Yesterday Is History Page 8

  “You didn’t take anything with you, did you? From before? When you jumped?”

  I shake my head. “No, I didn’t. Get off of me!” I shove him, firmly enough that his sturdy body separates from me. “That would create some sort of paradox, right?”

  “That only happens if you interact with yourself in the past, idiot.”

  “Don’t call me an idiot,” I warn.

  “Don’t say dumb things. And besides, that only happens if you touch yourself or your past self sees you. Not the other way around. And I highly doubt you saw yourself in… Where did you go, anyway?”

  “Same place as before.”

  “Which is?”

  “Boston. Nineteen sixty-nine. My house, actually.”

  “The one you live in now?”

  “Gee, what brought you to that conclusion?”

  “Don’t be a smart aleck.”

  “Don’t say dumb things.”

  Blake grins at me, and I smile back. The tit for tat is a different dance than the one with Isobel. Usually, she’ll get angry and defensive if I say something that offends her, even if she started it. And most of our arguments end with me conceding, because that’s just better for our relationship. But with Blake, the tango is fun.

  “There’s a guy there, in my house back then. He lives there in sixty-nine. Both times I traveled, I went to him. The first time, I appeared on the lawn, and he was there five seconds later. The next time, I was inside of the house. It’s like, I dunno…”

  “You’re either tethered to him or to the house.”

  He doesn’t give me time to ask him what the hell he means before he starts to explain.

  “Time travel is all about focus. If you don’t know how to control it, you’ll jump by accident. I’m guessing that when you jump, it’s because some part of you, consciously or subconsciously, doesn’t want to be where you are. Fight-or-flight reactions, anger, longing—all of these things trigger the automatic response to be somewhere else. Often the first jump is tied to some thought or memory.

  “But sometimes, for whatever reason, people get bound to other people through time and space. No one knows why it happens; typically, there’s some genetic or spiritual or emotional connection. So it could just be the house. Or it could be that you and…”

  “Michael.”

  “This Michael guy and you are connected. It might be because you live in the same house. Or it could have something to do with the person you’re going to become or with something he will do that directly affects you.

  “If it’s him you’re tethered to, then whenever you think of him or have an emotional response to something, you can travel to him. It’s like an express highway in time that leads to him. At any time in his existence. All you need to do is think about him, and”—Blake snaps—“you’re there.”

  I try to remember anything about Michael that jumps out to me. He’s a bit broken but charming. He seems unmoored but smart and brave. He seems like the type of guy I could see doing great things in his life, if he works at it—but connected? Us?

  “It feels like you jumped to that conclusion without enough evidence.”

  “Spoken like a scientist.” Blake grins. “Try it. The next time you want to jump somewhere intentionally, focus on him, and see what happens. That’ll prove what you’re tethered to.

  “A tether is also your default. It’s like…your lifeline. If you jump in a panic, and you need someplace safe to be, that’s your home base. It’s a rare thing, being bound to someone, but it can happen.”

  “How rare?”

  Blake shrugs. “The only person I know who was also tethered was Dave.” He hesitates again but recovers quickly. “But he was tethered to someone inside of our family.”

  “Maybe I’m able to tether because he did, and I have his organ?”

  Blake shrugs. “Maybe. Time travelers are obsessed with tethers, though. You’re unique for being able to do it.”

  Questions brew inside of me. Blake knows a lot about time travel but has never managed a jump himself. It’s like he’s on the edge of the conversation, absorbing it all, but never inserting himself inside of it. Like how a moon orbits a planet.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have any genetic connection to whomever you’re jumping to, would you? This Michael guy?”

  I shake my head.

  “You sure?”

  “Considering he’s as white as snow, yeah, I’m sure.”

  “That technically doesn’t—”

  I arch a brow. “Are you about to school me on race theory right now?”

  “Point taken.” A beat passes before Blake speaks again. “Maybe it’s something to do with your house?”

  “It’s just a house,” I counter.

  “You’d be surprised what type of energy some locations can hold. Ley lines are real, but that’s a conversation for another day.”

  Blake walks around the desk and moves to stand close to me—like, really close.

  “Stand up, will you?” he asks.

  Without hesitation, like his voice is some sort of lure, I do. He smiles that boyish grin that I’m sure makes the girls at Hutcherson weak in the knees.

  “You’ll forgive me for this.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know how people say, ‘Don’t think about elephants,’ and then that’s all you can think about?”

  I nod slowly, hesitantly.

  “Don’t think about Michael.”

  “What are y—”

  Before I can finish my sentence, he grabs my shoulder and kicks my right leg out from under me. As I lose my balance, he turns my body, spinning me around so that I’m poised to fall directly on the glass coffee table.

  But I never hit glass.

  It’s the floor—a wooden floor inside some industrial building that’s neither an apartment nor a workspace.

  This time, I don’t lie there. I don’t stare up at the sky, wondering why it’s black when just seconds before it was blue and I was inside.

  I know what happened.

  I know where I am.

