“What about you?” she asked, her shaking voice betraying her outward veneer of calm. “Or am I not supposed to ask?”
Jesse smiled sadly. “I have some stuff to make up for. But as soon as I’m done, I’ll come find you.”
She tapped his cheek before pulling her hand away. “Better late than never. Just make it quick, ’kay? I want to spend some time with my boy.”
“Okay.”
He watched his mom begin to climb the stairs back up to her bedroom. She looked so thin from behind. It made his chest ache.
“Hey, Mom?” Jesse scratched his wrist nervously.
She paused. “Hmm?”
“I’m sorry.” And I love you.
Her warm eyes crinkled. “I know.”
The UFOs & U HQ was a crudely built extension behind Tom Ralford’s house, painted an uneven black and made with reclaimed materials, mostly pilfered from a school construction site. Jesse only knew this because he was there when Tom first launched UFOs & U a year ago—before his big breakdown and subsequent resurrection of the channel—right in the middle of a group counseling session. He had pulled out one of his portable radios, tuned in to some random channel, and filled the room with the sound of the X-Files theme song. He beamed brighter than a young mother showing her newborn to the world. The rest of the session involved Ms. K trying to get back on track, her voice barely carrying over Tom’s overly detailed explanation of how and why he launched a radio channel dedicated to “the rich alien lore” of Roswell. Jesse had laughed his ass off.
Being at Tom’s house now made his stomach curdle with guilt.
Jesse’s heart drummed unsteadily as he pulled down his hood; he’d worn it beneath his leather jacket to blend into the crowd as he escaped his house and ran to Tom’s, carrying a wheelbarrow he’d found in the back of the shed before the crowd had arrived and filled with about twenty pounds of paper, as well as all the money he’d made from the machine, tucked inside a leather knapsack. The last thing he saw behind him was a man with a green bandanna covering his face, approaching the shed with something that looked like a lit glass beer bottle. An image that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
He was still trying to catch his breath.
Mom had already packed her things and snuck out from the back of the house. She was probably already halfway to Goddard Planetarium by now.
Which left only the messages to deal with. And Marco’s friends.
He knocked on Tom’s front door. If he knew Tom—and he did—he’d still be home. He wouldn’t leave Roswell, even if he could. Even now. Tom wasn’t a coward.
“Tom?” Jesse called out. “Tom Ralford? It’s me. Jesse. From counseling.”
Silence. The shuffling of feet. Then a gruff voice from behind the door said, “You mean Jesse from the machine.”
“Hey, that’d be a good band name,” said Jesse amicably. “But yes. I’m Jesse, formerly of the machine. I was hoping you’d give me a chance to talk to you.”
The door pried open an inch, and Jesse caught Tom’s beady eye staring back at him.
“Talk about what?”
“Your radio. Believe it or not.”
Tom’s eye narrowed to a sliver, as if considering.
“I’ve got a lady friend over. You can try again tomorrow.” The door slammed shut.
Jesse groaned. He leaned his forearm against the door. “Tom! Please?”
Again, silence.
“Tom!”
Jesus, how many people had Jesse pissed off?
“Tom, I think he gets the point,” a familiar woman’s voice sounded from behind the door.
The door opened once more, this time to reveal Ms. K.
“Sorry about that, Jesse. What are you doing here?”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I just stopped here on my way back from the hospital.” She looked at him meaningfully. “Mari is out of surgery.”
“Oh, that’s . . . good.”
Ms. K smiled knowingly. “She’s stable, in case you were wondering. Corbin is very relieved. So then I came here to see if I could get a message back home. Tom’s one of the only ones left in town with a working radio channel—well, maybe ‘working’ is a bit of a stretch. But we’re trying to fix it in case the others need to use it. And he’s got a generator.”
“Funny you should say that,” Jesse said, “because I also need to use the radio.”
“Tell him I have a rifle!” Tom shouted from somewhere inside the house.
