by Walter Jury
Mitra Archer.
My mother.
Who happens to be a professor of biochemistry at Princeton.
I hit SEND before I know what I’m doing. But as it starts to ring, I realize how much I need to hear her voice, how she is the only one who can make me feel safe. I know she left us, but I’m still so raw from what’s happened that I just need a parent. And my mom’s the only one I have left. “Pick up,” I whisper. “Please pick up.”
She doesn’t. Her cool, confident voice tells me she’s not available, that I should leave a message. But I can’t. What the hell am I supposed to say? So I hang up, and then waste several minutes composing and erasing a text that in the end reads Coming to Princeton. Please call me as soon as you get this.
It isn’t until I send it that I realize she’ll think it’s from my dad. I lower my forehead to my knees and suck wind, trying to get my heart to slow down, trying to navigate the nuclear wasteland between my ears. This whole situation is so massively fucked, which makes it doubly important that I get ahold of myself. I need to think. I need to figure this out.
“Which stadium?” asks Christina.
“What?”
It comes out of me sounding hard-edged, irritable. I hear her exhale a long breath before she speaks again. “You said you were going to a stadium,” she says, a bit louder. “Which one?”
“Princeton,” I say.
“Then I have to take the bridge to the turnpike, and we have to get gas while we’re still in New York.” The vehicle slows. “Is there . . . is there anything you can cover him with?”
Oh. God.
In full-on zombie mode, I look into the back and see there’s a tarp over some computer equipment. I yank it up and hold my breath as I cover my dad’s face and body with the tarp and ease him onto the floor of the SUV. I use my ruined, soaked shirt to mop up what I can of the blood on the seat.
Christina exits the highway and pulls into a gas station near the George Washington Bridge. I scoot low, because I’m half naked back here, and we’re already likely to catch someone’s attention; the vehicle might be bulletproof, but there are pockmarks in the windows and probably all over the metal.
“I think the glass is tinted,” she says when she sees me duck. She stops next to a pump. Her voice cracks as she says, “I don’t think people will notice the blood on my shirt because it’s black . . .” She squares her shoulders. “I’ll be right back.”
She gets out and unscrews the cap for the gas tank. Her face is pale, her expression solemn. I watch the pink tip of her tongue slide over her bottom lip, this tiny mannerism I know so well, one that usually drives me wild. But now it leaves me cold. She’s wearing this beautiful disguise, this skin I long to touch. All this time, it’s fooled me. I wonder what she’s like on the inside, what makes her different from me. I know her blood runs red; I had to watch her limp off the soccer field earlier this season, her knee raw and dripping after she collided with another player’s cleats. I know her heart beats; in my luckiest moment I’ve had my ear pressed to her chest as her fingers stroked through my hair. I know she breathes and sleeps. Hell, I know she pees, because she always needs to go at the most inconvenient moments, like right when we’re arriving at the theater, ten minutes late for the movie.
Despite all of those things that make her normal, that make her like me, I know what my father said. This girl, this gorgeous girl who is right now tucking her hair behind the delicate shell of her ear, who is slipping on sunglasses to cover her tear-stained face, is an alien.
Just like the ones who shot my dad.
Just like most of the people in the world, apparently. I look down at my dad’s legs, which are dead weight on top of my own feet. He wouldn’t have lied. He wouldn’t have screwed with me. He knew what was happening. He knew we were in danger. He was telling me the truth. He was trying to tell me everything, but ran out of time.
When I raise my head, Christina is gone.
It’s like an electric jolt to my system, sending prickling shocks from my brain to my limbs. I look in all directions and process only the random stuff, the trucker with bloodshot eyes and sweaty hat-hair at pump number three, the hot pink sandals of the little girl holding her mother’s hand as they walk into the convenience store, the bumper sticker that reads Nobody Likes Your Celtic Arm Tattoo on the back of a banged-up Honda.
The dread knots inside me as I swivel my head, looking for Christina. Just as I’m panicking, she walks out of the store, still wearing her sunglasses, clothed in a new Yankees sweatshirt and clutching a plastic bag. But instead of returning to the SUV, she heads over to a college-aged guy at one of the pumps a few rows down and strikes up a conversation with him. A minute later, he hands her his cell phone. With one glance over her shoulder at our car, she starts to dial.
And I start to sweat.
She wouldn’t, would she? Call the authorities? Turn me in?
Why wouldn’t she? Dad said most of the H2 don’t know they’re not human, but who’s to say she hasn’t known all along? What if that’s the reason she’s with me in the first place? Lamb was obviously some kind of plant—what if she is, too? She knows I’m in possession of something the H2 want, and that we’re on our way to meet one of my dad’s colleagues. This is her chance to call us in. She’d probably be rewarded for her loyalty to them.
Right as she hangs up, hands the guy back his cell, and comes back to the SUV, another Tate interrupts my mental meltdown, the me from this morning, from a few hours ago. This is Christina. I know her. I—
She unhooks the pump, then opens the door and pokes her head inside. Without taking off her shades, she holds the bag out to me. “I got you a shirt.”
