Come Find Me

by Megan Miranda

  He sighs and twists in his chair, leaning for his briefcase, and I’m momentarily hopeful that this interview is over. But it turns out he was only rummaging through his bag, because he pulls out a small recording device.

  “What’s this?” Joe asks, sitting straighter.

  Joe seems to understand something I don’t, and a sliver of panic works its way through me, from his body language.

  Crooked Tie presses a small button with a thick finger. “Sometimes this helps, to listen. To remember,” he says, not looking directly at either of us.

  Joe holds out a hand as if to stop him, but it just hovers there, unsure.

  A small, robotic voice speaks first, in stilted syllables: December fourth. One-eighteen a.m.

  I sit straight, my shoulders rigid. And then Joe’s hand comes down over the device, hitting the button. “Is this really necessary?”

  I’m not breathing. There’s not enough oxygen in the room.

  Crooked Tie frowns at both of us. “If she can’t remember, then yes, it is.”

  He presses the button again, and this time, Joe doesn’t stop it. Suddenly it’s a woman’s voice and not a robot. “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

  The room is silent except for the sound of breathing on the tape. Until suddenly, it’s my voice, filling the room. “Something happened. Something terrible.”

  And I’m there again, at the shadow house—

  “Ma’am? Can you tell me your name and location?”

  More breathing, until I speak again, ignoring her question. “Something happened in the hallway…”

  “Miss? Are you in immediate danger?”

  “He’s gone. I saw him. He’s gone.”

  “Stay on the line. We’ve got officers out to your location right now.”

  Suddenly, the sound of Joe’s chair scratching against the floor cuts through the static of the recording as we wait for someone to speak. The wait is infinite, then and now.

  Eventually, the doorbell will ring, and the woman on the line will instruct me to open the front door. I won’t look as I follow her orders.

  Joe hits the button again, and the room falls to silence.

  “You know what,” Joe says, “I don’t think now’s the best time after all. Why don’t you wait for me in the hall while we finish up here, Kenny.” Which is something he called me when I was much younger. Much, much younger.

  Still, I take the gift I am presented with. He gives me a few dollars, tells me to get myself something from the vending machine we saw on the way in, and to get him a soda, too. Something with caffeine, for the love of all that is holy, is what he actually says.

  The door shuts behind me, and the hall feels overexposed, fluorescent-lit.

  A man in uniform passes by and nods in my direction. I trail my fingers against the grooves in the wall as I make my way back to the vending machine at the entrance, near the double front doors.

  I stare at the options. Paper and aluminum and chemicals. My reflection in the glass. The buzzing of the light inside. Another crack in the glass at the upper right-hand corner. I get two Cokes, and I wait outside.

  * * *

  —

  “So,” Joe begins, when we’re in the car, on the highway. My soda is beside his in the cup holder, and at this point I’ve forgotten which one is mine.

  “He’s sort of obtuse,” I say, peeling the visitor label from my shirt. It’s got my name, a time stamp, a grainy black-and-white picture with only the top half of my face in the frame, taken at the front desk. I look like a ghost.

  “Kennedy, he’s on your side.”

  “I didn’t know I had a side.” I shove the crumpled label into my pocket. “If they have the nine-one-one recording, they don’t really need me to remember.”

  He sighs, just faintly, and I assume that’s the end of it. Until he adds, “You’re the only witness, Kennedy.”

  I don’t understand how that’s possible, standing as I was underneath a dark sky, full of a thousand stars. But that’s what they keep telling me. The night hid us from sight. The storm concealed the noise.

  Joe reaches an arm across the console, but I look out the window and he picks up one of the Cokes instead. There’s a white line zigzagging across the sky, the trail of an airplane.

  But I’m starting to think there’s a crack running through the whole universe and I’m the only one who sees it.

  * * *

  —

  Lydia hasn’t texted or called by the time we arrive back at Joe’s, so I log on to the computer to see if I have any more messages about my question on the forum.

  But the only thing in my inbox is a message from Visitor357. There’s also a video attachment, which I immediately open.

  The camera is trained on the dial of some device pressed up against a blue wall, and I watch as the dial dives below zero, back to neutral, over and over. You can’t see what’s out of frame, and I know anything could be causing this. This guy could be causing this. Faking this. But I watch it again. And again and again. I pull up my own readout from the radio telescope on the computer screen, and I set it to run in real time. The two images are side by side; I’ve stopped breathing.

  Spike. Pause. Spike. Pause.

  They line up completely.

  I was wrong. There’s not something wrong with the computer program, or the satellite dish.

  I lean closer to the screen, goose bumps rising across my arms.

  I think: The timing is important.

  Nobody remembers dinner. Nobody remembers that this investigation has already happened and an email isn’t going to change the outcome of that, either. They move as if time is still on our side, two years after the last shred of evidence led us nowhere. As if there’s still some piece of Liam left, and it’s been hidden away inside an anonymous email all along, and it’s going to slip from their grasp if they don’t all migrate over to Abby’s house at warp speed to inspect this new piece of evidence ASAP.

