The Last Place on Earth

by Carol Snow

  “You weren’t in school,” I said.

  “I’m sick.” It came out like Ibe zick.

  “Is Gwendolyn sick, too?”

  She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. Did you bring my math homework?”

  “Um, no.”

  She looked at me funny. “Then why are you here?”

  “Um … I mostly just came to see if you knew where Gwendolyn was.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Okay.”

  We gawked at each other in an agonizing silence.

  “The math homework is in the book,” I said. “I can’t remember the page, but if you give me your cell phone number, I’ll text you when I get home.”

  “I’ll get it from someone else,” she said.

  “Okay.” I forced a smile. “Hot day today.”

  “It’s kind of weird,” she said. “You coming here.”

  At a loss, I said, “It’s not weird. My brother drove me. Um. We have potato chips if you want some? Chicken-and-waffle-flavored. Which sounds kind of gross, but—”

  “I’m going back to bed.” She shut the door in my face.

  There are reasons why I don’t have a wide social circle, only some of them having to do with my impeccable taste.

  “No aliens?” Peter said when I got back in the car.

  “No.” I strapped in my seat belt.

  He handed me the potato chip bag and started the engine. “I’m disappointed.”

  I stuck my hand in the bag and met air. “They’re almost gone!”

  “I’m a growing boy.” Peter gave his tummy an affectionate pat.

  “We could go back to Gwendolyn’s. Check for aliens.” I shoved the chips in my mouth, trailing greasy crumbs down my shirt. They tasted odd but not in a bad way.

  “Sure.” Peter started the car and pulled away from the curb. “Not like I have anything better to do.”

  We followed a gardener’s truck through Gwendolyn’s community gate and drove through several streets of almost-identical stucco houses. I thought, If Gwendolyn’s home, then maybe Henry is back, too.

  But her grass needed cutting, and several home service flyers had been left outside the front door. I rang the bell and waited, waited, waited. I didn’t think about aliens. I just thought about Henry.

  By the time I climbed back in the car, Peter had polished off the chips. “Henry’s house next?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  * * *

  The newspapers were gone from the driveway. Was it possible Henry’s family had come home? I opened my car door before Peter had come to a complete stop. I raced up the front steps, rang the bell, and …

  Nothing.

  I swallowed hard, so sick of this nothingness I felt like crying. I rang the bell again and pounded on the door until I felt tears mix with the sweat on my face. I was going to need some serious rehydration later.

  You cried? I heard Henry say in my head, his voice shocked and amused. Because surely that was how he would respond once he came home and heard about how I’d grilled Hannah, stalked Bethany, and stoked Peter’s belief in aliens.

  I wiped my face, turned back to the car, and shook my head to let Peter know that there’d been no answer. I trudged across the overgrown grass and over to the driveway. At the very end, a white plastic gate that was supposed to look like wood opened up to an enclosure where the Hawkings kept their city-issued garbage cans out of sight. (At our house, the garbage cans stood on the side of the driveway, in full view of the neighbors and occasional hungry raccoons.)

  I lifted the lid on the green recycling can. Sure enough, the discarded Orange County Registers, presumably disposed of by a vigilant neighbor, sat on top of a jumble of soda cans, plastic food containers, and magazines. I checked the black trash can. The smell of old garbage made me shudder, but nothing inside seemed especially strange, not that I took time to investigate.

  Back in the car, Peter pretended not to notice the anguish, panic, and fear on my face. He’s good that way. Or maybe he just had his mind on more important things.

  “Can I see the toilet paper?” he asked. I’d told him about the Hawkings’ supply cabinets somewhere between Bethany’s and Gwendolyn’s houses.

  We left the car at the pond, where it wouldn’t look suspicious, and strolled back along the quiet roads. At the Hawkings’ driveway, we scanned the street to make sure no one was watching and hurried to the garage. I punched in the code, and we slipped inside.

  “This is an incredibly clean garage,” Peter said.

