Pod (2 page)

“What just happened?” I ask.

“Don’t know.”

“A car crash?”

Still looking out the window, he says, “No. This took too long. It was something else.”

“Like it was inside your head?”

He turns from the window. “Exactly.”

“Then what the hell was it? I thought my brain was exploding.”

“I’m thinking a furnace bearing.”

That seems like a huge stretch. I walk to my desk and pick up the handset for the landline. No dial tone. Since our phone and Internet are bundled together, that means no web. Perfect. How will I get the rest of my homework done?

I say, “Can furnace bearings shut down the telephone?”

“It’s just a theory,” he says, sitting on a corner of my bed.

Strength is returning to my legs. The ringing in my ears is almost gone. I glance at the digital clock on my nightstand.

5:03.

I should be sleeping for another hour. Then it’s thirty minutes of cramming for a first-period history test, but I can’t get online for the notes. This day has suck written all over it. A thought floats by, something I should catch, but my aching brain can’t reel it in.

Dad says, “Try the radio.”

I switch it on. Nothing but static up and down the band. And it’s a weird, wavering, screechy static. I try AM. More of the same. The sound reminds me of the big noise. I turn it off. It’s a good thing Mom’s away at a conference. Otherwise she’d be freaking out about now.

I’m starting to feel uneasy, like I’m on the edge of something but not sure what. I track down yesterday’s jeans and dig out my cell. “How much you want to bet this doesn’t
work?” I flip open the phone, dial our home number. “No service,” I say.

“This is definitely unusual.”

“You think?”

He shoots me a pained look.

“With a noise like this,” I say, “shouldn’t Dutch be barking his head off?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m going to see if he’s all right.”

Dad stands up. “I’ll check the furnace.”

Downstairs the house is dark, but there’s enough early morning light to see where I’m going. I walk into the living room first, look out the picture window. We live on a quiet cul-de-sac with overgrown hedges and washed-out cedar fences. At this hour the neighborhood should be mostly asleep, but it isn’t. Lights are on everywhere. The apartment building across the street is lit up like it’s dinnertime, not two hours before breakfast. I guess we aren’t the only ones with squeaky bearings.

I walk into the kitchen. It still has the lingering smells from last night’s supper—Dad’s regrettable attempt at French onion soup. The digital clock on the microwave reads 5:05. Again that slippery thought comes to me, but this time I’m able to hold on. It’s probably been five minutes since the big noise. I wonder if it happened at exactly 5:00. I’m sure that means something, but again, the significance is just out of reach.

Dutch is sleeping on the back deck, curled up on his rug by the patio door. A nervous, sad-eyed mutt, he barks at everything, even squirrels in a tree. I tap on the glass. He opens an eye, flips his tail a couple of times, and settles back to sleep. This feels wrong.

Dad walks into the room and stands beside me. “I guess Dutch didn’t hear it,” he says, yawning. His tone doesn’t match the unsettled feeling in my stomach.

“But none of the neighborhood dogs are barking.”

Dad scratches his head.

“How’s the furnace?”

“Running like a champ.”

We share a look but say nothing.

Birds fly from branch to branch. A gust of wind sends leaves skittering across the patio floor. Storm clouds gather and darken a turbulent sky. The sun feels like it’s going down instead of up. Sirens pierce the moment. It’s an ambulance and a fire truck, somewhere close. This wakes Dutch. He sees us, jumps to his feet, presses his nose to the glass.

I reach for the door.

“Josh, wait!”

The urgency in Dad’s voice stops me cold. He’s looking up. I follow his eyes.

The air is sucked out of my lungs. My jaw hangs open, numb.

Dropping down through the clouds, silent like a spider on a web, is a massive black sphere.

It’s a mile away at least, but even from this distance it dwarfs the neighborhoods below. I brace myself for the
horror of watching houses crushed with people inside. But it stops well above the trees, maybe five hundred feet off the ground. It hovers soundlessly.

Dad whispers, “Sweet Jesus.”

He points to another one, farther to the east. Then another.

