Yesterday

by C. K. Kelly Martin

For the future to untangle itself. Maybe we can outwait the director’s security forces.

  We sit hunched in our chairs, staring out the window, for at least fifteen minutes. We’re not the only ones inside the deli. A trio of balding men are nursing coffees and a washed-out-looking blond woman and her burly, mustached boyfriend have begun to argue in the corner. “That’s fucking unfair and you know it,” the boyfriend bellows to the blond woman across the table. “Do you think you’re the only one who has given up things to try to make this work?”

  “Oh, I know I am,” she retorts. “I gave up everything for you and look what it got me. You don’t give a shit about making this work. You just don’t want me to be with anyone else. That’s all this is about for you. Keeping me to yourself so that we both go down together.”

  The visions start up again as I listen to the couple argue. There are more details now. I see the light go out of Garren’s eyes for good as he falls. I hear myself howl in my mind, my soul rebelling against the loss.

  It can’t come to that. There has to be a way out of this.

  “Follow me,” I tell Garren. “We’ll go by the back door.”

  I don’t know what else to do. We have to leave sometime and in my vision we were in front of the deli, not behind it.

  Garren nods. He trusts that I know what I’m doing.

  We get up and shamble towards the counter. I crane my head over it and focus on the twenty-something-year-old guy behind the counter. He has a mop of overgrown red hair and a ruddy complexion to match. “Excuse me,” I say, “is there a back door we can use?”

  “The back door is for employees only.”

  “Right, I know. But my dad is out there looking for us. I just saw him across the street a few minutes ago, and if he sees me with him”—I point my thumb at Garren behind me—“he’ll kill him.”

  The redheaded guy smirks at us like he’s in on a dirty little secret. “Someone’s been a baaad boy.”

  Garren’s lips form a crooked grin. “I could take her old man no problem but she doesn’t want us to get into it.”

  The redheaded guy chuckles. “Okay, I’ll be the good guy here and save your asses.” He saunters down to the end of the counter and lifts the latch on the waist-high door to allow us entrance. Then we follow him into the kitchen where a woman in a hairnet is stirring an enormous pot of chili. She glances at us sideways but says nothing.

  “Right there,” the guy drawls, his finger aiming at the exit sign. As we’re leaving he says to our backs, “Be good, kids!” and wheezes with laughter.

  We hustle up a side street, past brick houses, green spaces and apartment buildings, our eyes constantly scanning the surrounding area. My heart’s racing but my mind is empty of visions—a single wish pounding behind my eyes, that our stealthy departure was enough to magically shuffle the variables and alter our future. We’ve already beaten the scenario in one of my visions. And we won’t set foot near the bus station. Does that mean we’re in the clear or does it just mean the director’s men will get us some other way?

  “Let’s cut back towards the lake,” I say breathlessly. “We shouldn’t get too close to the station.”

  “We need to go back for the gun,” Garren declares as we turn sharply. “It’s not safe out here on the street. We have to get our hands on a car.”

  There were no bullets left in the gun we dropped into the Dumpster but I see what Garren means. I don’t know how to hot-wire a car and I guess he doesn’t either. Pointing a gun at someone is the fastest way to get their car keys.

  Damn. We should’ve held on to it.

  We continue down the street, beginning to work our way back to the apartment building where we dumped the gun. My eyes keep catching on passing black cars. I gasp a little at each one.

  “We’re good,” Garren tells me. “We’re good. We’re good.” It’s like a chant almost. “We’ll get the gun and get out of here.”

  I adjust my hair under my hat, having forgotten that since it’s shorter and lighter now I have no need to hide it.

  Without warning a silver car jumps onto the sidewalk ahead of us, partially blocking our path. In a flash we turn and bolt in the opposite direction. Garren’s legs are longer and he’s ahead of me in no time, slowing to wait for me.

  “Freya!” a female voice calls. It sounds both familiar and a little frail. I immediately think of my mother. What am I going to do if they’ve dragged her into this?