  “Everything in their house is clean. And there’s no clutter at all. It’s creepy.”

  Peter’s first instinct was to take some of the toilet paper home with us (“I’ll replace it”), but I talked him out of it. We admired the cleaning supplies, agreeing that the volume and variety rivaled Target’s.

  And then we went into the house.

  The surfaces had acquired a thin layer of dust since my last visit. Not surprising, given that we were in the middle of an especially bad Santa Ana season. And yet—

  “The cleaning lady didn’t come.”

  “They weren’t here to let her in,” Peter pointed out.

  “Yeah, but she normally comes on Saturdays. That way, they can watch to make sure she doesn’t steal anything. But Henry’s mom can’t stand a dirty house, so when they are going away, they have someone at the security company let her in, then they turn on the nanny cam.”

  Immediately, our heads popped up. The nanny cam was mounted in a fake light above the pantry door, but there was no telltale red light blinking, thank goodness. The video camera was off. I’d forgotten all about it on my previous visit, but if the Hawkings ever saw me on the feed, breaking into their house … I shuddered.

  “You think the housekeeper would know anything?” Peter asked.

  “Dunno. And I wouldn’t know how to get in touch with her, anyway.” I ran my hand along the dusty countertop. “Maybe they’re just on vacation somewhere.”

  “That would be disappointing,” Peter said.

  “Why?”

  “No aliens.”

  “There could still be aliens. The aliens could be holding them hostage in a poolside cabana. Or taking them to the mother ship to do experiments—though ten minutes with Henry’s mom, and they’d send them all back.”

  Peter considered. “I don’t think we need to worry about aliens.”

  “No.”

  “But zombies are a real possibility.”

  “Too bad the office is locked,” I told Peter. “There could be a planner or something that could tell us where they are.”

  Peter rattled the knob. “I saw some tools in the garage.…”

  For someone who had never displayed any practical skills, Peter was remarkably handy with Mr. Hawking’s power screwdriver. Within minutes, he had removed the doorknob.

  “Voilà.” He pushed the door open.

  I expected to fall in hate with yet another boring, beige room, but the office was worse: brown plaid couch, green floral chair, a chipped white laminate desk, a fake wood file cabinet with the facing peeling off. The room was like an ugly furniture graveyard. No wonder they kept it locked.

  If the room held any secrets beyond its ugliness, it wasn’t giving them up: no calendar on the wall, no planner on the desk. I started to open the desk drawer and then stopped myself. This was invading the Hawkings’ privacy too much.

  Peter had no such qualms. Before I realized what he was doing, he was hauling manila folders out of the filing cabinet and rifling through their contents. “They keep their old electricity bills. Who does that?”

  “This doesn’t feel right,” I said.

  Peter frowned at the paper and shook his head. “You want to know what’s not right? The Hawkings use more energy than ninety-eight percent of their neighbors.”

  “The security system uses a lot of juice.” I opened the desk drawer. There were pens, paper clips, staples, Post-it notes, and a whole bunch of packs of chewing gum, but no plan
ner. I shut the drawer.

  Peter handed me a folder labeled, simply, HENRY. I opened up to a fifth-grade progress report and began to read:

  Henry is an unusually bright and creative child. He exhibits abstract thinking abilities and advanced problem-solving skills rarely seen in a child this age. His curiosity and gentle sense of humor make him a pleasure to teach.

  Henry does, however, continue to struggle socially. He prefers to eat his lunch in the classroom and resists group activities. His frequent absences may be contributing to his sense of separation from peers.

  “Did you find something?”

  “Huh?” I looked up to see Peter staring at me.

  “No.” I closed the folder and walked over to the file cabinet. “It’s just school stuff. Do you remember where you found it?”

  “It was under H for Henry,” Peter said.

  “What folder are you looking at?”

  “‘Bills Paid.’ Filed under B. Though you could argue that it should be ‘Paid Bills’ and filed under P. Whoa! Check it out!”

