The Day Before Forever

by Anna Caltabiano

  “We are now boarding Group Four,” a voice on the intercom said.

  “That’s us.” I pushed Henley forward.

  There was a clamor as most of the people waiting at the gate got up and moved into line. There were a few people who inserted themselves farther ahead of us, so we were waiting for longer. We were all going to the same place at the same time anyway. I knew they wanted room for their bags. Thankfully, that wasn’t going to be a problem for us.

  We moved up farther in the line.

  Henley was chewing on his lip. “This is where they check our passports?”

  I pointed out the woman at the front who was scanning the passengers’ boarding passes and checking passports.

  Henley let out a long breath. He wasn’t the only one who was nervous.

  It was finally our turn. I went first.

  I handed the woman my passport with my boarding pass. I could see her compare my face to my photo. She slapped the boarding pass onto the scanner machine. The light went off. It beeped.

  I was all good. She handed everything back to me.

  I waited to the side while Henley went next. He was trying to look casual, but I could tell he was holding his breath as the woman looked at his passport.

  “Have a safe flight,” she said, handing him his passport and his boarding pass.

  “T-thank you.”

  Henley’s eyes were wide as he joined me. I started walking down the covered ramp before he could say anything else to the attendant who had just checked us in.

  “I can’t believe that worked.”

  “Flight attendants, please prepare for takeoff.”

  I had spent the last five minutes watching Henley as he watched the flight attendants go through the safety features of the plane. Henley must have been the only passenger on the airplane who had pulled out the safety placard in front of him and had diligently followed along, just as the flight attendants had requested.

  As the engine whirred to life, I looked down to see Henley’s hand gripping the armrest between us. He had an aisle seat and was gripping the other armrest, which he had all to himself, on the other side as well.

  When we started moving, Henley unglued his eyes from the headrest in front of him to momentarily glance out of the window.

  The plane stopped, and Henley tapped me.

  “Is that supposed to happen?”

  “We’re just getting into position,” I said. “We’ll start moving faster down the runway quite soon.”

  Just as I said that, we heard the squeal of the gears getting in place. The engine was louder.

  “This is it?” Henley looked at me.

  I placed my hand on top of his. The plane started heading down the runway.

  I hated planes. I hated taking off and landing most of all. But because I had Henley next to me, with his knuckles pale, I put on a smile as if I were an airplane pro and I knew exactly everything that was happening.

  Henley calmed down once the plane got into a more horizontal position at cruising altitude.

  “You don’t even realize that you’re flying once you’re up here,” he said, craning his neck to see out of the window on the other side of me.

  There was a woman on my right who had fallen asleep as soon as the plane started. She had a pink sleeping mask pulled over her eyes. I was glad she couldn’t see Henley staring in her direction.

  I handed Henley his sandwich so he could eat it whenever he got hungry. He put the paper bag in the pouch on the seat in front of him before falling asleep.

  I took out the in-flight magazines from the pouch in front of me. The first one I looked at was a women’s magazine, detailing fitness tips, healthy eating habits, and street style as seen on current celebrities. It didn’t hold my attention for long, and I moved on to the other magazine.

  This one was a catalog of the strangest things, all of which one could buy while in a plane. I could have a heated cat litter box delivered to my house. I could get a wine cork carved into the shape of a friend’s head. I could even get an apron that lit up in the dark. Whose job was it to sit around and think of these things? Who cooks in the dark?

  I must have spent hours poring through the contents of that magazine. I read every description and studied every picture. It was all very curious.

  I fell asleep with the magazine still in my lap. I didn’t know how long I was out for. When I woke I noticed that Henley’s sandwich had been eaten, but he was asleep again, this time with his mouth slightly open. This hadn’t been a touristy trip or a vacation, after all. I didn’t blame Henley for being tired.

  I ate my sandwich and got a cup of water from the cart that came around. I got another for Henley. And then I fell back asleep.

  The second time I got up, Henley’s cup was empty. I peeked over to my left; sure enough, he was back asleep. It was as if we were sleeping in shifts.

  Not having anything else to do, I opened the backpack, which I had stored underneath the seat in front of me. There weren’t many useful things that I could do while on the plane. I got out the box with the phone in it. The man at the store had already set it up for us, but maybe I could learn how to use it? Maybe it would have some special features that I didn’t know about. That could be useful when we were on the ground.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  It was the woman next to me. She obviously wasn’t asleep anymore, and she was looking straight at me.

  “Um . . . excuse me?”

  Her sleeping mask was pushed up onto her forehead, and her curls stuck out from the band behind her head like little horns.

  “What. Are you. Doing. With that phone?”

  “Uh, I just wanted to learn how to use it,” I said.

  I wished I could run, but we were stuck in our seats.

  “You weren’t thinking of calling anyone, were you?”

  “Uh—”

  “It’s like you want to kill us all!” She grimaced. “You do realize that you can’t call anyone from here because you’ll cause the plane to go down?”

  “Um . . . yes?” I just wanted her to stop talking. I also wanted to tell her I was well aware that there was no reception mid-Atlantic.

