A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) (10 page)

“DUDE.”
Ducky’s outburst is so loud, it stops Cole and me mid–splash attack. We turn to see my PIP, forlorn, staring at the soaking wet floor behind us. “I already mopped that spot.”

I frown. “Sorry, Duck,” I say. Truth be told, the spot doesn’t look much different from the rest of the floor. Still, I feel like a shit. “Here.” I reach for the mop. “Why don’t you take a break?” There are about nine hundred things I’d rather do than Duck’s chores, but I haven’t seen my bud this close to losing it since the third grade, right before he hit Yani Bloomquist with his trombone case for heckling him about his band uniform. “I’ll do the rest.”

“Don’t worry about it, really.” Ducky jerks the mop away from me so quickly that he overturns the bucket. Filthy water everywhere.

“Ducky!” I screech, up on my toes. But it’s too late—my
shoes are soaked through. I squint at him. “What’s going on with you?”

He leans down to pick up the bucket, then slams it down on the ground hard. “Oh, nothing,” he snaps. “Just cleaning up after your messes. As usual.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” I shriek back. Seriously, who is this pissy freak, and what has he done with my bestie? In the corner I spy Dad and Bernard, trying to make a discreet exit out of the kitchen to avoid getting swept up in our little spat. I wish I could join them.

“Just forget it,” Ducky grumbles.

“I will not just forget it, Spaz Attack. Spill.”

“I thought that’s what I just did.”

“Ducky, seriously, dude—”

“You wanna know why I’m pissed? ’Cause I’m always getting dragged through shit because of you, Elvie,” Ducky barks back. I freeze in place, my head back ten centimeters on my neck like the force from Ducky’s words is physically shoving it. I don’t think Ducky’s ever yelled at me.
Ever
.

“Oh, like I’ve never had to put up with crap because of you?” I stammer back.

“When was the last time I got
you
locked up in a high-security alien prison, Elvie?”

I blink, trying to be sympathetic. “It sucks for me too, Duck,” I begin softly, but he cuts me off.

“I haven’t even
spoken
to my mom in almost three weeks, Elvie,” he says. “She probably thinks I’m dead.” I suck in my breath. With everything that’s been going on, somehow Ducky’s family never even popped into my head.

“I’m sorry,” I say, suddenly feeling worse than I knew was possible. “I never meant . . . I wish you weren’t here, really, I do.”

His eyes flit to Cole beside me, who’s totally
not
pretending to ignore our fight (thanks, Cole), just standing staring with his mouth open as it all unfolds before him. “Yeah,” Ducky replies flatly, eyes fixed on Cole. “I got that.”

“No,” I say, face-palming. “That’s not what I . . . Ducky, you’re just upset.”

“Yeah,” he snaps again. “Of
course
I’m upset, Elvie. I’m like a frigging
stick figure
in a camp full of superheroes, and for what?” I try to grab the mop from him again, but he jerks it back once more. “I’m sick of being the sidekick in ‘The Amazing Adventures of Elvie Nara,’ ” he tells me. He stares at the mop handle for a second as though unsure what to do with it, then seems to make up his mind. “You know what?” he says, tossing the mop at me. I catch it awkwardly. “Maybe I
will
let you do the floors. I’m done.” He spins on his heel and marches to the door, tracking sudsy footprints as he goes.

That’s it. Do I feel bad for the guy? Of course. But did I get him dragged here on purpose? Hardly. I will not be made to feel guilty.

“If you’re so sick of being my sidekick,” I shout after him as he reaches the door, “then go have your own adventure, dumbass!”

The door swings closed behind him, and I turn back to the sink, shoulders slumped. I lean the mop against the wall and do my best to shake off the argument as I begin to empty the clean dishes from the rack. Ducky’s just tired, I tell myself. He didn’t mean any of it.

But my mood isn’t improved when I look at the dish rack.

“Cole!” I screech, suddenly realizing the key to my boyfriend’s amazingly fast dishwashing skills. “Are you kidding me? These still have food all over them!”

“Really?” Cole asks, totally nonplussed. “I wiped them all.”

“With what, your feet? Did you even use soap?”

Cole, of course, merely shrugs. “So they’re a little dirty,” he says. “So what? I’m not competing in the Olympics or anything.”