I stare at her for a moment, and all I can think is that I need to see her eyes. I’d know the truth if I could only see her eyes. But then I shake myself into action, take the bag, and peek inside. It’s a dark green Jets T-shirt. I hate the Jets, but hey, what the fuck does it matter right now? I pull it out and tug it on.
Christina climbs up into the driver’s seat and turns around. “Are . . . you going to come sit in the front seat?”
I guess I should. Yes, I definitely should. I should stop wondering if she’s just called Race Lavin down on my head, and I should sit in the front with her.
I climb over the seat and strap myself in while she puts the SUV in motion. As we pull out of the gas station, I swear that every single freaking person turns their head to watch. The fat trucker. The little girl. The Honda driver. All of them. Everyone. I wonder how many of them are human. I could grab the scanner from the backseat and find out, but I don’t think I want to know.
I squeeze my eyes shut and rub my hands over them.
Christina gets back on the highway, heading over the bridge and onto the southbound Jersey turnpike. Her slender fingers are gripping the steering wheel so hard that it looks like her bones are going to come popping through her skin. I stare at them flexing, turning white, so human. So human.
But she’s not.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” she says.
I grit my teeth and turn toward the window. The scenery is a hazy gray-green sea beyond the glass, and the view doesn’t sharpen up until I blink a few times. “What an original sentiment,” I snap. “It took you this long to think of it?”
“I can’t believe you said that.” Her voice is thick, like she’s going to cry.
I exhale a sharp breath through my nose. “Why? What are you sorry for? You still have your parents. They’re happily married aliens without a care in the world.”
She taps the brakes to avoid colliding with a car transporter in front of us. “Tate, I know you’ve been through a lot, but—”
“I’ve been through a lot? Are you taking your lines from Generic Condolences 101? Do you have the brochure in your pocket? Christina, you’re one of them. I would think you’d be happy he’s d
ead.”
“What?” Her voice is all trembly and high-pitched. “I didn’t even know I was ‘one of them’ until about half an hour ago!”
“Well, congratulations, you’re on the winning side.” Somewhere, deep in the convoluted folds of my mind, there’s a small voice that’s shouting for me to shut up, but this feels too savagely good. I’ve got a target now, a place to aim all my rage, all my grief.
Christina’s quiet for a moment, but a pink flush is slowly spreading across her cheeks. When she speaks again, it’s almost a growl. “You’re being an asshole. Of course I’m not happy your dad’s dead. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Try looking at it from a human perspective,” I snarl.
She swerves into the middle lane and accelerates. “Oh my God, Tate! You’re the one who snuck into your father’s lab. You’re the one who stole that freaking scanner. And you’re the one who brought it to school!”
I punch the plastic window frame. “So it’s my fault he’s dead? That’s what you’re saying? That a bunch of trigger-happy aliens had nothing to do with it?”
“I’m saying I’m not your enemy!” she shrieks.
“You’re one of them!” I shout. I’m gone. Totally gone. My head is one giant pulse, throbbing, beating red and raw. “You called them just now, didn’t you? You told them where we were going and who we were meeting! That’s what you were doing, wasn’t it?”
“That’s what you think of me?” Christina veers back into the slow lane and shoots down an exit ramp. “I was calling my freaking parents, you jerk! Did you think they’d be cool with me disappearing from school?”
Even in all my craziness, I know she’s driving too fast. The metal poles of street lamps are flitting by in a steel blur, along with signs telling me we’re in Secaucus. She skids off the exit ramp and careens onto a city street, and for a second I actually think we’re going to roll over.
Tears are streaming down her face now. “I need to go home! I was an idiot to come with you!” she cries. She wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand and sniffles, but she barely slows down, even when she takes the sharp left into the tiny lot of a sparsely wooded playground, cutting right in front of a city bus.
We skid to a stop next to a sign indicating there’s a train station up the road. She rips the keys from the ignition and flings them at me. They hit my chest and fall to the floor.
“I’ll find my own way home.” She throws the door open, then loops her arm through her backpack and takes off. I sit there, watching her pistoning strides, trying to catch my breath. The red is fading fast from my vision, and that voice in my head is louder now.
It’s telling me what a douchebag I am.
As the curtain of sanity descends, too little too late as always, I see it all. I dragged her into this. She has done nothing but help me, stick by me, believe in me. If she’d been in on it, if she’d known who was after me, she could have refused to come. She could have left me then and there. But she didn’t. Instead, she risked her life. She threw herself into the driver’s seat—when its last occupant had just had his brains blown out.
“Goddamn it,” I grind out, and then I’m out of the car and running after her. “Christina!”
She doesn’t slow at all. I stumble over a crumbled patch of sidewalk, and by the time I’ve caught my balance, she’s made it across this huge intersection. And of course, the light has just changed.
I’ll never reach her on foot. I run back to the SUV and scrabble for the keys. This isn’t the safest area, and she’s all alone. And once again, it’s my fault.
I pull out of the parking lot and head down the road, my thoughts landing strike after strike on the inside of my skull. Idiot. Idiot. Find her. Find her. The light at the intersection turns green as I get to it, finally a lucky break, and I don’t even slow down as—
Everything around me explodes.
