by R. A. Nelson
It took me a second to remember how to work it. At last I flicked it on and thumbed the mike.
“Hey …”
The headset hissed in my ear. “You sound tired,” Sagan said.
“Ow! Deaf is more like it. This thing is loud.” I adjusted the volume, yawning.
“Are you getting enough sleep, Emma?”
If you only knew, I thought. “You sound like my mom.”
“So, whatcha want to do? Are you hungry?”
I tested my elbow. It was sore, but not too bad. The whole strange night flooded into my head. I suddenly realized I was not only hungry, but—after last night—desperate for his company. “Starving,” I said. “Bring me something.”
“You’re getting spoiled, you know that?” Sagan said.
“Yeah. Hurry before I get grouchy and kill a rabbit.”
“Ha. Okay … just to conserve the wildlife.” I could hear the grin in his voice. “I’ll bring Schlotzsky’s.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll love it.”
I did. Schlotzsky’s turned out to be big round sandwiches on black rye bread. “How’d you know I liked corned beef and mustard?” I said, taking a huge bite. It seemed like days since I had eaten. Well, food that is. My body squirmed involuntarily.
“Lucky guess,” Sagan said.
We were sitting on the little picnic bench out behind the Solar Observatory. The day was turning hotter than yesterday, and the cicadas were starting to whine in the trees. Which of course made me think about summer and wonder what it would be like living out here during the other end of the spectrum. Winter. The thought of being homeless that long was depressing. Sagan was asking me a question.
“What?” I said.
He pushed a little strand of hair out of my face and waved his hand in front of my eyes. “You were looking right at me,” he said. “But even through your sunglasses I could tell you had that thousand-yard stare you get sometimes.”
“Oh. Sorry. My mom used to complain about that too.” Used to. Now I was talking about her in the past tense. I needed to call her. Papi too.
“It’s like you’re so completely gone, when you get like that,” Sagan said. “I don’t even know where you are. How to bring you back.”
I took another bite, wanting to change the subject. “God, this is really good. Thank you.”
I could still taste that college guy’s beery blood in my mouth, if only in memory. I was dying to tell Sagan about my first Blood Hunt. But it was all so totally nuts. I wondered if I was changing in some important way, beyond the physical. When I first met the Sonnen, they had seemed strange to me, otherworldly. Now, just a few hours later, it was Sagan who was new and different with his white-blond locks and penetrating blue eyes. I almost felt as if we were a different species. I wondered if he could sense it.
“You’re really quiet today,” he said. “Anything happen last night?”
“No, not really.” Only the weirdest night of my life, I thought. And there had been a lot of those lately. “Just kind of strange out here after dark.”
“We need to talk about that,” he said. “Changing your situation.”
“Only that’s not up to you.”
“I know. But you can’t keep living out here. Somebody’s going to catch you sooner or later, Emma. Or you’ll get hurt and won’t even be able to call for help.”
“Haven’t we had this conversation before?” I said, looking away.
“Hey, don’t zone out on me again.”
“I’m not. I just get tired of having to explain myself.”
Sagan put down his sandwich and got up from the table. “But that’s the thing. You never explain. You just expect me to understand. What would you do if things were reversed? Say if I were living out here, homeless, sleeping in the woods, who knows where? How would you like it?”
I popped the last bite in my mouth and chewed. Made him wait while I drank some Mountain Dew. I thought about something Lena had said.
“Hey, the other day you told me about CMEs,” I said.
“You keep trying to change the subject.”
“I know. Please tell me again. About coronus massive—you know. There’s something I’ve been wondering about.”
“Coronal mass ejections. What about them?”
“What are they, exactly?”
“I told you. A violent ejection of material from the sun.”
“So … you could almost call it … an eruption of the sun?”
“Sure. What are you driving at? I thought this solar stuff bores you.”
“It does. Okay, so there is an eruption on the sun that violently throws material out. What kind of material?”
Sagan looked away, thinking. “It’s a gigantic bubble of gas, mostly. Plasma, to be more specific. The plasma is made up of electrons and protons.”
“Anything else?”
“Well.” He tapped his fingers against his head. “Small amounts of other elements, like helium, oxygen, iron. Plus there’s the coronal magnetic field to deal with.…”
“So when this solar flare—”
“CME,” Sagan corrected. “There’s a difference. A solar flare is an explosion too, but it’s mostly associated with sunspots, emitting X-rays and UV radiation.”
“And all of this stuff showers the earth?”
“If it’s aimed in our direction. It affects the earth, yeah. Some is intercepted by the earth’s magnetic field. The rest makes it all the way through.”
“Radiation, protons, et cetera?”
“Sure.”
“So how long does it take for the stuff to get here?” I said.
“With CMEs it can take as long as five days. But the effects of solar flares can reach us much faster. One erupted back in 2005 that hit the earth in fifteen minutes. That’s one-half the speed of light.”
“So what happened?”
“Not much. Disrupted satellite communications for a little while, that kind of thing.”
“Oh.”
He looked at me. “You sound disappointed.”
