A shuffling sound came from the other side of the deck, and I rounded the lava lamp, my face only a foot away from the unlit paraffin and carbon tetrachloride and who knew what else. A figure appeared in front of me. I squinted in the dark, then realized who was leaning over the railing, lost in his own contemplation.
“Frykowski.”
He whirled, surprised, and I reached out to steady him before he pitched over the rail. Up close, I could smell alcohol.
“Hofstadt,” Frykowski said drunkenly, his mouth trying to draw out both the d and t in my last name.
“Do you have a death wish?” I asked, watching him and discreetly beginning to record audio with my phone at the same time. “You shouldn’t be up here while you’re drunk. You shouldn’t be up here at all.”
“I’m not drunk,” he slurred. But he stepped away from the railing. With his back against the lava lamp he slid into a sitting position and slouched there.
“Why are you up here?” I asked.
“Hofstadt,” he replied. “What do I have to do to get ahead?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sit with me.” He patted the floor next to him.
I glanced down at the street. I’d see Ishmael when he pulled up in the Jeep. So I sat.
“All I ever wanted was to be a journalist,” Frykowski said.
“Aren’t you one?”
He laughed bitterly. “I edit obituaries and write a shitty blog no one reads.”
Accurate.
“Your blog gets decent traffic,” I said, attempting an encouraging tone.
“For two seconds, Hofstadt,” he said, reeling drunkenly toward me. “My two seconds of fame. Now they’re back to not caring about me.”
“Who?”
“Everyone.” Frykowski scowled. “Don’t you get it? I started things. I did. I connected your explosion to aliens. I put it out there for the world to read. And they read it, and they came, and they fucking took it from me. Don’t you see?”
Shockingly, I did.
“Now all the big boys are in it,” he went on. “Weird World News is writing about Lansburg. That asshole radio guy from Podunk, Nevada, is doing broadcasts. The Lansburg Lights have even gotten mentioned on the national news. The whole country is reporting on us, Hofstadt.”
“It’s true,” I said.
“And you know how many comments my last blog post got? Two. Two!”
I made a mental note to check his site later.
Frykowski looked me straight in the eye. “Tell me…with all this media attention, why should anyone care about me?”
Almost against my will, I found myself nodding in commiseration.
“I’m nothing,” Frykowski said. “They made me into nothing.”
“It makes you wonder why you even try,” I said.
“Exactly!”
“No matter what you do, other people take credit for your success.”
People…or one person. One person who swept into town in his shiny palace on wheels.
Frykowski patted me on the back. “See. You get it.”
If Oswald hadn’t shown up, the situation would still be in my control. Hell, if myTality™ didn’t exist, Mother would’ve never sent me on the Worst Date Ever, and I wouldn’t have gotten in a fight with Owen, and Owen wouldn’t have gone to the dance with Alex, and I wouldn’t have yelled at Arden, and she’d be safely at home.
Everything was Oswald’s fault.
“In the end,” Frykowski said glumly, “guys like us are nothing.”
“Yes,” I said, distractedly. “Wait. I mean no.”
I wasn’t nothing. I wasn’t a starfish.
I tried to make sense of my racing thoughts, my anger and confusion.
“Maybe you’re content being nothing,” I said. “But I’m not ready to give up.”
I’d come too far to be taken down by the owner of an MLM. A guy who wore cowboy boots with blazers. A guy who’d skated through life on charm.
I stood.
“Come on,” I told Frykowski. “I can’t leave you up here.”
I helped him to his feet. He swayed against me, and his weight pushed me closer to the railing. I hurriedly righted myself and guided Frykowski to the stairs before he killed us both.
“Your problem,” I said as we made our way off the deck, “is that you gave up too fast. You let people make you think you’re not good enough. Your worth shouldn’t have come from them, though. It should come from you. And if there’s someone in the world who’s out to defeat you, well, defeat them first.”
By the time we reached the bottom of the stairs, Ishmael had pulled the Jeep up in front of Super Scoop.
“Keep your feet on the ground,” I told Frykowski.
“Hofstadt,” he called as I hurried across the square toward my brother. “Was this on the record?”
I didn’t respond.
When I opened the passenger door of the Jeep, Ishmael eyed me warily. “You look…riled up.”
“Ishmael,” I said. “This is very important. We need to go to Crescent Road. I’m going to confront Oswald.”
Blog Comments
The following compilation is a selection of user comments from lightbringernews.com. Comments were originally posted on the article “LOCAL TEEN ABDUCTED BY ALIENS!”
CIAyylmao2001: IF YOU THINK SHE WAS TAKEN BY ALIENS YOUR A FUCKING IDIOT FRYKOWSKY. ALMOST ALL ADBUCTIONS IN THIS COUNTRY ARE DONE BY ARE OWN GOVERNMENT HAVE YOU EVEN HEARD OF PROJECT MK ULTRA??????? SHES PROBABLY LOCKED IN A LAB RIGHTNOW BEING GIVEN LSD AND UNDERGOING MIND EXPERIMENTS
MissusFry1962: Adam, it’s not kind to make light of a tragedy. This was a nicely written piece, but I think you should remove it from your website. Love, Mom.
