The door was ajar and I peeked inside.
The building was filled with preteen girls. They sat cross-legged on the floor in a loose circle, cushioned by old hay. There were maybe fifteen of them, most of whom I recognized from Maggie’s softball team. Maggie herself sat on the side of the barn and the other girls stared at her raptly.
“What’s going on?” I asked cautiously.
Fifteen sets of eyes turned to me.
“Gideon, please leave,” Maggie replied in an unnaturally calm voice.
“Tell me what you’re doing first.”
“This is a private meeting.”
The other girls nodded, as if Maggie had said something sage-like.
“Okay,” I said, creeped out by so many people staring at me, by the blankness on their faces. “Just… Never mind. Bye.”
I ducked away from the barn and continued to the house.
What was Maggie up to? Something disturbed me about her demeanor. She was tranquil. Self-assured. She acted like she was in charge, and not only did she know it, she relished it.
I was in my room before I realized that, for a moment, Maggie reminded me of J. Quincy Oswald.
Interview
Subject #2, Magdalene (Maggie) Hofstadt: It’s not that I respect cult leaders. I don’t think anything’s okay about Jim Jones convincing his followers to drink cyanide punch or David Koresh stockpiling weapons for his “Army of God.” I don’t think Charles Manson’s “Family” should have gone on a two-day killing spree or that we should celebrate the sarin gas attack masterminded by Shoko Asahara. Obviously, all that stuff is horrible. I’m just saying, isn’t it interesting, what some people are able to convince others to believe?
Event: Progress Check
Date: Oct. 9 (Mon.)
“October ninth progress update,” I said for the benefit of my audio recording.
Ishmael and I were in my lab, gazing at the desk that was covered with notes and documents, lists and drawings, newspaper articles and plans.
“The media attention is piling up.” I tapped on a stack of papers. “Exhibit A is composed of articles from credible sources.”
“No Adam Frykowski blog posts then?” Ishmael joked from his chair next to me.
“Correct. Now, exhibit B is—”
“More Seekers have shown up, you know,” Ishmael interrupted, bored with my research. “And more of Oz’s myTality distributors.”
I scowled. “Oswald again. I want to get rid of him.”
“Like…kill him?”
I sighed hard enough to make the papers in front of me flutter. “No, Ishmael. I don’t want to kill him. I just want him to go home to California. Or anywhere.”
My brother gave me a searching look. “What’s your problem with the guy?”
“Is it not apparent?”
“I know he’s annoying or whatever. But you super hate him. Like, way more than there’s reason to.”
Where to begin?
I hated Oswald because he was a liar. A cheat. A con man.
But most of all, I hated how easy life was for him. How we lived in a world where his unique blend of personality traits was revered. No matter how smart or talented someone was, no matter how much time and energy they dedicated to a project, there would always be a J. Quincy Oswald who could use his charm to take it away in an instant.
I didn’t know how to sum that up for Ishmael, though. So I simply said, “He’s my nemesis.”
“This isn’t a comic book, dude,” Ishmael said. He idly opened a container on my desk and began sifting through loose electronic components inside, as if he had any idea what he was looking at.
“Nemeses aren’t just for superheroes. For instance, take Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke—”
“Could we maybe not make this conversation about Isaac Newton?”
“It’s not about him,” I insisted, moving the electronics box away from Ishmael and firmly closing the lid. “It’s about Oswald.”
“You get that you’re turning the hoax into some weird competition between you and Oz, right?”
“Yes, but…how could I not compete?”
Ishmael shrugged. “You just don’t.”
“You’re telling me you don’t feel any element of competition right now?”
“This isn’t about I win or he wins. It isn’t sports or something. And even sports competitions are friendly.”
I knew countless people, Father included, who would not agree that sports were friendly competitions. This was likely one of the reasons Ishmael never became the baseball player Father hoped he’d be.
I thought for a moment. “What about last year, when Braden took out classified ads listing Irving High School for sale?”
“What about it?”
“Didn’t it bother you? You’re the one known for pranks.”
“So? It was an awesome prank,” Ishmael said, grinning. “It made me laugh. Why would that bug me?”
“Because…” I sputtered. But I didn’t entirely know what to say. “What about when you and Kyle both applied to be delivery drivers for Pizza Haus and he got hired? You wanted that job so badly.”
“It was just a job,” Ishmael said. “Besides, Kyle was totally more qualified.”
“How does one become ‘more qualified’ for a job at Pizza Haus?”
“He had a paper route before. He was used to doing deliveries.”
I looked at Ishmael for a long moment, trying to detect a lie on his face, but I didn’t see one. He truly didn’t have the urge to compete. He didn’t live with the same bitterness I did. He probably never looked at his peers and silently itemized the ways he didn’t measure up.
“Gideon,” Ishmael said after a moment. “You know you don’t need to, like, prove yourself to anyone.”
“But I do.”
“Is this about the universe again, and how you feel insignificant?”
