by Nick Lake
Cities rose into the air and covered the earth.
People lived and died and lived and died, over and over, whole civilizations of people, and yet she saw the old die and babies born too, faster and faster and faster until she saw:
herself and her parents, sitting by a campfire—in the Adirondacks, she guessed, when she was small. Pine trees and wide spaces around them. They were holding sticks, speared through marshmallows, and they were roasting them over a blazing fire, and then eating them: sticky, stretchy, blackened: and laughing all the time, laughing together.
Emily had forgotten that. Had forgotten that it had been fun, sometimes.
Jump cut: herself, dancing alone in the studio in Minnesota, sweat shining on her skin.
Another jump cut: the jeers of the boys at the football game, that last one, their laughter, the bright lights of the stadium. Getting changed slowly, not wanting to be there but not wanting to go home, either; under a poster that said:
IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED, ADJUST YOUR PONYTAIL AND TRY AGAIN.
Emily was wearing a ponytail when she first saw that, and it almost made her want to take it out. The uniform was bad enough: a tight, long-sleeved top with a roaring bear on it; a short pleated skirt; pom-poms. How were pom-poms still happening in this day and age? Not to mention the skirt, which was just gross.
She was back in jeans and a sweatshirt when she left the changing room long after the other girls, and Brad was there, waiting in the corridor, just him and no one else around. Smoking a cigarette by a sign that said: NO SMOKING. Probably thought it made him look cool.
“You want one?” he said, holding it up. A challenge in the words; the gesture.
“Sure,” she said.
A chink in his armor—his eyes registered surprise before he could get them under control. “OK,” he said, reaching for his packet.
“I’ve got my own.” She swung her bag around, took out her pack. She didn’t smoke much. Just an occasional thing, a habit picked up from other ballet dancers. Those long hours waiting around in rehearsal, at exhibitions. But he didn’t know that.
She took one out, lit it, and immediately regretted it. Now they had to stand there, smoking, until the cigarette was spent, when what she needed was to get out of there. She took a few drags and then crushed it under her heel. “Shoot,” she said. “Forgot these were menthol. Gross.”
He stepped forward, the confidence back in the set of his features. Leaned into her, as he’d done the other week, making his arms a cage. “You will go to prom with me,” he said. “You just don’t know it yet.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Not till you say yes.”
And she ducked under his arm and twisted and spun—she was good at that, she was small and lithe and that was why she was the flyer on the team—and she was away from him, running down the hall and out the door, turning hard left and hiding behind the trees there, until her breathing slowed.
She texted Jeremy, told him what had happened, how nothing had actually happened, but she had been scared. Trapped. Powerless.
Sounds like an a-hole, came the reply from her Minnesota friend.
A second message:
You should mess with his shit. Cut up his jersey or whatever those jocks wear.
She didn’t really think about what happened next. Just found herself lingering until she saw Brad drive off, until she was able to slip back into the building and she was alone in the boys’ locker room. She found his locker quickly: Mecklenburg, B. She tried the door.
Unlocked.
His varsity jacket or whatever it was called—she didn’t know the names any more than Jeremy did—was hanging there. Various patches on it, and the school insignia. The mark of belonging, to the team.
Jackpot.
She took the jacket out and made a little pile of it in the middle of the floor and lit a cigarette. Her intention—as much as she was aware of it—was to burn the thing, to put some holes in it. She even made sure there was a sprinkler above her. It was meant to be a gesture, symbolic. Thinking of how he’d looked at her when he offered her the cigarette.
But the jacket was some kind of shiny material, and, as it turned out, incredibly flammable: it whooshed into flame, and she stepped back, alarmed, knocked into a chair, which fell over. The sprinkler didn’t do anything. Maybe it wasn’t switched on?
She ran out the door—she was sure she’d seen a fire extinguisher in the corridor—but when she returned to the locker room, the fire was already licking up the bottom of the door. How was that even possible? How had it spread so quickly? She backed away.
She backed away until she was outside, in the cool air, smoke already issuing from the windows of the building.
And that was where Miss Brady found her; she’d been doing final checks or something in the stadium, and when the alarm went off, she came running and found Emily there, still holding the cigarettes, the lighter.
“What’s going on?” she’d shouted.
“I’m so sorry,” said Emily. “It was an accident. I didn’t…I didn’t mean…”
Flames now were roaring up the walls of the building.
“You did this?” said Miss Brady.
Emily nodded.
“But…why?”
Emily didn’t have the energy to explain—about moving to this goddamn place that was practically in the Arctic Circle, away from her best friend; about how cheerleading wasn’t dance; about the awful uniform, the short skirt; the hot feeling of all those eyes in the crowd, on her body; about Brad’s hand on her ass—the way he’d held her prisoner within his arms, the way they’d been alone, the way she’d wanted to get him back for that, to show him that he couldn’t just do what he wanted.
