Signal

by Cynthia DeFelice

  Josie lets out three sharp barks, and I grab her nose to hush her. Cam and I stare at each other, too frightened to speak. The footsteps come closer and we sit frozen, listening. My body remains paralyzed while a thousand thoughts rush through my brain, none of them good.

  A flashlight beam pans across the tips of the wheat stalks. A loud, angry voice calls out, “Damn it, girl, I know you’re out there, so just stand up where I can see you.”

  Cam grabs on to my arm so tight I feel her fingernails through my shirt. “Ray,” she says in a frightened whisper.

  There is silence for a minute except for Ray’s steps, coming closer. Ray is making no attempt at stealth or silence now, but moving fast.

  “I know where you are, so don’t think you can get away,” he says.

  “How can he know where we are?” I mutter desperately. “He can’t know.”

  He can’t know, and yet he is heading directly for us. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I sure don’t plan on being huddled helplessly on the ground when Ray’s flashlight beam finds us. I let go of Josie’s nose, and she leaps to her feet, barking.

  “Stay here,” I say to Cam. Without waiting for a reply, I hunch over and scoot several yards to the left of our sleeping bags before standing. Josie dashes toward the flashlight beam, then races back to me, barking wildly. She is caught for a second, fully illuminated. Then the beam falls on me and zeroes in on my face. I squint against the brightness and shield my eyes with my hand.

  “Where is she?” Ray says. He sounds almost bored as he says this, as if he knows I’m no match for him and he just wants to get it over with. As if I’m no more than the pesky bug he shooed away in the store. It makes me mad.

  “You leave her alone,” I say. My voice comes out high and shaky, and I stop to swallow. “Just leave her alone.” I sound ridiculous, I know. This makes me even madder.

  Ray chuckles, but it’s not a jolly sound. “Sure, kid. I just need to talk to her first. Where is she?”

  He has stopped walking, but continues to shine the light in my eyes. From behind its glare, he appears to me as a large, black, faceless form. He ignores Josie, who is circling him, barking like mad.

  “Look,” I say. “She’s going away for good, somewhere far away.”

  He gives a snorting laugh.

  “Just go and leave her alone.” I hate the pleading note in my voice, but I can’t help it.

  “Kid. Shut up. Where is she?” Ray repeats. He sounds tired and his voice is impatient now, flat and mean.

  I’m hoping that Cam is making an escape somehow, sneaking away while the flashlight is trained on me. If Cam runs off now, he won’t be able to catch her.

  I guess Ray is thinking the same thing because he turns the flashlight away from me and begins scanning the surrounding area. My eyes follow the light and—no! There’s Cam, standing right where I left her. She’s caught in the brutal beam, and turns her face away from it.

  Ray reaches her in seconds. Before I know what’s happening, he’s dropped the flashlight and grabbed her. He’s towering over her, holding her by both arms and shaking her.

  “You little brat, if it was up to me, I’d have taken off and left you. You want to run away, it’s fine with me. But your mother says I gotta find you, so she can kick your little smart-ass butt.”

  What is he talking about, “your mother”?

  “Leave her alone!” I scream, running toward them.

  Josie, hearing my cry and seeing Cam struggling with Ray, begins a frantic, high-pitched yelping. In the gleam from Ray’s fallen flashlight I can see her jumping and hurling herself at their grappling bodies. I come from behind and grab Ray’s arms. Cam dodges to the right, and Ray shakes me off and turns to face me.

  “You little …” he mutters. He’s so close I can smell his breath, and I realize he’s been drinking. Then his fist comes flying at me. I turn away quickly enough so that it misses my face, but it catches the side of my head in a shimmering burst of pain. I fall to the ground from the force and surprise of the blow, and the dark, hulking shadow that is Ray looms over me.

  Everything is happening in a dim, chaotic blur of noise and movement. Cam is screaming for Ray to stop, and Ray is panting, and Josie is growling and lunging like a wild thing. I’ve never seen her act this way, but we’ve never been in a situation like this before.

  There’s a dull thud, and a new wave of pain shoots through my side. I see Ray’s boot moving backward to launch another kick, and I roll over, cover my head with my hands, and tense my body for the impact.

