After school, I find Adam and Lucas waiting for me in the back of the parking lot. He’s leaning against his car, Lucas standing next to him. They both grin when they see me.
“Hey,” Adam says. He steps closer to me as if he’s going to take me into his arms but stops, leaving inches of empty space between us. I move closer, my head buzzing, my skin itching to touch his, wanting to be next to him.
“Hey, I gotta get going. Have a safe trip you two. Call me.” I jump at Lucas’s voice and step back from Adam. I forgot we weren’t alone. Lucas shifts his gaze between us for several moments before slapping Adam’s arm and saluting. “See ya,” he says before disappearing into the crowded lot.
There’s a moment of awkward silence, and Adam inches back until he’s leaning against the rear of his black Mustang. He crosses his arms.
“So,” I say. “Lucas knows.”
Adam nods. “Yeah, he’s going to help cover for us while we’re gone.”
“How long?”
“How long what? How long is the trip? I don’t know—”
“No,” I interrupt. “How long has Lucas known? When did you tell him?” There’s an ache in my heart as I wait for Adam to answer. The idea that Lucas has known all along—that I’ve been the one in the dark.
Adam looks puzzled. “Known? Known what? That I like—?,”He stops, his eyes dawning with understanding. “No….no, Sage. He doesn’t know about that, I swear. You’re the first person I’ve ever told—ever.”
“Then how does he know about the trip?”
A flush creeps up Adam’s cheeks. Is he blushing? He bites his lip before answering.
“He thinks we’re just going away to you know—”
“Oh,” My face grows hot.
“I’m sorry, Sage, but I can’t tell him the truth. You know Lucas, he’s terrible with secrets. The whole town would know by dinnertime.”
“Yeah,” I laugh slightly. I still feel hot.
Adam smiles, but then his face grows serious. “You can’t tell anyone about any of this, Sage, you know that right. Our enemies aren’t just on Perseida. The Nexians—they’re here too and they would do anything to find the Nexus. Not to mention what the government would do if they found out we existed.” He snorted a little at the last sentence.
“Who would I tell Adam?” I asked. “You and Lucas are my only friends. My mom’s crazy. Your mom already knows. So, who would I tell?”
Adam doesn’t answer me. He pauses before changing subjects.
“My mom thinks I’m going to be with my dad. My dad thinks I’m staying here. Lucas’s gonna tell my mom you’re sick and you can call into the diner. We need to figure out what to tell your mom.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t worry too much about that. I doubt she’ll notice. She’s got a boyfriend at the moment.” When we were younger, I used to spend the night at Adam’s whenever my mom had a new boyfriend. I would hide on the beach until Stella’s bedroom light went dark, and then Adam would sneak me in to his room, where he would pile his blankets on the floor and we camped out, talking most of the night until sunrise. We must’ve done this hundreds of times. Stella caught us a few times when I was sneaking in or out, but my mother never noticed. Once a boyfriend moves in, I become pretty much invisible. “I guess my biggest worry will be leaving her alone with him for too long. This one’s got a temper.”
Adam’s eyes darken and drift to my bruises. I can almost hear him saying I knew it. But instead he says, “Our flight will be back on Sunday.”
“Flight?” I swallow hard. I haven’t been on a plane since my dad died. Airplanes scare me.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s okay, right?”
I nod and look away. Deep breath. I can do this. I will do this.
“We’ll get in tonight and have all day tomorrow,” he continues. “I think it should be enough time to track my brother down. Is everything okay, Sage?”
“Yeah,” I answer in a high pitch. “Of course.”
“Okay, if you say so.” His eyes are unreadable. “ So, sure you want to do this?”
I nod like a shaken bobble head, hard and fast. If I’m too slow, if I hesitate, I may change my mind.
“Okay,” he says opening the passenger door for me. “Let’s go.” The drive from school is quiet. I think about the airport ahead of us. In a few hours, I will be on a plane. My lungs shrink as I think of the trembling metal around me sounding like a tin can as it lurches through the air. How am I going to do this? How am I going to go?
But if I don’t… I don’t want to lose him.
