We were broken in so many pieces on that day, I thought we’d never be whole again. Even Momma didn’t have the words to make it right.
It wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.
What came next, after an ending like that?
We didn’t know.
July 11, 1947—3:03 a.m.
My heart feels like it could explode with every beat inside my chest as Gracie and I sneak out of the holding cell and run to General Delgado’s office to fetch Moon Shadow and the others.
“Mylo!” Dibs calls out when I pull open General Delgado’s office door.
“Shhh!” I hiss.
“Yeah, but you’re okay.” He wraps his bony arms tight around me.
“Come on,” I tell him. “We have to get to J. Moon, and we have to do it right now.”
He nods and pulls his Buck Rogers Atomic Disintegrator Pistol from his back pocket. “Roger that,” he says, darting out the door first.
Once we all make it out of the office, Gracie leads the way through the maze of cinder-block halls.
Left, and then right.
Right, then right again.
I know you’re here with me now, Obie.
I feel it.
I’m sorry I couldn’t find you before. You really did keep your promise, just like you said you would. And I know it’s you who will help me get Moon Shadow and J. Moon home.
You.
My brother.
* * *
“Here!” Gracie calls, stopping at a door with a large sign: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Gracie pushes four buttons on the wall and the door buzzes.
“Well?” I ask. “Turn the knob.”
“It rejected the code.”
“What do you mean? I thought you said you knew it.”
“I—I did, but it must be different now.”
“We have to get to him,” I say. “We have to do it now.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Gracie’s eyes well up. “I—I don’t know. Let me try again.” She pushes the same four numbers and the door buzzes again, only this time it sounds an alarm that rings loud through the hallways.
Spuds covers his ears with his palms.
I grab Moon Shadow’s hand. “Moon Shadow!” I say. “Can you help us?”
She blinks at me and then places her other hand flat on the buttons and closes her eyes.
Clicks.
Beeps.
Boots squeak and shuffle in the next corridor. Voices.
“They’re coming!” Diego exclaims.
The alarm goes silent and the door pops open.
“Let’s go!” I shout. “We have to hurry!”
Inside the door is the longest hallway I’ve ever seen. On each side, there are more doors and floor-to-ceiling windows. Through each window, I see what looks like a doctor’s examining room. I scramble down the hall, pulling Moon Shadow along with me. I stop at each window, peering inside, looking for J. Moon.
In one room after another, small gray bodies lie still on silver gurneys. They are stripped naked of their flight suits and cut all the way down their bellies and across their chests. Their insides are sitting in clear jars of liquid on the counters. Each time, I look away and scramble on to the next window.
“Don’t look in there,” I instruct Moon Shadow.
Next window.
Another body cut up.
The next window. Same thing.
I stop looking after that. At least until I get to the very last room.
“He’s there!” Moon Shadow exclaims.
I place both palms on the glass and stare in at J. Moon lying on a hospital bed under a white sheet, hooked up to all kinds of wires and machines and a bag of clear liquid.
Alone.
I can’t help but think of Obie on that horrible day. He may have been sick and he may have been dying, but at least he wasn’t alone.
And he knew it, too.
Until he didn’t.
There’s a sign on the door of J. Moon’s room:
DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT PROPER RADIATION PROTECTION ATTIRE
Just then, five men covered from head to toe in white hooded suits with gas masks pulled tightly over their faces bound through the door at the end of the hall.
“Stop!” someone shouts, holding up a gloved hand. “That’s a contaminated room! Do not open that door!”
“There’s been a breach!” someone else yells into a handheld radio. “Code White! Code White!”
A screeching alarm sounds through the hallway, a piercing siren that blares and bounces off the cinder blocks.
Angry boots squeak and shuffle.
Men with guns ten times the size of Dibs’s Buck Rogers Atomic Disintegrator Pistol dart in our direction. And I’d bet any money they’re real ones, too.
I turn the knob on the door of J. Moon’s room, pulling Moon Shadow inside with me. “Hurry up!” I call to the rest of them.
They all scramble inside behind us.
Dibs, Gracie, Diego, and Spuds.
I slam the door behind them, locking it from the inside.
Heavy fists pound against the wood as the suited men line the window to the hall.
“Open this door, son. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“There are two survivors!” another man shouts. “I see another one in there now!”
Mordecai Lord and Daddy push their way to the window, too.
“Mylo!” Daddy calls, his eyes wide and his palms flat against the glass. “What are you doing in here? I told you to wait.”
“I couldn’t wait. He’s dying, Daddy.” I stare at him through blurry tears welling fast. “He’s dying!”
Daddy holds his lips in a straight line for a moment and then nods at me.
I grab Moon Shadow by the hand and we rush to J. Moon’s side while the other kids stand back by the door.
“Just let them be,” I can hear Daddy tell the men. “Mylo can help. No one wants them to die, right? Just let them do what they need to do.”
“And he will,” Mr. Lord says.
The sirens outside the room stop.
