Nolan stepped back, wiping at his cheeks and lips. It was all the space Patrick needed. He lunged and tackled Nolan to the floor. They rolled, clawing and gnashing, fists flailing. Blood and spit and sweat smearing everywhere. Then Patrick was on top of him, pummeling with both fists. Nolan raised his arms, but punches got through and each blow was fresh pain, and he began to drift and lose a part of himself, and in the back of his mind he started to think that maybe he deserved this.
Then Patrick was wrenched up and back, and more hands were reaching, grabbing, lifting Nolan to his feet too. A swirl of bodies, of voices. The PE teacher, who was also the track and field coach, shoved his face into Patrick’s, shouting. Patrick hung his head, pinching his nostrils shut, but still the blood dripped. Miss Simpson, the school librarian, was there too, appearing out of thin air and storming, breaking up the crowd of onlookers, nudging students in opposite directions, telling everyone the show was over, get back inside the gymnasium or go home, but don’t just stand here staring or they’d all find themselves in detention tomorrow.
Nolan sagged back against whoever was holding him up. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to blink. Every part of him cracked open with pain. He recognized his chemistry teacher’s voice loud in his ear, asking, “What happened, Nolan? What were you thinking?”
He had no answers, only aching bones and ringing ears, bruises everywhere and empty hands. When Patrick tackled him, he lost hold of his casebook. He scanned the floor for it now, but it wasn’t there. Then he saw Lucy hovering at the edge of the dispersing crowd. He hadn’t even known she was at the game until this moment. Her back and shoulders were rigid. The expression on her face unreadable. Her fingers pinched around the spine of his casebook and she held it slightly out in front of her so he would see. When they made eye contact, she slipped the casebook into her backpack, then turned and disappeared in a crush of students fleeing Miss Simpson’s wrath.
The crowd gone, Miss Simpson snapped her attention to Patrick and Nolan. The muscles in her neck were clenched tight. Red spots glowed high on her puffy cheeks. She could muster no words of reprimand, simply jabbed her finger toward the front of the school and both boys shuffled alongside their escorts to the principal’s office.
14
The sun slipped behind the Sierra Nevada mountains, turning the sky the color of a new bruise. Lucy turned into the Paiute Palace Casino’s parking lot a few minutes before nine o’clock. Traffic had been slow leaving Los Angeles and didn’t clear until she was through Santa Clarita, but the rest of the way she practically had the road to herself. She was glad for the drive. It gave her a chance to walk back through her conversations with Patrick and her father, digest the information she’d received in smaller, more manageable bites. By the time she reached Bishop, she was breathing normally again, no longer on the verge of crying. She could handle this. She’d made more poor choices in the past when she hadn’t known any better, but she had no excuses now. She had to make right what she could, while there was still time.
She entered the casino, pausing a moment to let her eyes adjust to the dimly lit room and the frenzied flash of slot machines. Music pumped through speakers in the ceiling. The whole place smelled of carpet cleaner and old cigarettes. A man in a cowboy hat sat alone at a slot machine near the door, sipping a beer and smoking a cigar, his shoulders hunched forward, his hand trembling as he played. When Lucy walked in, his head turned and his eyes moved up and down her body, inspecting her. He winked. She ignored him and scanned the rest of the single-floor casino until she spotted her mother behind the bar, making change for a customer.
Sandra stopped fussing with the cash register when Lucy walked over. “Who let you in here?”
“I came to apologize.”
Sandra slapped a few bills and loose change into the customer’s hand, then walked to the opposite end of the bar, ignoring Lucy completely. Lucy slid onto a stool and propped her elbows up on the counter. After a few minutes, Sandra returned, swiping a rag in front of Lucy and setting down a cardboard coaster with warped corners. “Are you going to order something or make me call security on you for loitering?”
Lucy ordered a Coke. Sandra took her time bringing it and then she turned her attention to another customer who had come in and then another one after that, and Lucy was half-finished with her soda before Sandra came over to check on her again.
