Everything We Lost

by Valerie Geary

  He could tell from the expression on his father’s face that he wasn’t explaining himself very well, that Robert did not believe him. Nolan needed something more than his inadequate words. He swung his gaze up to the sky, but it was hidden again by that thick layer of branches. Pinching the sleeping bag at his throat, so it stayed wrapped around his body, Nolan ducked away from his father and the woman, abandoning the fire’s warmth for the cold, dark road.

  Rocks and twigs stuck his skin, but the sting wasn’t enough to slow him down. Robert barreled after him, lantern swinging at his side, shouting something about hypothermia, shouting for him to stop, but Nolan’s sole focus was on getting to the meadow where everything would be made clear. There would be proof. Scorch marks in the grass. Broken limbs. Blown-over trees. Maybe the saucer itself would still be there, hovering above the clearing. He ran the whole way, retracing his tracks to the center of the meadow where he spun a slow circle, searching for evidence.

  Robert appeared at his side, short of breath. A few minutes later the woman appeared too. The lantern threw blue light across the grass and that was the only reason Nolan saw them: his down jacket, his shirt, his pants, his socks and shoes. Everything he’d been wearing earlier, now stretched out in the exact spot where he’d been lying, looking at the stars. Everything perfectly placed as though something, or someone, had come and carefully lifted him out of his clothes. There might have been a body lying there, but for the flatness, the lack of a head, of limbs and breath.

  Nolan ran to the empty clothes. “Look! This! My clothes are proof!”

  Robert shone the lantern over them, looking for something he must not have found because his jaw tensed and he lifted the light to Nolan, inspecting him instead.

  “Do you see?” Nolan demanded. “Do you understand? I was here. I was lying right here. Just like this. On my back.” And then the light growing bright and brighter. “They came. They came for me. They took me away. They took me and left my clothes.”

  He knew he sounded crazy, his words tripping too fast from his tongue, but he couldn’t seem to slow down. This was too important, too much of a miracle. He took a breath and, in the pause, tried to piece together an explanation of how abductions worked and the signs to look for. Blackouts, waking up naked in another location, seeing lights beforehand, a scar. He dropped the sleeping bag and felt his fingers over his skin, but found no unusual marks, nothing that hadn’t been there before.

  “Bobby, he’s going to catch his death.” The woman twittered like a baby bird.

  Robert lunged, snatching the sleeping bag off the grass and throwing it over Nolan’s shoulders again. “Goddamn it, Nolan. Enough.”

  “Did you hear Them?” He spun to look at the woman and then back to his father. “You must have heard Them. You weren’t very far away.” No more than a half mile. This level of activity would not have gone unnoticed.

  “Nolan . . .” There was a wariness to his father’s tone.

  “What time is it? How long was I gone?” Nolan bent to inspect his clothes. He turned them over, looking for any kind of singe marks or tears, but they were unscathed. He pressed his face into the clothes and inhaled deeply. They smelled like pine dew and early morning and, there! He shoved the clothes at his father. “Smell that? It’s musty, like damp cardboard. That’s Them. That’s the Visitors.”

  Robert reared back from the fabric bundle. “Are you on drugs right now?”

  Nolan clutched his clothes to his chest and began to walk in ever-widening circles. He searched the ground for anything out of place, disheveled grass, burn marks, a landing strip.

  “Stop this, Nolan. Look at me!” Robert grabbed his arm and shook him. He held the lantern up to his face, the light beaming straight into Nolan’s eyes.

  Nolan winced and looked away.

  “What did you take?” Robert demanded. “Ecstasy? Is that it? PCP? What is it? What are you on?”

  “Let me go.” Nolan struggled against him. “Nothing. I didn’t take anything. Let go.”

  He wrenched from his father’s grasp and stumbled backward, falling into the grass where he lay for a moment, dazed, the sleeping bag slipping off his shoulders again, exposing his naked body to the cool night air. There was a dampness on his upper lip. He touched his finger to it and found something sticky dripping from his nose. When he looked at his finger again, it was dark with blood.

  “Jesus.”

  “Oh God. Bobby. Do something.” The woman squatted in the grass and held out a handkerchief that she seemed to have pulled from nowhere. “I think he’s hurt. We should get help. Call 911.”

