Price also declared the ship to be secured, or at least as secured as it had been the day before it came to life.
At oh-five-twenty-two, the side of the ship opened, and a sixteen-year old girl in muddy clothing emerged from a blue-tinted interior. Price and Wentz drew their weapons and ordered the survivors to step back. This order was roundly ignored.
The girl was Annie Collins, and Price finally understood her orders.
According to most accounts, the first thing Annie said—after the hugs she received from essentially everyone in the clearing that wasn’t Price or Wentz—was:
“Step back.”
This was excellent advice, because at oh-five-twenty-nine, the Sorrow Falls spaceship roared to life, lifted off the ground, and after hovering seven feet above the earth for several seconds, shot straight up and into space.
Step back was not actually the first thing Annie said, however. The first thing she said was addressed specifically to Major Price and Corporal Wentz. It was: “I thought I ordered pizza.”
24
A GOOD IDEA IS HARD TO FIND
Annie had never been to Washington D.C. before.
The only other time the opportunity presented itself was a class trip to the capitol that was canceled last-minute because half the grade came down with the flu at the same time. It was the same year the ship landed anyway, so there was a lot less interest locally in going to see the White House and the Smithsonian when a much more interesting thing was happening on the town’s front lawn.
She remembered that year pretty well, not just because of the ship. That was the year everyone on the planet—it seemed—passed through town, and when she learned that being famous didn’t preclude anybody from being a total nutbar. The cancellation of the annual D.C. class trip seemed like a formality.
So far, she hadn’t had a chance to see anything up close. It was easy enough to spot important landmarks from the back of the SUV—the Washington Monument, Congress’s gold dome, the Lincoln Memorial—but it was all in passing, and largely ignored by everyone else in the car. She wondered what it must be like to live around things other people considered extraordinary. Then she remembered she was from Sorrow Falls.
She could see the tip of the Monument from the window. She was in a corner room on the top floor of an unassuming, square building that looked a lot like several other such buildings in the district. She had no idea what the name of the building was—if it even had one—or which government agency it belonged to.
It was a little alarming. Nobody would tell her precisely where she was going from day to day, only that they would like it very much if she came with them. It had been like this since the morning after. That was four days prior, but felt like it was months ago.
Incredibly, since her initial interview, conducted in the field in front of the ship by an army officer and consisting of only five questions—are you all right, are you sure, can you step over here please, can we ask you a few questions, and are you Annie Collins—nobody questioned her. Once she answered the fifth question with an affirmation she was politely escorted to the back of a Jeep and had been on the move ever since. She guessed this was standard protocol for sixteen-year olds who call the president in the war room.
Only one other question was asked since. That was, can you write down everything that happened to you on the night of the ship, in your own words? She’d done that. Nothing was sent back with notes or feedback, or even a smiley face sticker like the one Mrs. Winston in English put on the essays she liked.
It probably should have been a little intimidating. She didn’t feel intimidated, though. She’d had no contact with anyone from the media, but they hadn’t taken television away from her—that would probably, at some point, require that they decide to call her a prisoner instead of a guest—so she was well aware that her name came up quite a lot in the national discussion. Her friends from the trailer, plus Dill and Dougie, had clearly already been spoken to and released back into the wild, as they were all over the news. All except for two of them.
The door on the other end of the room opened.
“Ed!” Annie shouted. She stepped around the table and gave him a long hug. Then she punched him in the shoulder. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Sorry, I’m sorry, it’s been crazy.” He released her, stepped back and took a good look. “They’re treating you all right? Looks like they took you shopping.”
“Yes! I can’t go to the Smithsonian, but the mall? That they can do for me. I think the girls in the Gap thought I was some head-of-state’s daughter. It was awesome. The hotel, too. But look at you, you look as tired than the last time I saw you.”
“Fewer bruises, though, I hope.”
“Yes.”
“Like I said, it’s been crazy. Look, has anyone talked to you about…”
He stopped himself when the door reopened, admitting an army officer in full dress.
“Ms. Collins? Hello, I’m Major Corcoran.” His introduction came with a firm handshake. He had a cold hand and a dry grip.
He dropped a shoulder bag onto the table and took a seat on one side of it, then extracted a tape recorder and a stack of folders. These he arranged on the table in a way that implied there was an exactly correct place for them. Then he took out a new pad of paper—white, standard size, lined—and a pen. They had places as well. Finally, he looked up at the two other people in the room, as if they only just arrived and he’d been there the whole time.
“Please, sit.”
He turned the tape recorder on as they took his suggestion.
“This is Major Donald Corcoran, in an interview with Ms. Annette Collins. Also in attendance is Mr. Edgar Somerville, who has already provided independent testimony.”
Ed looked at her. “Annette?”
“Literally my first words were, ‘never call me Annette.’ They must have looked at the first draft of my birth certificate.”
“Mr. Somerville, for the record, I have an objection to your presence in this interview.”
“I’m aware of that, major. I’m also Annie’s legal guardian, and she’s a minor. I believe we had this argument already.”
“So we did; I wanted it on record.”
“You guys have been fighting over me?” Annie asked.
“Ms. Collins, in the past four days you have been the subject of very nearly every conversation Mr. Somerville and I have been a part of, as have a significant number of other people.”
Major Corcoran spoke as if his words were as starched and ironed as his shirt.
“Well that’s cool. Every girl’s dream.”
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. She noted a lack of comfort on his part with informality. “I’m going to walk through the events as we understand them, and ask that you fill in details whenever you can.”
“All right.”
He opened the first folder, and examined the top page for several seconds before speaking, as if what was on there was a prepared speech.
“According to statements made by Corporal Louboutin and a Mr. Douglas Kozinsky… private citizen… at some time around two in the morning on the night in question, you approached the anomaly, asked to be admitted, and went inside.”
“Can’t you just call it the spaceship?”
“The spaceship, then. Is that right?”
“Yeah but, you knew that. The major on the scene, in the Jeep…”
“We’ll get to that.”
“Okay.” She rolled her eyes at Ed, who smiled.
“You asked to be admitted,” Corcoran repeated. “Is that accurate?”