by Travis McBee
Jacob tilted his cup up again to take another quick sip of coffee when the alarm went off. That alarm that always set his nerves on edge. He glanced down at the screen and saw a massive object descending on the outback. It looked identical to the one he had seen over six months ago and it seemed to be in the same spot.
Jacob glanced at the telephone and once again considered calling it in. Then he glanced at his coffee that was in his hands.
“I’m just drunk,” He assured himself but he glanced back at the screen anyways.
The object was still there, that terrible green object, and even after Jacob rubbed his eyes it remained. He glanced at the phone again and then noticed the bottle of whiskey which he used to spice up his coffee sitting next to it. He decided to take action and reached out his hand.
When the day shift arrived at nine o’clock the next morning they found Jacob passed out on the floor clutching an empty bottle of whiskey. They dumped a bucket of water on the inebriated man and woke him up. That day Jacob got his wish, he was no longer the night operator at the airport, he got fired faster than a pyromaniac in a fireworks factory when he regained consciousness. That suited Jacob just fine to tell you the truth. The best part? He didn’t even have to call that stupid object in.
* * *
The journey back home was a considerable bit longer than his first voyage on the Terra shuttle as Will found out the hard way that Pleasant Valley was the last stop. After an hour Mr. Roberts began to make regular appearances and would direct the appropriate student that it was time to leave. The journey was much more enjoyable for Will all the same since he now knew everyone in the room and enjoyed light conversation up until Ryan made his departure leaving Will alone in the room. Five minutes later Mr. Roberts returned to tell Will that it was his turn to disembark.
“Give me your Lingus,” He told Will as he led him down the hallway and towards the door.
Will dug a finger into his ear and jabbed the small device out after only a second’s struggle. He dropped the Lingus into the outstretch palm of Mr. Roberts and continued along the corridor without speaking a word to the man.
Will descended down the ramp of the Earth shuttle and found himself in the same clearing he had left over seven months before. It was deadly dark and the night resonated with the sound of buzzing insects and hooting owls. The air was perfumed with the sweet smells of summer and a wave of humidity and heat settled on Will like a thick blanket.
“Remember not to tell anyone about Bridgeworld,” Mr. Roberts called after him from the top of ramp.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Will replied and watched as the ramp slid up and the flying saucer disappeared into the night sky.
“I’d end up in an asylum if I did,” Will muttered to himself and began to trudge up a path in the outback that would lead him to route nine and town.
When Will stumbled out of the thick leaves of the outback he found the intimidating shape of a sports car sitting on the side of the road with its engine pouring a deep resonance into the night. As he crossed the ditch that separated the highway from the woods the door creaked open and a familiar figure climbed out.
“Thought you’d want a lift,” His father told him as he walked towards Will and embraced him in a powerful hug.
“When did you get that,” Will asked motioning with his head at the idling cheetah of a car when his dad released him
“A couple of months ago,” His dad replied, “It’s the new Dodge Challenger. I saw it when I passed by Millen’s Dodge and Chrysler up on second avenue when I was coming home one day. Couldn’t help myself I bought it on the spot.” He punctuated the story with a deep chuckle.
“How’d mom like that,” Will asked smiling
“Not too pleased,” Steven Haynes replied simply, “Get in it’s late as it is.”
Will climbed into the passenger seat and wrapped the seat belt around his torso automatically. It’s amazing how things like that are automatic even after so long Will thought to himself after realizing he hadn’t used a seat belt for the better part of a year.
The drive to the house that Will had grown up in was brief since the roads were empty and Steven Haynes, a notorious speedster, was behind the wheel of a powerful sports car. When the car turned into the driveway with a subtle crunch of gravel Will’s father turned to him and grinned.
“Welcome home son,” he said in a fatherly voice.
Home. Will thought this doesn’t feel like home anymore. Will suddenly found himself feeling like a visitor coming to the house of a relative he had visited often, but it wasn’t home. At least it didn’t feel like it, something in his gut told him otherwise.
Will followed his father up the path and entered the door that he had once walked through to find a strange man sitting in the living room. The strange man wasn’t there but his mother was.
“Will!” she shouted and ran towards him and smothered him in a hug that a python could admire.
“You’re choking him Barbara,” His father laughed echoing Will’s thoughts
His mother released him and held him by his shoulders while staring into his face. Her face was split into such a wide smile that the top two-thirds of her head seemed to be threatening to fall backwards onto the floor.
“It’s good to have you home Will,” She said after a brief examination, “You look like you’ve grown six inches!” She added
“Mom that would make me six-six,” Will laughed at the classical hyperbole that all adults seem to favor.
“Oh be quiet,” she replied pinching his nose playfully
“I think it’s time for bed,” His father said interrupting the exchange, “We can hear all about Will’s adventures tomorrow morning,”
Will agreed instantly and retreated upstairs to the room that he had slept in for the majority of his life. When he entered it a pale beam of light fell from the moon through the window and across the bed. Will clicked on the lamp beside his bed and climbed into bed after changing into proper sleeping attire, boxer shorts.
