Everything We Lost

by Valerie Geary

  Five days later in the windowless basement of the senior center, Nolan tried to explain to the group why he believed the birds were evidence of an encounter.

  “Maybe someone’s just messing with you?” Tilly suggested, picking at the skin around her fingernails. “Kids were always doing shit like that when I was a teenager.”

  He supposed it was possible, but who would do such a thing? Who would kill innocent birds just to mess with him? He didn’t really have friends at school, though neither did he have enemies. None that he knew of anyway. For a fleeting second he thought of Patrick, but this seemed too heinous a prank, even for him. Especially considering Nolan had done nothing to deserve it. They hadn’t spoken since the Buttermilk Rocks incident. They had only one class together this year, AP History, and Patrick always ducked into the classroom right as the bell sounded, and darted out again when they were dismissed. He didn’t linger, hoping to talk; he hardly even looked in Nolan’s direction.

  “What about the two sightings I had over the summer?” Nolan told the group about the lights immediately after the sightings took place. There was a flurry of initial excitement, but this faded after a few weeks when there ceased to be any further developments.

  “You think they’re connected to these birds somehow?” Jim asked.

  “It’s possible.” Nolan looked across the circle at Wyatt, wanting him to weigh in, but Wyatt seemed content to sit and listen, to let them work it out on their own.

  I don’t have all the answers, he was always saying, though he was the most knowledgeable of the group, a smart and focused man, a man who, with a different kind of ambition, could have become a doctor or started his own business or traveled the world, but who instead chose to work part-time fixing motorcycles and restoring engines, who lived in a run-down double-wide on a dusty piece of scrub-covered property passed down from his great-grandfather to his grandfather to his father, and finally to him, a man who lived frugally, simply, so he would have more time to pursue his greatest passion: proving the existence of extraterrestrial life here on Earth. If anyone knew how the dead birds were connected to Nolan’s earlier sightings, it would be Wyatt. But Wyatt just sat there, his lips turned down slightly in a thoughtful way, his arms crossed over his chest, one finger tapping silently against his elbow.

  Nolan had a theory of his own. One he hadn’t shared with the group yet, with anyone, because it seemed so outrageous. He wasn’t even convinced of it himself.

  Celeste had been at the school a few hours before he found the birds. She’d taken a job as a waitress at Jake’s Family Restaurant a few days after she decided to stay in Bishop permanently. Gabriella was friends with the owner, who owed her a favor, and after a short fifteen-minute interview, Celeste walked out with an apron, a brand-new white polo shirt, and a name tag to pin on her chest. Starting out, she’d mostly worked the breakfast shift, even though the tips were lower, but more recently she’d been picking up lunch and dinner shifts, and since school started Nolan was seeing her much less often. But she had Mondays off, and on that Monday, she’d dropped by the school to surprise him with burgers and fries from the Burger Barn. They’d eaten together in his pickup, listening to music and talking about the book he was supposed to be reading for English, Lord of the Flies. Celeste had never read it; she’d skipped that class, she said, skipped all of them, actually, and got her GED instead. School was a waste of time, she said, the whole world her classroom.

  They’d made out awhile before she left, and Nolan was five minutes late to his next class, which meant he spent the rest of that period in the library serving detention. His first tardy, and the end of his perfect attendance record.

  The birds weren’t in the truck bed during lunch. He would have noticed them. So sometime between Celeste’s departure and the end of the school day, this terrible thing had happened to those two unlucky birds. A flying saucer had appeared in the vicinity, and the birds flew into its path or it flew into theirs. Either way, Nolan believed the flying saucer was there because of Celeste, but he couldn’t tell the group any of this because Gabriella was sitting next to him, and Celeste was still living in Gabriella’s guest bedroom. They saw each other every day. They talked. They were becoming friends. Gabriella cared for Celeste as if Celeste were her granddaughter, and Nolan didn’t want any of that to change. He didn’t want Gabriella to treat Celeste any differently just because she was, or probably was, or maybe was, one of Them.

  Wyatt shifted in his chair. Everyone, including Nolan, turned to look at him.

  “The birds are still in your possession?” he asked.

  Nolan nodded. “They’re in a safe place.”

  “Good,” Wyatt said. “Then I suggest tabling this topic until we have more information. Speculation will only get us so far.”

  With that, the group began discussing a ufology conference being held in Denver at the end of the month, a conference Nolan wasn’t attending because he had school and because Wyatt hadn’t invited him. He tuned out their voices, trying to picture Celeste’s face instead, the color of her eyes, the way they flickered and shone when she saw him. He tried to picture her lips, her perfect and kissable lips. But her face was a blank, a shadowy, shapeless form in his mind that could have been anyone. It bothered him that he couldn’t picture her when they were apart, that he had to flip through his comic book drawings to be reminded of her features, that they had to be apart at all.

  It had been Celeste’s choice to stay with Gabriella. Nolan had suggested she move in with him and his family instead, but she’d quickly dismissed the idea. She was comfortable with Gabriella and besides, she said, it was good to spend time apart. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that other bullshit. Nolan disagreed. The longer he went without seeing her, the more he wondered if maybe he was mistaken and the connection he thought they had was no connection at all, rather something he’d imagined, his brain misfiring. In her absence, she ceased to be extraordinary, and if she wasn’t extraordinary, then neither was he, and so what was the point of any of this? A meaningless life, another cog in the machine. He needed her to be extraordinary; he needed all this to mean something.

