Flying (24 page)

Lyle throws up his hands, giving in, and then begins dumping food products into the aisle even as a red-shirted Hannaford's worker yells at us to evacuate. China doesn't even look up.

“Sorry!” Lyle yells. “Important business! Trying to find the right box of organic oats.”

We don't find that or the chip. But we manage to leave the store via the storage room's back door just as the fire department barges through the front door.

We don't fare any better at the gym, but much to Lyle's relief, we don't make a mess for the employees there to clean up. We just casually peruse all the equipment, touching the bikes, the treadmills, the weight machines, the rower. I search the locker room even though Mom doesn't have a locker and just brings a bag and changes. We can't find anything anywhere.

“We're just not thinking of something,” China says as we get back in the truck, but unfortunately, none of us comes up with any great ideas. “I think we should just go back to the house. It's the most logical place. She probably—”

My cell phone rings, interrupting him. We all jump. I panic and clasp it to my chest, but don't answer it.

“Who is it?” China demands. He moves into the passing lane to get around an old lady driving a copper-colored sedan.

I read the display. “Seppie. I was supposed to meet her at the Y today. How did her call get through?”

I flip it open, trying to figure out how to get out of the fact that I was supposed to meet Seppie a half hour ago. She always knows when I'm lying.

“Hey Sep…”

“Mana?”

I try to think fast. “I am so sorry that I'm—”

She talks right over me. “Mana, listen, Lyle's—”

She's gone.

“Seppie?”

Nothing. I glance up at China. He mouths, “Everything okay?”

I mouth back the word
no
.

“Seppie?” I try again. I can hear noises in the background.

The next voice I hear sounds like it's being digitized by a computer, mechanically disguised or something. “Mana.”

“What are you doing to Seppie?” I demand. “Who are you?”

Lyle leans in toward my shoulder. “What's going on?”

I put up my free hand to make him stay quiet. China swerves the Jeep into the slow lane and then into the breakdown lane—so there's no extra noise, I guess. He puts on the hazard lights. I put the phone on speaker so everyone can hear.

The voice comes back. “Seppie is fine. For now. But I need you to bring the device to me.”

“What device?” Does he mean the chip?

“Don't play stupid, Mana. You're not stupid. I know you're with your mother's partner. I know you have the device.”

I turn to China for help. He nods vigorously.

“Right. Right…” I watch China scribble something on the back of the bill of sale receipt for the Jeep:
Pretend we have it.

“Right, okay, the device,” I lie.

“If you want your friend to live, you need to bring it to me.”

Lyle curses.

“Alone,” the voice goes on. “No Lyle. No China.”

“How do you even know about Lyle?” I ask. I clutch the phone so tightly that I accidentally push a button. It beeps obnoxiously—a long tone of nothing, in an unfortunate pitch.

As soon as the tone stops, the voice says, “I know everything about you, Mana.”

“But—”

China gives me a warning look. A logging truck drives by and the entire Jeep jiggles in its wake.

“I'm going to text you the address,” the voice continues. “Do not attempt to call back on this line. Do not bring anyone else. Just you. Just you, or she dies.”

He hangs up.

“Crap,” I say.

A text message comes through.

“Where's the meeting?” China asks.

I can't believe it. “The animal rehabilitation place?”

“A zoo?” China repeats. “Is there even a zoo here?”

Lyle answers for me, because I'm still staring at the phone. “Yes, but it isn't a zoo. It's more like an animal refuge, but they've got lions and moose and monkeys and emus.”

“Lyle loves it,” I manage to say. “He volunteers there in the summer. He's the softie, honestly.”

“Good.” China almost smiles and starts up the car. “You might be useful after all.”

