This Town Is a Nightmare
Page 21
Beacon was about to argue with Galen, when he heard footsteps in the corridor. Nixon went ramrod straight, and Beacon shot up and whirled around. Someone was here. They formed a circle around Galen, frantically looking around for something to defend themselves with. But it was too late. The person entered the room.
For a moment, Beacon thought he was seeing things.
“Everleigh?” He squinted at her.
How could his sister be here? But it was her, grease smeared on her cheek and the radio hanging limply from her hand. His dad was there, too, standing obediently in the hall behind her, waiting for a command.
Despite everything, relief washed over Beacon. He ran over and embraced his sister, then his dad, who just stood there with his arms straight at his sides.
“How are you here?” Beacon asked.
“Did you land the ship?”
“Where’s Daisy?”
The group volleyed questions at her. Everleigh swallowed hard before she spoke.
“Galen sent a message that you guys needed help,” she said in a shaky voice. “He said things were going badly and you needed backup. Daisy told me to land the ship on the roof, and I did, but when we got out of the ship, she didn’t follow. She locked us out.” Everleigh’s lip wobbled. “I yelled at the doors, but they wouldn’t open. Then she just took off. I tried to radio her, but she wouldn’t answer.”
“Why would she do that?” Arthur said.
Beacon turned to Galen, but he didn’t look shocked. Whatever Daisy had done, he’d known about it.
“What did you do?” Beacon asked.
“What we had to,” Galen said sadly. “Hacking the program was never going to be enough. It had to be the necklace.”
“What does the necklace have to do with anything?” Beacon started. But even as he said it, the puzzle pieces started to click together. Suddenly it all made sense. Why Galen had said he was officially no longer a coward. Why the Sov had all dropped like flies at the same time. Even the sad look Galen and Daisy had shared when he’d been sure they’d been communicating telepathically took on new meaning. They’d planned this all along.
“The necklace,” Beacon said. The necklace Daisy couldn’t remove. “You destroyed it.”
“What do you mean?” Nixon said.
Galen didn’t deny it.
“Daisy—she sacrificed herself to kill all the Sov,” Beacon said, his throat tight. “To save our planet.”
“Is this true?” Arthur’s grandma asked Galen.
“No, it can’t be.” Everleigh whipped her head from side to side. “Galen, tell Beacon he’s wrong.”
“I’m sorry,” Galen said.
Tears streamed down Everleigh’s cheeks. She furiously paced the room.
“This isn’t okay, Galen!” she shouted. “We didn’t agree to this!”
“It wasn’t up to you,” he said.
“Okay, we need to calm down,” Beacon said. “It isn’t too late. If you’re still alive, that means Daisy is, too, right? There has to be another way.”
“There isn’t,” Galen said.
“We’ll think of something,” Everleigh said. “Nixon’s a Junior Guard, he knows this place, these people. Maybe he can—”
A voice came through on the radio. Everleigh yelped and almost dropped it before she realized what was happening and clutched it desperately to her lips.
“Hello? Daisy, are you there?” she asked.
Static crackled, before Daisy’s voice broke through. “I’m here.”
Everleigh released a huge breath. “Oh, thank God. Listen, whatever you and your idiot friend were planning, you can forget about it. We’re coming up with Plan B.”
“It’s too late.” Daisy’s voice was so soft it was almost inaudible against the hum of machinery in the room, but it had an air of finality that shut Everleigh up. “Is Galen there?” she asked.
Everleigh swallowed. She nodded, then seemed to realize Daisy wouldn’t be able to see her and sniffled hard. “Yes. He’s here.”
“Can I talk to him, please?”
Everleigh brought the radio to Galen.
Galen licked his lips and took a deep breath. “Hey, Dais.”
“Hey, Gales,” Daisy said. “Our plan worked.”
“You did good. I’m proud of you.”
“Are you in pain?” Daisy asked after a moment.
“I’m okay,” he said.