  “What?”

  “They’ve got premium cable and Netflix!”

  I slipped the Henry file back into the cabinet, between GARAGE DOOR OPENERS and HOUSE REPAIRS. I was about to tell Peter to put his file back, too, when a label farther back caught my eye. SHOOTING STAR SOCIETY. Unlike the other folders, this one was bright yellow, and its label was handwritten in blue ink.

  Inside the yellow folder was a single slip of paper. A small graphic of a shooting star, similar to the sun-catcher in the front window, was centered at the top. Below, it read:

  Shooting Star Society

  National Headquarters

  1137 Hemlock Road

  Big Bear Lake, California 92315

  USA

  Facilities for members’ use only. Do not share address or information!!

  “Look at this.” I handed the paper to Peter.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. But maybe that’s where they are.”

  “In Big Bear? But what’s the Shooting Star Society?”

  “Beats me.” I copied down the address and put the file back in the cabinet, checking the other labels to see if anything else seemed out of place.

  “Found their cleaning bill,” Peter said. He handed it to me.

  The Hawkings used Tidy Time Cleaning Service. The bill displayed the company’s address, phone number, and website.

  “You gonna call them?” Peter asked.

  “And say what? That I broke into one of their customers’ houses and—”

  “Oh, please.” He took the bill, checked it, pulled out his cell phone, and punched in the numbers.

  “Peter, you can’t just—”

  He held up a finger to shut me up.

  “Helloooooo…” He looked up, realizing too late that he had no idea what to say. “I’m, um, a customer? You clean my house? Well, maybe not you yourself, but…” He cleared his throat.

  I gave Peter a thumbs-up: Smooth going, dude.

  “I was wondering … the thing is … I had a question about…” He blinked frantically, and just like that, everything fell into place. He should blink more often.

  He started over, speaking with confidence this time. “My wife went away for a few days. Weeks. I thought our house was scheduled for a cleaning on Saturday, but no one showed up.”

  Peter gave the Hawkings’ name and address. “They’re checking,” he mouthed to me.

  Finally the person on the other end came back on.

  “Oh.” Peter’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?” His mouth dropped. “No, that’s … maybe she’s planning to stay away longer than I thought.” He paused. “Yes. I know these things happen all the time. I should have seen it coming.” Another pause. “Uh, not for now. If things change, I’ll call you.”

  He turned off the phone and gazed off, puzzled.

  “What?”

  “I don’t think they’ve been abducted by aliens.”

  “What did they say?”

  “That Mrs. Hawking left a message on their machine. She said that her family was leaving town, perhaps for good, so she wanted to cancel her service.”

  “Peter…”

  “Guy said women leave their husbands all the time. I think he felt sorry for me.”

  “What do you think happened?” My voice was small.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. But it’s not good.”

  Ten

  RANDY SHOWED UP at nine thirty Saturday morning. He drove a silver pickup and wore a Hawaiian shirt. Of course he did.

  When it came to Man-Frans, my mother didn’t have a type. She just reacted to whatever type came before, assuming that different was always better. Like, there was this one guy who wouldn’t stop talking, followed by another who was so quiet that I was never entirely sure he spoke English.

  The Man-Fran who came before Randy was about as far from a regular, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing Joe as you can get: a poet and performance artist. I’d be cool with that, but this guy was a bad poet and performance artist. About a month into the relationship, my mother bribed me with promises of éclairs and lattes to accompany her to a performance in an arty little café downtown, where her Man-Fran read a poem called “Crows” while gluing black feathers to his black unitard.

  Not even kidding.

  And then one day Crow Boy just … flew away.

  All things considered, Randy wasn’t that bad. But no way was I going to get attached.

  “No wild parties while I’m gone!” my mother chirped as Randy carried her suitcase out to his truck. My mother is not normally a chirpy sort, but she doesn’t know how to talk to us when her Man-Frans are around. Which is too bad. For all her faults, she’s pretty fun to talk to when she’s alone.

