by Ella James
And still, my mind raced on.
What if I never saw them again? What if the DoD had already caught them, and they ended up having to issue another summons to keep from…I don’t know…getting hurt or even killed? Could they get killed? Nick had implied that he could. If Nick somehow died, Vera would definitely choose the gold. Vera would choose the gold anyway. Geez, I was going to die young. Would I see Dad again? What about Mom?
At that second, West swung out of his bunk and leaned against my bed.
“You okay up there?”
I shrugged. I didn’t have the energy to lie to him.
I expected…I don’t know what. Questions or something. West being West, the consummate class clown. Instead, he just nodded. In the quiet of the room, I could hear a faint buzzing through the walls: a kind of garbled static that obviously had something to do with broadcasting radio.
“Holy crap, West. Duh!” I shot up, gaping down at him as he stuck a worn-out looking Garfield mug in front of the Keurig. “Nick can like, read radio waves. Hear radio waves. I don’t know, but we’re at a radio station! Maybe we could call in. Like…dedicate a song or something. I could say I wanted them to play…I don’t know, something—from Milo to Nick. With a secret message. ‘You can find me right here.’ Maybe Nick would ‘hear’ it somehow and come here to find me.”
But West was already shaking his head. “Not with a name like Milo. If you were Jane,” he shrugged, “yeah. But everybody knows there’s a missing girl named Milo.”
I blew out the breath I’d been holding. “Ugh. You’re right.”
I rolled over on my side, watching as he filled the Keurig with water from a dingy-looking porcelain sink in the corner, loaded a little plastic container of coffee into the machine’s lift top, and pressed a glowing blue button.
The machine’s violent, frenzied sound as it did its work matched my mood just fine. I inhaled deeply with my eyes shut, waiting for the familiar smell of coffee, but a few minutes later, West stepped over to me, bearing a piping cup of cocoa.
“For you.”
I sat cross-legged with my back against the wall beside the beds and sipped it quietly while he repeated the process. His coffee mug was pale blue, and when it was ready, he took a long sip and sighed.
I slurped my cocoa down. It had been a while since I’d eaten, and even though I lacked an appetite, my body wanted calories. West was hungry too. He stepped over to the dresser barring the door, opened a drawer, and pulled out two bags of barbecue potato chips. He tossed one at me, and I abandoned the idea of denying myself food. I devoured the chips in handfuls I crammed into my mouth.
“Hungry?” he laughed.
“Yeah.”
“Here, have some more.” I tossed back two more bags of chips before I started feeling clear-headed again—and my anxiety increased tenfold.
I leaned around the headboard of my bunk bed, craning my neck so I could see through a small slit in the blinds.
“Do you think they’re still around?” I asked. “The men in black?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
I nodded. “Probably so. But I’m not sure how long I can handle sitting here. If Nick and Vera don’t find us in the next hour or so, I think I may want to go to Golden. If they aren’t back by then…” I pressed my lips together, not wanting to say what I feared. “West, I’ll totally understand if you don’t want to—”
“Go with you?” He shook his head. “Woman, how many times do I have to tell you, I’m in.”
“Thank you. You have no idea how much I appreciate this.”
“Ah, it ain’t no thing.”
I stretched out on the bed, trying to feel nothing, to think nothing. “I think I’m going to sleep for a little while,” I murmured.
“Knock yourself out,” he said.
I turned my back to him, tucked a magenta fleece blanket around myself, and folded my arm over my head.
The hour crept by painfully slow.
When the little alarm clock perched on the edge of my mattress showed that it was ten after two a.m., I sat up. Within seconds, West popped up.
He laid his chin on the side of my mattress, so close I could smell his soap. “How ya doing?”
I shrugged. “I’m fine.”
He gave me a look I couldn’t read—one that might have been worried—before holding up a money clip. “Counted it up. I’ve got a hundred and twelve dollars. I think it’ll get us to Golden if we use that nasty ass cab service on 18th.”
