From a Distant Star (13 page)

I took the stairs two at a time, glad that Eric was around for a talk. When I got to the top, I found Eric and Lucas in Eric’s room. Both of them were sitting on the floor, their backs against the wall,
legs stretched in front of them. Eric had his laptop open and they were staring at the screen. When I walked in, they looked up.

“Hey, Emma,” Eric said. “What took you so long? I thought you’d be here by now.”

I dropped my bag on the floor and sat in Eric’s desk chair. In the old days, I’d have nestled in next to Lucas, and he’d have wrapped his arms around me, pulling me so close our bodies would have melded tight against each other, but those days were over. “I wanted to give your mom a breather. She was annoyed with me last night.” I looked at Lucas’s face to see if he’d acknowledge the fact that he’d been crying or mention that the reason we’d left the porch was because he’d dragged me behind the barn, but his expression was blank.

“We need to talk,” Eric said, lowering his voice. He waved a finger toward the doorway. “Everyone’s outside, but you should close the door anyway.”

I swung the door shut and settled back in the chair. Eric closed the laptop and said, “We’ve been talking.” He gestured to Lucas. “He told me about his aircraft crash and how he needed a host body to survive so he latched on to Lucas. We’ve been brainstorming ways to fix this all morning.”

“Really,” I said, my breath catching in my chest. Eric spoke so matter-of-factly that it took me aback. “You believed that story?” I looked at Lucas, who had the good sense to look sheepish.

Eric said, “It’s not just a story, Emma. It’s what happened.”

“I’ve been thinking about this all night,” I said. “I can tell he believes it, but I just can’t wrap my brain around it. His story is pretty out there.”

“It is true,” Lucas said with conviction.

“Well, I believe it,” Eric said. “I knew right away he was telling the truth. It explains everything—why the agents were looking for wreckage and why they were interested in Lucas’s recovery. And why Lucas’s cancer is gone now.”

And it also explained Mrs. Kokesh’s feeling that there was a “disturbance in the force,” I thought, then pushed the idea out of my mind. Thinking that Lucas was mentally ill was easier to fathom.

“We’ve been working on a plan.” He put his hand on Lucas’s shoulder. “Obviously, he can’t stay here. And we want Lucas back.”

I leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Maybe we should start from the beginning. Tell me what he told you because I don’t think I got the whole story.”

Eric got up and put the laptop on his desk, then sat on the edge of the bed. Lucas watched, then got up and sat next to him, copying the exact way he positioned his arms and legs. Eric said to Lucas, “Is it okay if I tell her what happened?” Lucas nodded in response.

And then Eric told me the whole thing. Very early that morning, after his parents had headed out to the barn, he’d heard crying from Lucas’s room. Normally, in the summer, the whole family would be working from early on, but because of Lucas’s cancer and recovery, he got a pass, and because Mrs. Walker didn’t want Lucas to be alone, they took turns staying with him. This morning it was Eric’s turn.

“At first, I couldn’t figure out what that noise was,” Eric said, “and then I followed it to Lucas’s room. He was curled up in bed and really upset. That’s when he told me.”

Right from the start, Eric sensed Lucas was telling the truth. Eric believed that the object I’d found was a pod, a kind of shuttle attached to a larger spaceship that had carried him here from another planet. Apparently, the pod didn’t hold the alien’s actual body, though. What it contained was something more like his soul or his energy.

“His physical body is dormant back on his planet, waiting for him to return,” Eric said, as if he were describing a cool scene in a
movie. “And when Mack came up to sniff the pod, Scout jumped out and used Mack as a host.”

“Who jumped out?” I asked.

“Scout,” Eric said, pointing to Lucas. “That’s what I’m calling him, because that was his job. He was a scout, part of a team that compiled data about other planets.”

“What a minute.” I held up my hand and turned my attention to Lucas. “What’s your actual name? What did they call you on your planet?” I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation, but as long as we were, I wanted some answers.

He smiled shyly, a look I’d never seen on Lucas’s face. Lucas was all confidence and brash good humor. Being shy wasn’t on his list of personality traits. “I can’t say it in your language. We communicate differently than you do.”

“Oh.”

