I Hope You Get This Message

by Farah Naz Rishi

  If it was vindication they wanted, then these poor fools were better off at the bar.

  No, he corrected himself. They weren’t all fools.

  As he entered the safety of his house, Jesse felt his bones relax a little. He took in familiar smells, like his mom’s watered-down perfume, and dry tuna casserole, still pungent from when he microwaved a serving last night—a strong enough scent to cover the sour smell of mold lingering beneath the kitchen cabinets.

  His mom suddenly flicked the kitchen light on. Jesse flinched hard, banging his elbow on the counter, his eyes struggling to adjust.

  “So, now that we’re home, you gonna finally tell me what the hell happened?”

  His mom sat at the kitchen table, leaning her head on one hand, and looking as haggard as he felt.

  Behind her, the microwave blinked with neon green light: 2:46 a.m., it read, but that couldn’t have been right; it was almost 4:00 p.m. now. He wondered if the neighborhood had lost power in the middle of the night or if the clock had just given up like everything else lately. They all only had less than two days left now, supposedly.

  Jesse’s mind raced. All he could hear was the rush of blood in his ears. She was better off not knowing, wasn’t she?

  “I know it has something to do with your”—she waved her hands around—“bullshit alien communication machine or whatnot. Did someone jump you for it?”

  “Sort of.”

  The sunlight pouring through the window hit his mom’s hair, making it appear lighter—whiter. They hadn’t even celebrated her thirty-seventh birthday yet, but already, the hair at her temples was beginning to gray. Jesse felt his heart sink a little. When had she started to age? “I’ve been more than fair with you. I’ve stayed out of a lot of your business with this machine, giving you the space I thought you needed.” She squeezed her eyes, probably subduing memories of blood on white tile, of Jesse ghostly pale and breathless. Memories that haunted them like barely hidden scars. “I still don’t even know half of what you’re doing out there, but now you’ve gotta be straight with me. Are people trying to hurt you? Are they mad because you’re lying about talking to aliens or whatever the hell it is you’ve been telling people? Or are you the one picking fights?”

  “I didn’t pick a fight,” he said, struggling to keep his voice level. But watching Mom angrily grip the tablecloth between her fingers made something in his chest feel raw and frayed. He tried not to think of that night in the QuikTrip, his fists flying at Marco’s face as he begged Jesse to stop.

  She sighed. “Please don’t lie to me right now, J-Bird.”

  He grit his teeth. “I’m not. You’re right. I got jumped.”

  The front door pounded. The customers waiting outside were getting impatient.

  Mom frowned and released her grip on the tablecloth. “I knew that machine would bring nothing but trouble. Of course it would. It was your father’s, after all. It’s brought the whole town trouble; people keep talking about it at the diner, telling me all sorts of crap. But it’s troubling me now, Jesse. They say you’re the reason all these, these vagabonds in their damn tents keep stumbling into Roswell. You’ve been attracting the wrong kind of attention with that thing.”

  Jesse thought of the wolf the tourists let bleed to death, of what Ms. K had said about doing things you can’t take back. But he shook it out of his head.

  “And I told you we need this money. Mom, I know about the eviction notices. The late payments.”

  His mom recoiled. Her breath stilled.

  Jesse went on. “What I’m doing? It’s so we can get a new life. We can get a brand-new start. We could go to California, like Dad promised he’d take us. But we’ll make it on our own. You won’t have to work eighteen-hour shifts anymore. We can leave the shed and all the memories of Dad behind us. I’ll start going to school more, working more part-time jobs to help support you. We’ve earned it. The money’s for a good cause.” He wouldn’t tell her the part about Marco’s friend coming to claim that money for himself.

  His mom folded her arms across her chest. “Just like the peanut butter? The bread? Is that all for a good cause? I looked the other way for a long time, Jesse, but this—scamming people with your dad’s machine—it’s going too damn far.”

