Everything’s so still. Fat, fluffy snowflakes fall out of the sky and coat the ground and nothing changes. The banks aren’t getting any deeper. The pine trees aren’t getting smothered any further. It’s like the world’s on loop. Like I’m on loop. What happened to graduating and going out and seeing the world and getting out of Nowhere, Alberta for a change? This place might look like Abraham Lincoln built it but it’s still nowhere. I’m still nowhere.
At least it’s beautiful. The rolling hills curve gently upwards and reach for the mountains and the forests painting their slopes are thick, solid, comforting, like a warm blanket. Nothing moves. No distant farm machines, no trucks coming by on the one road out here, no birds, just endless numb beautiful limbo.
Then the sky explodes. There’s blue sweeping through the snow, a lightning strike on a clear day, and the ground pulses and the air screams. It’s not like thunder; it screams, like metal on metal. My ears ring. I check the glass, frantic, half-expecting all the windows in the house to be broken, dreading having to explain to my parents that aliens messed up their summer retreat, and—
Nothing. Just like it was before. As soon as the high-pitched screech in my ears goes away, it’s like nothing happened at all. Like maybe I’m going stir crazy and hallucinating, and everything’s just going to be boring again.
Boots on. Coat on. Get out the door, walk around the outside of the old ranch house looking for… something. An excuse to call my parents, I guess. Not that they’d want to talk to me; I’d just be interrupting their vacation. But at least I’d have a reason. Maybe I’d get thirty seconds of hearing someone else’s voice.
No luck. No broken glass, no sign of whatever made the noise, nothing. I was half expecting a pillar of smoke on the horizon or a crashed spaceship or a crater or something. At least a tree on fire, right? What else could lightning have possibly struck out here?
I should go back inside. Yeah, that’d be great. I’d make more tea and flip through the book of crossword puzzles some more and not actually solve any and before I knew it it’d be 9 PM and I’d be asleep because that’s the only thing worth doing around here.
New snow crunches under my boots, that sharp sound that almost makes you feel bad for it, makes you feel like some kind of trespasser in your own backyard. Really? You’re gonna mess up a landscape this perfect with your stupid footprints? Shame on you, it says. Nothing’s busy happening. Don’t interrupt. I crunch my way all the way to the treeline and almost slip down the hill on the way. It’s cold as hell. There’s nothing to see. The forest stretches out in front of me, bright and secretless and full of a thousand identical trees that look just like the trees on the next hill, and the next one, and creeping halfway up the Rockies that stare down at me in the distance.
See if I care how boring you are, you breathtaking psychic deathtrap. Something made that sound.
Five minutes of walking and freezing my lungs off. Five more, and I’m at the top of the hill, looking out over more wintry nothing for a messed-up tree or whatever I think is out here, and that’s when I see him. There’s dyed blue hair spilling out around his head like a wreath, spiderwebbed through the snow that’s starting to bury it, and he’s curled up under the branches half-hidden and naked and so pale and he’s not moving.
Oh, God. How long has he been here?
I step a little closer. There’s snow swept out around his limbs like he was trying to make the worst snow angel ever, or like—he was dreaming, or something. But he’s dead now, right? He couldn’t have gotten out here during the day or I would’ve heard him, so… so he’s got to be frozen through, right?
Me too. I’ve never seen a dead body before. What do I even do? Call an ambulance? Yeah, right. The Mounties? There’s nothing. I take a couple tentative steps toward him, trying not to fall. He’s so… serene. Like a drawing. You know. Study in pencil, boy sleeping in a snowbank. By… some artist who doesn’t know what frostbite is.
He moves.
I go flying, I mean I lose my footing right away and tumble like a dozen feet down the hill. Holy shit. I pick myself up and run over to him and—it’s real. He’s actually asleep, actually just dreaming. His arm sweeps languidly through the snow again, brushing those plump new flakes away even as they’re doing their damnedest to bury him. He murmurs something. I don’t know. I scrape snow off my jacket and just stare for a moment before I remember he’s probably dying of exposure.
I’m not a star athlete or anything. I don’t know how I got him all the way back home that fast through snow that deep, when he wouldn’t wake up, when he couldn’t help me carry him. I guess maybe I’m not as selfish as I always thought.