Within half a minute the entire horizon is dotted with black spheres. Dutch scratches at the glass, oblivious to the scene playing out above his head.

The spheres begin to rotate.

Then, as if on cue, they all start emitting jagged beams of white-blue light. The beams split off into smaller and smaller ones, like twigs off a branch, some into the air, most striking the ground. Two cars are speeding down a fire road on Horse Heaven Hills. A flash of light and they’re both gone. No explosion, no ball of flame. Just gone.

“Dad!” I yell.

He stares out the window, shaking his head, mumbling, “No, no, no.”

“I’m checking out front!”

I sprint through the kitchen and down the hall to the living room window. I scan the front yard. There’s a sphere spinning above the apartment building. It’s picking off cars parked along the curb. A dog trots by, dragging an empty leash.

There’s a bicycle on its side in the middle of the cul-de-sac, an upside-down helmet, and rolled-up newspapers scattered around. These belong to Jamie, our newspaper girl.

I open the front door. Search our yard, the street.

“Jamie!”

Nothing.

“Jamie!”

To my right, a whimpering, crying sound. Four cars and a beat-up RV are parked at various spots in the cul-de-sac. A white Honda is closest to me. Jamie is crouched down low, using her position to shield her from the sphere. It’s a forty-yard dash to our front step.

A flash of light and two cars are gone.

“Jamie, now!”

She looks at me. There’s a cut on her forehead, blood smeared on her cheek.

Another flash. The RV disappears.

She hesitates for a second, then stands up and runs. But something is wrong. Her left leg collapses. She regains her balance, starts running, stumbles again. I lunge to go out and help her. Two arms wrap me in a vise from behind. I’m pulled, screaming, back into the house.

Jamie is at the end of our driveway. Her eyes lock on mine.

She disappears, midstride, in a flash of white-blue light.

Flashes of Light

She’s trying to wake me. “Megs? C’mon, honey.”

I’m trying to ignore her.

“Megs. Wake up.”

Ignoring Mom is like ignoring a bad itch. She shakes my sleeping bag.

“Wake up, honey. C’mon!”

I know she won’t stop. And if I keep it up she’ll get mad, and that’s something I definitely want to avoid. I open my eyes. “Okay, okay! I’m up already.”

She peers at me from the front seat, her face all perfect with Cinnamon Blush lips, brown eyeliner, hair brushed and tied back like she’s been at it for hours. Her blue satin top shows more boobs than I thought she had. I sniff the air. Her flowery perfume mixes in with all the dirty laundry piled up on the floor in back.

“Megs, I’m sorry, but I need to get going.”

Going? Now I’m wide awake.

“Where?” I sit up in the backseat, rub the sleep out of my eyes, and look at the digital clock duct-taped to the dashboard. It’s hard to focus in the dim light.

4:48 a.m.

“Why are we getting up now?”

“I know it’s early, honey. I’m sorry. But I’m in a hurry and we have to talk.”

Mom saying she’s sorry twice in the same day? That’s a record. Something is definitely wrong. I need to figure some things out. We’re in a place I don’t recognize, full of shadows. There’s lots of concrete. A blue car is parked next to us, and somewhere beyond that is a green door that reads
Hotel Lobby
.

“Where are we?”

“We’re in the parking garage—”

“At a hotel?”

“Yes. But I—”

“I thought we were going to sleep at the beach.”

“We ran out of gas, remember?”

It’s coming back to me in pieces. Rolling into LA after midnight. The tank on “E.” Getting lost. Finding this hotel. Mom parking in the garage, fixing her hair in the mirror, putting on lipstick, going in to get directions to the beach. Me falling back to sleep. Mom kissing me good night, smelling of cigarettes and beer.

“Why do you have to leave now? Why are you all dressed up?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I have a job interview and I need to go right now.”

“A job interview?” My heart skips a beat. “In those clothes?”

“Yes, honey. Now you need to listen.”

And the missing piece falls into place. The whispering man.