Eric continued. “Then, when Mack came into the house, Scout was along for the ride. He figured out he’d have a better chance of surviving if he had a human host, so when he saw Lucas and realized he was dying, he went out of Mack and into Lucas through the membranes in their eyes. After that, he cured the cancer, but then he was stuck.” Eric’s eyes grew wide. “So he had to learn the language and figure out who everybody was. That had to suck. Crazy how well he adapted.”

“So you’re okay with this whole thing?” I asked Eric. He seemed all right. In fact, he sounded almost happy about the fact that his brother was supposedly possessed by an alien—like it was a cool summer project. Like it was one of his junk piles in the barn he was going to put together and turn into something that worked.

“Of course I’m not okay with it,” he said with an eye roll. “I mean, this is really bad for Lucas and for Scout. And us too, obviously.”

I stood up and pointed toward the doorway. “Can I talk to you in private for a minute, Eric?” To be polite, I said to Lucas, “You don’t mind, do you? Just for a minute.”

Eric looked puzzled, but he followed me down the hall. When I was sure we were out of earshot, I said, “Do you think we can trust him?”

He shot a glance back to his room. “Who? Scout?”

“Yeah, Scout or Lucas or whatever you want to call him.” I swallowed the lump in my throat that I knew would trigger tears if I didn’t push it back.

“Emma, don’t you believe him?”

Dammit, now the crying had begun. I wiped my eyes. “That’s the problem. It’s so crazy but I think I do believe him. And if it is true, how can we trust what he’s saying?”

Eric put his hands on my shoulders and said, “Emma, we have to trust him.”

I sighed. From little on we were told not to talk to strangers. Not to take candy, or help them look for their lost kittens, or get too close to their car. That’s how kids got abducted and killed. Everyone knew that. And now a stranger had taken over his brother’s body and Eric wasn’t even alarmed.

“But we don’t know what that thing inside of Lucas even is.” I was trying to speak quietly and my words came out in a hiss. “Maybe he’s killed Lucas, or is going to take over one of us next. How do we know?” Part of me still couldn’t believe we were having this discussion. Lucas as a host body for an alien? I was in the middle of a horrible nightmare, one that felt real.

Eric’s face softened. “You don’t have to worry, Emma. None of that is gonna happen. Scout’s just a kid, like us. This was his first job out of school and he feels like he screwed up by not following orders. He has a major case of survivor’s guilt. You should have heard him crying this morning. It didn’t even sound like regular crying. It was this primal, anguished sound. Man, it was like the
worst thing ever. You know Lucas
never
cried. He was tough as hell. Not this guy. Scout, he’s got tender feelings.” He leaned in closer. “You know, he didn’t even know what crying was. He was afraid he was doing something wrong, like peeing in your pants. Trust me, he’s not dangerous. We have to help him or he’ll never get home and we’ll never see Lucas again.”

I wouldn’t have thought there was anything that Eric could say to make me feel better, but I had to admit this helped. Still, it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I took a deep breath. “This whole thing is unbelievable. I kind of want to go back and pretend nothing’s wrong.”

“Yeah, well that’s not going to work. This is happening.”

I leaned against the wall, shaking my head. “This is so messed up. I just want Lucas back the way he was.”

“You and me both.”

I sighed. “So what do we do about it?”

“Scout and I came up with a plan, and it involves you,” Eric said. “Are you in?”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Am I in?” I said. “I guess so. What’s the plan?”

A minute later, all three of us were bounding down the stairs, headed outside to the old barn, the one Eric used as his workshop. Before he’d tell me the plan, Eric said he had to show me something. We managed to make it safely inside the barn with the door shut behind us without encountering anyone else. Eric flipped a light switch and the whole place came into view. What seemed like piles of junk in the dark still looked like piles of junk, but at least there was some order to all of it. A wooden workbench on the far wall was topped with pegboard covered with hanging tools. An enormous red metal chest of drawers next to it held still more tools. Lucas had told me once that Eric had more than a thousand dollars’ worth of tools, all purchased with his own money. Off to one side was Eric’s current project, a car covered with a large tarp.

“You know what’s under here?” he said, striding over and whipping off the cover with a flourish, like a bullfighter with a cape.

“A car,” I said, stating the obvious. A white car, with a big scrape on one side, but I’d seen worse. I walked around it and noticed that, unlike a lot of Eric’s projects, everything seemed intact. It even had license plates, although they were expired.