 

CHAPTER 17

The animal refuge looks exactly the way you'd expect a wildlife refuge to look at the end of autumn, when it's closed because there aren't enough people around to justify keeping it open. The workers only come in at dawn and dusk to feed the animals. Cold metal cages pen up mountain lions and bobcats and wolves. Some grazing, herd-type animals huddle in corners by stumps of trees. Some stare as I walk by. Some sleep in the fetal position, like this world and its cold is just too much for them. The dirt trail that meanders past the monkey house and the llamas is covered with a light dusting of snow. It's naked of footprints, except for mine. A wolf howls. The mountain lion paces back and forth in her little cage as I go by. The place smells of wet fur and helplessness, with a nice after-aroma of predator poop.

I wonder if these animals ever knew what it was like to be free, or if they think this is it—the sum total of their existence. A cage, food and water, people staring. And I wonder if people are like that, too. We go around thinking that our lives are somewhat planned and vaguely understandable. We're born. Most of us go to school. Some of us make the sex, have a baby. We die. We watch online videos, gossip, love each other, worry, eat, drink, study, work. That's it. But if the last forty-eight or so hours have taught me anything, it's that this idea of a life is just a cage, really. There are so many things we don't know, don't even know that we don't know. We are those mountain lions, and sometimes someone opens up one of our cage doors and the reality we've been basing our existence on just cracks.

I make my way to the caribou field. This is about an acre of land at the far side of the refuge, surrounded by a metal fence. Caribou and bison roam around in there. The caribou resemble reindeer, like happy little promises of good gifts to come. I keep trudging toward them, too hyped up by fear and adrenaline to shiver any more. Finally, I spot some footprints. Two sets. One set, hopefully, is Seppie's.

I pull out the little silver tool that China gave me. It looks like just a mini flashlight, but it zaps right through metal somehow. It's how I broke the lock on the big wooden front doors and got into the refuge. It's how I break the security lock on this fence, too.

If I get out of this, I'll have to make a donation to the refuge to cover the costs of the locks. Ahem. Right.
If I get out of this.

My feet smoosh into the three inches of snow. Some leaks into my shoes and melts into my socks, making my feet cold again. For the last two days, I have basically been nothing but cold. I tighten up against it. It doesn't matter. What matters is saving Seppie. What matters is finding my mom, and probably finding my dad, too, assuming he really is missing and not just on some weird work assignment with no cell signal.

A raven circles in the sky above me. Some sort of animal moos, which makes me jump. It's probably a cow. I'm not sure. Do they have cows in animal refuges?

Following the footsteps through the field, I spot them. Two figures. One is a little bigger than the other, a little taller—and has a gun pressed to her head. But she's not cowering. She is beautiful and angry, standing up straight. That's my Seppie. Even though I can't see their faces yet, I recognize her stance. I get closer. My heart beats panicky hard. My fingers twitch into themselves. I don't know if I can do this. I don't know
how
to do this. What am I doing here?

Then I gaze up again, stop worrying, start thinking. I will save her. I have to. And to do that, I have to assess the total asshole who is holding her hostage, willing to kill her to get what he wants. I stare. I stop walking.

“Mrs. Stephenson?”

She moves her shoulders up just a little bit. Some muscle in her cheek twitches.

“Mrs. Stephenson?” I repeat.

She says nothing. A caribou traipses downfield and bends his head down to poke through the snow, graze, search for something that he can eat, something that is green and makes sense in a world that has suddenly gone white.

I look at Seppie. “It's Mrs. Stephenson? Mrs. Stephenson kidnapped you?”

Seppie nods. She crosses her arms in front of her chest. “I think when aliens do it, it's called abduction.”

I just stare at her.

“What are you talking about? Mrs. Stephenson, what is going on?” I adjust my backpack straps so the weight isn't so heavy on my back. It suddenly feels like I am going to fall over backwards and not be able to get up. God, is she really so angry that I slept in Lyle's bed? We didn't even do the nasty. She is so out of control.

Mrs. Stephenson nudges Seppie forward. She's still got the gun—which I now see is sort of weird and shiny—pointed at the side of Seppie's head, but at least it isn't pressed into her hair anymore. Seppie is trying not to cringe, and to be all brave cheerleader toughie, but it is so not working.

