When the Sky Fell on Splendor

by Emily Henry

  “Are you kidding?” Arthur laughed harshly.

  “Stop,” Sofía hissed. “This isn’t helping anything.”

  “You’re a shoplifting addict who never even lets us past his front door,” Arthur cried at Nick. “We don’t even know your birthday! Every story you tell is about nine percent factual, Nick! You lie more than you tell the truth, and we all pretend not to notice, so that you can continue in your delusion that you’re just a normal guy with a normal life, and not a teen caretaker for a stay-at-home hoarder!”

  After five years, the laws of our private universe had been violated, and now the fabric of us was set to come apart.

  The Ordinary was teetering, ready to shatter in a way that it could never be put back together.

  “You’re damn right!” Nick shouted. “I take care of my mom! And if something happens to me, that’s it! She’s got no one else. She’ll die under a box of used batteries she’s saving in case she ever gets around to recharging them, and no one will think to check on her for weeks!

  “You think you and Franny have it so hard trying to get your parents’ attention, but guess what, man: Assuming an alien doesn’t kill you or the FBI doesn’t cart you off, you’re leaving in a week. You’re getting out, and you don’t even have to feel bad about that, while I’m here getting shit-talked for life. I might as well have just stayed in twelfth grade for five more years! That’s as close to a life as I’m getting, staying in this dump, but there’s nothing I can do about it, because someone needs me here.

  “Sorry your life matters so little that all you can do is fill up the void with bullshit schemes and—and Amazon packages and toys and freaking slumber parties”—he waved a hand toward Levi, who went red-faced and staggered back—“just so you don’t have to be alone with yourself for thirty seconds, but some of us have people counting on us and actually have to work for our money!”

  “Nicholas!” Sofía shouted. “That’s enough!”

  “Oh please!” Nick said. “Don’t go all defender of the weak on me—turn yourselves in to the FBI or don’t, but leave me out of it. I’m done, like I should’ve been from the beginning. I’m done.”

  The ground felt like water under my feet. Actually, my whole body felt like water, like my skin was as thin as a balloon and any second, everything in me might come rushing out.

  “Of course you are,” Arthur said. “Just walk away from the most important thing that’s ever happened to you.”

  “Wake up!” Nick said. “We’re nothing kids from a nothing town. You think we were chosen? We were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “The right place!” Arthur slammed a hand against the car. “We might be nothing kids from a nothing town, but that’s not enough for me, and I know it’s not enough for you either! Aren’t you tired of being the leftovers? I know we’re the kids they don’t look at. We’re like—shadows burned onto the ground by the accident. Maybe this thing chose us because we’re survivors, or maybe it’s that we were just the only pathetic option it had, but we’re the ones with the gifts! We have a chance to matter!”

  Nick shook his head and took a few steps back. “I’m done.” He turned and stalked down the road through the blaze of Remy’s headlights, and the energy was still building in me, crackling inside my skull until I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t parse out the accusations and demands hurtling back and forth around me as everyone broke out at once, shouting over one another.

  “How could you keep this from me? I’m your cousin!” Levi was saying. “Why do you always choose her over me?”

  “Because Nick’s right! Everything’s just a game for you, Levi! We’re just more of your accessories!”

  “How would you know? We never even talk anymore! You spend half your time with girls I never even meet and the rest whispering with Franny like I’m not even here!”

  “Please, stop!” Sofía pleaded. “We need to figure out what to do next.”

  The whole world was coming apart.

  The island we had built for ourselves. The place where none of the ugly shit was supposed to be able to intrude, where the ash from the accident wouldn’t fall and the things we feared were never said.

  My whole world was coming apart, and I had caused it.

  By telling them the truth. By needing them when they could barely withstand the pressure that was already on them.

  It was my parents’ fight in the kitchen all over again. It was Mom crying behind closed doors, begging Dad to understand. It was the Voyager pulling away from our driveway, two weeks after Wayne Hastings moved in behind us, Arthur’s fists whaling against drywall.