“You’re a bad liar,” Daisy replied. After a beat, she added, “I’m sorry it had to be this way.”
“Don’t be sorry for being a hero,” Galen said.
Quiet descended, as if neither of them knew what to say.
Beacon wondered then: If he’d had a chance to say goodbye to Jasper, what would he have said? How do you say goodbye to someone forever?
Static crackled. Beacon waited for one of them to talk again, but it didn’t happen. That’s when he realized that Galen was staring unblinkingly ahead.
Galen and Daisy were gone.
A surge of emotion welled up inside him. He would be sad later. But right now? Right now he was furious.
He screamed and kicked a chair, sending it smashing across the room. He thought someone would stop him, tell him to calm down and that it would all be okay, or some other patronizing junk he didn’t want to hear. But after a few moments, Everleigh joined in, too. She screamed with her whole body. The sound tore through the room like shards of glass. They screamed together until Beacon felt an artery bulging in his neck and he had no air left in his lungs. It felt so good to get it all out. Everything he felt about this unfair world. About losing people he cared about over and over. Therapy and long talks and self-reflection had their place, but there was something to be said about a good scream.
When he was done, he slumped onto the floor. Everleigh let out one final roar before she slid down the wall next to him and laid her head on his shoulder. Silence fell over the room. He felt more drained than he ever had in his life. Like he was just a husk of a human.
After a while, a hand landed on his shoulder. Beacon sighed heavily and peered up. He was expecting Arthur or even Nixon, but he froze when he saw his dad. His dad smiled wearily at him.
For a solid twenty seconds, Beacon just stared. His dad looked tired and weak and pale, but there was an alertness in his eyes and a softness in his expression that told Beacon everything he needed to know: He was Off-Program.
“Dad!” Beacon shouted.
Beacon and Everleigh jumped up as fast as they could and crushed their dad in a bear hug that made him hiss in pain, then laugh as the kids rushed to disentangle themselves from him.
“Are you okay?” Everleigh asked.
“I’m fine!” he said. “Get back over here.”
“Are you sure? Are you hurt?” Everleigh said.
“Just hug your old man,” he said, smiling.
They tried again, gentler this time. Their dad wrapped his arms around them, and Beacon was pretty sure he’d never been so happy. He felt horrible for feeling anything other than pain after Galen and Daisy’s sacrifice, but it was so good to have his dad back that he let himself have this moment. He closed his eyes and squeezed his dad and let the happiness soak into his bones. Several times Beacon tried to speak, but all that came out were unintelligible croaks.
“How?” Beacon finally said. He wasn’t sure when he’d started crying, but his dad’s shirt was soaked at the shoulder. “How are you normal again?”
“Was it the necklace?” Everleigh asked. “Did the program lose its power when Daisy . . . when Daisy made her sacrifice?” she finished.
Arthur quickly walked over to the computer. He typed something into the keyboard, his eyes scanning the screen. He shook his head in wonderment.
“The program,” Arthur said. “Galen did it. He hacked the antidote software.”<
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“Antidote software?” the twins’ dad asked, frowning. “I think I remember something about that.”
“It will all start coming back,” Everleigh said. Beacon almost asked her how she could be so sure, but then he remembered she’d once been brainwashed by the Sov.
“Let’s get out of here,” Arthur’s grandma said after a while.
The group picked their way through the wreckage of the base. There was slime everywhere, tentacles sprawled all over the floors. The last of the Sov clinging to life had finally stilled. Without the roaring and flailing, the building was eerily quiet. Through a blown-out gap in the side of the building, Beacon could even hear a bird chirping. He felt something heavy and cold move through him, all the way down to his knees. The Sov were dead. All of them. Victor, Jane. He had to remind himself that it was a good thing. That they’d done all of this to save human lives.
A sudden thought occurred to him.
He turned around and ran back the other way.
“Where are you going?” Beacon’s dad called.
Nixon sighed, and they all ran after Beacon. They caught up with him in Daisy’s room. Beacon stepped over a downed Sov and peeled back the tapestry on the wall.
