Translucent (5 page)

Finally, I leveled my eyes with the meteorite, relieved to find it dry to the touch. In my hands, its strange beauty washed over me again. Why had I wanted so badly to destroy it?

“Where’d you come from?” I said.

My words faded into silence, leaving only the sound of my uneven breathing. For some reason, a little voice in my head filled in the quiet with its own nonsensical reply.

I came from in between.

I rolled the rock between my fingers, wondering why those words had popped into my head.

The doorbell rang, delivering a nervous jolt.

A moment later, my mom’s footsteps creaked down the hall to answer—she worked from her home office on Fridays—and I went back to studying the meteorite.

Probably someone asking for a donation.

“In between what?” I muttered.

Why am I talking to myself?

I continued to gaze at the meteorite.

The meteorite gazed back at me.

It slid between my fingers, slippery again. Wow. In a matter of seconds, it had secreted more of the slimy stuff. I reached for my shirt to polish it off again, but flinched back.

Where I’d wiped off the fragment, I could see right through my T-shirt to my belly button. Threadbare cotton rimmed a fist-sized hole, edges worn thin.

I dropped the meteorite and yanked the shirt away from my stomach, jolted upright. Panicking, I dragged the shirt off my back and flung it away, then grabbed a dirty towel and dabbed at my belly button, dreading the tingle of acid.

On my knees, I stared down at my abs, lungs heaving, as the hairs rose on the back of my neck.
Oh God, this is bad
 . . . 

But nothing happened. No blistering rashes, no bubbling skin, no smell of burnt flesh.

Was I okay?

Heavy footsteps clomped up the hallway and the floor outside my door groaned in protest. I tensed up, just as a quiet knock rattled my door.

“Leona?” came my mom’s muffled voice.

I dragged on the first thing in sight—a hoodie—and pincered the meteorite between the covers of a leather journal, shoved it back in its sock, and returned it to the back of my underwear drawer before I called out, “What?”

My mom poked her head in. “Sweetie, there’s . . . there’s someone here to see you.”

I read fear in her shifty eyes and asked, “Who?”

She pushed the door open further, revealing a black guy in a navy blue suit and tie, trousers impeccably creased, curly salt and pepper hair receding from a stern face and flinty eyes.

He cleared his throat. “Ms. Leona Hewitt? Major Rod Connor, USAF Security Forces—” He reached into his suit and pulled out an official-looking police badge, then replaced it. “Why don’t we talk in your mother’s office.”

It wasn’t a question.

He knew.

The USAF knew, whoever they were.

And they had come for me.

“Do you mind
if I record our conversation, Leona?” Major Rod Connor placed a digital recording device on the desk between us and nailed me with a probing look, eyebrow raised. “May I?”

I fidgeted in my chair, feeling how I imagined an earthworm might feel skewered on a fishing hook. Finally I shook my head and looked at the carpet, a lump in my throat. My mom hovered outside the office, clearly agitated.

He tapped a button, and a light blinked on the recorder. My dread deepened.

How much did they know?

Major Connor cleared his throat. “This is an interview with Leona Hewitt. Friday, September fourth . . . Ms. Hewitt, please state your full name so we have that on record.”

“Leona Amber Hewitt,” I said, throat parched.

“May I call you Leona?”

I nodded.

“Please say yes or no for the recording.”

“Yes.”

He regarded me calmly. “Leona, please describe what happened on the morning of Tuesday, September first, exactly as you remember it.”

“Everything?” I said.

“Everything you remember.”

I swallowed hard and dove right into the lie Megan and I had prepared in case of questioning. “Well, I remember Megan spent the night that night. Megan Barker. She was my best friend, I mean, she
is
my best friend. We didn’t really do much, just stayed up late talking and watching movies in my room. That’s all.”

Wearing the hoodie, I had begun to sweat profusely in my mom’s stuffy office. I couldn’t take it off because I only had my bra underneath. Squirming under Major Connor’s scrutinizing gaze, I felt horribly exposed.

“Did you go anywhere?” he said.

“No,” I said quickly.

He drummed his fingers, staring intently at me. “Leona, you’re not telling the truth. I know you’re not telling the truth, because we know exactly where you were that night, and we know what you did. Now, let’s try this again. Do you think you can tell me the truth this time?”

I nodded.

“Please say yes or no for the recording,” he said.

“Yes,” I croaked.

He consulted a manila folder. “I have written here that you were hiking in the San Rafael Wilderness. Is that correct?”