“Well, I guess I was just thinking … that they were so much more powerful than that. That they really could affect things on earth.”
“Oh, they can. But the real danger is for astronauts in space at the time of the eruption—”
“But I’m thinking about something really strong from the sun,” I said. “Not just stuff that knocks out your Sunday NFL Ticket, but an explosion to end all explosions. Totally drenches us in particles or whatever …”
“The strongest are when they both happen at the same time,” Sagan said. “A massive CME combined with a humongous solar flare.”
“Does that happen often?”
“Maybe every few hundred years. We don’t really know. People have been studying the sun for centuries, but real scientific data doesn’t go back very far. So we don’t have many long-range samples. Best we can do to figure out what might have happened back then is by analyzing stuff like particles found in ice core samples from places like Greenland—”
“So what’s the biggest?”
“The biggest in recorded history?”
“I guess, yeah.”
Sagan smiled. “That’s easy. Carrington. It’s called the Carrington Event because it was first seen by a guy over in England, an astronomer named Richard Carrington. It was a phenomenal solar flare that came out of a sunspot and pushed a monster CME straight at us. The CME got here in eighteen hours instead of the usual three or four days. So strong, you could call it a solar storm. When it hit, it set telegraphs on fire all over North America and Europe. Auroras were seen as far south as the Caribbean. In the Rocky Mountains the sky was so bright, miners woke up, thinking it was morning, and started cooking breakfast—”
“But when did it happen?”
“September 1859.”
A chill rushed through me. 1859. The exact same year Lena had mentioned. The date of the last Sonneneruption. So it was true! That was the last time vampires all over the world we
re cured. And the vampire population had been building back up ever since. Ready to pop unless another Sonneneruption came along soon.
I got up from the table and walked around in a slow circle, thinking.
“Why are you so interested all of a sudden?” Sagan said.
“What?” I was still inside my head, trying to process it all.
“CMEs. Why did you want to know about them?
“It’s a secret,” I said.
“Oh. Another one.”
I didn’t like being frowned at. “What’s wrong with secrets?”
“I mean, when are you going to start trusting me, Emma? I thought after yesterday …”
He stood and tried to take my face in his hands.
“Stop.” I pushed his hands away.
“What’s wrong? It’s almost like you’ve … been away somewhere or something.”
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing’s wrong. I just don’t like you doing that when I’m trying to think.”
“So what are you thinking about? Look at me. Stop a second. What are we doing here?”
“I don’t understand. Me and you?”
He nodded.
“Me and you are fine.” I looked into his eyes and softened my voice. “Look, I know I’m not making much sense. One thing you need to know about me … I’ve never been all that great at the whole … people thing. Mom always says I don’t have enough patience for it. Either you trust me or you don’t.”
“I could say the same thing about you. Except I’m not holding anything back.”
Now it was my turn to touch his face. He left my hand there.
“I don’t want to fight,” I said. “I trust you, Sagan. Surely you get that by now, don’t you? The secrets are just … safety things.”
“I want to keep you safe.”
“You do. I mean … there are some things you can’t do. Not right now. But I swear … I will tell you everything. When I’m ready. You have to believe me. I wouldn’t have told you about—Wait, I know. Have you got a pen and a piece of paper?”
“Sure.” He fumbled around in the glove box of his Jeep. “Here.”
I took the pen and wrote something down. Folded the paper and stuffed it in the pocket of his jeans. Sagan started to pull it out. I stopped his hand.
“Don’t look at it till you get home. Hide it somewhere safe and promise me you will guard it with your life.”
“Wow. Okay, sure. What is it?”
“The address to my family’s apartment.”
Sagan kissed me.
“Um. I could do this forever,” I said.
“Not me,” he said.
“Huh?”
“I’ve got a secret too.”
“Okay, what is it?”
He walked over and held open the passenger door to his Jeep.
“Get in.”
We went down to the main road and he turned left. When we got to the next big intersection, Sagan turned right. We had never been in that direction before.
“Another tour, huh?” I said, a little disappointed.
The road went a good ways with nothing on either side, just lowlands and soggy woods. Then up ahead I saw it.…
“Is that a guard shack?”
Sagan didn’t say anything. Just pressed on the gas and the Jeep accelerated.
“You tricked me. You tricked me!” I said. “You’re taking me off the base, aren’t you?” I put my hand on the door handle. “Turn this Jeep around or I’ll jump out.”
Sagan nodded and spoke without looking at me. “You’ll jump out doing …” He glanced at the speedometer. “Fifty-two miles an hour?”
“I will,” I said. “If you don’t turn around.”
“Okay, go ahead.”
He wasn’t smiling. I unhooked my seat belt and leaned toward the door, ready to open it.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” I said.
“Nope.”
I opened the door. We were moving fast, but my eyes were so good I could see individual blades of grass whipping by on the shoulder. I leaned toward the opening.
“Hey!” Sagan yelled. The Jeep swerved a little as he grabbed at my arm. “What are you doing? Shut the door!”
I leaned a little more, tensing my leg muscles.
“Emma!”
I pulled the door shut and sank back into the seat, defeated.