#
His chest rises and falls under the heat packs and the blanket—my blanket. He’s in my bed. Nobody else has ever been in my bed before. It’s not as cool as I always thought it’d be, and not just because he might still be dying. It’s like a dream. A bad dream. I’m responsible for this kid? This kid from nowhere? ‘Kid’. That’s what it feels like. Sure, he looks my age but I’d feel a whole lot more confident that he can take care of himself if he pulled up in the driveway in winter gear with a cell phone at full charge and asked for directions instead of…
It feels like he’s lost. I’m already trying to find my own way out. How am I supposed to help him? What if he’s a runaway, or he wandered out here not expecting to come back? I’m not cut out for this.
He smiles in his sleep, wraps his arm around one of the heat packs, buries his face a little further in the pillow. Like he’s at home, having sweet dreams. You know, a little thanks would be nice. You can’t just lie there being cute and expect me to solve all your problems. That’s not how it…
Screw it. I’m his guardian angel. It can’t be that hard, someone’s probably looking for him already.
I stop looking at him for five minutes to make myself some tea and when I come back up I almost drop it. He’s sitting up in bed staring at me like I’m from Mars. We stand there for ten seconds or so, and then he smiles.
“Shmay?” he asks, tilting his head a little.
“What?”
“Hello? Um, how’d I get here?” It doesn’t sound like an accusation. It doesn’t look like one, either. He’s not even a little tense. Man, if I woke up in a stranger’s bed wet and covered in heat packs I’d freak, what’s going on?
“You were in a snowbank.” I say.
He grimaces, glances off to the side. Like he’s embarrassed and not, you know, recovering from a near-death experience. That’s normal. That’s super normal. Hey, why is his hair dye not washing out? Is that how hair dye works? Get a hold of yourself. This isn’t an anime. He does not have naturally blue hair. Dyes are permanent, dumbass. He’s weird, not magic.
“Where are my clothes?” he asks, still smiling like that’s not a really concerning question to have to ask.
I stammer out something about wanting to ask him the same thing. It sounded better in my head.
“Ooh. Mipsy cringe. Well, that’s fine, that’s not really the end of the world. Uh, thanks for helping me. You’re…”
He stares at me expectantly, the light from outside glinting off the pale skin above his collarbone, and I forget my name and go through a few stages of grief over it before it pops back into my head.
“Uh… Kyle Tran. Look, hey, this isn’t really my house and we’re kind of in the middle of nowhere and I was sort of hoping you knew some kind of number I could call, like someone you know who can come pick you up…”
“It’s not the middle of nowhere, right?” he asks hopefully, peering outside and shielding his eyes. “It’s um, pretty close to the capital right? Just a dozen or so kilometers west?”
“The capital of what?”
He snaps his fingers a couple times like he’s trying to remember. “Alberta?”
“No, that’s… that’s Edmonton, we’re near Calgary. Are you… American?”
He shakes his head and giggles. “No way.” He’s a bit more serious when he asks “Shmay, are you sure?”
“Um, yeah.”
He stares down at the blanket, frowning, deep in thought, then smiles a little. I’m trying to remember if fugue states are psychologically linked to being a serial killer. Man, I am not getting strangled in my own house by a naked Hatsune Miku cosplayer for being a good samaritan. That’s bullshit. He’s just gotta be weird, right? Not dangerous. Right?
“That’s rev, I guess. Hey, you didn’t ask my name.”
Ouch. Yeah, I didn’t, but you know why, right? It’s cause I’m freaking out. Don’t get on my case over it. I’m ready to say something snarky, but he’s all… bright and bubbly again.
“Okay, what’s your name?” I say, giving in, like a total idiot. Like, what if he is crazy?
“Zaiv Leppanen, they-them. Uh, that’s Zaiv with an X. I’m from… actually that’s not important, I’m gonna be perf, though, don’t fritz about me. Shmay, can I have some clothes? Oh, and uh, where’s the sinkroom?”
What the fuck?
Wait, is it ‘Xaiv’ or just ‘Xav’, then? Or maybe ‘Xzaiv’?
What’s a freakin’ sinkroom?
“They-them?” I ask.
“Oh, yeah, right. You know. They were lying in a snowbank in sub-zero temperatures, so I brought them inside and made sure they didn’t die of hypothermia? Thanks, by the way. I mean it.” Zxaive says, flashing a smile.
Maybe everybody’s gender-neutral on the planet they’re from. I don’t care. I can’t even think straight with them looking at me like that.