He pulls into my driveway but doesn’t shut off the car. “I have some things to do to get ready. Can you be packed and ready to go by five?”
I glance at the clock on the dash. That would give me a little over an hour. “Yeah,” I open the car door.
“Sage wait,” he says. “You said you had questions?”
“Yeah,” I pull my backpack on my lap and unzip it. I pull out my notebook, ripping the pages of questions I had written out.
Adam’s eyes widen and then his lips lift into a smile. He shakes his head. “Now this is the Sage I know and love.”
I flush at his words. Love. He said love. Does he mean it?
He doesn’t seem phased at using the word. Instead his eyes are reading each question line by line. “These are good, Sage. And I will answer every one of them. I promise. Get your stuff and I’ll be back at 5 for you. And I’ll answer them. Okay?”
I nod as I climb out of the car. My cheeks are still red and the word love is still rolling through my mind. “See you,” I say.
“Five,” he says again as he pulls out of my driveway. I watch him go.
Adam returns at exactly five. I’m sitting on the porch step with my backpack stuffed with enough clothes for the weekend. I had made a casserole and left it in the fridge with instructions for my mom to heat it up for dinner tonight. Hopefully she can handle that. She’ll most likely spend the rest of the weekend with Mark at the bar.
I’m quiet when I climb in, my muscles tense. Adam smiles, but as if he senses my mood, he turns up the radio and pulls out onto the main road towards the airport. It feels as if we’re going faster than usual. Star Harbor flying by before disappearing in the rearview mirror.
I turn around and look out the back window. Will my mom be okay without me? Will Mark keep his hands off her?
“Is everything okay?” Adam asks.
“What…uh, yes.” I face forward.
His expression tightens, and he rubs his teeth along his lower lip. It’s apparent he knows I’m lying, but he doesn’t ask any more so I sink back into the seat and watch the forest fly by, trying to still my thoughts.
As we get closer to the airport, I worry less about what is behind than what’s ahead. A plane. Can I do this? I have to do this.
Adam seems tense when we pull into the parking garage. Guilt climbs through me and I nearly confess my fears, but Adam is out of the car before I can. Several travelers stream past us, dragging suitcases on wheels. Adam hands me my backpack from the trunk before following them through the sliding doors into the airport. He walks fast, his head down, as we pass a police car at the front entrance, and two security guards inside the door.
He’s still quiet as we pull off our shoes and place our bags and shoes on the belt. We walk through the scanners, the uniformed guard waving me through. He stops Adam to check his pockets—Adam had forgotten to take his keys and phone out. But a moment later, he’s motioned through and I follow him, matching his long forceful steps. They are calling our flight number over the loudspeaker. It’s boarding.
We reach the gate and are steps from the entrance to the gateway when I freeze. My heart crashes like falling dishes, and my shaky legs are mere minutes from collapsing. I lick my lips and hug my arms against my stomach. Fear burns along my throat and mouth and skin. I taste it. The people and the noise and the colors of the airport spin hazily around me.
And I start seeing things. My d
ad kissing me goodbye and the cops at the door and my mother crying. The casket surrounded by his friends. Their faces are darker than the clothes they wear, and they pat my head and kiss my cheek. They whisper and watch me, waiting for me to cry. Wanting me to cry.
But I can’t.
Strong, I must be strong. I promised him.
And I’m back in the airport doubled over, burning and aching. Adam’s hands clutch my shoulders and his voice tickles my ear. I look up into his face, soft and scared.
Images flash again. The plane and the fiery wreckage. The reporters, lots of reporters. The men in suits who asked so many questions. Lawyers, movers, boxes of Daddy’s stuff being carried away.
It’s the airport again, and I can’t breathe, I can’t speak. Adam still leans over me, his voice in my ear asking me if I’m okay, begging me to talk.
“Are you okay?” The gate agent presses a hand on my shoulder and her eyes are a mix of business and compassion.
People wait behind us and the entrance waits before us. I can almost hear the whirring and rushing air of the gateway. The grinding of the plane.
I see the narrow aisles and small seats and the metal seatbelts.
