When the Sky Fell on Splendor

by Emily Henry

  “Arthur!” Mom said. “Apologize to your sister.”

  Tears and shame rushed to my face. Just then Dad came through the back door, drenched in sweat and smelling like cut grass. He leaned over Arthur’s shoulder as he was opening a bottle of beer. “What ya got there, Arto? Did you draw that?” He bent to kiss Mom on the cheek, and she writhed away from his sweaty face. “Mower’s out of gas,” he said, settling back against the fridge.

  “I thought you just filled it,” Mom said.

  “There must be a leak.”

  Arthur took his drawing back into the other room, and Mom and Dad fell into their conversation about the lawn mower, and the moment moved on, but I still felt small and incapable and embarrassed.

  “Psst!” Mark hissed across the table. When I looked up, he was pulling the nautilus shell out from under his BLACK HOLES DON’T SUCK T-shirt. He’d fixed it to a chain and was wearing it as a necklace.

  He tapped the center point of the shell. “Remember, Fran, it’s not the size of something that matters in this galaxy. It’s the gravity of a thing, how much it pulls on things and where it takes them. You’ve got gravity out the wazoo.”

  He dropped the shell and mussed my hair. “Also, I just got pizza grease in your hair.”

  * * *

  * * *

  I awoke to a message I’d been waiting for, but it wasn’t the one from Bill.

  Ungrounded, Remy wrote. Meet at WH for breakfast? I have updates.

  Sofía was softly snoring in the bed beside me, but judging from the voices and clinking of dishes rising through the sun-washed floorboards, I could tell the boys were already awake.

  I slid out of bed and retrieved the rubber gloves from my backpack. I’d sneaked down to the kitchen for them last night before I went to empty my wildly unsettled stomach, and then wrote my e-mails to Bill from the bathroom, praying Sofía wouldn’t have another spontaneous visitation into my eye sockets.

  As it turned out, she hadn’t heard the conversation with Remy. Her little visitations were limited to sight only, which was great until you were trying to send a discreet e-mail in between puke sessions.

  When I got back to the bedroom, though, she wasn’t there, and I figured she’d decided to go sleep on the couch. Apparently sharing a bed with someone she couldn’t even look at didn’t appeal to her.

  But here she was, back in bed this morning (our couch was famously uncomfortable), and things were looking better in the light of day. Whatever had upset my stomach—the crushing weight of this situation, perhaps!—had passed too.

  So do we, I typed back to Remy.

  We? he replied.

  Sofía sat up groggily in bed, shoving a fistful of dark hair out of her eyes and squinting through the buttery morning light. “Updates?” she said through a yawn. “What updates?”

  I stared at her for a minute, then typed back, Sofía’s psychic and Nick’s obsessed with pianos. We’ll explain everything at breakfast in half an hour.

  “Technically, I think I’m telepathic,” she said, reading the message from the far side of the room. “Or something.”

  She offered a tentative smile, an olive branch, and the relief flooding through me was immediate.

  “Get out of my head!” I teased, flinging my rubber glove across the room at her.

  “Get out of my head!” she squealed back, dodging the glove.

  This was how our last fight had gone too; one weird day and then 360-plus more wherein we agreed not to acknowledge the parts of our friendship that could never fit quite right.

  “It’s bad enough I had to see you poltergeist a house,” she deadpanned. “I shouldn’t also have to take a front-row seat to your and Handsome Remy’s unrequited love!”

  “How do you get unrequited love out of that text message?” I took my other glove off and flung it at her too.

  “It’s there between the lines,” she yelped, lurching onto her knees and hurling the first glove back at me. “The part about Waffle House! Splendor’s premier dining establishment! And the puppy dog eyes he gave you during your secret midnight rendezvous!”

  “It wasn’t a rendezvous!”

  It was exactly a rendezvous, but not in the way she was thinking.

  Still, she’d touched a nerve, made me feel anxious and seen in a way far more uncomfortable than knowing she was able to look through my eyes, and all the pressure points in our relationship gave tiny warning throbs.