The soft fabric of the sheets caressed his naked chest and Will found the sensation incredibly pleasant after having slept with his chest covered by the monogarb that he seldom shed even for bed.
Within minutes he fell asleep even though he forgot to snap off the lamp that still burned beside his head. A few hours into the night his mother snuck in quietly and extinguished the electric bulb with a nimble turn of her thumb and placed a kiss on his forehead before leaving. A few hours after that Will was snatched awake by one of the strangest sounds he had ever heard.
Chapter Fourteen
Happy Returns
The noise bounced around the room, ricocheting off of the walls and drug Will from his sleep as suddenly and violently as a grizzly bear might drag a sleeping camper out of their tent.
“What the…” he mumbled and looked around the room in a blur of confusion and sleepiness.
The sound was a strange little electronic sonnet that beeped and bopped and quite frankly annoyed Will.
“What is that?” he asked the empty room again as he knuckled the sand of sleep from his eyes.
Inside his head a number of other questions were bouncing around. The first thing that came to mind when he was hurtled from his slumber was where am I? That question only took a moment of memory and a quick glance around to solve, that incessant noise was another thing altogether.
Will rolled himself out of bed and managed to swing his feet under him before he hit the floor. He glared around his room in minor annoyance with anger kindling a fire of frustration in his head. At last he glanced at the small wooden desk that sat serenely by the twin windows that made up his room. On top of it sat a small plastic device that was lighting up and dancing around like a party trapped in a box. After a second of drowsy confusion Will recognized his cell phone and walked over to the desk, grabbed it, and flicked it open.
“ ‘ello?” He mumbled wearily into his unwanted alarm
“Will? Will is that you?”
An excited and skeptical voice launched out of the ear piece.
“ Course it’s me. Who is this?” Will yawned and glanced towards his alarm clock by his bed, it read 9:32.
“It’s Mike, who do you think it is!?” Mike’s voice was laced with excitement.
Will yawned again as he thought. Who is Mike. Then with a blaze of memory the face of his oldest friend swam up to him. Oh man Mike! How could I forget him?
“Mike! Well what’s going on buddy?” Will said almost fully awake with an onset of nostalgic excitement.
“I heard you were back in town dude! Where have you been?” Mike asked.
“School. How’d you know I was back?”
“Hank called me and said he saw a light on in your room last night and could have sworn he saw you.” He explained.
“Kind of creepy my neighbor spying on me,” Will said half jokingly and stared out the window at the Jones’s house that lay across the short yard, Hanks window was covered by a white lining of curtains.
“No dude what’s creepy is how you just disappeared. Where did you go?” Mike’s voice inquired again.
“Dude, how about we just meet up and talk about all of this later,” Will said stifling a yawn.
“Sure man, want to meet up at the YMCA pool around noon?”
“Yeah sure thing, I’ll see you there,” Will clicked the phone closed and tossed it onto his bed.
“I never get to sleep late,” He complained under his breath as he walked into his bathroom.
* * *
Will walked into the kitchen a little while later with his head still wet from the shower he had taken. He had completely forgotten how amazingly relaxing it was to sit in the shower and let hot water roll down your back and had thoroughly enjoyed it. However when he stepped out of the shower he still felt dirty and his skin felt dried out and sticky. That was most unrelaxing.
“Kind of different from the showers at Bridgeworld huh?” His father asked him from the kitchen table after glancing up from his paper and seeing Will’s wet hair laying plastered to his head.
“Oh yeah” Will agreed, “I feel more relaxed but still distinctly grubby,”
“Oh yes I remember that feeling,” His mom laughed from over a sizzling frying pan, “I didn’t feel clean for months when we first moved here.”
Will pulled out a chair and sat down across from his father and in that instant, with the smell of a home cooked breakfast radiating through the room he became reacquainted with home. It was the strangest feeling of his life, last night he had felt like a visitor and now that he felt at home thoughts of Bridgeworld seemed like a long vacation he had just returned from.
“So why haven’t you emailed us or called?” his father asked him over the top of the news paper.
Will frowned in thought. To be honest with himself he hadn’t ever thought of trying to get in touch with his parents but now that he was thinking about it a very important question came to his mind.
“How?” he asked quietly, “We don’t have computers or cell phones up there. Nothing that will communicate with Earth stuff at least.” He added
His father looked at him quizzically and then smiled a warm and somehow superior smile.
“You’re telling me that the micro’s they have these days can’t even make a phone call or send an email?”
“Well…uh,” Will stammered. He had never even thought about trying to send an email through his micro. He had sent hundreds of messages through it of course and even done a voice chat with Abby late one night, but it had never crossed his mind to send the communiques Earthbound.
“Just try and do it a little next season?” His mother asked bringing a platter of bacon, eggs, and homemade biscuits to the table.
“Of course mom,” he said reaching greedily for the food.
Will devoured the food with relentless ferocity. He hadn’t forgotten that his mom’s cooking was better than Bridgeworld's but he had forgotten just how much better it was.
“What’s the matter?” his father chuckled as Will cleaned his fifth plate, “Don’t like glosh?”
“Hate it,” Will said around a mouth crammed with food.
