by Cat Jordan
“Well, I—”
“When it was experiencing problems, why didn’t its pilots seek the water, which is, actually, the majority of the surface of this planet and easier to survive?”
“Uh, yeah—”
She mutters, as if to herself. “A wormhole is the more likely of the two options since faster-than-light travel, as it is currently understood, requires a warp bubble that allows the contraction of space ahead of the vehicle and the expansion of it behind. A stable warp bubble is nearly impossible to create, while a stable wormhole is, at least, viable at this time.”
She stops and looks at me, expecting me to . . . chime in? I only know half of the words she just said. They were English, right?
“But it’s not real,” I say. “None of it. There was no crash. There was no ship. There was no government cover-up.”
She falls back into the cushion, her thin frame sinking into the fabric. Her gaze on me does not even acknowledge what I just said. “Not to mention the pilots themselves. Where are they? Why didn’t a second ship rescue them?” Her lip quivers. “Would they have simply been left here to be captured? To be held prisoner?”
“But it’s—”
She turns to me, her gaze intense and withering. “Not real, so you said. But it is real. That field was the site of a crash landing. I can feel it when I’m there. And you can too, even if you insist you can’t.”
“Priya, you just said there were so many unanswered questions,” I try to reason with her. “The landing, the method of travel—”
“I don’t need answers.”
“Well, I do.”
“That is your problem.”
I can feel my temperature rise, and not in a good way at all. “Look, it wasn’t even produced very well. The aliens were just really tall people in metallic sweat suits and they carried plastic weapons.” I force a laugh, but she won’t be swayed.
“They talked to people who were there, Matthew. They—”
“They were idiots!” I shout. “Complete lunatics!”
Her eyes grow wide and she lurches to a standing position, fists on hips even as she nearly topples over. “Do you not understand? Each day I’m here, I am not at my home. You are here! You are home.”
You are here. An image of space pops into my head, an array of planets against a field of stars, and a red arrow aimed squarely at a speck on the Big Blue Marble. Me. Home. This is my home. Why isn’t it Priya’s? Or more important, why doesn’t she think it is?
I take her by the shoulders and force her to look at me. “Priya, you are not an alien. You are a girl, a human. Please, please, tell me who you are and where you’re from so I can help you.”
“Matthew—”
She tries to pull away, but I hold fast. “You’re not home and I want to help you get home, but it’s not going to be in a fucking spaceship! Okay? Listen to me!”
“No! Listen to me! I am what I say I am—what you know I am.”
I keep her gaze, and for the first time, I see her as Emily saw her: white wig askew, dark circles like bruises around her eyes, her breath shallow and fast.
“No, I don’t know what you are.”
Her eyes fly open. “You do!”
“I just want you to be—”
She wrenches free of me and stomps out of the living room, the heels of her boots clicking on the floor, with Ginger as her shadow. At the kitchen door, she fumbles with the lock. As I come up behind her, I see her fingers slip over and over again, like they’re unable to grasp the knob and turn it. She’s so angry with me that she can’t focus. She struggles with the door, grunting as she pushes and pulls the handle, trying to yank it and shove it and slam her hands against it in frustration.
Normal. I just want you to be normal.
I wait until she gives up and leans her shoulder against the wall. Gently, very gently, I wrap my hand around hers and unlock the door with her. I feel her fingers trembling from the effort before they free themselves from my grasp.
As soon as I open the door, she escapes, just like Ginger does, without a glance backward, anxious to be free of the confines of my house.
I watch as she gallops, colt-like, through the willows, the branches trailing down her back like hair, emerging on the other side, tripping up the gentle slope toward the field.
She stands, dead center of the field, alone, arms slack by her sides. Her head falls back and her face lifts. I can imagine her smile from here. Is that where she is happiest? In the magical space field? Where she can somehow feel the energy of a long-ago crash?
I hear Ginger whine at my feet. I’m standing in the doorway, blocking her path.