Wasn’t everything about that? I didn’t say so, though. I said, “Can we focus on Oswald?”
“Sure,” Ishmael agreed. “What do you wanna do?”
“I don’t know. To start, I want more information about what he’s up to.”
Was he just trying to make money with the new product or was there something more? My mind flashed to him in the middle of the road, shouting at the sky. I still entertained the possibility that part of him actually believed aliens were visiting.
“We can go over there right now,” Ishmael said.
I glanced at my phone. “It’s late.”
“Do you have a bedtime or something?” (The average teenager requires 9.75 hours of sleep to function optimally. Given the early start time of high school, having a bedtime was both practical and necessary.)
“I don’t want to wake Oswald up,” I said. “I don’t relish the idea of talking to him at all.”
Ishmael shook his head like I was hopeless. “We’re not gonna talk to Oz. He’ll never even know we were there.”
“We… What?”
“We’re gonna spy on him,” Ishmael said, his eyes lit with the gleam I knew too well.
“No,” I said simply.
Ishmael flashed his most charming smile. “You know I’ll convince you. Why don’t you give in now and make this go a lot faster?”
Event: The Infiltration
Date: Oct. 9 (Mon.)
Ishmael spent several minutes encouraging me to drive to Oswald’s camp. I refused for two reasons:
1. Learner’s permits only allow one to drive with a licensed passenger age twenty-one or older.
2. One practice session was not nearly enough for me to be comfortable behind the wheel. At all.
So Ishmael drove, giving me helpful tips along the way. Such as, “If you hit a yellow light, it’s best to gun it” and “No one really pays attention to turn signals.”
It was late when we neared Oswald’s field, which was how I’d come to think of it. Based only on the power of his presence, he’d claimed the field as his own.
“We should walk the rest of the way,” Ishmael said, maneuvering the Jeep down an unpaved side road.
“I didn’t exactly wear appropriate footwear,” I complained.
Ishmael shook his head. “Everyone says you’re the smart one. But look at which of us came prepared.”
“It’s not so much that I didn’t prepare. It’s more that, even during the drive over here, I wasn’t convinced we were actually going through with this.”
My brother gave me a sad look. “Come on, dude. You know me better than that.”
Ishmael got out of the Jeep and I followed. We entered the woods together, my shoes immediately sinking into the muddy ground. A moment later, my foot caught on a tree root and I stumbled.
“Shhh,” Ishmael hissed.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I whispered back.
We crept up on the outskirts of Oswald’s camp. I’d expected a livelier scene. When I passed the Seekers’ camps at night, it always seemed like a party was going on. Campfires lit, people wandering and talking, music playing. What else were you going to do when living in a field with limited resources?
But Oswald’s camp felt military. Everything was neat and tidy and arranged with precision. There was no music. There were no campfires. The only people wandering around looked to be on the way from one task to another.
“Are they all out somewhere?” Ishmael asked.
“I think they’re just…weird.”
“At least you know other people in Lansburg go to bed as early as you.”
I ignored my brother’s jab and scanned the field in front of us. I nodded toward the enormous camper in the middle. “That’s Oswald’s.”
Ishmael snorted. “You think you need to tell me that?”
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
“We try to see inside.”
That seemed like an exceptionally bad idea. But there wasn’t time to tell Ishmael that. He began weaving through tents, not being particularly stealthy about it.
Not to mention, he wore one of his Hawaiian shirts—its primary color was hot pink. If he hadn’t already crossed half of the field, I would’ve asked if he still wanted to brag about being prepared.
When Ishmael reached Oswald’s RV, he turned back and pressed a finger to his lips for quiet, as if I might announce our presence with a trumpet. Then he peeked into a window, the bottom of which was level with his eyes. Feeling undignified, I stood on my tiptoes to peer inside as well.
The curtains were sheer enough to see through. The tastefully understated track lighting bathed the interior in a warm glow.
“This camper is nicer than our house,” Ishmael whispered.
Our house was built a century ago and sparingly updated. It wasn’t exactly challenging to find nicer dwellings.
Inside the RV, Oswald had his back to us. He raised a hand and tilted his head back, taking a long swig of a drink.
I watched eagerly. I wanted to see after-hours Oswald, inebriated enough to drop the charade.
He turned slightly and revealed the bottle in his hand.
Not alcohol, but a myTality™ Shake It Up. Anger welled up inside of me. Did the man ever stop performing?
Oswald wandered around the camper, looking around absently, like he was waiting. Nothing was out of place. Not a scrap of paper, not a discarded water bottle. It was pristine, even by my standards.
I rested back on my heels, annoyed and disappointed. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. Maybe I thought we’d catch Oswald filling bottles marked “alien juice” from gallons of distilled water. Reading How to Win Friends and Influence People. Something. Anything.
“Oh shit,” Ishmael said, reaching over and tugging on my sleeve.
I immediately boosted myself back onto my toes and peered into the window.
