by Brian Yansky
“Right. I knew it. Comic books, graphic novels, fantasy, and sci-fi. That’s you.”
“So? What’s your point?”
“Shit, man, you’re giving me a hard time about reality TV. Look at yourself. Look at what you watched. You talk about something not being real.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “Doesn’t seem so far off now.”
Michael looks over at a Handler. “They were still lame shows.”
Then he adds, Lame like you.
You’re just bitter about your lame defense of reality shows.
Only then do I realize that he didn’t actually say “Lame like you” out loud. And I’ve answered without speaking, just by thinking. We both stare at each other.
We’re like them.
“No, we aren’t,” he says. Then he shouts it. “We aren’t like them!”
He walks away.
I make friends with this white-haired woman named Betty who is the oldest person here. She used to be a college history teacher in Michigan. She tells me she’s been keeping track of the days since the aliens came. The Sans have destroyed all calendars and clocks and watches because our way of breaking up time irritates them. Also, of course, they consider watches and clocks machines.
Betty may be the only one who knows what day it is.
I sit with her at lunch. I say, “What day is it, Betty?” I care because it’s something from our world. More and more of our world disappears every day.
She looks like she may not remember me, but then she smiles. “It’s my husband’s birthday,” she says.
“Your husband was sent somewhere else?” I say.
“Bad heart,” she says. “We were together when they invaded. He fell asleep with the others. The big sleep as that noir writer called it.”
I don’t know what she’s talking about but the memory of her husband dying twists up her face and I think she’s about to cry.
“What day is it, Betty?” I say again.
She smiles a broken smile. “And tomorrow is the first day of spring.”
Michael sits next to me just as Betty says this. “What did you say?”
“Tomorrow is officially spring in Texas,” she says again. “It feels the way summer in Michigan feels, but here it’s only spring.”
“Can’t be.”
“I’m quite sure,” she says. “I’ve been very meticulous. We historians like to keep our dates straight.”
“Spring,” Michael says, looking down at his tray.
“I would like to give you a happy spring present, Jesse,” Betty says. “You remind me of my son when he was your age. Look for me tomorrow.”
She gets up.
“You haven’t eaten,” I say.
“I don’t eat their food.”
She’s thin, and her movements are stiff and unnatural. I worry because the aliens won’t keep anyone alive who can’t be of use to them. “What do you eat, then?”
“Only what they don’t give me.”
“Can I eat it?” Michael says.
She pushes her tray toward him and walks away.
“Kind of a strange old lady,” Michael says, “but I think I might start eating with her every day.”
I see Lauren putting her tray up on the cart near the kitchen and then walking toward the library. I get up just as Lindsey sits down.
“Don’t leave on my account,” she says.
“I’m not. I just need to tell Lauren something. Michael can tell you.”
“Nothing to tell,” Michael says.
“What?” Lindsey says.
“There is something to tell.”
“The aliens just left one of the lines open or something. Why can’t you let it alone, Jesse?”
“Because it means something,” I say, walking away.
For some reason I think of my dad telling me the story of how he once nearly died in a desert. He was dying of thirst, and he almost gave up. He wanted to. Something kept him going. One foot in front of the other.
“If I’d given up, I never would have met your mother, love of my life, or had you for a son or seen a Texas spring or done a million other things. You don’t know what you might miss if you don’t make it to the next day. It could be something pretty wonderful. So sometimes, no matter how bad it is, you have to just put one foot in front of the other and hope you make it to a better place.”
That’s what I’m trying to do now. It’s true, I don’t know if it really means anything, but I want to believe it does. I want to believe that there’s a way out of here, just like there was a way out of the desert for my dad.
I find Lauren reading and I sit down beside her on a big leather sofa. Something about her looks particularly pretty. I can’t say what it is exactly, but I feel it.
“What?” she says. “Do I have something on my face?”
I realize I’m staring. I must look ridiculous. “No. Nothing.”
She rubs her face anyway. “Did I get it?”
“You got it,” I say. What else can I say at that point?
“Thank you.”
Lindsey and Michael come in. I guess Lindsey didn’t eat much of her lunch, or maybe she pushed her plate too close to Michael and he inhaled it. They sit down on the sofa across from Lauren and me.
“Did he tell you?” Lindsey says, and doesn’t wait for an answer. “They read each other’s minds.”
“I was about to tell her,” I say.
“What do you mean?” Lauren says.
“It was just a few sentences,” Michael says.
“Whatever,” Lindsey says. “They did it. Like the aliens.”
Lauren looks at me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was just about to.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Lauren says. “I mean, you did something only they can do.”
“I don’t know,” I say, “but I think it’s good.”
“It’s bull,” Michael says. “We’re not like them.”
“I think it’s good,” Lindsey says. “I’ve thought I’ve heard things sometimes. Whispers, kind of. I thought maybe I was, you know, just hearing stuff that wasn’t there. But maybe it was there.”
“We’re getting stronger,” I say.
“You don’t know that,” Michael says.
