Tomorrow (8 page)

“
He lives there,” Seneval explained. “We work together.”

“Wait.
You
live
at Wyldewood?”

Seneval
stared at our subject, her hand beginning to recreate the curve of his top lip on her page. “Almost everyone who works at Wyldewood lives there too. We don’t earn enough in wages to live any other decent place.”

Guilt for my privileged upbringing kept me silent.
I’d already put my foot in my mouth enough times that night.

“So will you be there
Tuesday?” she asked.

“I’ll be there.”

I didn’t loiter around when class was done; I took off as fast as I could. At home I flipped through my notebook and opened to Seneval’s crumpled drawing. The hole in the paper was tiny. She hadn’t needed to throw it away. She could’ve finished the picture.

Sometimes, during those weeks we shared a class, I’d find myself thinking about
Seneval while I was at school. No one else knew about her or the art class and that made the secret feel like something more than it was. Rosine and Bening thought I was at a friend’s house. I’d never breathed a word about Malyck or anything else and it was as if Seneval and I were on the verge of something together, like soldiers about to go into battle. Only there was no
together
. She’d just happened to be in the same room as me for a time. I was her job. Part of her cause. None of our conversations meant anything more than that.

If you’ve ever felt like you could be friends with someone but knew you didn’t have the time or the
opportunity—that was how it was with me and Seneval. I didn’t know how she felt about me or even what I meant by ‘friends.’ I only knew, when I fell asleep that night after class, that I was feeling the seeds of something that would never grow.

The few tools we own—a hammer, screwdriver, and wrench—are bundled in a plastic bag we keep in the hall closet. I grab the screwdriver and drag the overturned dining room chair into the bedroom with me to open the vent that’s spaced four inches from the ceiling.

I’d honestly started to think they’d stopped looking for us. Now I know we stayed too long, got too comfortable.

I yank the grill off the vent and toss it onto the bed. Reaching inside, I close my fingers around the gun and box of bullets we bought when we first reached Vancouver, a tight roll of twenty-dollar bills totalling eight hundred dollars, and two sets of fake IDs for Freya and me under the names Chris Henderson and Amy Lewandowski. We have more money at the bank, but I don’t have time for that. I load the gun, then shove everything into my duffle bag along with a fistful of underwear, socks, and T-shirts that I swipe off the floor. I throw a single pair of jeans into the bag along with them and hoist the strap over my shoulder.

Too late it occurs to me that I’m already letting their trail go cold; I should’ve run out to the street to catch sight of anything suspicious when I first saw that the apartment had been ransacked. My legs whirl me out to the balcony anyway. I stare up and down Fourteenth Avenue hoping my eyes will snag on something
—anything—that will help lead the way. When that doesn’t happen I turn and step back inside, freezing as I hear someone burst through the front door. I jump back onto the balcony, easing the sliding door shut as quietly as I can. Whoever it is won’t have seen me yet—the balcony isn’t visible from the entranceway.

But what if it’s Freya and she wasn’t taken after all? I stare through the glass, hope dying inside me as a balding man with severe sideburns glares back. He breaks into a run when he spies me, jerks the sliding door open and grabs at the front of my jacket, wrenching me inside with him. The duffle strap slides down my arm as I stumble into the apartment.

For all I know, this man’s only one of many the director’s sent, and if the others reach me I won’t stand a chance. I draw back my fist and hit his Adam’s apple dead-on, just like I saw old Freya do on the day she saved us. The man instinctively bends at the waist, both his hands releasing me. I stomp on his left foot with all my weight and watch him buckle in pain, skirting to his side to push him back out onto the balcony and lock the door behind him. Flustered, my fingers trip over the locking mechanism. The man’s tanned hand closes around the exterior handle just as I successfully lock the door. Momentarily proud of myself, an involuntary smile begins to burn into my cheeks.

The feeling doesn’t last a second before the man reaches into his blazer for a holstered gun. I twist to run, hearing the glass shatter behind me.

Out in the apartment corridor, I launch myself in the direction of the stairwell, wondering how much of a lead I have, whether they’ve had a chance to mess with Freya’s head yet, and what I can do about any of it.

