The Keystone: Finding Home

by Seren Goode

  Micah and Arie went with Lincoln today to meet a friend of his named Waters. This friend is going to help us get identification papers so it will be easier for us to travel and live. Lincoln also wants us to meet Waters because he thinks we need to spend some time with him learning his rules, which are apparently different from the ones the authorities use.

  Lincoln cautioned us to not tell Waters about our past.

  I will miss my friend. We took a photo together, and I promised to send him my journal when we left Earth so he could see the rest of our journey.

  We skimmed over the section on Waters, which was hauntingly familiar to our own training. Reading through our parents return to Santa Cruz where they spent months trying, again and again, to get the stones to open a passage was depressing, and it was even sadder as, over time, we could tell they were giving up hope. But they gained other things as they went along.

  I volunteered to read again.

  June 1996.

  I guess we really are a family since we now have a foster parent.

  Robert is a professor of mathematics at Stanford University, and he and Micah get along really well. Robert wanted to foster Micah and sponsor him to attend the University, but Micah said we had to come with him—and Robert agreed! Robert is trying to line up sponsors for Trystal to go to university too. Before we came to Earth, Micah and Trystal were in the year of decision making and studying hard to become academics. They are now studying even harder to adapt to Earth’s knowledge of things (I doubt they will get into a university here based on their knowledge of Teran’s history). Since Lincoln, we have never told another soul where we are from. And after working with Waters, I doubt we ever will. It is far too dangerous.

  Robert said he “pulled strings” and found places for Kindle, Arie, and me at a local program, but we have to live away from Trystal and Micah. From what I’ve read about Earth high schools, the experience will be terrifying, but I’m looking forward to making new friends.

  Once a week, we take a bus and all meet at the spot we arrived on Earth and try to open the passage. We do the same thing each time. It never works. But Micah won’t let it go.

  October 1996

  Kindle hates our high school. I love it! It is right on the ocean and so easy for Noah and me to get to the beach every day. Noah is my new friend. Micah has warned me to not say anything about our past, so when Noah asks, I have to pretend it’s too painful to talk about. I think I will tell him someday, but now, we have so much else to discuss it doesn’t matter. Noah showed me how to surf on a board. He is really smart and loves the ocean too.

  I still go up and visit Lincoln once a month.

  Even though Micah is now in classes all the time, he keeps dragging us up to the Mystery Spot to try and open a passage. It’s hard for me to explain to Noah where I disappear to each week, and every time, Kindle refuses to go and Arie has to talk her into it.

  June 1997.

  Kindle and Arie graduated high school! They did it a year early—if you consider our real ages—but we have been using our fake IDs so long, I think they forgot and just thought it was time to be done. They decided to go to college in Southern California. Micah is having a fit at how far away they will be. But he will let them go. Both he and Trystal are almost through their college degrees, and we hardly see them anymore, except for the pilgrimage every other month to the spot.

  I’m so glad I still have Noah here at school. Since he took the year off before I met him to study marine biology on a science vessel, his schedule has been messed up, and this year, he has been taking college classes while finishing high school. But we will both graduate next year. I haven’t told him I’m only fifteen.

  June 1998.

  Today we graduated from high school!

  Noah and I decided we wanted to go to school in Southern California. Trystal and Micah are starting their PhDs, so I’m glad I’ll be close to Arie and Kindle. It will be nice to see them more often, but they are busy too. Arie has decided he is going to become a medical doctor, and Kindle is studying business. She is really good at managing money. She also wants to be Mrs. Arie.

  I’ve decided to end this journal. It has served its purpose, and now, it’s time to let go and start something new. I’ll take it up to my dear friend Lincoln to read next time I see him. I always promised I would send it to him when we left Earth, but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.

  As much as I still miss my family on LaDér, there are now people here I would miss if I left. Earth feels like home. So, I guess I was right when I told Lincoln I would send him my journal when we found our way home.

  Chapter 35

  The Truth

  When I closed the journal, the sun was high in the sky, pouring in through the condo’s wall of windows, blinding me as it flashed off the sea of glass and the gold details of the city. The light was as brazen as the truth I had just read: my mother was from another place…another planet?

  Planet. I still couldn’t wrap my head around it.

  In the living room, the silence was a presence, an entity taking up the air in the room, making it hard to breathe. Sinking back into the shelter of the leather sofa, I closed my eyes against the glare. I guess, normally, you would think, What could be more boring than reading your parent’s diary? Ick! But each page had been even more mind-blowing than the last.

  Could this be real?

  Of course, it wasn’t…was it?

  The fragments of my life were puzzle pieces that now made a strange kind of sense. The nomadic lifestyle. The secrets. One revelation after another flashed through my head, ridiculous, insane, unbelievable. Believable? Maybe this diary was a fake? Half-baked excuses popped into my head, attempting to discredit everything we had read.

