From a Distant Star (12 page)

“No,” he said emphatically. “Not the sun.” His arm stretched in an arc above his head, like answering a question in class. He dropped his arm and asked, “Up. What else is up?”

I squinted. It wasn’t quite dark enough to see much more than the sunset, but I knew the stars were out there. “Everything else. The stars and the moon and other planets.” I struggled to think about what else really was out there. Astronomy wasn’t my thing. I couldn’t tell you the difference between a comet and a meteor. “But they’re all far away.”

“Not all is far,” he said, shaking his head. “The moon is near. The sun is near.” He raised one finger skyward. “My home is far.”

“Your home?”

He nodded, and gave me a look like he was glad I understood, but I didn’t.

“I don’t get it. What do you mean your home is far?” We were just behind the barn, but still I pointed back the way we’d come. “Your house is right over there.”

His face fell. “Lucas house is there,” he said, jerking his head to indicate. Again his arm rose, and this time his index finger led the way, pointing to the sky. “My house is there.”

I felt a chill go up my spine and I took a step away from him. There wasn’t much light left, but I could see the contours of his face—the familiar face that I’d admired and caressed, photographed and sketched. But suddenly, it didn’t feel so familiar anymore. I swallowed back a lump of unease. I had asked him to tell me; now I owed it to him to follow through in a calm manner.

“So you aren’t Lucas then?”

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

There were only three possibilities. Either there was nothing wrong with him and he was joking, trying to get a rise out of me. Or the person standing next to me
was
Lucas, but he had somehow developed a mental illness or brain injury and now believed
he was someone else. The third possibility, the one I didn’t want to acknowledge, was that he was telling the truth.

“So you came from another planet, and now you’re inside my boyfriend?” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady.

“Yes.”

“How did that happen?”

“I had an accident,” he said. “The object you call the round, shiny thing?”

“Yes?”

“I was inside that. We were shot down.”

I felt my heart skip a beat and then speed up. His voice sounded so sincere. He believed what he was saying, I was sure of that. “And then what happened?” I asked.

“The others in my group are dead,” he said. “They stayed with the ship. I did not. I left when it happened.”

“So you were actually
inside
the round, shiny thing?” I said slowly and he nodded. “Were there lots of you in there?”

“No, just me. The others had their own round, shiny things. And all of us were connected to a bigger ship.”

“But why? Why would you come to Earth?”

“We are like . . . explorers?” he said. “We visit and record data, and that is all.”

“Lucas, if you’re messing with me, I’m going to be so mad.” Even as I said it, I knew it was wishful thinking. I wanted him to laugh and say he’d just been fooling around. That he couldn’t believe I fell for it. But Lucas, even with his great sense of humor, didn’t make fun of people. That wasn’t his way.

“I am sorry,” he said. “But I had to go somewhere and Lucas was dying. I knew I could fix him, and in turn, he could save me.”

The chill in my spine was proving to be permanent. He was talking complete nonsense, the kind of story that could get a person thrown in an insane asylum, but I could tell he thought he was telling the truth.

“Okay,” I said, exhaling. “So, just say I believe you. We’ll say that I believe you’re an alien from another planet. A teeny tiny alien traveling in a spaceship the size of a birthday cake. You got shot down, and now all the other aliens you were with are dead. So you were shot down and you crashed in the Walkers’ field and you magically just went into Lucas. So then where did Lucas go?”

He looked miserable and didn’t say anything, just wrung his hands like an old person. My thoughts spun around and landed on the unthinkable. I choked out the next question. “Is he dead?”

“Oh no. Lucas is still alive, here in this body, but he is not able to move or talk. It is like he is sleeping.” He nodded to himself, satisfied with his explanation. “A kind of sleep.”

“Then wake him up.” I heard my voice become harsh. “Get out of there and let me talk to him. I want Lucas back.”

“Emma, please,” he said. “Emma, I cannot do that. If I go out of Lucas, I will die.”

“Okay, I have an idea. You go back in your round, shiny thing and go home, and leave Lucas alone.”

“I wish I could.” He was speaking more quietly now and I had to strain to hear him. “But it is broken and won’t work.”

