by Cat Jordan
“You lose yours?”
“Something like that.”
She shrugs. “Sucks to be you.” She’s just pissed she hasn’t found Dad’s lockbox. Still, who needs her crap? It’s not like it’s my fault. “What are you doing today?”
“Not calling or texting anyone.”
“Ha-ha, funny boy. There’s a thing called a landline.”
I make a face. “If you’re a hundred years old.”
She holds up her middle finger and I match it with mine, touching our knuckles together like we’re a profane version of the Wonder Twins. “Go. Clean the house.”
“Go. Heal the sick.” I feel Ginger’s tail swish against the backs of my legs and wonder how she got outside. Mom must have let her out. “What are we doing today, girl? Cleaning? Nah, I didn’t think so.”
Summer is not about cleaning the house or chasing after your stupid father. It’s about hanging out at the lake and riding dirt bikes and maybe smoking a little weed to make those two things even more enjoyable.
But I can’t stop thinking about the imaginary girl who has really stolen my cell phone.
11:13 A.M.
When we were little kids, Brian and Emily and I thought the underground passageway that connects the basement to my dad’s workshop was the coolest thing ever. If it was raining or snowing, we could actually walk underneath the earth from the house to the shop. Dad kept a potbellied stove burning on the coldest days, and he’d let us hang out with him if we swept up the ashes and brought in the firewood.
I wasn’t ever supposed to go in there when he wasn’t around, which of course I did. How else was I going to learn about girls and sex? Dad never cleared the cache in his computer, so I could look at all the porn he looked at.
I also learned about the Universe. Dad and I had our own telescopes so we could look at the stars side by side. On his walls were celestial maps and charts, miraculous photos from the Hubble, and a poster signed by Ray Bradbury. The shop was a mini observatory, a weird combination of Hollywood and NASA. For all of my father’s interest in the sky and aliens, he still had a fanboy’s obsession. It wasn’t enough for him to believe a ship had landed in the field next to his house. He needed everyone else to believe it too.
And I did. For a long time, I believed.
Leaving the basement through the secret passageway makes me feel like I’m nine again, giggling with Brian and Em as we sneak underground. I’m about two feet taller now, though, so I have to bend over at the waist to avoid hitting my head on the ceiling of the tunnel. It’s dark in here but I know every step, every inch of the way. When I get to the halfway point between shop and house, I stop and place my hands on the stone ceiling, pressing upward. We used to pretend we could hold the Earth high above our heads; we were superheroes of the underworld.
It could have been a claustrophobic feeling in that tunnel, the thought of tons of dirt on top of us, but it wasn’t. It made me feel safe and secure, although maybe it was having my best friends with me that made me feel that way.
The shop itself is just a small shed with a concrete floor and stone walls, and it’s partially built into a mound of earth in the side yard. From the outside it kind of looks like a hobbit’s home, but I seriously doubt Granddad used Tolkien as his architectural inspiration. More likely, it helped the insulation, keeping it cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
I involuntarily shudder when I step into the shop. It’s chilly here, yes, but it’s also like stepping back in time. So much of what I remember from my childhood is still here: the posters, the maps, the charts, the stove. But something is missing.
The telescope. There’s only one—mine.
Dad must have taken his with him.
As much as I didn’t believe his bullshit anymore, as much as I wanted him to be a regular dad I could count on . . . there’s something really sad about seeing my telescope sitting by itself next to the woodstove.
It looks . . . lonely.
Something sinks into my stomach then, and I feel my muscles tighten around it, squeeze it, crush it. I have to be glad he’s gone. I have to believe it will be better for Mom. For both of us. For everyone.
A chart on the wall catches my eye, one of the few he left behind. It’s a map of potentially habitable planets in what’s called the Goldilocks Zone. An exoplanet has to be in just the right place in order for life—as we know it—to form there. A dwarf planet like Pluto, for instance, is too far away from our sun to support life. It’s an icy rock with a surface temperature of minus 387 degrees Fahrenheit. Still other planetoids, like our moon, are tidal-locked, so one hemisphere is always facing the object it’s connected to gravitationally. With our moon, that means one half of it never sees the Earth. That’s the dark side of the moon.
