When the Sky Fell on Splendor(15)

“Besides,” Arthur jumped in, “don’t you think keeping what we saw to ourselves goes against your ‘justice for all’ thing?”

“That’s from the pledge of allegiance, Art!” Sofía said. “Not a diary of my legally trademarked thoughts!”

“Whatever that thing was, the public has the right to know about it, right?” he said. “It’s our duty to follow up on this.”

He said it with such conviction that I almost believed this had nothing to do with the ways his brain was rapidly calculating how this “duty” could bring him fame or wealth.

Sofía chewed her lip. “If they’re really worried about what happened in that field, we should give the sheriff the video. It’s the right thing to do.”

“And Stanford will be thrilled about your resulting breaking-and-entering charges,” Arthur said. “Going to the sheriff would just get us into trouble, and we’d lose ownership over this. The whole thing will be swept under the rug.”

“I had the same exact thought,” I deadpanned. “Harvard will have me out on my butt.”

“And my job at the U.N. certainly wouldn’t last,” Nick added.

Sofía shot me her best Please be serious look.

“The comments just keep coming in,” Levi said, still scrolling at the computer.

I perched on the edge of the desk and read along with him. There were still plenty of “I hope you REALLY get electrocuted, FKWAD,” but there was also enthusiasm.

Alien emojis. UFOs formed from keyboard symbols. “They are here, among us” and various typo-ridden phrases proclaiming the same thing. “This is some real Barney & Betty Hill shit,” one person wrote. “Look it up! They saw a strange light on the highway and next thing they know, they black out and wake up thirty-five miles down the road. We are NOT ALONE, PEOPLE!”

“We should turn this into a docuseries!” Levi said. “A real one. We can interview people in town—the sheriff, the owner of the field, maybe someone from Crane Energy. This is a story worth telling.”

“Dude,” Nick said. “Arthur and Remy have two weeks before they leave for college. Fairly busy time.”

“What could be more important than this?” Levi said. “My parents are gone for eight more days. We can just camp out here, do the whole thing rapid-fire!”

As he twisted in his chair to appeal to the others, I read the top-rated comment: “I want to believe.”

Beneath it, the comment with the second highest number of votes read, “FAKE. BAD EDITING.”

My eyes caught on a reply to that one.

“It’s not fake,” a commenter with the handle CitizenOfThe-BlackMailbox wrote. “I saw this, twenty years ago. DELETE THIS IMMEDIATELY AND CONTACT ME: BlackMailboxBill @COTBM.com. THEY ARE WATCHING!!!”

“What do you make of this?” I asked.

“Huh?” Levi spun back, read the comment, and shrugged. “It’s the Internet. Best to approach everything with a healthy dose of skepticism.”

Sofía crossed her arms. “Something your rabid fan base could learn from you.”

“Listen to this,” I said, and read the comment aloud.

“We’re not contacting him,” Arthur said. “We’re not contacting anyone until we get back to that field and see what we find. This is our UFO.”

“You’re flying way too close to the freaking sun, dude,” Nick said. “Talking about our UFO.”

“Speaking of the field.” Levi stuffed some gummy worms into his mouth. “What do you think the deal with the cows was? Did you see on TV, how they all lined up on the burns?”

“That part’s easy,” Nick said. Everyone’s attention snapped to him like one of his bulgy eyes had finally popped out of his head and rolled across the floor.

“Not all of us are bovine scientists, Nick,” I said. “Explain.”

Nick scritched the back of his head, and his fingers lingered, drumming out that restless beat he’d played against the car window earlier that morning. “Magnetic fields.”

“Magnetic fields,” Levi said in his documentarian voice, adjusting his hat.

Nick scooped up a fallen gummy worm and threw it at him. “Cows eat facing north to south. Or south to north. Either way. People think they sense Earth’s magnetism or some crud. Arthur’s beloved space critter must’ve messed that up with its spaceship.”

Sofía sighed. “Meteorite. Gas, or energy, trapped in a space rock.”

“It wasn’t rock,” Arthur said. “It was like jelly. Squishy.”

“That definitely sounds like space junk,” Sofía said.

“Wow, both a bovine scientist and a space-junkologist in the same room,” I said.

She shot me another reproachful stare.

Nick rolled his eyes. “No wonder the alien chose us, y’all.”

“See, that’s the part—well, one of many parts—that doesn’t make sense,” Sofía said. “If intelligent life were going to reveal itself to mankind, why would it choose six kids in Splendor, Ohio?”

Levi shook his head. “Maybe it crashed. The docuseries will uncover all that.”

“Give it up, Levi!” Nick said. “Not all of us have swimming pools full of money and buttloads of free time to bop around town with our fancy cameras and a Nancy Drew notepad. Some of us have jobs! People depending on us to pull our weight.”