Epilogue

Light shone through the window, not but not sunlight. The memory of sunlight only. No dust
particles were visible, no warmth detectable. Simply light that luminated what needed to be seen
and left the rest untouched.

Sara leaned back against the window sill, feeling the press of wood in the small of her back. It
was the first thing she'd felt without pain in a very long time.

"This is right," she said, taking in the room. It had changed a lot since she'd last seen it, except
that it didn't look any different. The walls were painted a soft yellow, with a bright floral runner
framing the ceiling. It was her bedroom, but not really. She was back in the dream room her mind
had created that had been as much her jail as her haven. Now it was just a haven, and she'd never
again have to be alone.

The teen sitting on the nearest bed in a nest of pillows and blankets nodded back. Their faces had
once been as identical as two humans' could be. Today enough differences showed that strangers
might recognize the two girls as mere sisters, no more. Clara looked wane, heavy circles beneath
her eyes marking how much recovery she still needed. Her hair hung long and tangled, held back
from her face with metal barrettes placed high on her head.

"What do we say?" Clara asked. "How do we explain what happened?"

Sara's brow furrowed, not in thought but as though she were listening to something faint and far
away. "I don't think we have to explain. I mean, how could we?"

"We were as much victims as them," Clara agreed.

"No. I mean, you were. You were a victim. But I made choices. Maybe I didn't understand what I
was doing, but I knew I was doing it."

"So you were a victim."

"No." Sara shook her head, her hands clutching behind her at the window sill for support. "That's
not the right way to think. I'm okay with knowing I screwed up. I'm a teenager. That's kinda what
I'm supposed to do. But not . . . I don't wanna be a victim." Could she be, she wondered? Was it
possible to be a victim of your own actions? She gnawed on her lip and tried to wrap her mind
around the question.

Clara interrupted her thoughts with her own question. "Do you remember when we were little,"
she asked, "and mom would dress us in identical outfits and send us off to kindergarten. The
teacher put a yellow ribbon in your hair so she could tell us apart? And she asked Mom all the
time not to dress us alike, but Mom always said it was a waste of identical twins if you couldn't
dress them the same?"

Sara nodded. "I hated that ribbon. I think I still hate the color yellow. Total trauma."

"I always wondered if she dressed us the same so she wouldn't have to worry about who was
who. She never called us by our real names anyway." Clara looked up at the ceiling, silently
composing thoughts that had only the slightest reflection on her face. "But, you do remember the
ribbon, right? You remember kindergarten and Mrs . . . Miss . . . oh, what was her name?"

"Howes? House?" Sara guessed. "Houston," both the girls said at the same time, then burst into
giggles.

"I don't know how I could forget her name," Sara said, smiling at the nostalgia. The smile faded
as she recalled why that name was so meaningful. "She was our teacher the year Challenger blew
up. Remember the jokes?" She hesitated, then said, "I suppose they weren't very funny. We were
just too young to understand."

Growing serious, Clara said, "At least you remember the same stuff I do. I wasn't sure you
would."

"Why not?

"When I was unconscious . . . I think his name was Casey . . . after he made me, you know, after
he got inside my head and the nightmare . . . ." Her voice dropped to a whisper; her gaze didn't
leave the ceiling. "I dreamed I was killing someone. Only, it wasn't me. I was doing it, but I was
also watching it be done." She started to shake.

"That's awful," Sara responded, not even trying to keep the shock out of her voice. "Did you do
it? Did it really happen?"

"It happened." Clara's words dropped like boulders in a pond. "Afterwards, there was so much
going on, all at once. I dreamed so many dreams. One was about being born and growing up. It
was a whole different life, though. The ribbon was purple. There were other dreams. I'm not even
sure which ones were mine and which ones weren't. Then I started to wake up, and now I'm not
sure which life is which. I remember parts of them both, as if they both happened to me at the
same time." She tore her gaze away from the ceiling and looked at her sister with obvious effort.
"I think I royally screwed up. I'm just not sure what I coulda done about it." Clara pulled the quilt
tighter around her frail body. "What about them?" she asked, nodding towards the doorway, "Do
you think maybe they screwed up?"

"I don't think . . . ." Sara paused again, the listening expression returning. "I don't think that's for
me to say," she concluded.

"I hear it too."

"The ship?"

"The ship. It's so deep in my head that I didn't know it wasn't me at first."

"It is you," Sara reminded her. "Don't ever forget that. It's you and it's me. Without it there
wouldn't be a you-and-me. We made that choice too."

Clara pondered this. "You think it was the right one?"

The light in the room grew brighter, the warmth deeper, surrounding the two girls. Both flinched
reflexively before their minds recognized that there was no danger; the ship merely had its own
opinion to express.

"Almost," Sara responded. "There's still something I need to do."

"I know."

Sara's eyebrows went up in surprise. "How? You were unconscious."

"I've known since the beginning. I know I was out for a long time to you, but to me it wasn't very
long at all. The dreams. I remember everything that happened to you, and everything that
happened to me, and a few things that happened to other people, and all those years took only a
few seconds." She smiled ruefully, one finger tracing the bruising under her right eye. "I hope the
Ship will still let me come visit. There are some people I'd like to talk to."

"Even though . . .?" Even though you're not a Tomorrow Person anymore, Sara thought, but
couldn't say.

Clara nodded once, understanding. "Especially because."

"Do you think things will be different?"

"Of course. The whole time I was gone, all Dad could think about was having us both healthy
and home with him. He was willing to do anything for you."