  “He’s fine,” Robert said. “He’s high.”

  “I’m not.” Nolan sat up. He pulled the sleeping bag tight around him and pinched the handkerchief to his nose.

  “Well, let’s drive him to the hospital at least,” the woman insisted. “Get him checked out.”

  “I said, he’s fine.” Robert grabbed the woman’s arm and jerked her to her feet again.

  “You’re hurting me, Bobby.”

  “Go home, Melissa.”

  That’s right, Nolan remembered now. Melissa. That was the fire-haired woman’s name. Melissa who was afraid of bears.

  “But—”

  “Go home.”

  “You know I don’t like driving in the dark. And my stuff’s already unpacked.”

  “Well, repack it then. Trip’s over.”

  “What about you?” She looked at Nolan. “What about him?”

  “He’s none of your concern, all right?” Robert gave Melissa a little shove in the direction of the road. “Just go.”

  She sniffled and stumbled her way through the grass, cursing under her breath. When she was out of sight, Robert returned his attention to Nolan. He set the lantern in the grass and extended his hand.

  Nolan stared at it, a pale starfish in the dark, then he grabbed hold and allowed himself to be lifted to his feet. He dressed slowly, struggling under the weight of exhaustion. What had They done to him? Why couldn’t he remember? He wanted to, he tried, but the space of time between seeing that light and waking up in the creek stayed blank.

  Nolan and Robert walked back to the campsite in silence. When they got there, Melissa was gone. Nolan started to unzip his tent, but Robert shook his head and pushed him toward the red dome, which smelled like sex and perfume inside, and Nolan backed away from it, but his father insisted. “I’m not letting you out of my sight again.” Nolan relented, crawling into the red tent and zipping his sleeping bag closed around him. Robert turned off the lantern and a few seconds later, his breathing settled into the rhythm of deep sleep.

  But Nolan couldn’t sleep, his mind restless with questions, his body still shivering. Again he worked his hands over himself, feeling for bruises, tender places, notches in his skin, anything that hadn’t been there before, but again he found nothing out of the ordinary. Why had They taken him? he wondered. Why now? Tonight of all nights. Maybe They were trying to warn him. But about what? Maybe They’d shown him something about Celeste, or given him a glimpse of the future, or the chemical formula for eternal life. If They had shown him something, he didn’t remember it now. Maybe the why didn’t matter, though, neither what They’d done or said. Maybe the thing that mattered was that he’d been taken. Finally, a universe so long hidden from him brought to light. In the blink of an eye, he had glimpsed the infinite and all he was capable of being and knowing and experiencing. He had crossed a threshold, moving from unknown to known, invisible to visible, separate to connected. A new reality revealed, and he was transcending, transformed, part of something miraculous now. They all were—his father, his mother, Lucy, Patrick, Wyatt, Celeste, even Melissa, every single person on this planet—whether they believed or not, they were all part of this miracle unfolding.

  Nolan was still awake when morning slipped through the trees and washed the dome of the tent from black to red, when the first bird sang, when his father finally began to stir. The day after, and he was
surprised at how normal he felt. On the surface, everything was the same as before, but at some subatomic level, he knew, everything was different.

  After breakfast, Robert took down both tents, even though the plan had been to stay all day and another night. He gestured to Nolan’s rolled-up sleeping bag and backpack heaped in a pile in the dirt. “Get your stuff. I’m taking you home.”

  Sandra wasn’t happy to see them back early. She crossed her arms over her chest and glowered at them both. “Did something happen? Are you sick?” She reached with the back of her hand to feel Nolan’s forehead.

  He sidestepped away from her—“I’m fine”—and tossed his gear on the floor next to the couch. Then he flopped down, slouching deep into the cushions.

  “Can we talk?” Robert asked Sandra, tipping his chin in the direction of the kitchen door. “Alone?”

  “I’m about to leave for work.” Her shift didn’t start for another six hours; she wasn’t even wearing her scrubs. “Why don’t you call me tomorrow or something?”

  “This is important, Sandy.”