“What I did,” Lucy said. “The helicopter prank. I know it was wrong. And I know I made it worse by not telling you sooner what was really in those photographs.”
Sandra stiffened. Her lips pressed razor thin.
“I didn’t think he would take it seriously,” Lucy continued. “I didn’t think anyone would take it seriously.”
“No, you didn’t think, did you?” Sandra twisted the rag in her hand. “Do you know how much time we wasted with those photographs? How much energy and . . . and hope?” Her voice cracked, but she kept going. “And then to find out it was just a hoax? That we’d all been duped?”
“I know.” Lucy hung her head. “And I am sorry. I really am. It was a shitty prank to play on him. We shouldn’t have done it. And I’m sorry you got wrapped up in it too. I know how this is going to reflect on your UFO group. But maybe that’s not a bad thing, you know?”
Sandra’s eyebrows shot up.
“I mean, maybe now with the UFO stuff out of the way,” Lucy tried to explain, “maybe now you can start considering more realistic possibilities, and we can make some actual progress in finding Nolan.”
A man sitting at the opposite end of the bar looked at them with open curiosity. He leaned in their direction, making no effort to hide his eavesdropping.
Sandra pursed her lips and then shook her head. “Let’s talk outside.” She called back to someone in the kitchen. “Luis? I’m taking my break.”
A man grumbled in response, then Sandra removed her apron and came out from behind the bar. She gestured for Lucy to follow her out the back door of the casino into the parking lot. They walked first to Sandra’s car where Kepler waited in the backseat. He leaped to his feet, happy to see them, his whole body wagging. Sandra clipped a leash to his collar, and then the three of them walked toward a picnic table chained to a fence that separated the casino parking lot from an expanse of empty land.
The sun was completely gone now, disappeared behind the mountains, and the pale gray twilight was fast collapsing midnight blue to black. A few streetlamps scattered throughout the parking lot flickered on. Kepler sniffed at tufts of grass along the fence. Sandra walked with him a few feet until he lifted his leg to pee on a post, then she pulled him back to the picnic table and sat down. Lucy sat beside her. Kepler positioned his body to lean against both of their legs.
Sandra scratched his ears. “Kepler was Wyatt’s idea. He said a dog was a better alarm system than anything else on the market. They’re loyal and never run out of batteries.”
“He’s a good dog,” Lucy said, stumbling over the stilted way her voice sounded. Now that they were alone, her words failed her.
A car started up and drove out of the parking lot, the headlights sweeping across them for one bright second before retreating to darkness.
Sandra tilted her head back, her gaze swinging across the dome of the sky. “It’s strange, isn’t it? How we say ‘the stars appear’? As if they go somewhere during the day only to return to us at night.” She was quiet a moment, then added, “But they don’t go anywhere at all, do they? We’re the wandering ones.”
Every second, twilight vanished, and the stars grew ever brighter. The moon bared half its face tonight, peeking from the horizon like a bashful child. Lucy scanned the darkening expanse, but nothing above them moved. It was a still life, a painted glass dome, and they were trapped beneath.
“You used to believe, you know,” Sandra said. “You and Nolan would play out in the yard for hours searching the skies for UFOs. Once you even came running inside saying you’d seen one, that the little green men had come down from a silver
ship and told you secrets. You told me I didn’t have to worry, that they weren’t going to hurt us. They were our friends.”
Lucy remembered. How much easier it had been to see the universe the same as her brother then, how wild to believe in worlds beyond Earth, imagining far-off civilizations casting messages into a sea of stars, then imagining those messages traveling here through all those many, many miles, somehow finding their way to her and Nolan. It made her feel important, believing in something like that, even if it wasn’t true.
“I was a kid,” Lucy said quietly, keeping her eyes on the multiplying stars. “Kids believe in a lot of things that aren’t real. They make stuff up, too.”
Sandra ran her hand down Kepler’s neck, digging her fingers deep into his fur. “Do you remember that dead patch we had in the front yard? That circle where we couldn’t get any grass to grow no matter how hard we tried?”
Lucy nodded.
