Everything We Lost

by Valerie Geary

  The questions were rhetorical. He gave her no time to answer before continuing, “Christians can’t prove the existence of guardian angels. Psychics can’t prove the existence of ghosts. But no one cares about that, do they? No one tries to lock those people away in mental institutions or stuff them full of clozapine. No one laughs at the pope, no one points fingers at him, crying narcissism and greed. No one called Mother Teresa a liar.”

  He reached into his bag and pulled out a pen. Then grabbed a napkin from the holder and began scribbling on it. “Everyone on this planet wants answers, Lucy, to who we are and why we’re here and what the hell it all means. For some of us that meaning comes from the stars, and from the extraterrestrial life-forms you are so quick to dismiss. Maybe you don’t believe, and that’s fine, but it doesn’t mean those of us who do are crazy.”

  He shoved the napkin at her. He’d drawn a map and directions to some place in Bishop.

  “My house,” he said, sliding out of the booth. “Sandra’s staying there with me for a while. She has the day off tomorrow.”

  Before Lucy could say anything—argue, defend herself, apologize—Wyatt was gone.

  She stared at the map for a few seconds, then slipped it into her purse and started to get up. A man approached the table, his small mouth spreading in a grin, exposing crooked teeth that made him look just this side of lecherous. His beady, dark eyes, long rat nose, and shaggy auburn hair were all too familiar, and Lucy crossed her arms tightly over her chest, a reflex from freshman year of high school when she’d spent far too much time trying to dodge Adam Paulson’s horrible, groping ape hands.

  He laughed when he reached her, a startling and obnoxious sound, like a drunk donkey. “I almost didn’t believe it. I was back there playing pool and I said to myself, ‘Goddamn it, Self, but if that pretty lady doesn’t look a helluva lot like lovely little Lucy Durant.’ ”

  She cringed at the nickname he’d given her the first day they met. He didn’t seem to notice her discomfort and kept right on talking, his lips flapping whiskey-loose. “But then I thought, nuh-uh, can’t be, no way in hell she’d come back to this shithole town. But just in case, I walk over to get a closer look and what do you know, but I was right! It is lovely little Lucy Durant! Not so little anymore, though.” His eyes roamed over what parts of her were visible above the table, then he winked.

  “Adam . . . ?” She pretended to have a hard time coming up with his name. “Adam Paulson, right?”

  “You got me.” He snapped his thumbs back so they were pointing at his chest, then in a single swift motion, slapped his palms down flat on the table, shaking the whole thing and sloshing soda over the edges of Wyatt’s and Lucy’s abandoned glasses. “Fuck’s sake, babe, how long has it been? Seven? Eight years?”

  “Almost ten.” She forced a smile, hoping she looked more relaxed than she felt. Her cheeks ached from trying. Her heart a mad hornet trapped inside her chest.

  “Is that right? Ten years? I’ll be damned, but time does fly like a motherfucker.” He tilted his head back and squinted at the ceiling like he was trying to think of something important that had slipped his mind. Then he returned his attention to her. “There a reunion going on nobody told me about? You think I would have heard about something like that on Facebook.”

  Lucy had never liked Adam. She’d only put up with him because he was friends with Patrick. Though, how Patrick could stand him, Lucy never understood. One time she asked Patrick about it, why they let a loser like Adam hang around. “He’s not a loser any more than the rest of us,” Patrick had said. “You just don’t know the whole story.” Then he told her that Adam lived with his grandmother because in first grade his dad tried to kill someone, a business partner supposedly, and was serving life in prison, and his mom was fucked up on meth all the time and once tried to pimp Adam out to her dealer, who, as it turned out, drew the line at child molestation and ended up calling social services.

  “So what? You feel sorry for him?” Lucy pressed. “That’s the reason you let him hang on like a leech?”

  Patrick made a face. “Baby,” he said, and she preened under his attention. “Baby, Adam’s the one who scores us weed and booze and those little pills you like so much. You don’t really want him to stop hanging out with us, do you?”