  Jesse gestured vaguely toward the window, toward the shed surrounded by paying customers. “Mom, these people are idiots. They want a place to pour out their problems, and I’m giving it to them. They just want to believe they can talk to Alma to make themselves feel better. If they think the machine actually works, then that’s their own damn fault.” He swallowed, but it wasn’t enough to ease his dry, aching throat. “What I do isn’t bad or wrong or a crime. People do this kind of stuff all the time. I’m no different from, I don’t know, a fortune-teller or something.”

  “No, you’re taking advantage of people’s legitimate fears.” Her face was unreadable now, and it unnerved Jesse. Why was she so angry? “I know you think you can get away with all this because of the way things are right now, and trust me, you’re not the only one preying on desperation. But you’ve got to be better than that. You need to start caring about other people, especially now. Get these thoughts out of your head. I never wanted us to go to California. Those pipe dreams were your dad’s. All I ever wanted was for us to be together. All I want is to spend time with my boy. Not a scam artist.”

  “Pipe dreams . . . ?” He couldn’t hide the acid in his voice, and his chest frantically quaked, barely wresting back control.

  He couldn’t help but feel he was missing something. He didn’t need to care about other people, just himself and his mom. What was so wrong with that? The machine was supposed to make him the opposite of his dad, but here Mom was, looking at him with an expression she had only ever used for Dad: disappointment. He hated it.

  “I don’t get it,” he said coldly. He went to the sink and ran some water into a glass. It tasted dusty. “Why are you acting like you think the message from Alma is legit?”

  “Because maybe I do,” she said simply.

  For a long time, neither of them said anything. Jesse’s mind went numb; he felt like his feet had fused to the floor. The worst part was watching Mom’s chest rise and fall, as though she was fighting to keep herself calm. But that just left the silence between them.

  That’s when it hit him: She hadn’t just taken off her last shift at the diner to keep him company at the urgent care. She’d taken off work for good.

  Finally, Jesse found his voice. “What happened? What happened to ‘this is all one big government conspiracy’?”

  His mom shook her head. “Jesse . . . we’ve gone through some horrible shit, you and me. Horrible things, they happen all the time. So who are we to say all this isn’t real, too?”

  But you know better, he wanted to say. You know none of this can be real. Because if it’s real . . .

  “I already almost lost you once. I didn’t see it coming, and I should have, and now, more than anything, I just want you to be safe,” she said, her words heavy and deliberate. “Your dad never knew when to stop. Never knew when to ask for help. And you know what? He died a lonely man.”

  “I’m not lonely,” Jesse said. But it was Corbin’s face, once again, that came to mind. Stupid. They barely knew each other.

  “There is nothing wrong with being lonely. I don’t—I don’t ever want you to feel ashamed.” His mom glanced at his wrist, her lightless eyes like nebulas, and stood. “But I don’t want you to keep pretending you’re okay. I don’t want you to keep downplaying the hurt you feel like you’re not even human. You keep it up—all these lies to yourself, to other people, and soon you’re not going to know who you are.”

  “That’s not true,” he said softly. He knew exactly who he was; that’s why after that bloody nightmare of a night, when he’d almost died, he’d promised himself to never let anyone close.

  But now, Ian’s face, illuminated by the neon lights of Close Encounters, flashed through his mind, followe
d by Joey, and Ryan, and Mark. Each face another kick to his gut.

  Those weren’t even friends. So who did he have, really?

  Who had he ever had?

  She grabbed her purse from the table and gave him one last hard look. “I’ll be upstairs if you decide what’s really important.”

  She went upstairs and slammed her bedroom door.

  21

  Adeem

  A giant signboard, painted a faded neon pink and yellow with peeling black letters, announced they’d reached Sunfree Grotto Park, where RVs littered the grounds and the afternoon sun really did beam freely—too freely. From afar, rows of white RVs looked like gapped, crooked teeth divided between dusted paths browned by sand. The narrow ribbons of pavement that snaked between them shimmered in the heat. Adeem’s eyes ached. The desert and everything in it was so blindingly beige, like the hairy, exposed back of a man sunbathing on a white beach. What little greenery there was—occasional dry shrubs and cacti—had been bleached to the same dull color.