  But it doesn’t come. Instead, I hear a sudden crack, followed by a weird groan, and then I feel a heavy weight fall on top of me. It takes me a few seconds to realize it’s Ray’s body. This sends an almost electric surge of revulsion through me, and as I struggle frantically to get him off me, he lets out a soft moan and becomes still.

  I crawl away from him and sit up, trying to figure out what’s happening. When it’s clear that Ray is not going to move, let alone launch another attack, I look up to see Cam standing a couple feet away.

  The four-foot board we used to make the signal hangs from her hands. Her expression is hard to read in the faint light from the fallen flashlight, but she appears stunned.

  Josie whines and licks my face, and I reach out a shaky hand to give her a pat. Cam remains frozen in place, staring at the board in her hands.

  I say her name, but she doesn’t answer.

  “You—you hit him?” This seems amazing, and not quite real.

  No answer. Then she whispers, “Is he …?”

  As if in answer to her unstated question, Ray stirs slightly and whimpers.

  I see relief flood across Cam’s face, and realize she was afraid she had killed him. The possibility of his death doesn’t bother me in the least, not right at this moment, anyway. He had, after all, been trying his darnedest to kill me. But it appears he’s only been knocked unconscious.

  Slowly, I stand up. I feel a little dizzy. There’s a wicked pain where Ray kicked me. But Ray is lying helpless on the ground and I’m alive. I can’t quite believe what has happened.

  Suddenly I become aware of a whooshing, whomping, droning noise coming from the sky. Cam and I both look up and listen. The sound grows louder.

  And there it is, coming out of the eastern sky, directly toward us, with red lights flashing and white lights piercing the still-dark sky.

  The spaceship!

  18

  THE NOISE GROWS LOUDER AND THE LIGHTS COME closer. A beam of light shines from the ship onto the field, moving methodically back and forth across the wheat.

  Cam begins jumping up and down and waving. “Here we are!” she calls. “Here we are!”

  In her excitement, she turns and hugs me. “Owen! They’re here! They’re really here!”

  I’m shouting, “I know! I know! I can’t believe it!” And I really can’t believe it. But there is the ship! I look down at Ray, who isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. But Cam is! The spaceship is here! It’s zeroing right in on our signal!

  As the ship draws nearer, I strain to make out its outline—is it a saucer shape, or more like a rocket, or a plane?—but I’m completely blinded by the beam of the searchlight. Although I can’t see the ship, I can feel the powerful force of it, and the noise has become deafening. Cam’s hair flies wildly about her face, and Josie barks with excitement, and I’ve never in my life had a feeling anything close to this, better than every single birthday and Christmas I’ve ever had put together.

  The searchlight remains directly on us. We wave happily as the craft hovers above us, deciding, I imagine, where to land. Or maybe Cam will be beamed up into it! We wave and smile, waiting for instructions, or for the ship to make a landing.

  Suddenly a deep voice blares out over the racket coming from the ship.

  “Owen McGuire!”

  I’m stunned for a second. How do they know my name? Why are they calling to me instead of Cam?

  Cam and
I gawk at each other, perplexed. Josie barks crazily at the strange deep voice coming from out of the sky.

  Again, it booms through the night. “Owen McGuire. Return to the farmhouse with your companion. Repeat: return to the farmhouse immediately.”

  I can’t believe this is happening. Cam and I simply stare at each other, too shocked to speak or move. With a rush of embarrassment and a disappointment so intense I feel kind of sick, I realize that the ship is nothing more than a helicopter. The wind and noise are coming from its whirling blades.

  It rises a little higher and moves off to the west, but continues to hover, the searchlight trapping us in its blinding cone of light.

  More lights gleam from the direction of the farmhouse. I shield my eyes from the searchlight and make out car headlights and the whirling red roof lights of police cars in the driveway.

  Cam stands staring into the sky. Her face is as still as a mask, except for the tears that roll silently down her cheeks.

  I feel dazed and lost. From the terrible surprise of Ray in the wheat field to this—I have no idea what will come next.

  And I know that however bad this is for me, it’s much, much worse for Cam.

