From a Distant Star

by McQuestion, Karen

  “If you want to be useful,” I said, “you could open up the blinds facing the back of the house. It’s really dark in here.”

  A second later, he called out from the living room, “Emma, you are brilliant!”

  “What? Did you find something?”

  “Yes, I did. Come and see. You will not believe it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I joined him at the big window and let out a low whistle. Outside, there was a satellite dish mounted on a concrete patio slab, but it wasn’t like any satellite dish I’d ever seen. This one was enormous, at least twenty feet across. The space above it was open to the sky, but the yard was surrounded by a wooden fence too high for anyone to peek over. No one could see this thing except from inside the house. And from overhead too, of course. Maybe we’d found the right Christy Carversen after all.

  “Whoa. That’s one big dish. I’d say she gets all the channels.”

  Scout’s nose wrinkled in confusion. “I don’t think this is for the television, Emma,” he said. “I believe it sends out signals to space.”

  I hugged Scout, who just stood there, calm as can be. “This is good news, Scout! This proves we’re in the right place. All we have to do is wait for Christy Carversen to help us send a message and you can go home.” And I can get Lucas back, I thought. “Pretty soon this will all be over and both of you will be where you belong.”

  He frowned. “But what if she will not help us?”

  “She has to!” I bounced around, doing my happy dance. “She will. How can she not? Look at this face!” I patted his cheek. “How could she resist?” Besides, she was on the outs with Erickson Ryder and so were we. What was the saying? The enemy of my enemy is my friend?

  Scout cleared his throat. “But if she does not help us, can I stay?”

  “Stay?” My happy bubble burst as I realized what he was asking. “Stay inside Lucas, you mean?”

  He nodded. “If we can get safely back to the Walker house, could you be happy with me? If I was here forever? I would need your help to get through school and to know what the Walker parents expect from me.”

  “Oh, Scout . . .” I said. “It’s not going to come to that. We’ll get you back to your home planet, and if that doesn’t work, we can always find another body for you to go into. Someone who is dying, who wouldn’t have used it anyway.” Said like that, it sounded really creepy. It was a solution, not a very good one, but at least it was something.

  “I don’t want to go into someone else,” he said sadly. “It would not be the same.”

  “I know, but you can’t stay inside Lucas. I need him back.”

  “So are you saying you don’t care about me? Me, Scout, not Lucas. Because I can feel that you do.” He tapped his chest with the flat of his hand. “I told you the truth that I was inside Lucas, but if I didn’t, you would never have known. You would have thought I was Lucas and you would have loved me then.”

  “But I knew something was different. You weren’t like Lucas. I saw the change. I knew. I could tell.”

  “You would have gotten used to me,” he said. “And I would have learned more of how to be Lucas and would have been better at it. After some time it would have been the same to you.”

  “Oh, Scout,” I said. “It never would have been the same. I do love you, but just as a friend. My heart belongs to Lucas.”

  “You could learn to love me.” Scout put his hands gently on my shoulders and leaned in so close our noses touched. He whispered, “I know everything about you. If you would think carefully about the times you had with Lucas, I would know the memories too.”

  I took a step back, shaking him off. “No. It wouldn’t be the same. Yes, I care about you, Scout, but you could be in his body for a hundred years and I’d never feel the same way about you as I do about Lucas.” I blurted out the words, but when I saw his hurt expression, I almost wished I could take it back. What made it worse was that the pain I saw was Scout’s, but it was written on Lucas’s face. It was true that the line between the two of them was beginning to blur for me, but I couldn’t deny that Lucas was my true love, my one and only. And I knew that Scout understood that, deep down. I gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “I don’t know why we’re even talking about this. You’re going to go home soon and it’s all going to work out fine. Imagine how excited Regina is going to be when she finds out you’re still alive.”

  “Yes,” he said with no emotion in his voice. “Regina will be surprised.”

  In the kitchen, the timer on the stove dinged.