“You do not have a rifle!” Ms. K retorted. She turned to Jesse. “Shouldn’t you be with the machine? What’s going on? Where’s your mom?”
“Mom’s fine. And the machine . . . it’s gone.” If she knew how he’d hammered it to death, and barely escaped with the jacket on his back and a wheelbarrow full of wishes before his former customers and/or Marco’s friends probably set the shed and his house on fire, she’d sit him down on a couch and ask him how he felt about it. “My machine wasn’t exactly built for the people I need to reach, anyway.”
“Who do you need to reach?” asked Ms. K, looking confused.
Jesse slipped past her and went inside, dragging his wheelbarrow behind him. The UFOs & U radio station had walls painted black to match the outside, but Tom had left the carpet a hideous green plush covered in what Jesse hoped were coffee stains. The back wall was taken up entirely by a thick wooden table with layers of weird blinking devices and boxes and radios. Tom had two matching computer monitors, both showing a screen saver that was some kind of cat slideshow.
A red-and-black ON THE AIR sign hung from the ceiling, but it was off. For now.
This was it. This was Jesse’s chance to make it up to all those people he’d conned. He’d promised he would send out their wishes like messages in a bottle. It was time for him to keep that promise.
Just because you’ve lost all hope doesn’t mean you get to throw out hope for all of us. Corbin’s words still echoed in his head, raw and undeniable. Jesse was so tired of taking out his hopelessness on others.
Tom was sitting on a chair, his arms folded across his chest. A circular black microphone held by a skinny metal support attached to the table floated above his head like a halo. Tom was pouting.
“So, Tom, you got any open slots on your radio?” Jesse lifted the first stack of paper from his wheelbarrow. “Because I’ve got a ton of messages to send out, and I’m going to need some help.”
29
Adeem
Adeem swayed. The sun burned overhead, hazy and terrible and blinding. He sat down on a curb.
“Don’t you dare sit down!” There Cate was in a second, pulling on his arm. “We are down to the wire, and my dad is still out there somewhere. Not to mention your sister. We don’t have time to rest.”
Cate was adamant about continuing their search—she was downright buzzing with renewed energy.
Adeem, on the other hand, had reached the point of exhaustion where his blood throbbed with a fever heat, even worse than that time he’d stayed up for a forty-eight-hour game jam. He wasn’t sure if he was fully conscious anymore, or maybe now he was a ghost, or a tiny corneal floater beneath Alma’s watchful eye, destined to be scooped up with an alien Kleenex and tossed into the trash void. But it wasn’t even the exhaustion that was killing him. It was the nervousness. His sister was near. Breathing the same air—theoretically. Anger had powered him through before, the sheer desire to punch Leyla for ditching him, but now he was here. He couldn’t believe they’d actually made it this far. He’d barf if he had anything in his stomach.
To think he’d gotten this close, only for his body to betray him in the last twenty-five hours. How did that poem go again? So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. He’d actually paid attention that time in English. Poetry reminded him of Leyla, after all.
Adeem rubbed his eyes. Cate’s determination was practically making her glow.
“I don’t want to die,” Adeem said. “I get that we have a
time limit and all, but in case you didn’t notice, for better or worse, we are still human with human bodies and human needs.”
“Why do you have to say it so gross like that?” said Cate, scowling. “What do you think we should do, just snooze our way through the freaking apocalypse?”
It was probably the delirium setting in, but Adeem almost laughed. She sounded like a little kid throwing a temper tantrum. He wished he could meet her mom and shake the woman’s hand; they could swap stories and share a good chuckle.
The thing was, Cate had been able to nod off a bit on the long drive, but Adeem hadn’t had a full eight hours’ rest since three days ago. Cate, being from San Francisco, had never driven a car before and decided their luck had been too bad to take unnecessary risks, so it couldn’t be helped. But Adeem had never been more tired in his life.
Besides, his legs and feet ached; Cate’s had to as well. And his skin felt like it was sizzling.
