From a Distant Star

by McQuestion, Karen

  Lucas’s head bobbed up and down. “I remember everything, Emma.”

  “I know you’ve said that, but can you tell me something specific?”

  “I’m tired,” Lucas said. I’d noticed he used that excuse a lot lately.

  “All you have to do is give me one example,” I said, exasperated. “One thing that tells me you remember our history.” But Lucas only shook his head.

  “This is getting us nowhere,” Mrs. Kokesh said. “If Lucas knows something, he’s choosing not to share it with us.” She glared in his direction before casting a sympathetic eye toward me. “I’m sorry, Emma. I can’t change him and make him love you more.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking—”

  She held a hand up to silence me. “But since you think this object and Lucas are connected, let me investigate. I have some books. I’ll do some research. My best guess is that this thing, whatever it is, comes from another world.”

  “Another world? Like another planet?” Eric asked.

  Her head tilted to one side. “Maybe. Or from another dimension. But definitely not from around here. Let me do some reading and some testing and I’ll get back to you.”

  “If it is from another dimension, what does that have to do with Lucas?” Eric said.

  Mrs. Kokesh shrugged. “That’s what we need to find out. I have to say, this has been a most interesting visit. Usually people come to me asking for revenge or money or love.” She ran her finger around the rim of the object. “Can I keep this for now?”

  “No,” Lucas said firmly.

  I glanced at him, startled. He’d gone with the flow for the last two weeks, staying quiet as can be, not expressing a preference for any foods, obeying his mother without question, agreeing with everything people said. Now he was going to object?

  “I think it would be okay if we left it with Mrs. Kokesh for a day or two,” I said.

  “No.” Lucas pushed his chair back and stood, picked up the object, and put it under his arm. “Time to go,” he said.

  “I agree. I think we need to go,” Eric said, getting up and following Lucas out of the room.

  “I guess we’re leaving,” I said to Mrs. Kokesh, gesturing to the doorway.

  She nodded. “Be careful, Emma. I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, but everything tells me it’s dangerous.”

  “I will.”

  “Hang on just a minute,” she said, getting up and rummaging through the drawer next to the sink. “I have something you might need.” She pulled out various items—Scotch tape, a calculator, a deck of cards, the plastic tabs from grocery store bread, a bag of rubber bands—and one by one, she placed them on the counter. Meanwhile, all I could think was that Eric and Lucas had left without me. As if reading my mind, she said, “They aren’t going to get too far. You drove, right?”

  “Yeah, I drove.” Just as I suspected. She’d watched us arrive from an upstairs window.

  “Aha!” Mrs. Kokesh said, jubilantly. “Here it is. All the way in the back. I knew it was in there, but for a second I thought I wasn’t gonna find it.” She turned around and held out a small leather case, zippered on two sides. “A gift from me. You might need it.”

  “What is it?” I took it from her and as soon as I had it in my hand, I could tell what it was by its weight and shape. “A gun?”

  “Think of it as your ace in the hole,” she said. “It’s not very big, but it’ll do the job.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be needing a gun,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. And I have a feeling you’re going to need it.”

  I unzipped the case and took it out, holding it carefully between two fingers. She explained that it was loaded and showed me that the safety catch was on.

  “I don’t know about this,” I said. “I’ve never shot a gun before.”

  “It’s not that difficult.” Mrs. Kokesh said, tapping her chin. “Once the safety catch is moved to the off position”—she paused to show me how to slide the button to one side—“you just pull the trigger.”

  “But isn’t that dangerous?”

  She rolled her eyes, like I was a complete idiot. “Yes. That would be the point, Emma.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said. “Thanks, I guess.”

  From outside Eric’s voice rang out: “Emma, hurry up!”

  “Yeah, I have to go,” I said. “Bye.” And I went down the hall so fast I almost tripped over a cat.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “What the hell, you guys?” I said as soon as I got past the front porch. Eric and Lucas stood next to the locked car. Lucas had the found object cradled against his body like it was a football. “You couldn’t have waited for me?”