  I tried to calm the spinning teacup ride my thoughts were on, to latch onto one of the life-changing brain explosions bombarding me and start to process it. The only anchor that steadied me was the bittersweetness of hearing my mother’s voice through her words in the diary.

  It wasn’t a fake. This was real. This diary was a gift, a piece of my mother that I could hold on to. In those written words, I recognized her tone and expressions. In her story of fear and courage in this new place, I heard her confusion, pain, and strength. She was so strong.

  And it changed everything.

  “How could they keep all of this from us?” Skylar asked.

  “Holy Sources, are we—” Breeze sat up, eyes huge.

  “Don’t say it,” Jaxon yelled.

  “Are we—” Breeze continued.

  “Shut up.” Skylar lunged for his sister.

  “Are we aliens?” Breeze finally got out.

  “No,” I scoffed. “Aliens are…” I faltered. Aliens are…people from other planets—which our parents were, which meant…

  “Yes,” Shim croaked. He looked stunned, and his mouth opened and closed a few times before he added, “Well, at least half.”

  Skylar got up and looked at himself in the large mirror on the wall. He turned his head from side to side as if he was searching for antennas. “I don’t feel like an alien,” he concluded. “Nothing has changed. I don’t feel any different.”

  But he was wrong. This. Changed. Everything.

  Brrrrrringgg. At the sudden intrusion of the ringing phone, we all jumped, muscles tensing. The sound was coming from right beside me. Without thinking, I reached down, fumbling with the extension on the side table and answered the call. “Hello?”

  The voice on the other end punched me up to a standing position. My attention snapped to the receiver in my hand.

  “Yes, Agent Bailey, this is Grace Thompson. Now, maybe you can tell me where our parents are?”

  ∞

  I pushed open the heavy metal door and moved out onto the building’s rooftop patio. The smell of rain was still in the air.

  “
Did you talk to her?” I asked.

  Shim shook his head, a quick abrupt movement.

  “Did you talk to him?” I asked. Shim looked over at me. Maybe he didn’t realize how obvious it was to everyone else. Once the lie was removed, the truth was plain to see. “Did you talk to Arie, your father?”

  He snorted and shook his head. “No. They’ve locked themselves in the master bedroom to yell at each other. I tried to go in, but they ignored my knock.”

  From the minute the key had gone into the lock this morning and our parents had rushed in, we had been swept up in the chaos of panicked family, protective government agents, and emotional explanations.

  Especially when our parents found out that we had found Amé’s diary and read it. They hadn’t gotten around to asking where it was yet, so I had time to make up a story on how I had lost it again, along with Stringham’s journals. Or maybe I would tell them the truth—that I’d traded the diary and journals for their freedom.

  Micah, the tall Indian man who had entered with the others, had requested the agents wait outside while we got reacquainted, and even after they had reluctantly agreed, Micah wouldn’t let us start talking. We waited as he and the other adults walked through the condo, checking each room. When he was satisfied we were alone, he held up a finger for silence, then pulled a brooch out of his pocket. He turned over the enameled piece of jewelry to show a reddish-green stone nestled in the back. I had reached up to my necklace and fingered the stone at my throat. Dad smiled faintly at me and rested his palm on my collar bone as he put a finger next to mine. I looked over. Skylar had pushed up the sleeve on his shirt and he, Breeze, and their father each laid a hand on the cuff’s stone. Jaxon shocked our parents by pulling out the ancient necklace, and he, Shim, and Kindle touched the stone in the center.

  The parents had been surprised we knew about the stones, and, as Shim had predicted, Kindle had been furious when she learned her ring was lost.

  They started firing questions at us, but we quickly put a stop to that, demanding to know where they had been. But they didn’t know. As soon as they were picked up, they had been separated and flown to an undisclosed location, where they were held in solitary confinement when they weren’t being questioned. They never saw each other or anyone else. In spite of their relief at seeing us again, they looked exhausted and broken.

  Micah was especially disheartened. He had been spying on the government for some time, working for them, not letting them know who he was while he secretly kept tabs on what they knew. He thought they were unaware of his status, but while he watched them, they had been watching him, thinking at first that he was working for the Helios group. When they realized he was not from Earth, they moved to pick him and his family up. Micah got off a warning to our parents, and that had given them the time to make the calls that put us on the run. They were appalled to learn it had ended up redirecting the Helios attention to us.

  Then I had to share the worst of it. When Noah learned my mother’s death hadn’t been an accident and the government had known the Helios held her, he had been heartbroken. The rest of the parents looked ill.

  Then, we told them everything else that had happened to us.

  “Amazing.” Standing beside me on the rooftop, Shim had been gazing out at the city, but now he glanced back at me, one side of his mouth quirking up.

  I raised an eyebrow in question.

  “You.” He reached out a hand and pulled down a strand of my green hair the wind was playing with. “We wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without you pushing.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good thing,” I remarked self-consciously.