  It was my model of the solar system on the table, Mom’s windbreakers in my arms the day we filmed “Kite Chasers.”

  “I’m done,” I said, barely louder than a whisper, but under the cousins’ arguing no one heard.

  I took a deep, painful breath. “Take me to the station,” I shouted. “I’ll tell them it’s in me.”

  The arguing stopped. Remy, Levi, Arthur, and Sofía all looked at me

  “I’ll show them,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “And I’ll tell them about the visions. I’ll just say I had them.”

  The four of them blinked at me. I was a stranger, speaking an unfamiliar language. I was a living ghost, standing in their periphery as their problems and fears took center stage.

  “What are you talking about?” Arthur said.

  “I have to turn myself in. It’s the best way, probably the only way out of this.”

  I expected Remy to lie, to say that we weren’t out of options yet, that we hadn’t reached our last resort.

  I expected Arthur to argue we couldn’t just turn everything over to the FBI, that we were the ones destined to save the world.

  I expected Levi to insist the world deserved the truth and we needed to stick together indefinitely to deliver it.

  And I expected Sofía to admit I was right: that turning me in was the only reasonable course of action we could follow, given Remy’s visions of world-ending peril and the total collapse of our plans to prevent those visions from unfolding.

  Instead, she looked right at me, heat flaming in her cheeks and sparking in her eyes. “No.”

  “No?” A humorless laugh went through me. “What do you mean, no?”

  “I mean no.” She took a deep breath. “It’s time for you to accept that you’re not in this alone and to stop acting like we’re just some people from your math class who misspell your name when we sign your yearbook. Nick was right. We all lie and keep secrets, and act like we’re doing one another some big favor by not talking about what’s happened to us in the last five years, but we’re not, and I’m sick of it. You didn’t even tell me about this Black Mailbox guy even after you knew I’d started seeing through your eyes and could bust you.”

  I opened my mouth to explain, but she cut me off: “And that’s okay. I forgive you. I know it’s hard for you to trust people.”

  My eyes prickled. An uneasiness jostled in my stomach. I started to argue, but she forged on.

  “I know you think I’m going to let you down, and I probably should’ve given up on this friendship a long time ago, but I can’t, because I know you too well—even the parts you try not to share—and I love you.

  “If we’re going to survive this, we need to stop lying to each other and keeping secrets. I’ll start: It sucks loving someone who doesn’t want to be loved, who won’t let you care about them—who doesn’t even want you to notice or care when they’re hurting.”

  Tears brimmed in my eyes, the knot in my chest dangerously loosening, threatening to let my body come apart. I didn’t understand where all this was coming from—what she was saying, what I was feeling. I didn’t understand why I kept picturing the hospital parking lot or why this conversation felt like it was cutting into me, deeper and deeper. �
��Sofía.”

  “No,” she said again, sharply. “Admit it: You didn’t tell us that thing went into you because you were afraid we’d fail you. You’re always afraid we won’t choose you, so you don’t even give us a chance to. But of course I would. Of course we do. You’re my family, Fran.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” I choked out. “There’s nothing you can do. Turning myself in is the only answer.”

  Levi shook his head. “No.”

  I looked to Remy for support, but he shook his head too. “You already know, Fran. I’d trade this whole stupid town for you.”

  “That’s morally indefensible,” Sofía said. “But same.”

  I was trembling, barely keeping a lid on the buzz running through me. “What if it’s not the whole town?” I managed. “What if it’s the world?”

  “Either way,” Levi said, “we’re going to save it.”

  “We’ll find a way,” Remy agreed. “We’ll get through this together.”

  I looked to Arthur. He hadn’t moved or spoken. His hazel eyes were narrowed and his mouth pressed closed. There was something uncomfortable, maybe even perplexed, in his expression, and he looked away quickly, running his forearm up his hairline to catch the sweat beading there. He cleared his throat, but his voice still came out thick, sort of overcome. “Thanks,” he said quietly, his eyes darting low across the others. “Thanks for watching out for Fran.”