The pounding fists quiet.
And the angry voices soften as the men gather at the window to watch Moon Shadow from the hall.
J. Moon’s breathing is wet and soggy, just like Obie’s on that horrible day.
He’s pale and weak.
Still and tired.
Moon Shadow takes his hand, and J. Moon opens his eyes.
They speak in beeps and clicks just like the radio transmission I heard in the flying disk.
“What are you waiting for?” I tell her. “Please save him. Send him home. Do what you have to do and do it fast. I made a promise. A promise.”
I can’t breathe.
Tears roll down my cheeks and I let them.
It can’t happen again. Not again.
Moon Shadow closes her eyes and raises her chin to the ceiling, her headband tight against her watermelon head, her fingers curled around her brother’s. I watch her refuel in the moon’s energy, and as she breathes it in, it transfers through her to J. Moon. Before my eyes, the color of his skin changes from chalk white to gray, and its texture goes from dry to moist. His eyes change from milky and tired to glassy black.
Moon Shadow stops for a moment, facing me then, her eyes drinking me in as if it is the last time she will see me. “You are my brother now, too,” she says to me. “You are family…my family.”
I turn to look at Daddy in the window, and then at Dibs and Gracie and Spuds and Diego standing close behind. I think of Momma at home and Baby Kay.
And I think of Obie.
“You are our family, too,” I tell Moon Shadow. “Always. I don’t want to say good-bye. I don’t l
ike good-byes.”
I reach out and hug her tiny Moontian body tightly against mine. Dibs, Gracie, Spuds, and Diego huddle in, too.
Our Corona family.
I don’t want to let her go, but I know I have to because it’s time for her to go.
Home where she belongs.
I watch as she pulls off her headband and hands it to me. I hold it tightly in my hand and know that this is not the good-bye I thought it would be. It’s not a good-bye at all. It’s the beginning of something instead.
A friendship through the stars and to a very special place far, far away.
For all of us.
She steps back toward the bed, and then slowly pulls herself on top of the mattress and stands tall just like she did on the fence post. This time with one hand pointed straight in the air and the other holding her brother’s hand.
She closes her eyes.
We watch her large black eyeballs move quickly back and forth underneath her lids.
A beam of green light penetrates through the ceiling from the powerful mother ship hovering high above us, ready to take them home. It’s a light so bright, it shines like a sun.
We shield our eyes.
“Krypton burns like a green star in the endless heavens,” Dibs says again, still standing next to me.
The electrical energy washes over the room like an ocean wave.
“What is that?” I hear muffled voices behind the glass.
“It feels like a magnet trying to pull our insides out,” someone answers.
“Should have used tinfoil instead of the gas masks!” Dibs hollers to the men through the glass. “Anti-Martian-mind-control skullcaps.” He points to the foil under his Yankees hat. “Martians will suck your brains out your ears as soon as look at you.”
The suited men take a step back from the window.
I smile and shake my head at him. “What are you doing?”
He smiles back. “Don’t tell me they didn’t have that coming.”
We watch the green light blaze, glowing low and then bright, low and then bright, as we watch Moon Shadow and her brother J. Moon slowly fade away.
Little by little they disappear, until even the green beam is gone. We watch until there is nothing left to see but an empty bed with a single white sheet.
“Good-bye,” I whisper, clutching the gold headband tightly in my fist.
July 13, 1947—7:40 a.m.
The morning before church, while Momma and Daddy are still getting ready, me and Baby Kay rock on the porch swing. She’s in her Sunday best dress and I’m in my tie and nice Brylcreemed hair with the straight part down the front.
I’m holding a photo album on my lap and showing her pictures of Obie.
Our brother.
And even though she’s too little to remember him, I don’t ever want her to forget he was here.
“See this one, Baby Kay?” I point. “This one is from the Bronx in New York City. It was a real hot day and we ran through the fire hydrant in the street. Momma let us get Popsicles at the corner store, too.”
“Pops?”
“That’s right. And you want to know what else? Obie knew everything there was to know about history,” I tell her. “He could list every single president and even recite the Declaration of Independence, word for word.”
“Wod?”
I nod. “He could catch a baseball even if someone threw it all the way from center field to home plate. And he never missed it, either. Not once,” I tell her.
“Frow?” she repeats.
“Yep. And he held you when you were born, too,” I say. “Did you know that, Baby Kay? He held you and said you would be a perfect third baseman in just a few years.” I laugh to myself. “Do you remember that? Your brother held you. Obie is your brother.”
“Obeee?” she repeats. “Broder?”
“That’s right. You think you’ll play baseball with us, Baby? Momma’s only okay on third, but don’t tell her I said so. Best to put her in right field. She’s a good hitter, though. Daddy plays first, second, and shortstop all at once. That’s how quick he is. So we definitely need a third baseman. You think you’ll want to do that?”
“Tird,” she says.
“Dibs is a good catcher,” I tell her. “Not as good as Obie, but pretty darn good.”