  “We are here now, knowing what we know, because of you. Our parents are downstairs, mine most likely still screaming at each other, because you managed to do what they couldn’t—negotiate for their release when Agent Bailey contacted us.”

  “They aren’t going to be happy when they learn that I gave away the diary and the journals so they could exchange detention camp for protective custody.”

  “True, but you were incredible. You had Agent Bailey drooling at the chance to read the diary.”

  My lip quirked up at the memory, then I frowned. “I didn’t think she would keep her word. I thought for sure the agents would crash in here and just take the books from us.”

  “Yeah, you were smart to have us photograph all the pages first. But if they had just grabbed them, they wouldn’t have gotten all our intel on the Helios Headquarters, along with my photos. And they brought our parents here. That has to mean they are going to keep their word, or they are going to detain us all. Like I said, you are amazing.”

  I rolled my eyes. I was torn between my old way of doubting myself or, maybe, this time believing in myself. Here, in the middle of all this chaos, I had found a new family and friends, and Shim. The things we had learned about ourselves changed everything. Maybe, it was okay if I changed too.

  I brushed my shoulder against his, playfully bumping him again as I turned to look out at the strip. I took a deep breath and tried to enjoy just being with Shim. I tried so hard, but it was nagging at me, and I finally just had to ask, “So are we friends? More than friends? Cousins?” He made a choking sound, and flustered, I rushed to add, “Because, it feels like we are more than friends, but I really don’t want to be related to you—and maybe finding out our parents have lied to us our whole lives and we’re really a-aliens”—I stumbled over the word—“isn’t the best time to start a relationship.”

  Shim’s scrubbed his hands over his face and sighed, then looked up, up at the stars. I allowed my eyes to follow the vulnerable line of his throat, the smooth honey-gold skin, the mess of multi-colored chocolate hair falling into his face. Thinking about the Shim I knew from long conversations through the stones and on the boat, I realized I didn’t care about being safe this time. “But—” I trailed off as I realized he was shaking. Concerned, I reached out to touch his arm.

  Shim’s amber gaze studied my face, his eyes full of mirth. He was laughing, laughing at me. His mouth quirked again, and he took over my thought.

  “But, you see, Grace, we are inevitable. There are a lot of complications. There are some things I need to take care of. And, maybe you don’t want to pin a label on it, maybe you don’t want to change your status, but you and I, we are meant to be.”

  “This sounds like fate, fairytales, and white knight crap.” I scrunched up my face as I teased him.

  He laughed. “You’d make a better green knight. You are a challenge to me,” he declared with a determined look.

  “Have you actually read that story?” I said with a grimace. Shim laughed and shook his head. A shiver of excitement raced through me that someone, that Shim, thought of me as complex. Interesting.

  His hands slid up and cupped each of my checks in warmth. Holding my face, he stared into my eyes.

  My stomach flipped.

  “Are we the kissing type of ‘more than friends’?” Shim asked, leaning in and placing his forehead against mine.

  I nodded, and his lips touched mine. It was a healing kiss, a connecting one—a kiss with intent and promise. After we broke apart, we both sighed.

  I looked out at the blanket of city lights twinkling as twilight turned to darkness and the city woke up. “What happens now?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we should go hang out with our family.”

  Family. I liked that. After a life of voluntary and involuntary isolation, I finally had people like me. We were the same, we were different, we were…family. I struggled with the word. I didn’t feel it the way my mom had. I was still coming to terms with all the members of her foster family. But Shim, Jaxon, Breeze, and Skylar, they had become everything to me. Closer than even my father. Never before had I felt like I had a home. Home. That’s what they felt like.

  With them, I was home.

  The En
d

  Thank you for choosing to read The Keystone. Grace and Shim’s story continues when they go off-world in The Activator book two in the Elements Series available December 2021.

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  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to Randy, my alpha reader, Lori Henderson, my beta reader, and to the LaBo Crew for moral support.

  This book has undergone a sensitivity reading, but any errors found are my responsibility. Please share your thoughts at star@serengoode.com

  About Seren Goode

  Seren Goode was born in the Midwest with itchy feet and a dream of far-off places. She has a love of all things alien and a fascination with ritual landscape. Her debut science fiction novel, The Keystone, redefines what makes a family and explores what it means to be human.

  A jane-of-all-trades, Seren has studied communications, English, design, marketing, metalsmith, pottery, juggling, and more, and eventually ended up abroad earning a graduate degree in archeology. She started writing fiction while in middle school and thoroughly blames her family for encouraging this habit. A big fan of making her characters do their own work, Seren loves to sit back and watch them unravel a mystery or dig for the truth. When she isn’t on the road, she is at home on the Central Coast of California plotting her next book, and her next trip, with her songwriter husband and puppies Clairey and Izzy.

  Follow her at

  serengoode.com