  When Mike showed up, at three o’clock, as promised, he was quickly sent away.

  “What’s happening?” he asked me, surveying the scene.

  “Nothing. They’ve lost their minds.”

  Mike patted my shoulder, and I knew he understood. The first months after Liam disappeared, the house was filled with Liam’s teachers, his coaches, his friends. When they dropped off, one by one, Mike pulled on the volunteers from the shelter where Liam had previously worked with him.

  The reason Mike joined the call for help was because his sister disappeared when he was a kid, never to be seen again. Not like the other volunteers who come and go, drawn to the unsolved mystery, or fueled by the guilt that it could’ve been one of their loved ones instead, or, like Dave and Clara/Sara and the rest of the college interns, needing the hours for school.

  Mike has spent his whole life searching, too. Something that’s painful to think about, considering the salt-and-pepper hair covering his head, and the gray scruff of his beard. Eventually his search for the lost led him to dedicate his time to the ones he can still help.

  Now, suddenly, no one cares about the phones anymore. They keep ringing downstairs, and instead of turning the lines to silent, I leave them be. I keep hoping they’ll jar my parents back to reality, pulling them back home.

  I’m watching out the window when the police car shows up next door, and my mom gestures for them to follow her inside the house that is not hers. I’m watching as my father paces on the sidewalk, his voice carrying, as I imagine Agent Lowell on the other side.

  I feel this urge to just go, and if I were any other kid, in any other family, I would. I would throw this gear into a bag, pack a change of clothes or two, take this car, and leave, and no one would even notice. Until much later. And that’s what has me stuck.

  I remember my mom’s face as I shouted Liam’s
name into the trees. When I called for Colby, straining to hear the sound of his bark in the distance. When the humor turned to annoyance turned to panic. And then later, when the panic turned to something else, this look of hard resignation that’s become her new permanent existence. I don’t even notice it anymore, usually. I only notice now because it’s gone. In its place is something else. Something worse.

  Hope.

  I don’t know what will happen to her next, what sort of place she’ll end up in, when that gets crushed, too.

  The house is empty and silent, and for once, I’m alone here. This place is usually the hub of activity. It may seem odd, but it’s still possible, maybe even more so, to feel invisible with so many people around.

  It’s only now, when it’s empty, that I wonder if something has been in Liam’s old room all along. If only I’d been listening for it.

  I place my hands against the blue wall dividing our rooms, then feel ridiculous. Wondering what I expected to feel—some beat, some pattern, moving through the walls? Some surge of electricity? As if that pattern were some sign that there was a shift in the universe, in what we believed possible, and it was finally within reach.

  My steps echo on the hardwood as I walk from my room out into the empty hall, extending in both directions, unlit. My parents’ door is across the hall, closed. Liam’s room is beside mine, door also closed. Usually, when I leave my room, I close mine out of solidarity. Like part of a set.

  The knob on the door of Liam’s room feels cold. Has it always been that way? I suddenly can’t remember. I was never focused on the little, odd details that were here. Only on what was missing. As I open the door wide, some things remain the same: the squeak of the hinges as the door swings open; the moss-green paint, the brown comforter, the blanket for Colby at the foot of the bed, the layout of Liam’s furniture. But in other ways, the room has been stripped bare. The electronics are now mine. Even the scent is gone. Liam hasn’t touched anything here in over two years.

  And yet.

  As I take a step inside the room, none of those facts matter. I hold the device in my hand once more, but still, nothing happens. I can feel the ghost of the movement in my palm, the way it felt the first time. The mechanism inside the device, the needle moving, like a pulse.

  I close my eyes, breathe in, feel a chill. Something was here. It might be gone now, but I’m sure of it: something was here.

  “Liam?” I say. The word lingers in the silence.

  Something buzzes in my back pocket and I jump, my heart suddenly pounding in my head. I back out of the room, fish my phone from the pocket of my jeans. It’s an email notification letting me know I’ve received a new message from the forum.

  I drop my gear inside my room, slam my door, and scroll through the message.

  There’s a video attached, only this one isn’t mine—it’s not the one I sent, nothing like it at all. I don’t know what I’m looking at. It looks like one of those hospital heart rate monitors you see on TV. Maybe in real life, too, but I wouldn’t know.

  The message from KJ explains that this is coming from a radio telescope, a satellite dish pointed at some sector in space, none of which means anything to me. The note ends:

  Count the time. This is what the pattern from my signal looks like if you let it run. It lines up with yours.

  I do as the note says. I count the time. A spike. The pause. A spike. They move in synchrony, the same pattern, the same time.

  The note continues:

  Tell me everything about this event. Where it originates, date and time, location coordinates, etc, etc.

  And the sign-off:

  I think we have something here.

  From this note I gather that KJ is bossy; KJ is overly excited; KJ and I are not going to be on the same page with this, with all these questions, etc, etc. Who says etc? Professors. Teachers. Random people on SETI message boards with satellite dishes pointed into space.

