The rest of the room was a collection of mismatched electronics verging on antique status, two floor lamps losing a battle with gravity, and an embarrassingly vast library of old movies on videotape. Every surface—the fireplace mantle, the end tables—was decorated with two or three porcelain tchotchkes, a drink coaster, a pen commemorating something, or an ashtray.
It wasn’t the kind of place meant for guests, but when they had them it was the guests who tended to act embarrassed, because this was a room that suggested privacy and intimacy, and not for public consumption.
“These men were just here to, well, I guess to offer you a job of some kind, isn’t that right?” her mother said with something close to a smile. It was impossible to tell if she was incredibly amused or if Annie was in a lot of trouble.
“It was her suggestion, actually,” Ed said, somewhat louder than he meant to. “I just decided to take her up on it.”
“I wonder, um...” Annie looked at Army Guy. “I’m sorry, we haven’t met have we? You are?”
He stood—this took some effort—and offered his hand. “Brigadier General Morris, Ms. Collins. A pleasure. Your reputation precedes you.”
“My reputation? Okay. Okay, can I…? General, I wonder if you could keep my mom company for a minute while I talk to… Mr. Somerville in private? Would that be all right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Great. Ed, if you could just… no, not my room, let’s go outside.”
She led him out onto the front porch.
There were a great many reasons not to hold this conversation anywhere else in the house, because despite the inhospitable nature of the living room to all but close family and friends, the rest of the house was possibly even worse. About two years earlier they’d discovered dry rot in some of the floorboards on the first floor, and her father—who didn’t live with them in any real sense—decided to tear out the floorboards to stop the rot from spreading. This was a good idea provided those floorboards eventually got replaced, and they hadn’t been. He was due to return in October, at which time he would hopefully finish the job, but given she and Carol had been saying that every six months for two years, there was a reason to think it wasn’t going to be happening.
What it meant was that navigating the house to get to just about any other room aside from the kitchen (which had a direct exit from the living room) meant going down a corridor that opened directly to the root cellar in three different places.
Annie took Ed down the creaky wooden porch stairs and past her bike, and around the side of the house. The entire time, he looked either confused or embarrassed, or something in the middle of both.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down, you showed up at my house?”
“I’m really sorry. I promise you, I didn’t… look, I didn’t know your mom was sick.”
“Didn’t know? It’s none of your business. It’s not anyone’s business unless I…”
“I know, all right? I screwed up. Look, I mean… it’s kind of your own fault, really.”
“I didn’t invite you here, how is this my fault?”
“You suggested it!”
“I suggested you hire me to show you around, I did not suggest a house call.”
“Right, and I’m the idiot who’s going to put a sixteen year old on the payroll without getting her parent’s permission first. In this day and age.”
“On the… wait a minute, you’re going to pay me?”
“No, the army’s going to pay you.”
She shook her head and stepped back like he had just whipped open his pants. “Whaaaat is going on?”
“I can’t really tell you.”
“You gotta tell me something. Like why you’re seriously about to turn me into a government agent.”
“Don’t get carried away, you’ll just be drawing a stipend.”
“I don’t know what that means, does it mean I get paid money?”
“Yes, that’s what it means.”
“All right, so I’m in, but let’s keep talking anyway and pretend you need to convince me, because I’m not necessarily going to be all that helpful if I don’t like what I hear.”
“All right.”
“Why don’t you tell me who you really are?”
“I gave you my real name.”
“Super, but you’re not a reporter.”
“No, I’m not. That’s my cover, though.”
“A cover. You’re a spy!”
“No, no I’m not a spy. A spy would be better at this.”
She laughed.
“I agree. You work for the army?”
“I work for the U.S. government. I’m an analyst. I do things called threat assessments and action plans.”
“Sounds boring.”
“It kind of is. But it means I’m sort of an expert on Sorrow Falls.”
“That’s an interesting distinction. Sorrow Falls, and not the spaceship.”
“I’m sort of an expert on both, but yes, I made that distinction deliberately. I’ve spent about as much time studying the town in nearly every way I can as I have the ship itself.
“All right, all right.”
Annie was pacing. This was partly because it helped her think, partly because she was in shorts and a t-shirt and the bugs were starting to discover her existence. Walking kept them guessing.
“So what I’m hearing is, something changed,” she said.
“Yes. I can’t tell you what.”
“Right, but it was something. But why me? You aren’t a reporter, and that was my whole pitch.”
“Yes, but… look, Annie, I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on, but the reason I’m here instead of someone else is because I’ve been arguing for a while that there’s something… different about Sorrow Falls. There are things here that don’t fit together right. I can’t pin it down, but it’s something. And now… well. I need to talk to people, get my ear to the ground, that sort of thing. I have a good reason for doing it, and I can’t tell you what that reason is. But based on everything I’ve heard about you in the past few hours, you’re something like the local Tom Sawyer. I’m not sure why or how that’s true, but it is.”
“I’m not sure if I like the comparison, Tom Sawyer was only like twelve, and I’m—”
“Sixteen, I know. You have a tendency to mention it every few minutes. Why is that?”
She laughed.
“I’ve spent my life in this town, and I know a lot of people. All of them are friendly and most of them are much older than I am. Around when I started hitting puberty I noticed some of those people were looking at me a little differently, so I got in the habit of reminding them how old I was. It’s nothing personal.”
“I guess that makes sense. What will you do when you turn eighteen?”
“I’ll start reminding them how old they are instead. So what are you looking to find out? In general.”
“Anything unusual, basically.”
“How unusual?”
“I don’t know how to qualify that.”
“All right, we’ll work that out later. How long?”
“As long as it takes, I guess.”