A mosquito buzzed around my ear and I waved it away. “But they’ll come looking for you, right? Your people will know that you’re stuck here and they’ll come back.” My mind flipped through all the things pilots did when they were in trouble. Sent up flares and signaled for help. “You must have sent out a distress call or something. They heard it and they’ll come back to pick you up. Right? Isn’t that how it works?”

“No, my people will not be back. They think I am dead.”

“But did you even
try
to contact them?”

He shook his head. “I could not. It happened too quickly.”

“Can you contact them now?”

“I have no way to contact them,” he said. “Emma, you must not tell anyone. You said you could help me.”

“I know.” Of course, when I said that, I had no idea what I was dealing with. I had to think this through. If Lucas was delusional and thought he’d become the host body for an alien, what would it take to bring him back? “What if you go inside someone else? Then will Lucas come back?”

“Maybe.”

“So do it.”

“No. I can’t.”

“You can’t or you won’t?”

His head wobbled from side to side and he didn’t say a word. Finally, I couldn’t take the silence anymore. I said, “If you traveled here from another planet, you must be more advanced than us, so why can’t you figure out how to let me have Lucas back? Are you one of the stupid ones? Is that why they left you behind?”

He didn’t flinch or move, just miserably took it like he thought he deserved my abuse, which made me even madder. Why wouldn’t he even try to defend his position?

A voice pierced the night air, coming from the back of the house. Lucas’s mom. “Lucas! Emma!” Only Mrs. Walker could manage to sound pissed off and worried all at the same time.

The Lucas imposter took off, running back toward the house and leaving me behind. I followed him. It had gotten pretty dark, so I made the trek partially from memory, the sound of Lucas’s shoes slapping against the ground just ahead of me. The back porch light was on, and now I could see Mrs. Walker standing in the yard, hands on hips. She was an average-looking woman normally, but she turned ugly when she was annoyed and right now she was super ugly. As we approached, she said, “You had me scared out of my mind. I’ve been looking everywhere for you two.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, slightly out of breath. “We were looking at the stars.” Next to me, Lucas had stopped in his tracks.

“There are stars in the front of the house too, you know,” she said. “You can see them from the porch.”

“I know, it’s just that Lucas wanted to show me something.” I almost bit my lip, regretting my explanation, because I knew she could start interrogating me about what Lucas wanted to show me and I had nothing ready to tell.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, Mrs. Walker went up to Lucas and touched his face. “Lucas, you’re crying? What happened?”

He was
crying
? Lucas never cried. When his grandfather died, he didn’t shed a tear. Once, he broke his collarbone midway through a football game, but he kept playing and later on he said it barely hurt. Lucas’s parents always bragged about how tough and brave he was. Even as a little kid, they said, Lucas never cried.

Was he crying now because of what I’d said? I’d been horrible to him, but somehow I thought this version of Lucas was immune to name calling and accusations. Did I hurt his feelings? Or was this is a physical reaction, Lucas who was trapped deep down inside crying because he couldn’t reach me? But Lucas never cried. So that couldn’t be it.

“Lucas?” Mrs. Walker lifted his chin to force him to look at her. “Why are you crying? What’s wrong?” He shook his head but didn’t say a word, so she turned her attention to me. “Emma? Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

“What? No, we were just talking.”

“Did the two of you have a fight?”

“No!” I said. “I think Lucas is just tired, right Lucas?”

His head dropped forward. “I’m just tired,” he said.

Mrs. Walker put a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s get you inside and put you to bed.” Her soft voice turned sharp when she added, “Emma, I think it’s best if you go home now.”

They went inside and left me standing there, a cloud of mosquitoes swirling around my head. Mrs. Walker was so quick to dismiss me, so fast to assume we’d had a teenage squabble. What if I’d warned her that her son thought he was possessed by an alien? I almost laughed when I thought about what her reaction would
be. If he denied it, she would think I was crazy or lying. She didn’t really like me to begin with; this would just seal the deal. But there was no way I could keep this to myself. I desperately needed to tell someone and hopefully, that someone would help me figure out what to do. I slapped at a mosquito and got into my mother’s car to go home.

When I pulled out onto the road and glanced back at the house, I saw a light on in a second-story room and a figure silhouetted in the window. Eric. Watching, always watching. That kid didn’t miss a thing. He was the smartest one in the house and the only one likely to believe me. Eric would be the one I could tell.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The next morning, I slept late and waited until ten o’clock before getting on my bike and heading over to Lucas’s house. Not getting there too early was deliberate on my part. I wanted to give Mrs. Walker a break from me.

