Everything We Lost

by Valerie Geary

  PHYSICAL EVIDENCE: Photographs taken. Film to be developed ASAP.

  CONCLUSION: Once the skeptics see these photos they will no longer be able to deny what’s happening. They’ll see I’ve been right all along.

  Nolan took the 35mm film case from the camera, slipped it into the envelope, and handed it to the girl working at the Walgreens Photo Center. She told him to come back in an hour and disappeared through a door into some back room where he assumed the film would be processed, the photos he’d taken the night before blown up and printed on glossy paper. He was nervous leaving them alone with her, but he didn’t know how to develop film or even have the necessary equipment and chemicals to try. He paced in front of the counter and then looked through a spinning rack of greeting cards trying to distract himself. What was taking so long? There were no windows looking into the back room so he couldn’t see what the girl was doing. He returned his attention to the greeting cards, straightening them and returning misplaced cards to their original slots.

  Last night, when he’d pulled back the curtain, his first thought was I wish Lucy and Mom were awake to see this. But he hadn’t gone to wake them, too afraid that the orb would vanish the second he turned his back. Then he remembered his mother’s old Nikon. He still had it in his top desk drawer. He moved slowly, not wanting to scare the orb away, opening the drawer, fumbling for the camera, sliding it out of the desk, lifting it to the glass. He took shot after shot, trying to get as many angles as possible. Even after the orb disappeared, he kept taking pictures until the button wouldn’t depress anymore and he was certain the roll was finished.

  He didn’t know if any of the pictures would turn out clear, if they’d show something more than a blurry bit of light, something obviously not of this world, but if they did, he’d finally have something to show them. See? he’d say to his mother, his sister, anyone who would listen. See, I’m not crazy. Something is happening to me, to all of us. It’s not just in my head. What had Lucy said? Figments of his freak imagination. No, Lucy, he thought. It’s so much more than that.

  He glanced at the clock behind the counter. Only ten minutes had passed.

  The man standing in front of the beer case was making Nolan nervous. Everything about him was too clean, too professional. His tie too straight. His suit too black. His hair too slick. His shoes too shiny. His shoulders too straight. His hands too stiff. Men like him with expensive suits and haircuts didn’t linger in Bishop, rarely ever came here in the first place. He’d been standing at the beer case for as long as Nolan had been at the photo counter as if he was having trouble deciding. But it was nine o’clock in the morning. Who bought beer at nine o’clock in the morning? Not men who dressed like this one.

  The man noticed Nolan noticing him and raised his hand to his ear.

  Nolan glanced at the door through which the photo girl had disappeared. A sense of unease crept along his spine. He looked back to the beer case, but the man in the black suit was gone. He rang the bell attached to the counter, but the girl didn’t come out. He rang it two more times and stretched his torso over the countertop. “Hello? Excuse me?”

  Shadows moved in his peripheral vision. There were two of them now and they looked identical to each other. Same height, same body shape, with matching suits and shoes and slicked-back, walnut-brown hair. Their eyes hidden by dark sunglasses. They moved in unison, their strides the same length, covering the same amount of distance, circling him.

  Nolan pushed away from the counter and bolted toward the front door. The men in suits reached for him. A hand caught the back of his shirt. He wrenched from their grasp and kept running, barreling into a woman carrying an armload of socks to the front registers.

  “Hey!” she shouted.

  The socks tumbled to the floor. Nolan skipped over them.

  He glanced over his shoulder. The two men strode after him, covering ground in a way that seemed to defy the laws of physics. No one else in the store paid any attention to the two men. Customers scowled at Nolan as he darted past, and a Walgreens employee came out from behind her register, waving for him to stop, but the two men slipped through the crowd unnoticed.

  Nolan burst through the front doors and ran into someone standing on the sidewalk.

  “Whoa, there!” The man grabbed him by the shoulders. “Nolan? Is everything all right?”