I was not familiar with it, but I smiled and nodded. “Okay. That’s good I guess.”
He produced a tablet from somewhere and touched the screen, revealing a map. “Looks like we should be okay if we take Highway 6 until it intersects with I-70. There’s a barricade around there somewhere. The news reports weren’t too specific.”
That didn’t sound pleasant. I took a deep breath and prayed Vera and Nick would find us like…right now. “Okay. Could you tell how many miles we’d have to walk to get to Golden?”
“I’m guessing three or four, at least.”
I nodded again. That seriously sucked, but there was no way was I complaining to West.
“I’m wanted for drug trafficking, by the way,” he said.
“What!”
He nodded and rubbed his head. “Saw a story about it online. They’ve got a warrant out and everything.”
“Oh my God, West, I’m so sorry!”
He shrugged. “Not like it’s a lie.”
“I know, but—”a“C’mon, you didn’t ask to get caught up in all this either, did you.” He stepped back over to the desk and put his hand on a landline phone. “I’m gonna call the cab, okay?”
I swallowed. “Okay. But West?”
He arched his brows.
“I’m really sorry. No matter what you say. I’m still sorry.” My throat tightened—a sensation that was becoming all too familiar in the last few days—and West smiled a little. “I changed my major. Sociology. A little criminal record never hurt a sociologist. Might even help.”
That made me laugh.
After he made the call, West and I washed our coffee cups out and went into the hallway, where we could see the curb line through a small, rectangular window. I didn’t see anyone who I thought looked super lurky, but my window only gave me a narrow view.
When the cab pulled up, I felt a bite of panic, but we had no choice other than to walk down the short sidewalk and get inside.
The driver turned out to be a middle-aged woman named Cindy; although what West said was true—the cab smelled like old feet—Cindy was nice.
While West talked to Cindy about some upcoming concert, and I wracked my brain for a plan. But nothing came. I had no idea how to find out about mom, much less my two possibly captured alien friends.
I picked at my cuticles, feeling lost and anxious as we moved closer and closer. What if we couldn’t even get into Golden on foot? What if we were seen? I didn’t have any slick powers. Neither did West. Without Nick and Vera, we were defenseless.
I kept my eyes trained on the road in front of us, watching for black SUVs, police cruisers, or helicopters. All I saw were garden variety vehicles. Then the cluster of tail lights got a little thicker. Another half mile and we were creeping along. I felt like I might throw up.
Within a minute Cindy was on her cell phone.
“I didn’t know six was still blocked off,” she told someone. I watched her black pony-tail as she nodded a few times. “Thanks, Gina. I will.”
She glanced into the rear-view at us. “I think I’ll have to turn around in a few miles. No traffic in or out of Golden. Got that big mess there. Don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but—”
“We have,” West interrupted, “but we live in Golden. Our parents do. We live in an apartment. We’re students at UC Denver. But anyway, we want to try to get home…”
Cindy shrugged. “We’ll see how it shakes out. I’ll get you as close as I can.”
West no
dded. “As close as you can.”
I could barely breathe as we inched closer to what I assumed was a barricade. Surely there would be DoD agents here. What if they had some high-tech way of recognizing me? I sat up a little straighter and rationed my breaths. Nick had mentioned something called a molecular…something. What did it do?
Cindy clucked. “Okay. I see.”
“What?” West asked.
She pointed at the line of traffic in front of us. “They’re doing a detour. Looks like here at this next exit we’ll get off. I’ll let you out and turn around.”
West nodded. “Works for us.”
But it didn’t. Once she let us out, where would we go? The next exit was one I took sometimes to get to Halah’s house, but— Halah’s house. It was close to Golden, but technically right outside the city line. Hence the detour through there.
I turned to West. “We’re going to Halah’s house.”
“What’s at Halah’s house?”
“Halah.”
I was thrilled to find, a minute later, that the detour took traffic right through Halah’s neighborhood.
