Remember Yesterday

by Pintip Dunn

  “I don’t know. That wasn’t part of my memory. That’s not what I saw.”

  I’m almost afraid to ask. “What did you see?”

  She turns to me, her eyes as luminous as the stars, as the galaxy, as time itself. If I look closely enough, I’m certain I’ll be able to see my future. Everyone’s future.

  “I can’t tell you much,” she says. “When you know too much, too early, the future has a way of not coming true. But I’ll say this much: I see you next to me. We are fighting.”

  Every cell in my body goes still. This is what the future Olivia told me as well. “Who are we fighting? And why?”

  She presses her lips together, and I know it’s useless to pry. She’s already told me everything she’s willing to say. We walk the next two corridors in silence, and then Olivia stops at a closed door.

  “Here we are,” she says. “Tanner should be inside, playing with his mazes and mice. That’s all he ever does.”

  “Thank you. Do you know how to get back to MK?”

  She nods.

  “Will you promise to go straight there?”

  She nods again.

  And that’s it. Any moment now, she’ll leave, and I won’t see her for the next ten years. But I don’t want to let her go like this. Knowing her mother doesn’t love her. Believing she’s alone in the world.

  I take her arm. It’s so skinny, so frail. Once upon a time, I had arms like this. “Olivia, wait. I’m your friend. You know that, right? No matter what time or place I’m in, I’ll always be your friend.”

  She nods a third time, her eyes wider than usual, and scurries down the hallway.

  I take a deep breath and face the door. Whatever the older Tanner Callahan is doing, I’m about to find out.

  54

  I open the door—and not a moment too soon. The older Tanner has a little boy in his arms, and he’s half carrying, half dragging him toward a spinning spherical blade. The kind used to cut through wood. A tool you would need to construct mazes out of planks of varying sizes. A whine fills my ears as the blade slashes through the air. Just as easily as it would slice through human skin.

  The boy kicks and screams as though his life depended on it—and maybe it does.

  I run up to them and grab Tanner’s arm. “Tanner! What are you doing?”

  He flicks my hand away like it’s an insect. “This kid is stronger than I remember being,” he pants.

  “I don’t care who you are,” the boy screams. “I don’t care if you are me. You could be Father Time himself, and I still wouldn’t let you hurt me.”

  “Pay attention, you little brat,” Tanner says, his voice strained. “This is for your own good. It’s a bit of pain for a lifetime of remembrance.”

  He grabs the boy’s hand—his younger self’s hand—and tries to force it toward the spinning blade.

  My heart lurches. Dear Fates. I step between them and the spinning blade. “Tanner, stop! Explain to me what you’re doing.”

  He looks up, his eyes so wild I almost don’t recognize him. “If anyone would approve, it should be you. I’m giving myself a reminder of what’s important.”

  He pushes his younger self to the floor and digs his elbows into the boy’s back. “I’m the cause of future genocide. I invented future memory. I take full responsibility, and that’s why I’m going to fix it.” He sucks in a breath, winces as if it hurts, and then sucks in another one. “If I cut off some of my fingers, then I’ll change the course of our future. When I grow up and see that severed mouse’s leg, I’ll know not to do what I did. Not to invent future memory. We’ll shift to another path. The riot won’t happen. Callie’s life won’t be in danger. Chairwoman Dresden will continue to be stymied.”

  “We can’t change the past.” I grip his shoulders. “You’re the one who keeps reminding me. Remi—”

  “Will still be born,” he interrupts. “If you saved Callie, the ripples would extend to everyone close to her, which includes Mikey and Angela. But my ripples will die long before it touches any of you. None of you even know me at this time. We won’t even live in the same city for six more years. Whether or not I’m missing a few fingers won’t affect any of your lives one iota.”

  “You don’t know that,” I whisper.

  His jaw tightens. “The payoff is too great. I have to risk it.” He gets off the boy and, with renewed energy, hauls him up and once more tries to force his hand to the blade.

  My mind spins, working through his logic.

