The letter. My stomach clenches when I think about it.
It takes me longer to write out my sizes and stuff. “Can’t I just take a picture of what’s in there?” I ask eventually, pointing at the dresser.
She chuckles. “Richard has a half sheet of paper with your writing on it, so no. You’ve already sent what you’re writing now—no picture.”
When I finish, I hand them to her and she folds them in half. She tightens her lips like she’s got something unpleasant to say. “Now the video.” She says it softly, like she knows it’s going to hurt.
It does, but I’m not going to show her. Instead, I point at the door behind her. “I think that’s what we used as a background.” I get up and grab my desk chair, drag it to the doorway, then close the door and sit in front of it. I look over at Corina, who’s not moving. “Ready?”
She bites her lip, wrinkles her nose. “I act like this is all natural, but sometimes the strangeness of sending shit back in time that we’ve already seen gets to me.”
I smile, shake my hair back. I’m weirded out, too, but I’m also sort of okay right now, too. “Let’s shoot this shit.” It comes out with more confidence than I mean it to, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
She pulls out her screen, arranges herself. “Go.”
I open my mouth, start to talk. “I found them on the kitchen floor when I got home on Friday night . . .” It comes out unemotionally and while I’m talking, even though I’m talking about my parents being murdered, I don’t feel anything. It doesn’t even feel like it’s me talking, it’s more like I’m just letting the words I heard earlier pass through me into the video so I can have watched them. “I was going to tell them I needed help and that I was ready to go to the psych ward if that’s what they thought I needed . . .”
The feelings come crashing back as soon as I finish, though, and I’m suddenly feeling worse than I can remember feeling—empty, lonely, hopeless.
“Alrighty, then.” She puts her screen away and grabs the notes. “Let me drop these off to Richard and then we should go to dinner.”
I want her to leave. I don’t want dinner, I want to close my eyes and disappear. Instead I stand up, move the chair away from the door and lie back down on the bed. “You go.” I close my eyes. “I’m not hungry.” Even though I’m trying to keep my voice clear, I know I sound as bad as I feel.
My eyes are closed, but I can hear her move, and feel the bed shift as she sits on the edge. She touches my hand. “I bet that was rough, and I’m sorry.”
I don’t say anything, but I don’t move my hand out of the way, either.
“You’re not hungry, but you should come hang out.” She squeezes my hand. I open my eyes. “You’ll feel better.”
I don’t want to, but I don’t want to say no to her, either. I nod, sit up. She shifts out of my way and stands, putting her hand down for me. I don’t take it, but I get up, and we go to dinner. Together.
Twenty
In the kitchen, Corina gets in line at the cat carrier next to Damon. She smiles when she sees him. He smiles back at her.
I look around the room, feeling alone.
I don’t want to stand in line at the cat carrier next to Damon and Corina feeling like a charity case, so I sit down next to Maddie, who’s already got her plate. It’s chicken of some sort.
She offers me a bite of it and I take it to be polite. It’s good, I suppose, but it’s not my style.
“You’re from LA?” she asks me.
I nod. “What about you?”
“Colorado,” she says as she scrapes up more chicken. “Aurora—near Denver.” She’s quiet for a moment and then she turns to examine me. “You down with all this?”
She looks like she’s actually asking. I sigh. “I don’t know. I’m freaking out a little bit, I think. This’s pretty weird.”
She nods. “Yeah. It was hard coming here.” She drags a finger through her hair to get it out of her face. “Freaked me the fuck out.”
“Yeah . . .” I offer, not sure what else to say. “Me too.”
She cuts off another small bite of her chicken. “It gets better,” she says as she eats it. She chews slowly and I scan the table for other conversations. Nobody’s looking back at me.
The line at the cat carrier is down to just the black guy, Calvin. Everybody else is already seated around us. Corina’s got a slab of salmon on top of rice.
Damon returns from the cat carrier with a burrito. He looks at me again as he sits down next to Corina. I try not to care, but I do. He says something to her. She laughs and I’m suddenly not hungry at all.
I walk to the cat carrier anyways, just for something to do.
“Mac and cheese,” Calvin says as he passes me with his plate. He gestures back at the carrier with his chin. “That thing’s bomb.”
I laugh. I don’t know what I’m looking to eat when I get to the cat carrier. I was thinking burger, but then as I was thinking about it, it disappeared in a flash of Locusts eating people. The carrier pulses and then stops. I open it.
Pizza. The cat carrier is bomb.
There’s not much talking while we eat, but as soon as we’re done, the questions start coming fast and furious at me.
Maddie: “You’re into soccer.”
It’s not a question as much as it’s a statement. I shrug and nod. I like soccer alright. Pete was the big soccer fan. He and my dad used to watch games together. They took me down to see the Galaxy play in Carson a couple times, too. Dad stopped watching soccer when Pete died.
“I watch it sometimes.”
