The Eighth Guardian (Annum Guard)

by Meredith McCardle

Yellow sets down the notebook and picks up her fork. She pushes her beans around on her plate. They pool in the blood-red juice seeping from her steak. I can tell she’s still hesitant about this plan.

  “Okay,” she finally says. “We’ll go to Dallas. First thing in the morning.”

  My stomach is in knots when I wake up the next morning. I ignore it and pack up the three files and the notebook, and we leave the Parker House. The streets are filthy, lined with animal waste and trampled food. Horse-drawn wagons clomp down the cobblestones. We pass a butcher stall right there on the street. A dead pig hangs from a wooden rail. I fiddle with my watch, and Yellow looks visibly nervous. Like maybe she doesn’t know if she’s strong enough to project again.

  “Do you think we can get away with using the gravity chamber?” I ask. “It’s only a few blocks from here.”

  Yellow shakes her head. “I wouldn’t risk it. They probably have it rigged so they’d know when we used it.”

  I nod in relief. Because obviously they have it rigged. I only offered to be polite. I suggest we head into an alley to get some privacy before we project.

  “Hang on,” Yellow says. “I want to duck back into Shreve, Crump & Low first.”

  “The jewelry store? What, do you have your eye on a necklace or something?”

  She shoots me a dirty look and walks into the store. A few minutes later, she’s back, holding a small velvet satchel.

  She shakes it as she walks up to me and smiles. “Gold. I bought two ounces of it with the rest of our money. It’s going to be worth significantly more in 1963. Instant money in our pockets.”

  I open my mouth to say something, then close it. Because that was a genius idea. I wish I’d been the one to think of it.

  We duck into an alleyway where there’s not a soul around.

  Yellow tucks the satchel inside her dress and turns to me. “Is your watch set?”

  “Yep.”

  “November 21, 1963?”

  “I said yes, Yellow.”

  She huffs. “I was just checking. There’s no need to get pissy.” She grabs both of my hands and takes them in hers. “Let’s do this together.”

  “That’s a charming sentiment and all, but I can’t close my watch face if you’re holding both of my hands.”

  Yellow lets out a giggle and releases my right hand. I reach up and grab the pendant hanging from my neck, and Yellow does the same, then squeezes my hand.

  My dad. We’re going to see my dad. I have the image of him from his Annum Guard file in my head as I click the lid shut.

  We’re shot up into darkness, and I instantly know something is really, really wrong. A loud screeching sound erupts in my head, and light explodes in front of me. My body is pulled and stretched, and the screeching is getting louder. It’s going to rip open my eardrums. It tears down my body and penetrates my heart. I feel the screeching echo in all four chambers, and it’s going to kill me. I try to clutch at my chest, but we’re going too fast.

  Yellow and I land in the same alley, sixty-nine years later. I drop onto my knees and grab at my chest with my hands. I feel as if I’m having a heart attack. Deep pains throb inside my chest and shoot down the left side of my body. I’m dying. My heart is going to give out, and I’m going to die.

  “That was kind of awesome,” I hear Yellow say above me. “That wasn’t bad at—Iris?” Her voice is panicked now, and she drops down next to me. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  I keep breathing, forcing the pain away. I try not to inhale too deeply.

  “Iris!” Yellow shrieks.

  I just keep focusing on my breath. Inhale the pain. Exhale it all away. Inhale the pain. Exhale it all away.

  “Iris, say something!”

  “I’m okay,” I whisper, keeping my eyes closed. “It’s getting better.”

  “What’s getting better? What are you talking about?”

  I open my eyes. Everything seems to be fading now. “That wasn’t the worst projection you’ve ever made?”

  Yellow scrunches her nose. “No. That was the best projection I’ve ever made. Well, apart from the chamber ones. I barely felt a thing.”

  My head starts to shake, back and forth, though I have no idea I’m doing it. “No. That was terrible. That was like every projection I’ve done over the past couple days added together and multiplied by ten.”

  Yellow presses her lips together. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would I feel nothing and you feel—” And then she gasps. “It’s not just a rumor!”