  I glance back to check, slowing to a jog. The woman’s not chasing me. I don’t think she could if she tried. She’s ancient. Not my mother but familiar all the same. Thin and graceful with long white hair. This must be a trick dreamt up by the director. Someone who looks harmless to reel us in.

  “I’m here to help you both,” the woman says from her place next to the car. “The director didn’t send me but he’s looking for you. Please, get in the car. It’s for you. You can take it wherever you want to go.”

  I’ve stopped and am gawking at her, Garren trying to pull me along with him. “Don’t listen to her,” he warns. “She has to be with them.”

  “I know what you saw in your visions back at the deli,” the white-haired woman yells. “You saw them kill him. In two different places. I’m trying to stop that.”

  Garren lets go of my arm. He stares wide-eyed at the old woman. It’s then that I recognize her. She was in our hotel lobby last night when I left for the restaurant. The woman who smelled like satsuma and smiled back at me.

  I don’t understand what’s happening. She could’ve taken us last night if she’d wanted to. She could’ve and she didn’t.

  “It’s true,” I tell him. “That’s what I saw.”

  The woman waves a small envelope over her head as I cautiously approach, Garren a step behind me. “I have new ID for you too. I’m going to set it down and walk away. The ownership papers for the car are in the glove box and made out in your new names. Take the car. Take the ID. Go to Vancouver or wherever else you think you want to be but you have to go now.”

  We’re so focused on what the old woman’s saying that we don’t see the lean man barging over from across the street until it seems as if it’s already too late. I don’t recognize him but he’s walking with a sense of purpose that can be no coincidence.

  “Are you going to shoot us all?” the old woman asks. “Don’t you think that might create more problems than it will solve?”

  “I’m not going to shoot anyone,” the man insists. “I’m this boy’s uncle. He’s a runaway. So is the girl. I’m just here to bring them home.”

  “He’s not anyone’s uncle,” I object.

  But the white-haired woman already knows that and is striding towards the man with a stillness in her blue eyes that steals my breath. “You’re not taking them,” she tells him.

  “Listen, it has nothing to do with you.” The man retreats a step. “It’s family business, okay? I’m sure you think you’re helping these kids but what they need is to be back with their families.”

  Across the street a radio crackles and a disembodied voice demands an update. The man casts a fleeting look over his shoulder at his car as the radio continues to spit out noise. The voice could be the director’s himself and I hear it ask for a description of the vehicle.

  “Freya, Garren, get in the car,” the woman commands, moving ever closer to the man whose job it is to steal us and make us forget forever. She’s closer to him now than she is to us.

  “No.” The man raises his hand as we step nearer to the silver car. He reaches into his jacket for his gun and aims it at us. The woman lunges at him, one of her hands grasping for the gun as her body blocks his.

  She’s still shouting at us and I’m staring at her, shocked that someone so old could hold him off, even for a moment. “Freya, take Garren and go. You lost him the last time you got this far. It could happen again.”

  Again. My veins run cold as the truth echoes inside me.

  What would I do if Garren was killed today? I�
�d do everything within my power to find Victor Soto in the here and now, twenty-two years after Lake Nipigon whipped him into 1963. A U.N.A. archivist discovered evidence of him, which means there must be a trail to follow. And then, once I’d reached Victor, I’d ask him for the exact location of Lake Nipigon, which would send me back seventy-eight years, seven months and eleven days in time.

  Eventually, I would come back to this moment, if I lived long enough. I would do anything I could to stop them from killing Garren.

  It’s what I did. Once already. The woman in front of me is another Freya. Even as I realize it the fact seems impossible to grasp. It loops repeatedly inside my head, slipping and sliding as I tumble after it. She is me. The knowledge pounds between my ears as Garren tears towards the altercation. The old woman—old Freya—is driving her fist into the man’s Adam’s apple. I’m running too and the gun goes off. She—I—collapse in a heap. The man gasps for breath but he still has the gun. Garren grabs for it, grappling with the man. I throw myself into the fight, hurl myself between them, the old woman lying at our feet.