“You’re… they. Okay. And… hold on, how do you spell—”
“X-A-V. It’s short for Zivasor. I know, mipsy cringe, my parents are kind of… tiquesters.” They grimace again, but this time it’s like they’re in on the joke but I’m not. Oh, man. This is gonna get even worse, isn’t it? I gotta get them to the sinkroom just so I have some buffer time before the next punch in the face I get every time they open their mouth.
“The, um, sinkroom, is just…” I point down the hall. “Over there on the right. And I’ll um…” They’re like, a whole size smaller than me. “Get you some clothes, I guess.”
“Thanks!” they say brightly, getting up out of the bed. I barely manage to avert my eyes. It was weird enough when they were unconscious, this is way worse. Do they just not care if I see them naked? Are those the terms I’m on with this… hot, total stranger who talks like they’re from bad 80s sci-fi? This is Hell. It’s actually Hell. I died on the way here, the endless snow pileup was Purgatory and this is Hell. The Christians were right. I should’ve gone to church with Dad for more than two weeks as a kid, huh?
Holy shit. I get some clothes out for Xav—old ones I haven’t worn in a while, they were just lying in the closet here—sit down, and breathe. I really, really don’t want to call the Mounties or an ambulance. I really don’t. I mean, ugh, what’s gonna happen to him—them—then, huh? Like, what if they are a runaway and this is just their way of sorting shit out with their parents? It doesn’t sound so good at home. Zivasor? Seriously? And the hair dye? I know kids like this. I don’t think they’re really that happy deep down under all the… displays. Not telling me about their contacts? And… lying in that snowbank? It could be bad. Real bad. And…
And there’s something real about this. About the weird shit they’re saying. I can hear them starting to hum some pop tune I’ve never heard before as they start running the shower. I was a band kid. It’s in 4|3 time. Man, what the fuck.
I pick up the phone, but put it back down. What are you doing? If you’re so bored, why are you throwing away the only interesting thing that has ever happened in Rocky Mountain Nowhere, just west of the ‘capital of Alberta’? Come on. Come on, Kyle. You idiot.
Sigh. Bang my head against the wall a couple times. We are officially in the Xav Timeline and there’s nothing I can do about it. Man, why couldn’t you just be a lost dog or something, huh? Now I’ve gotta…
Smile to myself a little. Can’t help it. I’ve gotta do something interesting, that’s what I’ve gotta do. God is a comedian and I’m the joke. Deep breath.
Yeah. What the hell. It’s the Xav Timeline. At least they’re cute.
#
They’re tying their wet hair up in the kitchen when it finally comes out. I ask where they found the hair tie, ‘cause it’s not like I use them, and they just say “sinkroom” and “thanks for letting me stay, by the way” and give me that little I’m-invincible smile. That’s when it happens.
“Who said you could stay? I-I mean are you okay? Is there somebody looking for you, I mean, what’s going on? This is crazy, you know that right? I don’t even know if I want you here if you won’t tell me what’s really…”
They transfix me with sad eyes, frozen, my old Triforce T-shirt hanging off their skinny frame, and I immediately regret saying it.
“Ugh, look, if—if you really need some help why not go to…” I don’t know where they’d go. Not if they didn’t want someone to find them. Like their parents. It’s bullshit but I’ve committed at this point.
“I’m okay. I promise. But nobody’s looking for me.” they say. It’s the first time they’ve really sounded serious about anything.
“Then why were you—”
“Because my time machine wasn’t calibrated properly and I’m a half century off from where I want to be. Everybody else is probably in the future, and because of the lensing my gear didn’t come with me so I’m stuck here until it flashes in. 4-K?” they say, raising their voice a little, emphasizing things. Like they’re angry, but… not with me.
Time machine? Wait, what? They sound serious. Oh, god, they are nuts.
“Um… yeah, that… pretty much clears everything up, thanks, Xav. I just gotta call my parents and tell them I’m um… having a friend over, okay?”
I’m halfway through dialing 911 when they grab my hand. My heart rate spikes. They’re clutching my wrist and I want to push them away but they’re holding on so tight and they look so desperate and there’s nothing I can do, not before they start talking.
“Kyle. Where were my footprints? In the forest, how’d I get to be lying down in the snow if I didn’t walk there? Where were the footprints?”
Deep breaths. Think. Try not to think too hard about just hitting them in the face and booking it. It’d be like throwing a rock at a butterfly. They just… look like they trust me so much to reason it out. Like this is normal. Like any of this is.
