Everything We Lost

by Valerie Geary

  “Did you see the lights?” he asked gently. “They were only there for a second, but you looked right at them.”

  “There was nothing out there,” Lucy insisted.

  “You don’t have to be afraid. You can tell me.” He reached for her, but she pulled away.

  “Man, there was nothing,” Patrick said.

  Nolan realized then his second mistake. He’d left the two of them alone long enough they were able to agree on a cover story, some other explanation for the incredible thing they had all witnessed tonight. Wyatt had talked about this before at meetings, how the human mind is notoriously unreliable when it comes to accurately remembering events and how it’s best to take a person’s statement as soon after an encounter as possible, before the witness has a chance to reconsider or talk themselves out of the truth. He rubbed his temples, wishing Wyatt was here with him now, so he could get it right, because the more Lucy and Patrick argued against him, the more he questioned what it was he actually saw. Already the clear image he had of those six orange lights hovering, then moving away, moving unlike any man-made craft he’d seen before, already the certainty was fading.

  Patrick rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together. “Let’s say there was something. What makes you think it was a flying saucer? Maybe it was an airplane.”

  “I saw six lights,” he said. “Orange. Airplanes use red, green, and white.”

  “Okay, so maybe it was something else,” Patrick said. “Maybe military.”

  “I know what I saw.” Even as he said it, his doubt grew.

  A reasonable explanation for everything, his mother liked to repeat. If she were here now, that’s what she’d say to him, praising his vivid imagination, but wondering if maybe he shouldn’t put it to a more useful purpose. You’re sixteen now, she’d taken to lecturing him. Practically an adult. Time to start acting like one. That’s why she’d started working the graveyard shift at the hospital, because it paid more, but also because she believed her children were old enough and responsible enough now to take care of themselves.

  Nolan shut off the tape recorder and closed his casebook. He looked at Patrick when he said, “You’re right, maybe it was military. Or a weather balloon or something.”

  Patrick nodded. “Yeah, man, or that thing, what do you call it? Ball lightning? Some kind of electrical storm. Exploding ions or some shit.” He seemed giddy with the possibility.

  Lucy scowled at her hands, her silence echoing her earlier denial.

  Nolan didn’t tell them about the four other sightings that had occurred in the past month near that same area. He didn’t tell them there were other people, adults with normal jobs and normal families, one was even a city councilman, who had seen similar lights, orange orbs dancing low on the horizon. They wouldn’t have believed him anyway.

  “Occam’s Razor, am I right?” Patrick grinned with pride over his cleverness.

  He rose from the couch, unfolding to his full height of six feet, as tall as Nolan. Growing up, they’d seemed to have growth spurts at the same time. Their mothers joked about them eating from the same box of Wheaties, but where Nolan was lanky and all sharp bones, Patrick was broad-shouldered and muscled. He had always been stronger and more handsome, too, more popular with girls, more athletic, a better test taker, better it seemed at everything, except the one thing he really wanted to be good at: drawing and writing comic books. He didn’t have Nolan’s imagination or skill with ink and paper. He couldn’t tell a good story if his life depended on it. All he ever did was copy other people’s ideas.

  Nolan had tried to help him, back when they were still friends, tried to explain the hero’s journey, how characters need an arc, need to change, but for whatever reason, it never clicked for Patrick. He would just get frustrated and tear his drafts to pieces. Once he’d torn up a collection of Nolan’s panels, pages he’d been working on for over a year, a story he was particularly proud of, and one he’d planned on giving to Lucy for her birthday. Shortly after that, Patrick stopped drawing altogether and stopped talking to Nolan, too, and as far as Nolan knew, he never started up again, his ambitions turning to track and field, and to becoming a star athlete and scholar, becoming whatever his parents wanted him to be. They had been inseparable once, more brothers than best friends. Now Nolan hardly recognized the half-grown man standing in front of him.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Patrick brushed his fingers lightly down Lucy’s arm.