I AM DIMLY AWARE OF MY WORLD TILTING, OF IMPACT that drives the air from my lungs, of glass flying, of pain. All the other sounds fade away except this awful skid-scrape-rend-shriek . . . silence.
I am lying on my side, my head resting against the deflating curtain airbag, the only thing between me and the asphalt. I look out at the wheels of cars and the feet running toward what used to be the bloody windshield but is now a clear view as far as my eye can see. Which is not very far.
“Tate!”
“Christina?” I try to say, but I choke on something and start to cough. Blood. It’s dripping from my nose, my mouth. I gag and spit, trying to get the metal taste off my tongue.
Then her face is right there, where the windshield used to be. “Oh God,” she whispers.
“You came back,” I mumble. My hands are tingling. So are my legs. I look down at myself. They’re still attached to me, and I seem to be in control of them. Kind of.
Her face crumples as she watches me, and she draws in a shaky breath. “Can you unbuckle your seat belt?”
“No problem.” I sound like I’m drunk. It feels that way, too, only without the happy buzz.
With fingers that feel as thick as sausages, I fumble with my seat belt and finally get it undone. Christina reaches for me. She strokes my face, then hooks her fingers in my armpit and pulls while I push. I slowly slide-crawl-flounder over glass and gravel, and then I’m resting with my back against the hood of the SUV, which is lying on its side at the edge of an intersection, half on the sidewalk, its ass-end out in the road.
Christina uses her sleeve to wipe the blood from my face. “Where are you hurt?” she asks.
“Nowhere.” All of me is cold, but nothing hurts, not really.
“You’ve got a cut over your eye, and your nose is bleeding.”
With a feather-light touch, her fingers flutter along my nose. I wince as sensation returns and she draws back quickly. I run my own fingers over the mess, less gentle, and nothing seems broken or out of place. My fingers are slick with blood, and I wipe them on my shirt.
Someone yells something about an ambulance. Christina squeezes my hand and stands up to peer over the hood, then takes a quick step back. She drops down on her stomach, and then all I can see is her sneakers protruding out of the shattered windshield. She scoots out of the wreckage a second later and crawls over to me. “Can you stand up?” she asks quietly.
A guy with a scraggly blond ponytail brandishes his cell phone as he leans around Christina. “Hey, dude, you all right? We called an ambulance for you and the other driver. They’re on their way.”
There’s something in the stormy blue of Christina’s eyes, something she’s trying to tell me. But my head is so foggy, and all around me there’s noise, and I can’t quite make sense of it. A siren. A cry. A shout. A honking horn. Skidding tires on asphalt.
Christina takes my face in her hands, forcing me to look at her. “Get. Up. I think they’re coming.”
I blink, focusing on her mouth, translating the words. “The ambulance?”
She shakes her head, and then scoots next to me and gets her shoulders under my arm. She wraps her arm around my waist. “I’m sorry. I know you’re hurting. But they’re going to catch us if you don’t get up. Please, baby. Get up.”
“The scanner—”
“I got it.”
“And my dad,” I say stupidly as she struggles beneath my weight.
“When the ambulance comes, they’ll take care of him,” she says. Her grip on me tightens, her fingers pressing against my ribs and digging into my forearm. “He’d want you to get to safety, Tate. You know that.”
I can’t find the words to argue. She helps me to my feet and holds me tight as I get my balance. She leads me around the back of the wreckage and onto the sidewalk. Sirens shriek nearby, and three cruisers stutter-stop their way into the intersection, blocking traffic from all sides. A hundred yards or so away, I see the flashing lights of what is probably
an ambulance.
In the middle of the intersection, a crowd is gathered around a blue sedan with its front end smashed in. The windshield has a circular spiderweb fracture in it. Where the driver’s head hit.
“Guy ran the red light,” the blond guy says, shaking his head. “I saw the whole thing. He didn’t even slow down.”
Christina’s lips are against my ear. “Look up the road. That way.”
She angles her head. I squint and see three black SUVs in the stopped line of traffic, a block away. The passenger door of the one at the front opens. A man gets out and shades his face with his hand as he peers in our direction. It’s Race Lavin.
“How did they find us?” Christina asks, all breath and no noise. And then she looks at me. “I didn’t do this, Tate. I swear.”
I think she’s sincere, though I’m not exactly at my most perceptive. But as Christina guides me toward the rear of the SUV, my gaze snags on its bumper. No bigger than a mouse, clinging to the rear panel, glinting dully in the light. “Could be a tracking device,” I say. “Remember the cop who jumped onto the back?”
Christina’s fingers brush over it as she leads me away. “That must be it.”
Race waves his arms and points to us, and the doors of the black SUVs all open at the same time.
My thoughts snap back into focus as a jolt of adrenaline roars through me. “Come on!” I tug Christina’s hand and stagger away from the wreckage of the SUV as the thing starts to smoke and spark. A woman standing on the curb screeches something about fire, and everyone scatters as ominous popping sounds come from under the hood. We’re caught up in the crowd, letting them carry us away from the intersection—and the people chasing us. Christina drags me all the way to the front of the throng of panicked people, who are thinking more about their own safety than the fact that we’re about to leave the scene of an accident.