I step aside and she escapes as Priya did, charging up the hill.
Normal. Why can’t you be a normal girl?
She’s so desperate to be out there, out in that stupid field. Desperate to hitch a ride on a comet or a rocket to the moon.
Fine, let her stay there.
I close the door, lock it.
7:31 P.M.
After two hours of dying and respawning in Halo and trying to forget the argument I had with Priya, I shut off my Xbox and drag my butt downstairs to find my mother in the kitchen. “When did you get home?”
She’s in sweats, changed from her work scrubs, and her hair is wet. “Not long ago. You upstairs?”
“Yeah.”
“Anyone with you?”
“Um, no. . . .”
Why would she ask that? Does she know about Priya? Did she see her in the field? My heart begins to pound and I force myself to take deep breaths.
Okay, Matty, tell her. Do it.
I have to do this. I have to ask Mom about Priya. I have to get her help, even though Priya will probably hate me for it, even if Mom blasts me for keeping her a secret.
“So, Mom, I—”
And then I notice she’s got her laptop on the table and an intense, troubled look on her face. The computer is an old Dell that Dad and I refurbished for her about a million years ago. I think she mostly uses it as a paperweight. “What’s that?”
“The blog,” she tells me. “His blog.” Her voice trembles and her finger shakes as she points at the screen.
“What about it?”
“It’s been updated.” She sits back and turns the screen toward me.
It’s a selfie of my dad in front of a nondescript city building. His shaggy sand-colored hair is blowing back in a wind and the too-close camera distorts his nose and chin, making him look like Ginger when she sniffs the phone.
“Read it,” my mother commands.
It’s brief, just a few lines of that god-awful white text on a black background, but the key words I see are: It’s the start of a new adventure.
I scan the rest of the entry but the words blur. I shove the laptop back at my mom. “Whatever. So he’s telling the world he’s gone. So what? We knew that. Now everyone else knows it too.”
But that’s not enough for my mom. She picks up the computer and follows me to the sink, where I’m running the water for a glass. She thrusts the screen at me again. “Where is he? Can you tell?”
“No.”
“Look, Matty. Please.”
“Fine.” I stare again at his photo. Behind him is a stone building, gray with round columns. There’s a blue-and-white bus in one corner and a tree in the other. “A city, I guess.”
“But where?”
Where in the world is David James Jones?
“I still can’t believe he hasn’t contacted us,” my mother says, nibbling on one nail.
Uhhh . . .
I can’t tell her. I need her to let this go, let him go. I want to remind her that he left with another woman, but that would be cruel. Face facts, Lorna.
“Not even a call?”
When she says “call,” the phone number Dad gave me suddenly pops into my brain.
Stupid brain, why are you remembering that, of all things? I can’t seem to remember enough to pass English lit, but I can remember a group of t
en numbers I don’t want to know?
2. 6. 7.
267.
Two six seven. I do a quick Google search on Mom’s laptop and come up with the answer: Philadelphia. My heart blips a beat. He’s actually just a four-hour drive away.
That’s it? That’s where he went?
I guess I’d imagined Dad heading for L.A., the sun on his face, salt spray in his hair, with Carol by his side in a shiny red convertible. I have no idea why I would picture this, since my dad drives a pickup truck and his fair skin burns the moment he steps outside.
Knowing he’s in the same state as me is both reassuring and disappointing.
“Is it Hollywood?” my mom asks.
Lie or truth? Which will hurt my mother more? If she knows he’s close by, will she flip out and go there herself? I answer my question and hers at the same time. “Yeah, probably.”
Oh god, this is killing me. I don’t want to know more than my mom. I kind of just want to be a dumb kid. That’s what she expects, right? What everyone expects?
My mother stands behind me and begins to massage my shoulders. “It’s okay, Matty. We’ll be okay, you and me.” She kisses me on the top of my head, something she hasn’t done since I was a baby, probably, the last time I was shorter than her. “I’m going to cook dinner for us.”
