Tomorrow (9 page)

When Kinnari told me Latham had scored tickets to the freshly announced Hendris concert in Chicago, my mind jumped to Freya. She’d be bouncing off the walls at the thought of seeing her idol. “She’s leaving the music business and becoming a painter,” Kinnari explained “She’s been talking about it for the last two years and now she’s finally doing it. This is going to be her farewell show—one-hundred-percent grounded—and we’re going to be there live in the flesh, can you believe it!”

I don’t think I’d seen
Kinnari that excited since she was six, when Bening and Rosine got permission to buy our beagle, June. You could only qualify for a pet license if you were well-off. There’d been so many animals set loose in the thirties and forties, when people couldn’t afford them any longer, that a massive culling had taken place across the U.N.A. and a stringent new law been passed. We’d had June— who was always wagging her tail and ready to play—for five years before she slipped out of the house one evening while Rosine was walking through the front door with her hands full.

With her
implanted microchip, June should’ve been simple to locate. The SecRos took off behind her only minutes after she’d gone missing. They found the chip on a scrap of lawn near the main road. Someone must’ve carved it out from the skin between June’s shoulder blades and nabbed her to sell on the black market. Kinnari cried every night for a week. I almost cried the night the SecRos told us myself.

“
There’s a ticket for you too,” Kinnari said, grinning at me like her six-year-old self. “Latham has the transit documents and everything.”

“When’s the show?”
I was all set to go. I’d feel better about Kinnari heading out to Chicago if I were with her. It wasn’t like I could protect her from a bomb or virus, but that’s one of those crazy things you think to yourself—that your presence has the power to keep someone safe.

“
Tuesday. Completely last minute. But so many people want to go, the concert’s already sold out.”

Tuesday
the twenty-eighth. The same night I’d promised Seneval I’d meet Minnow at Wyldewood. “This coming Tuesday. Are you sure?”

“This
Tuesday,” Kinnari repeated.

I leaned one of my shoulder
s against the wall. “You know Bening and Rosine will never say yes.” If I couldn’t go I didn’t really want Kinnari there, either. She’d be on the Zeph for ages. What if terrorists targeted it again?

Kinnari
rolled her eyes. “I know they won’t. But they don’t need to know about it. And you know as well as I do this concert is exactly the kind of thing they would’ve been into when they were our age.” She pressed her palms together and gave me a pleading look, not unlike the way June used to stare at me when I was eating. “Don’t guilt me, okay? It’s not going to change my mind.”

“It’s a bad idea. Things are so scary out there lately
.”

“You didn’t think it was a bad idea a minute ago. And things are always scary.”

Where was the ninety-one-year-old side of my sister when I needed it?

“Come on,
Garren,” she prodded. “I can’t believe you’re not jumping at the chance to do this. It’s Hendris. She’s a legend in her own time. In the future people will feel about her how you feel about Springsteen and David Bowie.”

I laughed.
“She’s not
that
good.”

“Yes
, she is. You just won’t let yourself see it because you think all the best stuff is in the past.” I only thought that because most of the best stuff
was
in the past. Besides, Kinnari was nearly as big a fan of old music and movies as I was. My sister charged ahead, not allowing me a chance to object. “And we’re asking Freya too. You’re starting to like her, right? We’ll have a great time, the four of us.”

“I never disliked Freya.”

“I know. I only meant that it seemed like you two were starting to connect on my birthday. She’s not how we thought.” We’d never really talked about Freya before but I understood what Kinnari was saying. Our grounded friends and the ideas we were raised with aligned us with a certain point of view, one that didn’t usually think highly of politicians or the corporations that had created the SecRos and DefRos. I’d despised the idea of Luca Kallas without ever having met him.

“Yeah, I know.” T
hat wistful expression of Freya’s I’d spied during “Heart of Gold” flashed behind my eyes. “And maybe the four of us can hang out some other time, but I can’t go on Tuesday. There’s this thing I have to do.”

“What thing?”
Kinnari demanded.

“It’s private
. I can’t say.”

“Private.”
My sister’s face turned impish. “Anyone I know?”

I shook my head and glanced at the floor. It was easie
r just to let her think this was about a girl. “I’m not giving you a name so you can forget it.”

“I must know her if you’re being so secretive.
”

“Still not telling.”
I smirked as I looked Kinnari in the eye. “The important thing is that it’s better if you don’t go to the show. It’s so far away. And a lie like that will come out sometime. You know how you are about telling Bening and Rosine the truth.” Kinnari’s dedication to it was almost compulsive. She’d spilled the news about her and Latham seeing each other within twenty-four hours of the onset of their relationship, despite suspecting our mothers might disapprove because of his reputation. “You’ll crack and tell them.”

“I won’t
crack
, Garren. And it’s only five hours on the Zephyr. It’s not like I’m going up to Hudson Bay or something.” In reality a trip to Hudson Bay would probably be safer. Millions of people had moved up over the former Canadian border since the evacuation, but the U.N.A.’s far north was still sparsely populated and therefore attracted less terrorist attacks. “So you just go do your private thing on Tuesday and I’ll do mine, okay?”

My foot scuffed against the floor.
“Fine.” I sighed noisily.

After that
I didn’t waste my breath trying to talk Kinnari out of the Hendris concert. She was going and that was it.

The next day
I found out Freya couldn’t make it out to Chicago for the show, either. She was being punished for fighting with her mother and was only permitted to leave for school, so it would just be Kinnari and Latham heading out East for the concert. Now I wish I’d done things differently—done anything to stop Kinnari from going with him. But at the time I left things alone. Ultimately I thought she had the right to do what she wanted.