  I sit up and lean my back against a brick wall. I still can only manage the short breaths. “What’s not a rumor?”

  She drops down next to me. “Dual projection! It’s real.”

  “English, Yellow. Speak English.”

  “Dual projection. It means force another Guardian to project with you. I could have my watch set to some completely different date, but if you were to grab on to me, you’d force me to come on your projection.”

  “I don’t understand.” I take another slow breath and lean my head back.

  “The rumor was that if one of us was really strong and really focused, we could dual project. I mean, we’ve all tried it, but it’s never worked. But you just did it.”

  “But we just traveled to the same date,” I point out. And then I bend forward. Breathing still hurts.

  “No, don’t you see? I must have transferred all my energy to you, so you took the full force of both of our projections, while I felt nothing.”

  I take a slow breath. “All I know is, you’re staying far the hell away from me the next time we project.”

  “Deal.” Yellow stands and takes the satchel out of her skirt pocket. “I’m going to go sell this, and then I’ll get us clothes. You stay here.”

  I don’t argue. I close my eyes and keep breathing. It takes a few minutes, but finally the pain subsides and I feel like myself again. And then Yellow’s back. Her face is contorted into a frown. “Problem. Turns out gold really wasn’t worth that much more in 1963 than it was in 1894.”

  “What?” I push up off the wall to stand. It takes me longer than it should. “How is that possible?”

  Yellow shrugs. “I don’t know. But I bought this for thirty-seven dollars, and that guy in there is telling me it’s only worth seventy dollars. That’s not going to get us to Dallas. I asked the guy. He said a round-trip plane ticket should set us back about seventy-five dollars.”

  “So we’re close.”

  “Seventy-five dollars apiece.”

  “Shit.”

  She cocks an eyebrow at me but doesn’t say anything, and I think of Abe. How many times he’s teased me about the “small-vocabulary” thing. Oh, Abe. Where are you right now? Do you still think of me?

  “Um, hello.” Yellow waves a hand in front of my face.

  I snap out of it. “Sorry. Okay, so we need to come up with another hundred dollars or so.” I can’t help but stare at the remaining diamond stud hanging in her left ear.

  Yellow catches me staring and reaches up to finger it. She sighs and starts unscrewing the back. “I know; it’s our only option. My dad is going to kill me. He gave me these when I joined the Guard.”

  An image pops into my head. Zeta handing over a small box. In my mind, it’s Tiffany blue with a white ribbon on top. Indigo stands beside them, beaming. A perfect little family.

  “Where’s your mother?” I ask her.

  Yellow’s head snaps back. “What?”

  “Your mom. It’s something that Blue said to me. He said Indigo had a perfect little family with two functioning parents.”

  A snort escapes Yellow’s lips. “Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth. My parents are both still alive, but they’ve been divorced forever. My mom lives in Manhattan with her new husband and family.” There’s more than a hint of hurt in her vo
ice. “She knows about us. Of course. What we do. But she never mentions it. We don’t even talk unless I call.”

  “Wait, you talk to your mom?” Alpha made it sound like we would never have contact with our friends and family members again. Was this a lie, too?

  Yellow scrunches up her nose like I just asked the dumbest question in the world. “Um, yeah.”

  Suddenly the smallest weight is lifted from my chest. Abe. My mom. They might not be gone from my life forever. If I make it through this—no, when I make it through this—I can see them. I can be with Abe. I can get my mom help.

  I smile for the first time in a while. “That’s . . . really great. I just assumed—”

  “Look, do you want to stand here and have a joint therapy session, or do you want to go to Dallas?” She raises an eyebrow at me and closes her fist around the earring. “I’ll be right back.”

  She shakes her head as she walks out of the jewelry store a few minutes later, and I force myself to stop thinking about Abe. Stop imagining how our potential reunion would play out.