  “Cam,” I say. “What do you want to do?”

  Cam doesn’t respond, and I stand right in front of her and brush the hair away from her eyes, so she has to look at me.

  Her lids flicker. Then, as if she’s slowly pulling herself back from the edge of some dark place she’s gone to in her mind, she looks up at me. The sun is just peeking over the tops of the wheat stalks and, in its fragile light, I see those amazing green eyes of hers. They are filled with so much sadness that I have to look away.

  I quickly force myself to face her again. “Cam!” I say. “We don’t have much choice, right? We have to go.”

  Cam, who has always acted so sure of herself, gives a shrug so slight I barely see it. She remains where she is, not able or not willing to move.

  I’ve gotten used to turning to Cam for answers. She’s the one who’s been in charge. But it looks like it’s my turn now.

  I take her arm. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  She doesn’t resist, but she doesn’t exactly help, either. She doesn’t even react when Josie prances in front of us, wiggling and smiling and looking for attention.

  After a few steps I say gently, “Cam? I’m sorry.”

  No answer. We take a few more slow steps.

  “What happened? Do you know? I mean, did we have the wrong night … or the wrong kind of field … or the wrong signal?”

  No answer.

  “Cam, I’m trying to figure out what to do. I promised not to tell anybody about you, and I didn’t. But look over there. The police are here. What are we going to tell them?”

  Cam raises her eyes to mine. Her face crumples. She makes a horrible choking sound and starts to cry. She is sobbing, and she bends over and wraps her arms around her chest as if she’s trying to keep herself from flying into pieces. I’m patting her on the shoulder and wishing there was some way I could help, but all I can do is just stay with her and wait.

  The stupid helicopter is still hovering nearby, and I feel like shouting at it, Get lost! Can’t you see we’re going?

  Finally Cam stops crying. Keeping her head down, she gasps out a few words mixed in with her cries and snuffles and hiccups. Her voice sounds broken. “When I was alone and scared—I imagined—I so wanted to believe—and then you came—and you made it seem possible—and you were even going to come with me— and now—I can’t go back to Bobbi—Ray—I can’t, I won’t—”

  And in a sudden rush of understanding, I get it: there is no Home Planet. There was never going to be a spaceship. This makes me sadder than anything I can remember.

  Cam raises her blotchy, tearstained face to mine and says, “I’m sorry, Owen. Some of it was true—Ray coming to live with us, moving to the motel, the way he treated me. Now there’s nowhere for me to go. What am I going to do?”

  Oh, man. I lie. I tell her not to worry. I tell her everything will be all right. I tell her there’s a solution to all this, we just haven’t thought of it yet. I keep babbling at her until we reach the edge of the field and step onto the lawn of the farmhouse.

  By now the sun is up. There are a couple of small planes flying around and another helicopter hovering over us. In the driveway of the farmhouse is the scene Cam had earlier posed as our worst-case scenario: cars, including Ray’s, television news vans with satellite dishes on the roofs, and sheriff’s patrol cars with their lights flashing. I see that a policeman is just about to enter the field with a German shepherd, and I raise one hand in a feeble wave of surrender.

  Josie runs up to the police dog wagging her tail, but he is all business, standing at attention, his ears pricked straight up, waiting for a command.

  “Josie,” I call wearily. “Come.”

  Josie comes to stand beside me, and reporters with microphones rush toward us, followed by their crews with giant cameras hoisted on their shoulders. They’re all shouting questions.

  “Are you Owen McGuire?”

  “Who’s the girl?”

  “Did you make those circles?”

  “Are they messages to aliens from space?”

  Snickers follow this question.

  “Or are you the aliens?”

  More laughter.

  I ignore them all and say to the policeman with the dog, “There’s a man out there. He’s unconscious.”

  He lifts his eyebrows and I say, “He attacked us. We were just protecting ourselves.”

  The policeman nods and starts walking out into the wheat field.

  A reporter is standing close to us, looking and speaking at a camera. “We have live footage of the so-called crop circles that mysteriously appeared in a wheat field in the town of Benton, in the Finger Lakes region of central New York state, and of the two children who are believed to have made them. Stay tuned for this story as it unfolds.”

