Chapter 4: Doors and Windows
There was a voice calling her: a voice out of her childhood, a voice from the past.
A voice from the time when her heart was filled with mischief and joy, not ice.
A voice reading a poem written by that little girl.
“Hey, Katie! Quit throwing pencils, what’s that on the wall? The lightbulbs should be here, not half down the hall…”
She didn’t open the door. No, stupid…remember. This is the one who asked you to gird his cardboard toy sword, right in front of his father who was sitting there with his space badges, looking all important. That’s your best friend there. After all she had been through it sounded hollow. Best friends don’t stay out of touch when best friends are reaching through absolute torture and desperation to find them. Best friends don’t let each other’s best friends die in an ice-storm.
“Stop!” Katie said.
Leonard gave her an expression of frank admiration. “That’s the first time I’ve known anyone to stop the machine while it was working.”
“I mean, that’s the moment I want,” Katie amended. “I have an idea. Let me compose a journal entry, and I’ll slide it under my past self’s door to him, instead of just ignoring him. I didn’t know he didn’t know Skye had died. He must have thought that I was just being a brat—he didn’t know what was up.”
Katie backed off to compose her thoughts. Leonard offered her a piece of paper. She accepted it with thanks—I’m surprised he even has any paper; most people use writing styluses and let their keyboards translate their handwriting and their voices right into text. But I need it now. She reached into the past, and tried to think in the language of Princess Katie of Avalon again.
Doors and windows…
I feel like I could step through the window in my room, right out into the clouds. Soft, spongy clouds I could jump on, one to the other, sink and spring and float/ A nice other world.
Of course, I’d need wings to get out of bed in this stupid cast!
I think I’ve just been here too long. It’s pretty here in the top room of the tower. The sunrise comes in the window just like all of the pictures around it, and if I could reach my crayons I’d draw some more. Jason drew all over my cast. Ha—I have to write down the verse he put all over my foot! “Roses are red, violets are blue, falling poles are dangerous—but not for you!” He drew a blindfolded girl with all sorts of natural disasters going on around her.
I don’t want to be here staring at this stupid cast! Jason’s definitely teasing me, and I want to go play a joke on him back! If I’d woken up this early a couple of weeks ago, that’s what I would have done—I would have dozed on the couch until about ten minutes before breakfast, then I would have switched Jason’s plate with the cat’s—or maybe put my Orange Cherry Bath Bubbles all over his chair. I can’t do either one here, and I can’t even sleep anywhere else. I never sleep in the same place twice in a row—well, not except for before the whole portal accident when I was so scared that I slept on the floor above Mom and Dad’s room every night. Only I didn’t really sleep. Why am I so wide awake now?
I have about four weeks to cover anyway. You can make me keep a journal, Mom, but you can’t tell me what to write about! I don’t want to list everything that happened. We both know. I’m not likely to forget the past few days.
Actually, there’s a part of the story you don’t know. You know all about my opening the Gate and getting trapped under the pole. But you don’t know why. And you don’t know what happened before, or the night after.
—Why—well, I’m not sure of that one either. Three people have already congratulated me on my bravery, my self-sacrifice, my ability to put my brothers and sisters and friends ahead of my own life.
I’d like to put them in a broken Groundship out in the rain! Well, no, I’d like to reprogram all their fire sprinklers. And when they’re soaking wet I’d like to flash an “off” button right underneath the place where Jason’s holding a water balloon.
Jason again. I can’t even think up a prank without thinking of him.
He doesn’t know I saw him move the pole. I think he thinks I was unconscious, maybe out from the pain. I nearly was, really. Courage and altruism aside, that pole hurt, more than I can ever remember anything hurting. But I wasn’t even thinking about that. I wasn’t thinking about home, either.
All I could imagine was that if I didn’t do something, Jason would die.
Katie stood back and bit her lip. Well, that last wasn’t entirely true. She had been thinking about Jason and Skye dying. But still, if he could read the journal entry, it would take things off in a different direction with their relationship.
“I’m ready,” she said to Leonard.
She was back in that moment. Her past self was sitting on the bed, staring at nothing. Jason’s voice was out in the hall. She held in her hand the slip of paper that might change everything.
She looked at a picture of Skye in her past self’s hands, and froze. Would the journal be betraying her friend’s memory?
Memory…
She was in the present, the paper still crumpled in her hands. I couldn’t do it. I can’t believe it. I couldn’t do it. I don’t get another chance, either.
Leonard now looked vastly uncomfortable. “Katie, do you want to start with something easier? Change a recent memory? Maybe something from the past week?”
“I can’t remember the past week,” Katie said slowly. “I can’t remember the past year. My life has been nothing but endless repetitions since I left that bedroom.”
“What happened?” Leonard said gently.
“Jason sat out there for a solid week…” Katie said. “I saw Skye’s face every time I tried to reach out to my present friend out there across the bedroom. He eventually had to go back to work. I sat there for awhile longer, and then someone came and forced me to eat something. I think it was my dad…but don’t put me in front of that machine, ‘cause I can’t remember it. I wasn’t a Spacechild any longer…I remember searching the want ads, pretty dimly, and finally came up with the post that I have now, as a clerk with the Memory Machine Printers. And that’s about it.”
“Have you written to him?” Leonard said.
“No…I think he’s better off without me anyway.”
“Maybe you need to.”
Katie sat at the VideoCom. The short and sincere thank-you note that she had already sent Leonard had been easy. She had congratulated him on his successfully built technology, and on his kindness and tact, and wished him the best in his career as an inventor. Jason’s letter would be much harder.
Somehow writing to Jason didn’t seem like writing to Jason unless she could take the letter and fold it into a paper airplane. To do that she needed paper. She had searched her room, and those of her three nearest apartment-mates until she had finally come up with a stack. Then she had spent the next three hours tearing up false-starts. I’m not going to be good for anything at work tomorrow, not that I’m going to work tomorrow. I haven’t used a day of my sick leave yet, and I think this definitely qualifies.
She had written a poem for Jason. With her hands shaking, she typed in his VideoCom numbers, and then waited several minutes before she could continue.
Mists hang over silent dawn,
Sun will burn the fog away,
Nightmares never clearly drawn,
Vague and fleeting into day—
A day just like the last.
Dreaming, lost in longing when
Worlds were open—I could see
Purpose—hiding—lost again.
Life is just a memory.
The dreams are fading fast.
Is this stuck-ness pity, sin?
I too wonder, wonder why
Always there, you’re like my twin.
Like the mist, you always fly.
My life is now; you’re past.
Sleep will bring the pain anon.
I forget, yet always know:
Lacking me and losing vision,
Somehow taught I’ve naught to show.
Where are you now? Oh, blast!
Mist has fled, and too-bright sun
Won’t reveal a life that’s new.
Standing as an empty one,
All I know is I want you
—to let me touch at last
the riches of your past,
make of that cavern—vast
—a friendship that will last.
Alone, I’m fading fast!