"Sage?" Adam asks.
"I-I'm sorry. Go without me." My chest aches and my lungs blaze and tears slip from the corners of my eyes.
"No," he says. "I’m so sorry…I wasn’t thinking….your dad.” And then he's holding me and his shirt is wet. I wipe the back of my hand across my cheek and look up at him.
“No, really go. You need to go and get your answers.”
"C'mon," he says. "We'll drive." And he's pulling my hand back through the airport to the parking lot.
"Are you crazy?" I say when we get into the car. "It's going to take us days to get there. Really, just go without me."
"I want you with me. Okay?"
“I’m not sure this is the best idea.” But each step away from the airport quiets the images, my breath, and my heart.
“As long as you’re with me it will be fine,” Adam says and he entwines his fingers into mine. Shivers of fire shoot through me, warming my skin. I shift closer to him, hoping he’ll reach for me, hoping he’ll kiss me.
But he squeezes my hand and lets go to start the car. He pulls out of the parking lot, out of the airport.
He drives south.
Chapter Seventeen
Adam’s dad bought him the Mustang two summers ago. It’s to keep at his mom’s so he has a car while he’s staying there. Stella hates the thing.
“Who buys a convertible car to keep in the U.P. of Michigan?” she asked when the car showed up that June.
Adam rarely drives it. When he’s in town we do a lot of walking, riding bikes, piling into Lucas’s truck. The leather seats still smell new and the dashboard is still glossy. I wrap my hands around my elbows, staring straight ahead at the tree-lined highways.
“I’m sorry,” I say for the thousandth time. My cheeks are hot at the memory of my breakdown in the airport.
“Stop apologizing, please.” Adam says and leans on his elbow which is propped against the window. There’s annoyance in his voice, and I bite back yet another apology.
He shifts and presses his hands against the steering wheel. Tension weighs down his face and his eyes. He looks so tired, scared, drained. And I’m making it worse. I burn inside with guilt.
Gnawing, fiery guilt.
Oh why did I freak out? Why do I have to be such a big baby? It’s just a plane. We should be landing in Las Vegas. We should be there, searching for answers for Adam. We should not be here, driving towards Wisconsin.
“I’m—” I cover my mouth.
Adam glances in my direction and sighs and shakes his head. “Sage, it was my choice to drive. And whether we fly or drive it makes no difference. Once my dad figures out what I’m up to, he’ll be there before I can blink.”
“The space ship,” I say as the image of the glowing orb and the pyramids in the woods flashes through my mind. It was one of my questions I had written down for him. “Is that how your dad got here—in the woods…with Stella? A UFO?”
Adam’s quiet for a moment as if he’s thinking on how to answer me.
“Yes,” he finally says quietly. “There are ships, we call them transporters. They try not to use them—for obvious reasons of course. But I had the Nexus and was here, and well that’s how my dad came to Star Harbor the other night. He had to—I needed his blood. Using the Nexus had poisoned so much of my own that I would’ve died without it.”
“Oh,” I pressed my lips together and looked out the window. The sun was beginning to sink into the horizon. It would be dark here soon. I thought of a TV show I saw once about a couple who had supposedly seen a UFO sitting in the middle of a lone two-way highway. There was another story too of a guy who had thought he had been kidnapped.
“Do you kidnap people?” I asked looking back at Adam.
He smiled—the first smile I’d seen in hours. “No,” he laughed. “No alien abductions. Any study of humans has come voluntarily—trust me. My mom is a perfect example of that.”
I turned to the window again thinking of Stella. How had she felt when she first found out? Did she know before she got pregnant with Adam? These questions were also on the page I’d written out for Adam. And here we were, with all this uninterrupted time. Time for answers to all of them. But the answer I was wanting wasn’t a question on that page.
“Adam,” I ask. “Why?”
“Why what?” There’s a hint of annoyance in his voice again. He looks so tired and my stomach clenches with guilt.
“Why are you doing this—searching for a way out? Don’t you want to save your planet?”