I do my best to steady myself. No use fighting with Cole, too. “I’m pretty sure there’s no Olympic dishwashing even—” I stop talking when I feel Cole’s arm on my waist. I jump, startled. Thankfully, Livs continues to sleep soundly, still smacking her lips. “Cole,” I say quietly.

He kisses the nape of my neck, wriggling his arm around the two of us—me and the baby both. “Hey,” he says. And I can just hear the warm smile in that one word. “You want to, um”—he raises his eyebrows—“do stuff?”

So subtle, my Cole.

My skin is tingly at his touch. How long has it been since Cole and I had an actual moment together? I look down at baby Olivia. Oh yeah. A little over nine months.

“Cole,” I say again. I do not turn around. “Not now, all right?”

“But . . .” He plants one on me. An epic Cole Archer kiss. It is wet and warm and wonderful.

I’ve got to say, the guy sure makes a compelling argument. Still . . .

“Cole.” I pull away.

“You don’t want to do it,” he pouts.

“I’d rather just . . . talk,” I tell him honestly.

Cole scrunches up his nose. “Seriously?”

Cole’s hand is back on my waist. His lips are back on mine. I’m goose-pimply all over.

“See?” he says softly, in between pecks. His lips are soft and full and beautiful. “You
do
want to do stuff. I can tell.”

My eyes dart open, and I catch a glance of the dirty dishes in the sink. Ducky’s mop against the wall. And our baby—our
baby
—who’s going to wake up not too long from now and need to be fed again. After which she will need to be changed. Again. And guess who’s going to end up doing all of
that
?

“Not now, all right, Cole?”

“But—”

“I said not now!”

Cole’s eyes go huge, like I just smacked him on the snout with a rolled-up newspaper. “Sorry,” I mutter.

“It’s okay,” he says into the sink, taking up his terrible dishwashing again. “You’re just tired. I get it.”

I try not to be offended by the notion that the only reason not to suck face with Cole Archer is because “I’m tired.” I’ve got other things to worry about. Like how right about now it’s finally occurring to me that the one person I need to be talking about Serious Life Issues with is the same guy who just spelled “Mommy” incorrectly on our daughter’s stomach in permanent marker.

“Elvs?” Cole calls.

But I’m already halfway out the kitchen door, almost without
realizing that I’m walking. “I’m fine, just finish up without me, okay?” I shout over my shoulder.

Cole says something else as the door closes behind me, but honestly, at this moment, whatever he has to say can wait. Because if I don’t get some air into my lungs, I think I might burst.

•  •  •

After I hand off Olivia to her doting grandfather, I make my way outside so that the pressure building up in my brain has somewhere to go. There are six dogs milling about outside their kennel when I exit the log-cabin exterior of the camp. The snow is light and dry underneath my damp shoes, and I laugh as one of the dogs starts lathering my face with a series of hard-core face-lickings. Yeah, maybe this was exactly what I needed right now.

“Pontius!” comes Oates’s scolding voice behind me. “Down! Down, boy!”

As soon as the dogs hear Oates, all of them immediately snap to attention—back on their haunches, tails wagging, ears relaxed. I turn and see Oates heading our way, one enormous bag of puppy chow loaded across each shoulder.

“Miss Elvie,” he greets me cordially. “I see Pontius is still keen on you.” When he reaches the kennel, Oates unslings the food bags, which land with two heavy plops in the snow, and the dogs take that as their cue to go back to their regularly scheduled business. Two of the bigger huskies begin nuzzling the bags of food like if they’re nice enough, the bags will give up the food of their own accord. Meanwhile, Pontius returns to his Elvie love fest.

I laugh. Nothing like doggie smooches to lift your spirits. “We’ve got a regular love affair going, Pontius and me,” I say, leaning down to rub Pontius’s muzzle. “Don’t we, boy?” He’s a beautiful tan husky, and other than Oates, I’m the only person that Pontius will play with. Unless you count when he stole Cole’s hat right off his head and buried it behind the cabin.

“He’s a good judge of character,” Oates replies.

The dogs whine and whimper as Oates tears into the first bag, but as soon as he pours the kibble into the trough, the canines go to town, shoving at each other for prime food-gobbling position. Pontius allows me one last nuzzle before leaving to join them.

While the dogs chow down, I turn and stare out into the snow, which this afternoon is mostly masked by a heavy blanket of white fog. I can barely see more than a few hundred meters before the snow and the fog meld into one giant splotch of white. Out here, in the crisp air, my thoughts slow their frantic swirling and begin to settle at the surface of my brain.