  If he’s right, future memory wouldn’t be invented. Callie would still be bonded to me. Dresden would have to find another way.

  And Tanner…Tanner would be missing a few fingers. He’ll bear the scars for the rest of his life. Add to this the torture that’s about to come, and it will rock him to his very core. It will change him.

  The Tanner Callahan I know—the one I’m beginning to love—might as well be dead.

  The blade touches skin, and the little boy’s scream pierces the air.

  “No!!!” I throw myself at them with all my strength, knocking them away from the blade.

  Tanner hits the ground, and I wrench his younger self from his arms. I pull the little boy, who is full-on hysterical, onto my lap.

  “Not like this.” I kiss the boy’s forehead, wetting the too-familiar black hair with my tears. “Callie already injected herself to keep future memory from being discovered. And then you invented it anyway. Don’t you see? No matter what we do, science will find a way. You told me yourself. We can’t stop science any more than we can stop the beast in the nursery rhyme. How many more lives do we have to ruin before we understand that?”

  The older Tanner pulls his knees to his chest, his shoulders vibrating violently. “I can’t be responsible for genocide. I can’t be the cause of that and live with myself.”

  “No,” I say with all the force in my soul and body. But he’s not listening to me. As lost as he is in his own guilt, he doesn’t hear.

  So I turn to the little boy on my lap. “You are not responsible, do you hear me? The only one who can be blamed for Dresden’s actions is Dresden herself. None of this is your fault. Not the world you live in and not your parents’ accident.”

  “Do you really think so?” The boy stares at his hand, where blood is blooming from the cut in between his fingers. “If I had listened more, if I had behaved better, maybe the chairwoman wouldn’t have gotten so angry. Maybe she would’ve punished me instead of them.”

  I grab a roll of gauze from a nearby table and wrap his finger as best as I can. “There was nothing you could’ve done. You did the best you could, and your parents would’ve been so proud of you. I’m proud of you.” I tie the gauze, hoping it holds long enough until a real medical assistant sees him. “You’re not responsible for the world, Tanner. Just try your best, in everything you do, and I promise you it will be enough. You may feel alone here, so alone. But I promise you that you will be valued. You will be loved.”

  He buries his face in my neck. “You’re nice. Are you an angel, just like my mommy?”

  I swallow hard. “Something like that.”

  “When I grow up, I want to marry you.” The fabric of my shirt muffles his words.

  I laugh through the moisture wetting my eyes. “Why don’t we work on being friends first?” I wrap my arms around the little boy, and I glance up to find the older boy watching me. I can’t read the expression on his face, but that’s nothing new. I’ve never been able to tell what Tanner is thinking. But for the first time, I know what’s in my own heart.

  So I look straight into his eyes and tell him. “You stay the boy you were meant to be. I wouldn’t change a thing about you. You hear? Not. A. Single. Thing.”

  55

  Too soon, we have to leave the young Tanner. Everything in me wants to bundle him up and take him back to the future with us, where he won’t have to suffer through six months of torture. Where he won’t grow up alone and unloved. Where he’ll be safe. But I can’t. Time
is a loop, but it doesn’t flow in both directions. If I take the six-year-old Tanner to the future with me, I’ll break that loop. The Tanner who is by my side now would disappear.

  This is the way his path unfolded, and I have to let time follow its natural course.

  We are quiet as we find our way out of the building, sticking to the less trafficked corridors. Once we emerge outside and go into the dense vegetation of the forest, he turns to me, the dappled sunlight decorating his face with shifting shadows.

  “I told you once that the only reason I survived the torture was because an angel came into my life,” he says. “She held me in her lap and told me that I was valued. I was loved. That’s the only thing that kept me going when the pain got to be too much. When I would’ve done anything to get it to stop.”

