by Platt, Sean
“Piper, Jesus. Thank God you’re all right.” He sounded out of breath, as if she’d called him while jogging.
“Me? I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be fine?”
“Have you seen the news? Or Astral? Have you checked Astral?”
Piper was as amused by the Astral app as it seemed everyone was (the makers, Rysoft, credited their app for ushering in “the second great space age”), but it wasn’t something she checked compulsively like Facebook.
“Astral?” Piper felt baffled. He’d called seven times, and now he was asking about the space view app? Maybe the calls had been a mistake and everything was fine after all. Maybe he’d simply pocket-dialed her. Seven times.
But no, he was clearly out of breath. Urgent. In no-bullshit mode. No matter what the world thought of Meyer Dempsey the mogul, he’d always been Meyer Dempsey the man to her. He was sweeter than people thought, and strangely courteous. He pulled out chairs for Piper in restaurants, and insisted on opening her car door whenever they went out. The fact that he was so down-to-business now prickled her skin. The threat on his mind was real and present. Piper found herself wishing he’d just say it and get it over with, so that at least it would be out in the open.
“Have you called the school, Piper? I’ve tried. I can’t get through.”
“Called the school?”
“If you’ve already called, I’ll stop trying. But I need to get ready here, so I’d like to stop.” There was a heave and grunt on the other end of the phone, then the sound of something heavy striking something soft.
“I haven’t called anyone. Meyer, what’s going on? Why would I call the school?”
As Piper said it, she thought she heard something out in the hallway — a dull crash, like someone slamming a door. But this was a yoga studio, and people traipsed the bamboo floors on slippers and pillows, speaking in whispers. Still, she could hear commotion on the level below. Looking up, Piper thought she could see some sort of ruckus on the street — the tops of heads rushing by, visible only from the hair up from her second-floor vantage.
“They’re saying that …” Meyer paused. “Shit, Piper. Nobody there knows?”
Piper looked around the emptying studio. Cell phones were required to be silenced in class, so during the movements the place was more or less severed from the outside world. Although she wondered now if the commotion outside had been going on long — nothing overt, just a generalized sense of increased energy — and whether Greg’s rainforest soundtrack had drowned it out. You were supposed to disconnect from the world and turn inward during yoga. Apparently, it worked too well.
Alan, a well-muscled classmate Piper had been noticing lately with no small amount of guilt, stood just a few feet away. She could see the wideness of his eyes as he looked over, his own cell phone in his white-knuckled grip. Every eye was fixed to a screen — something she’d never seen in the studio before.
“Knows what?”
“There’s …” Meyer sighed. “Something showed up on the Astral telescopes. Approaching … objects.”
Piper’s blood went cold. “Like a comet?” It was a stupid thing to say, and she felt foolish, but she liked old movies and had seen her parents’ generation’s disaster fetish films. The idea of Earth-smashing celestial bodies had kept her up many nights as a kid.
“No. Like … shit, just trust me, okay? Call the school. Pick up the kids. Meet me at home as soon as you possibly can.”
“What, Meyer? What’s coming?” Piper was practically shouting. But nobody was looking at her, because others were speaking just as loudly — the ones who weren’t staring dumbfounded at their phones, their eyes wide and complexions like flour.
“They think they’re ships.”
“Ships!”
“Yes. Look. I don’t have time to get into this, Piper. Listen to updates on the radio on the way if you have to — I’m sure it’ll be on every channel — but you have to get moving. Now. For our kids’ sake.”
It was a dire way to say it, and a small part of Piper wanted to make fun of him. Meyer was easy to make fun of, and her quirky humor was one of the things he seemed to like about her most, but she couldn’t do it. Something terrible was happening, and it didn’t matter for a second that Lila and Trevor weren’t her biological children. She’d been more like a sister than a mom, but they were family either way, and whatever was happening, Meyer’s nerves were infectious. “Their sake” felt accurate, and pressing.
“It can’t be real, can it? I mean …” She didn’t want to say it. “You’re talking about flying saucers?”
“Spheres, it looks like.”
“You’re not kidding, are you? Please tell me if you’re messing with me, ha-ha, I promise to laugh, and …”
“Just call!”
Meyer was gone.
Piper stared at the phone, seriously considering offense that he’d hung up on her. It was a familiar, uniquely female emotion welling inside her. She wanted to wrap both hands around it, run to her nearest female friend, and bitch about how shitty men could be. Anything to shift the air’s ominous feeling.
She shook it away and dialed the school. The phone rang and rang, but no one picked up.
Alan looked over. He still hadn’t returned the shirt to his tight muscled body. Piper would never cheat on Meyer, but she was an attractive woman at twenty-nine and liked to flirt. She’d normally have returned his look, then engaged in some pointless banter. But not now.
“They’re saying that …” Alan began.
But Piper was already grabbing her bag, snatching her mat as if yoga might one day matter again, and making for the door, still clutching her phone. She trotted to the garage, wondering if circumstances would allow her to leave the car and hail a cab. The streets had an odd energy, and she didn’t particularly want to be behind the wheel, but something she remembered from Meyer’s tone told her he’d want the car, even if she didn’t.
