Celeste shifted uncomfortably. “You’re hurting me.”
He loosened his grip. “I can’t believe it. How did you . . . ? What . . . ?” He was having trouble getting the words to come out right.
“I’ve been out here for an hour trying to decide whether or not to knock on your door,” she said.
“An hour?” He glanced at the street, seeing all the deep pockets of black, all the places a person could hide.
“I didn’t want to wake you.” She pressed her lips together and took a breath before continuing. “I made it all the way to the Lancaster bus station before I turned around and hitched back here. I thought I could just go, but I can’t. Not with how we left things before. I don’t want that to be our ending. I can’t go until I know you’re okay. I needed to see if you were okay.” She glanced at his pickup, at the backpack in the bed, the keys in his hand. “Are you going somewhere?”
He leaned close, running his fingers over her face, her arms, checking for cuts and bruises. “I was coming to save you.”
“Nolan?” She touched his arm. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”
He rubbed his forehead, trying to push away the clouded thoughts, the confusion taking hold. “How did you get away? Did they change their minds? Let you go?”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
“The men who kidnapped you,” he said. “They put you in a van. The government. They took you away. You were crying. You were, you were . . .”
“Nolan . . .” She shook her head. Her fingers were still pressed to his arm, like she was trying to draw him back from some far-off place. She looked over his shoulder at the house. “I think maybe we should go inside. I’ll wait with you, make some tea. Do you want me to call someone? Your mom? Is Lucy home?”
Something wasn’t right. He felt it prickling against the surface of his skin. His toes and fingertips were going numb. He couldn’t catch his breath. He leaned against the hood, the world spinning too fast under his feet. He tried to fit the pieces together, but it all kept slipping his grasp.
Without looking up, he said, “That wasn’t you on the phone just now?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I already told you, I’ve been pacing for like an hour trying to decide whether to come up and knock on the door or not.”
He lifted his eyes to hers and knew she was telling the truth.
“Nolan, please, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?” She took his hand. “I didn’t mean to surprise you like this, it’s just I was thinking about us and how we clicked so perfectly and the ways you were there for me when no one else was, and how maybe now it’s my turn to be there for you. I shouldn’t have run, but I was afraid. I didn’t know if I could handle—”
“Shut up.” He jerked his hand from hers.
“Nolan, I’m sorry. But I’m here now and—”
“Shut up!” He pressed his fingers to his temples again. “Just shut up and let me think for a second.”
He’d made a mistake, that much was clear. He’d wanted it to be Celeste on the phone and so it was Celeste’s voice he heard. He’d been so caught up thinking about her, so concerned about her well-being, that he’d never asked for proof, and going over the conversation again, he realized the truth with growing horror. He stared over his shoulder at the dark and empty house, sick with shame over his carelessness and inattention. It wasn’t Celeste on the phone. The men hadn’t known where she was. This whole time, she’d been safe in Lancaster, on her way to someplace else, somewhere she couldn’t be found, but she’d come back for him, and he wished she hadn’t, wished she’d never walked out of that alley with her stupid map and starlight eyes, wished he’d never met her. Then he wouldn’t be in this mess. None of them would.
“Get in the truck.” He grabbed Celeste and dragged her to the passenger side.
“What are you doing? Let me go.” She fought against him, slapping at his chest and shoulders, trying to wrench from his grasp. “Nolan, stop! Tell me what’s going on!”
“I’m sorry, Celeste. I’m sorry. It’s Lucy. They have Lucy.”
Her voice on the phone so small and far away and he should have known it was her. If he’d been paying any attention at all, if he hadn’t been so caught up in his own ego, thinking he was part of some Grand Destiny, that the stars had plans for him. The stars were indifferent. Destiny was a winding path built on your own small choices.
“Who has Lucy?” Celeste continued to struggle. “Should we call the police?”
“Just get in the truck, Celeste.”
But she wouldn’t. She beat her fist against him until he twisted her arm behind her back. She froze. Her shouts turned to whimpers.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, pressing his mouth close to her ear. “But they’ve given me no other choice, do you understand?”
Celeste nodded and climbed in. He shut the door and climbed in on the driver’s side. He felt her staring at him, felt her trembling. He stuck the keys in the ignition and revved the engine.
“Nolan, please.”
He wanted to reassure her, but there was nothing to say. He had turned betrayer, and it didn’t matter what she said now or how many tears she cried, he wouldn’t change his mind. He backed out of the driveway, tires squealing, and tore off toward the highway.
“Buckle your seat belt,” he said.
“Where are we going?” Celeste whispered. “Why are you doing this? Nolan, talk to me.”
She started to cry and apologize. For what he didn’t know. She’d done nothing wrong except be herself. She’d done nothing but be exceptional. He hoped that when the men in dark suits took her, they recognized her true worth. He hoped that, whatever they did, she wouldn’t be in pain for too long.
“I won’t call the police or anything,” she said. “Just stop the truck and let me out right here. Just let me go, Nolan, okay? I won’t tell anyone.”
He drove faster, blowing through stop signs and red lights when the intersections were clear. He’d been stupid, thinking Lucy was safe. The government wanted Celeste, and would use any means to get to her. He should have seen this coming.