  “It’s not like we could leave without you,” Eric pointed out as I unlocked the doors. After everyone got in, I pulled out of the driveway so fast that we left a trail of gravel dust behind. What a letdown. I’d thought Mrs. Kokesh could tell me what was wrong with Lucas, but it turned out she had her limits, just like everyone else.

  We went to Scotty’s so that my lie to the Walkers wouldn’t be a total lie after all. I convinced Lucas the object would be safer in the trunk of the car and he reluctantly allowed me to tuck it in next to the spare tire. By now, Lucas was even more of a local celebrity than he’d been in the first place, and I dreaded having to talk to other kids from our school, but as it turned out, the only ones we encountered were a group of five sophomore girls sitting in a corner booth and giggling continuously. When they were leaving, they stopped at our table and told Lucas they were glad he was better. “You’re going to be back at school this fall, right?” said one of them, a red-haired girl wearing a sheer tank top and really short shorts. She snapped her gum and rested a hand on Lucas’s shoulder as she spoke to him. I didn’t know her name, but mentally I named her Bambi McSlutsky.

  Lucas nodded agreeably. “Sure,” he said. Just then, the waitress brought our food, so they left, which was good timing because I was ready to swat Bambi and her annoying friends. Even though Lucas now had the personality of a droid, he’d regained his good looks and was so beautiful that girls flew to him like bees to nectar. But they couldn’t have him because I’d claimed him first. He was my nectar. My forever boy.

  Right from the start, Lucas and I were so sure we’d wind up together that I decided to document our dating years for all eternity. Sophomore year, my English teacher told us to be careful of anything we did online, including emails. He had a theory that everything, even things we deleted, could be accessed in the future. “It’s all still out there,” Mr. Anderson said, “and someday your great-grandchildren will be able to pull up everything you ever did online, videos on YouTube, emails, anonymous comments on message boards. The good, the bad, and the ugly.” He rubbed his hands together and chortled with glee. “They’ll get true insights into who you are, so make sure that what you put out there is what you want future generations to know.” If he thought he was scaring us, he was wrong, at least for me. I liked the idea of our future children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren knowing about our love story, so every week I started sending Lucas emails that talked about places we went and things we did together. I signed every email “Love, Emma <3.” My name, surrounded by my love for him.

  I even kept the emails going through Lucas’s cancer treatment, but the day he told me the treatment rendered him unable to father a baby, I lost interest and stopped. My love for Lucas hadn’t changed, but knowing there weren’t going to be future generations made my email project seem pointless. Still, the emails were out there, a forever record of the two of us.

  After we were done eating, all three of us agreed to skip the baseball game and go straight home. Eric had no interest in sports, Lucas had no opinion either way, and for me, the thought of having to sit in the bleachers and talk to all of Lucas’s fans was depressing as hell. Better to tell Mr. and Mrs. Walker that because Lucas seemed tired, we decided to cut t
he evening short. I’d get credit for using good sense and they’d be more likely to let us go out the next time.

  When we walked out to the car, Eric said, “Lucas, you sit in back. I want to talk to Emma.”

  This new Lucas never questioned anything and he didn’t object this time either, but got in the back and put his seat belt on. I missed the old Lucas, the one who would have said, “Like hell you’re sitting upfront with my girlfriend!” I imagined the two of them tussling over me, Lucas putting Eric in a headlock. I had once had a boyfriend, the love of my life, but now all that was left of him was a shell.

  “What did you want to talk about?” I asked, once we were heading down the road.

  “Just a minute.” Eric fiddled with the radio until the music only came through the back speakers. The car was so old that the sound quality was terrible, but if Lucas minded at all, he didn’t say so. Eric faced forward, his words coming out of the side of his mouth. “Remember what you said to Mrs. Kokesh about Lucas being a different person?”