  “Who would I invite to a party?” Peter said. “My friends are all away at college.”

  Peter was out of bed at nine thirty in the morning. If Mom had been paying attention, she would have known something was up.

  I said, “I only have one friend, and he’s missing.”

  Mom opened her mouth to say … something. That Peter should enroll in community college? That I could make more friends? That Henry was not missing, he had simply gone away without telling me?

  But any of those discussions would have taken more time than she had to spare, so she closed her mouth. And she smiled a little smile, though her eyes looked kind of nervous.

  She crossed the kitchen and threw her arms around me. She smelled like coffee and baby powder.

  “I’ll stay if you want me to,” she said, her voice low and right next to my ear.

  “No. You should go.”

  She took a step back and checked my face.

  “I want you to,” I said. When she still looked uncertain, I added, “You deserve this.”

  “Randy’s a nice man.” It sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than me.

  “Good.”

  “Do I look all right?” She had on an Indian print sundress and one of her hundreds of pairs of dangling mosaic earrings.

  “You look great.”

  “I don’t really know what people wear on cruises.…”

  I shrugged. “From what I’ve heard about the buffets, elastic-waist pants mostly. But that dress is loose, so you should be good.”

  She gave my arm a squeeze, put on a bright smile, and then she was off.

  From the kitchen table where he sat slumped over a bowl of Cocoa Puffs (I said he was awake; I didn’t say he was alert), Peter watched out the window as Randy opened the passenger door. Mom climbed up to the seat. As soon as Randy shut the door, she let the smile drop.

  I thought, She is starting to look old.

  And then I chased the thought from my brain.

  “Seven days,” Peter said.

  “Small cabin,” I added.

  “Poor guy.” Peter slurped his cereal.

  “How long till you’re ready to leave?” I asked, my thoughts already back on H
enry.

  Peter shrugged and slurped some more cereal. “I’m ready now.”

  “You’re not wearing pants.” His boxers were blue, faded, and a little tight.

  “Oh. Yeah. I guess I should put something on.”

  * * *

  An hour later, we were on the road, headed for Big Bear. At the last minute, Peter had decided to take a shower, and since I was scheduled to spend about five hours in a car with him, I wasn’t going to argue.

  The Hawkings probably weren’t at the Shooting Star Society’s headquarters, but it was possible. In any case, it was the only lead we had. We took my mother’s car because it was less likely than Peter’s to break down and also because it had a full tank of gas. Besides, the temperature was supposed to hit a hundred degrees today, and Mom’s car had working air-conditioning.

  Peter started the car, turned on the AC, and stroked the worn velour next to his thigh. “I love how the seats aren’t ripped.”

  I fiddled with the dial. “I love how the radio works.”

  It’s sad when a twelve-year-old Honda Civic is your family’s luxury car.

  Peter put the car in reverse and zipped down the driveway. “Let’s do this.”

  * * *

  In a few months, day-trip skiers would clog the roads that led to Big Bear, but today traffic was light. We made it out of town and onto the 57 freeway without any problem. We got a little swamped in truck traffic heading through Ontario on the I-10, but that was about it.

  As we passed Ontario Mills, Peter said, “Wanna stop at the outlets? I still have that Tilly’s gift card I got for graduation. Could use some new T-shirts.”

  “No.”

  “Wow. You are worried.”

  “I don’t have any money. But mostly I’m worried.”

  Peter knew better than to say I had nothing to worry about. Instead, he just turned up the radio, and we continued our journey across the flat terrain rimmed with soaring mountains, which kept the thick, hot, dirty air down near the valley floor.

  Even with the air-conditioning going full blast, it was warm in the car. Outside, the hazy smog blurred the mountains and lent the sky a yellow tinge. On a day like this, the air actually looked stinky—and if you don’t think that’s possible, you’ve never driven through Ontario during Santa Ana season.