  “You’d better not . . .” The woman pulled her eye mask down, as if she couldn’t bear to look at me for another second, and turned her back to me.

  How could something so small as this simple phone affect something as big as the plane we were on? I didn’t get the logic, but I put the phone away just in case.

  I spent the rest of the seven-and-a-half-hour flight sleeping and flipping through the magazines again in turn.

  When we landed, it was still light outside and that confused me.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the local time here in New York is 11:50 a.m. In just a few moments, the seat belt light will turn off and we will start disembarking. Until then, please remain seated with your seat belt fastened. I hope you have a great day, whether New York is just a stop or your final destination. On behalf of the entire crew of this flight, thank you for choosing Virgin Atlantic. We hope you think of us for your next trip.”

  Henley was awake. Our descent must have woken him, since that was when I felt his hand on mine again.

  I turned to him. “Congratulations. You just survived your first flight.”

  When the seat belt sign was turned off, everyone immediately stood—even the passengers with the window seats who couldn’t possibly get off the plane right away. I made sure the backpack was in my hands as we lined up in the aisle.

  “Careful, Henley.”

  I pulled him out of the way of a man trying to lower his suitcase from the overhead bin.

  “Let me help you with that,” Henley said, assisting the man in lowering it safely.

  The line started to move, but I was impatient. It wasn’t moving quickly enough.

  It took ten minutes for us to get to the front of the plane.

  “Thank you for flying with us!” a flight attendant said.

 
“You’re welcome!” Henley responded.

  I pulled him along toward the baggage claim. Though we didn’t have bags to pick up, that was where the exit was. Everyone was heading over there, and I wanted to beat the rush to get a taxi.

  “Come on.”

  Henley pumped his arms to keep up with me.

  The blazing New York summer heat hit us when we walked out through the doors.

  “Now this was something I didn’t miss,” Henley said.

  “From your time, or from the last time I was here?”

  “The last time you were here I didn’t have a body and didn’t have to feel all this.” Henley waved his arm around in the air.

  The air felt heavy with humidity. I had forgotten what summer in New York felt like.

  “We need to get a taxi before the other people start getting their bags and heading out here,” I said.

  Just then, I saw a yellow cab heading toward us.

  I stepped out to the edge of the sidewalk and put my hand up. I thought the driver saw me, but he drove past.

  No matter, another taxi was coming.

  When he was close, I put my hand up again. This time I waved it around a bit to ensure I got the driver’s attention. But he passed me too.

  What was wrong with these drivers?

  I looked to Henley for help, but he was nowhere to be found.

  “Rebecca!”

  I looked toward the voice.

  There was Henley, standing in a roped-off section of the sidewalk.

  “The cabs are here. Are you coming?”

  I jogged over. Henley was already near the front of the line to get a taxi.

  “Excuse me,” I said, passing a handful of people who were in line after Henley. “I’m not cutting in; I’m just joining my . . . boyfriend.”

  “Took you long enough.” Henley smirked. “There are some things I’m still better at, even in times you’re more familiar with. Admit it.”

  I ignored that and waited till we reached the front of the line.

  Two taxis pulled up to the curb. The family of four in front of us took the first, and we took the second.

  I gave him Miss Hatfield’s address.

  “Yes. Yes,” he said.

  I thought he had heard and understood me, but I couldn’t be certain.

  As we left the airport behind us, the scenery outside started to turn into buildings and then skyscrapers. We were heading into the city.

  “So is it your first time here?” our driver asked.

  “No. It’s been a while, though,” I said.

  “You’ve both been to New York before?”

  “I was here a long time ago,” Henley said.

  I couldn’t tell if he looked sad because he was facing away from me, looking out of the window on his side.

  “I bet a lot has changed,” the driver said. “The city keeps changing. That’s what makes New York the greatest city in the world.”

  “‘The more things change, the more they stay the same.’ Or at least that’s what they say, right?” Henley said, still looking out the window.

  It hadn’t even occurred to me that this quick trip into New York might be difficult for Henley, as it was his first time back since he’d lived here more than a century ago.

  “I’m a New Yorker born and bred,” the driver said. He took one hand off the wheel to gesture wildly with it. “My parents too. And their parents. My grandpop used to sit me on his lap and tell me about the time when carriages filled the city. Can you imagine? Carriages. Horse-drawn carriages.”

  Henley was looking up at the skyscrapers, ducking his head in the taxi so he could see the tops of the buildings. “No, I can’t begin to imagine . . .”

  When we got to Miss Hatfield’s brownstone, I waited for the driver to drive away before taking Henley’s hand and dragging him away from the front entrance.

  “Why aren’t we going in?”

  “We are,” I said. “We’re just getting the key. It’s not like my copy of the key survived traveling to Tudor England.”

  Miss Hatfield’s brownstone wasn’t on the corner of the street, but the house next to it was. We went around the block to the side of the neighbor’s house. There were four miniature trees in green pots decorating that side of the house.

  “Let me see if I remember correctly . . .”