“They aren’t as strong as they think they are, and we’re stronger than they think we are. They aren’t invincible.”
“Okay,” Lauren says. “Maybe not. So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying we have a chance to escape. We need to start thinking like prisoners who can escape. We don’t have to just accept we’re going to be slaves the rest of our lives. We have a choice.”
“Right,” Michael says. “We can be dead. What a choice.”
“I’m afraid he’s right,” Lauren says. “They conquered the world in ten seconds. We’re just four people.”
“But we aren’t the same as we were,” I say.
Everyone is silent. I can feel them considering this. Is it possible? What does it mean?
The Handler on duty, Anchise, interrupts our conversation and orders us back to work.
“I think your biological clock is off, Anchise,” I say. “We still have five or ten minutes.”
Lauren foolishly agrees with me.
Anchise picks us both up and shoves us roughly toward the door. Not physically. He does it with his mind. I can hear him thinking how nice it would be to turn us off and be done with it.
Are you reading me? he thinks, stopping, holding me where I am. It’s like he’s pinching my arms with his fingers. Among all the big-eyed freaks, his eyes are the most frightening; something about them makes me think of a lake full of snakes. His mind closes. It’s like I was looking through a window and now it’s a wall. I feel him in me, and it’s all I can do to hide what I saw under another thought. It’s like I’ve thrown a blanket over it.
He frowns. I can tell he thinks he must have been wrong. I can tell he thinks it’s impossible for a human to read
him. He lets me go.
Wrong again. Another of the all-powerful Sanginians is wrong. We are stronger. There’s a power in me that the aliens can’t believe I have. It’s come alive because of them, but it feels like something that was there all along. As I go back to work, I can hear my father say, “That’s your advantage, Grasshopper.”
The next morning is cool, the fog so thick it’s difficult to see. Lauren and I get out to the pool early for morning assignments. No one else is out there yet. We do this most mornings.
“You ever wish you could go back and do it again?” Lauren says.
“Do what?”
“Everything.”
“Maybe sometimes. I guess I wish I’d paid more attention.”
“You do pay attention. Most boys don’t pay attention at all, but you do.”
I allow her to criticize my gender without defense because she’s made me an exception. Still, I have to set the record straight. “Thank you, Ms. DeVille, but I missed a lot.”
A female Handler comes out. Then three girls. A boy. They start to line up.
“What would you change?” I ask.
“I would take more time just to be, I think. I was always doing something. Save the whales. Working at the animal shelter or Habitat for Humanity. Class president, all that school stuff. Volleyball. Big Sister. I was doing something every minute of every day. I just never was, you know, me. I don’t even know who me really was.”
More people come out the door. By then there are enough that the Handler orders us to make a line.
“There would have been time,” I say.
“What?”
“If they hadn’t come. There would have been time.”
We’re forced into the line then, pulled by the Handler. What I wanted to say was there would have been time for us to grow up.
Insomnia. I toss. I turn. Everyone else is asleep.
I need to see Catlin, but I can only see her when I dream, and I can’t dream if I can’t sleep.
And I can’t.
Catlin has information. I don’t know how, but she does. I need her information. I need to know more.
I try counting sheepdogs. My dog, Merlin, was a sheepdog, and I count them jumping a fence. I’m over five hundred before I finally slip off.
“It’s about time,” she says, sitting up in bed. She yawns and stretches.
“I couldn’t get to sleep,” I say.
“Have you figured out how to get me out of here?”
“Not yet.”
She nods as if this is the answer she expects. I go over to her bed.
“I need your help,” I say.
“When I was a little girl, I used to have flying dreams. I loved those dreams. I don’t suppose you can fly in your dreams.”
“I haven’t tried.”
Catlin shakes her head. “I think you’d drop like a rock. No, I don’t think you can fly me out of here.”
“You said we have to escape. How do we get out of this house?”
She laughs. “You could just walk out the front door.”
“Could we?”
“Of course not. There are probably traps all around. You’d be dead in about two seconds.”
“How do we get past the traps?”
“See, that’s why you need me. I’ll give you a chance. But you’re going to have to get me out of here.”
“Maybe I should just dream my way into Lord Vert’s and get the key.”
“A key won’t help. Anyway, I think you’d get caught. He’d hear you. Something about our dreaming confuses them. You fooled him once, but you won’t fool him again. You have a great talent but he’s strong. He’s really strong.”
“What do you mean by talent?”
“Wouldn’t you call it a talent?” she says quickly, but I feel like she’s hiding something.
“I guess.”
“Lord Vertenomous is worried. The rebels killed a patrol. He feels like the slaves might not be as weak as he thought. He keeps convincing himself that he must be wrong, but he’s worried. I can feel that much.”
“We aren’t as weak,” I say. “We can sometimes hear each other. I heard my friend Michael. I think maybe others are hearing more, too. We’re different.”
“Different how?”
“The static is gone when they talk to us. I feel things people are thinking, or emotions sometimes.”
“So you’re changing,” she says.