I leaned closer to my window, but I didn’t see anything weird. No police cruisers or big, dark SUVs. It was just a regular neighborhood with a few more cars than usual, circling back toward the interstate.
Cindy let us off by some trees in front of a blue two-story house, and West paid her forty-three dollars.
“You kids be careful.”
After a brief debate about what would be less weird, West and I decided to stick to the sidewalk rather than cutting through yards. We walked as quickly as we could until we were two streets away from the detour route. If my sense of direction was correct, we were pretty close to Halah’s house, on Briar Lane. If we walked just a few blocks more and took a left, hers would be the fourth house on the left.
It was a warmish night for late October, somewhere in the high forties, but the sidewalk still froze the soles of my feet. West and I walked close together as we hurried past yards decorated with strands of orange lights, jack-o-lanerns, faux tombstones and, in one, a mechanized witch who cackled as we past, prompting West to drop the f-bomb.
I glanced up at the sky a few times, wondering again how all of this could even be real. Wasn’t I a regular girl a few weeks ago—worried about little more than the shifting tides of my clique of girlfriends and my upcoming concert solo?
The moon shone brightly down on us, gleaming off the hoods of cars and SUVs. The smell of grass mingled with the occasional whiff of fabric softener, wafting out from someone’s laundry line. One house had a window open on the side, and I saw a swatch of pink wall paint before I heard a younger girl hiss, “I’m just so sick of her! I hate my mom so much. I wish I could go live with my dad.”
I pressed my lips together, wishing my problems were more of that nature. Instead they were all: Where is mom? Where are Nick and Vera? Will we all survive this?
Eventually, I succumbed to one of West’s conversation starters, because I couldn’t handle worrying anymore. I felt so frayed, I thought that at any moment I might snap in half.
One block later, we reached the street sign for Briar Lane, and I felt a rush of relief, followed by crippling nervousness. What would I tell her? Would she believe me?
I rubbed my eyes and glanced at West. “Do you know what time it is?” I hadn’t even remembered to look in the cab.
“When we left the car, it was around three. It’s probably three-thirty now.”
I wondered if Halah was home yet.
“Is it a weekend night?” I asked West.
He laughed. “Yeah. It’s Saturday.”
“But it’s late, so I’m sure she’s home.”
“If not, we’re in the bushes?” He said it like he was simply stating a fact, not complaining, but I still felt guilty.
“Yeah. I’m afraid so.”
“I’m down with that.”
Halah’s house was a yellow split-level, the upper half wood, the lower half brick. A wide, flat yard sprawled around it, with flower beds that bore sunflowers in the warmer months. Outside Halah’s second-story window was a giant, noble-looking oak. I remember one time when we wanted to sneak out during our freshman year to toilet paper someone’s yard, we were going to try to jump from her window sill into its branches.
As we approached the corner of her yard, we heard burr of a car’s engine. My heart nearly burst out of my chest as I tugged West behind a row of scraggly, winter-bare bushes. As the headlights grew brighter, and I spotted police lights on the car’s roof, I nearly peed my pants.
“Oh shit,” I gasped. “Oh shit!”
“Run!” West cried. I didn’t even get a chance to think before he jerked me up, and we were dashing toward the Colemans’ carport. We pressed our backs against one of its walls mere seconds before the cruiser crept past.
“Oh my God! Oh God!” I pressed my hand against my chest. “We shouldn’t have come here! Of course they’ll be watching! She’s my friend!”
West was gasping, too, holding his side. “Shit, woman. You’re gonna kill me.”
A minute later, without any warning in the form of a purring motor or the gentle whoosh of tires on pavement, headlights illuminated the carport.
THE HEADLIGHTS WERE round.
The headlights were round.
“Omigod! Shit! It’s Halah!”
Halah drove a Jeep Liberty, and I knew from nighttime excursions during our homecoming week toilet paper wars that it had round headlights.