He and Cate had spent hours in the sun today, asking strangers if there was a government building still open, or a place to go to find missing loved ones. But most people laughed at them and said they had enough problems to deal with. Not to mention a group of kids stole an army tank from the military academy, wreathed it in Christmas lights, and crashed it into the country clerk’s office.
He wanted to find Leyla and Cate’s dad, but it was starting to feel like they were better off finding two guppies in a giant ocean blanketed with an oil slick and set on fire.
A siren blared in the distance; volunteers with megaphones were shouting instructions along with directions to nearby fallout shelters all around them. Somewhere, he was pretty sure the orchestra they’d seen earlier was performing Beethoven’s Fifth.
Midnight tonight would mark the start of the final day.
“Just”—Cate rubbed her temples, exasperated—“stay here for a second, okay?”
“Happily.” Adeem rested his chin in his hands. His head pounded. His eyes struggled to adjust to all the movement and color around him. His ears hurt trying to pick up threads of sound from the cacophony. There was just too much of it. He wasn’t used to any of it. He wanted to be home, in the quiet dark of the library, surrounded by the gentle hum of his computer.
A few feet away, a group of people was huddled around a small portable radio, their ears glued to a staticky news broadcast from the State Department.
Adeem felt a surge of envy. He missed his radio, too; he’d never been this disconnected from the wider world for this long. At least he’d left it behind with Rosie. It was probably safer there than with him.
Down the street, a small white van had somehow managed to maneuver through the crowd; the back of the van was wide-open, and people were distributing hazmat suits throughout the tent city. They barely had enough for twenty, maybe thirty people, from the looks of it. Others had to settle for improvised gas masks made of plastic water bottles. Adeem wasn’t even sure if any of it would protect them from whatever Alma had planned. That was the worst part of Alma’s warning: no one knew what to expect.
Adeem suddenly felt cold. And vulnerable.
It was real. All of this was real, and really happening. Little more than twenty-four hours dividing humanity from destruction. Sixty miles dividing humanity from outer space. He wanted to kick himself for not taking the chance he’d had earlier to call his parents. Like a stupid coward. Now they were probably still huddled in the unfinished basement of the mosque, surrounded by other families less broken than his—and that was the best-case scenario. He wasn’t even sure where they were.
God. He’d been so focused on the journey itself, he hadn’t even taken the time to accept that the world might really end.
Behind him, the radio news broadcast went on: “The White House today has issued guidelines for protective measures, and suggests staying indoors and in basements. Fallout shelters have been designated in all major cities . . .”
“Hungry?”
He looked up, flooded with sudden joy and relief. Cate was back. It felt like she’d been gone for several rotations of Earth. But she was back. And not only that, but she was holding two water bottles and a couple granola bars wrapped in paper towels.
“They’re homemade,” she said, handing him one of the granola bars, “but the lady who gave them to me assured me they weren’t laced with anything.”
“Oh my God,” he said, snatching a granola bar and tearing into it. “May Allah bless you, you sweet angel.” He swallowed and felt the weight of the food nestled comfortably in the emptiness of his stomach.
After a moment, he realized she was still standing.
“What’s up?”
She sighed. “I just feel like we’re no closer than we were at the start of the day. It doesn’t help that most people here aren’t even from Roswell—no one has any idea who Garrett is. I keep trying to describe him—Mom said he had dark hair and eyes—but, you know.”
“So do thousands of other people.”
“Exactly.” She sat down beside him, finally, and they finished eating in silence.
He didn’t know what to say to give her hope.
He was too tired for hope.
He hated how he’d taken his own parents for granted for so long. Parents who were healthy enough to support him, even with all his idiosyncrasies and indecisions.
“I showed someone my mom’s letter,” Cate said at last. “And they told me to beam it to Alma.” She snorted. “I guess my odds are just as good at this point that he’s actually an alien.”
Adeem scratched his chin. Odds. Odds were something Leyla loved to talk about.