  “Come on.” Her voice is heavy and sad, and she’s making me feel incredibly guilty. She leads me to a big brownstone on Washington Street, right where Macy’s is today. Iron letters float on a ledge welcoming us to Jordan Marsh & Company. Once inside, we wave off a petite sales clerk who attacks us with a perfume bottle that reeks like little old ladies. I leave the shopping to Yellow, and she buys us two very plain, pencil-thin dresses, one in a dark gray and one in a brown tweed, both of which look seriously itchy. Also, pencil skirts and I don’t exactly get along. But I squeeze myself into the gray dress, and we head to Logan.

  Even at the ticket counter, I realize that air travel is completely different in 1963 from what it is today. Everyone in line is dressed in their Sunday best. Suits and ties for the men. Dresses, hose, hats, and gloves for the women. We buy our tickets from a young, chirpy blond who takes our money and hands us tickets. Just like that. She doesn’t even ask for ID. Security is nonexistent. We just walk up to the gate, and no one seems to care that we’re traveling without bags. I mean, come on; Yellow and I are hitting just about every suspicious-traveler check mark that exists in the present, but no one bats an eyelash.

  “This is weird, right?” I ask Yellow.

  “Totally weird.” She points to the window and squints. “Are those . . . passengers out there? Having a picnic on the tarmac?”

  The flight is even weirder. We go outside and climb a metal staircase to board. Everyone makes a huge deal that we’re on the plane. A perky young flight attendant who can’t be much older than I am asks me if it’s my first time flying as we board. I mutter that it’s not and push my way to my seat as I try to ignore the fact that the whole plane smells like a stale ashtray in a dingy New England crab shack.

  I give Yellow the window seat and take the middle. A businessman in a suit and tie slides in next to us and immediately lights up a cigarette. Well, that explains the smell. I cough and pivot in my seat so that my knees are practically on top of Yellow’s, but either the man doesn’t notice or he doesn’t care. Probably the latter. Yellow and I spend the entire flight trying to make a plan by writing notes on cocktail napkins. There are some things you just can’t say out loud, and the fact that President Kennedy is less than twenty-four hours away from being dead is one of them.

  We touch down in Dallas, and the flight attendant wishes everyone a great day as they start down the staircase. Except for me. She purses her lips shut and glares at me. I think it might be because I politely shook her off when she tried to serve me a hot meal that smelled like plastic and preservatives. There was no way I was eating it.

  We hop in a cab and tell the driver to take us to Dealey Plaza.

  “Dealey, eh?” the driver says in a slow voice. “You girls know the president is going to be riding through that plaza tomorrow, don’t you?”

  “Mmm,” I say. “Yes.” I look at Yellow, and I see it written all over her face that the enormity of the situation has just hit her. The Kennedy assassination. We’re going to witness the Kennedy assassination. It’s one of those things that happened so long ago—I mean, before my mom was even born—but I’ve seen the video. I’ve read about it in the history books.

  And all I can think about is my dad. He’s going to be there. Trying to stop it. And he’s going to die.

  The driver drops us off in front of the Dallas County Records Building, a white, window-filled building that rises several stories in the air. The weather is crisp—almost cold. Across the street, kitty-corner to where we’re standing, is the seven-story, redbrick Texas School Book Depository.

  “That’s it,” Yellow whispers.

  I nod my head and look to a window on the corner of the sixth floor. That’s where Lee Harvey Oswald is going to be when he shoots and kills President Kennedy tomorrow. And where Alpha is going to try to earn a boatload of money off of stopping it.

  I feel sick.

  If this was a normal mission, I would be all over that building, all over this plaza. I’d scour every inch of the place and come up with a plan of attack. But it’s not a normal mission. I don’t even know what we’re doing here. How on earth are we supposed to figure out who CE is?

  Yellow and I check into the cheapest motel we can find. There are two double beds covered in thread-bare dark-green comforters, a wobbly night table between them, a beat-up old dresser, and carpeting that I assume used to be beige at one time.

  “I can’t believe we wasted all that money on the Parker House,” Yellow says as she drops down onto one of the beds.

  “Mmm-hmm.” I stare at the dresser. There are scratches on the top of it, dozens of them. I trace my finger along the deepest ridge and wonder how it got there. Hotel key? That’s a scratch of anger. Of contempt. That scratch makes me think of Alpha.

