The Fellowship for Alien Detection (25 page)

“Dodger?” Harry asked. He was looking at Dodger with something like real worry again. . . .

Dodger couldn't take this. Everything was welling up inside. Suddenly, he felt a hitch at the back of his throat, almost like he was about to cry. What was happening to him? He had to get out of here.

“I—I um, forgot my meBox,” Dodger mumbled, sliding out of the booth. He'd get some air, some space to think, to breathe. “It's in my suitcase. I— I need it for the museum.”

“Oh.” Harry seemed startled. “Um, well, I . . . sure.” He pulled out his keys. “Hurry back, though, before your food gets cold.”

Dodger snatched the large key ring and hurried down the aisle. He burst out the front door into the warm sun and half-ran back to the car. Once he was there, he sat on the back bumper and tried to calm down. He barely understood this feeling. Like he was scared and yet deeply sad at the same time. But about what? Was he scared about telling his father what was really going on? Or was he scared about what Harry might tell him? What
was
all of this? He wished he still had the crystal shard. Something to connect with and feel some kind of certainty.

Dodger popped the back gate and spied his backpack at the top of the pile. He considered just taking it to the curb, hailing a cab, and going. Vanishing, just like that.

He grabbed his pack by the strap and yanked it out, but doing so caused the unsteady arrangement of bags to shift. They toppled out of the car, an avalanche of gear crashing to the pavement. Something cracked hard, and there was a little tinkle of broken pieces.

Dodger slammed his backpack to the ground in frustration.
You probably just broke your meBox, too, you idiot
, he scolded himself, but who even cared!

He looked around the empty parking lot, wondering if anyone had witnessed his tantrum, but there was no one around. Even that RV was now empty. Dodger picked up his backpack and fished out his meBox. He shoved it in his pocket, thinking he could at least take some pictures in the museum.

He grabbed the tent and a sleeping bag and hurled them back into the car. He picked up his dad's suitcase and heard the shuffle of whatever he'd broken. He placed it on the ground and zipped it open to see what he'd messed up now.

“Franny, everything okay?” Dodger looked over his shoulder to see Harry approaching, walking quickly.

“Fine!” Dodger called. He flipped open Harry's suitcase.

Harry's footsteps were getting closer. Hurrying. “Franny, wait!”

Dodger looked inside.

Everything was no longer fine.

“Hey, what are you doing in there?” Harry was right behind him.

Dodger lurched to his feet and spun around, his face red. He felt woozy and barely stayed upright. Inside, it felt like shelves were overturning, floors falling through.

Harry's eyes grew wide, his mouth hanging half-open. Dodger had never seen that expression before: like he'd been caught.

“What are you doing with this?” Dodger asked, holding Sid and R2's lunch box radio. His fingers were shaking. His voice felt hoarse, a clump of cotton. His heart was pounding.

Harry's jaw moved up and down before he finally spoke: “I—I went back for it. Listen, Dodger, just come back inside with me. I can explain. This is what I wanted to talk to you about.”

And Dodger suddenly saw a different version of his dad over these last few days: Harry sneaking back to get the radio, sneaking down into the mine after him . . . all those glances . . .

“You've been spying on me,” said Dodger.

“No, not spying, Franny,” Harry stammered. “I'm your father. I'm trying to protect you. . . . I . . .” He trailed off. Glanced at the sky. Peeled off his red baseball cap and wiped at his forehead. With each little move Harry made, Dodger felt himself winding tighter.

“Look,” said Harry. “I—I thought this would be the right thing to do, coming out here on this trip. Thought it might help you to figure things out, thought we could talk, but I haven't known. . . .” He glanced back up to the sky. “I haven't known where to start.”

“What are you talking about?” Dodger took a step back. He wanted to run, but he was frozen in place because he was suddenly having this giant, time-stopping realization that something big was about to happen, something that had been about to happen for a while, something
huge
that maybe Dodger had even been expecting for a long time, without ever realizing it.

“Franny, listen.” Harry started bending the rim of his hat with both hands. “We have to
talk
. I've been trying to find a way this whole trip. . . . But then, you'd been acting better, and so I wanted to give you space, so that maybe you would come to it on your own, but then yesterday . . . someone was after you, weren't they? And I realized that you're not going to be safe, but I didn't know what to do. . . . I . . . haven't known what to do for a long time.”

“Dad!” Dodger screamed. Who
was
this stammering person? And what did he mean—

“Sorry, I—” Harry's face seemed to quiver, like there were fault lines giving way beneath it. He sucked in a huge breath of air, checked in with the sky one last time. . . .

Dodger felt time slowing to a stop, his body freezing. No alien box required. What was about to—

“Franny,” said Harry. “I
know
. About the radio voice in your head and the feelings you've been having.”

“What?” Dodger whispered. His dad hadn't just said that. There was no way.

But there was his dad wringing his hat and looking at him. “I've been trying to find a way to tell you,” Harry went on. “I mean, we don't understand all of it, your mother and I, but enough. . . . And there's things you don't know, Dodger. Things we've wanted to tell you forever.”

Dodger's heart was slamming against his ribs. His hands shook. It was hard to make words. All the gears spinning, nothing lining up. “Tell . . . me . . . what?”

“That—” Harry gazed up at the sky. He put his hands out like he was making the sides of a box, crafting a space in which to place what he said next: “The reason these things are happening to you.”

“The reason?” Dodger croaked.