“I thought your brother had done it on purpose,” Sandra said. “I thought he came out with a blowtorch one night and set the grass on fire. Or used bleach or something. He swore up and down it wasn’t him, but I didn’t believe it. I even called in one of those lawn experts? Those landscaping guys? Paid him way too much money to come out and tell me he had no idea why the grass wasn’t growing back.” She laughed and then said, “Nolan claimed it was a UFO landing site.”
“Someone probably just parked a car there for too long and it leaked oil into the ground,” Lucy suggested.
Sandra was quiet for a long time, then she said, “This isn’t all there is, Lucy. This physical realm, this material world . . . There’s more. So much more.”
“You sound sure about that.”
“I am,” she said. “They showed me.”
“They.”
“Yes, the Ones who took Nolan.”
“The aliens.”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re talking to a child.” At the sharpness in Sandra’s voice, Kepler tilted his head, moving his ears forward and then flattening them back. “Like you think I’ve gone off the deep end.”
“But seriously? I mean, think about what you’re saying—”
“I have thought about it,” Sandra interrupted. “I’ve thought about it at great length. I’ve gone over it so many times, trying to talk myself out of it, trying to come up with another explanation, but I’ve seen things, Lucy. I’ve experienced things that defy rationality. And some people might think I’m crazy or making it up or suffering some grief delusions, but I can assure you, what I’ve seen, what I experienced, it was real as you and me sitting right here, right now talking under the stars. It was as real as this . . .” She pressed her fingertips against the side of Lucy’s face. “You feel that, don’t you? If someone asked you about it later, you’d say this really happened, wouldn’t you? You’d say what you felt, the warmth of my touch, the pressure against your skin, you’d say that it was real.”
She took her hand away and cold air rushed in. Lucy raised her hand to her cheek, touching the place where Sandra’s fingers had been, feeling the echo of her there, thinking how strange it was for a daughter to go so long without a mother and not realize what she’s missing.
“I saw Dad today,” Lucy said.
Sandra looked surprised, but sat quietly, waiting for her to continue.
“Is it true?” she asked. “Did you really call every month until I turned eighteen?”
A pained expression trembled on Sandra’s face, then she brushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear and bent to pet Kepler again. “Yes, well . . . I needed to know you were all right.”
“Why did you stop?” Lucy asked. “Calling, I mean.”
“You made it pretty clear you had nothing to say to me.” There was an edge to her voice that made Lucy want to shrink into stardust and drift away. “Every month for four years. A mother can take only so much rejection.”
“I didn’t know.” Lucy’s voice was choked with some raw mix of anger and grief. “He never told me.”
Sandra met Lucy’s gaze. The light from the casino sign glinted in her eyes.
“I didn’t know about the phone calls until today,” Lucy repeated. “If I had, I would have . . . I didn’t know about any of it, that you fought for custody, that you wanted me to stay. I thought . . . I thought you stopped loving me. That you didn’t want me anymore.”
“Oh, Lucy, no. I would never . . .” She touched the side of Lucy’s face again, this time letting her fingers rest there as she continued speaking. “Of course I wanted you to stay. You’re my daughter. My only daughter.” She laughed a little and then settled both hands in her lap. “You know, when I found out I was pregnant with you, I cried for two days straight. Not because I was sad, though, don’t get the wrong idea. I was just . . . I was so, so happy. A daughter. I’d dreamed of having a daughter my entire life. I’d dreamed of you and then there you were, pink-faced and squalling and so delicate, so new. The day you were born, I promised myself I’d do everything I could to keep you safe. Of course, I broke that promise the second I took you out of that hospital.”
“Mom, no.”
Sandra hushed her. “Being human hurts. So much sometimes it’s easy to get lost in that pain. I couldn’t cope. I didn’t know how. No one ever taught me. Your grandmother. She is, well, let’s just say her way of coping is similar to mine. It runs in the family, I guess.”