  Sofía rolled her eyes. “Just to be clear, Franny’s my favorite, but I would have the same opinion if it were you with an alien parasite, Arthur.”

  “Same,” Remy agreed.

  “I don’t play favorites,” Levi mused. “But I would lie to the FBI for any of you, and for Nick.”

  “Either way . . .” Arthur didn’t look at them, didn’t look at me. He took a few more seconds to gather himself, nodding. “Thanks.”

  I tried to say it too, but I couldn’t. I turned away, trying to discreetly wipe tears off my cheeks. I felt arms come around me and smelled Sofía’s rosewater as she tucked my head under her chin, the itch of the power slowing in my veins. “You’re my sister,” she said.

  I closed my eyes tight and nodded into her shoulder until I’d gotten control over myself. I pulled back finally, sniffling, and looked at the ground. “What about Bill? Do I e-mail him back?”

  For once, Levi, Arthur, Remy, and Sofía were in complete agreement.

  “No way.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Hell no.”

  “What are you thinking? He’s some guy on the Internet, Franny!”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  WE AGREED THAT LIFE had to appear to go on as usual, to not draw attention, and so I’d come to work, but now, with ten minutes until 6:30, when my shift ended, I couldn’t help but pace behind the desk.

  I checked the group message again. Someone had renamed it “THE FIRST RULE OF FIGHT CLUB,” but there had been no new messages since Remy’s noon update—that he was still waiting at home for his dad to show up so he could show him our evidence against Wayne—and Sofía’s two PM text that she was leaving lacrosse practice and to keep her posted.

  As long as the FBI was around, we’d have to lie low, but the sooner we led them to Wayne, we hoped, the sooner they’d be gone. Rather than risk going back to the station, Remy had taken Levi, Art, Sofía, and me back to our house, where the Doctors Perez already thought we were sleeping over, and then Remy had gone home to ambush his dad with what we’d found in Wayne’s cellar.

  Only, as of noon, the sheriff still hadn’t made it home for so much as a change of socks.

  Still, it had been more than six hours since then, and Remy hadn’t replied to either of my Any news? texts, which seemed strange. Black Mailbox Bill seemed to have finally gotten the hint and stopped e-mailing me too, and while I knew the others thought it was for the best, the silence was deafening.

  For all I knew, by ignoring him, we’d lost our one chance out of this.

  Or maybe he’d only stopped e-mailing because he had to.

  Because someone had finally found him.

  The bells rang over the glass doors as my replacement, Grace, showed up for the evening shift. She waved and pointed to the locker rooms without removing her earbuds, indicating that she needed to change, and I gathered my stuff and came out from behind the desk.

  The windows were washed in an eerie gray-green, and though the rain had let up, fog hung in its place. The repulsive humidity from outside had sneaked its way into the building, frizzing my hair and coating my skin in a sticky layer of sweat.

  To be fair, I’d been sticky since I got here––I was fairly sure that barely sleeping last night had left me with a low-grade fever. Just as I'd finally started to drift off around three, I'd heard a commotion in the front yard and looked out my window to find Arthur cursing up a storm as he fixed my broken bike wheel. And then at five, I’d awoken again, this time to the sound of Levi sleep-tripping through the hallway, and I’d had to run downstairs and forcefully shake him awake before he could march outside again.

  “Stop him,” he’d been grumbling, sending prickles out over and under my skin. “Youavetostop hmmmm.”

  Sofía had heard the commotion and come to help. “Wake up, Levi!” she’d kept saying. “It’s Fran and Sofía. You’re dreaming.”

  But just like the other night, that had set him off in a new direction, grumbling something like It is Molly or maybe, Sofía had pointed out, Moll-E.

