Page 74

Part 3

Echoes in the Past

Alone in the Past

Cassie was alone amid the noise and light, a solitary figure among the tourists and traffic in New York City.

She was sitting at the top of the TKTS red stairs in the heart of Times Square, sweating in the warm evening, her greatcoat folded on her lap, the hat and scarf tucked into its pockets. On all sides electric lights screamed at her, forcing her mind into a protective huddle and making her want to run away somewhere dark and quiet. But she couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. She was stuck in the past, with no money and no friends and no way to get home. Times Square was illuminated all night, and there were always tourists. It was safe, at least. Noisy and bright and jarring, but safe.

“Why would anyone want to go to Times Square?” she said to herself, remembering something Izzy had said a lifetime ago, before the world went crazy: “The only people interested in Times Square are tourists and terrorists.”

Tears came again, quiet, defeated tears brimming in her eyes, and the lights of New York City blurred in her vision.

“Oh god,” she wailed to herself.

Cassie had been through difficult times in her life. Her grandfather’s illness and his death, and the dark weeks that followed when she had been truly alone in the world for the first time. But even in those days she had never felt as alone as she did now, as helpless.

“What am I going to do?” she asked herself, wiping her tears with the sleeve of her old pullover.

After her bedroom door had slammed shut upon her, Cassie had waited in the parking garage for a while, hoping that it would open again, hoping that Drummond would come for her. But as the minutes and then hours had ticked by her hope had dimmed. She didn’t even know if Drummond could use the Book of Doors. Maybe no one could, other than her.

She had been too numb to panic straightaway. With her hope extinguished she had wandered up out of the parking garage into the hot New York afternoon. She had walked aimlessly for a while, her mind strangely silent, as if it had just checked out for the day. Streets and people and traffic had buffeted her, and then she had found herself on a bench in Central Park, watching dog walkers and joggers, and she had tried to think rationally about her problem, to find the obvious solution that was just a few logical steps away.

But there was no solution. She had no money. She was alone. Any ID she was carrying was dated from the future and would likely be useless in the past.

The panic had bubbled up like rapidly rising floodwaters, threatening to drown her. She had gripped the arm of the bench, trying to steady herself, hyperventilating while all around her New York went about its business and pointedly ignored her.

She was alone. More than ever.

Now, several hours later, as the lights of Times Square tried to hold back the coming darkness, Cassie’s mind had emerged from the hole it had slid into and tried to help her.

“Think about the positives,” she told herself, as a young Japanese couple posed for photographs in front of her. She saw them debating whether to ask her to take their photo, but they took one look at her tearstained face and went to a middle-aged man a few steps farther away instead.

“It’s warm,” she told herself, nodding. “It’s summer. You’re not going to freeze to death.”

She patted the coat on her lap. If she needed to, she could stay on the steps all night. She would be safe, and she would be warm.

“You’re not in any immediate danger.”

She nodded again, trying to emphasize the positives to herself.

“Great. So you’re not going to die immediately.”

That was it. That was all she had.

Cassie sat on the stairs all night, strangely scared to move, as if moving would make it all real, as if it meant she would have to deal with it all. The city never really went to sleep, certainly not in Times Square. The lights blinked and buzzed, and there were always taxis streaming by, always tourists, even though their numbers thinned in the small hours of the morning. And then it all started to come to life again, the traffic grew heavier, the noises grew louder, and Cassie realized she had dozed sitting up. Suddenly she was awake again, panicked and blinking and trying to remember why she was in Times Square alone.

Then she saw an advertisement for a film that was ten years old, and it all came crushing back upon her, the panic, the fear, and she had to get up, she had to move, just to stop the despair from swallowing her again.

She needed the toilet, and her mouth was dry, so she walked down Seventh Avenue to Penn Station, letting herself be pushed by the tide of commuters on their way to or from work. Inside the station she used the toilet, trying her best to ignore the shouted, aggressive conversations that seemed to echo around her, and hurrying away as soon as she was done, before someone tried to speak to her. She found the water fountain and drank until she was satiated, washing the taste of the city air out of her mouth.

She wandered the corridors of the station, smelling the bread and hot dogs, not yet feeling hungry but knowing it was coming. Knowing she had to do something if she was going to survive.

She saw a homeless woman, bulging plastic bag in each hand and many layers of clothes covering her body, and saw her own future. She saw herself becoming anonymous and forgotten, one of the people hidden beneath the surface of New York, a loner who told crazy stories about being from the future.

Suddenly Penn Station was suffocating, a trap she couldn’t escape from, and panic rushed her back out into the warm morning air. She walked north again, because her mind seemed to panic less when she walked, and she found herself back at Bryant Park, where she and Drummond had sat the previous day to watch the younger Drummond and his friends.

Cassie took a seat at a table and tried to relax. All she wanted was a bed. Her apartment. And Izzy.