His parents waited until Will had swallowed his last morsel of food before interrogating him for more details. Most of the questions they asked were boring like asking about old teachers they had had or if the cleaning robots still went haywire from time to time. Will was actually vaguely interested in the cleaning robots since he had never seen one during his first season at Bridgeworld. About five minutes into the interview his father successfully tapped in to a subject that interested both of them.
“Gone to any zegma games?” his dad asked him casually.
“Well I would hope so,” Will laughed, “I’m on the team.”
“You’re on the team?” His father raised his eyebrows, “You’re on the zegma team and you’re just now telling me? Shouldn’t the first thing you say to me be, ‘Hi dad, guess what? I’m on the school zegma team’?”
“Well, um, I didn’t think it was that big of a deal to be honest,” Will said hesitantly.
“Not a big deal?” his father nearly shouted, “Are you kidding? I love zegma! How’d you get on the team? I tried when I was in school but our team was really good back then and I didn’t stand a chance.”
So Will told him about how he and Jon had gone and tried out and he even described the incident with Brandon which earned a round of laughter from his father and a gasp of horror from his mother. They talked and talked about zegma. Will ended up giving a recap of each game and his father had patted him on the back when he told him about his heroics in the Central Mugoy game. They talked the morning away about zegma and when Will finally checked his watch he saw that it was getting close to noon and he needed to head to the pool to meet Mike.
“Have you played Starview yet?” His father was asking him.
“No. That’s the last game of the season,” Will replied absently, “I think it’s a few weeks after I get back.”
“Well be careful when you do,” His mother warned him.
“Yeah I will, but I’ve got to run I told Mike I’d meet him at the pool at noon.” Will told them and hurried out of the room.
His parents exchanged dark glances and from being married for so long knew exactly what each other was thinking without a word having to be spoken.
“He has no clue does he Stephen?” Barbara Haynes said softly
“Not an inkling,” Stephen frowned.
* * *
The Pleasant Valley YMCA pool was a happening place during the incredibly hot summers. It wasn’t big by any stretch of the imagination but it somehow fit most of the youth of Pleasant Valley into it almost every day. Will had been confused at the oversight at allowing girls into the pool when he was little, after all girls were most definitely not young men, but it was an oversight he came to love when he grew older.
When Will arrived Mike had already found a seat under one of the two palm trees that had been planted by the pool. These seats were usually impossible to get since it was the only reprieve offered from the blistering south Alabama sun. Will walked over to where his friend was sitting staring out at the pool and, more than likely, the plethora of girls in it.
“I don’t think any of them would be interested in you,” Will told him when he had walked right up to his oldest friend.
“Will! You’re late!” Mike shouted happily jumping to his feat at the sight of his friend.
“No I’m not you’re early,” Will said exchanging the classic hand grab, twist, bro-hug, back pat with his friend.
“Geeze you look pale,” Mike said after taking a second to examine his friend, “Not get much sun at that school?”
“Nope they have me studying most of the time,” Will replied with surprising honesty
“Phones and email not work either?” Mike asked frowning, “Dude we have all been trying to get in touch with you. It’s like you dropped off the face of the Earth.”
W
ill winced in his mind at how close his friend had come to the truth.
“Cell phones don’t work,” Will replied again with surprising honesty, “And I forgot to check my old email since the school gave me a new one,”
“What type of school is it anyways and where is it?” Mike continued with his interrogation.
Will took a deep breath and stared solemnly at his shoes. Mike had asked a question that couldn’t be answered with a clever twist of the truth or a vague answer. Now he would have to lie to Mike and it was something he wasn’t entirely sure he could do. Will and Mike had been friends since kindergarten almost a decade before and in that time Will had never told an outright lie to his friend and as far as he knew Mike had never done more than fib to him.
“Will? You there?” Mike’s voice broke through the reverie.
“Yeah I’m here, just zoned off for a second,” Will replied.
“Well what type of school is this place you ran off to?” Mike asked again.
Will looked off into the distance at a flock of birds that was dancing playfully in the air. He couldn’t look his friend in the eye to tell the lie, the truth would be communicated non verbally, or at least the lack of the truth.
“It’s a boarding school in England,” Will answered quietly.
“England? Man that’s awesome!” Mike replied apparently oblivious to the blatant lie, “How come you didn’t tell anybody though?” He added a bit more somberly
“I got accepted at the last minute,” Will said mirroring what Mr. Roberts had said seven long months ago, “It surprised me too man, surprised the heck out of me. I didn’t think there was a snowballs chance in Pleasant Valley of me getting in so I didn’t even tell people I applied.”
Will watched as the birds disappeared from view and then began to look around the pool. Inside countless boys and girls of varying ages splashed around in exuberant merriness. A boy no older than seven was shouting for the attention of his big brother from the edge of the diving board. When the older boy looked up the boy sprang from the board and pulled off a maneuver that he obviously thought was very graceful and Will thought was extraordinarily clumsy. The boy jumped into the air and attempted to do a back flip mid jump, the rotation died out less than a quarter of the way around and the boy landed in the water squarely on his back with a sickening smack. The boy disappeared below the surface for a brief moment and then splashed his way back up to the top.