  I walked up to the second pot and felt behind the plant. My fingers dug into the dry soil. I didn’t feel anything.

  Maybe I had gotten it wrong? Maybe the key was in the next pot or the second from the right instead of from the left?

  I was just about to give up and try the other pots before suggesting somehow breaking into the house when my fingers felt cold metal.

  “Here we go.” I retrieved the small key and shook it free of the dirt. “Just like Miss Hatfield to hide keys in potted plants that aren’t even hers.”

  Henley tried to keep his face emotionless at the mention of his mother, but there was tension behind his masked face.

  I led Henley back around to the front of the house. I had no trouble fitting the key into the lock, and it turned with a familiar click. I pushed the door open.

  It was dark inside, as we stepped over the large pile of mail that had collected on the floor. A little dusty. But it had always been that way. Miss Hatfield had always kept the dust covers over the furniture that wasn’t used every day.

  As I walked down the hallway, I almost forgot that Henley was following a few paces behind me.

  “So what do you think?” I asked, since he hadn’t said anything since entering.

  “I’m not sure what to think.”

  At least he was honest.

  “I hadn’t really thought about where my mother lived, but I guess I imagined it a bit differently,” he admitted.

  “But it’s not like you haven’t seen the place before. Granted, you weren’t in a body, but—”

  “It’s different,” he said, and left it at that.

  We entered the kitchen. It had been my favorite room, despite all the horrible things that had happened there. Miss Hatfield had slipped the water from the Fountain of Youth into my lemonade there. The fifth Miss Hatfield supposedly killed herself there in front of my Miss Hatfield. But it was the most homey part of this house—the most normal.

  Many things change when one becomes immortal, but the need to eat stays. It’s universal and it’s normal. Miss Hatfield even occasionally baked here.

  I flipped the light switch so we could see better, but the lights didn’t go on. I tried again, before realizing the electricity bills hadn’t been paid in God knew how long.

  “Are you sure there’s even a credit card here?” Henley said. I ran to the desk Miss Hatfield kept.

  It was a mess. Piles of spilled papers all coated with a thick layer of dust. I rummaged through it as best as I could.

  Not finding anything that resembled a credit card, I started looking through her drawers.

  There. In the back.

  I grabbed the credit card.

  Rebecca Hatfield, it read. That was the upside of having the same name.

  “Henley! I found it.”

  SIXTEEN

  I WOKE UP when Henley wrapped his arms around me and hugged me close from his side of the bed.

  It was dark in my bedroom in Miss Hatfield’s house because we had lowered all the thick blinds before going to bed, but I was sure it was already morning.

  Henley’s touch still made my breath catch. I hoped he didn’t notice. He would make some joke about it. I knew Henley well—his thoughts, his words, his entire mind, really—but his touch was foreign. In the dark, if I tried really hard, I could almost make myself believe this was the same Henley I had known all those years ago in 1904. I could clearly imagine his blue eyes and the way his dark hair flopped into them at times. In the dark, it was real. I could make it real with my imagination.

  “Henley . . .”

  “I’m sorry. Did I wake you?” he asked.

  I assure
d him he hadn’t.

  “Then was it that nightmare again?” He was referring to the dream I’d had once before of Miss Hatfield dying.

  I turned to face him in the dark and ran my fingers through his hair.

  “I wish I could stop it,” he said. I knew he was talking of my nightmares.

  “I know.” I placed my hand on top of his, feeling how much larger they were than my own.

  “It’s time to get up and get going.” He pulled away from me and got up from bed.

  I sat up in the dark. “Can you even see where you’re going? You don’t know the house well.”

  “I think I’ll manage. Don’t worry about me.”

  But I did worry about him. Henley had changed—whether he knew it or not—since the days when he had been ignorant of immortality and since his time in the turn of the century. New York had changed without him. He hadn’t seen much of the city yet, but he was bound to see this.

  “Let me open the blinds,” he said, moving toward the window. There was a flurry of dust as he did so.

  As I suspected, it was already bright outside and sunlight streamed in, momentarily blinding us.

  “The first sunlight of the day is always dazzling, isn’t it?”

  “It always is . . . I’m just going to grab a glass of water,” Henley said.

  I listened as his footsteps pattered away before I remembered we wouldn’t have running water in the house. Henley would notice quickly enough.

  “Rebecca!” He sounded urgent. Henley’s voice didn’t sound like it was calling me to come to him. It sounded like a warning.

  I shot up out of bed just as Henley burst through the bedroom door.

  “He’s found us.”

  “The killer?” I asked, scanning his face.

  “Juana. Whoever it is. They’ve found us.”

  I slowly walked past him into the kitchen. I didn’t know what I would find.

  In the middle of the room was a dead bird sitting in a pool of its own blood. It was a large bird, almost the size of a small human child. But its feathers were so matted, I couldn’t tell what kind of bird it was until I got closer.

  “A peacock.”

  “And it also had its head severed,” Henley said.

  “Is it a warning of some sort?” I asked. “A sign that he’s watching? I don’t know what he could want . . .”