Remember Yesterday

25

My cheek is crushed against a soft, cottony fabric, stretched over something warm and hard. It should be uncomfortable, but I cuddle closer, wanting more of that sensation against my neck and torso. I wrap my arms all the way around the muscular column. I don’t know where they get their pillows around here, but this one is strangely magnetic. You couldn’t pull me off if you tried. I rub my face up, up, up…and then, what feels like sandpaper scrapes against my skin.

I freeze. Oh dear Fates. I’m not hugging a pillow after all. That’s Tanner’s chin. And Tanner’s chest.

My eyes fly open, and my breathing becomes quick and shallow as I take stock of the situation. Our legs are tangled up underneath the blanket, and his arms are locked around me. His mouth is blowing hot air against my ear, and my pajama top has gotten twisted around in my sleep, so that my bare stomach is pressed against his.

I swallow hard, and my heart pounds drumbeats against my rib cage. In our sleep, we’ve somehow gotten more intimate than we’ve ever been. More intimate than I’ve ever even dreamed. I should pull away. Put the proper amount of distance between us. He’s asleep. There’s no way he intends to be curled up with me like this. No way he’d like it if he wakes up and finds us in this compromising position.

He doesn’t like me. To flirt and play games with, maybe. For real, no. I need to get out of his embrace before I make an even bigger fool of myself.

But I’m helpless to move. Paralyzed to break this up the way I’m supposed to. As magnetic as he was as a pillow, he’s even more irresistible now that I know what I’m hugging.

Just another minute, I tell myself. It’s not like I got us into this position on purpose. One more minute while I figure out what to do.

But then he shifts, and his face nuzzles down until his lips are pressed against my neck. His hands slide up the small of my back until they are nestled between my shoulder blades. He groans and rolls over, pulling me on top of him.

That’s when he opens his eyes.

“Jessa?” he asks, his voice hoarse with shock.

Blushing, I try to slide off him, but his hands tighten around my waist, holding me in place. “I’m sorry,” I blurt. “I woke up and found us like this. Neither of us was to blame. Just us moving around in our sleep.”

I pull away again, and this time, he lets me move off his body. Before I can retreat to my side of the mattress, however, he grabs my hand and rests his forehead against mine. We stay like that, both of us breathing heavily.

After what seems like an eternity, he lifts his head. “I’d better go sleep in the eating area,” he says in a strained voice.

“You don’t have to do that. There’s nothing to sleep on in there.” Even my ears feel hot now. I bunch up the blanket so that it forms a line down the middle of the mattress. “Here, now there’s a barrier between us. We won’t cross it, I’m sure.”

He stands, tucking his pillow under his arm. “Jessa, I never intended to play games with you,” he says, his voice quiet, his eyes dark and unreadable. “You’re worth far more to me than that.”

My mouth opens, and the breath gets caught in my lungs. Before I can decide if I’ve heard him correctly, his bare feet are already padding away.

I dream of screams. My mother’s whimpers in the middle of the night. My own six-year-old bellows when FuMA strapped me to a chair. The silent scream that ripped through the universe, crumbling up the fabric of time, when Callie stabbed the needle into her own heart.

And then there’s another moan, one that is long and low and desperate, one that resonates deeply inside me. There are some terrors, once imprinted onto your memory, that you can never unsee. Some experiences so destructive no amount of evil will surprise you ever again.

I open my eyes. There it is once more, that moan. Not a dream, then. It’s real. And it’s coming from Olivia’s room.

I look at the empty space next to me and remember that Tanner is sleeping in the eating area. Doesn’t matter. It may be better for me to go alone, anyhow. I creep toward the room. My every nerve is on high alert, and little pops of energy dance along my scalp. This isn’t going to be good. It can’t be.

Easing open the door, I see Zed advancing toward Olivia, an electro-whip wound around his wrist.

“Give me the vision,” he snarls, in a voice I barely recognize as human.

“Zed?” I say quietly so I don’t startle him. “What are you doing?”

He turns, and I stumble backward. This…this isn’t Zed. At least not the Zed I know. The one who would hold me upside down by my feet and tickle me, the one who skinned animals to provide for a community but never uttered a harsh word to anyone. His eyes are as wild as the prey he trapped, and his face is rigid with grief.

“What is it, Zed? Is it…Eli?”

His face crumples. Right in front of me, his features melt like hot wax and drip to the floor. His grief is so large there’s no room for anything else. No reasoning, no speech, no movement.

My stomach bottoms out. I don’t need any psychic abilities to know what happened. Eli is dead. They couldn’t save him in intensive care.

“He…was my…air,” Zed gasps. Each word rips its way out of him. “I have…nothing…left to…breathe.”

Tears drip onto his face. Such small bits of moisture for such a large man, and yet, each drop gathers in my lungs, suffocating me. You don’t need an ocean in order to drown. Sometimes an inch of bathwater is all it takes.

I close my eyes. That adorable orange-eating boy. Not even four, and already his feet were almost as big as mine. He had his father’s size and his mother’s passion. He would sit by Laurel for hours as she wrote her poems, on real parchment paper with a feather dipped in walnut ink. “When I grow up, I want to tell stories just like Mommy,” he would say. She would smile and ruffle his springy curls.

Now, the only stories he will ever tell are in other people’s memories.

When I wrench open my eyes, I’m looking right at Olivia. This is her chance to run, but she’s just as transfixed as I am. She reaches out a hand and touches Zed’s wrist.

He snaps up his head, and the whip shakes in his hand. “You will give us the vision.” His face deepens to the color of a bruise, and a pulse throbs at his temple. “You’ll show us, or you’ll be sorry that you are alive.”

He grabs her hair and yanks, and I see the long, slim column of her throat.

Zed, stop! I say in my head.

But my mouth doesn’t move. I feel the hand of Fate pushing against me, clamping my lips closed. What in space? I take a step forward, and it’s like I’m moving through a medium denser than mud. What’s happening?

And then I get it. This is Zed’s future memory. The one that sent him to Harmony fifteen years ago, the one that’s haunted him every day—every minute—since the moment he received it. The one where he beats a woman to a bloody pulp.

This is the moment Zed’s memory comes true.