“O-oh. I’m good. Fine,” Benji said woodenly.
With a look of intense relief, CR hugged Benji. After a moment, he said, “What happened? Did the gas explode?”
“What?”
CR stared at the rear of the Rocket, dumbfounded. “I thought the back of the car, like . . .” He mimed an explosion with his hands. The motion made him grimace in pain; he began rubbing his right shoulder.
He has no idea what just happened, Benji realized. He suddenly felt afraid to tell CR. He couldn’t have predicted anything like this would happen. But he’d still lied about what was in his magic trunk.
CR, still kneading his arm, took a sharp breath. “You okay?” Benji asked.
“Just yanked something in my shoulder when I was moving that log. Hey, where’d your trunk go?”
“My friends call me a liar . . .” somebody said softly.
They turned toward Zeeko. Benji saw that they were in a kind of valley, ringed by woods on all sides. The valley, weirdly, was studded here and there with random, waist-high metal poles.
“Benji,” said Zeeko, standing upright and wiping his wrist across his mouth, “what did you do? What was that thing?”
“What’re you talking about?” CR asked, confused.
“But my heart keeps racin’ higher . . .” that same soft voice said. But Zeeko hadn’t spoken.
Neither had Ellie. In fact, Ellie looked like she couldn’t have spoken if she’d tried. Eyes huge and afraid, she moved past Zeeko, staring at something in the dark valley behind Benji. He turned to follow her gaze, and he realized several things at once.
His magic trunk lay twenty yards behind him, thrown free during the RustRocket’s last moments of mayhem. The trunk’s lid was open crookedly, like a broken mouth, one of the hinges busted. And beside the trunk, brighter than the steam rising around it, was the pod.
“No. No, Benji, you did not bring that,” CR said, but he was cut off by another voice, a singing rock ’n’ roll voice, 1950s superstar “Bronkin’” Buck Strong, one of Papaw’s very favorites, rushing toward them from every direction like a tide of amplified teenage joy:
“My friends call me a liar! But my heart is racin’ higher! Baby, when you love me, OOOO, I just catch on fire!”
Benji was not just in a valley: He was standing in the middle of an abandoned drive-in theater.
A vast movie screen rose white and frayed at the far end of the field. A ripe crescent moon hung beyond it, veiled in clouds but visible through an ancient hole in the screen. Facing the screen and broadcasting the music were the drive-in’s speakers (they looked like old radio microphones), mounted on all those endless metal poles. As Bronkin’ Buck’s voice floated in the air, weak blue sparks zapped from several of the speakers, like circuitry receiving a charge after an age of corrosion.
“I dreamed this place,” he whispered to himself, goose bumps rippling across his body. “Didn’t I?” No, he told himself, he couldn’t have. He’d just wound up here by accident, because of—
“Yes, when I least expect it,” sang the night, “I just catch on FIRE!”
Benji felt his heart halt. He looked back at the pod. “Are you doing this?”
A new voice sang the answer in a style that was, unmistakably, 1950s doo-wop:
Ohhhh, my dear, don’t you know
That it’s true?
When I speak, I speak
My words only for youuuuu.
A mystical astonishment filled Benji. “It’s talking to us,” he said . . . and began to smile.
On Prank Night, in a long-lost movie wonderland just outside of Bedford Falls, Indiana, the pod from another world had spoken across the airwaves with pure teenage sound, and Benji Lightman thought: First contact.
“What, exactly, is talking?” CR said softly behind Benji.
Benji started to tell him it was the pod. But that wasn’t really right, was it? Until this moment, he’d thought of “the pod” as only interstellar debris, incredible and miraculous in theory, but ultimately nothing more than mindless shrapnel. Yet if it was broadcasting its answers to him, then the pod wasn’t random detritus. The night of the shootdown, Benji had been witness to a spaceshipwreck, and inside that seamless cylinder was its sole survivor.
“I think it’s the pilot of the saucer,” Benji replied.
The speakers responded in a voice taken from another doo-wop recording: “Heyyyyyy, B-I-N-G-O!”