Aaaannnd . . . how do I still know all this?
Why did it stick in my brain?
I don’t want it there, not any more than I want phone numbers of friends who moved away in my cell phone. Makes me wish I could stick a jump drive into my ear and suck out all the useless information. Maybe then I’d have room for English lit.
I stare at the chart, where Gliese 581c and Kepler-69c are crossed out. Both were once considered options for habitability, but no longer. At least not according to whoever designed this chart.
I run my finger along the poster, tapping each of the exoplanets in turn. Every one of them is classified according to how Earth-like it is as well as how far from us it is. Some of the exoplanets that scientists consider the most likely to be habitable are hundreds of billions of miles away. Those Star Trek crews would have to boldly go pretty damn far to find anything or anyone remotely like us.
Unless, of course, they come to us.
Which is exactly what my father and all his wack-job friends believe happened.
Online, DJ Jones is a minor crazy among an entire internet filled with crazies—legions of UFO chasers and self-professed alien abductees who DJ wrote to and chatted with every day. Like him, they believe we’re not alone in this universe.
When I was a kid, I loved learning about the stars and the Milky Way. I loved watching Captains Kirk and Picard and Janeway whoosh from quadrant to quadrant on the Enterprise, and I loved reading The Martian Chronicles.
It was science. It was real. And what was fiction was science fiction.
But Dad went beyond that at some point.
When Mom and I weren’t looking, he began to engage in conspiracy theories online. He egged his fans on, and they followed him from Twitter to his own blog. He was the Boy Who Was Born Next to a Spaceship Landing. He was Special. He was Blessed by Aliens.
It seemed like, in the blink of an eye, Dad became self-centered and egotistical. He never thought about me or Mom or Uncle Jack anymore. And what kind of a person prefers talking crap online with strangers to working and raising a family? What kind of a person takes off with his brother’s wife?
The kind that we’re better off without (#ibelieve).
Good riddance.
But something else feels weird in this workshop. Something I can’t quite put my finger on. Maybe something is out of place. My telescope, maybe? It looks clean, the layers of dust wiped from the tripod and tube. My dad must have done that, hoping I’d come back someday.
I continue to poke around until I give up. I’m not sure what’s bothering me about the place. I take one last glance around the workshop and snap off the light.
No lockbox.
I’m done.
It’s done.
2:45 P.M.
The lake at noon is crowded with kids and moms, but if we wait until they all go home for their naps, we get the place to ourselves. Unfortunately for my buddy Brian, Miranda the hot lifeguard isn’t working today.
“Why, dude?” he whines as soon as we settle our towels on the sand. “I was all set to drown today.”
“You’re an idiot. What if she isn’t watching and you actually do drown?” his sister asks. “Or her partner rescues you instead?”
I
purse my lips and make kissing noises at Brian. “Sure, you could be getting mouth-to-mouth from Eric Miller.”
“That wouldn’t be so bad,” Emily says, not quite under her breath. She isn’t in her old dive team uniform of a navy blue one-piece but instead wears a bikini in pink and red flowers that stands out sharply against the white towel. She unknots her hair and lets it splay behind her. She looks like a painting.
“What’s that, Em? Do you like Eric? Do you like, like him?” Brian teases.
I avoid looking at her face. I don’t want to know if she likes Eric Miller.
Fortunately for me, she slips a pair of sunglasses on, shutting out both of us. “Fuck off and drown, Toad.”
“Ooh, ouch!” I say.
“Aw, she’s gonna miss us when she’s at college.” Brian grins loopily; he smoked half a joint on our way to the lake. “Dude, tell me about the girl. What’s her name?”
I hesitate. “Priya.”
“Why didn’t you bring her?”
“She went home, that’s why.”
“You got her digits?”
