This Time Tomorrow(49)

Alice looked at the clock. It was three. All the lights on Pomander were out except for theirs. “Just give me a minute,” she said. She stubbed out the cigarette inside a bottle cap and hurried into her room. Alice looked around, searching for something solid to hold on to. She felt like she was on line for an upside-down roller coaster, a roller coaster she was going to fall out of, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. No change of clothes would help.

Leonard leaned against her doorframe. “Sweetie,” he said.

Alice looked at him and knew that she hadn’t done it—whatever he was talking about, pushing the car off the track, she hadn’t done it. “Dad,” she started, but he lifted a palm to stop her.

“It’s going to feel a little strange at first,” he said. Leonard walked her through it—the fuzziness that would follow. She would remember her life, the life before, but not vividly. Memories were memories, after all, and faded over time, especially without prompts like photographs. Over years, things smoothed out. At least he thought so. Of course, Leonard explained, he couldn’t say for sure. He was calm, but Alice was starting to panic.

“But I just got here,” Alice said. “It’s not fair.” She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t fair because she hadn’t figured out how to make sure that when she got back, or forward, or ahead, whatever the right word was, he would be waiting for her, eyes open.

Leonard nodded. “It’s never enough time. I know. But remember—you know how to get here. Do you know how many times I’ve watched you be born? You can come back.”

“And you’ll just be here? And we can just do this? So, what do I do?” Alice shook out her hands and feet, a one-girl hokey pokey. “What am I supposed to do?”

“It’s late,” Leonard said. “I would just go to bed. Or we can sit on the couch.”

Alice walked past her dad and down the dark hallway. Ursula rubbed her body against her, and Alice swooped down to pick her up. She lay down on the sofa and Ursula did, too, curling perfectly into her armpit.

Leonard covered her with a blanket and clicked on the television, though Alice knew he was watching her instead. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe normally, but she could only picture shriveled smoker lungs, black like the commercials that were supposed to scare her away but hadn’t.

“Will you do one thing for me?” Alice asked.

“Sure, what?” Leonard said.

“Will you quit smoking? Like, for real this time?” Leonard had tried before—he’d tried once a decade since he’d been a teenager himself.

Leonard snorted. “Fine. I’ll try, okay? You’re catching me in a weak moment here, and so I’ll promise to try.” He paused. “Al—” Leonard said, half to himself. “Why was it empty in the guardhouse? I’m so careful. How was it just, cleared out? Where was I?”

Alice didn’t want to lie to him, but she also couldn’t tell him the truth. She hadn’t thought much about the hospital, not as much as she usually did. It felt as far away as it was—decades, eons. If they were a hugging family, she would have hugged him, just to make sure she got one in. Why weren’t they a hugging family? Was it her? Was it him? Alice couldn’t remember. Leonard was close, and talking. That was all that mattered. “I took it out. It was piled up, like normal. Took me forever,” she murmured into the arm of the sofa, and then she was gone.





Part Three





36



Alice hadn’t fallen asleep, or at least she didn’t think she had, but there was the slightly underwater feeling of awakening from a dream. She stretched her arms over her head, clonking them on something hard. Alice let her hands feel around a little bit—hard, shiny, with bumps, definitely not her father’s ancient sofa—before she opened her eyes.

Once her eyes adjusted to the dark room, Alice could see that she was in bed—a huge bed, whatever size came after king. Alice wiggled her toes to make sure that she could, and sure enough, there they were, poking up against the heavy duvet. It looked like an expensive room at a hotel she couldn’t afford. A silver lamp with a geometric shade was next to her face, and Alice clicked on the light. The other half of the bed was empty, with the cover thrown back carelessly, as if someone had just climbed out. The walls were cream, the sheets were cream, and the floors were wood, with details laid in a hundred years earlier. Alice knew two things for certain: she’d never been in this room before, and also, at the same time, it was without a doubt her bedroom. It was like Leonard had told her: You’re going to wake up in your bed, wherever your bed is. You’re going to be inside your life, just like you’re inside your life right now. And there will be a lot of things that you missed. But you’ll feel those things, too, eventually.



* * *



? ? ?

She shimmied herself up so that she was propped against the headboard and then leaned over to inspect her drawer. There was her phone, all plugged in, and some earplugs, and a pen, and an eye mask. There was a small stack of books on the floor underneath the table, which calmed Alice down—she was still her, no matter how nice the apartment looked. She remembered what Leonard had said about the tracks, and that calmed her down, too, the idea that even if things looked different, she wasn’t, not really. Alice unplugged her phone and held it in front of her face. 5:45 a.m.—she’d slept through the shift. The password was the same—all her passwords were the same, her birthday and Keanu Reeves’s birthday; she’d set it when she was fourteen and had never seen a reason to change it. No wonder it was so easy to steal identities. Only now, instead of the resplendent photograph of Ursula that Alice was used to seeing, there were two smiling, dark-haired children.