Out There - Book One: Paradise

by David Gordon

“How did I let myself get talked into this?” Mrs. Lightfoot muttered to herself as she turned the car from Starlight Road and onto a side street that led into a neighborhood of expensive homes.

  Alejandro, who was sitting in the back seat, was happy to explain it to her. “Sami begged you and threw a fit, but you still said no, and then she borrowed Mr. Sanchez’s cell phone and showed you Brian’s message again, and then you cried some more and said okay.”

  Annoyed, Mrs. Lightfoot pinched her lips together and glanced at Alejandro in the rear view mirror. “Thank you, Alejandro.”

  “No problem,” he answered, very pleased with himself.

  Sami was sitting beside her mother in the front seat. She stared intently through the windshield and leaned forward to get a better view. “I think we turn left here somewhere,” she said. Then she brightened and thrust her hand out to point. “That’s—Ow!” She had forgotten about the windshield and had stabbed her finger right into it. She automatically popped her injured finger into her mouth and said, “Oy sing we shurn zair.”

  “What?” said Mrs. Lightfoot and Alejandro at the same time.

  Sami took her finger out of her mouth and pointed—carefully—and repeated, “There! I think we turn there, at that next corner!”

  “I see it,” said her mother. She flicked on her turn signal and began to slow. Just as she started to make the turn, Alejandro jumped forward and his hands slapped the top of the front seat.

  “Don’t turn! Keep going!” he shouted.

  Mrs. Lightfoot spun the wheel back, the turn signal clicked off, and they drove on past the street. As they passed it, Sami and her mother saw what he had already seen, which was a police car parked in front of Brian’s house. Two policemen were leaning against their squad car, talking. Yellow “police line” tape was strung across the driveway entrance.

  “We’re not getting in that way,” said Alejandro.

  Once they were past Brian’s street, Mrs. Lightfoot pulled the car over to the side and parked. “Well children, it was a good try,” she sighed.

  Sami’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. “We’re not giving up, are we?”

  “Honey,” said her mother, “the police are watching the house.”

  “The front of the house,” Alejandro corrected her. He leaned over the seat and said to Sami, “What’s the backyard like?”

  Sami thought for a moment, then described the dead lawn and trees, the empty swimming pool, Mr. Sombra’s little house in the corner, and the high block wall that surrounded the backyard.

  “Okay,” said Alejandro, clearly excited. “Now, is there anyone living behind them? Another house?”

  Sami closed one eye as she scanned her memories, then she nodded. “Yeah, there is.”

  “Perfect,” he said. “Listen—“

  “No, you listen,” Mrs. Lightfoot said angrily. “The police are watching the house. We did our best to—”

  “The front, Mrs. Lightfoot. The back has a high wall and neighbors. So maybe they don’t think they need to worry about that.”

  “He’s right!” said Sami.

  “Hush,” said her mother.

  “Mrs. Lightfoot,” Alejandro said in his most serious voice, “getting in and out of houses is one thing I know how to do. Maybe it’s the only thing. Just let me try. Please.”

  Mrs. Lightfoot stared at Alejandro. She could see how important this was to him. Then she looked at Sami and saw that Sami would never forgive her if she didn’t let them try. Mrs. Lightfoot sighed and shook her head, then put the car in gear and pulled back out onto the street. She drove one block and turned down the next street; the one that was right behind the street Brian’s house was on.

  Mrs. Lightfoot was inside her parked car and looking very worried as she stared at the space between the two houses. She was watching Sami and Alejandro, who were crouching in that space, hiding in the shade. A few feet away from them, separating the yards of the two houses, was a wall made of concrete blocks. In most of the neighborhoods in Paradise the houses—including their backyards—were separated from each other by block walls. Alejandro loved these walls. He called them his “highways,” and he was about to show Sami why he called them that. Block walls were usually about six feet high. But this was a neighborhood with very expensive homes, so the walls were higher, over eight feet high. Where Sami and Alejandro were, however, in the front yard, the wall came down like stair steps into the front yard. Here they were only a few feet high.