Odds. Hope. Leyla.
Odds. Hope. Leyla.
Finally, it occurred to him. “Maybe we do need to find my sister here.”
Cate stared at him. Then, slowly, a smile bloomed across her face, and she reached out to hug him. He was surprised that he didn’t mind.
“So you’re ready to see her, then? Even after what Priti said?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure. But, I’m thinking, if anyone could help us find your dad, it’s her.” His mouth was so dry, he could feel his tongue expand the moment the water bottle touched it. “We need her.”
“But how are we going to find her?”
“A friend back home told me she got a job at a counseling center. Maybe we could find a clue there.”
It wasn’t much of a lead, but it was the only one they had.
According to one of the only locals they’d found roaming through the tent city, the closest counseling center—and the only one in Roswell—was called La Familia Crisis Center, about a forty-minute walk from where they were now on North Main Street.
Or it should have been forty minutes. But navigating through the crowds and taking detours to avoid the more dangerous-looking roads, where people were shooting off fireworks and setting fires and bashing in windows, set them back over an hour.
Alma hadn’t even done anything yet, and already people were falling apart at the seams. Almost like they were proving Alma’s point. It was getting harder and harder for Adeem to convince himself they were better than this.
When they finally reached La Familia Crisis Center, the sky had gone gray and whispery with dusk. What little hope Adeem had had before promptly burned down to ashes. The small, tan, boxy building had been splattered with graffiti, and the door was nothing but a jumble of glass on cement. Broken beer bottles scattered the sidewalk leading to the entrance, and one of the trees had been ripped clean out of its roots; they had to step over it to reach the remains of the door. Adeem thought he heard music, too, coming from inside, but he couldn’t tell for sure—there was so much noise everywhere, it was impossible to filter.
“You still have the pepper spray?” Adeem asked. He didn’t want to go inside. His heart slammed hard against his ribs, making his breathing shallow. What if Leyla had been caught up in all the destruction? What if she was hurt? He didn’t want to imagine. But it was all the more reason for him to keep going.<
br />
Cate nodded, looking as nervous as he felt, and pulled the pepper spray out from her bag.
Together they went inside.
A thin layer of smoke tinged the air. Dirty shoes had trekked dirt and sand all over the gray carpeted hallway. His parents would have had a fit. A couple of overturned plants contributed to the mess on the floor—these, Cate quickly turned back to their rightful place.
The music inside grew louder: a woman’s voice, melodic and calming, undulating like gentle ocean waves on a hot summer day. But there were no screams, no moans—nothing that would indicate they were in any sort of danger. Nothing but the music.
Adeem stopped walking. “Cate?”
“What?”
They’d reached another door labeled MULTIPURPOSE CHAMBER at the end of the hall.
“I think we’re safe here. Relatively.”
Cate lowered the pepper spray. “Why do you say that?”
He slowly opened the door. “Because they’re playing Enya.”
A group of at least fifteen people were arranged in a circle around a small bonfire, contained by chunks of cement and debris arranged in a ring. They sat on yoga mats, their legs crossed, and their hands together at their hearts in prayer. The room was dim, lit only by the flickering fire, and smelled entirely of lavender and sage.
It was . . . strange, to say the least. Like Adeem and Cate had entered some kind of magical vortex existing outside the confines of time and space. It was probably the most ordinary thing they’d seen since arriving in Roswell.
One of the people by the bonfire, a young man with a bun at the top of his head and a long, rumpled beard that almost covered his concave bare chest, opened his eyes. There was a tiny brass gong to the left of his feet.
“Greetings, friends,” he welcomed them. “Please, stay with us a little while. This is a sanctuary for the lost and afraid.”
Adeem and Cate stood awkwardly at the doorway, unsure of what to do.
“Thank you, but we’re kind of in a hurry, actually,” explained Adeem, clearing his throat. “We’re looking for Leyla Khan. Do you know her, or have you maybe heard of her?”
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