  She tucked her wrist against her body and offered him a half smile. “I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

  “Don’t let this guy get under your skin,” Patrick said, as if Nolan wasn’t sitting right there listening. “If you need anything, anything at all.”

  Lucy nodded.

  “It was good running into you, Lucy Durant.” Patrick said her name as if it were something to savor. Then his gaze narrowed on Nolan. “If you ever decide to rejoin us here on planet Earth, let me know.” With that, he showed himself out the front door.

  When they were alone again, Nolan inched forward on the edge of his chair. “Lucy,” he said. “Those lights—”

  She stood up quickly. “If I saw them, I would tell you.”

  Before he had a chance to respond, she stormed to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  Nolan sighed and sank back against the cushions. His gaze shifted to the sliding glass door where his reflection wavered against a backdrop of night. He tried to visualize again what he had seen in the boulder lands not even an hour ago, but he wasn’t sure anymore, not exactly, and he wanted to be sure, the way Wyatt and Gabriella and the other group members were sure. They didn’t need proof to believe, so he shouldn’t need proof either. Except he did. He grabbed his camera and went out to the backyard where he lay down in the middle of the grass and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He had read somewhere that extraterrestrials communicated telepathically and so, with the camera clutched in his hands, shutter open, lens aimed at the stars, he sent his thoughts to the universe, asking Them to reappear, to give him another, better sign. Give him something tangible and undeniable.

  He waited over four hours watching the sky, but the extraterrestrials were either too far out of telepathic range or They were ignoring him, or it was like Lucy and Patrick said, and They were never there in the first place. The stars stayed in their places, and the only thing that appeared above him was a circling, swooping bat.

  4

  The year 2010 rolled in with little fanfare. When midnight struck, Lucy was finishing up some last-minute packing. In the distance, fireworks exploded. A car drove past honking. Downstairs Marnie began to sing “Auld Lang Syne” loudly and off-key. Robert’s baritone laugh tripped along in harmony. Lucy paused in the middle of stuffing socks into a duffel bag and turned toward the window, but there was nothing to see, a distorted reflection, a see-through version of herself standing in the middle of an empty room.

  Interest in the Strange Quarterly article and Nolan’s disappearance hadn’t dwindled as fast as she thought it would. The article was still making the rounds online two weeks later, and now the photograph of the supposed UFO was showing up in conspiracy forums where they discussed Lucy in the comments. Everyone wanted to know where she was now. Why wasn’t she coming forward? What did she know about that night? Had she told the police the truth? Could anyone believe a word she said? Mostly she ignored the things they wrote about her, but some nights when she couldn’t sleep, she’d skim the articles with a nervous pulse, her eyes slowing to a stop whenever she came across her name.

  Lucy’s been given plenty of opportunities to come forward and tell her side of the story, but she remains silent? WHAT IS SHE HIDING?

  She was a little girl when it happened—give her a break.

  Fourteen is old enough. She’s definitely hiding something. Little slut probably did it.

  Even her mother thinks she’s guilty.

  She never felt the urge to respond. These strangers seemed to be t
alking about some other girl named Lucy, not her, not the person she was now.

  Reporters continued to hound her, too, though after the first week the people calling were mostly from tabloids, small zines, and blogs no one had ever heard of. She deleted every message and didn’t return any calls. She even changed her phone number, but then they started calling the house. It was only after Robert threatened to sue for harassment that the calls finally stopped.

  Downstairs a champagne cork popped. Marnie laughed. Neither she nor Robert called Lucy to come and join them, so she went back to stuffing socks in her duffel bag. In years past, this transition from old year to new had always felt like the beginning of something. Today it felt like an end. It was after one o’clock when she finally crawled into bed. Downstairs Marnie was singing again, low and soft, a song unrecognizable.

  The next morning, Lucy loaded suitcases and boxes, her whole life as it was, in the trunk of her car. Marnie and Robert were still in bed when she left, sleeping off champagne hangovers. She left them a note saying she’d call when she got settled, she’d have them over for dinner, then she drove fifteen minutes to the three-story gated complex that was to be her new home. She’d signed a six-month lease on a studio apartment. First month’s rent was paid, thanks to her father. All she needed were the keys.