  “Come on,” said Alejandro. He jumped up onto the block wall and started walking up it, like he was walking up stairs. Sami hopped up behind him. She teetered for a moment then, like a tightrope walker, stuck out her arms for balance and followed him up the steps of the wall.

  As they walked between and past the houses on either side of them, she glanced to the left and right and was relieved that no one was at the windows to see her and Alejandro sneaking by. Soon they were at the top of the wall. Sami looked down, and it was a long way. She stopped, suddenly scared. When she looked up, Alejandro was already way ahead of her, walking like he was on a sidewalk.

  “Wait up!” she whispered, and tried to hurry as best she could after him.

  She caught up with him only because he had stopped. They were now behind the houses. On either side of them was a backyard, and when she looked around she could see many backyards. All of them were connected by the wall that they were standing on, just like streets in a city. This was Alejandro’s highway.

  He turned to her and held his finger to his lips, showing her to be quiet, and pointed down into the backyard to their left. Sami looked. There was a very big dog, sleeping. Sami started to wobble on the wall. Alejandro put his hands on her shoulders to steady her, and then whispered, “So, which one is it?”

  Sami took her eyes off of the dog and started looking at the double row of backyards and houses stretching in both directions, trying to figure out which one was Brian’s. She scanned up and down, trying to remember some special feature. Brian’s house was white. But most of the houses here were white. Suddenly she saw a flash of rainbow colors coming from the upstairs window of one of the houses. She remembered the glass crystal hanging in Brian’s bedroom window. She pointed and whispered, “That one.”

  Alejandro nodded and they continued along the narrow concrete blocks to the wall that ran along the backs of all of the backyards. There they turned right and headed down Alejandro’s “highway” to Brian’s backyard.

  Sami and Alejandro now stood on the block wall where it formed one of the corners of Brian’s backyard. They were staring down at the ground. It was a long way down. Too far to jump without risking getting hurt. After a moment of looking around, Alejandro started walking down the side wall of the backyard. Sami followed him until he stopped just across from Mr. Sombra’s little house.

  “At least we know Mr. Sombra isn’t there,” Sami said.

  “We have to jump across,” said Alejandro.

  Sami saw that the edge of the roof of the little house was about three feet away and about a foot lower than where they were. It was still pretty high above the ground, though. “How do we get down from there?” she asked.

  Alejandro pointed to a wooden trellis. This ladder of thin strips of wood was nailed to the side of the house. Pieces of a dead vine that had once been growing on the trellis were still sticking to it. “There,” said Alejandro, and then he jumped.

  He landed on the roof with a loud thump. He and Sami froze for a moment, listening. When they heard nothing, Alejandro waved at Sami to hurry. She looked at the space between the wall and the roof, then down at the ground. Now it looked even farther than before.

  “Don’t look down,” she heard Alejandro say. She looked across at him. He nodded, and she jumped.

  They had to lie on their bellies and let their legs dangle over the edge of the roof until their feet found the slats of the trellis. Once they did, though, they were able to climb down it as if it were a ladder. A moment later th
ey were peeking around the corner of the little house. As far as they could see, there was no one in the backyard. There were only a few brown bushes, with very few leaves still left on them. So there was no place to hide between where they were and Brian’s house. Bent over, Sami and Alejandro crept across the yard, hoping that no one would see them.

  No one did. They made it to the wall of the big house, and crouched down against it where they could not be seen from a window.

  “Now what?” Sami asked. “How do we get in?”

  “Stay here,” was the only answer Alejandro gave her before shuffling over to the nearest window.