Event: An Epiphany (Cont.)
The myTality™ camp was dark when Ishmael and I arrived. As before, there were no bonfires, no celebrations.
“I just don’t get what exactly you’re confronting Oz about,” Ishmael whispered.
“About being a fraud.”
“But, dude…aren’t we frauds?”
Instead of responding, I pulled out my phone and set it to record audio.
When we reached the palace on wheels, the monstrosity at the center of camp, Ishmael moved toward the window we’d peered through on our last visit.
“Let’s see if he’s here.”
“No. I’m done lurking in the shadows.” I took a deep breath and raised my hand to knock.
“But dude,” Ishmael said. “How can you tell him we know he’s faking without letting him know we were faking?”
I stared at my brother grimly.
“Oh,” he said sadly. “The hoax is ending.”
Yes, it was ending.
If Oswald turned us in, the consequences would be dire. Ishmael and I had committed a multitude of crimes—trespassing, reckless endangerment, livestock theft. Agent Ruiz would probably be more than happy to slap handcuffs on me and call the alien mystery solved. What would that mean for my future? I felt sick at the thought of saying goodbye to everything I’d envisioned for myself. But I had to stop Oswald. I had to.
I knocked on the door.
Oswald answered a moment later, in casual attire. No boots, no blazer.
“Gideon, Ishmael,” he said, surprised.
“Can we come in?”
“I’m always thrilled to see you, but now’s not a great time.”
“It is for me.” I was done letting him call the shots.
Oswald looked behind us into the darkness of the camp, as if someone might be lurking there.
“Okay,” he said, finally. “Come on.”
We entered the camper. Ishmael hovered near the door, looking uncomfortable, while Oswald leaned casually against the wall and smiled, easygoing as ever.
“How can I help you boys?”
“This has to end, Oswald.”
“Pardon?”
“Your messages from the cosmos. The Elixir ETernia. The whole scam. It’s over.”
He laughed. “Whoa there. I’m not sure where this is comin’ from.”
“There are no aliens and you know it.”
Oswald’s expression immediately turned sad. “Oh. I see.”
“You do?” I asked cautiously.
“They never really visited you, did they?” He put a hand on my shoulder. “That must hurt.”
“What? No. They’ve never visited anyone.”
Oswald smiled condescendingly. “They’ve sure visited me.”
“You’re ly—”
I stopped abruptly when I heard a noise from the bedroom. A cough.
Ishmael and I glanced at each other.
“Who’s here?” I asked.
“No one,” Oswald replied quickly, but there was no denying the flash of alarm on his face.
“Your girlfriend?” I sneered. “That teenager you were—”
“Now how do you—”
“Get rid of her,” I demanded.
“What?”
“We’re having a private conversation. I want her gone.”
From the corner of my eye I saw Ishmael staring at me like I’d gone rabid.
“You don’t come into my home and tell me what to do,” Oswald said. “You need to—”
Before he finished, I stormed to the bedroom door and yanked it open, preparing to… Well, I wasn’t 100 percent sure what my plan was.
I stopped abruptly.
I tried to process what I was seeing.
“Arden?” I said, hesitantly.
Interview
Subject #6, Arden Byrd: I ended up on Main Street and I was starting to calm down and wonder how I’d get home. That’s when the light appeared in front of me. It was Oz’s Range Rover. This might sound silly, but Range Rovers always seemed like cool-people cars. Like anyone who drives one doesn’t have the same problems I do. The window rolled down, and Oz asked why I looked so blue when I was dressed so nice. And he just…he saw me. He saw right into me. And he cared. He asked if I wanted to go somewhere to talk, and I did. And when I was in his RV with him, I never wanted to leave again. It was almost like, for the first time, I felt alive.
Event: An Epiphany (Cont.)
Arden sat on the bed, wearing boxer shorts and a myTality™ T-shirt that was five sizes too big. She looked at me with huge eyes.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Ishmael muttered behind me.
I spun toward Oswald. “What did you do to her?”
Oswald took a step back and held his hands up. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, Arden was on her feet, wrapping her hand around my elbow.
“Stop, Gideon. He didn’t do anything.”
“This can’t be happening,” Ishmael lamented, rubbing his eyes like he could erase the scene in front of him.
“Arden, we need to go.”
“No.”
“The whole town is looking for you. People think you’ve been murdered!”
“I’m staying here,” she said stubbornly.
“The police are involved. This is a big deal. This is a crime.”
Doubt flickered across her face.
“Do you really want Chief Kaufman to find you here with him?” I pressed. “How do you think she’d react?”
Arden’s gaze went to Oswald who, for the first time, didn’t seem slick. The color had drained from face and his skin looked like wax.
“You should go with your friends,” he told her weakly.
“I want to stay with you.”
“Arden, sweetheart, you really need to go.”
“Don’t you call her that.” I seethed. “Don’t you call her anything, ever again.”