Oswald wasn’t alone. A girl had emerged from what I assumed to be the bedroom area of the RV, wearing nothing but a sheet wrapped around her body. She crossed to Oswald, who set down his myTality™ health shake and wrapped his arms around her.
I stepped back from the window.
“This isn’t exactly what I was hoping for,” I whispered.
“But dude—”
“Stop watching.” I pulled him away. “You’re being creepy.”
“Dude,” Ishmael said more insistently. “Did you even check out that girl?”
“Of course I didn’t. What’s wrong with you?”
Ishmael shook his head and pulled me back to the window. “Not like that.”
Reluctantly, I rose on my toes a third time.
“Look,” my brother said. “How old do you think she is?”
I watched until the girl pulled back from Oswald’s embrace. She was very, very pretty. And very, very young.
“Let’s go,” I said. Ishmael nodded and followed me willingly back through the woods.
“How old?” Ishmael asked again once we were back in the Jeep and headed home.
“Young. Really young.”
“Like…underage?”
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling as disturbed as my brother sounded.
Ishmael got lost in thought for a long moment. “It’s just, I’m wondering if we should tell someone.”
“Like who?”
“Chief Kaufman, I guess.”
“What would we say? When we were spying on J. Quincy Oswald in his RV, we saw him with a woman who might have been underage and we think possibly they were going to have sex, but we don’t really know for sure?”
“Well, actually, I think they probably already had sex because she was wrapped in a sheet.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Yeah, I know,” Ishmael said. “I guess we don’t actually have much to tell anyone, do we?”
“We don’t.”
I frowned and gazed out the window, thinking. Venus was bright in the sky ahead of us. (Due to its brightness, many UFO sightings have been attributed to people misidentifying Venus.)
“Hey, Gideon,” Ishmael said quietly after a little while. “Even if that girl wasn’t a minor, she was still, like, half Oz’s age.”
“So?”
Ishmael chose his words carefully. “So it might not actually be illegal, but it would be immortal.”
“You mean immoral,” I said.
“Right. Anyway, I was just wondering. If Mom knew about this, would she still be so obsessed with myTality?”
I opened my mouth to say no, of course she wouldn’t. She’d find the situation disgusting. But… Why didn’t she find the company off-putting to start with? It was scamming people out of hard-earned money.
Did I take issue with that? If people were naive enough to give their money to myTality™, did they deserve whatever they got?
I wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know how Mother would feel,” I said finally.
I was afraid I wouldn’t like the answer.
Interview
Nancy Clements: I’d been a myTality distributor for, oh, maybe ten months at that point. I hadn’t quit my day job, but I’d made enough money to know myTality was a viable career path. Not that I needed much convincing. From the very first time I tried the products, I saw a powerful, positive change in my life. I was fifty-three years old and realized I had no control of my own mortality. I’d put my health and happiness in other people’s hands. Oz made me understand it belonged to me.
Interviewer: But surely you don’t think the products work?
Nancy Clements: They do work.
Interviewer: Have you gotten measurable results?
Nancy Clements: I thought this was an impartial interview?
&n
bsp; Interviewer: Right. Of course. I apologize.
Nancy Clements: I just want to be clear that myTality changed my life.
Interviewer: Perhaps we should focus on the night in question.
Nancy Clements: I didn’t hear anything that night, honestly. It wasn’t until the next morning that the distributors knew something was wrong. We woke up to Oz hollering about someone invading our camp—and that was strange in itself, because Oz never hollered. Not out of anger, anyway. A group of us ran over and saw them clear as day: footprints leading up to the RV. And Oz, he told us how the aliens visited him the night before, and they told him there were terrible, powerful men on Earth who wanted to steal the formula for the elixir. And those men wouldn’t make the elixir public like Oz. They wanted it for secret, nefarious purposes.
Interviewer: What purpose might that be?
Nancy Clements: Warfare.
Interviewer: How would one use this “fountain of youth” in warfare?
Nancy Clements: Well, I don’t know. The aliens weren’t visiting me.
Interviewer: I see. Please, go on.
Nancy Clements: That’s all of it. Oz knew spies were watching our camp, and he knew he had to guard the formula. He was… He seemed scared, to tell the truth.
Interviewer: And what about the girl who’d spent the night with him? Was she there that morning when all of this was going on?
Nancy Clements: I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about that.
Event: Family Dinner
Date: Oct. 10 (Tues.)
In the past week, I’d learned to appreciate dinners of the past. Those wonderful occasions when Father made healthy and delicious meals, and my family ate and conversed without awkwardness and tension.
It wasn’t that Mother never cooked. But she did it rarely enough that her meals always turned out…questionable. Especially when she added myTality™ protein powder to her recipes.
Gram had come over, so the table was crowded. Father sat with us but ate a TV dinner instead of Mother’s chili. Generally, I was opposed to TV dinners. They provided few nutrients, which was the entire point of eating. Food was fuel. I wouldn’t fill up a car with watered-down gas.
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