On the morning of
August twenty-eighth, Kinnari left early. In 2063 the U.N.A. had school throughout the year, but the summer months were full of optional days students could use to complete their required volunteer hours. With Latham’s connections he’d arranged to make it look like he and Kinnari were doing a twelve-hour stint at the Fairfield social welfare camp that day. I told my sister to be careful and stick close to Latham, and in return she told me she hoped whoever I was spending the evening with was worth missing the concert for.

When
Kinnari said that I pictured Seneval’s dark eyes. So close I could see my own reflection in them. I felt a dull ache under my ribs.

“She’s worth it,” I said.

At school later I was distracted, and my friend Mara kept poking me to get my attention. Mara was always physical when we were near each other in public but the few times we’d gotten close in private had seemed strained. It’d been simpler to put the other side of our relationship aside and just stay friends. “What is with you today?” she asked, leaning into me in the school hallway between classes. “You’re like someone in gushi withdrawal.”

The generation before us was full of
gushi burnouts. It was the reason the government had caved to the grounded movement and reintroduced the old school system. So many of the kids educated solely on gushi had breakdowns, even the politicians had to admit gushi use needed to be restricted. It was part of the reason they made the Cursed work.

“I’m just bored,” I
lied. “It seems pointless to be here when we’re so close to starting at college.” I was due in New York in only a week.

“I’m going to miss you,” she said.
“It’ll be strange to be in Billings without you.” Mara was going to Montana State University to become a teacher. She wasn’t excited about it but it was the best of her three career options.

“We’ll still talk
,” I assured her. On gushi. No one could avoid it completely and expect to function in 2063. The trick was not to let it swallow you. But my thoughts had already started to drift back to Seneval and my meeting with Isaac.

I was so wound up about
what he’d tell me that I had my trans take me to Wyldewood straight from school and was hours early for my meeting with Isaac. I let a guy twice my age show me patio furniture and twenty different pairs of shoes. Then I went and sat on the beach in the swimsuit I’d just bought, one the personal shopper had assured me utilized the latest technology.

The advantage of the false sun they used at
Wyldewood was that it was never too strong. Everyone else on the beach with me was much older but looked a decade or two younger than the sixty or seventy-year-olds from 1986. They had their Bio-nets to thank for that. I dug my toes into the sand and noticed it wasn’t the weird fake stuff they usually had other places, the kind that wouldn’t stick to you. If you weren’t thorough about brushing the Wyldewood sand off it’d still be clinging to your skin when you got home.

Because
Kinnari and I had been to the beach in Lewistown and West Glacier with our moms on all-clear days a few times, I knew Wyldewood’s beach experience was a couple of shades closer to reality than gushi but still not entirely right. The seagulls never shit, the wind never blew sand in your face, and the waves had a programmed uniformity to them, something you’d only realize if you’d been staring at them for twenty minutes straight like I had.

I don’t know how
Seneval knew I was out on the beach but she stalked over to me, tearing my gaze from the water as she looked me quickly up and down. I felt at a disadvantage in my swimsuit and the sight of her filled my nostrils with the imagined scent of cloves. To this day the thought of Seneval or anything to do with art class still conjures the smell for me.

“You’re early,” she noted
, plopping down next to me. “Minnow’s not ready to see you yet.” Seneval’s hands were making circles in the sand. “He’s finishing up a shift.”

I nodded like I was in no hurry.
“And you—are you in the middle of a shift?” I’d been hoping to see her but hadn’t expected it. She looked tired.

“I’m
done for the day,” she replied, one of her fingers brushing accidentally against mine in the sand. If it’d been Mara I wouldn’t have thought about it twice, but this was Seneval, and my hand jerked.

“Nervous?” she
asked. “You don’t have to do this, you know. You can just go to New York and leave us all behind. You haven’t done anything irreversible yet.”

Both of our faces were pointed at the waves. It seemed easier to speak that way.

“I think you’re really brave,” I admitted, knowing that she wouldn’t want to hear it. “Losing your parents, having to take care of your sister in the camp, and then dedicating yourself to this gateway work. I want to be like that. I want to know I’m doing something good.”

In the distance two seagulls swooped
down low over the water, their paths crossing in a graceful arc. For a split second I forgot none of this was real.

“
I’m not so brave,” she said. “My life took a turn that woke me up, that’s all. I might’ve stayed a sleepwalker, like Silas described, if my parents hadn’t disappeared.”

“Lots of people ha
ve hard lives,” I countered. “It doesn’t wake them all up. There’s something inside you that made you choose this.”

“You’re idealizing me.”
Seneval smiled out of one side of her mouth. “It’s nice but it’s not the whole story. Just be careful, okay? Don’t try to be a hero. I’d feel bad if something happened to you.”

I scratched the back of my neck. I knew I couldn’t be getting a burn under the false sun. It only felt that way. “You should be careful too
.”

I risked a look at
Seneval and saw her head bob. “We can wait upstairs in the domestic quarters, if you want. You can see how the other half lives. Minnow will come get you when it’s time.”

I slipped into the chang
ing room to put my clothes back on. Then Seneval led me upstairs, to the floor where the majority of Wyldewood employees lived. Most of the doors were closed—unlike in the social welfare camps, people had their own rooms—but Seneval showed me a communal kitchen area. Someone had tried to make it homey by decorating the walls with food-related artwork. One of the pieces was a vintage-style poster of a food group chart complete with illustrations of things like a block of cheese and head of lettuce.

My stomach
rumbled in response and Seneval reached into one of the lower cupboards to pull out a jomange for me. Popular and highly nutritious, the scientist-created fruit looked like a courgette but had a sweet citrus taste. I chomped into it as we edged down the long corridor, wiping away the juice that ran down my chin.