There were no tracks at all. Nothing. How the…
“You heard a loud scraping noise, right? And there was a flash like lightning but in the middle of the day, right? That’s the lensing, it was off calibration. It’s why it knocked me out too. Kyle, I’m from three hundred and fifty years in the future. How did I get in that snow? How?”
More deep breaths. It makes sense. And how’d they know about the flash!? They were asleep, and… unless…
They inhale hard through their nose. “Please don’t call the police. I screwed up really bad. I have a big project to do and it’s already ruined and if someone locks me up I might never get home. Please. I never did anything to you.”
We’re sitting at the kitchen table afterwards and my tea’s getting cold thinking about it. I don’t want to say anything. I mean, that was a shitty thing to do. What if they really had been lost? I guess they are lost. Fifty years off from where they want to be. 1961? What happened in 1961? Or maybe 2061, I guess. They did say their friends were in the future.
“Hey…” I finally say, cutting through the silence.
“Pon.” It sounds like ‘go ahead’. I think. I’m never gonna get used to how they talk.
“I believe you, okay? Sorry. I guess I’m just maladjusted or whatever. I don’t have a lot of friends. Especially not friends from… whenever you are. I… I freaked out. And this really isn’t my place, either. It’s my parents’. They’re on vacation.”
“It’s rev. You know, there are time periods they don’t let us go to for commencement projects because they always try to kill you. Sakoku Japan is really bad, and…”
“Are you trying to say ‘don’t beat yourself up, at least you didn’t kill me’?”
They giggle a little. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“Hey, no offense, but that’s bullshit, okay? I… I just want to make it up to you, it sounds like this miscalibration thing is rough and it was a shitty thing for me to do, okay? I’m sorry. I guess I was worried that you’d… that I’d… I was worried about meeting new people, okay? Or that you were dangerous or that… something that wasn’t dull and sad and boring would happen. It’s the same reason I don’t know where I want to go to uni yet. I just got scared. Sorry.”
“Is uni like lyceum? You know. After life school. Where they teach you how to do skills and how to get rolled into a makepath?”
“I… uh… fuck. Yeah, you know what, it sounds like it’s basically the same thing. Hey, does everybody really speak English in the future?” Or whatever language you’re speaking, is what I want to say. I don’t. I’m not that mean.
They nod. “Plural. But a lot of people are voc-half, ‘cause of herit or tique stuff or whatever. Um… not me, though. I learned how to draw instead. It’s slightways a language, yeah?”
“I don’t… think so.”
“Mipsy cringe, yeah, rezzig.” they say, shrugging, smiling sheepishly.
God, they’re so cute in that shirt. I just wish I could do something about whatever existential thing’s got them asking questions like that. Must suck to get to time travel and not even do it right and almost die. I mean, I can’t believe they’re holding it together. I’d freak out. I’d probably stay in the past and become a hermit.
Hey, hold on a minute.
“So, wait, wait, if you’re here, where are all the other time travelers? Like, if you go to medieval Japan then—”
They shake their head. Their eyes are so green, and they always watch you when you talk. Like you’re a big deal. Like, sometime way down in the future, respect—really seeing who you’re talking to—is… important to them. Not like us.
“You can go back anywhere, but you can only go forward home. It’s always home when you get back. Nothing ever changes, nobody ever writes themself into history. Like… you’re splinter worlds. Not made-up, not fake, just… well, we don’t know, if we saw your future, that it’d still be home. So when we come back, we always come back to the same world. And when we leave, we always leave backwards. Nobody who leaves forwards ever comes back.”
“And so you’re…”
“Everybody is. The first time traveler ever to go back. Ever to show up. We scramble the splinter data every time so nobody’s aiming at existing timelines. Except you can go back in groups—I wanted to, with some friends, for our big commencement project for lyceum, it’s part of the entrance exam, but… I was patched in on a proto sliprig that I miscalced ‘cause it wasn’t heirloom, so… you know. Lensing. Snowbank. Fifty years.”
They exhale hard and stare at the table. Now their tea is getting cold.
“A big project? Like, you have to…”
“Yeah. Go back in time and see how people live, take a month or so, not many people want to spend more than that. Make a big report, talk about it, try to learn something, show something off. It really helps if you want to get into one of the strong lyceums. The ones that really let you do anything.”
“What’s so special about 2061?”
“I guess you’ll mostways comp one day. You’ll be there. Not like I’m gonna change anything all by myself, you’ll still see it. But it’s not that big a deal. It’s that my friends are there. Together for a month without me. And their project’s gonna be better than mine.”