A shadow crosses over his face and for a moment I think he’s angry with me, but then his features relax and he smiles slightly. “Of course, I do. And if it comes down to me being the only one who can do it, then I will. But if there’s someone else, well, I’d rather stay here with you.”
His face squeezes and he drops his hand from the steering wheel into his pocket. He’d been doing that a lot, I thought. Putting his hand in his pocket. Putting his hand—
“Adam, are you using the Nexus?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The beads of sweat, the tired face, the surly mood. It explained it all. But why?
He glances in the rear view. “Well, you know how I told you we Perseidians have advanced abilities, right? Well that means my dad has the ability to keep pretty tight tabs on me—he can sense me. I guess I give off some sort of internal GPS. I need to throw him off long enough to get out of the state at least. The Nexus is helping me cloud his ability to sense me.”
I feel sick. If I hadn’t freaked out about the plane. If I hadn’t—
He wouldn’t have needed to use his power for this long. We would’ve been out of Michigan a long, long time ago.
“I’m sorry,” I say, but he doesn’t answer. He looks so tired. “Pull over, let me drive.”
“No,” he finally responds. “I’m okay. I’m not using a lot or anything. We’re just about to Wisconsin anyways.”
I turn back to the window again. It’s dark now. The highway cutting through the dark tall trees of the northern woods. Nevada seems so far away. I wonder how we’ll get there before Adam’s dad finds us. Or even worse, before using the Nexus becomes too much for Adam.
As if he could read my thoughts, Adam says, “I’ve been working with it for years, Sage. The Nexus. Yes, it makes me sick, but I’m used to it. Please don’t worry. I know my limits.”
“But the other night—”
“I knew my limits then too. I knew it could kill me. But I was worried about you. I needed to get to you.”
His words wrap me in tingles and warmth. My Adam. I can’t imagine this world without him. I can’t imagine him leaving. And he said he would if he was the only option.
“Adam.” There are boulders rolling in my stomach. “Is this going to work? Are we going to find this brot
her of yours? Will he go?”
“It has to. We have to. He has to.” His eyes dart between me and the road.
“But if it doesn’t?” I ask the question, but I know the answer. If it comes down to me being the only one who can do it. The ache inside of me throbs. I can’t lose Adam.
Chapter Eighteen
The sun sets somewhere in eastern Wisconsin, and the endless forests and sleepy towns disappear into the dark. We’re quiet except for my bi-hourly offers to drive. Adam’s eyes are heavy and dark, but he shakes his head. “Close your eyes,” he says. “Get some sleep. We have a long way to go. Please don’t worry. I haven’t used the Nexus since we crossed the border.”
Sleep is the last thing I feel like doing, so I press my head against the window while we pass trees and farms and shadows I can’t make out. There’s a raw burn in my cheeks and constant regret in my head. I should never have agreed to come. Adam would be there now, instead of here in this car driving this empty highway through a lonely Midwest. I’m also starting to worry about my mom. Is Mark hurting her?
It’s approaching two a.m. when Adam parks the car in front of a Super 8 somewhere in southern Minnesota and wipes a hand along his forehead. Sweat dots the skin around his eyes.
“Are we stopping for the night?” I ask.
He drops his hands to the steering wheel and flexes his forearms. He breathes hard and fast like he had been running from Star Harbor rather than driving. “I—”
“Adam, are you okay?”
“Can you get us a room?” Adam’s voice is a throaty whisper. He shifts in the seat, struggling to dig his hands into his pockets and retrieve a thick pile of folded bills. “Here, that should cover it.”
“Are you sure you’re okay? Is it the Nexus? Have you been using it?”
“Yeah…and no…just get a room, okay. I told you I know my limits and it will be okay.” There’s a hard edge to his voice, and I nearly flinch at his words. Nodding slowly, I pocket the money and climb out of the car.
Artificial light highlights the faded red carpet of the lobby as I walk into the motel. Signs line the doorway advertising continental breakfast and free Wi-Fi. Behind the counter, a paunchy man with more wrinkles than hair takes the money and hands me a key.
One Starry Knight: A Scifi Alien Love Story (The Starry Knight Saga Book 1) Page 10