  And I know, if I just look around…if I focus…

  “Dre?”

  I turn toward the direction of the voice and see Michael standing in the doorway, keys in hand, his mouth slightly open in surprise.

  I’m sure I’m looking at him the same way he’s looking at me, but I force a smile on my face and ask, “You free?”

  Twelve

  “I’m sorry, how long has it been?”

  The words that leave Michael’s mouth don’t make sense. Seven months? How can that be? Did I really get lobbed into the space-time continuum and spit out that far off course?

  “Give or take a few days, yeah,” he says, correcting himself as he shoves papers into his messenger bag. I catch a glimpse of them before they disappear—sheet music. “Close to seven months.”

  I look around, feeling for the first time since arriving the chill in the air. This building isn’t his home. It’s like one of those loft apartments that some people lust after. But this is too cluttered to be an apartment. Too many tables, filing cabinets…

  “Do you work here?”

  He nods while he finishes packing. “For now, yeah. A lot has changed since you’ve been gone, Dre.”

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  He shrugs, and a smile takes over his lips. It’s one of those sad smiles, the ones that are heavy with emotion, an emotion that he doesn’t want to share with me yet. “Depends on how you think about it, I guess. Come on. Are you hungry? I’m guessing that jumping through time leaves you starving.”

  I’m not hungry, but if eating means spending time with him…

  “Yeah, I could eat.”

  A grin of childlike joy spreads over his face. “Then I know the p
erfect place.”

  I follow Michael out of the building and down two flights of stairs. I can hear muffled but loud sounds through the walls. It sounds like people yelling, but it’s too loud for that. Too many noises—explosions, yelling, arguments. It almost seems like…

  “Are we above a movie theater?”

  “Yep.” He pushes the door open and holds it for me. The Boston chill hits me like a close yet overly aggressive friend, but I welcome it with open arms. It’s a familiar feeling, and right now, I appreciate something familiar.

  “I work for a newspaper. Well, it’s not a newspaper yet, it’s just a collection of people like me who want to have our voices heard, reporting on things that are important to people like us. It keeps me busy, which is good, since…”

  “Since what?” I ask as his voice trails off.

  “Never mind, let’s get going.”

  It’s only been seven months, and the changes are subtle, but Michael has changed. He’s thinned out just a bit, and his bone structure is more pronounced. He’s no longer wearing jeans and a T-shirt but a khaki trench coat, a gray turtleneck, and gray pants.

  He looks older, not just physically.

  “What do you mean ‘people like me’?” I ask. The first place my mind goes? White people, which sends a chill down my spine. A newspaper for white people doesn’t sound like anything anyone should be part of. But also, Michael doesn’t seem like the type of person who would participate in anything like that.

  But then again, a lot can change in seven months.

  “Gay people,” he says without hesitation and turns the corner. “It’s a paper for gay people. Somewhere we can get our news. For us, by us.”

  “FUBU,” I say, then pause. “Sorry, you don’t know what that is yet.”

  Michael looks puzzled, but then he chuckles. “How long until I do?”

  “What year is it? Nineteen seventy?”

  He nods.

  “Then, about twenty-two years.”

  “I’ll make sure to remember that. Maybe I’ll look you up in ninety-two.”

  “I won’t be born yet, but sure, wait about twelve years, and then you can.”

  That makes me wonder, what is the age difference between Michael and me? A quick calculation answers my question for me. If Michael is nineteen now, in 1970, that means he was born in 1951. In 2021, right now, he’s seventy. Assuming that he’s still alive, he’s only fifteen years older than my father and eighteen years older than my mother.

  Which means… I suddenly stop in my tracks. Michael turns to look at me, brow raised.

  “My mom and dad,” I mutter, looking at him but past him. “They are both alive right now. My dad is…four years old. My mom… Wait, what month is it?”

  “January,” he says. “You missed a great New Year’s Eve party.”

  “Yeah, my mom just turned one.”

  Michael reaches out and squeezes my shoulders, his hands warm and grounding. It’s like by rubbing them up and down, slowly, soothingly, he helps calm me.

  “Do you want to go find them?” he asks, breaking the silence and pulling me out of the depths of an existential crisis that threatens to engulf me.

  I snap my eyes up. “Wait, what?”

  He shrugs. “I mean, do you want to?”

  I open my mouth twice and close it twice. Is that even possible? Can we? Blake told me not to meet my past self, but there has to be some rule against talking to my parents before I’m even born.

  “They’re children,” I argue.

  Michael shrugs.

  “What would I gain from it?”

  Michael shrugs again.

  “I don’t even know where they are!”

  “Oh, come on. You don’t think it would be unreal to see them right now?” Michael suggests.

  “That’s not something I want to do.” I’m pretty sure it ventures too close to violating one of those rules Blake mentioned, anyway.

  Michael throws his hands up in defeat. “Fine, fine. Ignore my idea of fun. But there’s something else we can do instead.”

  “I’m listening.”

  There’s a glint in his eyes that could only be described as mischievous, and at this moment, I notice that his hands haven’t left my shoulders. And I don’t mind.