Their stomach growls. They look so sad. I’ve gotta do something, right? Get their gear back so they can go home? But it’s not here. I’d have heard it… flash in, is what they said. What if… no, that’s stupid too. It sounds like they’ve got one shot at this. It must be expensive to run a time machine. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s like Star Trek and there’s no money in the future.
You know what? I’ve gotta do something.
“You want to… go get some poutine?”
“What’s poutine?”
“Oh, man, seriously? You don’t know what poutine is? And you were gonna do your project on Canada.”
“It was going to be a learning experience.” they say.
“Hey, come on. Let’s… let’s go get some, okay? Hey. 2011 isn’t that bad. I’ll prove it. Come on, nobody comes back here, right? Nobody cares about this stupid year? You’re gonna be the only person who’s even got a report on… bad hockey and big flat plains of snow and the only city outside of America where people wear cowboy hats unironically. That’s what that means.”
I grab their hand to lead them to the car and don’t even realize how brave that is until they start giggling at my jokes and my heart skips a beat. By then, it’s too late to stop.
#
I always had pretty bad eyesight. One day, my parents figured it out and got me some prescription contact lenses.
Walking out into the street the day I first put them in was like stepping into a whole world I didn’t know existed. Everything changed. All the blur and the uncertainty just drained away; everything was sharp, in focus, bright. Like it had never been before.
That’s what walking around boring old Calgary with Xav in the winter is like. Like the world peels back and there’s something beautiful underneath that only they can help you see.
They can’t believe how grey everything is. Even in the winter, they say, back home there are trees everywhere, green poking through on the rooftops and lurking in the alleyways and standing proud in every square. They can’t believe how many lights there are. Late in the day, downtown, they keep missing crossing signals because they’re staring at the glow up above. They almost get run over three or four times. I’m grabbing them and shouting apologies to the drivers, and they don’t even see it. All they see is all the light pouring forth from the skyscrapers and the glowing signs and the advertisements and the cars on the street. Things are dark at night back home, they say. You can see the stars. I tell them I wish we could see the stars here, and they say… it’s not so bad. Just different.
I ask them if they want to see the stars. They say yeah. I tell them we’ll go to Banff, then.
But not yet. Always ‘not yet’ with them, there’s always something more to do. Nothing’s ever boring, I’m never on autopilot. I find out that first day, poutine for lunch, that they’ve never had cheese before. They don’t even know what it is and they won’t stop asking questions. Really? There are that many kinds? Oh, how come the cheese on the burger is so different from the cheese on the poutine? What, you mean the poutine cheese isn’t ripe yet? What kind of plant does it grow on?
“That’s rev. That’s plural rev, Kyle. You can just req cheese anywhere? Karmic.”
I’m starting to understand the future talk, but most of it’s pretty normal. Req, though, that one’s a problem. ‘Request’ or ‘requisition’ or something—not ‘buy’. I hate Star Trek for being so right. They don’t know you have to pay for anything. They got caught with no ticket by a transit cop when we were taking the C-train to see the Peace Bridge, even though it’s not even open yet. That was tough to explain. I smoothed it over while they stood there smiling like an idiot and talking to him like he was their classmate or something, and afterwards…
“Jesus, Xav, we could have really gotten in trouble back there, what were you thinking?”
And they just look at me and say, “Everybody’s so angry back here.” They say they’re sorry too, they’re all ‘mipsy cringe’ and ‘okay, miscalc, plural rezzig’ and some of that spark goes out of them, until we get to the bridge and they make a million sketches of it and beam and enthuse and everything’s fine again—but that’s not what sticks.
What sticks is… man, everybody’s so angry. They’re so angry back here. We are.
And Xav’s not. People compliment their hair on the street and on the lift up the mountain and all over the place—it is pretty impressive, it must take forever to brush it—and they keep replying. Looking people right in the eye. Caring. About everything. It doesn’t even matter that they say shit like ‘your hair’s rev too’ and ‘thanks, it’s genetic!’ and ‘mipsy ace, yeah’. It’s how they say it. How they do everything. How they ask me about the city and the country and the time we’re in like I’m an expert, like I’m not just… floundering my way through the world like the moron I am. Like they really think I’m showing them something amazing when it’s the reverse. Like I’m the one showing them a whole world when I’m just being nice.
