Meredith McCardle - The Eighth Guardian

Yellow presses her lips together. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would I feel nothing and you feel—” And then she gasps. “It’s not just a rumor!”

I sit up and lean my back against a brick wall. I still can only manage the short breaths. “What’s not a rumor?”

She drops down next to me. “Dual projection! It’s real.”

“English, Yellow. Speak English.”

“Dual projection. It means force another Guardian to project with you. I could have my watch set to some completely different date, but if you were to grab on to me, you’d force me to come on your projection.”

“I don’t understand.” I take another slow breath and lean my head back.

“The rumor was that if one of us was really strong and really focused, we could dual project. I mean, we’ve all tried it, but it’s never worked. But you just did it.”

“But we just traveled to the same date,” I point out. And then I bend forward. Breathing still hurts.

“No, don’t you see? I must have transferred all my energy to you, so you took the full force of both of our projections, while I felt nothing.”

I take a slow breath. “All I know is, you’re staying far the hell away from me the next time we project.”

“Deal.” Yellow stands and takes the satchel out of her skirt pocket. “I’m going to go sell this, and then I’ll get us clothes. You stay here.”

I don’t argue. I close my eyes and keep breathing. It takes a few minutes, but finally the pain subsides and I feel like myself again. And then Yellow’s back. Her face is contorted into a frown. “Problem. Turns out gold really wasn’t worth that much more in 1963 than it was in 1894.”

“What?” I push up off the wall to stand. It takes me longer than it should. “How is that possible?”

Yellow shrugs. “I don’t know. But I bought this for thirty-seven dollars, and that guy in there is telling me it’s only worth seventy dollars. That’s not going to get us to Dallas. I asked the guy. He said a round-trip plane ticket should set us back about seventy-five dollars.”

“So we’re close.”

“Seventy-five dollars apiece.”

“Shit.”

She cocks an eyebrow at me but doesn’t say anything, and I think of Abe. How many times he’s teased me about the “small-vocabulary” thing. Oh, Abe. Where are you right now? Do you still think of me?

“Um, hello.” Yellow waves a hand in front of my face.

I snap out of it. “Sorry. Okay, so we need to come up with another hundred dollars or so.” I can’t help but stare at the remaining diamond stud hanging in her left ear.

Yellow catches me staring and reaches up to finger it. She sighs and starts unscrewing the back. “I know; it’s our only option. My dad is going to kill me. He gave me these when I joined the Guard.”

An image pops into my head. Zeta handing over a small box. In my mind, it’s Tiffany blue with a white ribbon on top. Indigo stands beside them, beaming. A perfect little family.

“Where’s your mother?” I ask her.

Yellow’s head snaps back. “What?”

“Your mom. It’s something that Blue said to me. He said Indigo had a perfect little family with two functioning parents.”

A snort escapes Yellow’s lips. “Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth. My parents are both still alive, but they’ve been divorced forever. My mom lives in Manhattan with her new husband and family.” There’s more than a hint of hurt in her voice. “She knows about us. Of course. What we do. But she never mentions it. We don’t even talk unless I call.”

“Wait, you talk to your mom?” Alpha made it sound like we would never have contact with our friends and family members again. Was this a lie, too?

Yellow scrunches up her nose like I just asked the dumbest question in the world. “Um, yeah.”

Suddenly the smallest weight is lifted from my chest. Abe. My mom. They might not be gone from my life forever. If I make it through this—no, when I make it through this—I can see them. I can be with Abe. I can get my mom help.

I smile for the first time in a while. “That’s . . . really great. I just assumed—”

“Look, do you want to stand here and have a joint therapy session, or do you want to go to Dallas?” She raises an eyebrow at me and closes her fist around the earring. “I’ll be right back.”

She shakes her head as she walks out of the jewelry store a few minutes later, and I force myself to stop thinking about Abe. Stop imagining how our potential reunion would play out.

“Come on.” Her voice is heavy and sad, and she’s making me feel incredibly guilty. She leads me to a big brownstone on Washington Street, right where Macy’s is today. Iron letters float on a ledge welcoming us to Jordan Marsh & Company. Once inside, we wave off a petite sales clerk who attacks us with a perfume bottle that reeks like little old ladies. I leave the shopping to Yellow, and she buys us two very plain, pencil-thin dresses, one in a dark gray and one in a brown tweed, both of which look seriously itchy. Also, pencil skirts and I don’t exactly get along. But I squeeze myself into the gray dress, and we head to Logan.

Even at the ticket counter, I realize that air travel is completely different in 1963 from what it is today. Everyone in line is dressed in their Sunday best. Suits and ties for the men. Dresses, hose, hats, and gloves for the women. We buy our tickets from a young, chirpy blond who takes our money and hands us tickets. Just like that. She doesn’t even ask for ID. Security is nonexistent. We just walk up to the gate, and no one seems to care that we’re traveling without bags. I mean, come on; Yellow and I are hitting just about every suspicious-traveler check mark that exists in the present, but no one bats an eyelash.

“This is weird, right?” I ask Yellow.

“Totally weird.” She points to the window and squints. “Are those . . . passengers out there? Having a picnic on the tarmac?”

The flight is even weirder. We go outside and climb a metal staircase to board. Everyone makes a huge deal that we’re on the plane. A perky young flight attendant who can’t be much older than I am asks me if it’s my first time flying as we board. I mutter that it’s not and push my way to my seat as I try to ignore the fact that the whole plane smells like a stale ashtray in a dingy New England crab shack.

I give Yellow the window seat and take the middle. A businessman in a suit and tie slides in next to us and immediately lights up a cigarette. Well, that explains the smell. I cough and pivot in my seat so that my knees are practically on top of Yellow’s, but either the man doesn’t notice or he doesn’t care. Probably the latter. Yellow and I spend the entire flight trying to make a plan by writing notes on cocktail napkins. There are some things you just can’t say out loud, and the fact that President Kennedy is less than twenty-four hours away from being dead is one of them.

We touch down in Dallas, and the flight attendant wishes everyone a great day as they start down the staircase. Except for me. She purses her lips shut and glares at me. I think it might be because I politely shook her off when she tried to serve me a hot meal that smelled like plastic and preservatives. There was no way I was eating it.

We hop in a cab and tell the driver to take us to Dealey Plaza.

“Dealey, eh?” the driver says in a slow voice. “You girls know the president is going to be riding through that plaza tomorrow, don’t you?”

“Mmm,” I say. “Yes.” I look at Yellow, and I see it written all over her face that the enormity of the situation has just hit her. The Kennedy assassination. We’re going to witness the Kennedy assassination. It’s one of those things that happened so long ago—I mean, before my mom was even born—but I’ve seen the video. I’ve read about it in the history books.