  She watched as he peeked in through the windowpane, then carefully examined its frame. He crawled to several windows, and repeated his examination at each one. Finally, he seemed to find what he was looking for. Sami saw him yank the screen to one side, then pop it out of the window frame. He set it against the wall. Then he pulled out a pocketknife and opened the blade. He pushed against the window with his shoulder until he could work the knife blade into the frame. Sami saw his face turn red as he pushed up on the blade as hard as he could. Suddenly there was a clack! and he froze, listening. When he heard nothing, he put his knife back in his pocket and pushed on the window. It slid open.

  Alejandro waved Sami over. By the time she got to the window, he was already inside. She scrambled in after him.

  Sami dropped from the windowsill to the floor beside Alejandro. They were in the living room. They crouched there, listening. It was quiet. Really quiet. The only sound Sami heard was the refrigerator humming in the kitchen, and somehow that one sound made the house seem even quieter. The living room was just as she had remembered it. Shareen’s piano was against the far wall. Its white and black keys were completely still. Other instruments of every kind littered the floor and were laying on chairs, tables, and the sofa. But no one was playing them, either.

  Sami thought this was the quietest, emptiest place she had ever been, and it gave her the willies.

  “I think it’s okay,” said Alejandro. “I don’t think there are any police in the house.” He stood up and Sami stood up beside him. “Better close that window,” he told her, and she slid it shut. “Wow,” he continued as he scanned the room, “this place is weird.”

  Sami immediately felt she had to defend Shareen and Alexi. She glared at Alejandro. “It’s not either!”

  Alejandro looked at her with an expression on his face that said, You have got to be kidding. Sami’s anger drained away and she rolled her eyes.

  “Okay. It is,” she confessed.

  Alejandro nodded, satisfied, and started walking around the living room, looking at the many instruments. “What a lot of stuff.” He picked up an oboe and asked, “What’s this?”

  “Duh!” said Sami as she hurried over to him. “That’s a clarinet. Put it down!”

  “I’m not hurting it,” he said.

  She took it from him and set it back down. “That’s Shareen’s.”

  “Ooo, grabby,” said Alejandro, but he was smiling.

  Sami glared at him, and then said, “We better get looking.”

  “Where?”

  Sami shrugged. “Everywhere, I guess. Remember what Mr. Sanchez said. He doesn’t know what the communicator looks like, but it probably looks strange. So look for anything that looks strange.”

  Alejandro clapped his hands onto Sami’s shoulders and announced, “I found it!”

  In that moment a thought flashed into Sami’s mind. The thought was that she liked Alejandro. This confused her since she had spent the last few years absolutely hating him. She had no time now for this strange thought, so she tucked it into the back of her mind for some time later. She pushed his hands away and snorted. “Very funny. You take the upstairs. I’ll look down here.”

  From the moment they had decided to search Brian’s house, Sami had known exactly where she wanted to look. While Alejandro was still with her, she pretended to start searching the living room. But as soon as he had gone upstairs, she made a beeline for Alexi’s office.

  She walked into the entryway. The sliding doors to Alexi’s office were closed. Before going to them, she tiptoed to one of the narrow windows that were on either side of the front door. These glass panels had flower designs cut into them, so that when she looked through them the outside world was broken up into crazy patterns. Even so, she could make out the upside down image of the front gate at the end of the driveway. It was still closed, but she could see the head of one of the policemen just sticking above the top of the gate (though the designs cut into the glass made it look like the policeman’s head was upside down and floating free of his body).

  She went back to the office doors, pulled sideways on one of the handles, and the door slid open.

  This room was also the same as she had remembered. The blinds were still closed. The three computers were there, the printer, the two scanners, the wires, the stacks of CDs, the books, the papers, the clutter. When, after a few moments, her eyes adjusted to the gloomy darkness of the room, she saw that things were not exactly the same. The computers were now turned this way and that. She went over to check out the two on Alexi’s worktable. She saw small screws strewn on the table. Then she noticed, just sticking out from behind one of the computers, several colored wires that were hooked to a plastic clip. She leaned across the table to check behind the computer. A bunch of wires dangled out of a big, rectangular hole. Sami guessed that the police must have taken the hard drive out. She looked behind the other computer and found the same empty, rectangular hole.

