For a moment, I forgot everything else. I even forgot to search for Freya, until a pair of hands clutched both my shoulders and a familiar head nestled between my shoulder blades. “Boo,” she said softly. And then: “I heard you were looking for me.”
Back in the present, I turned to look at Freya. “Where’d you go? I was starting to worry.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I was coming back from the bathroom and thought I saw someone.”
“Someone?”
“Remember Ms. Jarrett from school?” Freya’s skin was pink around her hairline. Like me, she hadn’t been careful enough about sunscreen in that area.
Ms. Jarrett had taught me history for two years and I nodded. “Here?” It wasn’t impossible. The U.N.A. had resettled the families of other important people before us and possibly even after. Maybe Ms. Jarrett knew someone with clout. “And you went after her—how do you know we can trust her?”
“I don’t,” Freya admitted. “I did it without thinking. It wasn’t her anyway. When she took off her sunglasses her eyes were totally different.”
“Good. It’s better that it wasn’t her.” She could’ve been working for the director or had her real memories triggered by seeing Freya (things normally didn’t seem to work that way—usually a wipe and cover lasted forever—but we were proof that wasn’t always the case) and who knows what danger that could’ve brought us? “It’s like the past can’t leave us alone today.” I pointed at the guitarist and then threaded my fingers quickly between Freya’s to lead her away, not wanting to be reminded anymore that afternoon of all the good and bad things we’d left behind.
Freya broke free and made me chase her down to the water, splashing cold seawater at me until I was forced to laugh and haul her into my arms. I waded out a few more steps before throwing her in. The look on her face when she hit the water was priceless. Then she was bounding up and wrapping her cold body around me, retaliating by pulling me in with her.
When we got back to our towels, the both of us wet, the guy stretched out next to us happily observed, “You found each other.”
“We did,” Freya said, equally cheerful.
Maybe it was because the day was disarmingly beautiful, or because throwing a Frisbee around with Jeff and Heather had helped make us less wary of people in general, or because I was more relieved to find Freya again than I’d let on, but we struck up a long conversation with the guy and his girlfriend. This was back when I was still stuck at the shitty landscaping job and our neighbour on the beach, Sheldon Ostil, listened to me complain about my boss, offered me a cigarette, and told me they were looking for someone new at the bar he worked at.
A few days later I followed up on the lead and when Greasy Ryan’s hired me, Sheldon and I became friends. Probably none of that would’ve happened if Freya hadn’t wandered off after someone who happened to look like Ms. Jarrett. And maybe I wouldn’t have started smoking, either, but regardless, that day on the beach was one of the best we’d had in Vancouver up to that point. It’s the day my head falls effortlessly towards when my legs vanish from under me and I stop fighting my own disappearing act.
For a while, events unfold just as they did that June day in 1985. We’re hopeful, safe, and happy out on the sand, Freya and me. ‘Holly’ and ‘Robbie’ making new friends in a brand new life in an era that was once well behind us. Then the sky fills with clouds and the wind blows cold. Freya and I burrow into each other for warmth on our towels as thunder claps behind us. Sheldon sighs and stubs his lit cigarette into his palm. Like magic, he begins to disintegrate, his hand crumbling to dust that gusts away within seconds, leaving a void where his fingers and wrist should be. Next it’s his entire arm. Then a portion of his shoulder. Each of Sheldon’s dissolving parts is carried on the wind like ancient remains suffering from high-speed erosion. I shout, “Hold on!” and clutch his leg, desperate to keep him with us.
“I can’t,” Sheldon says calmly back. “Neither can you.”
Sheldon’s girlfriend has already vanished. So has everyone on the beach but the three of us: Sheldon (fading fast), Freya, and me. Beyond the shoreline, Kitsilano houses have been replaced by an impenetrable grey fog. For a moment, a sliver of it lifts just enough to reveal a familiar mushroom-shaped building. Then the clouds open up. They pelt us with stinging hail that instantly transforms the sand beneath us into mud. One of the shards clings to Freya’s scalp and sends a thin river of red spilling down her forehead and her cheek. What kind of industrial strength precipitation can do that? I reach into her hair, clamping my fingers around a tiny shard of fine china.