She rang the school. Now her phone refused the connection.
She tried again. Same results.
The sidewalks were chaos. It was unusual to see people running here unless they were actually out for a run, but now she saw scampering businessmen and businesswomen, still clinging to briefcases and satchels like useless tokens. Faces were lost. Piper found herself thinking of old footage of 9/11. New York had returned to business as usual since those terror-filled days, but apparently the tendency for panic had never stopped bubbling under the surface. She saw it now, barely contained.
Piper dialed again, trying to reach Constellation’s office. If she couldn’t reach the school, she’d drive there. Screw getting permission or notifying anyone in advance. Judging by what was happening around her, protocols no longer mattered. There was a security checkpoint at the doors of Constellation like any other school, but to hell with their security if she couldn’t reach the secretary by phone. She’d barge in, and dare them to stop her.
She tried again. The phone blessedly rang, and was snatched up almost immediately by a harried-sounding woman.
“What?”
Piper’s brow knitted. “Is this … is this the Constellation School?”
“What do you want?” Now that the voice had said more than a few words, Piper suspected it wasn’t a woman after all. If she had to guess, she thought it might be Mr. Hoover, the vice principal, his voice scraped by nerves.
“We’re very busy here dealing with …” the Hoover/woman began.
“This is Piper Dempsey. I’m—”
“I know who you are.”
“I’d like to pick up Trevor and Delilah early today, if that’s okay with the school. I know it’s the middle of the day and I don’t have—”
“Lady, I don’t give a fuck what you want to do. You want to come over here and piss in the fountain, I could care less.”
“Who is this?”
“We’re just trying to keep things together and fight our natural desire to run out of here and leave your kids to fend for themselves. Damned kid
s all have cell phones today. Even if we wanted to keep calm, we can’t. They all have Astral.”
“So there really is something …” Piper couldn’t make herself say coming toward Earth from space. “… wrong?”
“I have to go,” said the voice, impatient. There was noise on the line — either Hoover preparing to slam down the school’s old-fashioned hardline or the threat of a disconnection from elsewhere, possibly because everyone in the city seemed to be on their phones. Vaguely, Piper wondered if she’d be able to reach Meyer again if she needed to. The probable answer made her push the thought away, frightened.
“So I can just come and pick them up whenever? Do I come to the office?”
“Everyone seems to be coming,” he said with an audible effort to contain himself. “All the parents. Trevor … is he a driver?”
“He’s fifteen.”
“Then he’ll be in the car line. We’ll tell them to keep back from the curb, or some of these crazy bitches out there are going to run them over.”
“And Lila?”
“She’s a senior?”
“Junior,” said Piper. “She’s seventeen.”
“Hang on.”
There were distant taps and clicks. Piper could imagine Hoover looking Lila up on the school’s computer system. She found herself admiring the vice principal, maintaining his post. Like a captain going down with his ship.
“Dempsey, Delilah. Junior. Homeroom is Dr. Cheever.”
“That’s her.”
Hoover said, “She’s not here. The computer says she never showed up this morning.”
Chapter Three
Day One, Late Morning
Central Park, New York
Lila looked down at her phone, saw a fresh text from Piper, and slipped it back into her purse.
“What’s up?” said Raj. He had mocha skin and dark-brown eyes. Lila found him beautiful. Even today, even given what had happened, she couldn’t help herself being deeply in love.
“Nothing.”
“Who keeps texting?”
“Piper,” Lila said.
“Piper! You think she knows you ditched?”
Lila laughed. “I think that’s a safe assumption. She doesn’t normally text me at school.”
“You gonna answer her?”
Lila shrugged. She was too cool for the world right now, she knew better, she was her own boss and answered to no one.
“Tell her you had a doctor’s appointment,” Raj suggested.
“Because she wouldn’t know if I had a doctor’s appointment.”
“Well, what’s the text say?”
“Which one?”
“She’s texted you more than once?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, then what do they say, Li?”
“You have a little crush on Piper there, Raj?”
“My dad texts me, I answer him.”
“See, that’s why you’re going to be a good doctor some day,” said Lila. “You’re so responsible.”
“I’m not going to be a doctor.”
Lila leaned over on the stone bench and kissed him. “You should be a doctor. I want to marry a doctor. They’re so good at providing for their families. Keeping their wives in fancy things.”
“You don’t care about fancy things.”
Lila shrugged.
“Your dad is loaded.”
“And I want to take charity from my dad forever.”
Raj looked distracted. He wasn’t happy ditching school, he wasn’t happy with how things had changed between them, and he was, frankly, too responsible for his own good. He probably wouldn’t be a doctor like his father, but he’d be something respectable.
Lila took his hands in hers. “Relax. Enjoy the beautiful park.”
“I wonder what this land is worth?” said Raj, looking around. “If I owned a piece of Central Park and wanted to sell it to a developer, what do you think I could get?”
