Come Find Me(24)

    “This is important,” he reiterates, though I can see he’s losing steam. Joe wants me to have friends, to have a social life. To move on. He wants me to do this.

“Tomorrow,” I say. “After school. I can do this tomorrow.” I gesture to the papers, the couch and chair, whatever this whole thing is.

He nods. “Do you need a ride?”

“No,” I say, “she’s close enough to take my bike.”

“Leave me the address. And a phone number.”

“Joe, come on,” I say, even though my mother would’ve said the same. “I have my phone.” But still, I jot down the address, knowing he won’t look it up. Because his mind is already somewhere else. “Go out,” I tell him. “Have some fun.”

Joe used to be surrounded by an ever-changing stream of girls. I’m not sure if they were girlfriends, but there was typically some girl. I’d met at least three different ones in those first six months when we all lived in the same town. When we moved last year for my mom’s new position at the university, my mom said it was because she wanted to keep the small family we had together as much as we could—at first I thought for Joe, since my grandparents died while he was in college; but now I thought it was really for us instead. But I haven’t seen any girl—or really, any friend at all—in the six months I’ve been living with Joe. As if, in solidarity, he’s adopted the same ground rules as me. “The house is yours again,” I say, gesturing with my arm in a flourish.

He smiles faintly. When he stands, I retreat toward my room, to get ready to spend the night at my old house, excited that I won’t need to sneak out to get there, for once.

    When I’m almost at my room, he calls after me. “Kennedy, I miss them, too. I’m on your side. Always.”

My throat tightens. “I know,” I say, but I’m already closing the door, and I’m not sure if he’s heard me.

I need help. I need help from someone who is definitely on my side with this. Joe wouldn’t be. Joe thinks he is, but he wants to sell the house, and he wants to go over questions. He wants to sit in the past, dealing with the minutiae of what’s left of our lives.



* * *



—

My bag is packed for my fake stay at Lydia’s, but I’m not quite ready to go yet.

Visitor357 hasn’t responded, probably because I sent some embarrassing message rambling about disappearing people, totally downplaying the fact that his brother is gone. So I send an addendum:


I meant to say, I’m sorry about your brother.

But also, I’m sorry, because I don’t think this is related to your brother.

I know you’re looking for him. But I think, I think, you’ve stumbled upon something else. We’re missing something. Because it’s not just your room. It’s also a radio telescope at my house. I hate to ask this. I know how this will sound. The Internet, I know, predators, creeps, etc, etc. But. Locations would help.

     I’m on the 37th parallel, north.





Etc, etc.

I was back in my room, locked away, fake-studying, when my phone dinged with a new message. I didn’t know what to say to KJ’s last message (the feeling, he explained, like you’re on the edge of understanding something, even when something is gone, and the not knowing, where everything and anything is possible. Yes, yes. But you can’t just write back Yes, yes, to some dude on the Internet who’s looking for aliens. You can’t write back Something was taken from me, and I keep searching the emptiness, and I think I see something else, not just emptiness, something else), and I figured that was the end of that. But now there’s this new one.

What. The. Hell.

The 37th parallel? As in, latitude and longitude lines? What am I even supposed to do with that?

I pull up a fresh Internet window and search for a latitude and longitude grid. I find a site with an interactive map of the world, crisscrossed with labeled lines. I zoom in, finding the 37 north mark, and trace it across the screen. It bisects the entire country. The entire world. And okay, it’s possible I’m on it, too. It cuts straight through Virginia. But it also cuts through California, Asia, Europe. I get that he’s trying to let us keep some anonymity, but I don’t think this is helping.

    We’re missing something, he says.

Well, I’ll add it to the ever-growing list of things I’m missing right now. Whatever’s happening next door, and downstairs. The stack of textbooks on the side of my desk, my untouched math study guide beside the pile.

I stare at the study guide I haven’t yet started and probably won’t—circles, angles, degrees, equations. Answers that require calculations.

We are missing something. We keep focusing on the fact that this is happening. But the why isn’t always important. Or: the why isn’t always understood. That’s how I’ve been approaching my search—not in the hard, scientific facts, but in the unpredictable.

So it’s not just that it’s happening; it’s the signal itself. We’ve been ignoring that part, but there’s definitely a pattern. I pull up the data from KJ’s readout, which is much more practical than my own, with raw data. And I start plugging numbers in.

Count the time, KJ said. That’s what’s the same. The timing. Not the type of signal, not our exact location, but this. The pattern: the spike, the hold.