Benji couldn’t help it: He giggled. So did Ellie, who was standing beside him now. He looked over, and she did something that surprised him: In the moment of shared wonder, she took his hand, and squeezed it, once, warmly.
A billion questions for the pod streaked through Benji’s mind all at once. Where are you from? How old are you? Why did you come here—not just Earth, but Bedford Falls? He couldn’t quite locate his voice, though. For all he knew, this moment, this moment right here, was the most pivotal exchange since the first prehistoric man had spoken with the first understandable language, had given his ancestors the power of knowledge that would outlive himself. Benji felt dwarfed, thunderstruck by a sense of history.
Finally, he said, “How are you speaking to us?”
The musical night, sung in the style of a sock hop slow-dancer: “I think this is magic, my dear.”
Ellie (whispering): “My God, Benji . . .”
Benji: “Can you speak in your own voice?”
CR (whispering): “Banjo, stop. . . .”
The musical night: “Don’t you know, I’m spee-eee-eeechless?”
Zeeko: “I know that song. It’s really old. My mom used to listen to it on YouTube when she was learning English.”
Benji: “Can . . . can we help you out of the pod?”
The gorgeously manic voice of Ricky Richman: “Talk all you want, but ya ain’t comin’ in!”
Benji laughed. “How come?”
The speakers were silent. For a long moment, the only sounds Benji knew of were his and Ellie’s breathing, hissing in the frozen air of the Midwest winter dark. Then the clouds that had dimmed the moon broke apart, and a single brilliant moonbeam soared through the hole in the great movie screen. It looked like the dream-beam of a film projector, as if the movie screen, which had held so many fantasies, was offering one in return. The beam landed on the pod, making it gleam like a holy relic. Benji and Ellie gasped together.
So, at first, he didn’t pay much attention to what happened next. The snow around the pod began to stir in a soft wind; then the fine powder swirled a couple of feet high, forming a funnel that made him think wildly of the tornado that had delivered Dorothy to Oz. The funnel revolved as the wind grew stronger . . . except, he realized after a moment, there was no wind.
“Ho. Lee. Shit,” Ellie said.
In midair the snow took on new and impossible shapes: It rearranged itself into a flying saucer, roughly the size of a football. A smile twitched at the edges of Benji’s mouth until, without warning, the front of the saucer “exploded.” The violent burst of snow hit Benji like cold mist, and the rest of the snow-saucer crashed to the ground.
The speakers finally answered his question: “Darlin’, don’t desert me. Youuuu’ve already hurt me.”
Benji winced. “We hurt you when we blew u—” He paused. I don’t want to say “When we blew you up.” Feeling faintly ridiculous, he said, “When the incident involving a gaseous blast occurred?”
“B-I-N-G-O.”
Benji cleared his throat, feeling the need to offer a diplomatic apology. How did diplomats talk? “Well, umm, on behalf of my people, I offer my apologies to you from us. We here—my friends and myself—simply thought you may have been doing something that could have conceivably been a plan—or scheme, if you will—to bring bad harm to us—”
Ellie nudged him. “Why are you talking like Sarah Palin?”
Benji blushed, then continued, “On Earth, we’ve got a term called ‘big miscommunication.’”
Silence from the pod.
�
�Can you maybe come out when you’re feeling better?”
Silence from the pod.
“Are you alone?”
Silence.
Ellie (whispering): “Well, this is certainly awkward.”
Benji tried to change the subject. “So. Where do you come from?”
The silence spun out. How long did it actually last? Benji didn’t know. But it felt portentous in a way no other silence of his life ever had.
Ohhhhhh, I’m the one leaves a place, and never spies a familiar face,
And that’s the way I like it, since you asked!
See, honey, I’m the Voyager—see, tramping the journey is my story, sir,
And I’ll tell you why right now, since you asked!
The man who asks cannot understand, can’t know the heart of the voyaging man.
I prefer the horizon to a past!
That’s the song from my dream, Benji thought, feeling an electric surge through his body. And I’m in a drive-in, like in the dream.
He mentally replayed the dream. The radio had malfunctioned. The sky had blazed green. And a voice filled with almighty power had thundered through the amphitheater of his skull. What if the pod was. . . was talking to me in that dream? What if it was trying to tell me something?