I blinked. “Wait, you said . . . you said July first, right?”

“No, I did not. I asked you what happened on the morning of September first, four days ago.”

“Oh.” I blinked. “Wait, what’s your organization again?”

“USAF Security Forces.”

“USAF,” I repeated. “What is that? What does that stand for?”

“I’m stationed at the Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles, part of Air Force Space Command.” He reached into his suit and produced his badge again, which he pushed across to me. “It’s right there. Take a good look.”

I took it hesitantly.

Next to his photo ID, a silver badge featured a bald eagle perched on a wreath above a shield. Not gold like an FBI badge. A banner around the shield bore the words
Department of the Air Force Security Forces
.

Huh?

Military police?

He wasn’t asking about Ashley Lacroix.

I exhaled a breath of pure relief.
Air Force Space Command
. He must be asking about my hiking trip with Megan, what we’d seen—the helicopters, the hazmat suits, the biohazard zone.

The meteorite.

Of course. They must have seen me go back to the impact site on Thursday and cross the barbed wire. Their remote surveillance aircraft, or whatever. As long as it wasn’t about Ashley, I hardly cared. I finally caved and wiped the sweat off my forehead, leaving a large wet spot on the sleeve.

Even in a suit, Major Connor seemed unfazed by the afternoon heat. He slid his badge back into the jacket. “You were saying . . .”

“We were camping,” I said. “Sleeping under the stars. It was warm, so we didn’t need a tent. We saw a shooting star, and it hit near us.”

“A shooting star,” he said, nodding. “About what time would you say that was?”

“Three in the morning. I don’t remember. It was really late.”

“Can you remember what part of the sky it came from? If you can identify a constellation, perhaps?”

“Uh . . . I don’t know, from the north I guess. That’s what it kind of seemed like. Sorry, I only know the Big Dipper, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t come from there.”

“Could you point to where in the sky it came from?”

I stared at him. “You want me to point?”

“Roughly.”

I swiveled in my chair and raised my arm to point at a spot on the ceiling, feeling like an idiot. “About there, I think.”

Connor studied my arm and leaned toward the tape recorder. “For the recording, Ms. Hewitt is pointing northeast with an inclination of about thirty degrees. Thank you. You may lower your arm.”

“I’m not positive about that,” I said, dropping my hand in my lap. “I mean, I could be a little off. You’re not going to base anything important off that, are you?”

He ignored the comment. “How close were you to the impact site?”

“Five hundred feet. The sound took about half a second to get to us.”

“What happened after the impact?”

“We, uh . . . we went to investigate.”

He motioned me on. “Please continue.”

“There was this big crater, and everything was steaming and red-hot, and some of the plants around it were burning. Then I . . . I went down into the crater. It was stupid, I know. It was a stupid idea, but I just wanted to see what was down there. We heard helicopters coming, and we saw a bunch of people come out in protective suits and put out the fires. Then we went home.”

“Did you remove anything from the crater?”

My eyes sought out the ground. “No . . . I mean, it was just a little rock, a piece that broke off. Look, I didn’t know it was important. I’m really, really sorry. We were already leaving by the time the helicopters got there, so I didn’t know it was a big deal or anything.”

Connor regarded me with stony eyes, drumming his fingers on the desk. “Did you notice anything unusual about the fragment of rock you removed?”

I shook my head.

“Please say yes or no for the recording.”

“No.”

“Nothing at all?”

“It was wet. The meteorite was wet. Like, it secretes something. I don’t know.”

“Does the meteorite make you feel a certain way? Are you drawn to it, perhaps . . . or repelled by it?

I looked up. “Huh?”

“Does it make you feel unclean?”

I shifted in the chair. “Uh . . . a little, I guess.”

“Would you say you feel a strange attachment to it? Or do you feel it means a lot to you, has sentimental value . . . ?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I kind of feel protective of it. It’s weird.”

His eyes stayed fixed on mine, betraying nothing. “Go on.”

“I mean, it’s a meteorite. I think it’s cool.” I shut my mouth, feeling like a bumbling idiot.

He pressed his lips together. “How many people, besides you, have come in contact with the object you took from the crater?”

“Just my best friend, Megan.”

“Megan Barker?”

I nodded. “I mean,
yes
. Megan Barker.”

He leaned in. “For the recording, I’ll be interviewing Megan Barker immediately following this.” He addressed me again. “Has it come into contact with anything else besides your skin and your clothes? Any household items or containers. Try very hard to remember, now, Leona.”