“You’re meeting him, aren’t you? The one I heard you whispering with outside the car?”

“He bought us dinner,” she says, her eyes avoiding mine.

“Buffalo wings?”

I remember them making out. He had thin gray hair and a beard.

She takes a deep breath, fusses with a link on her bracelet. I can tell she’s dying to light a cigarette. She leans forward, suddenly going from soft to hard. Her green eyes drill into mine.

“I don’t have time for this, Megs. You got that? Now be quiet and listen. You need to do exactly what I tell you.”

She pauses, letting her words sink in. I sit in my sleeping bag, stewing.

“Wait in the car. Don’t go anywhere. Keep the doors locked and don’t open them for anyone. Not anyone. Understand?”

“Not even the police?”

She blinks. This hits a nerve. The police are not our friends at the moment. “I’ll only be gone an hour,” she says.

“A whole hour! Where are you going?”

“A different hotel.”

“Why doesn’t he interview you in this hotel?”

“This hotel doesn’t have a … coffee shop.”

She’s making absolutely no sense. “A coffee shop? What kind of job is it?”

A car pulls up behind us. It’s a white Mercedes with tinted windows. I can’t see who’s driving, but I know it’s the whispering man. She grabs her purse.

“Why don’t we just go to San Diego now?” I ask, knowing I can’t stop her but needing to try. “We can just—”

“Honey, please. We don’t have any gas, remember?” She smiles. We’re back to soft. “Don’t turn on the radio, okay? You could kill the battery and God knows we don’t need that. And remember, stay … in … the … car. When I come back I’ll have some money. We can buy gas and a huge breakfast at Denny’s, okay?” I hear the Mercedes idling behind us. She leans over the seat, kisses my hair, and whispers, “And then we’ll go to the beach. I promise.” Her perfume hangs like a cloud of rose petals over my head. She checks her lips in the rearview mirror, tugs her blouse down, opens the door, and leaves.

She starts walking toward the Mercedes, the click of her high heels echoing on the concrete walls. Then she stops, turns around.

She changed her mind!

She hurries back to the car and taps the window. “Lock it,” she mouths, pointing to the button. I push it down and she smiles. Her bright red lips blow me a kiss. There’s
something in her eyes, a glistening wetness, that doesn’t match her smile. Whatever this “interview” is, I know she doesn’t want the job.

Just because I’m twelve doesn’t mean I’m stupid.

I swing around to watch through the duct-taped cracks in the rear window as she walks to the Mercedes. Even in a dirty parking garage she’s beautiful. Tall, thin, like a princess—in a clingy red skirt. She opens the passenger door, says something to the driver. He has gray hair and a beard. Without looking back, she gets in. The Mercedes glides out into the early morning shadows.

Now what?

I’m wide awake. I have to pee but my orders are to stay … in … the … car. That’s just great. If I’m going to make it I need a distraction. Some kind of game. I’m good at keeping track of time in my head. I can look at a clock once and then know exactly when fifteen minutes has passed, give or take five seconds. My best friend, Jessica, says it’s almost creepy the way I always know what time it is. She calls it my “brain clock.” It’s the closest thing I have to a superpower. I decide to count down each minute until she gets back. That’s fifty-nine starting … now.

4:58.

I look around our ratty old car, a ’78 Nova with thumb-sized cracks in the dashboard. The ashtray overflows with smashed-up Marlboros with red lipstick on them. Three days’ worth of empty Jalapeño Doritos bags are crumpled on the floor. I’m in a sleeping bag that hasn’t been washed since who knows when. Mom just sleeps
under a thin yellow blanket with cigarette holes. Actually, I wonder if she sleeps at all.

4:59.

I try to remember where we slept two nights ago.

Oh yeah, a truck stop just over the California state line. Smelled diesel fumes all night. But it wasn’t as scary as this place. There were more lights. Here there are lots of cars and lots of dark shadowy places between them. I notice a big black SUV in the corner, two rows over. It’s so big it makes the car beside it look like a toy. I wish we had a car like that. There’d be so much room …