His words had done their job, though. Arden went back into the bedroom and gathered her things—her purse, and the dress she wore to the dance.
“Do you want to put shoes on?” Ishmael asked hesitantly.
“No.”
I quickly ushered Arden to the Jeep and got into the back seat with her, shoving aside piles of junk Ishmael had amassed there.
“Are you okay?” I asked, as we pulled onto the road.
“I’m fine.”
“Did he…”
“He didn’t do anything that I didn’t want him to do.”
From the front seat, Ishmael groaned. “This is so screwed up.”
“Arden,” I said. “We need to go to the police station.”
Her expression turned panicked. “What? No.”
“Your mom is terrified. People think you could be dead. You don’t understand what a big deal this is.”
“Who would care if I was dead?”
“I would.”
Arden’s eyes filled with tears. “You didn’t even trust me enough to tell me about Owen. And now I’m supposed to believe you’re my friend?”
“I’m sorry, Arden.” I took her hand. “I’m a jerk.”
She sniffled.
“But it’s not you, it’s—”
“Cliché, dude,” Ishmael interrupted.
“It is me, though,” I said. “I should’ve told you the truth, and I can’t even explain why I didn’t. It just seems impossible to talk about my feelings and make myself vulnerable. Maybe I’m not even really honest with myself.”
Tears snaked down Arden’s face. “I just wanted to be included. I wanted you to like me.”
“I only like about five percent of humanity. But one of the few people I like is you.”
Her tears didn’t stop, but a faint smile appeared on her face.
“I’m so sorry for what I said at the dance. I was angry and took it out on you. I hope you can forgive me.”
“It’s not just you, you know. It’s everyone and everything. Sometimes I don’t think I’ll ever belong anywhere.”
“Me too, Arden. Me too.”
After a pause, Arden took a deep breath and said, “I don’t regret what happened with Oz.”
“But—”
She held up a hand to stop me. “I know it doesn’t make sense to you. But he makes me feel good about myself.”
“That’s part of his act.”
“I don’t care.”
“You know you can’t see him again, though,” I said. “You know this was wrong. He’s an adult. He used you.”
Arden ducked her head. “Maybe. But I won’t turn him in.”
“You have to.”
“I’m gonna have to agree with Gideon,” Ishmael said from the front of the Jeep.
“He was there for me when no one else was. Maybe he was using me. But what I did was my choice, and I’m not getting him in trouble for it.”
The Jeep was silent for a long time. Eventually, Ishmael said, “Uh…I kind of need to know where to drive.”
I looked at Arden. “We need to go to the police station.”
“I said—”
“Don’t mention Oswald if you don’t want to. But people are looking for you. You need to tell the cops something. Say you ran away and…I don’t know. Stayed at a motel.”
Arden thought about it. Finally, she nodded. “Okay, fine.”
It wasn’t fine, though. Arden thought she went with Oswald willingly, but I knew how he manipulated people. He was an adult who took advantage of a mixed-up teenager, and there was nothing fine about that. I hoped Arden would eventually see that for herself.
“Gideon?” Arden said softly. I turned to her. “Thank you for apologizing.”
“I meant it,” I replied. “I promise.”
She sniffled and rubbed her nose.
“There’s a box of tissues back there somewhere,
” Ishmael offered.
Ishmael’s accumulated jumble in the back seat included a discarded Hawaiian shirt, fast-food wrappers, and for some inexplicable reason, a green teddy bear. Arden and I fumbled through the mess for the tissues.
A moment later, Arden pulled something off the floor. She frowned. “Is this a…JFK mask?”
I decided, for the first time, to be fully honest with Arden. She deserved that much, even if it had taken far too long for me to get there. “That’s actually a funny story…”
As we drove to the police station, I told Arden about the night in the woods with the radio jammer, the lengths Ishmael and I had gone to in order to keep the hoax alive. She laughed at our antics, but as we pulled into the parking lot and Ishmael steered the Jeep into a spot next to Chief Kaufman’s cruiser, Arden grew solemn.
“So…the aliens were a prank from the start?”
I stiffened, suddenly realizing my admission would mean I knew Arden had lied about her own encounter. “Yes, it was a prank. I’m so sorry.”
“I think part of me already knew,” Arden said.
I raised my eyebrows, surprised by her calmness. “You did? But then, what about…” She looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to go on. “The night you saw…you know. Lights in the sky.”
“What about it?”
I hesitated, unsure of how to continue without insulting her.
Arden spoke again before I was able to: “Just because you lied about UFOs doesn’t mean I did.”
“But that’s not—”
“Stop,” she said firmly. “I know what I saw that night. I won’t let you take it from me.”
I stared at her for a long moment, marveling at the determination in her voice. Where had this strength come from? Had it been hiding all along behind her hunched shoulders and downcast eyes? It’s amazing what you learn about a person once you stop shutting them out.
Okay,” I said. “I believe you.”
She smiled at me, and that moment, in the back of the messy Jeep, in the dark parking lot of Lansburg’s police station, I knew our friendship would never be the same as it was before—it would be so much better.
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