  “Come on,” I said, pulling on his arm. “Let’s eat the pizza. You’ll feel better once you have something in your stomach.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  My biggest concern that night—besides getting shot by Erickson Ryder or caught by federal agents—was worrying about my mom back home. She wasn’t the kind of parent who invented things to stress about, but even the most laid-back mother couldn’t ignore her teenage daughter not calling or coming home by nightfall. I could only think she was imagining the worst. And I had no way to tell her otherwise. There wasn’t a landline in Christy Carversen’s place, which was a good thing because I knew I’d be tempted to call her, which might lead the agents straight to us.

  I rationalized that this was the tradeoff: in exchange for a few frantic days, all of us—Eric, his parents, my mom, and me—would get Lucas back. I hated to put them all through grief, but there wasn’t any other way around it. In the meantime, at least Scout and I were safe enough for now. The only loose end I could think of was Lacey, the ditsy cat sitter. Hopefully, she was already camping with her friends.

  Both Scout and I were exhausted, so after we cleaned up our plates and fed the cat, I suggested getting some sleep. “I know it’s early, but we’re both tired,” I said, like I was speaking to a child. Scout nodded wearily, then followed me into Christy’s bedroom.

  “This side of the bed is mine, okay? There’s plenty of room for you on your side,” I said, positioning the pillows. Maybe tomorrow I’d see if Christy Carversen had any clothes that would fit me while I washed my own, but for tonight, I was sleeping in what I had on.

  I left the light on in the hallway and left the door open a crack. We hadn’t seen much of Boo the cat since we arrived, but I wasn’t going to worry about her. Cats pretty much took care of themselves.

  I thought Scout understood what it meant to stay on his own side, but as I was drifting off to sleep, I felt him nestle up to my backside, spooning against me. “Don’t get any ideas,” I grumbled. I was so tired, it took everything I had to get the words out.

  He didn’t answer, but now his arm was looped over me, pulling me into a warm hug. “Emma?” he whispered.

  “Uh-huh?”

  “What if Christy Carversen won’t help us?” he said. Here we went again.

  “Then I will make her help us,” I said. “I’ve got a gun, remember?” I opened one eye halfway and could see the dark outline of the gun on the nightstand table. I yawned. “Now stop worrying and go to sleep.”

  There was a long pause and then he said, “Emma?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think Regina wants me back.”

  The worry in his voice pulled me out of my drowsiness. “Why would you say that?”

  “On my planet, we do not choose our match. It is chosen for us.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s just . . .” His voice faltered. “Regina hates me.”

  I sat up. “She hates you?” I couldn’t believe my ears. He was the sweetest soul ever. Hating Scout would be like hating Dory from Finding Nemo. “She said that?”

  “No, but I can tell what she feels about me and it’s not the same as what you feel for Lucas.”

  “Well, everyone’s different,” I said, “but if she doesn’t love you, then she doesn’t deserve you.” I turned around to face him. “And who knows, maybe her feelings will change in time and she’ll grow to love you.”

  “Regina
likes doing things the right way and I did not follow orders. I left my ship.” The anguish in his voice pierced through the darkness.

  I reached out and stroked his head. “The orders were stupid. If you’d listened to them, you’d be dead like the others. Instead, you thought for yourself and were the only one who survived. That has to count for something.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Now go to sleep.” I settled back down, my head on the pillow.

  “Okay.” He exhaled heavily. “But can I ask you just one more thing?”

  A person would have to be pretty mean not to listen to just one more thing. “Sure, go ahead.”

  “Why do you say you are less than three?”

  “What?”

  “Why do you say you are less than three?” he repeated.

  “I’ve never said that, Scout.”

  “Yes, you did.” His tone was adamant. “In your emails to Lucas, you would put less than three next to your name.”

  “You read my emails?” I asked, irritated. Even given the circumstances, it seemed a violation of privacy.

  “Yes, and they did not make sense. Why would you tell Lucas about the things you did together? If he was there, he would already know these things, wouldn’t he?” His voice was tentative.