After driving my mom’s car the night before, biking seemed to take way too much time and effort. Pedaling, pedaling, pedaling. It never ended. If I had my own car, life would be so much easier, but as it stood I was lucky to be able to use Mom’s once in a great while.

When I’d gotten home the night before, earlier than expected, my mother was watching TV, a bowl of popcorn on her lap. “Hey, baby,” she called out, not even turning her head to confirm it was me. She always left the door unlocked until I came home. I often joked that someday instead of me coming in, it would be a serial killer, but she claimed to know the sound of my footsteps. She wasn’t one to worry about anything. “I didn’t expect you back before ten.”

I settled down in a chair next to her. “Yeah, Lucas was tired, so we didn’t go to the game.”

Mom was wearing loose cotton pajama bottoms and a white cotton T-shirt, a definite sign she was in for the night. To be polite, she held the bowl out to me. The smell of hot buttered popcorn was tempting, but I wasn’t hungry, so I shook my head.

“Something bothering you?” Mom asked, shutting off the TV and giving me a concerned look.

“No, not really. Well, maybe, a little bit.”

“Hit me,” she said, crossing her slipper-clad feet on the coffee table, like she was settling in to hear an interesting story.

“What if someone told you something that you found hard to believe? Well, almost impossible to believe? What do you do with that?”

“Is this someone Lucas?”

I nodded. “He’s been so different since he recovered and when I ask him about it, his explanation is bizarre.”

Her lips closed and she made what I thought of as her thoughtful face. “Hmmm . . . Is this something you can share with me?”

“No. I mean, I’d like to, but I promised to keep it between us.”

“Oh, okay.” Yet another great thing about my mother. She never pushed for more than I could give. “Well, I guess whatever he’s saying is either true or it’s not. Has he lied to you before?”

“No. Never.” Lucas was honest to a fault. Always had been, as far as I knew. I said, “But what if what he’s saying is because he’s mixed up from all the medical treatment?”

“That could be, I guess. I mean, I’m not a doctor, but I suppose it happens.” She popped a kernel into her mouth and the room was silent except for her soft crunching. I changed my mind about the popcorn, and got up to grab a handful. A moment later, Mom said, “Is what he’s saying consistent, or does it keep changing?”

“So far, it’s been consistent.” Now I was the one chewing.

“And is this bizarre thing he’s telling you plausible?”

“Maybe.”

Mom shifted the bowl on her lap. “I guess your options are either to believe what he’s telling you or not believe him. Sometimes a leap of faith is required. Listen to your gut, Emma. Your gut knows the answer.”

“My gut is confused.”

She laughed. “Then listen to your heart. And give him time. He nearly died of cancer and he’s only been better a short while. Time is what you need.”

The next day, I thought about our conversation while I was biking to the Walkers’, down the country roads and past the strawberry fields, where I could have been earning spending money if I had put in an application early enough, but I didn’t because I’d been preoccupied with Lucas’s situation. The muscles in my legs ached. I was tired of biking. If I ever got a car, I would never ride a bike again.

When I arrived, I left my bike in the front yard and knocked politely on the front door. No one answered, so I let myself in, hoping that the first person I came across wouldn’t be Mrs. Walker. But the house seemed empty. Mack, I knew, was outside. He’d gradually come to accept cancer-free Lucas and had stopped growling, but he still seemed wary of him, so Lucas’s mother decided he was an outdoor dog, at least while the weather was nice. So Mack wouldn’t be inside. But where was everyone else? Out in the barn? I raised my voice and called out, “Hello! Anyone home?”

“We’re up here!” Eric’s yell came from upstairs. “Come on up, Emma.”

I didn’t usually go upstairs. Actually, I wasn’t
allowed
upstairs. Mrs. Walker equated bedrooms with sex, so she made it a rule that there would be no girls in the bedrooms, a rule I’d violated only once when Lucas and I were there alone. We’d made out pretty passionately on his bed, but that was as far as it went. I wasn’t worried about breaking her rule now, though. With all that had happened with Lucas’s recovery and the fact that Eric was there, it was probably okay. Probably.