“I’m pretty sure we can just use the front door,” Everleigh said.
But she shut up when he opened the door and Perry and Sumiko stared out at them.
“What’s happening?” Sumiko said in a quavering voice.
Beacon, Everleigh, Arthur, and Nixon exchanged a glance.
“Come on. It’s safe now.” Beacon extended a hand.
Perry and Sumiko peered hesitantly out of the secret exit at the dead Sov on the ground. Then Perry took Beacon’s hand and stumbled out. Sumiko bypassed Everleigh’s hand and pushed through the door.
They trailed back through the base and, finally, outside. The storm was over. The wind had died down, and the clouds had broken apart. The sun shone so brightly that the snow was already beginning to melt, and Beacon had to shield his eyes as they stepped through the front doors. There were no Sov. No guards. No fighting or ships.
“Is it really over?” Everleigh asked.
Footsteps crunched over the snow, and Beacon froze. So did the guard who stumbled around the corner. Donna. Everleigh stepped forward, ready to defend them. But it turned out it wasn’t necessary. Donna just looked at the group for a moment, then at the base, before she shook her head and walked down the road toward town.
“It’s really over,” Arthur said.
“Well, what happens now?” Beacon asked after a moment.
His dad looked out at the road. “Now we go home.”
SIX MONTHS LATER
“Good morning, children. I trust you’ve read up to page sixty-eight in your history textbooks?”
Arthur’s grandma smiled at the class before bending over the laptop on her desk and tapping at the keys. She frowned, and a white tendril drifted loose from her bun and fell in front of her lined face.
“Let me help you with that, Grandma N,” Nixon said.
“That’s Mrs. Newell to you,” she said, though there was a twinkle in her eye as Nixon popped up to help her get her lesson going on the projector.
At first, it had been kind of weird seeing Arthur’s grandma at school like this, but it turned out she’d had a background in teaching before she retired, and she’d said she wanted to keep a close eye on the kids to make sure there was no more “funny business,” as she’d called it. Beacon thought that was partially true. But he also thought that she was just bored now that there was no rebel operation to front.
Beacon didn’t mind a little boredom.
After they’d left the base that day, they’d learned that, partly thanks to Driftwood Harbor being so rural, the other Sov ships hadn’t managed to get too far before Galen and Daisy’s world-saving sacrifice. The formerly brainwashed humans had somehow landed the ships back at the base and then gone home, dazed but alive. Only twelve people had died as a result of the acid rain.
Only twelve.
That was hard for Beacon to understand, but his dad had said it could have been so much worse.
Beacon had thought there would be no way for the government to cover up what had happened that day—UFOs, toxic rain, giant squids—but they had. They’d claimed the ships were part of an Air Force drill, and blamed the deaths on a particularly lethal outbreak of the flu. Any squid sightings were put down to conspiracy theories. And when Beacon and the others had returned to the base to collect Galen’s body for a funeral, not only was he not there, but the entire building and all of the ships were gone. Every last sign that the Sov had ever been there had disappeared.
The world was only too happy to believe, and just like that, everything was back to normal, and school was back in session.
The bell rang for lunch. Beacon and Nixon gathered their books and joined the flood of kids heading for the caf. Arthur pushed his way through the crowd and fell into step beside them.
“You won’t believe this,” he said, panting. “I got Sumiko to join YAT! She’s coming to our next meeting.”
“Really?” Beacon said. “How’d you manage that?”
Perry and Sumiko remembered everything from their time as brainwashed Sov minions. While Perry had instantly joined YAT and become one of their most active members, Sumiko had preferred to join Driftwood Harbor, and the rest of the world, in pretending nothing had ever happened.
“Tell ’em,” Nixon said.
“Well, I kind of agreed to join the Gold Stars,” Arthur said sheepishly.
“WHAT?!” Beacon cried, so loudly a few people looked over.