  She knew what she would find if she checked the third computer, the one that was connected to the scanner, over on the side of the room. Its hard drive would also be torn out. So she did not bother with it. Instead she searched through every drawer, stack of CDs, pile, corner, desktop, and closet. She found a lot of stuff, but nothing that was, to her, strange stuff. They were all familiar things, things she had grown up with. Nothing looked like a galactic cell phone. After going through the office several times, she stood in the middle of the room and huffed, “Rats!” She really had expected to find the communicator—if it existed at all—in Alexi’s office. Reluctantly, she left the office to search the living room (for real, this time), the dining room, and the kitchen.

  In the living room she looked under and inside the sofa. She stood on the piano bench, lifted the lid on the piano, and almost fell inside it as she bent down to get a closer look. She opened every one of the instrument cases, and looked inside the instruments themselves. She looked behind the furniture and up inside the fireplace chimney. She even took a fireplace poker and poked through the small pile of ashes in the fireplace. Nothing.

  The dining room was easy; there was absolutely nothing in there but the bare dining room table and four chairs. The boxes were gone.

  The kitchen was another story, though. Like all kitchens, it was filled with cupboards, drawers, nooks and crannies. Sami soon discovered that there was a pantry, as well, and that the pantry connected to a laundry room. She went through each of these rooms and every drawer and cabinet in them as quickly as she could, but carefully, too. Once, in a kitchen drawer, she found a strange device and got very excited. It was made out of polished metal and kind of heavy. The main part of it was a cylinder about five inches long, and coming off of one end were two, slightly curved pieces of metal. It reminded her a little of a space gun she had seen in a science fiction movie. She was wondering why they would keep it in a kitchen drawer as she turned it over, when something clicked loose in the device and the main body of the space gun split open. A corkscrew popped out. Of course, Sami knew a corkscrew—even a fancy one—when she saw one. Disappointed, she dropped it back into the drawer.

  Sami started thinking, Wait a sec! If I had an intergalactic cell phone, would I keep it in a kitchen drawer? No. Or stuffed in a couch? Of course not. Or a trumpet? Ridiculous. Where would I hide it? Someplace with space, but that no one looks in, that’s where. What ab
out in a drum? I didn’t check inside them, and that would be a perfect place to hide something!

  Sami hurried back into the living room. Behind the couch were stacked a number of drums. One was a snare drum, the kind marchers typically march to. Beside it were a set of bongos, a tall conga drum, and a couple of African drums painted in bright oranges, reds and browns. Sami picked up the bongos because they were small and turned them over to look inside. Nothing. She grabbed the snare off of its chrome stand and gave it a shake, and it surprised her by rattling like a rattlesnake. She turned it over. Stretched across the bottom of the drum were some long, skinny springs. These were what had rattled. She put her eye to hole in the side of the snare drum to peer inside, but did not see anything in there. The conga was almost as tall as her and made of heavy wood. She carefully tipped it onto its side, then got down on her knees to peer inside. It was empty. She was reaching for one of the colorful African drums (and wondering if Konoko had ever played one of these) when she heard a scraping sound. Slowly she peeked up over the top of the sofa at the entryway. Someone was moving around in Alexi’s office.

  Sami tiptoed across the living room, into the entryway, and up to the edge of the sliding door. The sounds from inside had stopped. She waited, listening and wondering what to do, when Alejandro’s head suddenly popped through the doorway.

  “Gotcha!” he whispered.

  “Aack!” yelled Sami as her arms jumped up to protect her. “Don’t do that!”

  Alejandro grinned, put his fingers to his lips, and said, “Shhh.”

  They did not know it, but Alejandro’s shushing was too late. The policemen guarding the entrance to the driveway had heard Sami’s “aack!” and were already talking about whether or not they really had heard something coming from the house.