Lucy remembered the three of them driving to Carson City, Nevada, one Christmas. Nolan sat in the front. Lucy had the whole backseat to herself. They listened to Christmas carols and when they tired of that, David Bowie albums. They played “I Spy,” and Nolan started off, “I spy something silver.” “A guardrail,” Sandra had guessed. “A car,” said Lucy. He laughed. “You’ll never guess, never,” and he was right.
In Carson City, Lucy and Nolan met their grandmother for the first time. She smelled like cough syrup and mildewed socks and several of her teeth were missing, but they had to hug her anyway. While they waited for dinner to be ready, Lucy and Nolan tried to play Mouse Trap in the living room, but the game was missing most of its pieces. They watched a boring football game on television instead and listened to their mother and grandmother fight in the kitchen. Dinner was terrible. The ham still frozen in the middle. The Jell-O salad runny like snot. The mashed potatoes lumpy and dry. They picked at their food and their grandmother drank brandy and snipped at their mother. “What’s wrong with your children? Spoiled little brats is what they are.” On the drive home, their mother had said, “There. That’s done. I did my duty as a mother, I introduced you to your grandmother, and now we never have to see her ever again if we don’t want to. Who wants hamburgers?” Lucy told herself that when she got older, she’d be friends with her mother. They’d have Christmas together as a family every year no matter where they were living or what they were doing, they’d spend Christmas together and the ham would be perfectly cooked.
“When things got hard,” Sandra continued quietly, “when life overwhelmed me, I drank. I drank, and I let you and Nolan both down.”
“It’s okay,” Lucy said, surprised to discover she meant it.
“It’s not. As a mother, I failed pretty spectacularly.” Sandra stared down at her hands for a few seconds and then smiled tentatively up at Lucy. “But I’m trying to forgive myself. What matters is that you’re here now. You came back and you told the truth about the pictures and, yes, I was upset at first, but I’m not anymore. Because you were right, Lucy. I let myself see what I wanted to see. I should have questioned. I should have known it wouldn’t be that simple to find him. Nothing in life ever is.”
“So what now?” Lucy asked.
“Keep looking.” Her voice was strong with conviction. “The pictures led nowhere. Okay, we know that now, but that doesn’t mean we stop trying.”
“But the alien thing,” Lucy said. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious now that we should be looking in other, more realisti
c directions, right?”
Sandra drew back slightly. “You can do whatever you want. The pictures were only one piece of a very complicated puzzle that I’m not ready to give up on yet. I know that’s hard for you to understand.”
“Tell me, then.” Lucy grabbed her mother’s hand. “Tell me what you saw to make you believe.”
She took her time telling Lucy the story. It was like the ones Nolan used to tell, full of things that couldn’t possibly be true and yet the details were so startlingly clear, her voice so steady and weighted with conviction. It wasn’t possible, but then again, people used to believe the world was flat and if you took a boat to the horizon you would sail right off the edge into a pit of hungry dragons.
The night Nolan went missing, Sandra took her break around one thirty in the morning. On normal nights, she would go to the cafeteria, grab a cup of coffee and an apple, and read a magazine or chat with the other nurses, but that night something was different. Something felt off. Her stomach was upset. She was nervous, pacing. She couldn’t sit still for more than a minute before she was on her feet again, checking someone’s chart or filing paperwork. When her break started, instead of taking the elevator to the cafeteria, she pressed the button to the top floor. Then she took the stairs to the roof. Even though technically the staff wasn’t supposed to go up there, the door was always unlocked. Doctors, nurses, radiology techs, sometimes even patients came out to get fresh air or have a smoke. Sometimes to cry.
There was no one else around. Sandra walked to the east side of the hospital where she could look toward the White Mountains and south toward Big Pine. It was a pretty good view that high up, with much of Owens Valley visible as a patchwork of bright lights and shadows. Her focus kept turning east toward the observatory. Something was out there, something was coming. She didn’t know what, but she felt it, somehow knew that now was not the time to look away. A churning started in her gut, twisted her heart to knots, and she watched for what felt like hours, growing steadily more afraid. Though of what, she wasn’t sure. Then she saw it. A light, a bright glowing orb hovering far in the distance, out over the desert.
Everything We Lost Page 29