“It’s not a big deal,” Arthur said defensively. “It’s just a normal volunteer group now. With Nixon, Perry, Donna, and your dad, our YAT membership is up to eight people!”
“Next step: world domination,” Nixon joked.
* * *
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“Hey, wait for me!” Beacon dragged the boat the last few feet up the shore, then jogged after Everleigh and Arthur, Boots trotting happily alongside him.
They’d gone back to New York to get Boots from the kennel after all the dust had settled. It hadn’t seemed right to leave him there, waiting for an owner who would never come back, so he and Everleigh had convinced their dad that they needed to be the ones to find him a good home. Well, Boots had practically knocked Beacon over with slobbery kisses when he saw him, and that was it: He was officially their dog. Pretty much the only place Boots didn’t go with Beacon was to school, and that was only because of Nurse Allen harping on about health code violations.
The sun was out, birds were singing, and the flowers bloomed. It seemed wrong. Like everything should be as dark and foggy as Beacon felt inside. But it was as if the world wanted to remind him that life would go on.
Before long, they arrived at the mouth of the cave. Galen had once said that he came here a lot to think, and Beacon thought Daisy might have liked this place, too, when she sneaked out of the ship with him, so it seemed like a fitting place for their funeral.
“Did you bring the stuff?” Arthur asked.
“Honestly, what do you take me for?” Everleigh shucked her backpack and took out two plants, handling them as if they were bombs that might detonate. They went to work digging two holes, then they tucked the plants into them and filled the holes with dirt. Some light in all the darkness.
“Well, that’s done.” Everleigh dusted off her hands. They admired their work for a moment.
“Should we say something?” Arthur said.
Everleigh cleared her throat. “We didn’t know you that well, but I like to think that we would have been great friends. Your sacrifice won’t be in vain.”
A bird trilled, and a brook babbled somewhere nearby.
Beacon wanted to say something, but h
e couldn’t find the right words. One second passed, then two. He could have let it go. But then he remembered Jasper’s funeral. He hadn’t spoken then, either—he’d been too overwhelmed, too unsure of what to say, and the thought of speaking in front of hundreds of people had paralyzed him. But the regret of not speaking had eaten at him, and when he was falling asleep at night, he’d sometimes replay in his mind what he would have said about Jasper, perfecting the epic tribute to his brother that he should have delivered. Now he knew that for him, the only wrong thing to say would be nothing at all. So he took a deep breath and let out everything he’d been thinking lately.
“When Victor told me I was going to save the world, I thought he was wrong. I figured the elders had screwed up, maybe got the wrong kid or something. After you did what you did, I was even more confused. I didn’t do anything. It was all you two. But now I think Victor was right. I did save the world—we did,” he said, looking at Everleigh and Arthur. “But we were only able to do it because we met you two. We did it together. And I guess what I’m trying to say is you’re always going to be a part of our team, even if you’re not actually here anymore.”
Everleigh linked fingers with him, and Arthur clasped his shoulder.
And that was it.
It didn’t seem like enough. They’d saved the world, and history would never even know their names.
They had a picnic in the warm grass, talking and laughing about Galen and Daisy, until the sun began sinking on the horizon. It was the weirdest funeral Beacon had ever been to. Kind of the best, too. He thought this was how it should always be: focusing on the happy times, instead of the grief. He’d had enough of grief lately.
“Well, we better get back,” Arthur said, looking at his watch. “Our YAT meeting starts in half an hour.”
“Everyone collect your trash,” Beacon said. “I’ve got a separate bag for recyclables, too.”
“Yeah, yeah, we know the drill, Captain Planet,” Everleigh said, picking up her soda can.
They booked it back to the boat.
Soon, they were cruising down the main road toward Arthur’s house, Everleigh and Arthur on bikes, and Beacon on his board, Boots trotting happily on his leash beside him. It wasn’t his favorite board—that one had been lost in the apartment squid fight debacle—but he was just happy to be riding again. He couldn’t believe how much he’d missed the feeling of the road bumping along under his feet.