  She parked on the street and sat with the engine idling, waiting for the landlord to arrive. She should feel good about this. New apartment, new job opportunities. Thanks to her father’s business connections, interviews were pretty much guaranteed. All she had to do was send in her résumé. Her whole life moving in a new direction, she had no reason to feel anything other than optimistic, and yet a dull, throbbing ache was starting up at the base of her skull. Thud-thud-thud, like someone trying to break in. Everything’s going to be fine, she tried to convince herself. This was what she needed. A fresh start. Only it wasn’t, not really.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about the article, how certain her mother seemed, even though she was so absolutely wrong. All of them—the reporters, the online forums, that Wyatt Riggs person with his faux professorial demeanor—they had it all wrong. They were wrong about the orb in the pictures, they were wrong about Nolan, and they were wrong about her. If she’d had Sandra’s phone number, she would have called right then and set the record straight. But then maybe it was better that she didn’t, because what she needed to say needed to be said in person. She didn’t give herself time to think about the details or the logistics or how it had been over nine years since she last spoke to her mother and maybe Lucy was the last person Sandra wanted to hear from right now. She didn’t think about what she would tell her father or what she was going to do about the apartment, her already-paid-for apartment, her landlord on his way with the key. She was well aware of how quickly days turned to weeks, to months, to years, how easy it was to slip into a routine and put off important things for so long they ceased to be important anymore. If she didn’t do this now, she never would.

  She turned her car around and drove east out of Los Angeles, east over the Sierra Nevada mountains, east to the house where she grew up at the end of Skyline Road. Home. And yet, not home. Not anymore.

  It was dark when she got there, and the single-story ranch looked black, though she remembered it painted moss green, trimmed in white. None of the lights inside the house were on, only the porch light, which illuminated brass numbers screwed into the wall and a dried-up Christmas wreath hanging crooked from a nail on the front door. Beige slippers lay like two dead birds on a worn and tattered welcome mat. The orange honeysuckle she and Nolan planted fifteen years ago for Mother’s Day was overgrown now, snaking shadows up the side of the house and clawing at the gutters.

  The last time Lucy was on that porch, she had a suitcase in one hand and was wiping tears from her eyes with the other. Sandra tilted in the doorway behind her taking large swigs from a half-empty bottle of vodka and screaming, “Fine! If that’s what you want. Go! Get out of here! I can’t stand the sight of you anyway!” The last time she was here, she vowed to never return.

  She stared out the windshield at the ragged mountains she’d just crossed, trying to work up the courage to finish the journey. All she had to do was get out of the car. You’ve made it this far. What are a few more steps? A few steps, a thousand miles, ten years, a lifetime.

  She threw open the driver-side door and hurried up the driveway before she could change her mind. At the last second she swerved and slipped around the side of the house and through the unlocked gate into the backyard where the moon, full and bright, cast the world in a glittering silver net. Patio furniture was stacked against one side of the house. Drapes hung across the sliding glass back door, but no light filtered through. It was close to ten, late enough Sandra was probably asleep, or passed out drunk on the living room floor.

  Lucy crept across the backyard and stopped in front of another gate along the back edge of their property line that once allowed access to acres of public land beyond, but which was padlocked shut now. She gave the lock a hard tug. It didn’t budge.

  When they were kids, she and Nolan came in and out of this gate whenever they pleased. Like wild things, they ran across the land on the other side of the fence. Kicking up dust, turning over stones, chasing jackrabbits and tumbleweeds, climbing boulders as big as semitrucks, staying out until after dark to watch Venus rise. She had flickers of memories from those early years, images that flashed and darted away before she could examine them too closely.