  When the second shot goes off I don’t know what’s happened—which of us has been hit—until the man sinks to his knees next to my dying old body, leaving me with the gun in my hand. My fingers are bloody but I can’t feel any pain—the blood must be all his. Garren and I watch the director’s man thump to the ground, blood gushing from his chest.

  “We have to go,” Garren cries. “Get in the car.”

  I drop the gun and sink to my knees next to the woman I could become. The man got her in the neck and she’s bleeding badly but still alive. “It’s me,” I tell Garren, because I don’t know if he understands that yet. “She’s me.”

  I reach for her hand and squeeze. Her fingers are freezing. I can barely feel her return the pressure but her gaze is holding mine. Her stare is tender, protective. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m sorry.”

  She begins to smile as if it’s okay, as if this is how it was supposed to go all along. I guess from her point of view it was. Then she shuts her eyes and stops breathing and I know we can’t stay here another second.

  If we get caught now everything she did would have been for nothing.

  I feel Garren’s arm on my back. “I have the envelope,” he says quietly. She must have dropped it when she lunged for the director’s man. “Please, Freya, let’s go.”

  I get up and stumble towards the car, my face streaming with tears. She left the key in the ignition for us and Garren jumps into the driver’s seat and starts the engine. I burrow into the passenger seat, feeling miles away. We all lose ourselves to something eventually, but not like this. I can’t imagine what the other Freya must have gone through to get here. I thought I’d had it hard but suddenly my own difficulties feel like nothing in comparison. So much of her life must have been lived with this day in mind. The odds would’ve been against her from the start.

  I don’t know how I’d do it. But I would. I never thought of myself as weak but that kind of strength is a revelation. I would go back in time to give some newer version of me a better chance at happiness.

  Only I won’t have to. She did it for me and I’m filled with a gratitude so cavernous that it makes me cry harder.

  Why didn’t she approach me at the hotel last night? The sole reason I can imagine is that ominous visions kept her from intervening earlier. It seems that she wanted to get as close as possible to the moment that she lost Garren last time. Every step we take has the potential to change something, create a ripple that gives rise to potential new dangers from the director’s men. The conflicting visions in my head made me acutely aware of that. So did Garren’s gunshot wound. Having failed once, given the chance to do things over it appears that I’d walk in my own footsteps exactly until just before the crucial minute, as near as a person can come to cheating fate.

  Not that I believe in fate. How could I, knowing that you can change the past? But old Freya must have reached the conclusion that she shouldn’t make waves. When she saw me in the lobby she knew which path we’d ultimately choose today and knew those hours in the dark with Garren lay ahead of me too. As right as those hours felt, like something that was meant to happen, that doesn’t mean they were fate either—only that some moments have a special shine to them, the quality of being the best and truest they can be.

  We’re out of town, on a highway to who knows where, before Garren or I say anything.

  “Where are you going?” I ask. I’ve cried all the moisture from my voice. It sounds like sandpaper.

  “North.” Garren takes his eyes off the road to glance at me. “I don’t know where we catch up with the Trans-Canada Highway but it’s north somewhere. When we get far enough away we can ask for directions.”

  I nod dazedly. I don’t know how long this will all take to sink in.

  “It’ll be days before we get to Vancouver,” he continues. “At this time of year we’re bound to run into some really shitty weather on the way. I see a lot of motels in our immediate future.” Garren lowers his voice, his right hand landing on my thigh. “I won’t ask you what you see.” His individual fingers tap my jeans in quick succession, over and over until I reach across the gearshift and touch him back.

  I still don’t know what to say—how to put my feelings into words—and Garren just keeps talking through it. About anything. That he didn’t realize how strong the sun was until we got in the car. That he’s glad for the false memories because they make driving a snap. That he’s not sure whether the car has snow tires but he hopes so because we have a long, long way to go. Miles to go before we sleep, he jokes.