And probably maxing out my credit card. I just can’t help it. They got cold with no coat that fit them, okay? And how are they ever gonna finish their big project if we’re not going out to eat? They’re gonna think all anyone ever eats in 2011 is… oatmeal and TV dinners if we stay at the ranch. The ‘ranch’. What used to be a ranch a hundred years ago and now it’s just where Mom and Dad send me so I can pretend I’m on vacation. Like I had anything else to do now that school’s over.
Joke’s on them. This is the best vacation I’ve ever had.
We’re up in the mountains now. It’s been a week since they landed or flashed in or whatever we’re calling it and I finally got them to stop ordering new kinds of dim sum and looking at new buildings that all look the same, and we’re finally going to Banff. They’re still excitedly chatting with some poor bewildered woman who liked their hair and said so, not knowing they were crazy, when we hit the ice.
Evergreens boldly climb the slopes on either side of us, laying claim to the mountain. The ice is smooth and flat and extends out forever, and it’s full of people. It’s the weekend, after all.
Xav’s awestruck. It’s like they’ve never seen mountains before. Or snow. They make me take pictures, and then they rest their notepad on my shoulder and stare out at the slopes and the forest and the grey December sky and they sketch and draw and sketch some more and touch up their line-work until my teasing finally gets to them. Or their hand goes numb. I don’t know why they stop, just that if they could have, they’d have stayed there forever drawing the mountains and the skaters on the frozen Lake Louise and the sheer enormity of it all. Drawing the past.
They’re lacing up a pair of rental skates when they ask me something that makes me get it. I think.
“Where’s the best ice?”
“Up here? On the lake? Xav, I haven’t been up here in like, years. And I…” I want to say I can’t skate. It’s less depressing. It doesn’t work. “I don’t skate.”
“What stopped you?”
Ouch. You can’t just ask questions like that.
“School. And it… I mean… it just wasn’t what I wanted to…”
I wanted to.
“But it’s so beautiful.” they say, disbelieving. Shoot me right in the heart, why don’t you. Like they can see right through me.
“Because I don’t know what I want, okay? Because everything’s happening too fast and I’m doing it all for no reason and I don’t stop and think about how beautiful anything is and I have to ask permission before I can get anything good to happen, and all my friends are leaving town and… and nothing’s fun and it’d be a waste of time and money anyway because I don’t skate and I don’t have anyone to go with. That’s why. Because I’m pathetic. I’m…”
Their mouth hangs open as they look up at me, snowflakes caught in their bright blue hair as the wind brushes it across their cheeks.
“I’m not like you, Xav. Yeah, everyone’s angry back here but that’s not my problem. I just don’t know what I want. And when I do want something I don’t let myself have it. I don’t know how you do it. Not care. Just go for it, like you do.”
They’re quiet for a minute, frozen in the middle of lacing up their skates, like a painting again. Or a sculpture. Reflecting whatever you project onto them, impenetrable. A black box. I’m starting to dread the answer. Maybe they’re not like me because the future is so big and so perfect and they just learned to love themself some way I didn’t. Learned the world was safe and so everything can work out if you just try. God, imagine how strong you’d be if that’s what the world taught you. Just imagine how—
“Because you’re here to catch me if I make a mistake. Like in the subway. And with the cars when I almost got hit. And in the snow. And all the other times. You know what to do and what it’s like here. So while you’re my friend, I can’t go wrong. That’s the first thing they tell you to do when you flash back like this. Make a friend who knows what the world’s like, so you’ll be safe.” they say.
“Yeah, that’s a big help for me.” I snark. They don’t deserve it but I don’t care. Spilling my guts to a delusional stranger from outer space and not even getting anything out of it hurts.
Well, nothing except that they consider me a friend. That’s sweet, but so is everything about them. It’s nothing new.
They finish lacing up their skates, flash me a ‘check this out’ smile and head out onto the ice. I stare at the treeline and think about how much of an idiot I’m being, keeping them in my peripheral vision just to make them happy, until I hear the first cheers from the other skaters. That’s when it becomes real.
I glance over just in time to see them jump like there are springs in their skates, spin in place like a dancer as soon as they land, take off again to build up momentum, faster than I can follow, faster than anything. They found a nice open spot on the ice and now they can fly, now nothing can stop them, and people are staring and clapping and wondering if it’s some kind of demonstration. Like that’s gonna make me feel any better. It’s for me. They’re trying to cheer me up, I know they are because they keep looking at me and smiling as they pirouette and leap and tear across the ice.
Thanks, Xav. I guess.