  He takes a few quick breaths. “Over the years, her features have blurred. Until I was sure of only one thing: She was beautiful.” He breaks off, dropping his face so I won’t see his eyes. So I won’t see his heart. A full thirty seconds pass as he struggles to compose himself. And then he lifts his head again. “Today, I find out that my angel was you. That’s why I thought I had known you in a past life. That’s why I reacted so strongly at the hoverpark. From the moment I met you, I’ve felt like I was in love with you. The feeling didn’t make any sense to me, so I tried to push it away. But now, I know that nothing makes more sense in the world. It was you, this entire time. It’s always been you.”

  He tugs me forward, and I trip over a root. I stumble against his chest and look up into his eyes. He begins to lower his mouth to mine. Our noses bump. His lips graze instead the skin by my ear.

  I smile. Our entire relationship, Tanner has been cocky and smooth. Well, he’s awkward now, and I love him all the more for it.

  “Let’s try that again,” he whispers, cupping my face with his hands.

  This time, our mouths connect solidly. I kiss him like I’ve never kissed anybody before. It’s not just our lips that are touching. Not just our tongues, not just our chests. I feel like our very souls are meeting. And it doesn’t matter if we’re in the present or the past. It makes no difference if we’re in this world or another one.

  There’s only one true Jessa and one true Tanner. And we’re here. Together. Now.

  He pulls back a fraction of an inch. “I love you, Jessa,” he says against my mouth. “You saved me.”

  “I love you.” I weave my fingers together behind his neck. “And you were the one who saved me.”

  And he did. I’ve spent my life engaging in stupid pranks that didn’t amount to anything. Trying my hardest to avoid anyone’s political agenda. When my true goal was always in front of me. I just never understood it until he showed me what was important.

  Him. Our love. The people in our lives.

  We’ve been going about this all wrong. Callie, Mikey, the entire Underground. We thought we could prevent genocide by preventing the invention of future memory. When future memory was never the culprit. It was always Dresden who was to blame. Dresden who is the enemy.

  There’s only one way to kill the beast.

  He gives me one last kiss and then squints at the sky. The sun is blazing overhead. “I hate to say this, but we need to get going.”

  I nod and rub my thumb over his knuckles. There, where I never noticed it before, is a scar between his ring and middle finger. In the exact spot where a whirling blade might cut. “Was this always here?” I ask.

  He holds up his hand, and mine along with it, and considers the scar in the sunlight. “As long as I can remember.”

  “Our lives have always been intertwined,” I say. “We just never knew it.”

  “I want our lives to stay intertwined,” he says somberly.

  “Me, too.”

  He lowers our hands, and we begin to walk through the woods, picking our way around the brambles and thorns. I don’t know how much longer my hand can stay fused in his.

  All I know is this: I don’t want to let go. Not for the rest of this time and all of the next one.

  ...

  I open my eyes. I’m standing on a metal platform. Naked once again. Disoriented one more time. I blink at the metal arch. Hear the creaking groan of one of the most powerful generators of our time. And register that the boy I value above all others is across from me. Also naked.

  My mom and Preston descend on us.

  “You’re okay,” my mom sobs, wrapping her arms around me. “You’re back here with me.”

  I embrace her for a long moment, closing my eyes. My hands begin to tremble as it sinks in. I did it. I went to the past—and returned, safe and sound.

  My mom pulls back, handing me a robe. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my dad helping Tanner get dressed.

  “Did it work?” my mom asks. “Did you go to the past?”

  I slip my arms through the sleeves. So strange, but from their perspective, only a brief time must have elapsed. “What did you see?” I ask.

  Preston helps Tanner on with his robe. “The metal arch passed over you, and there was this tornado of energy. For a few seconds, the wind was so strong we couldn’t see your bodies at all. And then the arch passed over you again, the wind died down, and here you are.” He looks at us expectantly. “Well? What happened?”

  “We went to the past,” I say slowly. “We saw Callie. We completed the mission.”

  All true, those lines. But it’s such a gross understatement of what actually happened it feels like a lie. Those sentences capture nothing about Tanner’s past. They skim over how it felt to see my sister again, what I learned about my relationship with my mother. They leave out my insights about my purpose in life.