  “Yeah, of course I remember. It was only like an hour ago.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “About what?” I glanced his way, but his face didn’t tell me anything. Clearly, he didn’t want Lucas to hear what we were talking about.

  “I think you’re right. He is a different person,” he said. “I didn’t see it at first. He just seemed slower, like he was waking up from the coma. Even on the drive over I thought you were overreacting. Making too much of it. You know, like girls do.” Hastily, he added, “No offense.”

  “None taken.” I flipped on my turn signal and veered right onto the highway. “So what changed your mind?”

  “Movie quotes.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Eric leaned over and spoke through gritted teeth. “You know how Lucas has been making odd comments? He says things that sort of fit what we’re talking about, but not really? I didn’t think too much of it, until we were at the witch’s house. Then he said three things that came right from The Outlaw from San Antonio.”

  “The outlaw from what?” I glanced in the rearview mirror to see Lucas staring out the side window like a little kid.

  “The Outlaw from San Antonio. It’s an old western. My favorite, even if it is pretty cheesy. I’ve seen it like a hundred times. But Lucas never liked cowboy movies so he only saw it for the first time after he woke up from his coma.”

  I remembered Eric bringing his laptop into Lucas’s sick room and the two of them watching a western. I couldn’t have come up with the name of the movie for any amount of money, though. It wasn’t the kind of thing Lucas and I would normally be interested in.

  He continued. “He quoted from it three times tonight. When he said, ‘Your concern is noted and appreciated.’ And then when he said, ‘It’s important to know who to blame.’ That’s straight from the movie.”

  “Maybe it’s a coincidence?” I asked, glancing at the rearview mirror to see Lucas looking out the window. “The movie was still on his mind, probably.”

  “Yeah, well how about when he said, ‘Given the choice, I’d rather be living than dying’? A direct quote from the movie.” His eyes got large. “When he said that, I just about fell over. That was when I knew for sure. Normally, Lucas would never talk like that.”

  “So what conclusion are you drawing here?” I asked quietly.

  “I don’t know, but it’s like he’s not Lucas. It’s like he’s trying to be Lucas, but he’s having some trouble getting it right so he’s copying what we say and picking up lines from TV and movies.”

  My mind reeled. As much as I’d been the one to say Lucas wasn’t himself, I hadn’t thought he was literally a different person. “So what are you saying? He’s possessed by a demon or what?” Now I was speaking through clenched teeth, although there was no indication that Lucas was listening or even cared about what we were talking about.

  “I don’t know,” Eric admitted. “All I know is he’s not acting like my brother.” He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the backseat.

  And he thought girls were melodramatic. I said, “Maybe he has amnesia and he’s relearning how to be himself. Or maybe he had a stroke or some kind of brain explosion or something and it completely changed his personality.” I’d heard of this happening. People who had strokes and had to relearn how to read, or woke up from comas only able to remember recent events but nothing from the past. I’d read about one woman in England who was knocked unconscious and woke up speaking with a French accent. All these things came about as a result of mixed-up, crazy brain injuries. Sometimes even the doctors didn’t understand why they happened. There had to be a sensible explanation.

  Eric said, “Yeah, but then how do you explain that he knew about the thing you found in the field?”

  I shrugged. “He was mistaken. Confused.” Our voices were getting louder, but if Lucas knew we were talking about him, he didn’t show it.

  “No. He definitely recognized it. This is what I think—something else is inside of Lucas and that something is wearing him like a costume, making him walk and talk and eat and everything else.”

  I had to remind myself that Eric was fourteen and watched a lot of the Syfy channel. “Okay,” I said, humoring him. “Let’s just say you’re right. What do you want to do about it?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “It’s up to you, I think. You were the one who brought him back in the first place.”

  The rest of the way home, I drove without speaking, the music filling the void. I tried to make sense of what had happened: a magic potion, a fallen object from another world or dimension, a dying boy brought back by true love’s kiss. The stuff of storybooks or movies. But now Eric was suggesting that what I’d done out of love had resulted in something sinister. What if he was right? Oh, Lucas, what did I do? And how can I fix it?