Paul wants to know how old I am and what music I like. I tell him that I like metal, rap, and oldies, which starts a whole discussion about whether it’s possible to like both metal and rap equally. Calvin says it’s impossible because anybody who likes metal doesn’t have an ear to really appreciate rap, and Corina says that they’re both annoying so it’s perfectly possible to be tasteless enough to enjoy them both equally, which makes Calvin laugh and Maddie roll her eyes. Corina asks what sort of oldies and doesn’t believe me when I tell her stuff like the Temptations and the Platters. Paul asks whether I could ever listen to country. I tell him to not be ridiculous before I can stop myself. At first he looks hurt, but then he turns to Calvin and says that he can’t marry me anymore, which weirds me out for a second, but then I laugh. Maddie says she likes country and that he can marry her and he looks at her like she’s got scabies until Maddie promises to love the gay right off of him.
While we’re talking about music and stuff like that, I start to really just chill and I’m almost able to forget why we’re here.
Until Damon says out of the blue: “I wonder what Marcus is doing right now.”
The table goes quiet, then Calvin speaks: “Whatever it is, he’s doing it with a mind clear of Locusts, Live-Tech, Gentry, and the end of the world.”
Maddie turns, speaks quietly just to me: “When they send us back, they wipe our memories and give us new ones. Marcus doesn’t remember shit about this now.”
I nod to show her I heard, but I don’t know what to feel about that.
“Can’t be easy going back like that, but it’s better than the alternative.” Corina shakes her head. “Can you imagine going home remembering all this shit, but not being able to say boo about it to anybody?” She pinches some rice between her thumb and finger and pops it into her mouth. “All this shit wears on me too much. I can’t wait for them to wipe it from my mind.”
Calvin shrugs. “Yeah, me too. It’d be bad to have this all in my head out there. Nobody to talk to about it.”
The conversation splinters again after that. Everybody’s talking, but nobody’s talking to me.
Which is fine, because I don’t want to talk anymore.
I clear my plate. When I try and sneak out, Corina catches my eye. She gives me a shy litt
le wave, which warms me up.
Back in my room, I get ready for bed. I usually sleep in my boxers, but I feel really exposed just wearing my underwear here, so I keep my T-shirt on and crawl under the covers.
As I fall asleep, I think about the people I used to know. I try to get a picture of my mom and dad, but their faces keep changing and I’m suddenly sure I’m going to forget them.
I try to imagine Mousie sitting on her retaining wall, waiting for me to pick her up for school, but I end up with a fuzzy mess of colors and shapes in my head instead.
I do the same with Pete, and then with Julio and my aunt, but they’re not clear either.
Tía Juana. She’s probably in the apartment, feeling like the world ended. She lost her house when my uncle died, and she had to move into a big apartment building in Boyle Heights that she hates because it’s loud and the walls are thin and it’s right next to the freeway. That’s part of the reason she was always at our house. But she can’t do that anymore because our house is . . .
My auntie believes in ghosts.
I get out of bed and grab my backpack, looking for my old screen. Its battery’s dead, so I plug it in and turn it on. While it loads, I imagine what I’ll find when I get connected. Texts from people, wondering why I did it, where I am. Articles about me being a murderer.
Messages from my Tía begging me to call her. I imagine the conversation, telling her that I didn’t do it, describing what happened, telling her about Sabazios and where I am now.
I want to see the article again, the one that quoted her. I want to get a message to the reporter so she knows that I’m innocent.
Maybe she’ll publish it and let everyone else know.
The screen comes on finally, but there’s no Wi-Fi. Not like there’s no open connection; there’s no connection at all. There’s no emergency service reception, either. It’s like we’re in a hole.
I move the phone around the room a bit to see if I can get the corner of some service, but there’s nothing.
I look at the door, but I’m not dressed and I don’t want to talk to anybody here.
There’s only one person I want to talk to. I dive to try and find her. I feel her.
HELLO?
She says nothing, and then:
“Goodbye, scared boy.”
She sounds sad.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN?
“You’re on your own, runaway boy. You’re gonna get your patch. Gonna plug the drain in your brain where the Silly Juice and me come through. Don’t be scared, boy. I’ll be here when you need to run away again.”
And then she’s gone. I call for her. I wait.
Nothing.
I fall asleep totally alone.
Twenty-One
Paul shakes me awake in the morning. At first I don’t know where I am or who he is, but by the time I’ve gotten halfway up it all comes back in a heap that lands on me like a physical weight. Time travel, dead parents, evil aliens who want to eat us, other aliens here to help us.
I lie back down and pull the blankets up.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Paul says. “You’ve got to save the Earth today.” He grabs my hand and leans back as he pulls me into a reluctant standing position.
“Holy hell,” I manage to say, but I’m not sure exactly which part I’m saying it about.
Paul points at the desk, where there’s now a bottle of shampoo and some soap. “Go. Shower. Get dressed!”
Everything he says has a smile attached to it like it’s a joke that only he gets.
In the shower, I spend the time thinking about people who I don’t have anymore, and about Locusts eating the rest of everybody. By the time I’m dried off, I feel horrible.
Paul’s sitting in his desk chair playing guitar when I get back to the room.
He stands up and returns the guitar to its stand. “You ready, champ?”
“Yeah.” I drop my clothes and shampoo onto the bed.
The crumpled papers from the letter I tried to write are still on the desk. I want to throw them away, make them disappear, but Paul’s sitting right where I need to go to get to the desk.