  Only a few seconds have passed, and yet, I’m an entirely new person. A person who bears little resemblance to the old Jessa Stone.

  There’ll be plenty of time later to fill in the details. Or maybe not. Maybe those things don’t need to be spoken, shouldn’t be shared. Maybe what has passed should stay in the past. Maybe Tanner and I are the only ones who were meant to remember yesterday.

  I reach out and take Tanner’s hand. Whatever happens next, I want it to be with him.

  My mother places her hand over our connected ones. Of course she knows there’s more. She was there for part of it. But I’ve also learned she’s nothing if not patient. She’s been waiting for ten years for this day, after all.

  “I’m so glad you came back to me,” she says simply.

  I try to smile. “Was there ever a doubt?”

  Something flickers in her eyes. Hope. Nothing but an ember, really. Her family has been torn apart for so long. A husband stuck in the future, a daughter she believed was dead. Another daughter who spoke to her with only resentment. She’s on the verge of having her entire family back again—but she knows better than to hope.

  And yet, it seeps in anyway. Hope is the flame that will not die, no matter how much tragedy tries to smother it.

  “I need to see Logan,” I say hoarsely. “I need to tell him about Callie. He has as much right as we do to be there by her side. Whether or not the jingle works, whether or not she wakes up, he should be there when we try.”

  Instead of readily acquiescing, as I expect, my parents exchange a look. One that makes my stomach free-fall to the floor.

  “What is it, Mom? What. Is. It?”

  “We didn’t want to tell you earlier,” she says slowly. “We didn’t want it to interfere with your mission. But Mikey came to me this morning. And he said…” She moves her shoulders helplessly. “Oh, Jessa, he said Logan was going to propose to his new girlfriend today.”

  My heart stutters. “Well, did you stop him? Did you explain what we were going to do? That Callie might come back to us?”

  She stares at the floor, and my father places his hands on her shoulders. “We couldn’t. Mikey insisted we didn’t interfere, and he has a point. Even now, we have no idea if our crazy plan will work. We don’t know if Callie will wake up. It wouldn’t be fair to knock Logan�
�s life off-kilter now that he’s moved on.”

  “This isn’t about fair.” I remember the way Logan crumpled when my sister’s eyes closed. The way he put himself back together so that he could take me to safety.

  In that instant, I know Mikey’s wrong to keep this from Logan. He might mean well. He might be trying to protect his brother. But Logan has already lived his pain. So did Tanner. They both became the people they are because of their experiences.

  I wouldn’t erase the Logan I know any more than I would change Tanner. Any more than I would blight Remi out of existence.

  “I’m telling him,” I say, looking from my mom to my dad to Tanner. Daring them to disagree. “It’s the right thing to do.”

  56

  I run. My feet fly over the ground, and my arms whip against the bramble and brush of the woods. The air whistles in and out of my lungs, and a stray branch slashes my forehead. I don’t bother to stop or even wince. I have to find Logan.

  Dear Fates. Don’t let me be too late.

  Logan wasn’t at his house. He left Mikey’s—where he confided his intention to propose—hours ago. But I know him. There’s one place to which we both escape when we need to think. A place where the sky is our ceiling and the water is our floor. The place where we both feel closest to Callie.

  I have to believe that for a decision this big, he would come here first.

  Please. Let me be right.

  I crash through the woods, heading toward the cove where the lake juts into the land and the trees spread their leafy fingers overhead. I skirt around a fallen moss-covered trunk, and there he is. Sitting on one of two side-by-side stumps that always seemed tailor-made for us.

  The sun is warm on my skin, and the air smells of fresh pine and damp earth. This is what the outdoors—what home—always smells like. And yet, my hands are slick with sweat, and my heart thumps in my throat.

  I walk to the stumps. My shoes crunch on small sticks, and Logan looks up. Deep circles rim his eyes, and the lines on his face seem to have multiplied. I may have traveled a decade into the past, but in that same time, Logan looks like he’s jumped forward ten years.