  I sighed. “Yes, he already knew about most of it, but that wasn’t the point. I wrote those emails so there would be a record for all time. So that our children and all the future generations to come would know about our love and what things were like for us when we were young.” Tears filled my eyes. “Just forget about it. It was stupid.”

  “Why was it stupid?”

  “Because there aren’t going to be any future generations.” I spoke quickly, wanting to get this over with. “The cancer treatment made Lucas sterile. He can’t have children.” I hoped this would end the conversation. “Good-night, Scout.”

  There was a long silence and then, as if he just couldn’t help himself, Scout floated another question. “But why would you say you were less than three? It does not make sense. Your age is seventeen, and it is not the number of your house, or your phone number. I have been thinking very hard about it and I do not understand what it means.”

  I sighed. “It means ‘love,’ okay? That’s just the way I signed everything I wrote to Lucas. Don’t think of it as a number. It stands for love.” I closed my eyes. It seemed like a week had passed since I’d left my house that morning. If I didn’t get some sleep soon, I was going to lapse into a coma of my own.

  Still, his voice, uncertain and soft, came drifting toward me. “But how does ‘less than three’ mean love?”

  How to explain this? I thought for a moment and then said, “When you put the symbol for ‘less than’ next to the number ‘three,’ it looks like a heart on its side. And love comes from the heart.” Outside, I could hear crickets chirping. If anyone pulled into the driveway, we’d hear it since the bedroom window faced the front.

  “But you know, love doesn’t really come from the heart,” he said, eager to educate me. “The heart is a pump for your blood, which carries—”

  “Go to sleep!”

  “Okay, good-night, Emma.”

  “Good-night, Scout.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Scout couldn’t sleep. He had an underlying awareness that the solution to the problem of the locked basement door was within his reach, but he couldn’t quite figure out what that would be. When he finally remembered, he sat up suddenly.

  “Emma?” he whispered, leaning over her. But she was sound asleep, one hand curled over her eyes like she was trying to block out the world. She looked so peaceful that he hated to disturb her.

  Emma had been through a lot today, and all of it was because of him. His fault. He could feel her stress and worry, and knew it was a heavy load. He decided to let her sleep. He could take care of this problem himself.

  When one of the universal keys he’d retrieved from the back of the van actually worked, and he saw the equipment set up in the secret room, he felt a shiver of anticipation, something he’d never felt on his own planet where so much was placid and predictable. The setup was primitive, but logical, and once he got it up and running, he knew how it all worked. The communications device was already sending out signals, a repeating pattern that he overrode with one of his own—a simple numeric language that everyone on his planet learned during their early educational years. Archaic, really, a throwback to earlier times. Communication for infants. He’d balked at having to learn it at the time, never imagining how useful it would prove to be when he was fully grown and stranded in another galaxy.

  He tapped in his message over and over again, and paused between, waiting for a response. When one finally arrived, a smile stretched across his face. And when he discovered exactly who was on the other end, his fist involuntarily pumped upward in a burst of glee. The reaction felt perfect, but was so unlike him. Yes, this planet had definitely affected him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The overhead light flicked on, making the bedroom as bright as day. I blinked and sat up in shock, finding myself staring down the barrel of a gun. My gun, the one Mrs. Kokesh gave me. A woman standing over me had it pointed right at my face.

  “What are you doing in my house?” she said through gritted teeth.

  I went from sound asleep into adrenaline overdrive in two-and-a-half seconds. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” I raised my hands. “I can explain.”

  “You can explain to the police,” she said.

  “No, no,” I said, protesting. “Don’t call them.” My mind reeled. “Or did you call them already?”

  She hesitated and I saw from the look on her face that she hadn’t called them. Yet. My hands still up, I said, “You’re Christy Carversen, right?” My eyes were working well enough now that I could see that the gun’s safety catch was still on. “I’m Emma Garson. We came here—” I glanced behind me and that’s when I realized Scout was gone. “I’m here with a friend. We know about the radio signals you’re sending out to space and we need your help. We were just waiting for you to get home.”

