I plate up the stir-fry for Mom and me and deliver Danny’s grilled cheese before settling between the two of them on the couch. I send Finn a quick text, telling him to come over, and I leave the phone in my lap as I eat. We watch the movie, and for a while it feels wonderful to be back in the normal world again. But I know there’s no such thing. I don’t get to be normal, ever again. Someone wants me dead.
Finn shows up halfway through the movie and watches it to the end with us. He’s never seen a Pixar movie, and I have to remind myself that he’s not from around here. After the movie, we go up to my room so I can tackle some homework.
“You seem like you’re feeling better,” he remarks as he sits down on the bed next to me.
“My shoulder still hurts, but it’s not as bad as it was. It’s a great shade of yellowish green. I only have to take my medicine at bedtime now.”
“That’s a shame,” he says, and his mouth twitches into a smile. “You’re awfully cute when you’re medicated.”
I put my hands over my face. “Oh God. What did I tell you?”
He’s grinning widely now. “You met a certain pirate…,” he prods. “And I gather he—or should I say ‘I’—got a little familiar.”
“It all happened out of nowhere,” I tell him. “I had no idea he was there until I ran into him. I was too busy noticing how weird everything was.”
“It’s all right,” he says. “You’re bound to run into me from time to time. It’s just a little odd that you fell right into his arms like that. You’ve been so determined to run away from me.”
He sounds almost … hurt. I owe him the truth.
“It’s not you I’m running from, Finn. You come with a whole life I’m not sure I want for myself.”
“Would it be so bad?” he asks softly. “Living that life? You’re not alone in this.”
His fingers come up to tuck my hair back behind my ear, and they linger, touching my face. “I’ll take care of you, Jessa. You know that.”
I give a little shiver as his fingers stroke my skin.
“You’re cold,” he says.
I try to get a grip on myself. “It’s freezing in here.”
“You think?” He shrugs. “Guess I’m used to the cold. I’m fine.” He glances around, then finds my hoodie on the back of the chair by my desk. He hops off the bed and then helps me out of my sling and carefully into the sleeves.
Once I get my sling back on, I settle myself again, cross-legged. “So, where do you live that’s so cold and has no Pixar movies?” I ask him. “Antarctica?”
He exhales, almost like a sigh but deeper, and I wonder if I shouldn’t have asked that. Finally, he answers.
“My reality started out a lot like yours,” he tells me. “We just got … derailed.”
“By what?”
“Natural catastrophe, triggered by man. We’d been fracking and drilling all over Montana and Wyoming for decades, without a lot of regulation or oversight. Eventually, we triggered an earthquake cluster that kicked off the Yellowstone eruption. That led to global temperature drops, crop destruction, famine; all the rivers and streams were choked with ash. It happened when I was a little kid, but my mom used to tell me about what it was like before. It sounded a lot like your life.”
“And now?” I’m almost afraid to ask.
“Widespread starvation and not a lot of natural resources. The government fell to a military coup, which led to a couple of short-lived wars in a battle for usable land that threw spots all over the world into anarchy. Now the few people who are left are running. Like me.”
“From what?”
“From each other.” He stops a moment. “There’s no food where I live, Jessa. No animals, no plants, not even many living trees. It’s all gone. The rest of the globe didn’t fare much better, so aid has been extremely limited and without any kind of widespread distribution. In some places, humans are the easiest source of food.”
I put my hand to my mouth. “That’s horrible.”
“You learn to sleep with one eye open. And you learn to avoid people when you do see them.” He smiles faintly with a memory. “It took you and me a long time to trust each other.”
I’m almost afraid to ask. “We didn’t … eat people, did we?”
“No. But now you know why I’d rather be here with you,” he explains. “And I never existed in your reality, so I wasn’t sending anyone to a certain death when I came over.”
“You never existed here? Really?”
“Not as far as I can tell. I tried to find my parents when I first got here, but no luck. And according to the census records at the town library, there’s no record of me or anyone in my family anywhere in your reality.”
“So how did you know to come here?”
“Rudy,” he says. “Since I don’t have a counterpart, he arranged everything through another Traveler—money, shelter, cell phone. I don’t need much. I’m used to living with a lot less.”
I reach for my notebook while my mind processes everything he just told me.
“No trees?” I ask. “At all?”
“Not many. A lot of the streams and creeks that fed their roots are gone. There were so many fires. They raged out of control with no one to stop them.” He pauses a moment, and his eyes unfocus as he remembers.
“There was one big oak I found once,” he continues. “It was on the bank of a river, so it was still alive. And green.” His voice is wistful. “I hadn’t seen green in a long, long time, so it was amazing when I saw it.”
“Have you been back?”