“I can’t,” I said, as much to myself as to Sagan.
We passed through the gate and kept on going off the base.
“I can’t believe you did that,” Sagan said. “You were really thinking about jumping, weren’t you? You’re crazy, you know that?”
We drove a little ways not speaking, both of us hot. We were passing a big new subdivision on the left, stubbly cotton land on the right.
“So what’s the big deal, anyhow?” Sagan said finally. “You left the Space Center to go mall hopping the other day.”
“That was different.”
“Different how?”
“That was just me, okay?” I said, shooting bullets at him with my eyes, though I was pretty sure he couldn’t see them on account of my shades. “I wasn’t in somebody’s car. I could do what I want. I was in control of the situation.”
“So it’s that bad … what might happen to you … that you have to be on top of it every second?”
“Now you’re starting to get it.”
Sagan made a sour expression. “So you don’t think I could protect you.”
“No,” I said. “Like I said, nobody could. Just tell me where we are going.”
“I told you, it’s a secret.”
“Kidnapping me is a secret?” I said.
“I didn’t kidnap you. I asked you to get in my car, and you did.”
“But what if they had stopped us!”
“They never stop you going out, only coming in.”
I sat back in my seat, pouting. “So what now?”
“Just wait.”
“You’re not taking me to the police, are you?” I said, again feeling the need to jump. “Please, swear you wouldn’t do something that stupid.”
“Of course not,” Sagan said, looking offended. “I told you I wouldn’t. Just hang on a little farther. We’re almost there.”
I anxiously watched the telephone poles we passed, wondering how I would feel if I saw my photo plastered there: MISSING GIRL. I also kept having crazy flashes of us pulling up alongside my mother’s car. Even after I reminded myself that she was in another town thirty miles away, it still seemed all too possible.
I tried to distract myself by memorizing the turns we took, but there were too many. The last road we came to cut through the center of a quiet middle-class neighborhood. The houses were mostly two stories with medium-sized yards and flowers around the mailboxes. Sagan slowed to a stop in front of one of them. The house was a little bigger than some and had white frame siding with brick chimneys on either end. There were four cars in the driveway.
“This is where I live,” he said.
“What?”
“I want you to come meet my family. I told them … last night I told them about you.”
“You didn’t!”
“Calm down, please. I didn’t tell them you were … homeless. Just that we had met at school.”
“I’m in high school, remember?”
“You could pass for a college freshman. We’ll … make up a course we’re taking together.”
“Yeah, astrophysics.”
“I’m serious. History. There you go. You’re in my Western Civ class. We’ve been studying together. You’ve been helping me with that while I help you with … calculus. How about that?”
“Oh my God. I’m going to kill you, Sagan. Take me back. Take me back right now.”
“But I already told them that you’re coming. It’s a cookout by the pool. That’s an easy way to get to know new people, right?”
My jaw was hurting from clenching my teeth. “Oh sure. That’s easy. Just me and about a million
lies surrounded by strangers. Do you have any idea how stupid you are right now?”
“Yeah. I do. Really I do. But I knew if I just asked you, you wouldn’t come. Please. Guaranteed pain free. They are really nice and easygoing. It would mean a lot to me. Please.”
I couldn’t look at his eyes.
“Please?”
This time I looked at his eyes, and then I was done. I blew air out of my cheeks.
“Anything else I need to know?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Your name is Julia.”
I swore as we walked around to the back. “Julia. Are you serious?” But inside I was thankful he had thought to protect my identity.
“Yeah, I’ve been reading 1984 lately,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Julia? Winston? One of the all-time great love stories … well, until they put Winston’s head in a cage full of rats—”
“Spare me,” I said. We were already at the gate to the swimming pool and I wanted a chance to catch my breath.
I checked myself over. I was completely clean and wearing decent clothes, but my stomach was doing barrel rolls. Forget about the homeless vampire stuff.… It had been a long time … years … since I had been over to anybody’s house like this. Because of the curse.
I could hear screams and splashes coming from the back, the kind of sounds that always make you feel like an outsider.
What if his family watched a lot of TV, especially the local news? Would they have seen me? I tried to remember; did they put missing teenagers on TV? The only time I ever saw them was on those little Xeroxed posters at Walmart: HAVE YOU SEEN ME? The only missing people who ever seemed to make the nightly news all seemed to fall into one of two categories: (1) kids younger than ten or (2) hot, squeaky-clean moms. Forget about Channel 8 showing up at your house otherwise. I sure didn’t fit either of those profiles. Plus my shades would help.…
“Did you tell them about my eyes?” I said.
“I think so. Yeah, I did,” Sagan said. “Don’t worry. I don’t know who you’re used to being around, but they’re not like that.”
“Not like what?”
“They’re easy. They won’t pounce or anything.”
I wasn’t so sure.
Sagan opened the gate. Nobody seemed to notice us at first; they were making too much noise and talking to one another. Then just when I thought we could safely make it to the sliding glass door and escape inside the house, a little kid screamed, “Hey, Sagan’s new girlfriend is here!” and did a cannonball that threw water all over me.
