Пинтип Данн - Remember Yesterday

I take a breath and let it out slowly. Let’s hope I won’t have to try.

As I approach the compound, I see a lone figure sitting on the ten-foot wall, his long legs dangling against the stucco. The sky has turned purple with the dusk, and a spotlight shines on my best friend’s oversize feet, leaving the rest of him in shadows.

I smile. Two years ago, Angela ordered the branches of the nearby trees trimmed, but that didn’t stop Ryder and me. Very little does.

I break into a run, getting in four nice strides before I strike the wall waist-high with my foot and vault myself up. I grab the ledge with both hands, scrabbling my legs beneath me until I get a sneaker on the wall. From there, it’s a simple matter of hauling myself up.

It took me six months to learn this trick. And I’m still pretty impressed with myself.

“I think I’m ready to try a twelve-foot wall,” I pant.

But Ryder doesn’t grin at me, and he doesn’t make fun of my form. I plop onto the wall facing him, my legs hanging on either side.

“Where have you been?” He swings his leg around so that he’s facing me, too. The moonlight glints off his goggles, but he’s close enough that I can see the worry lines in his forehead.

“You’ll never believe it,” I burst out. “It wasn’t Olivia sending me that message after all. It was my sister! She’s alive!”

With run-together words, punctuated by gasps, I tell him the entire story. Ryder’s eyes widen, and he grips the wall as though he might be in danger of sliding off.

“I remember her,” he says wonderingly. “When I was a kid. She came to Harmony and stayed with us. I didn’t know her well, but I thought she had a pretty smile. I can’t believe she’s still alive.”

I kick my feet against the wall. “I can’t wait to tell everybody. They’re going to go crazy.”

“Maybe Mikey will even forget to be mad.”

My feet stop mid-swing. “Mad? Why is he mad?”

“I’m sorry, Jessa. I didn’t know where you were. I didn’t know if you were hurt or in danger.” He ducks his head. “I had to tell Mikey everything.”

Aw, fike. We deliberately disobeyed him. He warned us, and we broke into the lower floors of TechRA anyway. Mikey’s not going to be happy.

“He’s convinced you’re a bad influence on me,” Ryder says quietly. “I’m grounded from seeing or talking to you for the next month. This is to be our last communication. I’m under strict instructions to bring you to the house as soon as you show up. Your mom’s waiting there with Mikey and Angela.”

I barely hear his last sentence. Not see or talk to my best friend for a month? I’ve never gone so long without Ryder’s friendship before. What am I going to do?

All of a sudden, his wrist com flashes white and then red, bright alternating lights that can’t be ignored. I shield my face, while he lifts his wrist to shut down the alarm. “That must be Mikey now.”

I check my own com unit. I turned it off when I climbed into the stretcher and forgot to switch it back on. The dial spins, counting off the messages with each rotation and emitting the corresponding light. Violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red.

My stomach sinks to my toes. Someone’s left me six messages, each with an escalating level of priority. From violet—“where are you?”—to red—“even if your country is under attack, hear me now .”

“Which message should we listen to first?” I ask weakly.

“Doesn’t matter.” Ryder squints at his com. “Same ID code. The security vids outside the compound must’ve gotten a picture of us.”

He hits play, and Mikey’s voice fills the sky: “I can see you two on the wall. If Jessa isn’t here in the next two minutes, I will personally take apart both your hoverboards and send them on the next trash shipment to space.”

I wince. “I guess he’s not a fan of our hoverboards?”

Ryder sighs. He flips on the light on his wrist com and holds it under his chin. “Take a look at this handsome face, Jessa. There’s no telling when you’ll see it again.”

The wave of Mikey’s anger almost knocks me over as soon as I enter the house. I wish Ryder were still with me. We always faced Mikey’s disappointment together, always received our punishments together, from the time we lived in the wilderness. Somehow, scaling fish by the bushel was easier when Ryder was by my side, making fun of my technique or flinging fish guts at me.

But he’s not here. And he won’t be for the next month.

“This is not a game.” Mikey slams his foot down as I approach, and a red and yellow splotch appears on the pressure-sensitive floor. Behind him, the tile shows blue and green footprints walking between the couch and the wall screen, where my mom and Angela are standing. “I made it clear you were no longer to snoop around TechRA, and you did what you wanted the first chance you got. I don’t know how else to get through to you.”

“These agencies are doing things they don’t want the public to know about.” Angela bounces Remi in her arms. “It’s not safe.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing.” Both my mother’s voice and expression are pinched. “You’re going to mess everything up.” Just like always , I could’ve added for her.

The voices come at me from every direction, the concern and anger and disappointment blending together, and I let their words wash over me. In a moment, everyone’s world will tilt off its axis. All because of a girl who used to be at the center of all our lives. And then wasn’t.

“I saw Callie,” I blurt out. “She’s not dead like we thought. She’s in a coma—she’s been in a coma these last ten years—and she’s being kept in one of the basement levels of TechRA.”

It is so quiet you could hear a bot reboot. My mother turns pale, the color of a chicken before it goes into the Meal Assembler. Her hand moves to her throat, kneading and squeezing, as if she can massage out the words that are stuck there.

My insides twist. “She’s back, Mom. Actually, she never left us. She’s been here all along. She might…come back to us still.”

My mother’s eyes well up. “I hoped she was still alive. Something…in the past…made me believe she might be. But as the years passed, and there was no sign of her, I began to lose hope. My little girl…my baby. How is this possible?”

For the second time in half an hour, I repeat the story. You’d think I would get bored of the retelling, but I could talk about this—I could talk about Callie—for the rest of the night. Maybe even the rest of the week.

My mother’s openly crying now, and she moves forward and hugs me, in a way she hasn’t since I came back to civilization. I close my eyes, feeling the warmth of her embrace, the solidity of her arms and chest. This is how it would feel if she loved me. This is how it would be if we were a true family.

“Your true daughter, your firstborn,” I murmur. “The one you actually love.”

I don’t know why I say it. Swear to Fates, it just slips out. I want to snatch the words from the air, stuff them back in.

But it’s too late. She drops her arms and backs away from me. I reach out, but before I can touch her, she cries out and runs from the room. Blood-red footprints decorate the floor in her wake.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. What is wrong with me? This is the closest I’ve felt to my mom in years. Why did I have to ruin the moment with my insecurities?

Angela squeezes my hand. Her eyes are red, and she looks like she’s been crying herself. “She’s emotional, and who can blame her? I can only imagine how I would feel if my daughter were returned to me.” She drops a kiss on Remi’s head. “Don’t you worry. I’ll go talk to her. She may want to be alone now, but in a few minutes, she’ll be glad for the company.”