“It’s a Pontiac Grand Prix,” he said, tapping on the hood. “It was ready for the scrap heap when I got it. A barn car.” A barn car
was what people around here called the nonworking automobiles that they kept in their barns, hoping to someday have the time or money to fix them up. When someday never came and they realized they needed the space, they’d offer the car free for the taking. When that happened, Eric and his dad would take their truck and tow the vehicle home. For the price of parts and the cost of his time and labor, Eric fixed them up and sold them. He’d done it a few times now and made a crapload of money.

“It’s nice,” I said peering inside. The upholstery was in good shape and the windshield wasn’t cracked. It was decent, as barn cars went. Through the window, I saw Lucas leaning in to look from the other side, just like me, and I was touched at how hard he tried to fit in. “But old.”

“It’s not that old,” Eric said. “If it was a kid, it would only be in fifth grade.”

“Right,” I said, doing the math and figuring that in car years, the Grand Prix was elderly.

“It was dead when I got it,” Eric said. “Some idiot tried to drive it through standing water when the road flooded a few years ago. Killed it completely. But it purrs like a kitten now. Six cylinders and it only has sixty thousand miles. Probably the best car I’ve turned yet and I could make a big profit if I sold it.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a keychain, which he held out to me. “But I’m not going to sell it. I’m giving it to you.”

“Me? Why would you give me a car?”

He still held the keys out, but when I didn’t take them, he set them on the hood. “Because you’re going to need it to carry out the plan. And when you come back with my brother, you’re going to need a car next year. Seniors don’t take the bus.”

He was right about that. Seniors at our high school didn’t take the bus. The ones who didn’t have cars rode with those who did. Only friendless losers would be caught dead riding the school bus their senior year. Even as a junior, there was something of a stigma,
so I always rode with Lucas on the days he went to school. When his cancer treatment kept him home, his friends were glad to give me a ride. But next year was another matter. One I hadn’t even started to think about yet. A car would be a good thing to have, but no one just gave you a car, even a junky Pontiac Grand Prix, without some big strings attached. And only a complete moron would agree to something without knowing the details.

I crossed my arms. “So what’s the plan?”

Eric leaned his butt against the car and crossed his arms the same way—to mock me, I thought. “You and Scout drive up to Ashland, up near Lake Superior. Just for a day. There’s a private research facility right outside of the city called Erickson Ryder Incorporated. They must be working on something top secret, because they don’t have a website or much of anything online. The one thing I did find was on a job search website where they said they were looking to hire scientists with an astrophysics background to do research on radio communications. They also said their work was strictly confidential.”

“And why would we want to drive up there?”

“Because there’s more to it than that.” Eric’s brown eyes flashed with excitement. “I did some more searching on this Erickson Ryder place and I found this message board with all these people talking off the record. Apparently, the company is an unofficial SETI site and they’re doing all kinds of sneaky things.”

“SETI? What’s that?”

“SETI stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. There are these places all over the world that monitor radio frequencies and what they’re looking for are signs of transmissions from other planets. This one guy on this message board—he goes by the name Woodcarver—he’s ranting all over the place about Erickson Ryder. He says they’re not only receiving transmissions, but that they actually made contact and are inviting the aliens to visit Earth. This Woodcarver guy says he knows all this because one of his
relatives has the inside track. And Woodcarver is mad as hell that they’re doing this. He says Erickson Ryder is putting the whole planet at risk, that his grandfather was once abducted and tortured by aliens, and that instead of inviting them, we should be warning them to stay away.”

“Woodcarver sounds like a wacko,” I observed.

Eric shrugged. “It sounds better when you read it. He comes off as being fairly intelligent, and a lot of people on the message board believe him and look up to him.”

“That just makes him king of the wackos.”

He continued. “The last few messages Woodcarver posted were a month ago. First, he said he had proof that aliens were coming to the area and that he and his sister were going to be ready for them. They knew from the radio signals where they were going to land and they were ready to blow them back to where they came from. Revenge for what their grandfather went through. Then Woodcarver came back on the message board two days later and said he’d tracked the aliens’ location, fired a missile, and destroyed a ship. The other posters on the message board cheered him on like you wouldn’t believe. They think this guy is a hero.”