  She didn’t care about the booze or the drugs. She only drank to keep up with Patrick and his friends, to prove herself worthy. And she only used because Patrick wanted her to. He paid her more attention when she was wasted. He liked her better high. At the time, she liked herself better too, but now it was only one of a long list of things, along with putting up with Adam Paulson’s bullshit, that she’d done for Patrick and later regretted.

  “No reunion,” she said, answering Adam’s question. “Not that I know of. I mean, I’m not on Facebook so maybe there is but no one told me about it either.”

  She laughed, but he didn’t join in.

  She mumbled something about just being in town for a couple of days to do some sightseeing, which was a stupid response. She could have thought of something better; she wished she had. Adam raised his eyebrows. With one finger, he pushed at the half-full glass of club soda in front of him, bumping it across the table closer to her.

  “That guy you were with just now,” he said. “Isn’t he that UFO nut job, what’s his name? I see his face all over the news, talking bullshit about little green men and flying saucers like they actually exist. You’re not going all Looney Tunes on us like your brother now, are you? I didn’t think crazy was contagious.”

  He leaned way back in the seat and made a cross with his fingers. Then he chuckled to himself and lowered his hands to the table again.

  The ibuprofen she’d taken two hours ago had worn off, and her headache was working itself into a full-blown electrical storm now. She could almost hear her brain crackling as it shot lightning bolts through her temples. She massaged her forehead.

  “Speaking of your brother . . .” Adam started to say, then stopped and gestured to the bartender. “I need another drink. You want one?”

  “No, thanks, I really should be going.” She started to slide out of the bench. “It was good to see you again—”

  “Sit down, Lucy.” His voice was taut and high-wire thin. Something about it made her think he wasn’t nearly as drunk as he was acting. She sat back down.

  Adam leaned his elbows on the table and pressed his face close to hers. “What are you doing here? I mean, what are you really doing? Not sightseeing. That’s bullshit.”

  She swallowed hard, trying to push down the lump building in her throat. She had nothing to say to him, and her skull felt like it was going to crack wide open, or she was going to throw up, or both, and she needed to get the hell out of here. So what was she doing still sitting, listening to this asshole’s blathering nonsense, why was she having so much trouble getting her legs to obey?

  “I guess it doesn’t matter why you’re here,” he said. “As long as you’re not thinking about doing something stupid. You’re not thinking about doing something stupid, are you, Lucy?” When she didn’t answer, he smiled again. “No, I didn’t think you were, because you’re a good girl. Lovely little Lucy. Isn’t that right?”

  She pressed her lips between her teeth, clamping down against a rising wave of nausea.

  The bartender was beside their table now, waiting to take their drink order.

  Adam smiled up at him. “Scotch on the rocks, for me. And whatever the lovely little Lucy wants.”

  She shook her head and then finally managed to command her knees to straighten, her legs to push up. She lurched to her feet and, clasping her purse to her chest, stumbled toward the front door. Adam’s mocking voice chased after her. “Was it something I said?”

  She burst outside and gulped in a pint of cool night air. Just before the door swung shut behind her, she heard Adam call out, “I’ll tell Patrick you said hello.”

  Three blocks stretched between Riley’s and her motel room.
Lucy hurried along the sidewalk, every step expecting to hear Adam coming up behind her. The traffic on Line Street was lighter than when she’d walked to the bar a half hour earlier. Fewer people roamed the sidewalks. Shops and restaurants were closed, their windows shuttered and dark. She snuck glances over her shoulder, certain he would follow, but the bar door stayed closed.

  Feeling returned to her fingers and toes and slowly into her limbs, even as her headache raged on. Not a headache, a migraine. A thousand tiny hammers beating a thousand tiny nails into the delicate flesh of her brain. She hadn’t experienced one so intense in years. Usually painkillers were enough to dull the pain to a slightly uncomfortable but innocuous pulse. Running helped too. The last time she remembered having a headache this bad was the morning after Nolan disappeared.

  Her hands shook. She fumbled with the motel key card, dropping it once on the ground before finally slipping it into the lock and getting the green light. In the bathroom, she sank to her knees and bent her head over the toilet. She dry-heaved twice, and then sat there with her head resting on her arms for another ten minutes until the nausea passed and the pain faded to a slightly more manageable roar. Then she got to her feet again, rummaged in her purse for ibuprofen, filled a glass with water, and swallowed two pills. She found her way to the bed in the dark and collapsed on top of it without bothering to climb under the blankets.

