Пинтип Данн - Remember Yesterday

He places his hands on my shoulders, and a burst of electricity zips through me, tangling with the anger, leaving me unsettled and confused. Blindly, I grope for the future, searching for something—anything—that will get me back to solid ground again.

The vision crashes over me, almost knocking me down. In the near future, I weep, sobs racking my body. Strong arms wrap around me, pulling me close to a muscled chest covered by a thermal shirt with a tight weave. Tanner’s shirt. Tanner’s chest. Moments from now, Tanner Callahan will hold me as I soak his shirt with my tears.

“No!” Back in the present, I wrench away from Tanner and race down a row of pods, running from him and my vision. I don’t want to be comforted. Don’t have time to cry. I’ve got to find a girl.

I scan the faces in the stretchers, searching for those telltale brown bangs, trying to extrapolate how Olivia might’ve aged in the last ten years. Not a little girl anymore, but a teenager like me.

I finish one row and turn down the next. In my wake, the machines start beeping and flashing.

“Slow down,” Tanner says, jogging behind me. The bastard, he’s not even breathing hard. “These monitors are very sensitive. They detect the slightest change in the vital signs, and you’re making too much noise. The bodies are reacting to your running.”

“So they are aware.”

“In the same way that a plant turns toward the sun. They react, but that doesn’t mean they feel. You’re making the machines go crazy. Stop running.”

“Tell me where she is.” I slow down, but I swivel my head, continuing to search. Olivia’s here, and she’s counting on me. I’m not going to desert her. Not the way I was deserted.

He sighs. Even with the incessant beeping, I hear the soft whisper of air. “Last row. The pod all the way at the end. She was our very first suspension.”

I run to the back of the room and fly down the row, setting off even more alarms. But I don’t care. Because for the first time, I’m about to do something that might make me worthy of my sister’s sacrifice. I’ve waited ten years for this moment. I’m not about to delay it a second longer than necessary.

When I reach the last pod in the row, I freeze. The girl on the stretcher doesn’t have brown bangs. Her face is nothing like the little girl I remember from my memories.

It’s not Olivia Dresden.

When I stare into the girl’s face, I feel like I’m looking in a mirror. The same high cheekbones, the same sparse eyelashes, the same swoop at the end of each eye.

I’m lying on the bed. No, not me. She’s thinner than me and older. Ten years older.

My legs buckle. Deep, deep in my soul, I scream, a scream that started ten years ago and hasn’t let up since.

It’s not me lying on the bed, but my other half. My twin, my sister, my soul.

Callie.

Callie. Here. Not dead. Not alive, maybe, but not dead. How is this possible?

My head feels strangely light, like a balloon about to detach from my body. I sway, and the ground rushes up to meet me. Suddenly, I’m on my hands and knees, with no clear idea how I got here. I crawl forward until my hands hit the rectangular pod, until I’m sitting inches below my sister.

My sister.

This can’t be real. It has to be some weird vision, not from the future or the past, but a hallucination created from my dearest wish, my most fantastical desires. The dream lab, Tanner called this room. That’s what this is. A dream.

“She’s not here. She’s not.” But I say the words in a whisper, because no matter what dreamland dimension I’m in, I don’t want to break the spell.

I pull myself to my feet and drink in Callie’s face. The beige skin with the yellow undertones, the barely there lashes. As a kid, I used to watch her experiment with eye tints, but she never bothered with false lashes, and I was glad. Falsies would’ve blocked her eyes. I saw my entire world in those eyes. I’d give anything to see them now.

“She is here,” Tanner says. His voice is gentle, too gentle. Like he’s pushed his anger aside because he feels sorry for me. “Who did you think it was?”

“Olivia.” I can barely get out the syllables. “I thought Dresden had locked her up, and she sent me the vision as a cry for help.”

“No. I thought you’d guessed. Your sister’s always been here. From the day she injected herself ten years ago. She was brought straight to this room and has been here ever since.”

I should be angry with him for not telling me earlier. I should be absolutely furious. But he had no more reason to trust me than I had to trust him. So I guess we’re even, in a twisted sort of way.

Besides, I can’t shake the wonder that my sister is actually alive. A feeding tube trails from her mouth, and an IV plugs into her wrist. Automated metal braces wrap around her limbs in order to move her muscles and prevent them from degenerating. “How did this happen?”

“Somebody rushed in after you escaped. They injected her with the antidote around the two-minute mark. Soon enough to preserve her mind but not in time to save her body. She slipped into a coma and has been in that state ever since.”

“Does this mean…” The words get stuck in my throat. “Does this mean she might someday wake up?”

“There’s no way to know for sure.” His words are noncommittal, but his tone is hesitant—even hopeful.

It’s the hope that does me in.

The ocean roars in my ears, and I collapse onto the floor. My breath rushes in and out, as useless as if I’ve punctured my lungs. No matter how much air I gulp, it’s not enough.

Tanner wraps his arms around me, pulling me off the floor. I am trapped against the wall of his chest, surrounded by the bands of his muscles. I sob. Tears pour out of me, the ones I couldn’t shed as a child. In the year after Callie injected herself, I didn’t cry, not once. I held both my tears and my words inside, close to my chest, even as Logan and Angela and Mikey worried. I didn’t talk, and I refused to cry, and they thought I would never recover from my sister’s death.

They were right. I never recovered. I could never express the deep, deep sorrow of my other half being ripped from me—until now, when she’s been given back.

“Shh…” Tanner whispers against my hair. “It will be okay. I promise it will be okay.”

It’s more than okay. Callie’s not dead. She’s been here, the whole time, in this realm, this dimension. In the same city, for Fate’s sake. Just like the future, all I have to do is reach out and I’ll be able to touch her.

My tears eventually subside, and the physical world seeps back in. Tanner smells like soap, fresh and woodsy, and his shirt brushes against my face. It’s not rough, like I imagined, but baby-soft. The contrast of the texture over his solid chest makes me shiver.

I glance up, and his face is inches away. So close I can see the individual bristles on his chin, the creases like shadows in his lips. I lean forward to get a closer look.

He briefly tightens his hold on me. “I’m not going to kiss you.”

I blink, not understanding. And then the words sink in. “Who says I’d let you?”

“I’ve been with enough girls to know when my kisses are wanted, Jessa.”

“Well, you’re w-wrong,” I sputter, heat flooding my face. “I just found out my sister’s still alive. The last thing I want is to kiss you.”

“I’ve told you before. You’re not my type.” He smiles, still gentle, and smooths my hair back from my face, so carefully that I feel like a precious artifact from the pre-Boom era.

My mouth dries, and my pulse speeds as though it’s approaching the final leg of a race. I wonder if he can hear my heartbeat—but it doesn’t matter. Because none of this is actually about kissing. He’s trying to pull me back from my despair, and he knows he can’t do that by soft words and sympathy. He knows he has to make an outrageous statement to which I’ll react.