Lightning split the sky to the east and Celeste flinched at the bright flash. Tears streaked her face and for a second he saw his own terror reflected there, his failures, his missteps, all the ways he’d let this go too far, all the ways he could have stopped it from ever happening. There were so many obvious signs, but he’d been blind to them. Worse, for a second, he thought maybe he had gotten it all wrong. There were no men in dark suits, no UFOs, no extraterrestrials, and Wyatt was right, Celeste was not his Star Being, but a normal human, and whatever that phone call had been, it was nothing, Lucy was fine and would be home soon and there was still time. He could turn around, retrace his steps back to the beginning, fix the mess he’d made. But then the cab descended into shadow again, and he remembered how scared Lucy sounded on the phone, the way she screamed. He thought about the men at Walgreens, how quickly they moved, with panther-like stealth. They were smarter than him, stronger, better prepared, and given the chance, they could take away everything and everyone he’d ever loved. He pressed down on the gas pedal, urging his pickup faster. Celeste let slip a single, damp sob, and then clamped her hand over her mouth. Maybe, if he had just a little more time, he could think of a way to save them both.
Storm clouds chased them, roiling and churning overhead, smothering the stars. Thunder cracked. Through the partially open windows came the peppery tang of sage, the scent of coming rain. Then and suddenly, the telescopes appeared on the horizon, rising ever taller, gleaming white giants, beckoning, showing him the way, guiding him through the dark.
21
When Lucy was eight and Nolan ten, they got a set of walkie-talkies for Christmas. They tore into the packaging and immediately took them outside, even though there were other presents waiting to be opened. Their mother shouted at them to bring their coats, but they ignored her. Nolan went to
the backyard, Lucy to the front.
“We’re on different planets.” Nolan’s voice crackled through the walkie-talkie speaker. “I’m on planet Magellan and you’re on planet Degas.”
Made-up planets with made-up names, planets that had yet to be discovered.
A light dusting of snow had fallen overnight. The driveway and street were white and shining. The whole outside world unfamiliar and new. The light, too, had changed. Everything etched in silver. Lucy shivered in the frozen grass, her breath rising in white ribbons. She had left Earth. She was the first girl—the first human—to set foot on this strange new planet where anything was possible.
Nolan’s voice crackled again as he began to describe the planet he was on. “Everything’s backwards. The sky is green. The grass is blue. The cats bark. The dogs meow.”
Lucy laughed, but she hadn’t pushed the walkie-talkie button, and Nolan didn’t hear her. She was adrift, floating through space, light-years away from him.
“What’s it like where you’re at, Asteroid Girl? Any signs of life?”
She pressed the button this time, but waited a few seconds before talking, letting the silence expand and fill her chest with want. Then she held the walkie-talkie to her mouth and whispered, “I’m all alone out here, Starman.”
She released the button. Static hissed and it seemed forever before there was a click and Nolan’s voice reached her. “I’m entering your coordinates into my navigation system. Hang tight, Asteroid Girl. I’m coming to get you.”
A few seconds later, he came around the corner of the house and chucked a pitiful snowball at her back. She squealed as a cold blast of ice spilled down her shirt, then bent and scooped up a handful of snow, but it was too soft and wouldn’t hold its shape. She threw it anyway, silver flakes spraying, twinkling on their descent back to Earth.
This is the illusion of time, and the heartbreak: that an event occurring over seventeen years ago can feel so much like yesterday, that a decade can pass within the span of a single breath, another year gone in the blink of an eye. Eleven years and three months missing and if anyone were to ask, Lucy would say she doesn’t think Nolan is coming back. No one asks.
She is enrolled at UC Berkeley now. Her father pays her tuition. He may not understand her sudden interest in stars and space and the complexities of the universe, but to him a planetary science degree is better than living out of her car, wiping down tables at a café, taking breakfast orders, chasing down her mother’s crazy fantasies. Better than mooching off him for the rest of her life. And this is something he can tell his friends over dinner—my daughter, the scientist—something he can say with pride.
She isn’t a scientist quite yet, but she’s getting there. Slowly. She’s spent most of the last year catching up on general education classes. Math and science, all the things she only half-paid attention to in high school. Most of the time she feels like she’s barely keeping up, but when grades come in, she gets Bs and As and this is good enough for a summer internship at the SETI Institute working with researchers at the Allen Telescope Array.
Most of the students in her classes are younger, fresh out of high school, and most have no idea what they want to do with the rest of their lives, let alone what they want their majors to be. But Lucy applied to Berkeley specifically for the astronomy program and a chance to work with Dr. Brandon Shipley, a leading researcher in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. She found his office on the first day of class and introduced herself. He asked her about her interest in SETI. “Why not some other field? Something a little less disappointing?”
She countered with a question of her own. “Do you believe there’s intelligent life out there somewhere trying to communicate with us?”
He thought about it a moment before answering, “I don’t think it matters whether I believe or not. There either is or there isn’t. We’ll either find them or we won’t. It’s the search that’s interesting. What about you, Lucy Durant? What do you believe?”
