She nodded, rolling her eyes in a way that was so teenage girl, I almost choked on my surprise. “My mom's a real bitch,” she added a second later.
“What do you know about what's going on in Golden?” I asked West.
“You can't get in?”
“I stopped here because I wasn't sure what the best way was. We were up in Yellowstone—”
“Damn, you went all the way up there?”
I nodded, reticent to reveal any more details. “I wanted a little vacation,” I lied. “I heard about the virus in a gas station. I tried to call Mom, but couldn’t get through.”
West nodded, drumming his fingers against the bong, which he again held between his legs. “New strain of swine flu.”
“Do you know if my Mom's okay? I mean, she's been in contact with your parents, so she has to be, right?”
West shrugged, frowning. “I haven’t heard about any deaths or anything, so I’m sure she’s fine. But I don’t think anyone’s been able to call in or out since the CDC moved in.”
Nick's hand spread out on my knee. “Nothing?” I said. I planted my feet on the floor, genuinely feeling like I might throw up.
“They said it started near your house. Your neighbor, Suxley. He’s the dickhead, right?”
“It started with his pigs or something?” I said, hating that I couldn't just be honest. I wanted to scream in frustration.
“Maybe. All I know is, the place is blocked off,” West said. “My mom left me a message yesterday, but I don’t know what it was about. I haven't called her back. She'd call twenty times a day if I answered.” He made a face.
“Could you call her back for me? Please?”
“I don't know.” He dragged a hand back through his dark hair. “I'm pretty high.”
“But it's my mom,” I said. My voice cracked on the word, and I dropped my head into my palm. I'd already lost my dad; I couldn't live without my mom, too. I was clutching my chest, where it felt like a nail had pierced my ribcage, when I heard Nick ask, “Can we stay here tonight?”
I lifted my head, narrowing my eyes at Nick, but his expression was unreadable.
“I guess so. Yeah,” West said. “We’ve got a spare room, and I don't think Guss is coming back tonight, so that makes two.” He shrugged. “I'll have to cancel a date, but I can do a rain check.” West pulled his long body off the couch, looking for all the world like the college baseball player he might have been had his dad pushed him less. He ran a hand back through his hair again and gave Vera a lopsided smile. His blue eyes were mischievous as he sauntered to the kitchen, cradling his cell phone to his ear. He spoke in low tones as he pulled a six-pack of some fancy, locally brewed beer out of the refrigerator.
I turned to Nick. “Why are we staying here?”
“We’ll talk in a moment,” he said.
The moment ended up being several minutes as West first called and canceled on Emily, then called his mom. I waited, breath held, until I couldn’t hold my breath anymore. Five minutes into the conversation, West still hadn’t asked about my mom, and Nick pulled me into the spare bedroom, leaving Vera watching an episode of “House Hunters.”
The room was a small square filled by a queen-sized bed with a black and white checkered duvet and a Coors clock on the wall. Once the door was closed, Nick wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close, resting his chin atop my head for a breath before he spoke. “Vera and I will go see what's going on. We'll take the car and get close enough for her to see Golden. She'll flash in—she can do that if the place she’s flashing to is within sight—take a look around, flash out, and we’ll drive back.”
“Nick—” I pulled away from him, looking into his dark brown eyes. “No way.”
He kneaded my shoulders. “Milo, everything will be fine.”
“You know about movies, obviously?” He nodded. “Well, there are too many movies where people promise everything will be fine and it isn’t.”
He closed his hands around both of mine. “But in this one I’m the alien, so, you know, they’re the ones who should be afraid.” He smiled briefly, before his face got all soft and serious. “There are movies with happy endings, too.”
I swallowed back tears, because even if they did get in and out safely, there wasn’t going to be a happy ending. Nick pulled me to his chest, kissing my hairline, tracing circles on my back while I stood there, feeling somehow both separate from all of this and also ensnared.
“They won’t be able to catch me again. I promise.”