  The meeting ended, and the group dispersed, some gathering to make small talk around the coffeepot and a box of donuts, others leaving out the front door, eager to return to their regular lives. Wyatt hung around chatting a few minutes before he finally said his good-byes and left. Nolan followed him out to the parking lot.

  “Is everything all right?” Wyatt asked when Nolan appeared at his side. “You seemed a little distracted during the meeting. Things okay at home?”

  “Yeah, everything’s fine.” Nolan dug around in his pockets.

  Wyatt stopped beside his car, a two-door clunker sedan. “School’s fine? Kids aren’t bothering you, are they?”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s all great.” Nolan found the folded-up piece of paper he’d been looking for. He took it from his back pocket, unfolded it, and smoothed out the edges. “There’s someone I think you should meet.”

  “Oh yeah?” Wyatt looked curiously at the paper, but Nolan held it close to his chest, not quite ready to share. “And who’s that?”

  “Remember the craft that touched down near the observatory?”

  Wyatt nodded with a hint of impatience.

  “The next night this girl . . .” Nolan hesitated. To call her simply a girl felt wrong. “She found me. And there’s something about her. Something different. Special. I’ve been working on this theory—”

  “Slow down there, kid.” Wyatt laid his hand gently on Nolan’s shoulder. “I’m having trouble following you. This girl—”

  “No, she’s not . . . she’s . . . more than that. More than just a girl.” He held the creased piece of paper out for Wyatt to see.

  It was a photocopy of one of his comic book pages. A black and white sketch of his Aurelian warrior princess standing on the edge of a windy cliff, her fists set strongly on her hips, her hair blowing behind her, a dark cape.
Her eyes, the only chips of color he’d added to the page, copper and sparkling, staring into the distance. Her eyes alert, victorious.

  “You drew this?” Wyatt lifted the page closer to his face. “I didn’t know you were so talented with this kind of stuff. How come you’ve never said anything?”

  Nolan jabbed his finger into the page. “It’s her.”

  “What?” Wyatt’s brow furrowed.

  “The . . . the one who found me the night after the observatory sighting.” He jabbed the paper again. “It’s her.”

  Wyatt started to laugh, but seeing Nolan’s very serious expression, stopped. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

  “Celeste,” Nolan said, taking the paper back from Wyatt and refolding it.

  “Your friend who’s staying with Gabriella?”

  Nolan nodded. “I think she might be a—I think she might be one of Them, a Visitor.”

  “Hold on a second . . .”

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure.”

  “I should think not.”

  “But it makes sense.” Nolan began listing things off on his fingers. Two UFO sightings in two months, her unique fashion choices, how she carried everything she owned in a backpack with a patch of Saturn stitched on the front pocket, her strange and elusive behavior, how she was hitchhiking across the country, how no one seemed to miss her.

  “And this.” Nolan rattled the folded comic book page in the air. “She looks exactly like I imagined she’d look.”

  “So let me make sure I’m understanding you. You’re saying that because she looks similar to this picture you drew, she’s some sort of extraterrestrial.” He sounded skeptical.

  “No,” Nolan said, then shaking his head, “or yes. I don’t know.”

  He was certain of two things: he’d asked the stars for proof and shortly after that, Celeste walked into his life.

  “Have you told anyone else about this yet?” Wyatt asked.

  “No, of course not.” Nolan stuffed the comic book page into his pocket. “I wanted to talk to you first.”

  “Good, that’s good, Nolan. And has she said anything to you about being . . . different?”

  “Not in so many words.” But there had been moments when she’d hinted at something before backing away again or changing the subject entirely.

  Wyatt rubbed the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes a moment. When he reopened them, Nolan could tell a plan was forming.

  “Okay,” Wyatt said, speaking faster now, the way he did when he was working up to something important. “Okay, this could be huge, you know that, right?”

  Nolan nodded eagerly.

  “But it could be nothing, a false assumption. Wishful thinking.”

  “It’s not,” Nolan protested.

  “I hope that’s the case, Nolan, I do, but we still have to go about this carefully. We have to work slowly, methodically, make sure we explore every angle. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “We can’t get ahead of ourselves.”

  “Exactly.” Wyatt smiled. “We take our time. We do this right.”

  Nolan felt himself relax again. Wyatt was an expert. He knew what he was doing. If there was a discovery to make, if this was the paradigm shift the world needed, he would find it and Nolan would be with him when he did. And if Celeste turned out to be normal, terrestrial, human in every usual way, then that would be okay, too. They would be okay. He’d make sure of it.

  Nolan and Wyatt met in the parking lot of Jake’s the next afternoon at a quarter to three. Nolan parked his pickup down the street so when Celeste arrived for her shift, she wouldn’t see it and come looking for him. Then he climbed into Wyatt’s sedan, which was parked in the first row nearest the restaurant with a good view of the picture windows stretching across the front.