  “Iris,” Yellow says.

  I turn.

  “You need to be honest with me right now.” She drops her voice to a whisper. “Are you planning on stopping the assassination tomorrow?”

  “No.” I drum my fingers across the dresser, then wipe them on my dress. Dusty. “Why would I stop it? If I do, Alpha gets ten million dollars, and who knows how we’d affect the world. I’m not going to risk it.”

  Yellow nods her head, moving barely more than an inch in either direction. “And what about the other assassination?” She holds up a hand. “I’m not judging, but I need to be prepared.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do.” Yellow raises an eyebrow. “Honestly, I don’t. I just . . . want to be there . . . when it happens. It’s the only lead we have right now.”

  Yellow doesn’t say anything for a while. Then she simply says, “Okay.”

  I don’t sleep very well. I toss. I turn. I imagine my dad’s face. I wonder if I’ll recognize him. There are only two pictures of my dad in my house. One sits on a side table in the living room. It’s a picture of my dad holding me as a baby, staring down into my eyes. My mom stands above him, watching us. My dad’s face is hidden, partially obscured behind a mop of floppy hair that covers his eyes. That picture is part of the reason I have such a complicated relationship with my mom, because you can see it written all over her face in the photo: She only has eyes for him. She tolerates me, but she loves my dad.

  Except that now I know she did love me. She tried so hard to protect me. I shake my head; but the guilt remains, firmly nuzzled, no intention of budging.

  The second picture sits on my mom’s dresser in her bedroom. It was taken on their wedding day. They’re looking right at the camera. I spent hours staring at that picture as a child. I used to talk to it. Talk to my dad.

  In my head, my dad is going to look exactly like that picture tomorrow. Young. Handsome. Wearing a tuxedo and a bow tie.

  Okay, that’s probably not going to happen. But it might.

  I wake up Yellow at six the next mor
ning, mainly because I’m jumpy, and I can’t sit there and watch her sleep anymore.

  “Plan,” Yellow says as she flops our cocktail napkins full of poorly thought-out gibberish onto the bed. “We need to have a better idea what we’re doing.”

  I nod. She’s right. I pull out my dad’s file and flip to the very end. I read over the details I only skimmed before.

  “According to this, the main confrontation with Beta happens on the landing in between the fifth and sixth floors.”

  “And Lee Harvey Oswald is on the sixth?” Yellow says. “How close to the stairs is he stationed?”

  I realize I have no idea what the layout of the building is. That’s such a simple, basic detail, and I don’t have a freaking clue.

  “He can’t be too close to the stairs,” Yellow says, “or else he would have heard the argument; and as far as I know, the assassination happens just like it always has.”

  “Or he does hear it and carries on anyway.”

  “Either way, we need to figure out where we’re going to be. How many floors does the building have?”

  “Seven,” I tell her. At least I know that.

  “Okay, so we could set ourselves up on the sixth floor where Oswald is”—Yellow cocks her head to the side—“which just seems like a recipe for disaster, or we could be on the stairs too, on the landing above.”

  “Yes, the landing above,” I say. “That way we can be there the whole time and just wait for it to happen.”

  It’s seven in the morning by the time we cross Dealey Plaza and head over to the book depository. The president isn’t due to arrive for more than five hours, but already the crowds are gathering, setting up to get the best look.

  “These poor people,” Yellow whispers. “They have no idea what’s going to happen.”

  A pit forms in my stomach. They don’t know. The president doesn’t know. No one knows except for me and Yellow and Lee Harvey. For a second I wonder if maybe we should stop the assassination. Reading about something in a history book is so much different than actually being there.

  Kind of like the time my mom took me to Disney World when I was seven. She’d been on a high for a week already. My mom is almost always a happy manic. Anything is possible during that time. It’s when she gets all her painting done. Passionate swirls of color thrown onto canvas that sell for enough money throughout New England to ensure that the rent gets paid. She always paints first whenever mania hits—exhausts the muse, as she calls it—and then it’s onto whatever else she feels like in the moment. This time it was Orlando.