Come Find Me(58)

She shakes her head sadly. “What’s the point?”

“Excuse me?” I say. The point is answers. The point is there was a signal, sent to both of us. The point is my brother, whispering across some impenetrable divide. And Kennedy’s voice, filling up the classroom.

She lets out a long sigh, resting her chin in her hand. Her gaze shifts behind me, but I can’t figure out what she’s looking for in the darkness. “Have you heard of the Fermi paradox?” she asks. I haven’t, but she must know that, because she continues. “In the history of the universe, there’s been more than enough time for life to develop somewhere else, and to advance. But there’s no evidence that any exists.” She frowns. “A scientist postulated years ago that the reason nothing has made contact with us in four billion years, the reason that there is no evidence that anything has colonized the universe, ever, in fourteen billion years, is simple, really.” She waits for that to sink in. “It’s because nothing else exists, has ever existed, or will ever exist. We’re a fluke, and we’re alone.”

    “No,” I say, “my brother.”

But she continues as if she hasn’t heard me. “We’re in an echo chamber, Nolan.” I remember, then, her own voice echoing back. “A vast expanse of nothing, nothing, nothing. There’s no one out there. This is it. Even my call for help. It just…bounced back.”

But that’s not true, because it reached me.

Kennedy has changed somehow, like something’s been taken from her today. Some belief. I don’t know how to give it back to her, except with the truth. I need her to see.

“December fourth, my brother appeared.”

She brushes the comment aside. “I know, you told me.”

“And I couldn’t make out what he was saying,” I continue, my voice growing more animated. “Just the end. He said: Help us. Please.”

Her gaze shifts from the empty night, back to me. She blinks slowly. “What?”

“It sounds crazy, right? I had a dream, and he came to me, and he spoke in the corner of the room. Help us. Please. Just like you said at the end of the transmission. I think the signal was reaching out to me, even then.” Not just the signal. “I think it was you.”

She shakes her head. “That’s not possible.”

I place my hand on the screen between us, leaning closer. “None of this is supposed to be possible. That’s the point.”

    “What’s the point, Nolan? I think I’m missing it here.”

I say the thing that’s been itching at the back of my skull. This feeling that’s been with me since that first day, when my device started moving against my brother’s wall, driving me to the computer to see what it meant. “I think I was supposed to find you.”

She doesn’t answer for a moment, and I think she’s mulling it over. I think she believes it, too, even if she doesn’t want to admit it. “For what?” she finally asks.

I’m not sure. Not yet. But I think we’re close. “For you to come to my house. For you to see that picture.”

I can see her thinking it over. “I thought that at first. But I don’t know, Nolan. I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“What have we got to lose, Kennedy?”

“You mean, other than Joe completely freaking out?”

“Right. Other than that.”

She thinks for a second. “Give me a few minutes. I need to leave a note this time.”





“Now I know why you wanted me to come,” I say. “How were you planning to find this place, without me and my phone?”

Nolan grins, gesturing to the glove compartment. “Look inside.”

I pull out a pile of maps, folded up and labeled in sections with a highlighter. “Oh my,” I say.

“Yep. Stopped in a gas station to fill up the tank, bought these inside.”

“Admit it, though. You’re glad I’m here.”

He turns his face from the road briefly, his eyes meeting mine. “I am, Kennedy.”

It’s a long drive, and the highway twists through the mountains in the dark. I keep worrying he’ll fall asleep, or I’ll fall asleep, but both of us are on edge, antsy in our seats. And I think I understand: instead of waiting for answers, we’re driving after them. It fills me with adrenaline. I almost don’t need the second coffee. Almost.



* * *



—

    I turn off my phone when we arrive on the street of the Long residence, just after dawn. Joe will be waking up soon, and he’ll see the note I left—Be back by Sunday, promise—and he’ll immediately start calling my number. Whatever tentative trust he’s placed in me, I’m sure I’ve shattered it with this move. But I hope he’ll forgive me. That he’ll understand.

Nolan’s car idles at the curb. There are two cars in the driveway, beside a white picket fence. The porch light is still on.

“It’s early in the day still. Maybe they’ll leave soon,” Nolan says.

“Let’s get some breakfast and come back,” I say.

“If by breakfast you mean more caffeine, then yes.” It’s then I notice the dark circles under Nolan’s eyes—mine must be the same. A string of sleepless nights, ending in this.