Rolling his eyes, Quincy began to close up the sunroof, until the woman laughed irritatingly loud. “I mean, aliens? Come on. I mean, I have a few cleaning the pool today, don’t get me wrong!”
Quincy didn’t have to crane to hear her, but he did anyway. “I mean, yes, like we’ve talked about, it’s super weird all those missing people came back. But they weren’t taken by aliens, I don’t care what Marsha says or what the Washington Post reports. It’s just mainstream media trying to get clicks. It’s just crap.”
He couldn’t make out what the other trophy wife was saying, but Mrs. Blonde shook her head, her ponytail waving wildly. “And what’s so strange about wildfires? Although it did totally interrupt Mike and my wine country anniversary. So what if people were sick and fighting everywhere? It happens. It’s the world. I hate it for those people who died, but it happens.”
Quincy rolled down his window. “Hey lady,” he yelled.
She looked over, and he winked. “It’s all real.”
He punched the gas and swerved in front of her. She honked her horn twice.
“I’ll probably have homeroom with one of those girls,” Lily said. “We aren’t like these rich kids.”
“No, you’re richer. At least I’m richer, and so by default, you’re richer. And like we talked about, if anyone questions it, just tell your last name. It’s MARTIN. As in QUINCY MARTIN.”
Lily rolled her eyes. She’d adopted so many of his mannerisms.
I wish I could keep you home. Cover you in Lilly Pulitzer clothes. Find a way to fill your room with more toys, if that were possible. Be there every second some snobby girl asks who your parents really are. Or more importantly, be a voice for Ava when she refuses to talk.
It hadn’t been easy. None of it had. It’s why they lived in almost constant isolation that first year. Daily sessions with therapists who had signed nondisclosure agreements and were paid more in a week than they normally made in a month. Night terrors, sobbing, fear of the dark, refusal to speak. And that was just Ava.
Lily had been forced to become her sister’s mouthpiece, grappling daily with the guilt she felt. She’d had to be coaxed to stop doing everything for her sister.
Quincy had given them everything. Ice cream for breakfast. Private trips to Hawaiian islands. He tried to show them that there was good in the world, even though he had a hard time seeing it himself.
He’d found it in them.
He knew they were his the moment that Ava had woken screaming again, about six months into their stay. He’d rushed into her room, knowing she refused to be touched by anyone except for Lily. When he’d sat on the edge of the bed and she’d reached out for him, he vowed to never let go.
It was that night when she’d explained what she’d seen in those final moments inside the mountain. How the man from her dreams, the one who brought her the comfort of knowing she wasn’t alone in the never-ending nightmare, stood in the same kind of cage that had trapped her for so long.
How, in just one moment, she felt different. Something in her had changed. And the man from the dreams had done it. The burden she’d carried, the dreams of the diseases, were gone. It was over.
She remembered pressing her hands against the filmy substance that ensnared her as she watched the man pull a gun out and point it to his head—
“Quincy, you’re holding up traffic,” Lily said.
“Oops, sorry. Hey, where’s the valet?” He smiled at her.
They pulled up in front of the school, amid a sea of children in perfectly coiffed ponytails and dry-cleaned uniforms. A woman in a drab suit and sensible shoes walked briskly up to his Mercedes.
“No need to get out, sir. Just let them out, and the line won’t stall—”
Quincy began to open the doors for the girls. “That,” he said, pointing to the building under construction on the corner of campus, “means everyone else can just move around me.” A sizeable sign stood in front reading, “The Quincy Martin Center for Technology.”
“Oh.” The woman forced a smile. “Of course.”
“Quincy,” Lily chastised. “Don’t make a scene.”
“Men open doors for ladies.” He reached down to give her bear hug.
“Ladies don’t need men to open anything for them,” she said, returning the hug.
“I do adore you, Lily girl,” he said, with a final kiss to her forehead.
Then he followed her around to open Ava’s door.
“And you, pretty face, are going to knock it out of the park,” he said, sliding Ava’s backpack over her shoulder. He leaned in and whispered, “I stuck your phone in the side pocket. You need me, I’ll be a hologram for you in a second.”
“Do you promise, Quincy?” she asked.
He knew she wasn’t talking about the phone.
Ava had made the same request almost every day since the night she explained how it ended. How she watched the monster move in so close to William that she feared it would tear him apart in those horrible jaws. Even at nine years old, she’d understood why William held the gun to his head. If he were dead, there would be no way to ever reignite them all.
But then William had turned the gun from where he held it against his temple and began to fire at the monster, right into its eye.
She’d been with it for so long, she’d become part of it too. The hundreds of veins that had so long ago lodged themselves into her skin meant it was a part of her. She knew it was completely armored, nothing could penetrate it. But the eyes, those large slashes of darkness, were as vulnerable and jellylike as her own.
William had fired over and over into them, and she felt the pain in the monster’s head. It screamed again, this time in confusion and disbelief. By the time William had run out of bullets, it could no longer see, but was still very much alive.
And that’s when she felt him, reach down to her and ignite the weapon within her. But this time, instead of being directed out into the world around her, it was focused entirely on the monster itself.
She felt the others too, from the dreams, including her sister. The tendrils of the creature burst into flames. Winds suddenly rushed around them, fanning the fire that now burned its horrid face and neck. She felt the diseases from Lily join the ones she sent as well, turning the skin from oily black to a fading gray.
The lights around her had gone out. The tentacle holding William’s pod dropped as the monster fell, its horrible face smashing against the floor, thrashing for a moment before it lay in silence.
Then, she felt no connection to the others. The disease, so much a part of her that she could taste it, was gone. She felt lighter.
She forced her way through the filmy prison, stepping out to see the other pod had crashed. A single hand reached out from it, and a red-haired man stumbled free.
“You know the deal,” Quincy said, his hands on her shoulders. “You go to school. You get good grades and you talk and you show everybody what you’re made of, and I promise. We’ll go see William again.”
Lynn gripped the armrests of the seat as the plane landed. Even in her plush surroundings, she felt her nerves jitter as the wheels of the jet touched the surface of the rural airport. She looked out the window at the holywood trees rushing past them, thrilling for a moment that she was seeing them for the first time after reading about them all her life. The slow-growing trees provided the hardest wood in the world, which explained why the species was endangered. Her daddy had told her about them, marveling in their existence. He hadn’t lived to see them, though.
She certainly thought she never would either.