  Nolan blinked up at the man, panic blurring his vision for an instant before he realized it was one of his teachers, his chemistry teacher, Mr. Burdoch. “You have to help me! They’re right behind me!”

  “Slow down, Nolan. What are you talking about? Who’s behind you?”

  “The men.” He turned his head around, squinting to see into the store. Two tall silhouettes peered at him through the murky glass. “Them, right there! Those two men! They’re with the government. They’re going to lock me up so I can’t tell the world what I know.”

  “Nolan? What men?” He was staring at the doors, staring right at them. “Why don’t you sit down on that bench and catch your breath, okay? We’ll call your mother, have her come get you.”

  Nolan broke free of Mr. Burdoch and sprinted across the parking lot to his pickup. This whole town was against him. Somehow the government had gotten to every single person he knew; there were no safe places anymore. Not here, anyway, not in Bishop. As he climbed into the cab and started the engine, he looked back toward the store. Sunlight reflected off the window glass, making it hard to see clearly, but he was certain something was moving inside that brilliant glare. Two shadow figures shimmering like optical illusions, growing larger as they hurried toward him. His tires squealed as he peeled out of the parking lot.

  He drove in circles for an hour, eyes roaming, scanning the road ahead and behind and every side road, too, for a suspicious car. It would be black or silver. It would have tinted windows and either a government-issued license plate or no license plate at all. It would creep around corners. It would stick close to his bumper. It would try to corral him onto a dead-end street or run him off the road. He could never go back for those pictures. That girl behind the counter must have been working with the two men from the beginning. She probably called them as soon as Nolan walked into the store. Those photos, his proof—lost to him forever.

  Then it happened. Just like he thought it would.

  As he passed Bishop’s Grocery, a black sedan pulled out from the parking lot and followed him for about a quarter of a mile. When he sped up, the black sedan did too. He turned right onto a side street. So did the black sedan. He blew through two stop signs and then made a left and then another left and when he looked in the rearview mirror, the black sedan was nowhere to be seen. He’d lost them—for now—but he knew that, as long as he stayed in this town, he could never really be safe.

  Nolan pounded his fists on the door for what felt like forever before Gabriella finally answered. She sighed when she saw him and invited him inside. He raced past her through the front of the house toward the guest room. Gabriella followed, her steps heavy across the carpet.

  “She’s gone, dear.” There was a hint of sadness to her words; she had lost someone too.

  He had to be sure. He had to know absolutely. He flung open the guest-room door without knocking. Until this moment when he saw the mattress stripped bare, he’d hoped to find her here. He went around the room twice, checking the closet and corners, under the bed, checking every drawer, but nothing here belonged to Celeste. There was no sign she’d been here at all, that she’d even existed.

  Nolan stood in the middle of the room and stared up at the ceiling, looking for a crack that hadn’t been there before, a stain, a pattern in the spackling, some kind of arrow pointing the way, something for him to follow. The ceiling blurred. A whisper at the back of his mind, growing louder, louder, taking over, but none of the words made sense.

  A hand clasped onto his arm. He jumped, winging his elbow and knocking Gabriella in the side of the face. She cried out in surprise and stumbled back from him.
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br />   “I’m sorry!” Nolan moved to help her. “I thought you were someone else. I didn’t mean to . . .”

  Gabriella waved away his apology. The bracelets on her wrist clanged together. She worked her jaw back and forth a few times. “I think I’ll be all right. Nothing broken anyway.”

  “When?” Nolan asked, gesturing to the empty room.

  “This morning.”

  “Did she say anything? Leave a note at least?”

  Gabriella offered him a strained smile. “She told me what happened, Nolan. She told me about the casebook going around school, and what you wrote about her.”

  He didn’t want to talk about that again. It had happened. It was over. He couldn’t go back in time and change anything. “Did she tell you where she was going?”

  Gabriella pinched her lips together. He didn’t like the way she was looking at him, like he was the bad guy in this scenario, like he was the one to fear.