Underneath his almost robotic voice lurked a hint of urgency.

I complied. “It touched my bed sheets, the inside of my pockets . . . obviously . . . my nightstand, and let’s see . . .” I looked up, trying to remember. “My trash can. And the floor. It fell on the floor.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Now think very hard, Leona. Has it touched anything else? This is very important.” His dark eyes bored into me.

I shook my head.

“Please say yes or no.”

“No.”

“Thank you for your cooperation.” He reached forward and turned off the recorder, letting out a weary sigh. “As you’ve probably guessed, the meteorite that struck the San Rafael Wilderness contained toxic radioactive isotopes. What you witnessed on Sunday was merely a drill testing the readiness of our meteorite response unit. They really should have been the first ones on the scene. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.”

“I thought they did really well,” I said. “I mean, they got there within five minutes. That’s good, right?”

“Not nearly good enough, I’m afraid.” He clasped his hands in front of him and straightened up. “Leona, I’m going to send in a cleanup crew to decontaminate your bedroom. Why don’t you show me where it is.”

“It’s in a
sock. Down in the bottom corner.” From my bedroom doorway, I pointed to the bottom drawer of my bureau, feeling an embarrassed blush rise in my cheeks.

Inside my room, two men in full hazmat suits dug through my underwear drawer, rifling through my panties. The closer one reached in with some kind of telescoping baton and lifted out a black thong by the tiny strap, which he studied, confused.

He turned to Major Connor, standing in the doorway next to me, and gave a shrug, like he couldn’t find the meteorite.

I wanted to die.

“It’s in a
sock
,” I said, cheeks burning. “Let me go in and show him.”

“Don’t move,” said Connor.

So they proceeded to violate my privacy right in front of me. The thong ended up in a large trash bag, along with all my other contaminated clothes—the jean shorts I had worn hiking, my pajamas, the T-shirt I had worn to school today, which now had a huge hole, and most of my other summer outfits.

“The sheets,” shouted Connor. “Sheets off the bed.”

On the other side of the room, more personnel stripped my bedding and stuffed it in another bag.

“What else?” Connor said to me.

“The nightstand,” I said.

“Nightstand,” he called. “Someone grab the drawer.”

One of the cleanup crew yanked out the drawer of my nightstand and dumped the contents into the bag—my Eiffel Tower and the photo of Megan and me. Then he threw the entire drawer in the bag.

“I set it on top too,” I said hesitantly. “Next to my bed.”

“Guys, the whole thing’s got to go,” said Connor, gesturing. “The whole table, come on. Let’s move.”

A power saw came into play, screaming and spitting sawdust as it severed the table at the legs. I clamped my hands over my ears. The legs collapsed to the side, which they gathered and deposited in the bag.

Meanwhile, the two personnel at my underwear drawer had found the meteorite. Yielding a pair of prongs, they extracted it from the sock and dropped it into a Dewar flask—making a metallic clang. The flask was then sealed, and the sock and the prongs were disposed of.

Next they wrested out the entire bottom drawer from the dresser and dumped it into a large trash bin, along with the waste basket under my desk.

“What about your desk?” Major Connor leaned closer to be heard over the saw, and I caught the aroma of witch hazel in his aftershave. “You ever set it down on your desk?”

Thinking back, I had.

“But . . . but I need my desk,” I stuttered.

“Get the desk too,” he shouted, and the team moved in and swept my papers and books into another bag, then yanked out the drawers and dumped their contents—all my schoolwork, my records, my first pay stub . . . gone.

“Laptop too,” said Connor. “She typed on it.”

“No—” I took a step into the room.

His iron grip closed around my elbow, and his eyes flashed a warning. “It has to be done, Leona.”

So all I could do was watch as my room was stripped down to nothing. The desk was sawed into pieces, and the pieces piled into the bin. Along the walls, a pair of guys sawed at the carpet along the molding with a heavy duty box cutter, tore it loose, and rolled it back in sections, exposing the mottled foundation floor below. The sections were stuffed into the now overflowing trash bin.

“All of it,” yelled Connor. “It’s all got to go. Her bed, her mattress, everything. Come on, people, let’s move!”

My mattress was wrapped in a plastic sheet and carried off. My bed frame was ravaged, sawed into pieces, trashed.

They stripped off the paint too. Two personnel in hazmat suits moved around the room, painting the walls with a pink goo. A third followed with a putty knife and scraped off ribbons of the goo—along with the top layer of paint—into another trash bag.