From a Distant Star

by McQuestion, Karen

  “Try not to worry,” he said gently, glancing over at my hands, clenched tight into fists. “We will be there soon.”

  “I can’t help worrying,” I said, flexing my fingers. We’d reached a country road that had houses every half mile or so. I read the names on the mailboxes as we drove by, trying to get my mind on something else. The Dembiec mailbox was decorated with sunflowers. The Hunt’s was planted in a concrete cylinder to keep country thugs from playing mailbox baseball. The one that said C. Carversen was—

  “Stop, Scout! Turn around,” I yelled. He slowed slightly and gave me a puzzled look. “We need to go back,” I said.

  I’d recognized the name on the mailbox and the realization hit me like a bolt of lightning. C. Carversen. I knew that name. Christy Carversen was the former employee at Erickson Ryder. I didn’t know what had happened to her, but the mention of her name had made Dr. Kessler furious, so it had to be something important.

  Scout pulled to the side of the road and spun the wheel around, pointing the van back the way we came. “You are thinking that this C. Carversen is the same one from Erickson Ryder?”

  This mind-reading thing was getting to be pretty handy. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thinking. It has to be her. What are the chances there would be two people with that name living in this area?”

  He shrugged and pulled into the gravel driveway, following the slight curve up to the garage. The house was typical of what we’d seen up and down this road: one story, white clapboard siding, asphalt-shingled roof. Not much to look at, really. Black shutters on either side of the two front windows were the only decorative element. Otherwise, the house was a rectangular box with a concrete stoop in front of a red door. A large tree in front loomed over the house, casting shadows over the entryway. The garage door was down and the curtains were drawn, making the house look lonely.

  Scout frowned. “I do not think anyone is home.”

  “Do you know that for sure?” I asked. He shook his head and I said, “Wait here, I’ll check.” I hopped out of the van and slammed the door shut, then went up to the front door. As I pressed the doorbell, I noticed a fuchsia-colored bike on the ground next to the stoop. I heard a ding-dong as the doorbell echoed inside the house. I rang again and heard approaching footsteps.

  “Just a minute.” A woman’s voice called from the other side of the door. I heard a chain lock disengage before the door gave way.

  But when the door opened, it wasn’t a woman at all, but a girl my age. She wore a halter top that showed off significant tan lines and a tattoo of a Celtic cross that covered most of her right shoulder. The frown on her face showed she wasn’t all that excited to see me standing there. “Yes?” she said, jutting her chin close to the screen.

  “I’m looking for Christy Carversen?” As soon as the words slipped out, I heard my mistake. There was too much question in my voice when what I really needed was confidence.

  “She can’t come to the door right now.” The girl folded her arms in front of her. “Can I help you?”

  “I can wait. When will she be available?” I tried to sound a little more assertive this time, but knew I was failing miserably.

  “Who wants to know?”

  Before I could answer, Scout bounded up onto the porch next to me, nearly knocking me over. “Hi,” he said, a huge smile crossing his face. I recognized the look. It might have been Scout behind it, but the smile was all Lucas, pearly whites gleaming, along with an expression designed to lure anyone caught in his spotlight. “Lacey, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s me. I’m Lacey.” She dropped her arms, and her annoyance was replaced with puzzlement. “Have we met?”

  “No, but Aunt Christy told me if I got here early that you might be looking after Boo,” he said, giving her a smile that could melt an iceberg. “I’m Lucas. Did she forget to tell you I was coming?”

  Boo? I held my breath, listening to him outright lie to this girl. Was she going to buy it?

  “Oh, right. Lucas.” She took a step back and opened the screen door. “I’m pretty sure she’s talked about you before, but she didn’t say you’d be coming by. I would have remembered.”

  Unbelievable. With only a smile and a name, she let us into the house. A house that belonged to someone else, no less.