I nodded numbly, not caring. “I still don't want you to go.”
“I know.” He gently grabbed my chin and tilted it up, so we were staring into each other's eyes. When he was slow to act, I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him down so our foreheads were touching. His hand caressed my cheek as his lips found mine.
He pulled away, his eyes intense, his face intense. I expected him to kiss me again, and I even had my face tipped up toward him, when he crushed me up against him in a strong hug.
“I'm glad I veered off course,” he murmured, never breaking my gaze. “It was a necessity. Not a choice. I had to see you, and hear you, and smell you. I had to do all this. Had to. You understand me, right?”
I nodded.
“Say you do.”
“I do.”
He shut his eyes, and then he pressed his cheek against my neck, taking refuge in my hair for just a few seconds before he gently pushed me back. He held one of my hands as he led me to the door, then paused with his free hand on the door knob.
Nick kissed my lips once more, and we walked back toward the living area.
Vera was hunched over the bong, and West was hunched over Vera. “That's right.”
They both froze when we walked in, then Vera sat up, grinned, and blew out a thick cloud.
“Vera, I thought we agreed—” Nick started.
“We didn't,” she said, giving West a joyous smile. “We didn't agree to anything, Nick.”
Nick and Vera played tug-of-wills with their eyes, and West shrugged, looking not regretful.
“Why don't you come with me on a gas station run?” Nick asked.
She answered him by taking another hit. She blew it out in rings so impossibly perfect I felt sure the game was up. But West didn’t seem to think her smoke solar system required any more consideration than his enthusiastic applause. He must have been really high.
“I don't want to go,” Vera said, grinning again. “I want to stay here with West and experience all human life has to offer!”
Nick gave her the requisite watch-yourself look, and Vera wobbled up, smiling again.
“Thank you for the marijuana,” she said, sounding almost…I don’t know. Not like the most powerful person in the room. She met my eyes and gave me a smile so genuine it almost made me think we were friends. “See you soon, Einstein.”
“We'll be back,” Nick said, showing me his promise with his eyes.
Vera winked, and she and Nick were gone.
I turned to West, whose red eyes were wide as saucers. “Okay, I must be really high.”
I COULDN'T HELP feeling that the moment Nick and Vera flashed out of the room, they were gone forever.
In the companionable silence that sprang up after West accepted that he’d imagined the whole thing, I pinched myself a few times, worried I might wake up and find I'd dreamed all this. Then I thought about Vera and her choice, and mom and the DoD, and it made me so nervous that a part of me wished I had. But it was a small part. Most of me wanted Nick so badly, I'd take him any way I could.
“Why do you think the government would lie about a virus?” I asked, after West had settled in with a soccer game on TV.
He shrugged, and I noticed he was wearing royal blue draw-string pants with lollipops on them. I checked his shirt—black; one of the long-sleeved tops that went with thermal underwear—and wondered what Vera thought of him. He was handsome, objectively: Dark hair and blue eyes. Lanky, but tall.
But was that the sort of thing Vera even cared about? Maybe Nick’s borrowed body had regular teen hormones, and Vera’s alien-made ‘vessel’ didn’t.
“There could be lots of reasons,” West said with a twist of his lips. “Do you think the virus is fake?”
I shook my head. “It’d just weird.”
“I dunno.” He narrowed his eyes. “If you’re not careful, I’m going to think something else is going on with you.”
I rolled my eyes and tried to act like that was just dumb. “What, I’m some kind of terrorist or something?”
“Maybe. Your mom was in a cult.”
“Oh my gosh no she wasn’t!” Mom was kind of into Hare Krishna right before she met Dad. “Speaking of my mom, West, what did your mom say?”
He had to think about this for a second; realization dawned on his face, bringing with it regret. “I forgot to ask,” he said sheepishly.
“West!”
“I’m sorry! When I called she got all over me about forgetting my aunt’s birthday—”
“Which one?”
“Forty-seven, I think.”