“It’s easy to find yourself a little stir-crazy at first,” Oates says, reading me like a book. “Tensions invariably flare between even dear friends. It will pass.”

“What if it doesn’t?” I ask.

Oates shrugs. “Then it doesn’t.”

Great.

“I’m fine, really,” I say. “Just some drama with Ducky and Cole.”

Oates nods, the kind of polite nod that indicates that he’d rather be talking about just about anything besides my teenage girl feelings. He turns around holding the two empty bags
and moves without saying a word toward the large incinerator unit that’s about thirty yards away from the cabin. He glances behind him when he’s about halfway there, and I realize he means for me to follow him. I leave the chomping dogs and rush to catch up.

No one ever bothers to shovel out this stretch, and the snowdrifts are nearly a meter high, so I have to push hard to keep up. Oates, of course, cuts through the snow like it’s powder. I stop a few meters behind Oates as he opens the chute to the incinerator feeder and tosses the empty bags in. Once he closes the chute, a sudden puff of black smoke shoots up into the air and quickly dissipates. Oates busies himself with something on the side of the incinerator.

“You’re fortunate to have two men here who love you very dearly, Miss Elvie,” Oates says.

“Love?” I practically choke on my own spit. How carefully has this guy been listening to my conversations? When did me and my buddies become the new Cape Crozier daytime soap? “Well, I don’t think it’s quite
that
drama—”

“Your child’s father, and your own,” Oates clarifies.

“Ah.” Clearly
I’m
the only one with the soap opera fantasies. “Er, yeah,” I say. “I guess that’s true.”

“The lad Donald is quite protective of you as well,” Oates continues. “This is good.” He looks at me, and even though his mouth stays even, his eyes smile down on me warmly. “It’s good to have friends you can rely on to stay true.”

“Oates, who was she?” I ask. “The woman who got you sent here.” The question’s been buzzing in my brain for weeks: What was she like, the mysterious woman so lovely that she
could sway stoic, duty-bound Titus Oates away from the Code?

If Oates is taken aback by my brashness, he doesn’t let on. “No woman, Miss,” he says quietly.

“But I thought all you guys here had broken the Code and had, er . . .
relations
with an extra Earth girl or two.”

“There are laws that govern us beyond the Code, child,” Oates replies, an old, lingering sadness in his voice.

“So what are you here for, then?” Hell, if I’m already in this deep, I might as well keep digging. “Industrial espionage? Genocide? Were you one of the studio execs who green-lit
Sucker Punch
?”

Oates bends down and resumes fiddling with the incinerator. “I’m here,” he says, “for staying true to my friends.”

“Dude,” I say, feeling the ice starting to break ever so slightly, “I’m stuck in this place freezing my butt off for who knows how long, and all you can give me is—”

“Freezing your butt off?” Oates interrupts, as if missing my point entirely. “You’re cold?”

“Well, no,” I say, realizing it’s true. I’m not cold, though I should be. It’s most definitely below freezing out, and when I look down, I notice that I didn’t remember to zip my thermal up all the way when I came outside. “I guess I’m, I dunno, adapting to the cold, or whatever,” I say. Even my toes aren’t that chilly, despite the dirty mop water that’s icing up under my laces.

Oates looks at me for a beat too long before he starts talking. “Adaptation is good, especially in a place like this. It means you’re strong.” He rises to his feet, gesturing toward the cabin, where the dogs have finished eating and are tumbling
and tousling with one another. “Take the dog,” he says. “Long ago, when the dog was still a wolf, he was a rogue, and lived or died by what he could catch. Then the wolf came into camp, learned to live with humans, and he changed. Adapted. Soon the wolf was a dog, and the dog helped man, and the man helped dog. The two species learned to coexist. They even came to depend on each other.”

“So you’re saying I should learn to fetch slippers?” I ask. I’m a little confused by this whole monologue.

Oates merely pats his leg for Pontius, who comes leaping over to greet him. “That which remains still cannot survive,” he replies, scratching the husky’s head.

I’m pondering Oates’s Yoda-like proclamation when I’m shaken from my reverie by that same
Crack-BOOM!
noise off in the distance that I heard when we first arrived two weeks ago.

“Are you
sure
it never thunderstorms here?” I say to Oates, turning back around. “Because it seriously sounds like . . .” I trail off.