  “This is important,” he pressed. “I have to know she’s safe. I have to know she got out and she wasn’t just . . .” He couldn’t finish, couldn’t stand the thought that the men in the dark suits had gotten here before him, that they’d tied her up and stuffed her in an unmarked car and driven her to some secret location, not marked on any map, and then erased all signs of her.

  “Just . . . what, Nolan?” Gabriella asked. “What do you think will happen to her?”

  Her voice was stiff, and she didn’t blink, and he didn’t like the way her head was cocked to one side, how her bracelets kept jangling. She always wore so much jewelry. A large medallion around her neck, turquoise earrings in the shape of horseshoes, half her arm covered in gold bangles. So many places to hide a tiny microphone or even a video camera, and with all that jewelry, no one would ever notice.

  “Where is she?” Nolan demanded, stepping close to Gabriella.

  Even though he towered over her, she didn’t back away. She met his gaze and said, “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do.” He grabbed her wrists, felt the brittleness of her bones.

  Her eyes widened, but she didn’t fight him. “Nolan, let me go. You’re not yourself right now. You’re not thinking straight.”

  “I’m thinking fine.” He loosened his grip, and Gabriella jerked away from him.

  She rubbed her wrists. “Wyatt said he talked to you about Celeste. He said he showed you all the paperwork, the proof that she’s not a Visitor.”

  “You talked to Wyatt?”

  “We care about you, Nolan. And we want to help you figure this out, but you have to slow down and listen to what we’re saying. You have to let us help you.”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders, trying this time to be gentle. “Gabriella, please, when did you talk to Wyatt?”

  “This morning,” she said, like it wasn’t a big deal.

  “Before or after Celeste left?”

  “Nolan . . .”

  “Before or after?” He shook her.

  “He came and picked her up.”

  It was the worst possible scenario he could have imagined. Celeste hadn’t just left him, she’d been taken, and not by her own kind, but by the government, whatever entity Wyatt worked for, and hours had passed between then and now and who knew what was happening, where they’d taken her, what they were doing. Nolan barreled past Gabriella toward the front door.

  “Nolan, wait!” She chased after him. “It’s not like that! It’s not what you think!”

  He didn’t stop to listen. He ran down the porch and jumped into his pickup. As he drove away, he saw Gabriella in his rearview mirror standing in the middle of the driveway, a cell phone pressed to her ear. Her arm stirred the air with urgency, and he knew she was talking to the men in dark suits. They would come for him eventually, and he didn’t want to be anywhere near here when they did.

  Wyatt was bent over the engine compartment of an ATV, tinkering with something inside, when Nolan barged into the hangar. “Where is she? Where are you hiding her?”

  Startled by the disruption, Wyatt grabbed a wrench off the floor and held it over his head, ready to swing, but he lowered it again upon seeing Nolan tearing through the hangar, turning over boxes and kicking aside piles of junk.

  “What did you do with her?” A box of discarded machine parts clattered across the floor.

  “Nolan, calm down.” Wyatt moved toward him, with empty hands outstretched. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  “Celeste. You took her.” Nolan kicked a pile of grease rags.

  “She needed a ride to the bus station in Lancaster.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “She’s halfway to Santa Monica by now.”

  “You’re lying! You brought her here and then what?” He scanned the hangar, but there was nowhere she could be hiding. “Then your goons came and got her and took her where?”

  “My goons?” Wyatt shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Nolan charged Wyatt, grabbed his shirt, and shook him. “I want to know where she is. You tell me where she is.”

  Wyatt shoved him away. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  Nolan rushed Wyatt again, who easily sidestepped out of his way this time. Nolan crashed into a metal filing cabinet. The impact was enough to diminish his rage.

  He closed his eyes for a second, trying to piece it together, all the things that were coming loose around him. It didn’t make sense. She should have been here, but she wasn’t, and he didn’t know where to look for her next. He fluttered his eyes open. Movement out the open hangar door drew his attention, but it was just a cloud shadow skimming blue across the cracked, taupe-colored earth.