I don’t look back. My ears tell me that my tail hasn’t reached the stairway yet
, and instead of running down to street level I ease the third-floor doorway open, squeeze through it, and close it gently behind me. What now?
Think, Garren.
You got away from them in Toronto. You can do it again.

I duck down beside the
doorway so the man won’t see me and hunch, poised to jump him if he comes through the door. Seconds later I hear shouting from the stairs.

“We have to find him,” a choked voice barks, allowing me to hear the damage I’ve inflicted on his windpipe. “I almost had him. He can’t have gotten far.”

“He didn’t pass me,” the second voice responds.

Damn, there are at least two of them after all.
Maybe more.

With no way out, there’s only one thing left for me to take a chance on.
The elevator.
I scuttle along the hallway towards it and jab at the ‘down’ button. The ordinarily sloth-paced elevator opens for me within three seconds. Like fate, the bald man who grabbed me upstairs hurtles breathlessly into the corridor behind me.

Leaping onto the elevator, I poke repeatedly at the
‘close’ button. “You only need to push it once you know,” the girl next to me quips. Dawn, in skin-tight white jeans and a red turtleneck.
Shit
. She must have missed them upstairs by seconds.

Finally the door responds, sliding shut and leaving the man panting in the hallway. “Listen, Dawn, I’m in trouble here,” I spit out. We’ve both been lucky so far but I can’t put a thirteen-year-old kid at risk, even if it might help me. “You don’t want to be next to me when we
reach the ground floor.” I hit ‘two’ for her. “Get off there and stay as long as you can. See if Mr. Deering’s home to let you into his apartment for a while.” Stew Deering, a World War II hero who’s hard of hearing but loves to talk all the same, is like the building’s mascot, the kind of person who would do anyone a favour.

“What’s going on?” Dawn asks, her face sharpening to an unhappy point. “What do you mean you’re in trouble?”

“People are after me.” I bite down hard on my lip. “They’re in the building. I need to get out of here, if I can. But right now you need to stay away from me.” The bell chimes as the door opens on the second floor. Dawn stares at the doorway gap as if internally debating what I’ve told her.

“Do it,” I urge, grabbing her arm and pulling her towards the door.

“Ouch!” Dawn jumps out, her eyes shooting daggers at me. Her annoyance barely registers. The look’s already fading, morphing into something I don’t expect. Dawn reaches into her pocket, her fingers emerging with a long key hanging from a pink rabbit’s foot chain. “My mom’s Sunbird is parked out front,” she says, tossing the keychain into the elevator with me. “It’s the red one. She’s out cold. She won’t notice it’s missing for a while.”

I’m speechless. Only when the door begins to close do I reach down for the keys and shout after her, “Thanks!”

Tonight, the elevator’s usual snail pace feels like the speed of light. I hit the ground floor in no time, dart out of the elevator with my duffle bag still slung over my shoulder, and run full out for the street. Scanning left and right, for the Sunbird and the men who are after me, I careen onto the lawn and then the pavement.
Got it.
Dawn’s mom is parked behind a Toyota about forty feet to my left.

I thrust the key
roughly into the lock and turn, venturing a glance over my shoulder as I drop into the driver’s seat and start the engine. A thin man in acid wash jeans is spurting after me. He must be the other one from the stairwell and I peel away from the curb so fast that the right side of the car scrapes the Toyota’s bumper. I don’t hazard another look back; I keep my eyes on the road ahead of me, flooring it onto Main Street, where I weave in and out of traffic like a maniac.

If they catch me, I won’t be able to help Freya. We’ll both have our brains turned inside-out. On the other hand, if I lose the director’s men, how will I find her?

I don’t know what to do. I need help.

I hang a right onto Broadway, zigzagging northwest on some kind of autopilot as I try to chase the director’s logic in my head. Would he risk dragging Freya all the way back across the country, to where Canadian operations are based, before
performing the procedure? Or could he have it done somewhere closer? And why now? Does it have something to do with the Reagan shooting? The director told Freya that news of future environmental instability and the Toxo plague could destabilize current society. But we were never going to tell anyone about the U.N.A. and its plans. We would have kept quiet forever.

So many questions.
And none of them are bringing me any closer to Freya. Should I head for the airport and hop on a plane to Toronto? Should I stop the car now and let them take me, just for the chance to get close to her?