“I guess.”
“It will get stronger,” she says. “You can speed up the process by trying to improve your skills.”
“I’m not sure,” I say.
But this isn’t true. I know how to improve skills. I’ve done it all my life in martial arts.
“You want to get out of here alive?”
“Of course.”
“You’ve got to practice hearing. Your friend, too.”
“Do you think we can get out of here?”
“I don’t know, but I know we won’t have a chance unless we’re as strong as we can be.”
“How do you know all this?”
“You’d better go now. It’s time. He’ll be here soon.”
Catlin looks down when she says this, embarrassed.
“I’ll come back for you,” I say.
“I’d like to believe that.”
“We’re friends.” I don’t know if this is true, but saying it makes it more true to me.
“All right,” she says, and she puts out her hand. “You get me out. I’ll get you out. Friends.”
We shake hands.
“You’ve got to go now.”
I think of my bedroom, and I’m back in it. Everyone is still asleep, including me. I will myself to wake because I’m frightened of seeing myself sleep. It’s like I’m dead. But as soon as I try to wake, I do. I’m back in my body, looking around, listening to Michael snore.
My breathing is short and sharp. My throat is dry.
I guess people have been dreaming for thousands and thousands of years. I imagine people have had every kind of dream possible in that time. But has anyone ever dreamed like me? Have they crossed over into the waking world and talked to someone?
No one answers these questions, of course. Sometimes you ask questions even when you know no one will answer. I imagine that’s been going on for thousands of years, too.
I fall asleep after a little while. I have another dream, but this isn’t one I travel in. It’s a dream of the past, of my parents and me in Taos, New Mexico. We’re walking around the plaza. We’re laughing. Tourists are going in and out of shops, people talking, a couple taking bites of ice cream from each other’s cones. Then it’s different. Something is very wrong. I look around and no one is there, not even my parents; the whole plaza is deserted. The stores are all empty, too, and they look like they’ve been deserted for a long time. It feels like the town has been abandoned.
I hear something. I can’t see them but I hear whispers, and the whispers feel like someone calling me. Then all at once the calling stops. Everything becomes silent and still, and something powerful and angry is in the square with me, something terrible.
It pulls at me from all directions. It’s like it’s pulling me apart. I wake up with my heart racing.
Betty gets herself killed today.
She hands me something at lunch. She puts her hands over mine for a second and she whispers, “Happy spring, Jesse.”
“Come and sit with me,” I say.
“I can’t,” she says.
“Well,” I say, “thanks for the gift.”
“My pleasure. You know how old I am?”
“You look young.”
“Such a liar,” she says, “but the good kind of liar. I’m sixty-one. I doubt there are many left who are sixty-one.”
“You are.”
“I am. I’m too old to see a future, Jesse.”
I start to tell her what my dad told me, but she holds up her hand. “Keep track of the days. It’s important. If there’s a future,
it will be important.”
She walks away. I look at what she’s given me: pages. At first I hardly recognize it: the little squares with numbers and days of the week. She’s made a calendar. It begins with the date of the invasion. There are empty pages for the next year and a pencil to fill them in with. It’s a funny thing, but seeing the calendar makes me hopeful. It’s like seeing it makes me think there will be days in the future.
I look up as Betty approaches Anchise, and I know what she’s going to do before she does it.
“No, Betty,” I whisper.
She slaps Anchise so hard I can hear the surprise in Anchise’s mind. I can hear her laughing even though I don’t think she’s laughing out loud. She looks back at me.
Anchise is going to kill her, turn her off like all the others, but something unbelievable happens. She stops him. It’s not for long, just a second maybe, but long enough that I see it. She wants me to see it. This is part of my gift.
Then Anchise, the anger like fire in him, turns her off. He makes her scream in pain before she dies, but she doesn’t stop looking him right in the eye. This makes him even more angry. I feel her leave. I can actually feel her move out of her body. Where does she go?
I feel sorrow defeat me. It’s like it covers me. I get weak everywhere. I want to fall off my chair and curl up on the floor and just lie there. I can’t stand this losing anymore. I can’t.
But I do, and when I do, I get mad. “Why did you have to do that, Betty?” I want to shout at her corpse. I want to scream at it. “You are stupid! You are a coward! You make me sick! I hate you!” I want to say all these things to her.
Anchise doesn’t say he’s sorry. He turns and walks away, and I’m sure if anyone makes a noise, he will kill them, too. He can’t control himself. She made him unable to control himself.
I put her calendar in my pocket, and my anger weakens and then disappears entirely.
“I’m sorry, Betty,” I whisper.
She stopped Anchise. It was only for a second and she had to die to do it, but she stopped him. Betty wanted me to see that it could be done. She wanted me to see that they aren’t invincible.
The next day, Michael and I are painting in the dorms again. Another day or two and we’ll be done. The Handler supervising the crew wants us to think he’s nearby, but I know better. I’ve improved at recognizing the phantoms they create, and I know that what’s in the room with us isn’t real.