  But at the same time, we hadn’t laughed like this, just the two of us, much in the last year, and there was a pining feeling low in my stomach, like I got when Remy said I love you, like I was already missing this moment even as it was happening.

  “Are you still mad?” I blurted before I could change my mind.

  Sofía’s smile faded. “I would’ve told you,” she said. “If it had been me, I would’ve told you.”

  “I know,” I admitted. But if Sofía suspected about herself what I knew about myself from Remy, she would’ve turned herself in to be quarantined and dissected for the greater good.

  She was too good, too selfless, to understand someone like me. Meanwhile I’d driven my own mother away by demanding her attention when she was so torn up she could barely get out of bed.

  Sofía shook her head. “What did I do to make you not trust me?”

  A pit opened into my stomach. I hadn’t meant to hurt her. That was the whole point. I’d wanted to be the kind of person who didn’t cause the people she loved pain, but somehow, I still managed to poison things.

  Sofía had left behind the private school where she could have prepared for her future as a lawyer, she’d left behind her favorite city in the world, her enviable lacrosse team, and a whole host of friends, and she’d been stuck with me: someone who couldn’t be the friend she deserved and couldn’t really explain why. “You didn’t do anything,” I said.

  Outside, footsteps thundered down the hall, and my bedroom door was flung open.

  “Is everything okay?” Arthur asked as he, Nick, and Levi swarmed in. “We heard screams.”

  “I knew it!” Nick pointed at Sofía, whose hand was still poised to throw the second rubber glove my way. “Girl sleepovers really are freakier than boy sleepovers!”

  Sofía cleared her throat and pitched the glove at his head. “Put pants on, Grandpa. Remy’s ungrounded, and he has ‘updates’ for us.”

  “New haircut,” Nick guessed.

  “New girlfriend,” Levi said.

  Arthur clapped his hands together. “New superpower!”

  “New phone,” I said. “Who dis.”

  “Who indeed,” Levi narrated. “The travelers would not see, until they’d tracked down the rare and elusive Handsome Remy for themselves.”

  SEVENTEEN

  “YOU’RE PSYCHIC,” REMY SAID.

  We were scrunched into a booth, and none of our food had come out yet, but the table was already completely covered in beverages.

  Orange juice and water for Remy.

  Water and coffee for Sofía, Levi, and me.

  Water, chocolate milk, and Mountain Dew for the world’s grossest humans, Nick Colasanti Jr. and Arthur Schmidt.

  “Actually, it’s more like telepathic,” Sofía clarified. “Or maybe that’s not right. I can’t hear your thoughts—before you ask. Actu-ally, I can’t hear anything you hear. It’s all visual.”

  Remy blinked at her for a few seconds. “Prove it.”

  She sighed. “Weren’t you listening? I can’t do it on command any more than Franny can snap her fingers and start up the stove back there.”

  Levi twisted in the booth to look over the counter. “Also, that’s a gas range, not electric.”

  “An astrophysicist, a bovine scientist, and a connoisseur of stoves!” I said, trying to drag the conversation away from my ability.

  Remy shot me a te
nse half smile. He didn’t love it when I deflected with humor, and with him it was easier not to. Maybe because his emotions rode so close to the surface and that made mine feel more manageable, or maybe because the first moment I’d truly seen him was the low point of both our lives.

  I pressed my knee against his, an apology.

  He pressed his back, an understanding.

  “Just try, dude,” Nick urged Sofia. “How many fingers am I holding up under the table?”

  “Just your middle one,” she said. “Doesn’t take a psychic to guess that, Nick.”

  Remy pulled his gaze from mine and looked to Arthur. “What about you? What’s your power?”

  “TBD.” Arthur fidgeted. “As long as it’s better than Nick’s, I’ll be satisfied.”

  “Which is . . . ?” Remy prompted.

  Nick took a big swig of Mountain Dew and chased it with a swig of chocolate milk. Sofía pretended to gag, which set my stomach back on edge.