"What about you?" Sara asked. She pushed herself away from the window sill and tried to find
something to do. There wasn't much. This room was bare of the usual diversions; what existed,
existed because it was important to her or served an immediate function: the beds, the quilt still
clutched in her sister's hands. On top of the dresser, a tall wooden chest on which the girls had
once spent a glorious afternoon slopping a bucket of paint, sat a single framed picture. She didn't
even know who was in it, her or her sister.

"Mostly he'd given up on me," Clara answered. "He didn't want to admit it, but he knew I
wouldn't be coming back. He figured I was dead."

Sara picked up the frame. It was heavy in her hands. Light from somewhere glared off the glass,
hiding the picture inside. "He was wrong," Sara protested. She tilted the frame back and forth,
but couldn't get a clear view.

"Not by much. I wasn't supposed to come back. You know that, right?" Clara's words were slow
and serious. "If it hadn't been for you, I would have died. You kept me alive, and then you made
it possible for me to come back. What you gave up made it possible. Things are going to be
different; we'll never be the kind of people we should have been. But we'll have--"

"--We'll still have here, even if we don't have the rest of it." Sara'd never said that sentence
before, but it came out of her mouth like it had been programmed. She set the picture frame back
down and turned to face her sister. "You are coming home, right?"

Clara hesitated, just for a second, before answering. "Maybe. I don't know what happens next."
She drew a deep breath, then whistled it out between her front teeth. "I'm not going to walk
through our front door tomorrow, if that's what you mean. At least, I don't think so. It might
happen. It might never happen. We have here. That's all I know for sure."

"I want more than that," Sara said.

"I know. So do I." Clara shrugged. "The Ship can only do so much. We can only bend the rules
so much. We're just not that special."

"Is that what you learned in your dreams?"

A small laugh escaped Clara's lips. "Sometimes. There's so much more too it than that."

"Will you . . . tell me about it? Someday?"

"Yeah. But first. . . " Clara let her words drop off and turned to look at the bedroom door. In the
real world its equivalent was a plain pressed wood door with a simple metal doorknob. Here, if
anyone could touch it, he might find the same thing.

Sara knew better. To ease her loneliness she had brought people into her room, into her head.
They never stayed for long. Everyone who had tried to open that door had instead vanished
through it, going someplace . . . else. She didn't know where. They vanished from both the real
world and the one in her head at the same time. Somehow she had caused them to go. When she
was finally able to talk to the Ship, it brought Clara back through the door, and showed Sara how
to bring back the others. "It's time," she said.

Across the room the door swung open. Through it stepped the first of those people Sara had
come here to see: A young man in his late teens with almost black hair, and a broad, high-cheek
boned face. She had seen him once before, but hadn't been able to pay attention. Now she looked
at him and saw a person who wasn't quite a stranger, and wasn't quite familiar. It was like
running into a friend she hadn't seen in a very long time and to whom she couldn't place a name.

What she could see is that unlike the last time, he didn't seem scared. He didn't know why he was
here; she could sense that very clearly, but he knew that this time he would find out. He took one
step into the room. She matched his step, then stopped. She didn't want to get too close, just in
case.

"When you wake up," she said, not introducing herself because she figured no introduction was
needed, "I don't know how much you'll remember. I'm sorry for what happened to you. For what I
did to you."

Alejo stepped further into the room, which brought him to the edge of the bed on which Clara
rested. She pulled up her knees, giving him a silent invitation to sit down. Wordlessly, without
reservation, he accepted it, perching on the corner of the bed, his eyes still on Sara.

She listened carefully, and tried to put into words the thoughts it placed in her head. "You'll be
okay in the morning. That's what the Ship says."

"The Ship," he echoed, a fleeting look of confusion crossing his face. "The Ship es, iss, here?"
He touched the side of his head above his ear.

"Yes. The voice in your head is the Ship talking. Sometimes you'll be able to understand
everything it says, and sometimes you won't understand anything. At least, not consciously.
Inside," she tapped her chest above her heart, "you'll always know."

His eyes narrowed, crinkling around the corners as he puzzled through what she said. "Ah, si.
Understand," he said, at last, standing up as if to leave.

"There's something else," Sara said, stopping him. This next part didn't make any sense to her;
not yet. She wanted to demand that the Ship tell her everything, right now. She had the time to
listen, but Alejo only had a few minutes here and there were things she had to say.

"Que? What?" he asked.

"They call themselves the Tomorrow People," Sara said. "That's what I'm supposed to tell you."

"The Tomorrow People?" Alejo repeated, testing the words slowly. "I no understand."

"You will. I'm also supposed to tell you that."

Alejo seemed satisfied with the answer, even though he clearly didn't understand it. Unlike her,
he had the patience to wait for the time when the answer would make sense. He stood up again
and turned as if to leave the room. He was already beginning to fade from sight, and Sara knew
there was no need from him to go out the door in order to leave. The door still wasn't an exit, but
one wasn't needed. He turned back before he got there with a final question. "You are?" he asked,
his eyes narrowed as if he already knew the answer and wasn't sure he liked it. "A Tomorrow
People?"

Sara thought back over everything that had happened: Clara's disappearance, and her own
entrapment; at the fantasy world she had created in her own head, and how desperately lonely she
had been there, and what she'd done to try to ease that loneliness. And Lisa, a Tomorrow Person
in spite of herself who had come to accept what she was. That was something they should have
had to common: being Tomorrow People. Sara looked at Alejo, but could see nothing in his
brown eyes except open curiosity. He wasn't going to judge, because he didn't understand enough
to make a judgement..

She next looked to her sister, to the china blue eyes that matched her own. These were also open
and waiting. There was no judgment there either; it did no one any good to critique the could-have beens. Clara just wanted to know how this question was going to be answered.

Sara shook her head slowly, a small smile starting on her lips. "Oh no," she stated, "Not any
more."

END