  I followed Scout inside, but now that he’d charmed his way in, I was forgotten. There were three of us standing in the front hall, but as far as Lacey was concerned, it was just the two of them. She chattered away about how she’d been getting the mail and taking care of the cat all week and how Christy would be gone for at least another night, which sucked because Lacey had a chance to go camping with some friends for a few days up at Badger Lake. They were leaving that evening.

  “I already told them yes, because this is our last year before my friend Mandy goes off to college, and you know how that goes,” she said. “Next year, my whole group is going to be split up after graduation and it will never be the same.”

  Scout had one hand on the wall and was leaning toward her, giving her all his attention. He nodded as if he understood exactly what she was going through. “I hear you,” he said, sounding exactly like Lucas.

  “So, I’m thinking it’s no big deal if I go,” Lacey said. “My mom or dad can just swing by and take care of the cat and get the mail and check on things, but then my mom says,” here she let out a huge dramatic sigh, “that since I was the one Christy made the arrangements with, I need to live up to my obligation and stay. I’m like, really?” She threw up her hands. “So I’m not supposed to go camping just because I have to stop over here for fifteen minutes a day? That’s ridiculous and so unfair. Usually I can get my dad on board, so I begged him to help me out, but this time he agreed with her. He said my friends should change their plans and go a day later to wait for me. Like, how ridiculous is that? God!”

  “So ridiculous,” Scout echoed, then added, “good thing we’re here now. We’ll take care of things so you can go camping with your friends.”

  “Would you?” She practically shrieked. “Oh, that would be so awesome. I’ll show you where the cat food and the litter box are.”

  “Is the litter box still in the second bedroom in the closet?” Scout said.

  “Yes.” The next sentence, she and Scout spoke together: “And the cat food is in the cabinet with the canned goods.”

  “Jinx!” Lacey grinned. “If you know where she keeps the cat stuff, I guess Christy really is your aunt.”

  “She really is my aunt,” Scout said. “Don’t worry, we’ve totally got this. I’ll stay until Aunt Christy gets back. You don’t have to worry about anything.”

  “Who is she?” Lacey said, her head swiveling sharply, her attention suddenly on me.

  “She’s no one,” Scout said before I could answer. “A neighbor. I brought her along as a favor to her parents.” He leaned in again. “She doesn’t get out much.”

  “Thanks,” I said, but the word was lost in Lacey’s laughter. I suddenly felt a familiar pang of exclusion, the kind I’d last felt in fifth grade when my two best friends suddenly and inexplicably ditched me midway through the year. I knew Scout was acting, reading Lacey’s thoughts and telling her what she wanted to hear, but still, it hurt. Until recently, he’d seemed so innocent that this new version of him caught me off guard.

  “I’ll walk you out,” Scout said to Lacey and the two of them went out the front door without another word to me.

  I watched through the screen as Lacey picked up her bike and walked with Scout toward the road. They paused under the tree and Lacey began talking to him in earnest, one hand resting on his forearm. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve thought they were boyfriend and girlfriend. As I watched, I felt something soft and furry brush up against my calf.

  “You must be Boo,” I said, reaching down to pet a chubby black cat. The cat flopped over on her side, asking for more attention, and I complied, running my fingers through her fur. When I straightened up a minute or two lat
er, Lacey and Scout were standing closer together and the skank had her hand on his face, stroking his cheek. An objection froze in my throat and I watched, horrified, as she stood on her tiptoes to kiss his lips, then laughed and hopped on her bike to ride away.

  When he came back inside, I said, “What was that all about?”

  “I got her to go,” he said happily. “Now we have a place to hide.”

  “No, I mean the kiss. Why did she kiss you?”

  He shrugged. “She wanted to, I guess. She asked if she could kiss me and I said yes.”

  “Just like that. Some girl you never saw before in your life asked to kiss you and you were okay with it?” My mind was at war with my emotions. I knew that it was Scout doing the kissing, but he was doing it with Lucas’s lips, and I was having trouble differentiating between the two. “Just like that.” I heard my voice get ugly as I did a derpy impression of Lacey. “I want to kiss you.” And then I mimicked his response, equally derpy. “Okay.”