“We’re alone in the universe. Very much alone.” Then she added, “But if I’m wrong, if there is something else out there, someone else, I want to be the first to know.”
He shook her hand and invited her for a tour of the Hat Creek Observatory, which was where she learned about the internship and what her plans for the summer would be. By some stroke of luck, they approved her application, and now she’s here, working with some of the best planetary scientists and astrobiologists in the country, in the world even. She spends her days and nights alongside them, hunting the stars for a miracle.
A total of forty-two radio telescopes make up the array. They are much smaller than the ones in Owens Valley, but can be paired up, or all linked together to mimic a single giant telescope with a narrowly focused beam and better resolution. Every evening after dinner, Lucy goes for a run, circling the perimeter of campus and finishing in the very center of the array, where she waits for the stars to appear. The telescopes operate all day and will continue into the night. Unlike optical telescopes, they do not need the dark to see. They make a low humming sound as they make small adjustments, correcting for Earth’s continuous orbit.
Sometimes they point toward planets discovered by the Kepler space telescope. Other times they listen to “hab stars,” stellar systems less than 1,000 light-years from Earth that show characteristics of being suitable for life. Tonight they are tilted at a sharp angle observing a small region near the center of the Milky Way. At all times they collect data, looking for signals, specifically artificial ones that can only be coming from an extraterrestrial, intelligent life-form. So far nothing conclusive has been found, but the search continues, and now Lucy is an active part of it.
The day after meeting Patrick at the observatory, seeing the strange light, and remembering all she was going to remember about the night Nolan went missing, Lucy went to the sheriff’s office. Sandra came with her. Breaking her blood oath to Patrick and Adam, Lucy told Detective Williams about the phone call and what she’d seen at the observatory, what she’d heard, and how scared she’d been, how she’d fled, how the last time she saw Nolan, he was still very much alive, but now she couldn’t be sure. She turned over Celeste’s backpack, too. It belonged to the person Stuart Tomlinson had seen with Nolan, to a girl who went missing that night, too. A girl who was more than a girl in Nolan’s mind. Detective Williams was less than pleased it took Lucy this long to come forward, but he let her go with a warning in exchange for her full cooperation on the case. Whatever he wants, she’ll do it—wear a wire, identify a body, testify against a boy she once loved—whatever it takes to bring Nolan home. So far he hasn’t asked her to do anything, but when the day comes, if it ever does, she’ll be ready.
Patrick sent Lucy several emails shortly after she told Detective Williams the truth. He raged, he pleaded, he threatened, he wrote: I can’t believe you betrayed me like this. I thought you cared about me, I thought we were friends. I will make your life a living hell. She wrote back only once: If you didn’t do anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about. Now anything that comes from him she sends straight to the trash folder without reading.
She returned to Los Angeles before the fifteenth and her landlord grudgingly handed over the studio apartment keys where she lived out her six-month lease, working full-time for one of her father’s business associates and taking general education classes at the community college while applying for and then waiting to hear back from Berkeley. Once accepted, she packed her things again and moved north to be near the university. Even though she hasn’t had any migraines since leaving Bishop, she followed up with her doctor who took her blood and ordered an MRI and ultimately found nothing. On paper she is a healthy twenty-four-year-old woman and the only conclusion her doctor can offer is that the migraines were stress-induced.
She lies awake some nights thinking of all the things she would do differently if she could go back to the year Nolan went missing. She would have never gotten involved with Patrick in
the first place. And she would have paid more attention to Nolan before things got so out of control; listened, really listened; accepted him for who he was; she would have loved him more, loved him better; she would have tried to believe—maybe that would have been enough, but maybe not. Maybe nothing on this Earth could have kept him here.
She calls Detective Williams once a month to find out if there have been any new developments and to make sure her brother’s case stays a priority. She loves her mother, but she will never believe as Sandra does, and will continue to look for answers elsewhere. It would be easier to believe. In Sandra’s mind, Nolan is still alive and there is comfort in that, and Lucy has seen her fair share of high strangeness, events that—for the moment—defy rational explanation, but as long as other, more terrestrial, possibilities exist, she will forever remain a skeptic.
Tomorrow Lucy will see her mother and Wyatt for the first time in almost six months. The two of them are attending a UFO festival in San Francisco this weekend, but first want to come by and take a tour of the observatory. She’s nervous about seeing them both and about introducing them to her colleagues and peers. This is my mother, she imagines herself saying. This is my mother who believes.
She spent the winter break in Bishop trying to piece together a relationship with Sandra from the shards of what they had before, but nothing fit. Too much has gone missing. So they are starting over from scratch and discovering they have very little in common, but Sandra is trying and that means something to Lucy. They are both trying. They talk on the phone once or twice a week, about what Lucy’s studying in school and about sightings people have reported to Sandra and Wyatt. They circle around each other, careful with their still-tender scars, and they try. Sometimes Sandra emails Lucy articles that she or Wyatt has written and Lucy offers her feedback, ways this idea or that sentence could be improved, but even though it’s been suggested dozens of times, she refuses to have her name added to the byline. No one in the scientific community will take her seriously if they think she’s mixed up in ufology, and she wants to be taken seriously.
Everything We Lost Page 40