“Bibby Boo!” Baby Kay exclaims.
“Yep.”
“Broder?”
I turn to face her.
She’s looking at me with her warm chestnut eyes and a wide smile.
“Dibby Boo,” she says again. “Broder?”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, he is.”
The screen door creaks and I turn to see Momma with Daddy behind her, his large palms resting on her shoulders, both of them watching us. Momma dabs her eyes with a flowery hanky and pushes open the door.
“Hey, Baby.” She reaches for Baby Kay, squeezing her tight.
Then she puts one arm around me, and Daddy joins in with his long, strong arms around all of us in one giant family hug.
Someone very important is missing.
And it’s not just Obie this time.
Dibs is missing, too.
* * *
I haven’t seen him since the base rescue.
Two whole days, to be exact.
I went looking for him at his house, but his daddy told me to get and said Dibs was sick. Momma even called over yesterday, asking if she could make some chicken soup and bring it by. Mr. Butte told her he wasn’t a charity case and hung up the phone.
Now that it’s finally Sunday, we go pick Dibs up for church. But he doesn’t come out for that, either. Daddy finally gives up, making his way back to the truck as red eyes peer out at us through the screen door. Then I watch Mr. Butte push open the door so hard it slams all the way to the other side against the house.
“That’s right! Get out of here!” he says, slurring his words at Daddy, stumbling across the porch.
When Daddy pulls himself in behind the wheel, he exchanges a look with Momma.
“Well?” I demand. “Where is he?”
“Mr. Butte says he’s still sick,” Daddy tells me, shifting the truck into reverse, throwing his arm across the back of the seat, and backing us out of the drive.
“He’s lying,” I say, putting a hand on Daddy’s arm. “Why are you leaving?”
Mr. Butte is still shouting sloppy words at us from the porch steps.
“Daddy,” I say. “Please try again.”
“We can only do what we can do, Mylo.” Momma’s voice cracks as she wrestles with Baby Kay’s flyaways.
“Broder?” Baby Kay says again.
“Yes, Baby,” I tell her.
After Daddy makes it to the end of the drive, he stops to look both ways for church traffic, his white knuckles curled around the steering wheel. I turn and stare back at the house through the rear window.
I see him.
Upstairs at the window of his room.
It’s too far away now to see him clear enough, but just seeing him up there watching us leave him makes my bones ache so much, I feel like I need a body cast to sit up straight.
Daddy pushes the gas pedal and the truck lurches forward, turning onto State Highway 247 toward church.
I watch Dibs until I can’t see him anymore, and then I remember something real important.
The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.
I think hard about that on our way and decide it’s a good thing to talk to God about. It was courage that helped to get Moon Shadow home, and now it’s Dibs’s turn to come home.
Home where he belongs.
* * *
At church we go to the fifth row like always, behind Gracie Delgado and her family. Except there’s someone already there.
<
br /> Mordecai Lord.
Mr. Lord, with his white hair slicked back with so much Brylcreem it looks like he came in from a rainstorm, a straight part pulled down the middle of his head. He has on a clean suit with a red striped tie. Like maybe the gray has finally let him go.
I guess he found his courage part, too.
“Where’s Dibs?” Mr. Lord takes a handkerchief from his front pocket and wipes at the sweat beading up on his forehead.
“Mr. Butte wouldn’t let him come today,” I tell him.
He holds his lips tight and nods. “I brought something for him.” He hands me a small brown bear.
“This?” I take the bear in my hands.
“Yes,” he says. “Seems he needs it more than me. Will you give it to him?”
“Yes, sir,” I tell him. “He’s really going to like having this.”
Momma smiles real big at Mr. Lord as she and Daddy slide into the pew next to me. “Mr. Lord.” She reaches her hand out to him. “Real good to see you here this Sunday morning.”
“Ma’am.” He grabs her hand.
Mrs. Meadows starts to play the large organ, while we all stand to sing and watch the procession start up the aisle. Diego and Spuds lead the way in their altar boy gowns, and Father Kevin follows closely, making his way to the altar, where he will give us the messages that God wants us to know today.
He shares a passage about God holding your right hand when you need Him most.
I look down at my palm and smile.
And today, for the first time in a long time, when we all get down on our knees to pray, I pray, too.
God? I start. It’s me, Mylo Affinito…I don’t know if you’re listening but I want to let you know that I think I found my courage part. Sorry I blamed you for leaving it out. I guess it wasn’t gone…it was just lost. And not to be disrespectful, but I’m still not seeing anything on my upper lip yet. Anyway, I’m sorry I’ve been mad at you, too. Truth be told, I might still be a little mad, but you probably already know that ’cause you’re God and everything.
I peek an eye open.
Everyone is still, with heads bowed and lips moving.
Mrs. Meadows starts playing on the organ to let us know to wrap it up because God only has so much time. When Mrs. Manuela starts to sing, we all must sign off and say amen.
The Truth About Martians Page 22