  The nickname softened her. She led Robert through to the kitchen. They spoke in hushed voices, but Nolan could hear every word and he wondered if this was the gift the extraterrestrials had given him, this power of understanding.

  “How long has he been like this?” Robert asked.

  “Like what?”

  “He went nuts up there,” said Robert. “He was talking about the stars moving. About aliens taking him up in the air. He took off all his clothes—”

  “He what?” Sandra interrupted.

  “I woke up in the middle of the night and found him buck-naked in the creek, like he was trying to drown himself or something.”

  “Trying to drown himself?” Sandra sighed. “I doubt that very much.”

  “You weren’t there, Sandy,” Robert insisted. “You didn’t see him. The way he was acting. The things he said. How he looked at me.” He paused before continuing, “You’re not seriously going to stand there and tell me you haven’t noticed how strange his behavior has been lately. Isn’t that the whole reason you asked me to take him on this stupid camping trip in the first place?”

  “You’re with him for less than twenty-four hours and suddenly you’re an expert on our son’s behavior?” Her words clipped short. “And where were you when all this was going on anyway? What were you doing that you didn’t notice until after all his clothes were off?”

  “Sandy, he’s acting out. Probably because you’re gone all the time—”

  “Don’t ‘Sandy’ me, Robert. And don’t you dare start in on some lecture about my parenting skills. You don’t get to do that. Not anymore.”

  Nolan pressed even deeper into the cushions and looked out the sliding glass door. A flock of starlings bobbed in the grass beneath a tree. He wished he was one of them. Not a care in the world, answering to no one. Movement in the hallway caught his attention. Lucy leaned against the wall, listening from the shadows.

  “How long have you been standing there?” Nolan asked her.

  “Long enough.” She came and sat next to him. “So you’re running naked through the woods now?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “I guess that’s one way to get attention.”

  “I’m not trying to get attention,” he mumbled.

  Her eyebrows arched. “Then what the hell are you doing?”

  “Don’t say hell.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  They both fell silent again, listening to their parents fight.

  “What is going on around here, Sandra?” Robert demanded. “I mean, really, do I need to be worried? First the pills. And now this claiming to be abducted bullshit. It’s like Toby all over again.”

  “Don’t,” Sandra said. “Don’t even. He’s not Toby. He’s just tired, that’s all. Stressed out from school and work. Maybe he should cut back his hours at the store, or quit, or . . . I don’t know. He’s going through some stuff right now, the way all teenagers do, that’s it. He’s nothing like your brother. He’s nothing like that.”

  Nolan squeezed his hands together in his lap.

  “Who’s Toby?” Lucy whispered.

  Nolan shook his head, not knowing how to best explain what he didn’t quite understand himself. Lucy was barely five when Uncle Toby left, too young to remember how he used to come over for dinner on Sundays, and too young to remember the stories he told about silver disks rising out of lakes, spiraling multicolored lights, Martian canals, and alien astronauts. Nolan remembered, though. He’d sit enthralled and wide-eyed, until halfway through a story, he would catch Uncle Toby winking at Robert and Sandra. Nolan was never sure what the wink meant, whether it was to indicate the stories were jokes and all in good fun, or that they were real and now he was in on the secret too.

  Shortly after Nolan’s seventh birthday, Uncle Toby started skipping Sunday dinners, and the times he did show up, his eyes darted, his hands shook, and he insisted that all the curtains be drawn and the doors locked. His stories changed, too, turning nightmarish and frantic. He said little gray beings with buggy black eyes were coming into his room while he slept and doing experiments on him, sticking things up his nose and into his privates. They talked to him through the lights.

  He lost his job flying crop dusters. His longtime girlfriend broke up with him. The very last time Uncle Toby came to dinner he tried to cut a tracking device out of his neck with a kitchen knife. Nolan remembered the blood, remembered crying, hiding in the corner, and Robert shouting, grabbing his brother by the shoulders, shaking him hard. Sandra had dragged Lucy and Nolan into her bedroom, locked the door, and called 911.