So the locker room burned as they watched, as the firefighters arrived and trained their hoses on it, until the fire dampened, and smoked, and hissed.
Emily had thought the whole building might go up, but in the end it was just that one big room, the locker room, its ceiling and roof and walls burned so that the twisted, melted lockers were exposed to the sky, a blackened space missing from the structure, like a tooth from a mouth.
The boys’ locker room, up in smoke. It did feel symbolic, though a step further than she’d wanted.
But as far as Miss Brady was concerned, it was what she’d wanted, because of that one stupid moment when she asked if Emily had done it, and Emily nodded, saying, “Yes, but it was an accident” instead of any of the other things she could and should have said.
She just went along with it: arson, immediate indefinite suspension pending an investigation, a call to her mom, who, in fact, was waiting in the parking lot outside, to take her home.
And then she went home, and her mom blew up, and she stormed out of the back door, and that was when—after slamming the door—she heard another loud noise and went into the woods behind their house to investigate, and found Aidan there, with his ship.
A stupid, angry, impetuous act, and it had turned her whole life upside down.
The memory shimmered, vanished, like a bubble bursting.
Oh, yes. It was Aidan; it was Aidan showing her this.
She was in the darkness of space again, stars all around.
Then:
She and Aidan were by the lake, dancing in the snow, her holding him and moving with him as if he were weightless, as if he were made to fit into her arms.
The whole moment shining, as if seen through a snow globe, studded with the sparkle of stars. Perfect. Real too, even though it was past, still so real, as she watched them, him and her together, the vapor of their breath, the sound of their laughter, something like bells in the cold, but then—
Gone again, as time whisked her up to the present, and here she was, still with Aidan, outside the radio station, and there time stopped, bouncing hopefully
in front of a white bright empty expanse: an emptiness she could fill, she realized, with whatever she wanted, a blankness to be written on with whatever story she wanted to tell—
And then she was zooming out again and the earth was tiny, brightly lit by the sun, a little glowing speck in blackness, and she knew that from this far away those millions of years would seem like nothing; from far enough away they would seem like an instant.
She watched the earth as the planets wheeled around her; the sugar-dust stars. Floating, she felt a kind of touch inside her mind, a nudge, a steer, from an intelligence far deeper and greater than her own and…she understood.
She understood what she was being shown.
She understood that the only thing that didn’t exist was the future: that everything that was now and had been would always be, if you stepped far enough back, if you looked from far enough away. Because now was always becoming then, so what was the difference, really?
Right now, she was floating above the earth, but at every subsequent point in her life she would remember it as the past, and would that make it less real, less a true experience, simply because it was no longer at the surf’s edge of the tide of time?
So: that moment by the lake with Aidan, dancing, was no less valid or vivid than now, which anyway was constantly being replaced by:
now—
And:
now—
And:
now.
The universe was being built out of tiny slices of the present, that was what she understood, that was the first part of the gift that was given to her, and some of those slices had Aidan in them and always would, and if you floated far enough from the earth and your view was wide-angle enough, there would seem no difference between the short time he was there and the rest of the world’s history, and so Aidan couldn’t really leave.
And: and she could do it herself, if she wanted, just by closing her eyes.
She understood too, though, the second part of the gift.
The present was a machine for making the past, she realized, but the material that fed that machine, its fuel, was the future: was everything that was yet to happen.
The past was always there. Aidan would never be gone.
But the future: the future was not yet real, and that meant that it was unwritten, that Emily could make it whatever she wanted to.
It was just bright blankness that she could fill with whatever she chose.
And nothing—not even Aidan—would ever really be gone.
CHAPTER 55
EMILY BLINKED BACK into the brightness of the beam from the spaceship, her eyes wet with tears.
“Thank you,” she said.
Aidan shook his head. “Thank you,” he said. “For finding me. For saving me.”
She blinked away tears. “You’re going, and I don’t even know who you are,” she said.
“I’m Aidan.”
“I mean, who you really are.”
“I’m really Aidan. And…something else.”
Emily took in his small boy’s body, his small boy’s face. “But I’ve never really seen you; I don’t know where you come from or anything…”
“I’ll show you,” he said.
He held her hand again, and he showed her. He showed her who he was, and who his people were and who they had been, in the history of the world, and how they had helped before, and how they were trying to help now.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” It was the most sensible utterance she could manage.
He looked up, as if hearing something. “But now I have to go,” he said.
And then Aidan let go of her hand, and stepped away from her, and into the beam of light—and then it was gone, and so was he.
Somewhere, far away, she heard one of the men, speaking into a radio, she guessed. “We lost him,” he said. “We lost him.”
Emily fell to the ground.
CHAPTER 56
WHEN THE LIGHT went away and the world came back, Emily saw:
Her parents: her dad still holding a gun and her mom still hunched, ready to fight or run, but heads tilted, confused.
Then her mom saw Emily, lying on the ground, and she ran over, just started running, instantly, and then she was by Emily’s side, lifting her up.
