Remember Yesterday

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.”