I can’t think
. Can’t work this out on my own. There’s a guy at work I trust as much as I can trust anyone, aside from Freya. He ran away from his asshole parents in Lethbridge, Alberta when he was sixteen and has been working at Greasy Ryan’s for the last couple of years. But Sheldon Ostil’s only a year and a half older than I am. He wouldn’t know how to deal with this. And he and his girlfriend had a baby girl just a couple of months ago. The last thing I want to do is bring trouble down on him and his family.

Wait
. Suddenly I know who Freya would want me to go to. Dennis and Scott. I’ve only met them a handful of times, but I know where they live. They gave us their old couch when we moved in. Dennis has a bad back and can’t lift anything heavier than a case of soda, so Scott and I hauled the couch out to his van, drove it over here, and then crammed it into the elevator.

I feel
better having a plan of action and I continue in roughly the same direction, heading for Kitsilano while intermittently checking the rear-view mirror for any sign of a tail. Considering I don’t know what kind of car the director’s men are driving, it’s not surprising that I don’t notice anything strange. And then I lose the chance to notice much of anything because the car’s crawling to a halt, the steering wheel turning heavy and unresponsive in my hands, and multiple dashboard warning lights flashing. I fight with the wheel, guiding the car sluggishly towards the curb.

I
t won’t move another inch. The Sunbird’s as dead as anything you’d find rusting in a junkyard. Stalled next to a white Honda, I jump out of the Sunbird with my duffle bag and begin jogging towards Dennis and Scott’s place, cursing out loud in frustration. I’m easier to spot on foot, but it’s only about four blocks now and I don’t have a choice.

I imagine what Freya would say, seeing me pant.
Something about lung capacity and cigarettes. It’s not the cigarettes making me breathless, though. It’s the thought of never seeing her again.

When we
arrived in Vancouver last March we were in the weirdest mental state imaginable, wanting to celebrate our survival but still in shock over the things we’d remembered. We rented the first apartment we stumbled on that didn’t require references. It was a hellhole but the price was right and we knew it was just a stepping stone.

We found Christmas lights on sale at a bargain store and taped them up on the ceiling so the place wouldn’t look
as creepy in the dark. We didn’t have a TV then. Just a portable radio with a built-in tape player. At night we’d turn off the lamps and ceiling lights, plug in the Christmas bulbs, and dance in the dark to the radio. Fast or slow songs, it didn’t matter. Art of Noise, Elvis Costello, Madonna, the Ramones, Thin Lizzy, Alison Moyet, Billy Joel, Billy Idol, Billy Ocean, whatever. We danced to anything, including music it was nearly impossible to dance to. And when we were too tired to move but still couldn’t sleep because our minds were running wild, we’d read to each other from a stack of books we’d bought at a second-hand store. It was always the scary stuff we wanted in those early days. Things like
Carrie
,
The Picture of Dorian Gray
, and
Dracula
made us feel more normal, like we weren’t the only two people in the world who’d gone through something crazy.

Sometimes we read each other to sleep, one of us pushing the
paperback at the other to take over when we couldn’t force our own mouths to form words anymore. One time Freya even sang me to sleep with a medley of new wave tunes. The last thing I remembered hearing that night was her voice in my ear crooning, “So many adventures couldn’t happen today. So many songs we forgot to play…”

I’d know that voice anywhere.
Soft and strong and one-hundred-percent herself. In my head I hear Freya sliding over Alphaville’s imagined synthesizer notes like it did that night and…

No, I can’t.
I need to concentrate on running. If I don’t stop thinking about her I’ll lose power in my legs, just like what happened with the car, and come crashing to the ground.

I push myself to go faster, my head swivelling on my neck, watching out for anyone taking extra notice of me.
The daylight’s fast disappearing and with it I feel Freya drift farther away. Rounding the corner onto Dennis and Scott’s street undetected is a minor victory but I don’t slow down. I hurl myself up their front steps and lean on the doorbell until Scott, sweaty and out of breath in shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt, opens the door for me.

“Jesus H. Christ,
Robbie,” he says, pushing his mop of blond hair off his face. “Where’s the fire?”

I barge into the house with
Scott, throwing my bag on their terracotta tile floor. “They took her,” I croak, my hands on my knees as I lean over to fill my lungs. “Freya’s gone.”