“Mrs. Stephenson?” I say it again, like saying it will suddenly make this whole scene make sense. It doesn't work.

Instead, she just stares at me while her mouth moves. It's the only part of her body that does. “I need that device, Mana. That chip.”

That's when it registers. She's here for the chip. Lyle's overprotective, churchgoing, wide-hipped mom is not here because she's angry and has gone mental about the whole finding-me-in-bed thing. No. She is freaking kidnapping my best friend because she is somehow a part of this whole dealing-with-aliens thing.

I try for jokey. “Mrs. Stephenson? You don't even like chips. ‘A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips' is what you always say.”

“I'm not talking about Cool Ranch Doritos here, Mana.” Not even a smile.

“You have no sense of humor.” I put my hands on my own, sadly nonexistent hips, and glare at her. “I do not have the chip.”

“Of course you do,” she says. “Your mother said she was going to give you something.”

“You talked to my mom?”

Her face shifts into something more Mrs. Stephenson–like. “Right before she … vanished. She told me to keep an eye out for you, said that she might have to take an abrupt business trip. I knew what she was saying. She just didn't know I knew. She said that you were her baby girl and she loved you, and she wanted me to make sure that I kept an eye on you. Who else would she give it to, honestly? It has to be you. You're not smart enough to know better. You're too focused on your own little world of cheering and boys and school to know that your neighbors—your own mother—aren't who you thought they were.”

“That hurts,” I manage to say.

“She's just jealous,” Seppie says, “because Lyle likes you.”

Mrs. Stephenson laughs. “That can't happen. Alien never mixes with human well. My people won't allow it anyway.”

Alien and human? Her people? Aren't people her people? I try to focus. My whole brain shifts. If alien and human can't mix, that means either Lyle or I is an alien. If she is saying her people won't allow it, that probably means her people are not people. That means Mr. Stephenson is some kind of alien, too. It means that
Lyle
is, too. It means … I am not? Even though I can hear voices? Or maybe I am, too, but Mrs. Stephenson, despite her know-it-all attitude, doesn't actually know it all. Either way, it means my mom didn't know about the Stephensons.

“Does Lyle know?” I ask. I don't specify what I'm talking about, because open-ended questions usually make people talk more. I learned that from Mom's after-party interrogations of me.

“About our nature?” She smiles, and now I know for sure. He is an alien. She is an alien. “Not yet. He will soon, and then he'll drop you like a hot potato—if you aren't dead already, obviously. He drops all his girlfriends. You know that, girls. You've watched him. They last … what? A week, at most? Do you know why? Humans are inferior. That's why. Dull and inferior and unworthy. Lyle doesn't even know he is different yet, but he can still sense it.”

Whoa. I kissed an alien. My male BFF is an alien. And a really good kisser. And, more importantly, his mom is an alien. No, even
more
importantly, his mom is an
evil
alien. Somehow, this makes complete sense.

None of this matters. She's just trying to hurt me and distract me. Back to the heart of this: I need to get Seppie safe, to get away from Mrs. Stephenson and her irrational eyes and her damn gun. I need to find out what she knows about my mom.

“Why would my mom tell you to keep an eye on me?”

“She knew they were after her.”

“Who? The Men in Black?”

“Not just them.” She gazes around us nervously, clears her throat. “There are some alien factions who really don't want the world to continue this way. People are destroying the world. True, some alien races aren't much better, but we all are tired of this … this hiding. Colluding with militaries for safety. We want an end.”

I think for a second. “The man I talked to, one of those guys in suits, he said that if they didn't get the chip, then it would be the end. What did he mean? What would end? He used the word
unleashed
.”

“If that chip is activated, the world will end. Or at least the world as you humans know it. Those Men in Black, part humans and part shifters, the whole group is a mess. They don't want the chip activated, but they still want it intact. Probably for the same reason your mother did,” she says. “This world is no good for us as it is. Do you know what would happen if the masses realized that we are already here? Some of us, like that Pierce, trapped here for centuries?”