For the most face-palm-worthy moment of my life, I face-palmed. “Which aunt?”
“Oh. Ha ha. Marcy.”
“Oh.” I’d never heard much about his Aunt Marcy. “Well, call her back!”
“Why don't you just call her?” He held out his iPhone, and I felt a stab of longing for my own phone.
“I don't want to.” I pulled a pillow into my lap. “Just call her back.”
“Dude, she’ll be all over me again.”
“Please, West.”
He sighed. “Okay, I'll try her in a few minutes.” He looked me up and down, then toward the door. “Now that we’re alone…you sure you’re cool? You really weren’t kidnapped, were you?”
I shake my head. “It was just a crazy accident. I…don’t know how things ended up this way.” As West nodded sagely, I wondered for the first time what my friends thought about me now. They had met Nick, after all. Had they sensed anything different about him? I hadn’t even wondered how I would explain all this, if I got the chance. “I'm worried if we try to go to Golden, we'll get...caught before I can even see my mom.” I inhaled, fighting off the sudden sting of tears.
“I gotcha, Lo. Just let me come down some, and I'll call Skylar.”
“Thank you.”
He smiled. “Now you tell me how you really met your friends.” He winked, and I couldn't help smiling back a little.
He made a cross over his heart and said, “To the grave, sister.”
The hazy cloud of weed smoke had grown ever thicker, and I was worried I was getting some kind of second-hand high. I had never wanted to smoke pot before—never considered it—so I had no idea if that was a real thing, or if I would be feeling this paranoid anyway.
“Milo?”
I blinked at West.
“I said what did your mom do? To piss you off?”
“Oh. Um... She just works a lot. Like, a lot. Since Dad died, she doesn't care about anything but the turbines. It gets annoying.”
He nodded. “That was the story growing up for me a lot.” He snickered. “Look how I turned out,” he said in jovial voice that contained not a trace of irony.
“It gets old,” I said.
He nodded, sizing me up with those blue eyes while he absently stroked the bong. “You sure you don't want a hit?”
“I'm sure.” I stretched my legs out. They felt stiff, in need of movement. “When are you going to call your mom?”
If I didn't find out something soon, I wasn't sure I could keep on sitting here.
West stood. “I'll go call her now.”
“Wait!” I practically cried, and he turned around, frowning. I fumbled for an explanation for my reaction. “Do it here. So I can hear things as she says them.”
My heart was pounding, because what if West really wasn’t going to call Aunt Skylar? I knew I was being paranoid, but they really were out to get me. I had to be.
West sat back on the couch; I sat down, too. I watched him punch some numbers on his phone. Garish light from the TV flickered across his face, but suddenly I didn't even care what Aunt Skylar told him. All I could think about was how everything rested on me. If Nick didn't have...whatever it was he had for me, he and Vera might be blowing their whistles and ending human life sometime about right now. I covered my mouth with my hand, feeling like I might be sick. I swallowed convulsively, totally unable to get up and rush to the bathroom.
I caught West giving me a strange look as he spoke into his phone, but I couldn't move the hand that was slapped over my mouth to give him a reassuring smile.
What would Earth look like with no…anything? Just a big rock.
I tried to imagine “The Rest” descending on Earth, and realized I had no idea what that would look like. I couldn’t even begin to imagine it. I wished I'd asked more questions about what life was like for Nick, and about fragmenting. I wondered sickly what his death would look like…if that happened.
I tried to reconcile the metallic creatures from my imagination with the sweet guy who'd swam in the hot springs with me, but I couldn't. I just couldn't understand how Nick could be both things at once. It was the same problem I had with Dad. If he was there, he wasn't here; even if there was a heaven, I still sort of hated it, because my dad belonged with me…
I shut my eyes. I needed to stop thinking.
I inhaled deeply and turned to West. He was holding his hand up and moving his thumb and fingers together in a talking motion. “No, it’s nothing important.” He shut his eyes, looking exasperated. “Nothing like that.” He paused, “Mom, I said I'm not feeling 'off' at all. Just tired. End of the week, you know?”