“You—you don't remember . . .” Harry said. “I mean, we thought that was good. The therapists we took you to afterward, they told us that because you were so young, you wouldn't even remember it. You seemed okay. And there were no scars, or any of those things you read about, so we . . . we just wanted you to be normal. And then even when you weren't . . . I mean,
lots
of kids withdraw. Lots of kids have a hard time making friends or doing activities. All the books say it's well within normal. There was no reason to think it had anything to do with the . . .” Harry trailed off, looking anywhere but at Dodger.

“The
what
?” Dodger whispered.

Suddenly Harry's breath hitched. He wiped tears from his eyes. Dodger had never seen anything like it, and it made what Harry was saying even worse. “The abduction,” he continued quietly. “It happened when you were two. We were living in California then, and . . . I woke up, middle of the night and, just thought the clock was wrong, but Sophie got up to check on you and . . .” His voice halted again. “You were gone, Son. There'd been some kind of sixteen-minute gap. We had the police, the FBI, everyone, but there was no sign of a break-in. It was impossible. No leads, like you'd just vanished from us. And there was nothing I could do. Nothing.”

Dodger just stared.
Abducted
.

“Then, eight days later, the longest eight days you could imagine, it was about five a.m., maybe the first sleep any of us had gotten since you were taken, and we heard crying, and there you were, back in your room, right where you'd been. It was like waking up from a nightmare. Like that week had been some strange alternate reality. You were with us again. And you were fine. Fine . . .”

“Why didn't you tell me?” Dodger shouted, the words erupting out of him. He felt like some wild creature was running around in his head.

Harry threw up his hands. “How could we tell anyone? No one was going to believe us. The FBI suggested a cover story—so we could say
something
—about an aunt who had a breakdown and ran off with you, briefly, how she couldn't have kids of her own, that kind of thing. We got the family to buy it, or at least go along with it. Just to put it behind us. I mean, it didn't even seem real after a while, because you were okay, you were fine, we—”

Dodger started trembling. “I had a right to know.”

Harry shook his head. “We thought about it a million times, probably every day, but the timing never seemed right, and what good would it have done you? You've got to understand how we felt. . . . We've never been the same, but we thought you could be. We thought if you never knew, you could be normal.”

Dodger blinked. Then he hurled the radio at Harry. “Well, I'm not normal!”

Harry barely deflected it with his forearm, sending it skidding across the pavement.

“Nothing about me is normal!” Dodger shouted.

And he grabbed his backpack and ran.

“Franny, wait!”

“Stay away from me!” Dodger tore out of the parking lot, down Main Street, past the Denny's, across the intersection.

He looked back, but Harry hadn't followed. Dodger ran on until he reached the shade beneath the UFO Museum marquee. There, he fell against the wall, breathless, thoughtless, choking on tears.

He looked down at his hands. He hadn't been switched at birth. He wasn't some magical being from another home. He . . . he was just a lab rat. Everyone's lab rat. Taken and . . . changed? It sounded like it. Then returned and . . . watched. Mourned. Lost to everyone, even himself. Until now, and . . . He stared vacantly. What now? What exactly was he supposed to do now? What exactly was he supposed to do, ever?

A flash caught his eye and he looked up. A car had just passed, catching the sun—no, it hadn't been that. The flash had come from across the street.

Standing there on the far sidewalk were two people. They were dressed in particularly loud floral outfits. The sun reflected brilliantly off the pale, plastic-looking skin of their faces and arms, and even more brightly off the silver box that the male was holding, which had begun to pulse with silver strobe light.

They'd found him. The world began to flicker and drain of color around One and Two, a sphere of strobe light growing, its light enveloping the buildings, the street. People near them stiffened and stopped moving. A car passed through the spreading wave, slowing almost to a stop before lurching free. The next car didn't escape. The entire street was coming to a halt.

Run!
Dodger thought to himself, but he didn't move. What was the point? They were just here to collect him again, wasn't that it? Back to pick up their little lab rat, their malfunctioning abductee. Heck, they'd probably take him back to Juliette, where he'd been trying to go anyway, to fix his circuits and get him shipshape! Maybe by the time they were done, there'd be no more weirdness. Maybe they could just wipe his memories clean and stick him back home in Washington. Or he could just ask them to make him someone else completely. Maybe that was what he wanted. Just to let them take all this away, all these painful memories . . .

The black-and-white had reached the near curb.

“Francis! Hey!”

It took Dodger a moment to realize the voice was directed at him. A girl had appeared near him. About his age, wearing glasses, her brown hair in a braid. Her face was red and gleaming with sweat, and she was out of breath. She looked normal enough, maybe a little high-strung. Dodger knew the type from school. Always on top of everything. Always raising their hands and always disappointed to get Dodger as a partner on a project.

“You're Francis . . .” she was saying. “Right?”

“What?”

“The FAD.”

Dodger knew he understood the words, but he still peered at her. “I—I go by Dodger.”

“Huh?” she asked.

“It's from an old cartoon,” Dodger stammered. “You know, Duck Dodgers in the twenty-fourth-and-a-half century. It was a parody of Buck Rogers—”

She cut him off. “Okay, fine. Dodger. I'm Haley.” Her hand fell to his arm. “I'm the other fellowship winner. You need to come with me.”

“You . . .”

She pulled at him. “Now!”

Dodger yanked his arm free. “Let go of me!”

“Come on, Dodger!” She glanced across the street. “It's a Missing Time Field.”

“I've seen it before,” said Dodger, not meaning to sound defensive but maybe he did because where did she get off knowing more about what was happening to him than
he
did? “Have
you
seen it?”

Haley frowned at him. “Yes.” She glanced worriedly at the advancing light. “Now, come with me if you want to get to Juliette.”

Dodger looked at her. Looked back at One and Two, who had started to hurry across the street toward them.