I felt my own heartbeat pulse in my ears. I felt it stop beating.
“Dad, no . . .” My voice was barely a whisper, but he heard me all the same. He hadn’t given up on it at all. And it was then I knew the truth; he wasn’t in there anymore, in that husk of a body, not my dad. This was some other dad. Some replacement dad.
I thought I’d stopped crying, but I tasted the tears when I opened my mouth to say, “Just take me home.”
The minute I walked through the front door, my mom started questioning me, but she was the absolute last person I wanted to confide in. She was half the problem. If she hadn’t pushed my dad away in the first place, there was no way he would’ve ended up in that crap-ass trailer overflowing with star charts and hidden booze bottles. But instead of facing her like a grown-up, I opted for the more mature choice of running to my fake bedroom and locking myself inside. And by locking I mean pushing my nightstand in front of the door.
She at least had the decency not to shove her way inside, which she totally could have since my nightstand weighed like ten pounds.
Instead, she stood out in the hallway and spoke to me through the door, which is how it felt like she’d been talking to me ever since I’d been back—through a barrier.
Listening to her attempts to coax me out was almost worse than listening to my dad tell me about his online forums and how everyone on there agreed with him, that I was certainly-surely-most definitely a victim of alien abduction. I pinched my eyes in an effort to suppress the headache my dad had given me with all his crazy talk and did my best to stop thinking about my father and what he’d become. I wondered if he’d ever, ever come back to me the way I’d come back to him.
I stayed quiet until, eventually, my mom gave up and went away.
When my new phone buzzed in my pocket, I regretted checking it almost the moment I did.
Can we please talk? the text from my dad read.
I’d never, in my entire life, ever avoided my dad before. I mean, yeah, maybe once or twice, when I didn’t want to go to practice or that one time when I got detention for texting in class. Or the times when I didn’t want to talk about which college I should go to.
But never like this. Never when I was afraid of hurting his feelings because I was sure he’d lost his freaking mind.
Suddenly I had a glimpse into what my mom must’ve gone through, and I hated it. I hated her for giving up on him, and hated myself for being on the brink of doing the same thing.
There was a first time for everything, I thought, ignoring his message. I knew I couldn’t put him off forever, but I wasn’t yet ready for another round of Kyra Meets ET.
The worst part was, there were parts of his story that made sense. Maybe that would explain why I still had a bruise on my shin, or the reason I’d been wearing the same clothes when I woke up behind the Gas ’n’ Sip, or how my phone was still charged. Or maybe I was starting to sound as whacked out as he did.
Why on earth would aliens have a charger for a Motorola Razr?
Every explanation left me more confused. More lost.
And more alone.
When the text from Tyler came in, I almost didn’t notice it because I’d been ignoring messages from my dad for hours. But when I finally saw who it was, I let myself forget all about unchanged dental records and crazy dads and prying moms, and everything else that had turned my day to total crap.
After what had happened in front of his house yesterday, I’d worried he might not want to be my friend anymore. And Tyler was pretty much the only friend I had. I couldn’t bear the idea of losing him before we even got a chance to really know each other.
I left you something. To make up for this morning.
This morning? I wondered. What about this morning?
But I was already leaping from my bed to find out what he meant.
When I opened my window, I leaned all the way out, thinking that maybe he’d meant another chalk drawing on the road. But even as dusk fell I could see the road was the same as before.
And then I saw the small gift bag beneath my window.
Without going outside, I lowered myself far enough that my fingers brushed the top of it and snagged it before pulling myself back inside. When I closed the window, I sank to the floor and peeked into the bag.
It wasn’t anything elaborate, the bag. There was no tissue paper or sparkly shreds or anything, just a single piece of paper, rolled up and secured by an ordinary rubber band.
Slipping the rubber band free, I uncurled the sheet of paper and gasped.
I leaned in closer, to get a better look as a wide smile slowly drew my lips apart. It was incredible.
I’d been wrong when I’d assumed it wasn’t another chalk drawing, because it was. Only this one wasn’t drawn on the road. This one was so much more personal, and meant solely for me.
It was me.
Me, the way I’d looked the day I’d come home, when I’d first stumbled across the street and fallen into Tyler’s arms, still wearing my uniform, with the ribbons tangled through my hair.
He’d captured my image perfectly, with precision and depth and life. Somehow he’d made my eyes, which I’d always thought were too big, seem beautiful in a haunted kind of way; and I no longer questioned whether they fit my face. He managed to re-create the arch of my brows and the shape of my jaw and each and every freckle splattered across my nose.
Immediately, I texted him back: I love it. Thank you. Because what more could I possibly say?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Day Five
THIS WAS MY MOM’S FIRST DAY BACK AT WORK since I’d been home—probably the longest she’d been off work at one time since she’d squeezed out her new kid, so it hadn’t been hard to convince her I’d be fine and that I could fend for myself for a whole eight hours.
It was Thursday, according to my obsession with the calendar, which meant Tyler, the only other person who might’ve kept me company, was at school too. I was completely on my own for the day.
By 8:01 I was pacing the house.
By 8:16 I’d taken a complete inventory of the refrigerator, the kitchen cabinets, and the pantry, and noted the sad lack of nonnutritional, preservative-laden snack foods.
By 8:43 I was bored out of my frickin’ skull.
I finally settled down on the couch and started flipping through the channels, most of which were morning talk shows aimed at the stay-at-home-mom crowd. I paused when one of those talk shows was interrupted by a local news segment. My throat felt tight and scratchy as I stared at the familiar face on the screen.
I knew him. It was the lab guy who’d taken my blood at the hospital the night I’d come home. And according to the news report I was watching, he was dead.
I tried to read the ticker that ran continuously across the bottom of the screen, but I could only catch bits and pieces of it:
. . . A phlebotomist from Skagit General Hospital . . . found dead in his apartment last night by his girlfriend . . . hemorrhaging from his mouth and eyes . . . autopsy will be performed to determine exact cause of death . . .
I switched to several other channels to see if there were any other details, but when I couldn’t find anything, I gave up and decided to see if I could find anything online. Trouble was, the computer was password protected, and I would rather have been forced to wear my mom’s high waters every day until the end of time than to break down and ask her, even via text, what her password was.