  “Some piano shit,” Nick grumbled, rubbing his head.

  “He’s convinced the alien gave him nuclear codes in the form of piano chords,” Sofía elaborated.

  “Just one theory,” Nick said.

  “It’s a huge, and possibly ego-driven, assumption that just because Franny and I are both experiencing strange phenomena, your piano dreams have anything to do with what happened that night.”

  “And what about you?” Remy asked Levi. “Are you experiencing anything strange?”

  He gave a bearlike shrug then took off his camel-skin fedora and set it on the table. “Maybe the whole sleepwalking thing? It requires more observation.”

  “Sleepwalking . . . is your superpower?” Remy asked.

  “Sleepwalking is my anti-drug,” I deadpanned.

  “My other car is sleepwalking!” Levi said brightly.

  “Sleepwalking: We have the meats,” Nick joined in.

  We stared at him.

  “Did you just use the Arby’s slogan for a joke?” Sofía asked.

  “And here they thought they’d found the one slogan that couldn’t be made funny,” I said.

  “Will you all stop it.” Remy gripped the sides of his head. “This is serious. Can we quit with The Ordinary Variety Show for, like, two seconds?”

  I sank in the booth like a scolded kid. Remy’s eyes caught mine then flashed away. He cleared his throat. “If this . . . alien really is making all this happen, why? I mean, if it’s really causing Franny’s power surges and Sof’s eye-hijacking and Nick’s . . .”

  “Pianos,” Nick said.

  “. . . sure, and Levi’s . . .”

  “Somnambulism,” Sofía offered. “That’s the medical term for it.”

  “Then why?” Remy finished. “And how do we make it stop before we all wind up stapled to tree trunks on Wayne Hastings’s property?”

  “Obviously, we’re going to have to go back to see why it would take us there,” Arthur said.

  Sofía mouthed, Oh, obviously.

  “We’ll wait until he’s not home,” Arthur said. “He goes out most nights, for an hour or so.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” I asked.

  Arthur shrugged. “We’ll give him a reason to.”

  “Such as?” Sofía was wise to ask; the first image that popped into my head was Arthur dumping gasoline on the hermit’s porch and tossing a hand-rolled cigarette onto it.

  “I’ll think of something,” Arthur said. “In the meantime, we’ve got plenty to do. We need to get the camera back from the cave and see if the alien, or anyone else, came for the debris. We need to take Nick to meet his piano, hone Franny’s and Sofía’s abilities, and figure out mine and Remy’s. The good news is, I have a plan that covers most of that, but the hitch is, we need to go back to the Jenkins House.”

  Remy ran a hand through his dark hair, then realized what he was doing and slapped it onto the table before anyone could make a crack about it. “This seems like as good a time as any to tell you my update,” he said quickly. “There’s a reason I’m not grounded anymore. Something happened early this morning. There was another big power surge, this time out by the steel mill.”

  “The steel mill?” I repeated. “There’s nothing out there.”

  Arthur’s eyes narrowed. “It makes perfect sense—no one goes out there, ever. It’s the perfect place for the alien to hide.”

  “Yeah, maybe it was,” Remy allowed. “But it isn’t now. My dad went to check it out this morning, and they’ll probably patrol for a couple of days. The good news is, though, they’re pretty much convinced there’s something wrong with the electrical system that’s causing the blackouts and caused the burns.

  “I guess now that the blame’s getting turned back on them, Crane Utilities is pretty much shutting up, paying St. James for the damages to his property, and doing their own review of their systems. My dad thinks they’re afraid any more police involvement could turn up some big mistake, and they could get sued, or something. They don’t even seem to care about the missing parts anymore.”

  “So he’s just done investigating?” Sofía said, bristling at the thought. “If he suspects a cover-up, he shouldn’t give up.”

  Remy shrugged. “I doubt he’ll just let it go, but officially, the investigation’s over. I’m sure he’ll keep an eye on things, but the security won’t be as tight on Jenkins Lane from now on.”

  Art rubbed his chin. “Perfect. Then Operation Franny starts tonight.”