It’s okay, Kyle. Xav’s not making fun of you. They’re not trying to lord it over you that they’re good at things and you’re not. This is just one more cool thing they want to show you, because as far as they’re concerned you’ve been showing them cool things all week, right? That’s what makes them happy. Seeing things they’ve never seen before. They’re just trying to make it up to you by showing you something totally rev, something they’re proud of.
That’s what hurts. That they’re so proud. Effortlessly.
I can’t watch.
Late that evening, we’re soaking in the hot springs—they insisted—when the last couple of people still there with us get up to leave. I haven’t really said much since the ice. They can tell something’s wrong but it’s like they’re still in that world where everything’s gonna work out, like they still have their safety net. Doesn’t matter that I’m so burnt out I don’t know if I could bail them out of a stubbed toe, let alone another pissed-off transit cop. Doesn’t even matter to them that their cheer-me-up stunt didn’t work, I guess.
They’re splashing around in the water with that big stupid grin on their face and I just can’t look away. I gotta say something. I mean, we can’t go home like this. I can’t go to bed like this, let it sit. How toxic would that be?
“Did your parents teach you to skate when you were a kid then, or what?” Lame question.
They look back at me.
“I did it, yeah. Got flow.”
“Isn’t it kind of a… you know… like a girl thing to learn how to do? Or I guess…” Even lamer, jeez, Kyle.
They just look back at me, a little sad. Alpenglow shines off their left shoulder. The setting sun’s in their hair, firelight off the ocean.
“It’s a Xav thing.” All the indignation goes out of them like escaping steam. “Shmay… you wanted to do skating like that when you were a kid, didn’t you? Like for your makepath even. But they didn’t let you. Because…”
Thank god everyone’s gone, because that’s about when I stop being able to hold the tears back. They swim over and hold my hand under the water and stare at me with those green eyes like anchors telling me I’m still here, chaining me down to the warmth and the mountain and the feeling of their fingers brushing against mine.
“Don’t fritz. It’s held. Kyle. I’ll teach you, shmay? You’ll do it too. We’ll make it for you. I promise. It’s held.”
#
December 20th. My parents aren’t gonna miss Christmas. They’ll be back soon and then I’ll have to explain everything. And it’s almost been a month since Xav got here, too. When we come home from the ice rink, I always hope I won’t have the energy to worry about anything, but no matter how tired I am every little noise makes me think it’s the sky splitting open again, Xav’s gear flashing in from the future to take them back home forever.
If you’re always the first traveler back in time, doesn’t that mean you’ll always be the last, too? They never said it. I guess at first they might’ve just forgotten, but by now they’ve got to be trying to make it easier on me when it happens. When they go home. God, I’m gonna miss them. I still can’t do half of what they do. I still haven’t shown them everything. Enough for their big project maybe, but not everything. Not everything about this place, sure, but not everything about me, either. I want to tell them so much and there’s no time. We’ve barely been apart all month and there wasn’t enough.
It’s not fair.
It’s hard to get to sleep, but when I wake up from my nap, it’s snowing again, like that day they appeared out of nowhere a month ago—and seeing that, seeing it come down again and bury everything, sleeping is all I want to do. It’s supposed to be a big storm, so we can’t go out again and do anything today—no dinner on the town, no people-watching, no landmarks, no shopping, nothing but sitting here and waiting for it to end.
I’m about to shut my eyes when they call for me. Get up on autopilot, head upstairs to my room and they’re waiting by the door, grinning. I know it’s Xav, but it still makes me nervous. Most times someone wants to see me that badly, it means they’re gonna pull some kind of practical joke.
“Hey. What is it?” I ask.
They slowly open my door. “My project.” they say. “It’s flow. All made. Look.”
I’m never out here, so I’m used to there being all this blank space on the walls and shelves full of old books I never read. I’m used to my room here being… mind-numbing. What Xav’s done with it takes my breath away.
It’s total. Ceiling to floor, every wall is covered in drawings, simple ones in pen and pencil and more that they’ve coloured in, the hills and the mountains and the buildings and rows and rows of traffic and cardboard containers full of poutine and the Peace Bridge and the Calgary Tower and trains and people and city lights and…
And so many pictures of me. There’s me awkwardly trying to placate that cop. There’s me on the train, half-asleep. There’s me looking out of the lift at Banff, there’s me in the hot springs, me trying to skate, me actually skating. Me taking my little nap just now. That one’s a rough charcoal sketch. Maybe fifteen minutes old. They’ve been watching me the whole time.