  His phone was still very much dead, and according to the dubious GPS on Cate’s barely charged phone, it was an eight-hour walk from Corn Creek to Las Vegas, the closest actual city where they had any hope of finding help and rides home. Two hours into their stumbling through the desert like a couple of robots learning how to walk, the heat became unbearable, and his one-pound radio felt like a cement block at his side. They needed water, fast; the desert out here was lifeless and dead as a Fallout video game, and as much as he loved playing it, he didn’t exactly want to live it.

  He’d been right to give up on Roswell; even finding a way back home was feeling more impossible by the minute.

  “I don’t get the name on the sign,” said Adeem, wiping off his forehead with his T-shirt. “Is it a ‘grotto’ or is it a ‘park’? Those are two very different things. And why even call it a ‘park’ when it’s just a bunch of RVs?” He was trying to get Cate to laugh. It was bad enough they could die out here, but he didn’t want to do it with her like this. She’d been silent for hours—still angry at him, probably, for abandoning their plan to get to Roswell. Not that they had much of a choice. As soon as they found civilization, he’d told her, he would head back home.

  At least he could die true to himself: half-assing things and not following through.

  Now Cate shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a gathering of RVs is a park, the same way a bunch of crows is a murder, or a group of antelope is a herd.” At least she was talking to him again.

  “And you know what that makes us?” he asked. “Hella lost.”

  Cate smiled for the first time all day. “Now, that right there is a good reason why Alma won’t nuke us: our sense of humor is so bad, they’ll just leave us alone.”

  Adeem smiled, too, despite the emptiness of his stomach, the chafe of burst blisters in his shoes, and the desert sun, still relentless even in September, turning his neck into jerky. It wasn’t funny. None of it was funny. But the thing about the end of the world was this: either everything mattered, or nothing did.

  Plus, he liked making her smile. It let him forget, for just a moment, that they would either have to turn back together or go their separate ways.

  He knew he might never see her again. But in three days, he might be able to say the same for everyone he’d ever met.

  For Leyla, even.

  The RV park was at capacity. Some RVs seemed to have been here for years; those had little garden setups lining their weather-battered frames, and blue and green retractable awnings over their front doors, and power generators clinging to their sides. A couple of them even had chicken coops. But other RVs had just arrived: the dirt around them had been overturned by the fresh tracks of people and tires, and they still radiated the heat of engines. As Adeem passed them, their exteriors clicked like freshly poured bowls of Rice Krispies, the sound of metal barely cooling in the heat. The thought made him hungrier.

  But he was relieved to see life. At least in this moment, where there were people, there was hope, if only a little.

  Dogs barked frantically as they went by. Some of the residents were busy setting up tents—little pops of color: reds, blues, and yellows. No, not just people—entire families. A group of people of all ages was gathered around a table, playing a board game. Civilization, from the looks of it. And nearby, someone had set up a makeshift Popsicle stand.

  Were they all extraterrestrialists, like Alice and Ty? Unlikely; he didn’t see any lime-green alien or UFO flags, or people openly spreading the good word of their Almaen overlords. Had they all been displaced from their homes? Even before he’d left home, he’d caught radio reports of riots and stampedes, people fighting and even killing one another over supplies. According to Alice and Ty, the violence had only gotten worse since then, and the deserts—far away from other people—were probably safer for those who weren’t survivalists. Either way, here, he didn’t feel the same unease he’d felt with Alice and Ty. These people could still laugh. These people were still trying to hold on.

  Some kids had started a game of tag; they zigzagged past Cate and Adeem, giggling as they disappeared behind the rows of RVs and ignoring the glares from weary adults. Desi parents would’ve slapped them for less, he thought—amused at first, then sick with guilt and worry.

  He missed his parents.

  Bad.

  He missed Derek.

  He missed his bedroom. His laptop. His radio.

  There was so much he was going to miss.