  She was seven, carrying a bright red bucket, trailing behind Nolan, who led her deeper and deeper into the strewn boulder field, explaining how meteorites would be smoother than regular rocks. “They might look like metal or charcoal. If you aren’t sure, ask me.” Now a little older, lying on their backs on a flat and sun-warmed rock, seeing her first meteor streak across the starry dome. Now a different time, a different summer, she didn’t know how old they were, they found something in the brush. A rabbit? A lizard? A mouse? The animal kept changing shape in her memory, and then she was seven again, carrying a bright red bucket and trying to keep up with Nolan’s long strides.

  She had only one clear memory of something that happened on the other side of the fence. It was July, the summer before she entered high school, and hot. Sticky pavement hot. Burning metal hot. Melting to a puddle hot. The kind of hot that can make a person see things that aren’t really there.

  Sandra had just left for work, and Lucy was watching television by herself when Nolan came into the living room carrying a backpack on his shoulders and binoculars around his neck. He stopped at the back door and asked if she wanted to come along. Nothing good was playing on TV, and she had no better offers, so she laced up her boots and followed him out the gate into the boulder lands. She didn’t see what the big deal was, why Nolan was suddenly so obsessed with UFOs. Growing up, he’d been interested in aliens and sci-fi movies, and she played along with his backyard games, but he’d become so serious of late, everything done in earnest. It was obvious he wasn’t playing anymore, that he seemed to really believe in all this alien contact nonsense, and that’s what Lucy didn’t understand. Wasn’t he getting too old to believe in something so absurd? UFOs were the kind of fad a person should grow out of eventually, except Nolan only seemed to be sinking deeper into the fantasy.

  Lucy heard the other kids before she saw them. She almost turned around and went home, and looking back she wished she had, but at the time Nolan kept going, and so did she.

  The only person in the group she recognized was Patrick. He used to come over to the house all the time when they were younger, but then something happened between him and Nolan, something Nolan refused to talk about, and he didn’t come over anymore after that. The last time Lucy saw Patrick was a few months ago at a track and field meet. She’d hidden behind the bleachers to watch him run. He’d grown taller since then, and his blond hair was thicker, cut short along the sides and long on top. He was drinking a beer and being obnoxious and
Lucy might have died of embarrassment except he didn’t even see her. Then Nolan said, “Lucy, let’s go,” and Patrick’s gaze was drawn to her for the first time in a long time. His eyes moved up and down the length of her, and it was as if he was seeing something new, someone other than the little girl he used to know, his best friend’s tagalong baby sister, who liked to play with Barbies and was addicted to purple Nerds and laughed so hard once she peed her pants.

  He said, “You don’t have to go, Lucy.”

  He said, “You can stay.”

  He leaned close to her and whispered, “Since when did you get so beautiful?”

  And then he smiled. A rush of heat spread through her body. Patrick’s smile was everything. Even as a little girl, she would run circles around him, doing floppy cartwheels and telling silly knock-knock jokes that she plagiarized from a library book, trying to get his attention, trying to get his dimple-cheeked Prince Charming smile. She had it now. For one fleeting, perfect moment. Until Nolan ruined everything.

  He grabbed her wrist, clamping down hard. “Do you see that?”

  In the seconds before she looked up, she believed she would see something. She wanted to see something. But the sky was empty. A dark expanse, purple twilight melting the edges and nothing more. Nothing at all.

  “They were right over there.” He started to drag her away from Patrick and he wouldn’t let go, even though she fought him.

  She couldn’t believe he was doing this, embarrassing her like this in front of these older kids, in front of Patrick. It wasn’t funny, and she asked him to stop, but he kept going on and on about the lights, how they’d been right there, right there! But no one else saw them. Because there were no lights to begin with. He was just making it up to humiliate her or he was pissed that someone other than him was using his stupid stargazing rock. She broke free of him and thought that would be it, but then he pulled out his tape recorder and the other kids stared at him like he was a pod person or an axe murderer or something worse, and they looked at her like that too, like she was crazy by association. He shoved the recorder in her face, and that was all she could take. She left him and Patrick then, turned and sprinted back to the house.