  His face froze and he tilted his head to one side, like he was picking up radio signals only he could hear. “She needed it,” he finally said. “It made her feel good about leaving. She thought it was fate that she was here when I arrived and that we had a connection.”

  “And did you?”

  He shrugged. “I did not feel a connection with her. My only emotional connection with a human on this planet is with you.”

  A smile crept over my face. “Good. Try not to forget that.”

  “How could I forget it?” he asked, puzzled. “It is a fact.”

  “Okay,” I said, sighing. “Should we go through the house and look for evidence that Christy Carversen was involved with the radio signals sent to outer space?”

  “Yes.” He nodded vigorously. “But first I would like to put the van in the garage so it is out of sight.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Once, when I was twelve, I stole gum from the grocery store. I knew it was a terrible idea, but I still did it, spurred on by peer pressure and stupidity. Afterward, it bothered me so much that I didn’t even enjoy the gum; it felt like dirt in my mouth. That night, knowing the rest of the pack was in my dresser, I couldn’t sleep at all because of the guilt. In retrospect, the gum heist wasn’t even much of a crime. But this? Entering someone’s home without their permission? This was a thousand times worse than shoplifting gum. But Scout seemed so sure that everything was going to be fine and he somehow knew things, things no one else would know. I wanted this journey to have a happy ending, and I wanted to believe him.

  Scout drove the van into the garage, which was fairly empty except for a motorcycle parked on one side. Once in, we lowered the door and locked it. From the road, no one would be able to tell that anyone was in the house. With the van taken care of, we locked all the doors and went through the place, room by room, looking for anything that might help us.

  The house was nothing special. The air-conditioning was on, which was one positive, but everything else looked dated and worn. If I had to guess, I’d say the owner of the house was about sixty-five. In the kitchen, a white refrigerator wheezed in the corner. Grocery store coupons covered the front, held in place by daisy magnets. The plain pine cabinets and white countertops were exactly like the kind my mom and I had in our trailer. The whole place could have been the “before” photo for a home-remodeling website.

  It was not a large house, and we went through it very quickly. A basic eat-in kitchen, a living room, one bathroom, and three bedrooms. One of the bedrooms was obviously where Christy Carversen slept. The second was empty except for a bag of litter and few cardboard boxes in one corner, and a litter box on the floor in the closet. I combed through the boxes hoping to find something significant, but all I found were some photo albums and books. The third bedroom was set up as an office with a bookcase and a desk, the old wooden kind. The desk was massive with multiple drawers, all of them full of things like yellow legal pads, markers, and pens.

  There wasn’t a sign of anything modern anywhere in the house. Not even a computer or a tablet. Maybe whoever lived here wasn’t the former Erickson Ryder employee? But no, Lacey had confirmed that the homeowner’s name was Christy Carversen and the mail sitting on the kitchen table was addressed to that same name. And it didn’t seem like there could be two Christy Carversens in one small area. Maybe she was a lower-level employee? Someone from the loading docks who’d been caught stealing or something. Wouldn’t that just cap off the day? We’d been chased and shot at by the very people we’d thought might help us, and now we’d illegally taken refuge in the house of someone who had nothing to do with our problem. Of course, getting caught trespassing was the least of our worries right now.

  “Ready to check the basement?” I asked and Scout, nodding, followed me down the rickety wooden stairs. The light at the bottom had a metal pull chain that switched on one bare bulb.

  Three of the walls were concrete block. The fourth wall was shiny wood paneling, bare except for an empty bookcase right in the middle. The paneling wasn’t much of an improvement over the concrete. On the opposite side of the room, a washer and dryer sat underneath a narrow window. A wooden table next to the appliances held laundry detergent and a box of dryer sheets. With the basement’s lack of head room and musty smell, it wasn’t anywhere I’d want to spend much time. I squinted into the dim recesses of the basement. Empty. There weren’t even boxes.