  Garren’s eyes fill with something I can’t describe. “But you can sleep for a while if you want,” he adds.

  I don’t want to. I want to stay awake with him. “I can drive later,” I mumble. “We can switch when you’re tired.”

  Garren nods and touches me again. It’s like we can’t stop. We need to keep doing it to prove we’re both still here. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, good.” He scratches his cheek and then retrieves the envelope from his coat pocket, handing it to me. “Have a look and see what’s in there.”

  I tear it open. There are two sets of identification inside—driver’s licenses, birth certificates and the Canadian version of Social Security cards (Social Insurance cards). I stare at the faces in the photographs, our faces. My identification is made out in the name of Holly Allen and the photo of me on the driver’s license looks almost exactly like I do now. Maybe my hair’s ever so slightly longer. Garren’s photograph is the one I’ve spied on his fake student card. I guess it was the only one of him I had.

  “You’re Robert Clark,” I tell him, clearing my throat. “You turn twenty on July twelfth.”

  “And who are you?”

  I quote my name and new date of birth. I was eighteen as of December third.

  “Holly,” Garren repeats. “That’s nice. Not as nice as Freya but I guess we have to get used to the new names.” His eyes seek mine out and now I think I recognize most of the various emotions I see in them. Some of them were in the final look old Freya gave me. Some of them are mirror-image reflections of feelings I can’t ever imagine having for anyone but Garren. The bit left over is pure admiration and I listen to Garren say, “I can’t believe everything she must have done to reach us. I can’t—” He cuts himself off, his eyes shining as he starts over. “You did all this. You saved my life.”

  He’s going to make me start crying again. I shoot him a look that translates simultaneously as you’re welcome and shut up. I only stopped unraveling a few minutes ago; I’m not ready to get that raw again.

  We fall mute, both of us gazing determinedly at the road ahead until I believe I can trust my voice. “I think … you’re more of a Robbie than a Robert.”

  Garren’s green eyes glint wetly in the sun. “Okay.” He takes a swipe at one of his eyes. “So I already have myself a nickname.”

  I lay my hand on his leg for what must be
the fourteenth time since we started driving and try to think of something else to say that won’t make either of us cry. “Robbie, you know, ever since I got back here those Winston Churchill quotes from the Dailies keep popping into my head.”

  “They were good quotes.” Garren raises his chin. His voice is bold and defiant as he says, “Never, never, never give up.”

  Never, never, never. Winston was on to something there.

  I smile for the first time since we got into the car. It feels faint but I think it will soon be stronger. “Can we drive straight through to Winnipeg?” I ask. Miles to go before we sleep.

  It seems right to be on the road. Like as long as we’re moving we’ll never be caught. Never, never, never. I can’t see anything but the present. No visions tugging at my mind. I hope it’s a good sign, and maybe when we reach Vancouver and see the whales I’ll finally believe we’re safe. We’re not invincible but we’re definitely each other’s best defense system. I’ve proven that.

  “Of course we can,” Garren says, and there’s his hand on me again, again, again. “We can take turns sleeping in the backseat.”

  “That sounds good,” I tell him, and I stare across the highway at the sea of 1985 people in their clunky old polluting vehicles. The way the light hits the bobbing jumbles of metal makes the cars look nearly pretty. They shimmer as they hurtle forward and skate across lanes. There’s a pony-tailed girl with a rambunctious dog in the backseat of the Buick ahead of us, and a bearded man in a leather jacket singing along to his radio in the station wagon on our left. These are our people now. This is our time. I flick on the radio and flip through the stations, looking for the first familiar song I can find. I stop on a Depeche Mode tune and Garren smiles.

  We drive on, deeper into the present, disappearing seamlessly into 1985. Just a regular teenage couple with the radio up loud, wondering what, aside from love, the world has in store for them.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As always, thanks to my husband, Paddy, for being my trusty first reader and sounding board and for making me laugh when that’s what I need the most.