  CASEBOOK ENTRY #2

  SIGHTING:

  OVRO Disc Landing

  DATE: August 12, 1999

  LONGITUDE/LATITUDE: 37.231453 W, 118.282702 N

  SYNOPSIS: At 22:44 hours I observed a craft approaching Owens Valley Radio Observatory from the SE out of White Mountains. Approach was steady with no apparent change in elevation or speed. Craft arrived at 22:46 and hovered above telescopes for 43 secs before touching down briefly on the N side of antenna. Craft was on the ground <30 secs before taking off again and moving NNW toward Sierras. Craft moved out of sight at 22:52.

  OBJECT DESCRIPTION: 6 disc-shaped lights similar to what I saw at Buttermilk Rocks, only these lights varied orange to green and maintained triangle formation. No engine sounds detected. Wind gusted during touchdown and again at liftoff. Based on my location S of antenna, approximately 100 yards from touchdown location, I estimate width of the craft to be 450 ft—nearly the equivalent of two 747s parked end to end. Too dark to see much of the mechanical or physical structure of craft. Lights rotated counterclockwise on landing and takeoff.

  OTHER WITNESS STATEMENTS: One possible witness to event. Seconds after the craft flew out of sight, I saw a shadow moving in the scrub near the telescopes. However, I was unable to make contact. I called out, but there was no response. Shadow appeared humanoid in shape and walked upright. I attempted to get closer, but area is restricted, and the shadow moved quickly, vanishing into the night before I had a chance to capture any further details.

  WEATHER INFORMATION: 78°F; winds from SSE at 13 mph; clear skies; New Moon

  LOCATION DESCRIPTION: California, Owens Valley, 6 miles SSE of Big Pine, Leighton Road, near Owens River. Owens Valley Radio Observatory is a university-operated research facility currently studying blazars, cosmic microwave background, and star formation. It should also be noted that there are rumors of a top-secret, underground military testing facility near this location, though at this time I have no evidence to confirm this.

  PHYSICAL EVIDENCE: None. Craft moved away before I could secure photographs. Unable to inspect touchdown location due to restricted access.

  CONCLUSION: Certainly the most remarkable sighting to date. Size and behavior of craft suggests it is neither natural phenomena nor weather related. No man-made craft that I know of maneuvers like this. Most likely extraterrestrial in origin.

  The girl appeared out of nowhere.

  One second, Nolan sat alone in his pickup staring into the empty alleyway behind Bishop’s Grocery, distracted with thoughts of what he’d witnessed not even twenty-four hours earlier at the observatory, wondering what it could possibly mean. The next, a figure materialized from the shadows, a piece of night breaking off and coming to life, approaching with tentative steps and a cautious look on her full moon face.

  She wore a hodgepodge of vintage clothes. Green corduroy bell-bottoms and a fringed leather vest overtop a billowing red blouse. Pearls and puka shells hung around her neck. She’d braided feathers into a thick strand of her hair, the rest of which swept loose and long to her waist, dark and shimmering burgundy under the glow of a nearby bar sign. She strode across the parking lot in heavy-duty hiking boots that were scuffed and covered in dust. The plum-colored backpack she carried over one shoulder was crammed full and near bursting at the seams. When she reached him, she swung it around to access the front pocket, and his gaze caught on an orange and silver shimmering patch stitched to the front. Saturn. Sixth planet from the Sun. A gas giant with a radius nine times that of Earth and an atmosphere mostly made of hydrogen and helium. Seven spectacular, visible rings of dust and ice. Fifty-three known moons, including Titan. Incapable of life as we know it.

  She pulled a map from the pocket and waved it at him. Her voice drifted through the cracked open driver’s window like a soft ribbon coiling over his skin, making him think of distant places, starlight, and yearning.

  “I’m a little turned around. Can you help?”

  The lights were on inside the store, but the place was empty, the doors locked up for the night, the alarm set. Carol, the store’s manager and Nolan’s boss, had gone home. They’d walked to the parking lot together not even fifteen minutes ago. Nolan, too, would have been almost home by now, except all day he’d been plagued by a strange sort of inertia.