  Her face softened; I’d caught her off guard and she was unsure what to do next. The hand holding the gun was shaking and there was a healthy measure of fear in her eyes. “What makes you think I’m sending radio signals to space?”

  “Well, you are, aren’t you?”

  Instead of answering, she lobbed a question back at me. “How did you get into my house?” Her avoidance of my question about the radio signals confirmed it for me: the big monstrosity in the backyard was for sending messages to other planets.

  “Lacey let us in.” I dropped my hands. “Could you put the gun down so we can talk? I promise I’m harmless.”

  “Lacey let you in,” she repeated in disbelief, shaking her head. “Great. Just great.”

  I was willing to bet Lacey’s cat-sitting days were over. “Lacey said you wouldn’t be back for another day.”

  “I came back early to get . . . never mind, I just came back.” Christy lowered the gun but didn’t put it down. Still, I saw it as progress. “How many other people are with you?” Without the gun pointing at me, there was nothing scary about her. Just a skinny woman in her forties with severe features, a ratty T-shirt, and pants that were too short.

  “Just one. My boyfriend,” I said. “Well, he was my boyfriend. Now he’s someone else.” I stopped myself before I could go nervously rambling off topic. I took a deep breath. “Listen, I know how this looks, but could you just let us explain before you do anything?”

  Her eyes darted to one side, like she was considering what to do, so I jumped in full speed before she could decide something I wasn’t going to like. “My friend desperately needs to send a radio signal to another planet and we need your help.”

  Her eyebrows furrowed. “Who sent you here?”

  “We came on our own.” I got up off the bed and faced her, trying not to seem too menacing, which wasn’t hard because she was
at least six inches taller than me. “Once you talk to Scout, you’ll understand why we need your help. It’s a matter of life and death.” I gestured to the door. “He probably just got up to go to the bathroom or something. He wouldn’t have left.” I pushed past her and went for the door.

  “He’s not in the bathroom,” Christy said, her voice trailing behind me. “Don’t try anything. I still have the gun.”

  Yeah, yeah. I knew all about the gun. The one with the safety still on. “Scout? Scout!” Where could he have gone? I felt a clutch of fear, wondering if one of the agents could have captured him. No, I’d been sleeping right next to him. I would have woken up if anyone had tried to take him.

  “Your friend’s not here,” Christy said. “I’ve already searched the house and you’re the only one I found.”

  Could he have gone outside to look at the satellite dish? In the dark? Now I was starting to worry. Where could he be? “Scout?”

  “Your boyfriend’s name is Scout?”

  “Yes.” I kept going. When I walked past the basement door, I noticed a sliver of light underneath. We’d turned off the lights earlier, I was sure of it. “He must be downstairs,” I said, flinging open the door and bounding down the wooden stairs.

  Behind me, I heard Christy say, “You better not be trying something.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” I said over my shoulder. “Not when you have a gun.”

  Downstairs, I was relieved to see the bookcase swung away from the wall. The metal door was now unlocked, and slightly open. I couldn’t see into the room, but I could tell that the light was on. I stopped short in the doorway, stunned to see Scout sitting in a desk chair with his back to the door, headphones on his head. His head was bobbing as if he was listening to music and he was tapping away at a keyboard like he was writing a novel. The cat, Boo, was nestled in his lap. In front of him was the kind of console and semicircle of monitors I knew from the movie famous for the classic line, “Houston, we have a problem.” One of the screens showed a graph, the line rising and falling like a lie detector; the second displayed an audio line, the kind you’d see in a recording studio; and the third was filled with columns of numbers scrolling at a dizzying speed. On the dashboard were dozens of levers and dials. I had trouble reconciling the one side of the basement, the laundry side, with this hidden room. Who would have guessed that Christy Carversen had her own secret space station under her house?