  Meanwhile, Sami had joined Alejandro in Alexi’s office. “Did you find anything upstairs?”

  Alejandro smiled. “Oh yeah, I found it.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out an electric toothbrush. He held the brush end to his ear and pressed the button. The toothbrush started to whirr and he said, “Hello? Hello? Is this the alien planet?”

  “Oh, you are such—” Of course, Sami was about to say You are such a jerk. But this time she could not get out the words. Alejandro was no longer the same Alejandro to her, no longer such a jerk. Liking him was starting to annoy her. She snatched the toothbrush out of his hand and switched it off. “Did you find anything or not?”

  Alejandro did not seemed bothered by Sami taking the toothbrush from him. “Nope. I did find something kind of cool, though,” he added. From his other back pocket he pulled out a white glove. “Check this out.” He handed it to Sami and wandered off to inspect the computer equipment some more.

  The glove was made out of a very soft, stretchy material, and it was sewn together with great care. By the size and length of the fingers, Sami was sure it must belong to Shareen. Sami spread the glove out on the palm of her hand. It looked strange to her. It looked strange because it looked like a normal glove for a normal human being, with four fingers and a thumb. Then she noticed that the pinky and ring fingers were not laying flat like the rest of the glove. Sami poked them and found that they had been stuffed with something so that they would look like fingers were in them. Sami lifted one edge of the glove and looked inside. She could clearly see that a kind of pocket had been sewn inside to hold Shareen’s extra thumb where no one would see it. Sami tried to imagine Shareen wearing these gloves when she went outside her house, trying to hide her unusual hands, hoping that everyone would think she was just like them. Sami could feel how scared Shareen must have felt.

  “Did you already check out this room?” Alejandro asked Sami.

  “Yeah, everything” she said. “All except that one.” She pointed at the third computer. “They probably took the hard drive out of that one, too.”

  “Probably?” Alejandro repeated. He frowned at her and shook his head. He went over to check. “Listen,” said Alejandro, as he looked at the back of the computer, “if this communicator does exist, I bet it was kept in here—yep, this drive’s gone, too—and I also bet the cops already got it.”

  Sami was feeling sad about the glove, and beaten. She just nodded. Alejandro was probably right.

  “The cops must have been fooling around with this equipment,” he went on, talking more to himself than to Sami. He was still leaning over the computer and fiddling around with something behind the computer’s monitor. He gave a tug and popped a cord out of the back of the monitor. He held it up for Sami to see. “Look, some doofus went and plugged the scanner into the monitor instead of the computer.” He squinted at the plug on the end of the cord. “What the heck. Is that a USB?”

  Sami was about to say something when they heard the heavy footsteps of the policemen on the front porch. Her eyes got very big. Alejandro dropped the cord and zipped past her, grabbing her by the arm, and they slipped out of the room.

  They were halfway across the living room and headed for the window when they heard the deadbolt lock in the front door click. Sami and Alejandro dove behind the couch, squeezed in among the drums, and held their breaths. They heard the front door open and the police come in. The front door closed with a thud.

  “Check that office,” ordered the first policeman. “I’ll check the living room.”

  Sami heard the second policeman grunt as he slid open the office doors all the way. Then she heard the footsteps of the first policeman as he walked to the entrance of the living room, and stop. Sami turned her head to look at the window they had come in. It was closed, and now she understood how clever Alejandro had been.

  “I don’t see anything in there,” said the second policeman coming out of the office.

  “Me either,” said the first. “You check upstairs. I’ll check the kitchen.”

  Sami heard the second policeman trudging up the stairs. Then she heard the first policeman walking through the living room. She gulped. Her mouth was suddenly as dry as paper. To get to the kitchen, she realized, the policeman would have to walk right by where they were hiding behind the couch.

  Chapter 16

  “Alejandro, he’s going to kill you!”