Trespassers: a science-fiction novel

by Todd Wynn

  Sara smiled back at him, so captivated by his manner that she forgot to pay attention to what he was saying. When Jeremy caught that smile, he forgot what he was saying as well.

  “When you asked me out, I actually thought for a second that you might be the one who was supposed to contact me . . . the one who was mentioned in the note.”

  Jeremy smiled at this. He wasn’t sure whether she was actually asking him.

  “I was mad at you for being so late,” she admitted.

  He still wasn’t sure.

  “I’m not, you know,” he said.

  “I know.” She smiled. “I’m still mad at you for being so late, though.”

  There was a sudden silence that was sweeter than any words. One side of Jeremy’s mind was screaming Kiss her! The other side was busy playing images of all the catastrophes that might take place if he tried. In one image, she slapped him. In another, she laughed right in his face. Then he felt the edge of the box digging into his side, and the dull pinch reminded him why they were there.

  “I guess we should try these out,” he said, turning a fire hose on the whole romantic moment.

  “Yeah.” Sara quickly nodded. She had also been playing catastrophic images of what might happen. And, unbeknownst to Jeremy, this was one of them.

  Her smile suddenly turned from captivated to obligatory. Jeremy set the box on a nearby stump and opened its lid.

  “Okay, so what do you think these others do?” he said, in an awkward attempt to restart the conversation. He pulled a quoret from the box and looked it over. “How does it work?”

  “I just turned it on and pointed it,” she shrugged.

  “How do you turn it on?”

  “Put your fingers in the grooves on the side,” she said, “and twist your wrist until the bottom lights up.”

  “How did you figure that out?”

  “By accident.”

  “So, there’s no instruction manual, huh?” he smirked.

  Sara smiled.

  “Okay, here we go.” Jeremy held the quoret in his fingers and twisted his wrist. The cube illuminated, and he aimed it at a nearby rock. The rock did exactly nothing.

  “Does it feel like it’s doing anything?” she asked.

  “Maybe.”

  He tried to use his mind to will the rock to move. He squinted and focused. He pictured it lifting off the ground. The whole endeavor was right on the verge of ridiculousness. But what kept it from crossing the line over to absurdity was what he had witnessed back in the house, no more than twenty minutes ago. When you watch a wall dissolve, you tend to give a little more slack to the absurdity rope. Plus, Jeremy really wanted these things to do something cool.

  “Well, that’s not working,” Sara concluded, as she watched the stubborn rock.

  Jeremy stopped aiming.

  “So what are you thinking?” Sara asked.

  “I have to stop picturing you in your underwear if I want this erection to go down,” he said. These words shocked his system. He hadn’t authorized his mouth to say such a thing. “I mean—I don’t know why I said that.”

  She watched him squirm.

  “I don’t know where that came from.”

  “You’re picturing me in my underwear?”

  “Yes.” Jeremy had meant to say no. He was trying with all his might to say no. “You were talking about your underwear drawer, and I couldn’t help picturing you in your underwear . . . then when you bent down to duck under a branch, I saw the top of your underwear . . . I really wish I could stop talking now.”

  She pointed to his hand. “It’s still on. That must be it. That thing must be like a truth serum, making you answer.”

  He rotated his wrist to switch off the cube. The glow of light died out.

  “You think that’s it?” he asked.

  “It must be. Turn it back on.”

  He hesitated.

  “Come on, don’t be like that,” she said.

  He didn’t budge.

  “I’ll just ask you math problems,” she explained. “And you try to give wrong answers. If it’s really a truth device, you won’t be able to answer incorrectly.”

  Jeremy slowly nodded. This seemed innocent enough. He twisted the quoret, and it began to glow.

  “What’s three plus three?” she asked.

  “Six,” he said, without thinking.

  “Right, but now try to give a wrong answer.”

  Jeremy focused. Five, five, five, he repeated in his head. “Six,” he heard himself say aloud. He was flabbergasted. His mouth was deliberately disobeying him.