  After that, Uncle Toby didn’t come around anymore, and anytime Nolan asked, his parents brushed away his questions. Uncle Toby was getting the help he needed, they said, and left it at that. For a while, Nolan thought his uncle was dead. Then on his tenth birthday, he’d received the alien books along with the strange note. Not dead then, just hiding in Alaska from the very same beings Nolan found fascinating, not fearful. Or maybe They weren’t the same. The Encounters group had discussed before the probability of multiple and varying species of extraterrestrial visitors to planet Earth. Who’s to say Uncle Toby hadn’t encountered a hostile species, while Nolan was in contact with a more affable kind?

  “You should have called me a long time ago.” Robert’s voice from the kitchen grew steadily louder. “You should have never let it get this bad.”

  Sandra forced a loud, sharp laugh. “Excuse me? I should have never let it get this bad? And where have you been all this time? Six years you want nothing to do with him. Six years acting like he doesn’t even exist and now you come sweeping in here on your white steed, all knight in shining armor, shouting about what I’m doing wrong, how badly I fucked up. I don’t think so. I don’t fucking think so, Robert.”

  “You should have told me what was going on,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

  Her voice soft again, defeated. “You never asked.”

  There was a long crush of silence. Lucy curled herself into a ball, knees to chest, chin on knees, shoulders round. Nolan plucked at a thread coming loose from the arm of the couch. He wondered if he should apologize, but he didn’t know to whom or for what. He’d done nothing wrong. It wasn’t his fault the whole world was blind and deaf to what was really going on.

  “I think I should take him in to talk to someone,” Sandra said. “A psychiatrist or something. They might be able to help.”

  “The last thing we need is some overpaid quack picking through our lives, filling our son’s head with even more bullshit, blaming all this on us, how we were mean to him when he was a baby, how he didn’t get enough love. No, absolutely not.”

  “What do you suggest then, Robert?” Her voice thick with sarcasm. “Please, if you have a better idea, I’d love to hear it.”

  “He needs a swift kick in the ass, if you ask me.”

  “Excuse me?”

&
nbsp; “You’re too soft on him, Sandra. You need to lay down some rules, draw a line in the sand when it comes to this alien bullshit, and when he crosses it, don’t give him any slack. Punish him.”

  The kitchen went quiet for a moment, then Sandra spoke again, her voice getting louder as she moved toward the door. “I think it’s time for you to go now, Robert.”

  When she entered the living room, she seemed startled to see Nolan still sitting on the couch, with Lucy beside him now. Robert, trailing behind her, scowled at both of his children like they were bugs on his shoe, something to be scraped off and flicked away. Nolan glowered back at him. Robert’s mouth opened like he was about to speak, but then he shook his head, his breath releasing in a sigh, abandoning whatever meaningless advice he’d wanted to impart.

  He walked out of the house, paused on the front porch, and turned toward Sandra to say one final thing. “If you can’t handle this, call me and I will.”

  She shut the door on him, then leaned against it, pressing her eyes shut and taking several deep breaths. When she turned toward Nolan and Lucy again, her lips were stretched tight across her teeth, her nostrils flared. She spoke to Lucy first. “I need to talk to your brother.”

  Lucy shrugged. “Okay.” But she didn’t move from the couch.

  Sandra’s nostrils flared wider. “Go wait in your room, please.”

  Lucy made a big deal out of unfolding herself from the couch, huffing and rolling her eyes, puffing out her cheeks, flinging her hands up, but eventually she was on her feet, stomping down the hallway to her bedroom. The door slammed shut. The picture frames hanging in the hallway rattled.

  Sandra pinched the bridge of her nose and then smiled stiffly at Nolan. “You want some hot chocolate?” She moved toward the kitchen before he could answer. “I’ll make us some hot chocolate.”

  Several minutes later, Sandra returned to the living room carrying two steaming mugs. She gave one to Nolan and then sat down in the armchair across from the couch where she could look at him directly without having to angle her head.

  Nolan lifted the mug and breathed in the chocolate steam, but didn’t drink. His stomach was still upset from the night before, and he didn’t think he’d be able to keep down something so sweet. Sandra raised her cup to her lips and peered at him over the blue porcelain rim. She sipped slowly and then lowered the cup, still watching him, but saying nothing. He shifted beneath her gaze, not wanting to be the one to speak first, but after several stretched-out, silent minutes he couldn’t take it anymore.