  “Spend some time with me,” he mutters, his voice low, like saying it too loudly will shatter the moment.

  I study Michael’s eyes—really study them. Boys are tricky beasts. Their words are like weasels that can wiggle their way into the smallest of cracks in another person’s armor. When I came out as gay, my mother told me to watch out for them, for the way they can wrap around you and strangle what makes you special.

  But that’s not Michael. He’s biting his bottom lip. His pulse, which I can feel in his thumbs, grows faster. His neck and his sharp clavicle become more pronounced as he swallows thickly.

  Since I appeared here, I’d been out of my element, out of my time. But now, I held the power in my hands.

  “I mean, where else would I go? It’s not like I know anyone here. So the real question is, how are you going to make it up to me if this perfect place isn’t actually perfect?”

  * * *

  Michael and I get two candy bars and Cokes from the corner store. It’s not really a meal, but it’s something, and the sugar feels like a rush of power and energy.

  “Sorry, it’s not much,” Michael mutters as he chews.

  “It’s fine.”

  “I’m…low on cash. Journalism doesn’t pay much, you know? We do it for the value of the free press, First Amendment, all that jazz.”

  “It’s fine, Michael,” I say, adding a reassuring smile. “This is great. Besides, who can ignore a Snickers bar? It really is perfect.” And that’s not a lie.

  I’m starting to think that maybe, just maybe, even simple meals like this can be enjoyable with someone like Michael. He gives off that calming energy that I’ve heard people have. Unlike, as Isobel says, my frantic energy.

  Maybe, in some ways, we complement each other in that sense.

  “Speaking of jazz, your music, are you still playing?” I ask, refocusing my attention.

  He smiles—no, beams—at me with pride. “You remember.” It’s more a statement of surprise than a question.

  “Of course I do.” It’s only been a few days for me, but for him, it’s been seven months. I wonder how much Michael has thought about me. Did he wonder if I was coming back? Did he start to think that I was a figment of his imagination?

  “Yeah, I play a set downtown.” He points in the general direction. “Once every two weeks. You should come by sometime.”

  Is that something I could do? I’ve never willingly time traveled to a specific period of time. But it should be possible. I doubt that Claire just throws herself through time and hopes for the best. I can learn how to do it.

  “If you think, you know, that’s something you’d want to do?” He nervously smiles. “You know, you don’t have to, of course.”

  “Two weeks from now, yeah?”

  “One week from this upcoming Saturday, actually, but yeah.”

  “What time?”

  “Ten o’clock at the Citadel. Is that still around in your time?”

  “Mm-hmm.” It’s a twenty-one-and-over club. But something tells me that getting in won’t be a problem. “I’ll be there,” I promise.

  His smile shifts from nervous to warm as we head deeper into the city. The streets are familiar, but not so familiar that this feels boring. Things have changed in the fifty years between Michael’s time and mine. Side streets and one-way streets have been combined in my time and turned into two-way streets. Buildings have been demolished and ownership has changed. The city is still my city, but not completely.

  And there’s some comfort in that. The city is close enough
to being my city but far enough away that at this moment, at this time with Michael? It’s ours. It’s not something that can be replicated by thousands of other…

  What even are we?

  “It’s my turn for a question, I think,” I say, breaking the silence.

  Michael glances over at me, finishing the rest of his Coke. He tosses it; the can makes a sharp sound as it hits the corner of the nearby trash can. It bounces once, twice, three times, and then lands inside it.

  Michael doesn’t think that I see the way he quietly fist-pumps, but I do.

  “Shoot.”

  “What did you mean before when you said, ‘It keeps me busy, which is good, since…’?”

  “That’s…not the question I thought you were going to ask.”

  I arch my brows incredulously.

  “Who am I fooling? Of course you’d ask that.”

  I can tell from the stillness between us that the question is uncomfortable, prickly, even. It’s jagged and cold, but it also burns hot at the same time.

  “My parents aren’t happy with me right now,” he finally says. “They kicked me out. I’m working at that newspaper for room and board.”

  “They kicked you out because you’re gay? Or because you want to be a musician?”

  He shrugs. That’s not an answer, but I don’t think I’m going to get anything else out of him. Not yet, anyway.

  We cross the street in silence. It’s on me to say something; Michael’s done pouring his heart out. But I don’t know what to say. I’ve never dealt with something like that. When I came out, my parents were accepting. They love me for me, and my friends do too. I’m lucky—and rare. I know that. So stories about dealing with homophobia from parents? That’s foreign to me.

  But I can understand standing up for what you believe in and fighting for your own future, not the idea of a future someone else has for you. While we walk in silence, I try to play out what might happen if I told my parents that I’m not sure I want to go into medicine. They wouldn’t kick me out, of course not, but they’d be disappointed. They’d question every choice I made and try to poke holes in my logic.

  They’d be dismissive.

  “You know you can’t choose, right?” I finally say. “Being gay. It’s not a choice.”