He didn’t wait for her answer. He’d been spouting pointless things like this all day, and Lila kept having to return him to center. He was whistling in the dark, trying not to feel the pressure. But they were both seventeen now, practically adults. She’d been kidding about marrying him as a doctor, but she wasn’t kidding about marrying Raj, if he asked. They’d been together for three years, had been having sex for two, and both saw themselves as ending up together in the long term. They could get married soon; really. Her grandmother had married at eighteen, and that had lasted over fifty years.
“Bajillions,” said Lila.
Her phone buzzed inside her purse.
“At least see what it says,” said Raj.
“No. I’m here with you.” She wrapped both her arms around one of his and leaned her head on his shoulder.
Raj looked around the Ramble again. He didn’t like being down here and kept saying it was a gay hookup spot. Lila could have replied that they were here because it was the only place she knew where they could talk in relative isolation, but it was more fun to chide him for being homophobic. Raj was Indian, but his family had been in this country long enough and become affluent enough that he had acquired quite a bit of liberal white guilt.
There was a buzzing from Raj’s wrist, shaking near Lila’s head. Raj was more responsible than Lila. He looked at his forearm immediately.
“You’re such a dork with that thing.”
“This is state of the art, cretin,” Raj said, tapping at it.
“My dad wears a watch. You’re just like my dad.”
“I got a message from my mom.”
“Is it about being responsible and getting good grades?”
Raj looked up from the device and met her eyes with irritation. He was usually so fun. It hurt her to see him like this, but the recent news had unsettled him. He was torn somewhere between fear and an intensified form of personal responsibility. Now he had a problem to solve, and would remain annoyed until he’d managed to do it — as if it were his problem alone.
“She just says to come home.”
“You should call her back. I love when you talk to your wrist. You look like a brown Dick Tracy.”
“Who’s Dick Tracy?”
“My dad has these old comics, like hard-copy comics, and … well, it’s what people thought the future would be like back then. Can we take your hover car back home, Dick?”
“I love you, Li, but I’m not really in the mood for joking.”
“What, just because I …” Now her phone wasn’t just vibrating. It was vibrating again and again. Apparently, Piper had tired of texting and was calling. She sighed and dug the phone from her purse, looked at the screen, then gave Raj a look. “Hang on.”
She put the phone to her ear. “Hey, Piper.”
Lila waited for a torrent of guilt. Piper was strange as a stepmother, being just twelve years older than Lila herself, and was ill suited to outright chastising or discipline. Piper usually tried talking to Lila like a sister, saying she remembered what it was like to be a young girl … then infusing those somewhat-dated memories with sage, vaguely parental advice. It was like an older sister trying to help more than a mother interfering. But still, her father stood behind Piper, so Lila usually listened to her requests before they turned into Meyer’s commands.
Instead of rattling on about Lila ditching school, Piper demanded to know where she was, her voice hurried.
“I’m …” Lila hesitated, but Piper’s concerned tone was disarming. She found herself blurting the truth, “ … in the park.”
“Are you near the museum? The Museum of Natural History?”
“I … sure, I suppose.”
Lila heard a scream somewhere behind her, followed by running feet. Raj looked over, his eyes wide. Then the feet were gone, and they were back to being mostly alone.
“The West 77th Street entrance. Meet me there.”
“When?” But that was far too compliant. “Why?”
Lila listened for several minutes while Piper lost her mind on the p
hone. When she finally hung up with a promise to be in front of the museum as soon as she could (“though it may take a while for me to get there because the streets are losing their shit”), Lila looked at Raj. She was ready to say that her stepmother had finally lost her airy-fairy, hippie mind, but Raj’s expression stopped her. He’d been poking around on that stupid wrist mobile thing of his, using the projection feature to watch video on the bench with the accompanying earpiece pushed into his head. And his eyes were as wide as she’d imagined Piper’s through their conversation.
“Aliens,” said Raj.
“You can’t possibly believe that. You’re more rational than stupid crap like UFOs and aliens.”
There was another shout. A group of people ran into and then quickly out of sight. Raj clutched Lila protectively, but they were gone before the potential threat could more than register.
“Everyone else seems to believe it,” said Raj, nodding toward his wrist. “What did Piper say?”
“She said …” Lila trailed off. It was all too ridiculous.
“Shit, Lila. This isn’t good. We can go to my place.”
“It’s way the hell uptown.”
“We’ll take a cab.”
A crashing, crunching sound tore through the air from somewhere far away.
“Piper is going to pick me up at the museum.”
“Let’s go,” he said, standing. “Think she can drop me off? Think she’ll be too pissed that we ditched together?”
“Something tells me she has bigger things to worry about,” Lila said. “Just don’t tell her you got me pregnant, and I think we’ll be fine.”
Chapter Four
Day One, Late Morning
Constellation Academy, New York
Trevor stood dutifully in the car line at school for five minutes, then decided that another frozen moment would make him fucking retarded.