  When we were just down the road from the farmhouse, Eric turned around and explained to Lucas that he had to hide the object in the barn. “We can’t let our parents see it or they’ll turn it over to the authorities and those agents will be back.”

  “Someone will take it?” Lucas said.

  “Yes.” Eric nodded emphatically. “I’ll keep it for you and you can see it whenever you want.”

  Lucas thought for a moment and then said, “Okay.”

  When we got to the Walkers’, I pulled the car around back, threw it into park, and popped the trunk. Eric jumped out and disappeared into the barn with my discovery. When Mrs. Walker came through the back door, the three of us were walking toward the house.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, suspicious. It was hard to get anything past her.

  “I found a hubcap on the road for my collection,” Eric said. “I just stuck it in with my stuff.”

  “No, I mean why are you back so soon? Is Lucas okay?” She rushed down the steps and put a hand on Lucas’s forehead, the international sign of mother-caring.

  “He’s fine,” I assured her. “After we ate at Scotty’s, he looked a little tired, so we decided to skip the ball game.”

  But she wasn’t done fussing. “Do you want to go to bed, Lucas? Or just rest on the couch? I could get you something to drink.” She turned to me. “I want to make sure he stays hydrated.”

  “Something to drink,” he said, and for the first time I really noticed what Eric had mentioned. Like a beginner trying to speak a foreign language, Lucas was repeating what we said rather than coming up with his own words.

  “Lemonade?” Mrs. Walker said brightly. “I just made a fresh pitcher.”

  “That sounds good,” I said. “Can I have a glass too?”

  “Of course, Emma.” Our early return seemed to have softened her attitude toward me. “Why don’t you kids wait on the front porch and I’ll bring out the drinks?”

  “I’m good, Mom,” Eric said, brushing past us and heading toward the house. “I’ve got some stuff to do.”

  Mrs. Walker sighed as she watched her younger son bound up the st
eps and go inside. Eric found interacting with people draining. I knew he was going to his room to be alone where he could recharge. “Thanks for taking Eric with you,” she said. “I wish he would get out more but he seems happy just staying home and building things with his junk pile.”

  “We didn’t mind,” I said. “Eric’s cool.”

  “That’s nice of you to say,” she said.

  “No, I mean it.”

  But Mrs. Walker didn’t look convinced. It gave me a new perspective on what it must be like to be Eric. Poor kid. Someday, he might carve an impressive niche in the world, but for now he was just Lucas Walker’s awkward little brother.

  Mrs. Walker went into the house, while Lucas and I walked around to the front and sat down on the wicker love seat on their front porch. The Walkers had planters with red geraniums on either side of the flagstone path and an American flag proudly waving from one of the porch columns. Their house was picture perfect. When Mrs. Walker came out with a tray holding iced glasses and set them on the wicker table in front of us, it was like a scene out of a lemonade commercial.

  “Anything else?” she asked. “I can get some cheese and crackers. Or raisins?”

  “I’m good, thanks,” I said.

  “Good, thanks,” Lucas parroted.

  “Okay, well, I’ll let you kids have some privacy,” she said, brushing her hands on the front of her shirt. “When the mosquitoes start biting, that will be your cue to come in.” She went into the house and shut the door behind her.

  Her mosquito comment told me that she expected us to come inside when it got dark. As soon as the sun went down, the mosquitoes came out in full force. The sun was sinking, so I’d have to act quickly. For the first time in a long time, I had a chance to talk to Lucas uninterrupted and I was going to use that time to get to the bottom of this.

  I handed him a glass of lemonade and took one for myself, taking a sip before I asked, “How’s the lemonade, Lucas?”

  He looked at the glass and then at me. “Good.”

  “I’ve always thought that lemons are the sweetest fruit, don’t you think?”