The clouds must hate us with a passion to abuse us this way. I shield my eyes with my hand as I stare up at the falling fragments of china. They litter the beach like seashell slivers.
Next to me, Sheldon says, “This is nothing. Lots of worse things happen out there than some smashed china.”
“I know,” I tell him, the entire right half of Sheldon’s body gone now. “But fight, damn it. Don’t let them do this.”
“You fight,” Freya urges me, her face awash in blood. “It’s your turn. Come find me. ”
“I’m coming,” I promise, my voice halting and mechanical. My teeth are turning to steel inside my mouth and my jaw…I’ve lost the power to open it. Control’s been snatched out from under me. My will, my strength, my identity. They’ve poured my essence out. I’m not even human anymore. That’s how it feels, like I’m nothing more than an empty carton of milk, and that should make it easy to give in, except that Freya’s aqua eyes are staring at me with a tenacity I’ve never seen in anyone else.
“Find me,” she demands. “You’re so close already.”
I must be. Sensation’s returning to my mouth. My tongue tastes medicinal. The inside of my nostrils reek of it too. My body aches all over, like it’s been folded accordion style. But although I’m zoning in on consciousness, I can’t open my eyes. My lids remain firmly shut, no matter how I struggle. Behind them, Sheldon completes his disappearing act, even though part of me knows it’s not real, and that it hasn’t been June 1985 in almost a year. In my dream, sand blows into my pupils and seals my eyes closed. Someone laughs as I wince.
“He’s waking up,” a voice notes.
I shiver and shake, my body contorting as my lashes flutter and give way. My pupils stare headlong into a blinding white light. No…nothing quite as dramatic as that, after all. Just a flashlight they’re shining on me, and in the same second I realize that I understand why I couldn’t control my jaw. They’ve gagged me so I can’t scream. I try anyway. I thrash around on the metal bars they’ve caged me inside, making muffled sounds of aggression while the flashlight holds me fixedly within its spotlight.
“There’s no point,” the voice behind the glare tells me. “You might as well save your strength.”
“Let him scream, if it makes him happy,” someone else says. “What’s it to us?”
My hands are cuffed behind me; I feel that now too. Thirst, rage, and helplessness. Only as something moves close by in the darkness does my head snap to the left and take in the shadowy image of a second cage, a man crammed inside it. In the dark I can only guess it’s Minnow. Moonlight shines through the rickety slats of what appears to be an old barn, a cavernous space carpeted with hay and filled with forgotten things—a trough, wheelbarrow, and what could be old cans of paint. I panic when the flashlight swerves to illuminate Minnow instead. The square cage is too small to allow him to stretch out; he’s lying unconscious in the fetal position with his kneecaps pulled in close to his chin. My cage is the same size, only I’m almost a foot taller than Isaac. I’ve never felt claustrophobic before but my body automatically rebels against the cramped conditions, my legs trying to stand as my head bashes against the top of the cage and knocks me straight back into oblivion.
Twelve: 1986
The second time I wake up, the barn is bathed in the dim light of camping lanterns. Someone’s uncuffed my hands and taken the cloth out of my
mouth. Those are the first things I notice. Next is the water dispenser that’s been hung inside the cage with me like I’m some kind of animal. I look past it, over at Isaac—still fast asleep—this time sitting up with the side of his head resting against the metal bars of his cage. A couple of months ago I saw a news report about a couple of police officers who had squeezed a black bear inside a cage roughly the same size. It’d been spotted wandering around Port Coquitlam and people were worried it was becoming aggressive. The bear didn’t look any more comfortable trapped inside the metal bars than Isaac does now.
In front of the barn door sits a man on a red folding chair, staring dispassionately my way. As the sleep clears from my eyes I see it’s the thin man in acid wash jeans who chased me out of my apartment yesterday. “Where is she?” I ask.