I held onto West’s arm as Halah rolled to a stop behind her dad’s Mercedes. I could feel my pulse throbbing in my throat as I raced over what to say.
I watched her curly-haired silhouette move slowly toward the carport, wearing high-heels and a dress and toting one of her giant purses.
I didn’t want to scare her, so I called, “Halah!”
She shrieked, and turned a circle with her hand shielding her eyes. “Who the hell is that?”
I hesitated a second before hissing, “It’s Milo. Come into your carport!”
A crushing hug confirmed what I’d already figured: Halah was drunk. She reeked of cigarettes. But she seemed ecstatic to see me, and she gave West a fist-bump without asking any questions about why we were together at such a strange hour, when I was supposed to’ve been kidnapped.
“Come on in,” she told us in a low voice. “Mom and Dad took the camper to some cruddy park, so it’s just me.”
She fumbled with the keys, then shoved the door open and beckoned us into the kitchen, a modern, open space done in gray, red, and black.
“You guys!” She pointed to some bar stools. “Sit down and spill. Milo, what the hell happened?”
I looked into her red-rimmed eyes and sighed. “It’s not what you heard. Trust me.”
She laughed. “Well I’ve heard a lot of different crap. You know your Mom was like, a total basket case. Then she got the swine flu. Did you even know that?”
It took all my willpower to inhale deeply and nod without bursting into tears. “Yeah. But I don’t know much more than that.” I climbed onto one of the bar stools and propped my elbows on the island, cradling my head in my hand.
Halah was too drunk to notice my distress, but West moved to stand behind me.
“So who wants coffee and donuts?”
“I think Milo wants to know about her mom,” West said.
Halah, opening the pantry, paused. “Oh, right.” She turned toward me. “Well, your asshole neighbor Suxley gave it to her. Well, his pigs did. Or, I don’t know. She got it a few days ago and I heard she had to go to like special quarantine. No, but Milo, she’s like, going to be fine. Are you okay?”
I knew tears were sliding down my face, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I wiped at them quickly, trying to seem composed and…not kidnapped.
“I’m sorry. Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just…my mom and I had this huge fight and…” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I just need to see her. Do you kno
w where they took her?”
Halah shook her head. “I don’t. Girlfriend, I’m sorry.” She looked me up and down, her eyebrows pinched together. “You look kind of rough. What’s going on with you?” She turned sideways and stood on her tip-toes to reach a box of cereal. As she tore into it, her hazel eyes held mine.
“I want to know what’s up with you Milo. We’ve all been worried. And your mom—”
“Halah. Milo feels like shit about that, okay. Don’t make her feel worse.”
Halah raised her brows. Her mouth lolled open. “Okay, toker. Chill your shit.”
I could tell she was pretty drunk. This wasn’t the Halah I knew like a sister. Her voice seemed lower than it had before; scratchy, like maybe she had smoked too many cigarettes. Her lipstick, I noticed, was bright red and her silver dress was short. Like, almost butt short.
“Did you go out?” I asked, as a way to kind of clear the air.
“It’s Saturday, isn’t it?” She shoveled some cereal into her mouth, and my stomach growled.
“Here.” She slid it across the table. “You look like you need it.”
I accepted the cereal without a word and ate a few handfuls while West complimented the house, and Halah poured West and me some milk.
She slid our glasses across the island and put her hands on her hips. “So what’s going on, and where’s your kidnapper, Milo? The really hot one. Nick.”
I was rubbing my eyes, wondering what exactly I should tell her, when West leaned forward. “You’re not gonna believe this shit.”
“What shit?” I asked him cluelessly.
He looked at me with question in his eyes, and Halah echoed, “What shit?”
“He’s not my cousin,” I hedged.
“I know that already.”
“Well…” I struggled to come up with a story I thought Halah would buy. In the meantime, I leaned forward and whispered: “West was right, you might not believe this but—” I was going to say, I ran away with him. Something exciting but benign.