  Sand had leaked into his shoes, and now his blisters stung more than ever—Cate had been limping, too. They reached what appeared to be the main office: another trailer, adorned with large, crooked antennae on its roof, which beckoned them with a cheerful plastic pink flamingo standing beside an overly enthusiastic neon sign that read Welcome to Sunfree! Across a shimmering strip of asphalt was a mini-mart, miraculously open. Even better, it appeared from the rotation of people passing in and out that there were actually things for sale.

  “You can wait here,” Adeem suggested. She looked even more exhausted than she had the day before; he didn’t blame her after trekking all morning in the desert. But he thought she might be hungry, too—she kept wincing, as if she was in pain, and pressing her hands to her stomach.

  She straightened up when she realized Adeem was staring.

  “I’ll check out the mini-mart,” she said. “Maybe they have a working ATM.”

  Adeem doubted it. The problem, most likely, wasn’t just the servers. He’d seen enough end-of-the-world movies and video games to know that by the time people resorted to making tent cities, things like banks had already long fallen. If he could get his radio working, he wouldn’t be surprised to hear ham reports of Wall Street itself and federal government buildings around the country all getting caught in the cross fire of apocalyptic chaos. But there it was, that spark of hope in her eyes. He was too tired to extinguish it.

  Adeem knocked on the trailer door. “What?” a voice called from within, and Adeem opened the door.

  The first thing Adeem noticed were the animals: there were at least four—no, five cats scattered throughout the office, some sleeping, others sunbathing. One was sleeping next to a watercooler nestled beside a large, leafy green tree in a pot, and it took all of Adeem’s willpower not to stumble toward the cooler and drink his body weight in water. The place was a hidden oasis; from the ceiling hung several other plants with dangling vines. But then he saw the giant bulletin board, plastered with handwritten messages alongside MISSING posters, hundreds of strangers’ faces all staring back at him.

  Despite the heat, he shivered.

  Finally, he noticed the tiny, old, brown-skinned woman sitting at a small counter, a fat pair of headphones wrapped around her neck. Her round, metal-rimmed glasses sat at the edge of her nose. There was a large black dog curled up by her feet where a small metal fan whirred. Adeem made a mental note to tell Cate about the dog—she could finally cross something off that ridiculous bucket list of hers.r />
  “No tenemos teléfonos que funcionen,” the woman said.

  “Sorry. I don’t speak Spanish.” Adeem got that a lot. People saw his skin color and assumed.

  “And why the hell not? We live in a global society.” She adjusted her glasses. “What are you, then?”

  Adeem’s skin prickled. He hated that question, and yet, it was one that somehow people always found reasonable to ask. “I’m from Nevada,” he said firmly, “and my parents are from Pakistan.” He looked for signs of judgment or mistrust on her face but found none.

  “Hmm.” She wasn’t even looking at him; she had spun around in her chair to fiddle with something on the table. “Getting transmissions to Pakistan’ll be difficult, if that’s what you’re here for, but: ‘Verily, with every hardship comes ease.’”

  That, he hadn’t expected: a line from the Quran was not the usual response to his heritage.

  Seeing his expression, she explained: “I’m hearing that one a lot on the waves. That and a lot of psalms. ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’” She chuckled. “So? You got a message for me?”

  Adeem stepped closer; only then did he notice the modest ham radio station rig hidden behind wires and the hanging plants, set with multiple shelves filled with two—no, three different radio transceivers, a wattmeter, a linear amp, and an HC-5 microphone. In the corner, a large black box covered in dials: a quantum phaser, a device to block any interference from a radio signal bigger than hers. Two of her computer monitors displayed rows of fluctuating frequencies. He couldn’t even begin to compare his setup back home to hers. She had to have at least one generator powering it all.

  But his breath snagged when he saw the grand piece de resistance: a gorgeous vintage beast of a transceiver—a Yaesu FT-101B—with a shiny oak inlay. A custom job, probably, one that put the chipped Philco back home to shame.