  I glance at Cam. Her face is streaked and swollen, but I’m glad to see it’s lost that blank, empty look. When she turns to the reporters, I see in her green eyes the same mixture of fear and defiance I saw that first day when I discovered her in the upstairs bedroom of the farmhouse. I’m not sure, but it seems like a good sign.

  A state police car pulls up then, and with a jolt, I see my father get out of the back. He gazes around anxiously, and when he sees me our eyes lock. He looks tired and bewildered—and relieved. We stare across the yard at each other.

  The other rear door of the police car opens and a stooped, white-haired figure emerges with difficulty from the seat. It’s Mr. Powers!

  The sheriff tells the reporters to stand back and leave us alone. “Once we sort things out, there will be an official statement for the press,” he announces. “When we know what’s going on, you’ll know.”

  Then the sheriff comes over to Cam and me, accompanied by my father.

  “Hi, Dad,” I say. I am so glad to see him, but I don’t know how to tell him this. Instead, because it seems rude not to, I add, “Uh, this is Campion.”

  Cam says quietly, “My full name is Campion Cooper.”

  Campion Cooper? Startled, I realize I never knew Cam’s last name. Cooper. My third-grade teacher’s name was Miss Cooper, for crying out loud. It’s such an ordinary Earthling name, it takes me aback for a couple seconds.

  But then, I tell myself, it looks as if Cam is an Earthling, after all. Though I would never call her ordinary.

  “Hello, Campion,” Dad says. Then he gives me a hug. “Owen, I—” he says.

  I want to hug him back, but Mr. Powers interrupts us, shuffling up and fixing me with a triumphant stare. “I knew you were up to something!” he says. “I said so, plain as day, when you were in the store, remember?”

  His eyes penetrate mine, waiting for an answer. I nod.

  He gives me a satisfied nod in return, and goes on. “So when I heard on the scanner that pilots reported some peculiar designs
appearing in the field right back here, I thought to myself, Uh-huh. It’s that kid. And then I heard there’s a boy missing, and I called in and I told ’em, I know which way that boy went. I told ’em I knew you were up to something with the rope and the boards and all-what-have-you, and the trips back and forth, back and forth, all day long.”

  He turns to Cam suddenly, winks, and says slyly, “I suppose you’re the one with the sweet tooth?”

  Cam looks puzzled, and a little alarmed. I don’t blame her: when Mr. Powers turns the full force of his gaze on you, he’s someone to be reckoned with.

  “The Tootsie Rolls,” he says.

  “Yeah, I guess that would be me,” Cam replies.

  “Got to be careful, they’ll rot your teeth,” says Mr. Powers. “I’m proud to say I still have all my own teeth.”

  He opens his mouth to prove this to Cam, the way he did for me the other day. I glance at Dad, who appears surprised by the way Mr. Powers has barged in and taken over the conversation.

  Then the sheriff politely tells Mr. Powers to wait in another officer’s car. “Someone will take your statement and drive you back to the store,” he says.

  Mr. Powers, clearly unhappy at being asked to leave the center of the action, gets in his final word. “You’re not a bad kid,” he says. “I told ’em that.” To Dad he says, “You his father?”

  Dad nods.

  “I was you, I’d keep a closer eye on him,” Mr. Powers advises.

  Dad looks at me and nods again. It feels like a promise.

  The sheriff leads me, Cam, Josie, and Dad over to his patrol car and tells us to get in, saying, “We can have some privacy here.”

  When we’re settled in the car, with Cam and me in the back, Josie between us on the seat, and Dad and the sheriff in the front, the sheriff closes the windows and puts on the air-conditioning. Then he turns around and says, “Suppose you two tell me what in the Sam Hill is going on here?”

  19

  Three weeks later

  I DON’T KNOW IF ANYONE IN OUTER SPACE SAW our signal, but it sure attracted a lot of attention here on Earth. Cam and I were right to be worried about the small planes that flew over while we were working on the circle. Somebody took pictures of us, and the story of the mysterious design in the wheat field was featured on the late-night TV news.