I instantly think of my phone, which is probably in her bag at this very moment. Oh man, that thing had a brand-new case on it. “Yeah, sort of.”
“So text her.”
“Not that simple.”
“What, she’s got a boyfriend?”
I shake my head and laugh. “That would be easy.”
“Then what is it?”
“She’s . . .”
I don’t know where she is and if she’s ever coming back and I don’t even know why I’m still thinking about her.
I stare down at my feet. I’m wearing sneakers and socks; the sand is scorching and making me sweat. I heel away my Nikes and gym socks before I strip off my T-shirt. “I’m hot like your mother, dude. I gotta get wet.”
I do a shallow dive into the lake and come up for air a few feet away. There are two wooden floats off the shore, both empty—I swim for the farthest and pull myself up onto it. With my feet dangling over the side, I’m surely bait for the monsters that live under the surface.
The lake water is cool, the sun toasty, but the breeze makes all the difference in the world. It whisks away the moisture on my skin, like toxins released from my body to rise into the atmosphere. The smells of suntan lotion and sugary melted Popsicles waft toward me from the shore. They are the scents of summer, what defines a hot day in this town.
When I lay my hand flat on the wooden float, I’m reminded of last night, of lying by Priya’s side and staring into the sky. Maybe I shouldn’t have left her. Maybe I should have waited with her till she was picked up. Maybe I should have asked her where she was from, where she was really going.
At the very least, I’d still have my phone.
A couple of minutes later, the float bobs as another swimmer pulls himself up.
Or herself. Emily. Of course. “’Sup.”
“Nada mucho.”
“So, you met a strange girl in the middle of the night.”
I prop myself on my elbows and look at her. Her hair is slicked back from the swim; water drips down her temples and cheeks and lips.
The last time I was alone with Em was a week ago, when we hooked up at a post-grad party.
Afterward, she was all “Matty, we can’t do this again. I’m going to college and I don’t want a boyfriend,” and I was all “No worries, no girlfriend for me, thankyouverymuch,” and it was cool.
Except . . . it wasn’t cool.
It wasn’t . . . enough. For me, it wasn’t enough. I kissed her because I felt things for her. I thought she felt the same way. About me. About us. I thought there could be an us. I mean, we’ve known each other forever. But when I asked her out—in person, not on the phone, not in a text—she was all “Get bent, Jones.”
Maybe not those exact words, but it felt like that.
It felt like she said, Get lost, screw you, why won’t you die and let me be.
And now.
Here she is.
And she’s wearing a bikini and she has that face that I’ve kissed before and that body that I’ve wrapped my arms around and I . . .
“Who is she?”
I blink. “Huh? Priya?”
“Is that her name? That’s . . . different.” Em’s on the other side of the float with her knees pulled up, one leg crossed over the other as if she were sitting on the couch at home. She’s so comfortable in the water, around the water, above the water. Swimming is as natural to her as firing up a bong is to her brother.
“Well, yeah, that’s what she said.”
“You don’t believe her?”
I almost snort a laugh. “Uh, yeah, well, she was . . . kind of crazy.”
Emily tilts her head back and looks at me. “Crazy how?”
I wave a hand. “Never mind. She just . . . she was pretty and I guess she was smart.”
“You like smart girls.”
Our eyes meet for a split second and then she glances away. That was weird.
“She had white hair.”
“Girls can have white hair.”
“Yeah, if they’re in a comic book.”
“So she’s Storm?”
I laugh. “She was not Storm. I’m sure it was a wig.”
“Girl with a wig. Okay.”
“Whatever, Em. Just—”
“She was hot, huh?”
“Can we not talk about this?”
“Why not? You didn’t think she was hot?”
“She was, but—”
“We’re friends, Matty. I want to know.”
Was that my heart that just slammed shut like a prison door? “Right. Friends.”
Emily combs her fingers through her hair. Water drips off the ends like icicles melting in the sun. “Are we ever going to talk about it?”
“About what? About us being awesome friends?”
