by Nick Lake
“Why?” said her mom.
“I guess I got used to it,” she said slowly, thinking on her feet. How could she explain that there was a strange light, and she thought it might be an alien ship? “Being outside, I mean,” she continued. “On the mountain. The air. The birds. The sunlight. You know?”
Her dad grinned, pleased. “Yeah, I know.”
“So I just wanna be out in it for a moment,” Emily said. “In the light.” This was an evasion that had the benefit of being literally true.
“OK, honey, but don’t be long,” said her mom. “School starts in an hour.”
Emily glanced at the shimmering sky. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said.
“Sure,” said her mom. “Put on a coat—it’s still cold out there.”
Emily did: she put on a coat, and she went out of the back door, and through the trees. As she walked, she took out her phone and typed a message for Jeremy. He was real, he was human, and she hadn’t talked to him in ages. He’d sent her messages, of course—she’d been on TV; trending on Twitter. But she hadn’t texted back until now. She hit Send.
Summer intensive at Juilliard. applying. you in?
A pause, then a ping. And Jeremy—amazing Jeremy—didn’t even mention all the texts she hadn’t returned.
Sure. anything for you. saw you on the news, BTW. WHAT HAS BEEN GOING ON, GIRL? your life is crazy.
She texted back:
You have literally no idea.
Another ping:
Can’t wait. Xxx.
She smiled and put away the phone. Then she carried on, to where she had first seen Aidan, where his ship had crashed. Twigs snapped, and leaves from the previous autumn crunched underfoot, laced with morning frost.
When she arrived, though, at the small clearing, there was nothing there.
Just a bare space, an indentation where the trees had been flattened, a kind of furrow, already filling with vegetation. To the side, some of the trees that had been broken were now divided into neat piles of sectioned trunk, waiting to be turned by her dad into logs for burning. Other than that, nothing…
But no.
Because then she saw it: a small object in the very middle of the circular, concave clearing.
She went to it, and stooped, and picked it up. She turned it over in her hands, marveling at it. The material was like nothing she had ever seen before: nothing that existed on Earth, she was sure, straightaway. It was smooth and hard and yet warm to the touch: like a cross between wood and stone but with the dull gleam of metal.
It was a figurine.
It was a little boy. A little boy, formed perfectly from this strange substance, a little boy with messy hair and a smile on his face.
It was Aidan.
She thought of the carved wooden girl she had given him in the woods, the one she had spent all night whittling. This was infinitely finer, and she knew she could never show it to anyone, especially not the man with the gray eyes who wanted to ask her questions. She also knew she would keep it with her, forever, until the last day of her life.
She held it close for a moment, then put it into the fur-lined pocket of her jacket.
She looked up: a cloud hung overhead, cumulonimbus, backlit even though the low sun was behind her: backlit impossibly, a sort of fish-scale shimmer that existed somewhere at the edge of vision, not the edge as in the corners, but the edge as in almost invisible, as in only faintly visible.
She put up both her hands, and crossed them above her head, a universal gesture, she hoped, a greeting, a way to say hello. Then she opened them, and crossed them again, and again, waving. The wave of a person wanting to be rescued, though she didn’t need to be rescued anymore. She did it with big movements, with all the strength she could muster. Clasped her hands over her heart.
A way to say I love you.
For a second, the brightness increased—someone turning up the dimmer switch on the whole sky—and the cloud above seemed to burn, to glow like a fresco from long ago on some Italian ceiling, all the smoke-ribboned light of heaven, shooting beams through the clouds; all the incomprehensible majesty.
She remembered Aidan, speaking outside the cabin.
It’s beautiful, he had said.
Yes.
Then, just as quickly, the light disappeared, and there was only a gunmetal sky, and a cloud moving slowly across it. He was gone. But she thought of one of her mom’s motivational magnets, which had never made sense to her before: EVERYTHING YOU NEED IS INSIDE YOU.
It made sense now.
She lowered her arms.
She smiled to herself, and turned, and walked back toward the house.
Into the future.
Toby Madden
NICK LAKE is the Michael L. Printz Award winner for In Darkness. His novel Hostage Three received three starred reviews and was named a Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, and Boston Globe Best Book of the Year. Nick is also the publishing director for fiction at HarperCollins Children’s Books UK.
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