  He’d lain in bed that morning staring at the ceiling, trying and failing to lift his heavy limbs, until his mother burst in around noon, threatening to sell his truck if he didn’t get up right this instant and take out the trash like she’d asked him to do two days ago. After that, he’d wandered aimlessly through the house for a while before coming to a stop in front of the sliding glass door. The back gate was open, even though he remembered closing it. Lucy came into the room a few minutes later, but walked right back out when she saw him.

  They’d barely said two words to each other since the Buttermilk Rocks incident. She left the house as often as she could to avoid him, going who knew where and doing who knew what with her friends. He asked her once when she thought she’d be back. She told him it was none of his business, and maybe it wasn’t, but he worried about her sneaking out after their mother left for work, staying out past curfew, and he should probably bring all of this to their mother’s attention at some point, but he had bigger things to deal with at the moment.

  Last night he’d witnessed a miracle. A craft almost certainly of extraterrestrial origin had touched down right in front of him, and he was struggling to understand how something so significant could have happened to him. A nobody, a doubter. Why not Wyatt? Or Gabriella? Why not any number of other, more prepared, more qualified people? And only a month after his sighting at Buttermilk Rocks. It seemed a remarkable bit of good fortune, but then a quiet whisper started up in the back of his mind, growing louder as the day wore into night. What if it wasn’t luck at all? What if They had chosen that place, that moment? What if They had chosen him? Maybe it was the same craft that he’d seen—or thought he’d seen—at Buttermilk Rocks. Maybe They had in fact tried to reach out to him that day in July and since that first attempt failed, tried a second time last night.

  Wyatt had a saying, one he repeated to the group often: One strange event is an anomaly, two is a fluke, three is a pattern. Nolan hadn’t understood it at first, but he was beginning to. Three strange events had meaning on a grander scale. Three strange events were likely connected in some way. Three strange events meant someone somewhere was trying to get your attention.

  The girl waited, still holding up the map and smiling hopefully, looking at him with such beautiful and peculiar eyes. Flecked with gold, they were
molten, shifting copper to amber to brown to amber and back to copper again. They seemed to search the very depths of him. He experienced a moment of déjà vu, convinced he’d seen eyes like hers before, but he struggled to remember where. Then it came to him: he’d drawn these very same eyes just last week.

  He was working on a comic about a warrior princess from the distant planet Aurelia, who comes to Earth with orders to destroy this tiny, messed-up place before it wreaks havoc on neighboring star systems, but winds up falling for an earthling boy instead. The star-crossed lovers find themselves in a race against time to save Earth and their newly budding love before other Aurelian warriors carry out the orders the princess could not. He had drawn the princess with long dark hair and copper eyes. Copper eyes that could melt glass and the coldest of hearts. He had drawn the princess and now she stood in front of him, flesh and blood and waiting. Her smile started to slip, but he didn’t know what to do or say. He stared at her like an idiot. His mouth went dry. Sweat trickled down his back. He couldn’t think straight. He couldn’t get his brain working right. He lost all feeling in his hands.

  This wasn’t possible, she wasn’t real, she couldn’t be—

  “I’m trying to get to the ocean?” The girl, the very real girl, unfolded the map. She turned it one way and then the other. “The Pacific? Santa Monica?” She lifted her gaze and scowled at their immediate surroundings, then at the mountains edging the horizon, then back at the map. “Clearly, I took a wrong turn somewhere.”

  She laughed, and the sound shocked energy through Nolan’s veins, returning him to himself. He got out of the pickup, leaving the door open so the dome light stayed on, took the map from the girl, and spread it over the hood. It was a standard California road map, the creases soft from use. One corner was stained with what looked like coffee.

  Nolan dropped his finger down on a greenish-colored area a little over halfway down the length of the map near the Nevada state line south of Lake Tahoe. “You’re here. This is Bishop.” He moved his finger, following Highway 395 south to the 14 and then west to a broad expanse of blue on the opposite side. “That’s the ocean.” He tapped a city on the edge where land met water. “Santa Monica.”