“Matty . . . you asked me out.”
“After we hooked up. Yes, I did. And you—”
Ripped my heart out.
“—said no.”
“But it’s not because I don’t like you.”
“Yes, you mentioned that.” Is it childish of me to want to stick my fingers in my ears and sing la la la to drown out this torturous little chat? Wait, I know. I’ll just look out over the lake, watch the water-skiers and the kayakers. How lovely.
“And I had a fantastic time with you on grad night.”
I hear a but coming. Straight at me. I brace myself for the barrage of reasons she is killing my soul.
“Matty, will you just look at me?”
I do, and oddly enough, any urge to press my lips to hers vanishes into this humid air.
“I like you a lot. And I think you’re a really cool guy. But I’m going to college in a couple of months and there’s just no future, you know? I can’t be your girlfriend.”
I spit out, “Who said I—”
“You want a girlfriend. And that’s cool but I . . . I don’t know. It’s just not something I want right now.”
My head starts to burn like it’s been in the sun for too long, and I guess it has. We’ve been out here on this float for a hundred years broiling in the heat. I don’t want to talk to Emily about this anymore. I don’t want to hear her say this crap ever again. It didn’t need to be said. I already knew it.
“Right. Okay. Well, thanks for that, uh, clarification.” I roll my eyes, which pretty much always pisses her off.
The evil part of me smiles when I see her grit her teeth in response. “You are so childish, Matty. God. Grow up.”
“Grow up?” I scoop some water from the lake and splash it on her face. She doesn’t even flinch. “Is that grown up?”
She doesn’t take the bait, and my imprisoned heart trembles. Maybe I am childish. So what? “We’re friends, Em. I get it. We’re just friends.”
The saving grace to all of this? She and Brian will be gone for a week starting tomorrow.
Back on the shore Brian’s waving his arms over
his head to get our attention. He’s probably bored without us. “I’m going back, all right?”
“Yeah, sure.”
She looks confused by my reply, like maybe she didn’t really want to blow a hole through my heart. Or maybe I’m just projecting. I glance sideways at her and make her an offer I know she can’t refuse. “You wanna race?”
Em perks up and her eyebrows arch. “Race you?”
“Yeah.” I kick my feet in the water, making a big splash. “Afraid I’ll win?”
“Oh my god, no. I just don’t want to embarrass you in front of Brian.”
“Bullshit. You’d love to embarrass me in front of Brian.”
A smile creeps across her face. “Yeah, I would.”
I crouch over the side. Emily takes her sweet time. I can feel the heat of her body next to mine as she bends down, ready to dive in. I have to harden my heart to her. I have to or else I will die a little more every day that we’re together. I push Em away and dive into the water, giving myself a head start.
“Cheater!”
A couple of minutes later I haul my butt out of the water—only to find Emily already lying on her towel, face to the sun.
Brian slow-claps. “Congrats, dude, you came in second.”
8:56 P.M.
It’s kind of cool not having a phone. Mom can’t contact me. No one can text me. I don’t have to stare at an empty screen and see no calls from Dad. And the thought of Priya holding it, using it, swiping a long, delicate finger across the screen as she plays Angry Birds, which is the only game I have on my phone—it sort of pisses me off but it sort of doesn’t.
When Em and Brian drop me at home, after saying good-bye for a week, I see a car in my dad’s spot in the garage. For a moment, I freeze; then I realize it’s my uncle Jack’s. A brand-new Mustang as befits a Ford salesman. He and Mom are inside, sitting at the kitchen table with glasses of wine in front of them. I watch from outside for a few minutes, wondering what they’re saying, how much of that bottle they’ve already had.
Although Jack is ten years younger than my dad, he looks like he’s the older brother. Maybe because he has a real job in the real world with real responsibilities. And maybe because he wears a tie and a sad smile. My dad was always in jeans and a T-shirt and sneakers; he looked like an aging but happy-go-lucky skater boy. Tony Hawk, if he hadn’t been successful at anything.