“You are?”
“Why are you so shocked?”
I turn in my chair to watch her start the motions of cooking a meal. “Is your name Colonel Sanders? Or Marie Callender?”
“It’s Olive Garden, actually. Didn’t you know that?”
“Oh, you’re famous!”
“I am. And cheap.”
“Two things I admire most in a person,” I say.
My mother grins and holds up a frying pan. “Okay, tonight we’ll be serving chicken.”
“We will? And where will we be getting chicken?” My mom is nearly clueless in this kitchen. She has no idea that we don’t have any ingredients besides coffee and mashed potatoes. I start to get up but she waves the pan at me.
“Sit down. I’m doing this tonight.”
“You really are? I need to write this down in my diary.”
She somehow manages to hold the pan and give me the finger.
I give it right back. “Bring it on, Ms. Garden. I’ll take two of everything.”
Mom grins, which brings a smile to my face too. I like seeing her happy. I like being cooked for, although I’m glad we have pizza on speed-dial. We might need to place an order when she realizes we have no actual food with which to make an actual dinner.
“Matty, did you need something from me?”
“Huh?”
“When you came in? You seemed like you wanted to talk about something. I’m sure it wasn’t your dad and his blog.” She rolls her eyes like I do, which makes me laugh.
I hesitate for a fraction of a second. Now is the time to take Em’s advice and get Mom’s professional opinion. Maybe it will be okay.
But then . . .
. . . I hear Mom hum.
God, she’s happy. For once, finally, she’s happy. I shake my head. “It can wait. I’m pretty hungry.”
My mother waves a spatula at me like it’s a wand. “You got it.”
After dinner. I promise I’ll ask her after dinner.
DAY SEVEN
7:01 A.M.
I ate too much pizza.
Yeah, that meal wasn’t my mom’s finest effort. She did the best she could with what she had, but honestly, no. It was crap. The pizza, on the other hand, was amazing. I scarfed six of the eight slices along with a side of garlic knots and brownie bites.
And then I fell asleep on the couch as Mom and I watched a movie on Netflix.
I awake alone, though, and the television is off. Mom must have crawled up to her room, leaving me to sleep down here.
I stumble to the kitchen to start the coffee, start my day, when I remember I locked the door. If Priya needed to use the bathroom or the phone or just to come inside, she wouldn’t have been able to.
Stupid, Matty. Stupid.
The sun is creeping up over the horizon as I head out to the field barefoot. It feels good to touch the earth with my toes, to sink my heels into the dewy grass. The slender blades spring back into place with each step I take.
I blink a few times when I get to the field.
I don’t see Priya.
Turning in a circle, I search the field and the surrounding woods for her. Is she curled up with Ginger somewhere? But I don’t see the dog either.
Telescope.
Tent.
No girl. No dog.
I peel the tent flap back. “Priya? Are you—”
Ginger is lying in the middle of the tent, her tail wrapped around her, her paws crossed with her chin resting atop them. I’m overwhelmed with a feeling of déjà vu.
The garage. Empty. And now this.
My stomach sinks to my feet. “She’s gone,” I tell Ginger, who obviously knows. She drags herself to me and rests her head under my hand, nudging it for a pet, as if rubbing my palm over her silky ears will make everything better.
It does, but not for very long.
I can’t believe it. One night—one goddamn night—that I’m not out here with her, and she leaves. I shake my head when I feel tears cloud my eyes.
I knew she had to go at some point. I knew she couldn’t live in this field forever.
“But . . .”
The telescope is still aimed at the sky, at that distant spot in the Universe that called to Priya. During the day, I won’t be able to see anything, but I look through it anyway, careful to avoid pointing it directly at the sun.
She’s just a girl. She’s not an alien.
My heart plummets. I know. I knew. I did. But . . .
I want to believe. I need to believe.
In something. In someone.