The man doesn’t answer. His eyes settle in a spot behind me and it takes me a second—with my knees pressed up to my nose—to jerk around in the cage and see what he sees. A second man, one I don’t recognize. This guy’s wearing a plaid shirt and muddy Kodiak boots and says, “You don’t ask the questions here. We do.”
In Toronto, the guys who came after us were in suits, trying to pass as Canadian intelligence officers and businessmen-on-lunch types, but these two are definitely going for the rural look.
“I don’t know anything important,” I tell them, Minnow stirring at the sound of our voices. “Freya doesn’t either. We haven’t said anything to anyone. And we won’t. It’s been over a year and we haven’t said a word.”
Both of the men have walkie-talkies down beside their chairs, and as they crackle to life the men reach for them in tandem, a female voice commanding, “Bring Monroe in.”
The man in the plaid shirt stomps towards the cage, sliding a key into the padlock and unlocking it. The thinner man is directly behind him and once the cage door has swung open he reaches past the first man to yank Minnow forwards. Isaac falls onto the hay-lined floor, his hands splayed out in front of him, while the man in the plaid shirt stands with a tranquilizer gun drawn.
“Up!” the thin man demands.
Minnow attempts to obey, staggering to his feet only to collapse to his knees. I don’t know if he was injured when they abducted us or whether he’s just stiff from spending the night folded like a newspaper. “Up,” the man repeats, one of his hands gripping Minnow’s arm to force him into a standing position.
Minnow’s expression is blank as he successfully reaches his full height and stumbles forwards with the man. The guy with the tranquilizer gun keeps his distance, his weapon still at the ready. I watch in silence as a second duo—a man and woman—burst through the barn door and take charge of Minnow. As the newly arrived man reaches for him, Isaac recoils, nearly falling again. “What are you doing here?” Minnow says.
The woman, holding her own tranquilizer gun, aims it at Isaac. “Be quiet,” she tells him. But as the trio walk out of the barn I hear Minnow questioning the man further. “It was you, wasn’t it?” he says sharply. “You were the one who got to her.”
The thin man in the acid wash jeans that haven’t been relegated to fashion history yet closes the barn door behind them, and he and the other man return to their places on either side of my cage.
“Just tell me if Freya’s okay,” I plead. “What can it hurt you to tell me that?”
The guy in plaid sighs as he drops into his chair. “We already told you we don’t answer questions.”
I flex my knees and arms. They’re numb like Minnow’s must have been and if I get the chance to run I’ll have to be ready. “I’m the one in the cage,” I remind him, my head aching where I whacked it. My fingers skim over the top of my skull and find one hell of a goose egg. “It’s not like you have to worry about what I’ll do with the information.” I swivel so I can see both men at the same time just by turning my neck. The thin man’s sitting tall in his folding chair, his eyes as expressionless as if he were alone.
Before I’m even aware that I’m going to do it, I’m opening up my lungs and roaring, “Help! Fire!” That’s something I learned from TV too—people are more likely to help you in cases of fire rather than personal attacks. I shout the words over and over with a vehemence that makes me cough. But neither of the men react to my outburst with anything more than a blink of their lashes or slight shift in their seats. There must be no one around to hear us. Because I don’t know what else to do, their apathy doesn’t stop me; I scream until my throat’s raw and I’m forced to lean my head towards the water dispenser and suck on it.
The humiliation of that sticks in my throat. I never got the chance to help the warren, but I wish I had. All I am to the U.N.A. is an obstacle. And then I remember what Isaac said about the French nuclear bombs in 2071. The future has no future. Not the way it was unfolding back in 2063 or 2065 anyway. Now is the only chance anyone has. Will what Isaac tells the director’s people change their minds about their plans for us? Will they even believe him? And where are they keeping Freya? There must be another building close by. Or maybe they took Minnow somewhere in the van.