  “Nothing here.” I surveyed the space, hoping to spot something, anything, but nope, it was just your basic basement with a washer and dryer. “I hate to say it, but I don’t think Christy Carversen has anything to do with your radio signals,” I said, ready to turn around and go back upstairs.

  But Scout’s outstretched arm stopped me. “What’s behind that wall?” he asked, pointing to the paneling.

  “Nothing?” I said.

  “No.” He strode across the room and pulled another light chain, making it easier to examine the empty bookcase. He sized it up from each side before grabbing one side and pulling it away from the wall. It swung forward like a door, and behind it was an actual door, solid metal from the looks of it. “Something is hiding back here.”

  Scout turned the knob but it didn’t give, not even a fraction of an inch. He yanked on it, pulling back with all his weight, but nothing. Instead of getting impatient, like Lucas would have, Scout took a step back and ruminated on the situation, his fist to his chin. I recognized it as his thinking look. Finally, he ran his hand along the doorframe, looking for a way in, but it was solid metal, bolted to concrete.

  “Did you see any keys upstairs?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “But Lacey had the key to get into the house. She left it on the kitchen table.”

  Scout shook his head. “Lacey did not have this key. The opening is the wrong size.”

  I remembered our getaway at Erickson Ryder. “Maybe I could shoot the lock mechanism to get it to open like I did before?”

  He turned and gave me the kind of look you give little kids when they offer their allowance so the family can go to Disneyland. It was a sweet idea, but not practical. “Your gun did not open the door at Erickson Ryder,” he explained patiently. “The noise of the gun confused the girl and she opened the door with her buzzer.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I didn’t aim well. It might have worked if I’d done it right.” What he’d said was true. Still, it always worked in movies and we didn’t have any other options.

  “Shooting a gun in a small space might be dangerous,” he said, slowly. “But if you want to try it, we can do it.”

  I nodded and held up a finger indicating he should wait, then bounded up the stairs to get the gun out of my backpack. When I came back down, he was right where I’d left him, standing directly in front of the door. When he saw me approach, he held his hand out. I gave him the gun, glad not to be the one doing the shooting.

  “Put your fingers in your ears,” he said.

  I did as instructed, and then took a few step
s back, watching as he carefully turned the gun sideways before pulling the trigger. Even with my ears covered, the crack from the gunfire was deafening. The smell made me cough. I waved a hand in front of my mouth as Scout unsuccessfully tugged on the door again and again. Finally, I put my hand on his shoulder.

  “Enough. It’s not going to open. I’m hungry. Let’s get something to eat and we can think about it and maybe come up with something else.”

  I led the way upstairs, talking as we went. I tried to cheer him up, saying it was just as well. Once Christy came home, we’d find out more. “Why did you turn the gun sideways before you pulled the trigger?” I asked.

  “Oh!” His face brightened. “I learned that from a movie. That is known as the kill shot.”

  “I don’t think it’s any more accurate that way,” I said.

  “I know, but it looks cooler.”

  Scout was one stair below me and I stopped, forcing him to halt in his tracks. I gazed down at his earnest face and grinned. “Did you say it looks cooler?”

  “Yes. Everyone thinks so.”

  I reached down to muss his hair and he did nothing to stop me. “You have no idea how adorable you are right now. I wish I had my phone so I could record you saying that.” I brushed his hair back into place and continued up the stairs.

  “I do not understand. What is adorable about me?”

  “Everything,” I said without turning around.

  In the kitchen I found a packaged pizza in the freezer and some bottles of soda in the fridge, and figured that would have to do for dinner. While I was rummaging around looking for a pizza cutter, Scout was double checking all the drawers for keys. He started in the kitchen and worked his way through all the other rooms. I could even hear him pulling things out of the bathroom drawers and cabinets, like a key would be hidden in Christy Carversen’s box of tampons. When he came back fifteen minutes later, his defeated look and empty hands told me he hadn’t had any luck. By this point, I’d already preheated the oven and popped the pizza onto the rack.