I bend down to Ginger and let her lick my face and nuzzle her cold nose under my chin. “Where did she go, girl? Did she tell you?”
My dog’s brown eyes look worried, or maybe I’m just projecting.
And maybe she’s not really gone. Maybe she’s out for a walk or she slept under the trees. Maybe the sneaky girl is actually in my house somewhere, having discovered a way into the basement or attic, and maybe if I wait, she’ll come back.
But as the minutes pass and she doesn’t walk out of the woods after a quick pee and she doesn’t amble up the hill from the workshop, the realization that she is really and truly gone finally sinks in, settling into my bones like a frigid wind.
Where the hell is she?
Did she walk away? Drive away? Call a taxi or an Uber? Did her boyfriend or family find her? My head swirls with the possibilities.
I pace the field as if it would tell me something, give me a clue. My bare feet stumble over dry branches and rocks and leaves.
She’s gone. She’s really gone.
But where? I start to head down to the house, and in my mind, I’ve hopped on my bike and begun to cruise the streets of my crappy town to see if she’s wandering around. Maybe she went to the DQ to talk to a tree? To the lake for a swim? To the Aokis’ to visit Felicette?
I call to Ginger but she doesn’t budge. I clap my hands.
“Come on, girl!”
Normally I wouldn’t care. Normally I don’t give a shit if the dog wants to stay up here and bake in the sun. But this week has been anything but normal and I do care. I take a few menacing steps closer to Ginger, growling at her, and still she holds her ground.
Next to the telescope.
Which has a white paper tied around a tripod leg.
What on earth?
It’s not paper, though, it’s nylon, and as soon as I bend down to peer closer at it, I recognize what it is instantly because I’ve seen a million of them: a hospital ID bracelet. My heart thumps as I carefully unwrap it from the tripod. It’s definitely a bracelet, but the part where it was tied around the stand is shredded and the words are indistinct.
Johnson, Simone MD
DOB 2/12/00
There’s one line—the most important one, damn it—that isn’t clear. Where it should say the name of the hospital, all I can read is PHILA.
Priya has a last name. And a date of birth. And a doctor.
And a hospital that’s probably in Philadelphia.
I hear Em’s voice in my head: Maybe she’s sick.
Too skinny. Too clumsy. Too . . . scarred.
She’s not crazy. She’s not a mental patient. She’s not . . . an alien.
Em’s voice again: Maybe you should talk to your mom.
I didn’t! Why didn’t I? Oh god.
I clutch the bracelet in my fist and run all the way to the house, jumping over the stream and nearly tripping in the grass. If anyone knows about hospitals, it’s my mother, the nurse.
“Mom! Mom! Are you up?” I charge up the stairs. Bedroom’s empty, bathroom’s empty.
And back down. Not in the kitchen or the laundry room.
“Mom!”
Her purse and keys and cell are missing from their usual spots.
So is her car.
“Are you serious?” My voice echoes in the garage. Ginger sits at my feet, ever patient.
I’m always—always—a step behind. I never seem to think ahead, to anticipate the possibilities of things to come. I never saw Emily’s rejection, or my dad taking off, or Priya’s sickness. That’s what it is, right? God, how dumb can one person be?
Will it always be this way? Will I always be left in the dust of the empty garage, the vacant field? Will I always be blindsided and crushed?
“I can’t let her go,” I tell Ginger. “I can’t. I have to find her.”
I open my hand and unfurl the bracelet: Shah, Priya.
“Let’s start with that.”
7:45 A.M.
When I do a search for “Priya Shah” and “Philadelphia,” I come up with dozens of hits. The first few are news sites with headlines like “Local girl missing,” and subheads such as, “Teen leaves hospital; public urged to contact authorities.”
“Teen” is Priya Shah, a patient who slipped out of her room at a children’s hospital in Philadelphia in the middle of the night shortly after a nurse checked on her. According to the brief articles, her parents have been worried sick since she disappeared. Their only daughter. Their only child.