  “Listen, Nolan.” Wyatt spoke softly. “Celeste told me how upset you were when you found out she was leaving. She asked me to check up on you. I know it’s a lot, it sucks. I know you cared about her. But you have to stop thinking that everyone is out to get you.” He spread his hands wide in a gesture of peace. “I’m not your enemy.”

  When Nolan didn’t respond, he walked across the hangar to the minifridge. “Want something to drink? Water or soda or something?”

  He opened the door and rummaged around inside, pretending to look for drinks, pretending because Nolan could see the cell phone in Wyatt’s hand, his thumb moving quickly over the keypad. When he turned around again, though, the cell phone was gone, stuffed back in the fridge behind a carton of milk or something, and the only things in his hands were a soda can and a bottle of water.

  “The best thing you can do for yourself right now is forget about her,” Wyatt said. “Move on and let her move on too. Let her get on with her own life and you get on with yours.”

  Nolan refused the drinks that Wyatt offered. He sidestepped toward the hangar door. “I’ll find her, you know. Wherever she is, you won’t be able to keep her from me.”

  “You know, Nolan, not everything is a conspiracy. Not every shadow you see is a bad guy coming to get you.” Wyatt set both the soda can and water on top of the fridge.

  Through the hangar door, a dust cloud rolled on the horizon.

  “Some things in life are simple,” Wyatt continued. “This is one of those things. I’m not working for any kind of secret government agency. And Celeste is human. I swear to you, on my mother’s life. There’s nothing, there’s no one, you need to protect her from. Do you understand what I’m saying, Nolan? Nolan, look at me.”

  The dust cloud rolled closer. Something flashed in its center, the sun reflecting off glass or some smooth, bright metal. Finally Nolan looked at Wyatt, who smiled as though nothing was wrong.

  He never should have come here. Nolan ran out of the hangar.

  Wyatt followed him. “What are you going to do?”

  Nolan slammed his door closed and started the engine. Wyatt’s lips moved, but Nolan couldn’t hear what he said through the glass. He stepped on the gas. The pickup lurched forward. He cranked the wheel hard to the left, pulling a tight U-turn. Wyatt waved at him to stop, even stepped i
n front of the pickup a second before leaping away again when he realized Nolan wasn’t stopping.

  Whoever was coming up the driveway was halfway to the hangar now. A smudge of black was visible through the dust, a flash of light reflected off a metal grill. Nolan pointed his pickup directly at the approaching car and increased his speed. Twenty miles an hour, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five. The sedan was all he could see in his windshield now. A black beast with gnashing teeth and wicked red eyes. Nolan would not be the one to slow down, he would not pull over. His pickup was bigger. At the last second, the sedan jerked to the right, bumping off the road, spinning out over the flat plain alongside the driveway. A horn blared. Rocks scattered and pinged against the side of Nolan’s pickup.

  He kept going, increasing the distance between the two vehicles. For a moment there was nothing but dust, then the cloud cleared and in his rearview mirror he saw brake lights glaring red. He leaned over his steering wheel and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. Behind him, the sedan grew smaller and smaller, becoming little more than a black dot on the horizon before vanishing completely. Even then, Nolan did not slow down.

  19

  Someone shook Lucy’s shoulder. A woman asked if she was okay. “Should I call an ambulance?”

  Lucy blinked away grit. She was on her back, the stars above partially blocked by whoever was crouched over her. Her tongue felt like sandpaper, her throat as dry and cracked as the earth beneath her. She shivered and tried to sit up, but the woman pushed her back down.

  “Lie still. You might have hit your head.”

  “I think maybe I passed out,” Lucy said, though she wasn’t sure exactly what had happened.

  She moved to sit up again, and the woman sighed, relenting. Hands on her arms, slipping under her back, helping her fight against the heavy weight of gravity. The stars tilted and dropped behind the mountains. Lucy closed her eyes, waiting for the world to stop spinning; it would never stop spinning. She inhaled long, deep breaths. She inhaled and pushed away panic.