Another long silence, in which West's face looked heavy. “Actually, I called back because I forgot to ask if you had heard any news from Golden.”
My heart froze. West nodded. His mouth turned into a serious frown, and I thought, Oh shit.
Tears welled in my eyes as I stared at West, and he moved to sit beside me, surprising me by wrapping an arm around my shoulders. Oh no! What the hell happened?
I heard a beeping sound that lasted for maybe three seconds, followed by something that sounded like a man's low voice, and static. I peeked my eyes open, wondering if West had turned up the volume on the TV. He hadn’t, but he did jump to his feet and stride to a little black box sitting on a table beside it. It had antennae ears and a flashing light flashing red.
West turned to me, a deer in headlights. “Mom, I've gotta go.” He slid his phone into the pocket of his drawstring pants and was at the door in a flash.
I got up to follow, weighted by unease. I knew when I saw West’s face pressed to the peephole that something was wrong. Time slowed, the way it always does when things go straight to hell, and I heard West hiss, “F-ing cops!”
He whirled on me, his face a mask of holy crap. “Damnit, the pigs!”
It took me half a second to realize that if West was dashing past me, he probably hadn't ratted me out. I remembered he was high, and underage; he thought they were here for him. My next thought was terror: Nick and Vera. Had something happened to them?
Oh, please no.
I looked left and right, searching in vain for an escape that wasn't the front door. I remembered we were on the second floor.
Crap!
I dashed after West, chasing him through his bedroom and into his bathroom. I found him standing over the toilet, feeding little plastic bags of weed to the toilet bowl.
“Shit, Milo! Frexing shit!”
I grabbed his arm. “West, we’ve got to get out of here!”
“I’ve got to flush this shit!” he cried.
“They aren’t here for that! That doesn’t even make any sense! It’s legal, remember?”
He looked at me, eyes wide with panic. “I’ve been mailing it out of state!” he gasped.
“What!”
“I’ve been mailing it to a few of my f
riends at different colleges. I put a bogus address as the mailing address and I put a house they’ve scoped out as the return address and—”
“This is not about THAT!” I practically screamed in his ear.
I grabbed him by the arm and flung him out of the bathroom. “We need to get out of here now!”
“What?”
“They’re here for me West! And they’re not police. They’re bad people. And I need to get out now so please help me!”
He snatched his current baggie to his chest as his eyes narrowed on me.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
I swallowed hard, barely able to get air in or out as West's blue eyes blinked at me, anger brimming just beneath suspicion. He grabbed my shoulder, squeezing. “Milo, what’s going on? Who are Nick and Vera?”
I shook my head, unable for a full second to answer him. There was a loud pounding on the door. “Denver Police,” someone called. “Open up.”
“West, they’re aliens.”
I SAID IT the way you might reveal, I don’t know, an “A” on a tough final to your mom: like it was important, but nothing to get too worked up about.
West’s face reacted appropriately. His eyebrows scrunched down low over his eyes and then shot up before he grabbed my shoulders with both hands. His lips peeled back, the expression he'd worn that night, two years ago, that we had wrecked Uncle William's Escalade.
“What the hell are you talking about?” A low boom echoed from the door—too close!—and I grabbed West's arm off my shoulder and squeezed his wrist. “West, this is real! We need to get out of here! They're going to kill me!”
In case he didn't get the point, I jerked him one more time. He must have thought I was nuts, because he threw my arm off and dashed back into the bathroom. “West, please!” In that moment, I didn't even know what I was asking for. My brain had started slowing down, part of me accepting the inevitability of my capture while the other part considered jumping out the bathroom window.
I slammed the bathroom door shut and leaned against it, panting. “West, remember when you thought you saw Nick and Vera disappear from the room? That’s because they did because they really are aliens and I know it’s crazy but I need to get away!”