He’s looking at me, making me feel weird, just strumming quietly. When I go past him I end up knocking the head of his guitar. I don’t mean to, but I don’t make much of an effort to avoid it, either.
“Excuse me,” he says.
I don’t reply, just gather the papers and throw them in the garbage under the desk.
When I turn around, he’s standing, the guitar laid across his bed. He’s smiling, but his eyes are street hard. “No,” he says. He shakes his head. “Uh-uh. Alex, this will not work. We are partners and roommates and I am working very hard to make you feel welcome here. If you’ve got a problem, say it now.”
I go to stare back at him, but my hair is wet and it falls straight in my face and I have to move it away with my hand and somehow having to do it takes the anger out of me and leaves me tired.
“It’s nothing,” I mutter. “I don’t have a problem with you.” Then I look at him, my face as calm as I can make it.
He squints at me. Nods his head slowly. “You sure?”
I shrug. “Yeah.” Then: “It’s just . . .”
He raises an eyebrow.
I don’t reply immediately, not even sure what I’m going to say. Eventually: “I got a lot in my head right now.”
“Yeah,” he says softly. His eyes relax. “I bet you do. Maybe don’t take it out on me, though, okay?”
I nod. “Yeah. Okay.”
He waits a moment. “Alright, then. We should get breakfast—gliding on an empty stomach sucks.”
“Okay.” Food sounds alright. “Yeah.”
Together, we walk to the kitchen.
It’s just us and Calvin there while we eat. “Calvin’s always here,” Paul says.
Calvin bobs his head. “Good a place as any.” He stuffs a spoonful of cereal into his mouth, chews.
I’m just finishing my Pop-Tarts when Richard walks in. “Alex!” he sings as he walks up behind me and puts his hands on my shoulders. “You ready to get started?”
I shrug. “Is there a way I can get a message home first? My aunt . . .”
He shakes his head slowly. “I’m sorry, man. While you’re with us, we have to keep total control on the information that goes out.” He waves at the stuff around us. “Our only chance for success is by working under the radar until we’re ready to go public, so we have to keep the lid screwed on tight.” When he sees the look on my face, he stops smiling. “I know how much it would mean to you, though, so we’ll figure out a way to let your aunt know you’re alright, and that you didn’t . . .” He trails off. “Okay?”
I bob my head, feel myself smile a little bit even though I don’t mean it.
He pinches my shoulder, looks over at Paul, then down at me. “You’ve got a big a day ahead, Alex, so we probably should get going.” He raises his eyebrows. “You think you’re up to it?”
I bob my head again, raise my shoulder under his hand.
“Good man.” He laughs. “Let’s go.”
Paul stands with us. “You’re coming, too?” I try to keep my voice level.
He grins. “Sure am. I’m gonna train you.” He leans in over the table. “You can call me Morpheus.”
I shake my head, try not to smile, but he’s goofy as hell and he’s actually funny. “I’m not calling you Morpheus.”
“Then you shouldn’t’ve taken the red pill.”
Richard and Paul take me back to the central patio and then through the door that leads up a set of stairs and into a wide hallway that looks too big and too long to fit inside the hill. Richard opens a door about halfway down and gestures for me to go inside. It’s a doctor’s office. “Take a seat on the exam table,” he tells me. “We’ve got to get your patch attached.
”
I sit on the table.
“Do you have your letter?”
I freeze. Even the memory of the panic I felt yesterday when I was trying to write it makes me sweat. I don’t respond, hoping that’ll be the end of it.
It’s not. Richard’s whole attitude changes. “You tried to change what it said? For your parents?”
“No.” It comes out like a whisper. My cheeks are starting to get hot. I can feel my eyes begin to burn.
Richard speaks softly. “Alex, there’s no way to do that.”
And that’s it. Too much. I make it out of the room and into the hallway before the tears come. I’m so mad that I’m shaking. I don’t even notice the door open until Richard’s got his hand on me.
“Alex?” His voice cuts through me.
“I’m not writing it.”
He nods his head. “You’re right. You don’t need to do it today. I should’ve been more sensitive.”
I look up. His face is right there, just above me, so close. I want to . . .
I don’t.
“I’m not ever writing that fucking letter.” I point at him. “Ever.”
He backs up, pulls himself out of range, which lets me relax a little. “Alex . . .” But then he trails off. He takes in a breath like he’s going to say something else, but instead he just lets it go.
“What?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing you need to be bothered with right now.”
“Tell me.”
He shakes his head, blows out another breath. “Look, the way these things work is that you got the letter, so somehow, someday, you will write it and it will be the exact letter you received.” He holds up his hands to slow my response. “But it doesn’t have to be now and it doesn’t have to be any time soon, so we don’t need to worry about it here and now.”
I wipe my sleeve hard across my face, push my eyes in with my thumbs, then shake my head. “I’m not writing it.”
He picks his hand off my shoulder. “I understand.”
I’m not feeling much of anything anymore, except that I don’t want to continue this conversation. I try to talk, but my throat’s full. I cough to clear it. “Does the patch hurt?”
Strange Days Page 10