  “Are you really doing it?” Sara asked, on the verge of full-blown excitement.

  “Hold on, try it again,” Jeremy said.

  She held up four fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  He focused even harder. He was going to will a wrong answer.

  “Come on, lie to me,” she prodded.

  THHHHRRRREEEEEEE!!!!! he thought to himself. He thought it so hard that his lungs began to hurt. And when his mouth opened, “Four!” What a thrilling experience. It was exhilarating to be unable to control your own voice. “This is unbelievable. Give me another one—something more complex.”

  “Okay . . . Do you want to kiss me?” she asked.

  Jeremy paused, suddenly unafraid. He switched the device off. He could be brave now.

  “Yes,” he said in a way he had never said anything before. Sara’s grin grew, and they both knew it was going to happen.

  For Sara, it was going to be the first kiss she could remember. She guessed that she may have kissed a boy before, but she certainly had no memory of it.

  As he leaned in, the world faded around the edges of her hair. He inhaled her. The air belonged to her. It held her warmth and her smell. And now it belonged to him as well. He closed his eyes as she made the final move to close the gap.

  She pushed her lips against his and he pushed right back.

  When Jeremy came up for air, what he saw was disappointment. She hadn’t had time to mask it. He wondered where he had gone wrong. Sara’s eyes quickly told him that he hadn’t . . . but they were lying.

  As Sara watched him pull back, her mind raced to explain what had just happened. Maybe he was just a boy, she thought. Maybe I was expecting a man. Maybe I was foolish to expect some magical moment. Maybe kissing isn’t anything more than touching lips with someone you like.

  She hoped they would give it another try. But he turned away.

  “I guess we should try the next one,” he said, looking at the wooden cube, looking at the sky, looking at the woods, looking anywhere but in her eyes.

  He pushed the quoret back down into its compartment and pulled out another. He pointed it at the same rock—again, nothing. Sara watched him shift it around the field. It seemed to be doing nothing. Neither one of them thought twice about it when he shifted it in her direction. But when the end of the device crossed her path, she dropped like a marionette with its strings suddenly cut. After a momentary pause of panic, the quoret hit the ground and Jeremy dashed to her side, sliding a hand beneath her head.

  19

  Spend the Night

  Jeremy set a pot of water on the stove and turned on the burner. Fresh tea would be something good for her to have when she awoke. He was fairly confident she would wake, now. He hadn’t been so sure forty-five minutes ago. Several times he had been on the verge of dialing 9-1-1. But he didn’t want to make matters worse by getting the authorities involved—not if he didn’t have to. She had trusted him with her secret, and he wanted to keep it.

  He walked to his bedroom to see her lying on his bed, on top of the covers, fully clothed, right where he had placed her. His arms were still numb from having carried her all the way back from the woods—he hadn’t felt a thing at the time, except a sense of urgency.

  He moved in closer to get a better look. Her breathing was normal, and there was almost a smile on her face. She looked peaceful, and that peaceful look was what h
ad kept him from dialing. You don’t call an ambulance every time somebody passes out. At least that’s what he kept telling himself.

  He placed a hand on her shoulder and shook her. She moaned, just as she had every other time he had tried to wake her. It was the moan of a sleepy person, not the moan of someone who needed an ambulance. He shook her harder, and she moaned longer, but wouldn’t open her eyes.

  “Sara, do you want to wake up? . . . Sara, wake up,” he coaxed her. Her smile seemed to widen, and she took a deep breath. “Sara, I’m making you some tea. Do you want some tea?” Still, her eyes didn’t open.