I choke on nothing, my throat still dry, and then gulp down more water. No one says a word. Outside, an owl hoots. I twist and turn, trying to get comfortable, trying to get full feeling back in my limbs.
“Are they going to kill me or just fuck with my mind?” I ask.
The man in muddy boots taps his left foot idly on the floor, one of his thumbs folded over the other as they lie flat against his plaid shirt. “What did you have to do to get back here?” I prod, smugness colouring my tone. “Oh, right, you can’t tell me, can you? That’s how much control they have over you. They’re in your head.” But these guys have been U.N.A. trained. They’re not about to fall for my mind games.
Minnow’s already been gone about ten minutes. I can’t depend on him to help me form a plan; I’ll have to come up with one myself. For the next few minutes I absorb as many details about my surroundings as I can see. If there were only one camping lantern I could make a break for it and throw us into darkness, but four are placed in select spots around the barn. There’s a ladder leading up to an empty loft but not much to use as a makeshift weapon; every advantage is theirs. Somehow I’ll need to run for the door and hope they can’t get a decent shot at me with the tranquilizer gun. I picture the moment of freedom in my head and try to make it play out neatly. If I can duck behind one of the men at the right moment, maybe the other will shoot him instead. Then I can use his limp body as a shield or…I don’t know. Logically, I doubt any play I make will work. But I have to try. I’d rather die trying than give up on Freya.
No one should be able to destroy what we’ve had this past year. We never said forever but it was there underneath everything we did. Our old world was taken from us, for better or for worse. But we had something new, something still growing. We were meant to see this world together and make the best things in it a part of us.
Ronda and the Puente Nuevo have been waiting for us. The whole world’s been waiting, and I can’t bear to think that maybe the waiting’s finished with for good and they’ve already broken her.
Back in Toronto the director told Freya they couldn’t perform the new wipe and cover as well as they’d done in the U.N.A. It sounded like a hatchet job that could render us vegetables. In the best-case scenario, a completed wipe would steal me from Freya’s mind, in the worst she’d be a faint shadow of her old self. I’ve been losing my mind since I got home and found the apartment in shambles and Freya gone, but now I begin to go to pieces, my eyes burning and my feet kicking at the cage door like I don’t care if I break a bone doing it.
“Maybe we should give him another shot,” the thin man says. “Put him back under.”
No. If they do that I’ll never get out of here; I’ll lose her for sure. I squeeze my eyelids shut and pull my legs towards me, out of breath. To calm myself I start counting the seconds, trying to calculate how long Isaac’s been gone. Less than thirty minutes, likely, but every second counts. I
need them to let me out of the cage. If Freya’s here, I need to get to her and see what they’ve done.
“I need the bathroom,” I announce, locking eyes with the thin man.
He hunches silently in his chair. I hear the other man get up and jerk my neck to look at him. He’s wriggling something out of a knapsack—a collection of paper cups, the kind you’d find in a doctor’s office.
“No,” I protest. “Come on. Just let me out for two seconds.”
“How many of these do you want?” the man asks, ignoring my request. When I don’t answer he approaches the cage, scrunching two of the cups up small and shoving them through the breaks between the horizontal and vertical bars.
I don’t really need to relieve myself yet. What I do need is for the men to believe I won’t try to escape. I wait another two minutes and then smooth out the cups, pull down my fly and force out nearly a cup’s worth of fluid. “Now what?” I ask, holding up the cup.
“Just set it down next to you. We’ll get it later.”
Later. Later when they plan to move me?
I don’t complain. I just set the cup down and pull my legs up tight to my chin like I’m giving up inside. Meanwhile my ears continue scanning for sounds from outside the barn. Every few minutes an owl hoots or wind gusts. Aside from that it’s terminally quiet. No cars or machine noises. No voices or sign of Minnow. Whatever they’re doing, they’re saving me for last.
When I think I’ve waited long enough, I try again. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I mutter. “And it’s not something that’s going to fit in a cup.”
Tomorrow Page 13