“Your name,” he said, “is it Mr. Fahrenheit?”
“Come closer and I’ll tell you, my dear.”
A hand grabbed Benji’s shoulder. He jolted. CR had stopped him. “Benji,” he whispered, “keep a good distance from that thing.” His narrowed gaze was locked on the pod. Benji recognized his expression: It was the same calculating, subzero glare CR used against an enemy defender at the line of scrimmage. “What if it wants to get back at us for hurting it?”
“That’s not what it wants.”
“How do you even know?”
“I . . . it’s weird, but I can feel it,” Benji said. He was thinking back to how he’d felt since retrieving the pod from the saucer. He’d experienced foreign feelings of power; he’d had strange mental images that were so clear, they seemed to come via a high-def broadcast. . . .
“I think maybe the pod has been, like, connecting to me. My brain, I mean.”
CR wore an expression that said, Maybe I’ve heard of crazier things. I just can’t think of any right now.
“Don’t you guys feel it?” Benji said. “Or see pictures in your head? Here, maybe if you get closer to the pod.”
Now Zeeko and Ellie’s faces echoed CR’s. Nobody moved closer.
Holy crap, I’m the only one it’s happening to. He didn’t understand why the alien (the Voyager, he thought with a trill of happiness) did not mentally and emotionally communicate with anyone except him. But there was something vaguely thrilling about it.
“It wants to understand us, I think,” Benji said. “To ask us things. It came here for a reason, you know? And of all the people in the world, we’re the ones it wants to talk to.”
“Banjo, seriously, did you hit your head or something?” CR whispered, then said aloud to the pod, “We shot you out of the sky. Scale of one to ten, where are you, anger-wise?”
The pod stayed silent.
“Why isn’t it answering me?”
The pod, via the Southern twang of “Rebel” Roddy Dee: “You’ll never be my buddy, cause you’re a fuddy-duddy.”
Benji laughed. “What?” CR asked.
“I don’t think it likes you, man,” Benji said.
“That’s what we call a bull’s-eye, smart guy.”
Now Ellie and Zeeko laughed, too. CR’s jaw dropped; he looked at the pod, goggle-eyed. “What a dick!” he breathed.
“Listen, I know the whole psychic-alien deal sounds insane,” Benji said. “But even if I’m wrong about that, there’s another reason I know it’s not mad: It helped us get away from the Newporte guys. Here, look at this.” He jogged to the RustRocket, got the ray gun, and showed it to CR. “This is what made us go so fast.”
“What the hell is ‘this’?”
Benji smiled, almost goofy with happiness. “Right, so admittedly this makes me sound like a villain on Dr. Who, but, say hello to Mr. Ray Gun. I got it at the quarry after the saucer explo—after the gaseous blast.”
“And it didn’t seem important to you to tell us you had a laser pistol? Just like you didn’t happen to mention the alien pod was in your trunk?”
Benji’s cheeks prickled. “You’re making it sound worse than it is. I didn’t even know the gun was anything but shrapnel until it acted weird yesterday at school.”
“What?” CR spluttered. “You took that thing to school? You took a gun from outer space to school? Jesus, we get suspended for having tobacco in school!”
“But I’m saying I didn’t know there was anything weird about it until I was talking to this guy. . . .” Benji trailed off.
“What guy?” said Ellie.
“Well, first let me just say there is no need to freak out.”
Not exactly a reassuring speech, there, Benji.
He took a breath. “It was a guy from the FBI.”
CR made a sound like a growl, like a scream he was keeping locked in his throat, and pivoted on his heels, away from Benji. Zeeko’s brow knit in confusion; he raised his palms and mouthed, FBI?
But it was Ellie’s reaction, more than anyone else’s, that punctured the joy and brought home the gravity of what he’d said. It wasn’t just that she looked furious and frightened and even a little sick. It was that she looked so . . . disappointed in him. And betrayed.
“This FBI guy,” CR said, voice clipped, crouching down on his heels, still not looking at Benji, “does he know anything about the dick-pod over there?”