  “As in Wall-E?” I’d said, laughing.

  “I don’t know! Maybe it’s some kind of alien naming convention!”

  For a very brief time this afternoon, I’d renamed the group text “The Alien Formerly Known as Moll-E,” and she’d sent a quick mid-practice text saying, You Schmidts! Unhappy when I’m a skeptic; unhappy when I try to embrace this ridiculously absurd situation we’ve wandered into.

  She had a point. Hosting the consciousness of an alien named Moll-E was no more unlikely than hosting an alien consciousness, period. And Molly had turned out to be a convenient shorthand for “extraterrestrial being” in the group text.

  A blur of red caught my eye from the TV, and I jerked my gloved hand out of my sweatshirt pocket, lunging for the remote to unmute Cheryl Kelly as she appeared.

  When I recognized the huge blue facade behind her, my stomach dropped.

  “I’m here outside the Splendor Township Walmart . . .” she began, and my eyes went instinctively to my phone, checking for messages from Arthur or Nick I already knew weren’t there.

  “. . . where Crane Energy officials are investigating another in this week’s long series of blackouts. While the power has since been returned, a fourteen-minute loss of electricity in the early hours of this morning led to a shoplifting frenzy, whose cost for the store may have totaled several thousand dollars, including—disturbingly—a three-hundred-dollar gun safe, four propane tanks, and several high-end power tools. While the blackout appears to have affected the entire block, Walmart was the only business that was, in fact, open at the time of power loss. Police are advising nearby business owners to check inventory for signs of theft anyway.”

  The scene cut to a prerecorded interview with a large-toothed “Walmart shopper,” and I dialed Arthur as quickly as I could.

  The call went straight to voice mail, and I hung up, steeling myself to call Nick. It rang endlessly, but he didn’t answer.

  I typed into the group message: Saw the CK report! What’s going on there???

  The truth was, I could guess.

  There was only one other person, besides me and Molly the Benevolent Alien, who might be able to cause a blackout.

  And that stuff he stole. Propane tanks, a gun safe, who knew what else.

  And what did it mean that he’d left his house this morning? He never left his house in the morning.

  It means he’s hurr
ying, I realized.

  It meant we were nearly out of time, and meanwhile the FBI had probably been circling Arthur and Nick all day.

  My gut clenched. I texted the group again: Remy, you NEED to send your dad to Wayne’s NOW if you haven’t.

  As soon as Grace reappeared in uniform at the end of the hall, I hurried to clock out and ran into the humid parking lot, almost smacking into the blue Cadillac idling outside the doors. I waved an apology and headed for my bike.

  I thought about going straight to Walmart to check on Arthur and Nick, but according to the report, the power was back on now, and the last thing we needed was for me to make a spectacle with another blackout.

  If we were careful, this could work out for us. We could nudge the police toward Wayne Hastings; they could find the stolen material, which would tip off the FBI that he’d been there during the blackout; and when they came to investigate, they’d find the burns.

  But if they found those burns, they’d know there were multiple crashes, and I doubted taking one alien host would satisfy them when they had proof two might be walking around Splendor.

  I’d figure that out later. The point was, we couldn’t let Remy’s vision come true.

  I turned my bike toward home and pedaled up the slope of the parking lot toward the street. Through the fog, the headlights of the idling Cadillac caught the corner of my eye again. It had pulled forward, making its way toward the driveway. I set my feet on the asphalt, waiting to let the car pass me, but it stopped, the driver waving for me to pass.

  I kicked off again and crossed the street, fast, before some car could barrel through the fog at full speed, and turned left along the grassy shoulder.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the energy in me jumped, crackling in response.

  My gaze swept across the intersection as I turned onto Old Crow Station Lane and dipped into the ditch alongside it, mud spitting up against my ankles as I pedaled. I ducked my head as a car sped past, kicking rainwater into my hair. I tugged my hood up as it slowed onto the tree-lined shoulder ahead of me.