Emily also saw:
The two masked men, blinking.
A helicopter, approaching fast, from the mountains.
Then she heard it: chukachukachukachuka.
“What…What am I…I mean…,” said her dad, looking at the rifle in his hands.
One of the men stepped forward. “The boy is gone,” he said. Snow in his tone. Coldness.
“What boy?” said Emily’s dad.
Silence.
The two men looked at each other. Something passed between them, some sharing of understanding.
The one who had spoken took another step toward Emily’s dad, who was no longer pointing the gun in any kind of threatening way. “It seems there’s some sort of mix-up. If you could hand back the weapon, sir.”
“Um,” he said. “Yes. Of course. Um. Who are you?”
“That’s…er…,” said the man.
“What’s going on?” asked Emily’s mom, who had her arms tight around Emily. “What’s happening? Emily? Honey?”
Emily wondered why her mom was focusing on her, then realized it was because she had fallen. “I don’t know,” she said. She lied.
“The radio field…,” said the other man, the injured one—Emily could tell from the liquid rattle in his voice, his vowels thickened by the blood in his broken nose. “It must have scrambled you up somehow. We came to tell you to leave, and you, sir…, kind of lost it. Took my gun.” Emily could also tell that he was thinking on his feet, that he could see Emily’s parents were truly out of it, truly unaware of what had just happened.
“Shi—er—shoot,” said her dad. Ever the church man. “Training must have kicked in. I was Special Forces.”
“So you said,” said the man, not without bitterness.
Emily’s dad handed back the gun. The man kept it low. The tension was mostly gone—just a strange atmosphere of bemusement and not knowing what to do, from this moment on.
One of the men spoke into his radio quietly. Giving a situation update, Emily guessed.
The thwack of the rotor blades was louder now, and the helicopter a big black presence that descended from the sky and landed by the jeep. A man got out—a man in a dark gray suit, with gray hair that almost matched, receding from his hairline. A man who radiated power and authority.
He stood for a moment, reading the scene. The downdraft flattened his hair. Emily saw vivid intelligence behind his gray eyes, a sense of quickness, even though he was perfectly still. She had never seen such motion in an unmoving person before, so much contained energy.
A man who would know what to do.
He walked briskly over to them.
“Mr. and Mrs. Perez?” he said. “Emily?”
“Yes,” said Emily’s mom, for all of them.
“Apologies for the heavy-handedness. This is a very sensitive laboratory. Our guards can be…a little overzealous when they believe someone has trespassed.”
Emily’s mom peered at the men with their masks, helmets, and rifles. “A little?” she said.
“I thought this was a university facility now,” said Emily’s dad. “Not military anymore.”
“Correct,” said the man. Emily noticed he hadn’t introduced himself. She felt that was probably deliberate. “But we do a lot of work for the military, still. A lot of very secret work. You understand.”
“Well, I wouldn’t—”
“Good,” said the man in the suit.
He nodded to the two men, who went back to the jeep and got in. They started the engine but didn’t drive aw
ay.
“There wasn’t…I don’t think I saw a sign, telling us that…we weren’t…I mean, that it was…,” said Emily’s mom.
“…private?” said the man. “Oh, there’s a sign. Maybe you missed it. It happens.”
“Oh,” said her mom. “Oh. Sorry.” A pause. Then a frown. “How do you know our names?”
“We must have run your plates,” the man said, pointing to the pickup truck.
Emily looked at him sharply, and he looked back, and, Oh no, she thought, and immediately looked away, down, so he couldn’t hold her gaze.
“I don’t think that’s…ours,” said Emily’s mom.
The man nodded slowly.
Tick tick tick went his mind, behind his eyes.
“You borrowed it, didn’t you?” he said. “I mean, you must have. You’re all over the news. Emily was in the small plane that crashed. I’m guessing you found her, and wanted to get her to a hospital right away to be checked over, and you thought this was some kind of medical center.”
Emily’s mind was turning. It struck her that if this man was saying this stuff, he was going to have to back it up. Make it real. Make people agree with his version of events. Which meant he was powerful. Very powerful. Were they on the news? But they were going to be, because he’d said so; she just felt that this was true.
Would the man whose truck they’d stolen from his driveway agree that they had borrowed it? And whoever this truck belonged to? Yes, she thought. Because the man in the suit would make it so.
“I…,” said Emily’s dad. “Maybe. Yeah. I don’t know. Sorry. This is very…It’s very unlike us. I don’t know how to explain it. Stealing a truck?”
The man smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Do not be concerned. I’m sure the police will take a lenient view. You were caring for your daughter, after all. I will put in a word for you.” Emily noticed that her parents didn’t question who this man was to be putting in words with the police. That was how disoriented they were. “I’m afraid you will need to leave, however.”
“Of course,” Emily’s mom said. “But how? I mean, we can’t just…take this…vehicle. Which isn’t ours.”