Remember Yesterday

11

The moment I step into the hallway, something clicks. The vision rushes over me, layered on top of my reality, and I’m flooded with a feeling of rightness. A magnetic force pulls me forward, sucking me into this path. I must run this maze. Not because the vision tells me, not because it’s in my genes. But because sometime in the future, I already did.

Callie felt this way. On the last day of her life, Logan told me how she talked about Fate’s invisible hand, urging her forward.

She may have changed the future. She may have proved that an infinite number of parallel universes exist, and it’s up to us to determine which world we live in. But she had to walk into my room, with a syringe in her hand. Because this was her Fixed.

Mikey posited—and I believe—that some moments are lived more strongly than others. These sequences of actions happen in every world. The Fixed, he called these moments. You can change your future all you want, but you will never get away from walking certain paths.

The blood roars in my ears. My heart attempts to lap itself in beats. Somewhere inside my soul, too honest for artifice, too deep for excuses, I know this is my Fixed. However I choose to live my life, in whatever world parallel to this one, I will always end up here, at this moment.

Metal clatters down the hall, and I snap to attention. I scan the corridor and duck into a relief room, heart pounding in an entirely different way.

I take a deep breath, count to one hundred, and then slip back into the corridor. Nobody. Good.

Of their own volition, my feet start moving. There’s no question which way to go. Even if I hadn’t dreamed about the purple and green corridor every night, there’s that invisible hand, tugging me in the right direction.

I’m not going quickly enough. Something pushes between my shoulders, urging me faster, faster. I start trotting and then break into a full-out run, holding the picnic basket tightly. My sneakered feet slap loudly against the pale-green tile, but I’ll risk the extra noise. I have to. The hand of Fate won’t allow otherwise.

The wait lounges flash by, and sure enough, I see emerald carpets and purple amethyst couches.

Green and purple. Purple and green.

By now, it no longer seems strange that the combination of colors feels so familiar. That it resonates so deeply inside me. Sweat drenches my back, making my shirt cling to my skin. I make a left, go through the double swinging doors, bypass another set of elevator capsules, open the emergency exit, and descend down, down, down an endless set of stairs.

And then, I enter a hallway and stop dead in my tracks. Stretchers line the wall, holding people. No, not people. Bodies. Corpses, with their hands clasped across their chests. All lying perfectly, deadly still.

The hair stands on my neck, and my bones melt into fluid. Where am I? Did I stumble into a morgue?

I rub my arms. The air is chilly, at least ten degrees cooler than above ground, and smells too clean, too sterile. Like the entire hallway was doused with sanitizer.

This isn’t right. I must’ve taken a wrong turn because these corpses weren’t in my vision. And yet, I continue walking down the hallway. Because that unseen force is still here, still tugging me down the path.

I see it. A door. Just like the one in my vision.

It is metal, locked up tighter than a tomb with its blinking-purple-light security system, its pale green box of personal identity scans. Two long strips of green and purple, twisted together, bisect the walls on either side of the door. The exit signs flash purple; the grating over the lights is green.

The message couldn’t be clearer. This is where the colors lead. This is where you’re meant to be. This is the place to which you’ve been called.

I’m here. I found it. Now what?

I look up the corridor, my breath erupting in pants. I don’t know what I expected. Fireworks, a symphony orchestra? Instead, it’s just a hallway. Just a door. Locked, with no way for me to get inside.

Clearly I’m not going to turn around and go back. My only choice is to find a spot and hide. Stake out the door and wait for something to happen. But where?

There’s nothing else in the hallway. No twisted metal plant, no laundry carts, no trash chutes. Could I conceal myself underneath the stretchers? I crouch down and examine the crisscrossing metal rods. It wouldn’t hide a three-legged mouse, much less a person.

Frustrated, I stand. That’s when I notice some of the stretchers hold more than one corpse. The bodies are crammed together, side-by-side on the narrow mattresses, as if the administration ran out of beds and thought the corpses wouldn’t mind.

I shiver. A sick feeling starts in my stomach and climbs into my throat, all acidic and sharp and burning. Not just because of the cavalier treatment of the dead bodies. But also because I’ve realized there’s only one spot for me to hide. One spot where I can stake out the door and remain concealed.

On one of the stretchers, snuggled against a dead body.