“No, he was asking about stupid stuff, random stuff. It was boring, honestly. He mentioned the plane crash, and asked me to talk to him if I heard anything weird about it. But I don’t think he knows anything.”
“You don’t think so.”
“N—” Benji began, but CR didn’t let him finish: With all the grace and speed of a great and terrible tornado, CR burst up from his crouch and whirled toward Benji. He had something in his hand. A snowball. CR roared. This wasn’t playtime.
Benji ducked, raising his arms. The hard-packed snowball smacked the ray gun, which spun from his grasp, rang cheerily like a tuning fork, and vanished into the snow a few feet away.
“Do you know what could happen to all of us?!” CR screamed.
“Calm down!” Benji staggered backward as CR stomped toward him. “We’re not going to get in trouble!”
“‘Get in trouble’? Hiding an alien, keeping a weapon like that, lying to a government super agent: You don’t get in trouble for that stuff, Lightman. You get disappeared for it!”
“CR, stop!” Zeeko said.
“Seriously? You’re on his side?”
“Who said anything about sides?”
CR only glared at the pod. “We have to get rid of this thing,” he said. “Right now, before anyone finds out we have it. I said so ever since we shot it down. You’re not talking me out of it this time, Lightman.” CR’s gaze landed on something in the snow to Benji’s right. And he dived toward it.
Benji felt what seemed to be the Voyager’s anger, but he was motivated by his own.
“NO, PLEASE, CR, DON’T!” Benji shouted, lunging for the ray gun, and then, hardly aware of it and not really understanding why, he added: “YOU COWARD!”
CR scooped the ray gun from the snow and aimed it at the pod.
If he had used the weapon before, had known that you had to hold the ray gun for a moment before its trigger would present itself, he really might have destroyed the pod, and “Mr. Fahrenheit,” too. But that was Benji’s secret, and he sacked CR, tackling him from behind, the gun arcing out of CR’s hand.
They spilled to the ground. CR cried out in pain and grabbed his injured shoulder. He kicked Benji off him, and as Benji was launched backward into the air, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, Zeeko sprinting toward them.
Benji’s head hit Zeeko dead-smack on the chin. With the combined factors of the strike, Zeeko’s sprint, and the slick snow, the result was almost cartoonish: Zeeko’s feet flew out from under him, banana peel–style. He crash-landed on his back in the snow.
For a second, CR and Benji just looked at each other, gawping. Benji’s head hurt a little, but Zeeko had plainly taken the worst of it.
“I didn’t mean to do that, Zeek!”
“Dude, dude, hey, are you all right?!”
They helped him to his feet. He blinked, shell-shocked.
Ellie hurried over. “Oh, Zeek, this will help,” she said, and gently placed a handful of snow against Zeeko’s already-swelling chin.
Zeeko replied: “MMMAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” He plopped back down, cross-legged in the snow.
The injury (and Ellie’s reprimanding stare) mollified Benji and CR a bit. But CR’s voice was still hot with anger when he said, “Why do you need this, Benji? Why are you so obsessed with this thing? Why can’t you just be happy? It could ruin everything for us.”
“For you.”
“What?”
“It could ruin everything for you. That’s what you really mean, isn’t it? You’re a coward, Noland. Your life was just so perfect, and now you’re pissed because it’s the moment when someone other than you gets to do amazing things, too.”
“‘Amazing things’?” CR scoffed. “You’re not doing anything amazing. If anything’s ‘amazing,’ it’s that thing, not you. You’re playing dress-up with aprons Zeeko stole from the hospital, and pretending you’re Steven Spielberg in a shitty tree house, and feeling like a badass for lying to the only friends you ever had. Yep, really amazing there, buddy! You know what? I think you’re dangerous, Lightman. I think we made that plane crash. I think the tractor beam ripped that plane right out of the sky.”
The idea hit Benji with the force of a roundhouse slap. He didn’t know what to say.
“You can’t just throw something like that in our faces,” Ellie said. Benji felt a flood of gratitude. “You were there, too. And you don’t even know if it’s true.”
Mr. Fahrenheit Page 14