  “Okay,” Wyatt said. “Let’s go over the plan again.”

  “So we go in,” Nolan started, but Wyatt cut him off.

  “I go in. You stay here.”

  “But—”

  “We talked about this.” Wyatt sighed. “At best, you’ll be a distraction. At worst, you’ll give us away. I need to meet her first by myself. I need to get a feel for her without you prejudicing the conversation.”

  “I wouldn’t prejudice anything.” Nolan was hurt that Wyatt would think him so unprofessional. “I’d simply introduce you to her and then you can ask her whatever you want. You’ll hardly even notice me.”

  “You’ve spent so much time with her already, and if she’s what you think she is, she can probably read your thoughts.” Wyatt took the keys from the ignition and put them in his pocket. “I need to have this first conversation with her alone. That’s just the way it has to be.”

  “Fine.” Nolan slouched low in his seat. “You go in. I wait here.”

  A few minutes passed and then Nolan broke the silence. “What are you going to ask her?”

  Wyatt shook his head. “I don’t know yet.”

  Nolan scowled out the windshield. He’d imagined this whole thing going differently. He’d imagined being with Wyatt every step of the way, a sidekick, not a bystander.

  Celeste came around the corner then. She wore the same green corduroys and hiking boots as the night they first met, but her top was the nearly brand-new white polo required for work. Her hair was tied back in a sloppy bun. A springy tress had come loose and curled down the length of her neck, bobbing as she walked. She smiled a little to herself. The backpack she carried with her everywhere, even now, seemed to weigh nothing. Nolan wondered what was inside it, if she kept mementos of their time together, receipts and movie ticket stubs, dried wildflowers he’d plucked from the side of the road, weeds really, dandelions and poppies, prettier for their tenacity to live in such an arid climate. He carried mementos of her around in his casebook: sketches of her face, a notation of all the places they’d been together, every conversation they’d had, all the ways she surprised him.

  “That’s her,” Nolan said to Wyatt.

  They watched her enter the restaurant. Then Wyatt opened the driver-side door and got out. He paused before closing it and leaned his head in again. “Stay put.”

  Like a dog. Like a kid who would only get in the way.

  The door slammed shut. Nolan glared at the back of Wyatt’s head until he disappeared inside the restaurant. It wasn’t fair. She’d come to Nolan first. He should be the one in there asking the questions, not Wyatt. But what if he was wrong? What if she laughed at him? Or worse. What if she left?

  After a minute, Wyatt reappeared on the other side of the large glass windows. He sat down at a table and looked at a menu. Nolan leaned forward. The restaurant windows weren’t tinted, and so he could make out most of what was happening as long as it happened close to the glass; anything beyond that was invisible to him, hidden by shadows.

  A few seconds after Wyatt sat down, Celeste appeared. She smiled and said something to him, the typical niceties, Nolan assumed. How are you today, sir? Yes, lovely weather we’re having. May I get you started with something to drink? Wyatt said something in return, laying down his menu and placing one hand on top of it. Celeste laughed at whatever it was Wyatt said, and something in Nolan’s chest pinched. He rubbed his knuckles across his breastbone until the pain passed. A few minutes went by. And then five more. And then ten. Celeste was still at Wyatt’s table, still talking. She hadn’t taken out an order pad, wasn’t writing anything down. She looked relaxed, her hands moving freely, her smile warm and open. Whatever Wyatt was saying to her, she appeared to be very much engaged.

  Nolan drummed his fingers against his knees. This shouldn’t be taking so long; first impressions only, in and then out. It made sense for Wyatt to order coffee or orange juice or something so as not to arouse suspicion, but that didn’t seem to be what was happening here. Celeste leaned in a little closer to Wyatt, as if she was about to whisper in his ear.

  Knuckles rapped on the car window, breaking Nolan’s concentration.

  Patrick peered at
him through the glass and, in a too-loud voice that made Nolan cringe and slide down low in his seat, said, “Hey, Space Case, what the hell are you doing out here?” He leaned back, inspecting Wyatt’s sedan. “Whose car is this?”

  Nolan rolled down the window so Patrick would stop shouting. “What do you want?”

  He darted a glance at the clones flanking Patrick on either side. Adam Paulson, a mean kid Nolan had never liked, and Grant, who nodded at Nolan, silent and unsmiling.

  “We’re just going to grab something to eat,” Patrick said, gesturing to the restaurant. “Saw you sitting out here like some creepy little perv.”

  Adam laughed, a hideous blast like an air horn, and nudged Patrick in the ribs. Patrick shot him a hard look, and Adam went quiet again.

  Three girls waited in the parking lot slightly behind the boys. Nolan recognized Megan and Natasha immediately, junior girls who were both on the track team with Patrick and who had probably both slept with him at least once, maybe more, depending on which rumor you believed. But it took him a second, and a few blinks, to realize that the other girl was Lucy. She was sandwiched between Megan and Natasha and wearing jean shorts that barely covered her butt and a shirt that looked more like a bandana. The older girls passed a cigarette, paying very little attention to Nolan, but Lucy stared bug-eyed, her cheeks flaming red. He stared back, whatever words he should be saying to her now dried up on his tongue.