  The teapot began to whistle, and Jeremy walked back to the kitchen to tend to it. His mother always kept a drawer full of assorted teas. She used them to accent any occasion. Something good coming on television? We’ll have some tea to go with it. Bad day at school? A cup of tea will make you feel better. Trouble getting to sleep? How about some tea? And the flavor was always crucial. Jeremy didn’t know which flavor would be right for a girl waking from a temporary coma caused by a top-secret ABC block—that was a new one in his book—but Almond Ginger Spice felt right. He set two mugs on the counter and fitted each with its own teabag—Mint for himself, unless she wanted to trade. As he poured the hot water over the teabags, he heard the greatest sound in the world coming from his bedroom.

  “Hello? . . . Jeremy?”

  He hurried back to the doorway to see Sara sitting up in bed. A relieved smile stretched across his face.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Yeah . . . what happened?”

  “I think that last wooden thing knocked you out. I carried you back and put you on the bed. You seemed peaceful, so I didn’t . . . I didn’t call anybody. I checked your pulse, and it felt okay. And I made sure you were breathing.”

  She looked around to get her bearings. She saw a laundry hamper overflowing, a dresser cluttered with magazines, and trophies climbing the wall.

  “How long was I out?”

  He checked the clock next to the bed. “About three hours . . . maybe.”

  “This is your bedroom?”

  “Yeah.”

  She looked to her bare feet.

  “Yeah, I took your shoes off,” Jeremy explained. “They’re at the end of the bed. I hate falling asleep in shoes.”

  She took another look around—an Indianapolis Colts poster clung to the wall. “Are you a football fan?”

  “Isn’t everyone?” he said.

  “I guess so.” She sat up and slid her feet down to the carpet.

  “Are you okay to walk?” He moved in to spot her.

  She stretched her limbs and curled her back, like a cat waking from a long nap. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said through a yawn.

  He led her into the kitchen, where the tea was waiting. She slid into a chair at the kitchen table and held the tea to her nose, slowly breathing it in.

  “Is that cinnamon?” she guessed.

  “Almond Ginger Spice,” he said, as he stood at the counter, dipping his own teabag.

  “Did it go away?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Your erection.” She grinned behind her teacup.

  Jeremy groaned with embarrassment.

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “You know that was funny.”

  Had she crossed a line? It had been an enormous invasion of privacy, having his thoughts broadcast against his will. Maybe it was unfair for her to poke fun at him. She was just beginning to work up an apology, when—

  “Do you think someone is worried about you?” Jeremy asked.

  “You mean the Nathans?”

  “No, I mean someone from before eight months ago.”

  Sara lowered her teacup and gave it some thought. “Yeah . . . it seems like there would be. Actually, there has to be, doesn’t there?”

  “But isn’t it strange that there aren’t any fliers or news reports?” he said. “I mean there are usually big searches for missing kids. And you see the parents on television with hundreds of volunteers looking for them.”

  Sara began to wonder whether he was saying this to make her feel bad—to get back at her for the joke she had made. If he was, she figured it might be justified. “What’s your point?”

  Jeremy slid into the seat across from her. “It’s like your family and friends don’t know you’re missing. Like they’ve been fed some cover-up story.”

  He wasn’t trying to make her feel bad, after all. He was actually on to something.

  “That’s interesting,” she said.

  “Yeah, they could have said you’re away on some exotic trip or that you’re going to college in another country. You said that was your handwriting. Maybe you even wrote letters to your family and friends. Maybe you wrote a stockpile of letters and someone sends one off every so often.”

  Sara shook her head. “It’s too much to think about. Let’s just . . . drink our tea.”

  “Okay.” He had forgotten to put himself in her shoes. All this talk about family was bound to make her feel bad. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  After a few sips of her tea, Sara caught a glimpse of the darkness just beyond the kitchen window. It hadn’t occurred to her that night had fallen.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  Jeremy turned and read the clock on the wall, “Ten seventeen.”

  “I didn’t know it was that late,” she said, suddenly preoccupied.

  “What? Do you need to get back?” He didn’t like the sound of his own question. He didn’t like the possible answer. Heck, he was thinking it. He hoped she was thinking it. He might as well say it . . . “Because, you can stay here, if you’d like. I can sleep on the couch or in my parents’ room.”