  A tremor went through me, and Remy’s knee pressed into mine again, this time a promise: It will be okay.

  “What about my piano?” Nick cried.

  “Sure,” Arthur said. “That too.”

  * * *

  * * *

  We headed over just before dark. It was raining, so Remy drove, but we left his car parked on the cross street that ran parallel to Jenkins Lane and made our way through the misty woods to the cave.

  “Who’s going to get the camera down?” Remy asked.

  Arthur clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks for volunteering.”

  “Nice try.” Remy slipped out from under his grip, and followed me and Sofía toward the cave.

  “It’s a two-person job,” Levi insisted. “I wouldn’t want to drop it.”

  “Why not?” Arthur called, jogging after us. “You’ll just order a new one.”

  “But—”

  “Keep your pants on, Levi,” Nick said as the rest of us headed for the cave’s low mouth. “You don’t have to be alone for five seconds: I’m not going in no alien hidey-hole.”

  He’d been visibly anxious all day, tapping his head and thigh and chin in that obsessive rhythm, and I’d half expected him to back out. Instead he’d been the reason we’d headed over before the sun even set.

  “If this piano bomb is gonna kill me,” he’d said, “I’d rather just get it over with.”

  As he and Levi argued about who was going to climb the tree, Arthur dropped into a crouch and crawled into the cave, followed by Sofía, and then me, and finally Remy.

  Nick’s squawking voice faded along with the soft taptaptap of rain and everything else as we followed Sofía’s flashlight beam deeper into the cave’s antechamber, until finally the ceiling lifted and we could stand.

  “Pretty creepy,” Remy whispered behind me, his voice echoing as we started down the stone path toward the steady drip-drip-drip.

  “I wish we’d found this place sooner,” Arthur murmured. “Would’ve made a great hideout.”

  “For what?” Sofía asked.

  “For anything,” Arthur said.

  Ahead, the cave curved in on itself, and as I moved around the bend, I felt a little bit like a piece of food being sucked down an esophagus, passed along by the muscles of an intestine.

  Arthur stopped so abruptly he caused a pileup, Sofía plow
ing into him, me slamming into her, Remy colliding with me.

  “What?” Remy asked, stepping out to get a look at the rounded-out hollow where the cave ended, the trickling waterfall that formed a shallow pool in the corner.

  Arthur laughed. “It’s gone.” He patted the stone wall like it was a very good horse. “That means E.T. came back for it! That means the video caught it!”

  “Or whoever else might have taken it,” Sofía amended. She seemed every bit as optimistic as my brother did that this would prove what she expected it to, though it was no longer clear to me just what she thought that might be.

  Hope swelled in my chest, a light, shaky feeling like I’d swallowed a bunch of helium.

  “We’ll know who dropped the bullet,” I said. “Whether that was . . . an alien, or just a person who saw what happened to us, we’ll know.”

  And once we knew if we had a human observer, and who they were, I could figure out what I had to do to make sure our secret was safe, to protect against the people Bill had warned me about.

  How I’d convince the person to keep quiet about what had happened was another matter entirely, but I could focus on only one obstacle at a time.

  Remy gave me a look that said he understood. We’d told him earlier that morning about the bullets we’d found both on Jenkins and in the cave, but he and I hadn’t managed to have a second alone since breakfast, so we hadn’t gotten to talk freely about Black Mailbox Bill’s e-mails. And since then, I’d even received another one, though it was just a prompt.

  Friend? Bill had written. Please reply so I know you’re all right.

  I hadn’t had a chance yet; for one thing, taking my rubber gloves out to type on my phone in the midst of all this might draw attention, and until I knew for sure that the alien wasn’t contained to me, I wasn’t going to drag them any deeper into this.

  For another, every time I looked at my phone, I worried Sofía would mind-meld with me and find out about the e-mails in the worst possible way.

  “At least we’ll get some kind of answer,” Remy said, pulling his gaze from mine. “Assuming the video camera actually caught anything.”