An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #1)(61)

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s April, are you still up?”

“Yeah, I mean, why didn’t you just text me?”

“I thought this was more fun, I had the operator connect us!”

“Oooooo,” she mimicked my faux enthusiasm.

“So, I know you’ve been doing some research on what I’ve told you about the 767 Sequence.” I’d shared this with Maya, Andy, Robin, and Miranda and sworn them all to secrecy. I figured Miranda would have some ideas by now. “I thought maybe you could come by my room and we could go over it before I go to sleep.”

“Yeah! I’ve got a couple ideas!” She sounded absolutely oblivious to the fact that there might be an alternate interest in my asking her over, which worried me. She was obviously a little obsessed with me, but maybe that didn’t go beyond “April May, Discoverer of New York Carl.” Maybe I’d misread her. Maybe she was super straight or just not attracted to me!

This was the kind of fear-based excitement I was looking for.

“Cool, 606,” I said.

“Oh, that’s funny,” she replied.

“What?”

“Nothing, I’ll tell you when I get there.”

I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. I had taken off my fancy dress, of course, but I freshened up my makeup just enough that hopefully she wouldn’t notice I’d done it. Then I put on a tank top that was a little too small and sleeping pants that were a little too big. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, I’d do me, and then she knocked. I swear I caught her checking me out for just a millisecond before her eyes hit mine.

She looked adorable as always in a gray T-shirt fabric skater dress. The waist of the dress was high, almost an empire waist. It was tight across her slight bust and then flowed out to only hint at the shape below.

This was the evening I needed.

We sat down next to each other on the bed and chatted a bit about the adventures of the evening before settling into Dream interpretation. “The hexagons? I have no idea, that could be encoding anything. It could be binary, it could be some numerical pattern, I don’t know, April, I’ve worked through it a dozen ways and nothing makes any sense. But I do have a couple leads on the airline logo thing.” Since the hotel room didn’t have much in the way of chairs, we sat together on the end of the bed, our laptops in our laps.

“It felt familiar to me in the Dream,” I said, “but nothing we’ve gone through has turned anything up.”

“Well”—she lifted her laptop and leaned it gently on my upper thigh—“it probably looks familiar because it has the vague look of a flag. If you filled in the top, it would be a rectangle with a circle in it with bars of color. That’s, like, flag design 101. But not only is this definitely not a flag of an existing country, it just seems more likely that it’s representing something else.”

“Why?” I tried to make as much eye contact with her huge brown eyes as I could.

“I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem like the Dream to be referring to a specific country so blatantly. Usually it’s more abstract than that.”

She seemed both excited and nervous.

“I think it’s more likely that it’s either symbolic or representative. The symbolic feel is like the sun in front of the ocean, which might mean something to someone, but it doesn’t mean anything to me. But I’ve been thinking about it being representative. What if it’s not a single symbol, but two? It could be one dot and one dash of Morse code. If it’s just a dot and a dash, that would be just the letter A. But if it’s broken into two letters, that’s”—she checked her computer—“E . . . and T.”

I lifted up my finger to her. “E.T.?”

She lifted her finger up to mine. “Phoooone hoooome.”

We laughed and she blushed and I reached my hand out to grab hers as if that were a natural thing to do when sharing a laugh with a friend. Just a little extra physical touch. She tilted her head down and looked up at me, her smile gone, her face flushing red. I dropped her hand and put mine on her shoulder. As soon as my hand hit the fabric, she leaned into me with a kiss that was, ultimately, a bit of a mess.

I didn’t mind.



* * *



—

About an hour later (sorry for leaving out the fun bits—Miranda is a pretty private person) we were under the covers together, Miranda nestled in the crook of my arm. It was a little sweaty and sticky, but it was too nice to mind.

“I am a fool for saying this, but I can’t believe I just hooked up with April May.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, a little worried.

“Oh, I know that we’re friends and that you’re just a normal person. I think I’ve actually gotten to know you pretty well”—there was a hint of pride in her voice—“but you’re still April May, y’know. Champion of our alien visitors, initiator of First Contact, initiator of the Dream.”

“We did that last one together,” I reminded her.

“Oh, April, we’re all just satellites in your orbit.”

That made me very uncomfortable.

“That’s ridiculous, Miranda,” I said seriously. “You’re a genius. I can’t believe I just hooked up with Miranda Beckwith.”