They talked about all these things we saw together, all the things they’ve drawn here. They couldn’t stop. They kept saying how beautiful and inspiring and strange they all were, staring like every mundane nothing was the most important thing in the world and then enthusing afterwards, for hours sometimes. I had to drag them away. So what does it mean that they’ve drawn so much me? Surely they can’t…
I’m not…
I swallow hard. Got to keep the tears out of my eyes. Crying in front of Xav once was bad enough. It gets to them. They want to help so bad.
“Xav, it’s… this is… plural rev.”
“Yeah. Held ace. It’s almost finished. I’ve been writing too, all sorts of things, but… this was always the language, I mean, slightways language,” They smile at our little inside joke, “I was better at. It’s all you really need to see to know. That it’s held. That it’ll all work out. The project, lyceum, everything. Nobody’s going to believe this.”
“Do you really need all those pictures of me? Don’t you want some pictures of, you know, you in there?”
“When I get my gear we’ll pull some pictures of me from your camera. I saw you taking them.” they tease.
Their voice softens.
“But… slightways, I mean, yeah, Kyle. I do. How would any of it ever have happened without you? You showed it all to me. You helped me get around. You told me what was important. There wouldn’t be anything without you. There wouldn’t even be a Xav to come home.”
They look out my window at the forest where I found them, mouth curling downwards. Right. Yeah. I saved their life, I guess. Forgot about that with how much they’ve been saving mine.
“You’re this world. So you should be right in the middle of it.”
Thin, lazy alpine light filters through the heavy snowflakes cascading down outside and lights up their face and their verdant green eyes. I’ve never done this before. It’s crazy. You’d have to be someone like Xav to just do it without thinking about it.
I can’t beat them at that, but I guess I can match them, because we both lean in at the same time. I kiss them like I’m never going to see them again, and they giggle and give me pointers and show me how, like it’s my first time, and I guess it is but it still stings a little. Not enough to dampen the moment. Not at all. They run their hands under my shirt, and I shiver and gasp, and they stop, and I tell them to keep going, even reciprocate, slide my fingers up their chest and under their arms. They keep touching me, their lips and hands wandering like the explorer they are, and it’s all I can do to keep up. They’re so smooth and so soft, like all the rough edges in the world have all been sanded out in that future they come from. The one they belong in.
I don’t know what happens. I’m excited, I want to do whatever it is we’re doing, go wherever they’re leading me like always but they just end up holding me, and I’m crying and I’m asking them not to leave, not to go away. They’re quiet. They’re so quiet. There are no reassurances, and it makes me so angry for a moment, but then I realize that even with how thin they are, their arms wrapped around me are reassurance enough.
This is my world. I can navigate it all myself. That’s what they’re telling me, so quiet and firm pressed against me, but there’s still a hole in my heart when I think about it.
#
I wanted Xav back for Christmas. I don’t even know if my parents noticed. They sure didn’t ask any questions about who was in those pictures I framed or who did those line drawings hanging up on my wall at home. Home home, not the ranch, but it barely feels any better. All I can think about is them standing there in their jumpsuit with their big backpack full of memories and gifts from the past, and waving goodbye, and then vanishing into a crack in time with a smile on their face. Like it didn’t break their heart.
I guess it wouldn’t. They’ve got a better home to go back to, and I never told them how much I needed a guide for my own world. A friend. My fault, really.
I’m in my room alone when the earth shivers and the lights flicker in their sockets and a faint blue flash like a distant firework shines through the window for a millisecond or two. I’ve never dashed out the back door so fast in my life. I don’t even put my coat on, just rush outside, and there they are, leaving footprints in the thick snow as they run towards me.
“Guess who’s taking freeform archaeo field labs in their first year at lyceum and got permission to input the exact same splinter data as last time?” they ask breathlessly, beaming, and I throw my arms around them and try not to say anything mean.
I settle on “I thought you weren’t coming back.”
They look up at me, a tiny smile on their face, and brush a little naturally blue hair out of their eyes. Their hand sports a tiny, fresh tattoo of a snowy mountainside.
“I promised to teach you how to skate, remember? It’s held. Shmay, can we go get Tim Horton’s? Mipsy please?”
“Kyle, who’s that?” Mom shouts from inside.
The tiniest bit of concern creeps onto Xav’s face. I sigh.
“Don’t fritz. It’s okay.” I say, and turn back to face the whole world. This time I’m not hiding.
red-headed android 