  We’re not looking for the same thing here. The answer to me is obvious, and simple. If (a) my brother disappeared with no earthly explanation; and (b) this signal was coming from my brother’s room; then (c) whatever’s happening here is related. If not exactly proof, it’s definitely a sign. Even if I don’t understand what it means yet.

  KJ wants a list of facts and figures. This house is already full of facts. It’s full of statistics, and documentation, height and weight, hair color, eye color, etc, etc. Everything about my life is Liam etc.

  None of it brings anyone back.

  Tell me everything about this event.

  Well, okay. I hit Reply. Here’s everything:

  My brother disappeared. This was coming from his room.

  These are the only details that matter.

  I hear a car door, the bustle of activity outside Abby’s house, and I know they’re looking in all the wrong places.

  Screw it, I think, grabbing my bag, just like I planned. I’ll leave a note. Tell them I’ll be back. And I’ll bring my phone.

  Downstairs, a gust of air funnels through the open space. Someone left the front door ajar, and the photos ripple with the breeze. All those faces, smiling at me.

  I back out the front door, giving them one long look—because I should, because I never do. Turning around, I collide with something hard and immobile. Hands reach out for my shoulders, and I face forward, looking straight into the familiar ice-blue eyes of Agent Lowell. I used to have to look up to see him. I used to find his downward gaze intimidating. I don’t anymore.

  Now I’m just pissed that he’s here at all, catering to the whim of a girl looking for attention. He’s still holding me by the shoulders. “Wow, you’ve really grown these last two years.” Then he notices the bag on my shoulder. “Where are you going, Nolan?”

  I need to get back to the house, to the radio telescope, and pull the rest of the data. To figure out where the telescope is aiming, and to see if it’s still happening, because now I realize it’s not a mistake. Two incidents make a pattern. Make this an event that is happening.

  Lydia still isn’t picking up the phone. I send her a text, asking if she’s still at my place. But the message just sits there on my phone, staring back at me. I wonder if maybe she’s like Elliot, who would get lost in his work, the rest of the world falling away.

  I hear Joe talking on his phone through the thin walls between our rooms. He’s just there, on the other side, but it’s still too far to hear clearly. But I can tell from the rise and fall of his voice that he’s agitated, and I’m guessing he’s agitated by me. Or the whole situation.

  Well, join the club. I’m on edge, made claustrophobic by the generic walls of this room that isn’t mine, and the half-unpacked boxes taking up floor space, and how every day we talk about these little trivial things to fill the silence (breakfast, what’s on television, the rising temperature)—when there’s a whole universe out there, waiting to be uncovered.

  And now I believe there’s something out there. Something reaching back.

  * * *

  —

  By the time Joe comes out of his room, I’ve wracked my brain for excuses. But I don’t need one, because it seems he’s been trying to come up with his own. “I need to head to campus for a couple hours,” he says, running his hand through his hair. He’s not even looking at me.

  “Okay,” I say. I hope he’s meeting up with friends. Or a girl. Maybe lunch, or a movie, where he doesn’t have to think about being responsible for a sixteen-year-old who’s supposed to testify at a trial next week.

  I don’t even wait for his car to turn the corner down the street before pulling my bike out of the garage.

  I’m sort of a mess by the time I make it to my house, but at least I realize that. The heat is still strong, but the sun is hovering lower, turning the sky over the trees a glowing amber.

  When I steer my bike into the di
rt drive, the dust clings to the sweat on the back of my legs. My backpack clings to my T-shirt, which clings to my skin, and a cloud of dirt hovers in my wake.

  I hop off the bike at the side of the house and leave it resting against the porch as I jog toward the shed around back. As I approach, I can see that the door is slightly ajar. I don’t want to spook her, so I say, “It’s me, I’m back,” but no one answers from the darkness behind the door.

  “Lydia?” I call as I push the shed door all the way open, the creak cutting through the silence. There’s no one here. The box is still on the ground, half of Elliot’s things strewn around the floor and covering the desk. The computer monitor is on, and the chair is just faintly crooked, like Lydia was here just a moment ago and took off midthought.

  I poke my head out the door and call her name into the fields. Her name echoes through the open space, but I don’t hear anyone call back.

  Dinnertime, I think. But the way she’s left everything, the way the door is still open, sends a chill up my spine. I shake it off, then insert the flash drive into the computer and pull the rest of the data, all of it, from the last time I was here.

  There are open notebooks around the desk, with Elliot’s instructions, or diagrams, or notes on the results. I wonder if maybe she’s left me a note, so I scan the papers on the surface. There’s a pad of paper to my right with nothing on it but a number. I pull it across the desk, closer to the computer, and look again.

  12/4

  No, I realize, it’s not a number. It’s a date. I can’t tell whether Elliot once wrote it down, or if this is Lydia. If it was written before or after. Only that this is the date that divides the before and after, that divides my life; that splits the universe straight in half. 12/4. December fourth.

  As if everything is connected. Before. After. Here. There. As if this was meant for me to find.