  There was a pause. She didn’t say no. That was a good sign. She just sat there, thinking.

  “I should call the Nathans and let them know,” she finally said.

  Let them know what? Jeremy wondered. Is she staying? She pulled her phone from her pocket and made the call. “Hey, I’m staying with a friend, tonight . . . I just didn’t want you to worry about me.”

  At that moment, Jeremy realized she didn’t answer to the Nathans. They weren’t her parents or legal guardians or even an aunt and uncle. They were her landlords, and she didn’t have to ask their permission to stay with a friend.

  Sara hung up and looked to Jeremy. “I guess we’re all set,” she said.

  “I want to show you something,” he said, standing and walking to the hallway, with his tea in his hand. “It’s outside, so you can either get your shoes or . . .” He turned to expose his back. “ . . . piggyback ride.”

  There wasn’t a single light to be seen. The dim sliver of moon hanging on the edge of the night sky showed a few worn deck chairs and a tipped-over plastic table on a dilapidated balcony built on the roof. Most of the nails had worked their way up from the wood, and the railings were twisted from age, but the structure was still hanging on.

  Jeremy’s head rose from the staircase, one careful step at a time. He held two teacups in his hands and one memory-challenged girl on his back. Her legs were locked around his hips, and her arms were wrapped around his collar. The side of her face pressed against his, and despite the ache in his thighs, he wished for a thousand more steps.

  “We don’t need any truth device, now,” she laughed. He felt her leg against his crotch, and knew what she meant.

  He delivered her to one of the lounge chairs and she dismounted. He gathered one of the other loungers and slid it next to hers. She sat with her legs crossed and watched him take a seat.

  “What now?” she asked.

  He pointed to the sky. She looked up and saw more stars than she could ever remember seeing. The absence of city lights created a vast canvas of stars. After three sips of her tea, she saw it: a shooting star sparked across the sky, as clear as a firework.

  “Whoa, did you see that?” she exclaimed. Jeremy had been staring at her the whole time.

  “They sta
rt about eight o’clock, and they last most of the night.”

  “You mean there are going to be more?” She looked back to the sky.

  “A lot more.”

  “And this is every night?” she asked.

  “Well, this is the right time of year for it.”

  “How many have you seen?”

  “Thousands,” he said.

  She lay back on the lounger and stared up at the heavens, awaiting the next one.

  “How many girls have you brought up here?” She wanted him to say zero. She wanted to be special. She wanted this to be as genuine and organic as it felt.

  “Thousands,” he said again, as he rolled onto his back to view the stars. This made her smile. She knew it was the answer she was looking for. She knew it meant zero.

  20

  Bedtime

  The Ford Edge was back in its spot next to the cornfield. Upstairs, Lyntic peeled the thick, green, quilted cover from the head of the bed. It was very familiar . . . not the details, but the general look and feel. Beds were always a reminder of how similar humans were, regardless of which corner of the universe they called home.

  Lyntic perched comfortably on the edge of the bed, one foot still dragging on the floor. The sheets beneath her were a rose pattern, and their stems perfectly matched the green pillowcases. The upstairs bedrooms were each outfitted in a different color, and this was unmistakably the green room.

  For one indulgent moment, Lyntic allowed herself to consider how far she was from home. She was used to being far from home, but Earth was something very different. For most of her life, Earth had been a source of happy memories. Now, it was making her homesick.

  Lyntic had convinced herself that they could pop down on Earth, do their job, and be off again. She convinced herself that she wouldn’t be affected by this cute little planet . . . and all the memories it held for her. At the moment, however, she wasn’t feeling very convinced.

  In the room across the hall, Jin could hear the night just outside his window. And it was loud. It sounded like subterranean engines powering up in preparation for a launch. What else would explain the unsteady engine pulses? Maybe it was a series of subterranean missiles. He leaned closer to the window and peered out, not really wanting to see anything.