YesterWorld (Book 2 of the Down World Series)

Original Edition: Chapter Thirty-Seven

"How did you choose nineteen ninety-nine anyway?" I asked, my head resting on Adam's broad chest, his fingers stroking up and down my back like the strings of a violin. "The first time you went?"

"Oh, the Prince song," he answered. "It's a really awesome song."

Clouds had shrouded part of the night sky, leaving just enough of a glow to feel like God had turned on a night light. It was weirdly silent outside until a distant owl began to hoot, somewhere far off beyond the wheat fields.

"Are you serious?" I asked.

"No, I'm messing with you."

I laughed, picking up my head and slapping his arm just to have the pleasure of replacing my face on his warm skin after.

"No, I'd had this—this epically, and I mean really colossally, bad wrestling match. I'd gotten my ass creamed..." he laughed with the memory, and I couldn't help but laugh too, trying to picture what teenager could ever beat Adam. "And there was this trophy in the display case at the front of the school. You know which one..."

"Yeah. I've got a trophy in there."

He looked down at me, impressed. "For what?"

"Robotics. I was on a team that went to regionals last year."

He chuckled to himself, shaking his head and twirling his index finger around a ring of my hair.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing," he laughed. "I love how smart you are."

I couldn't tell if he was messing with me again, but I decided not to push it. "So there was a wrestling trophy?"

"Yeah, the school had a really good wrestler that year, and I decided, what the hell. I've been everywhere else I can think of. I'll go back to the year this kid won this trophy and maybe I'll learn a couple things."

"Right."

"And I go back, and I sit myself down in the bleachers, and I look up across the gym. And there's this face of an angel staring back at me. And that was it. I just kept going back."

He must have felt me hold my breath for a moment because his fingers stopped twirling in my hair.

"Yeah, she's really pretty," I offered, a beat too late and dripping with way too much hostility.

He laughed, holding my chin up to look me in the eyes.

"What?"

"Is that jealousy?"

"No, I want to hear more about how pretty your ex-girlfriend is. Seriously, don't skip any details." I started to pull away, but he pulled me back by my left arm and held it up to his own.

"Look at this," he said, and though I wanted to stay angry with him, I couldn't do it. I looked at our arms together, our two different skin tones, his almond-colored and mine caramel, pressed up against each other. "That's beautiful to me, Marina," he whispered, kissing my shoulder. I flipped my arm over to show my scars and he did the same, pressing his to mine and letting our hands fall into each other.

I smiled at him, realizing something.

"What is it?" he asked.

"You've stopped calling me 'M.'"

He smiled back, shaking his head and holding my hand tighter. "That's someone else's name for you. Marina is mine."

I put my head back on his chest.

"Why robotics?" he continued.

"It's the future."

"Humans make the future."

"Hate to break it to you, but it's actually gonna be robots." I swirled my finger in slow circles on his chest while I talked, and his hand went back to stroking me idly and working its way into my hair. "Which is a good thing," I continued, "because, as you know, human history is just people destroying everything in sight over and over again."

"That's what you think history is?"

"It's white people killing brown people, Adam."

"If you don't study history, you're doomed to repeat it."

"We are repeating it. Literally."

A silence came over the room, and even the owl seemed to have drifted off to sleep. The light was changing outside the window, growing darker and more ominous with the late hour, telling us that time was passing.

"Imagine an airplane," I continued, letting my mind drift and the images become vivid and real, "flying through the sky, running on the power of its own wind resistance. No gas. No engine. It's basically a huge wind-powered drone, adjusting for height, temperature, turbulence. Landing perfectly on time. You go from point A to point B, and you don't destroy the world in the process."

"Something would go wrong. It always does."

"And we would fix it. With robots!"

I could feel his chest shake a bit, laughing at me, and I knew I should be falling asleep, but the moment was too perfect to let go.

"And this is why I teach history," he laughed.

"You're a great teacher."

"Don't say that when you've got your leg draped over my stomach."

"You are. This doesn't count."

"Everything counts."

He finished twirling my hair then, letting it slip out of his fingers like water.

"We're only five and a half years apart," I said, and somehow it came out sounding like a prayer.

"And in a couple years, that won't matter at all," he agreed. "But right now, it does."

"So go meet me in a couple years then."

A chill passed through the room, so real and cold that I swear I could almost hear it. I shivered despite Adam's heat, and I could feel his breath catch and then release beneath my ear. Because it was too real. With the portals, anything was possible. Any timeline could be altered. We could spend the rest of our lives this way, shaving off a year here, a minute there, trying to achieve a perfection that would never come.

I dropped everything every time you decided to show up. And what did it get me?

"Marina," he began, his voice tight, "we have to promise ourselves. No more portals after this."

"I know."

"We have to leave it all behind. All of it."

"We will," I said, holding him even closer, clutching him to me like he was my last breath. "This will be the last time."

And several minutes passed, the night air thick and hot, the silence deafening.

"Tell me about your brother," he whispered, already half asleep.

"Robbie," I smiled, my voice far away, "Robbie was my best friend growing up. He was my whole world..." and through a voice that grew softer and softer as I spoke, I told him about the pyramid house, the games of Monopoly. A deck of cards with the geography of the world on it. A packet of stolen M&Ms. And a train... the rumbling of a train. 

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Keep reading for chapter 38!