When the Sky Fell on Splendor(17)
It scared me to see how badly he wanted this.
Wanting things was like needing people. It backfired every time.
Soon, he’d lose interest in this, like he’d lost interest in learning to count cards or play the bass guitar or slack line. It would all blow over.
In the meantime, we’d get my necklace back, wander a burnt field, and maybe even generate some ad revenue on our newly viral video.
Then we’d put this all out of our minds, like we did with everything else we couldn’t control.
“I’m in.”
SIX
BUT WE DIDN’T GO back to the field the next day.
For one thing, there was the violent storm that rolled into town not long after I turned up to work that morning, with angry purple clouds pushing in over the outdoor pool. Within minutes, lightning snapped across the sky toward the soccer fields beyond the water slide, and within half an hour, the YMCA’s director called to tell us the forecast wasn’t promising and we might as well close the outdoor facility for the day.
So I’d gotten bumped to the front desk, and the guy scheduled there went home sick. I hated working inside on the best of days, and today, there was nothing to do—nothing but a sticky romance novel in the lost and found, which I wasn’t brave enough to touch. And even if I’d wanted to continue the unsettling “research” Arthur was pestering us all about in the group texts (I didn’t), the storm seemed to be having some kind of adverse effect on both my phone, which kept freezing, and the computer, whose screen started pixelating and shuddering whenever I got too close.
Sofía was working too, but back in the fitness center, so I was left alone in the silent lobby, counting the minutes until Arthur’s shift at Walmart and Sofía’s and my shifts here ended, and we could finally go put all this behind us, lightning storm or not.
But then, after a segment about a dog who liked to ride the bus played on the muted TV fixed to the lobby ceiling, Cheryl Kelly appeared onscreen in front of the electric fence that guarded the substation on Jenkins Lane.
She was clad in a red windbreaker, and a disembodied hand floated on the left side of the frame, holding an umbrella over Cheryl’s billowing blond hair.
I wondered if someone had told her to swap out the blue she wore while reporting on the steel mill accident for the red she’d been wearing since, or if she’d made the decision herself.
While Remy had his denim and Levi had his loud hats and Nick had his trademark all-black outfit plus an endless supply of neon high-tops, I couldn’t imagine committing to one look.
Of course, I couldn’t imagine committing to anything. It was best to stay flexible when it came to decisions. You never got what you really wanted anyway. Someday Cheryl Kelly with News 11 would wake up and find a very particular burglar had robbed her of all her red clothing, and she’d have to settle for something teal.
Onscreen, her face was emoting so aggressively I couldn’t take the suspense. I left the desk and stood on one of the plastic chairs to turn up the TV’s volume.
The TV was old, and as soon as I was eye level with it, it went fuzzy, static pulling monochromatic streaks across the screen. I smacked the side of it, but (shockingly!) that didn’t help. I turned up the volume on the off chance I’d be able to hear her through the fuzz (I couldn’t!), then hopped off the chair hoping to give it a moment to resolve.
“The plot thickens!” Cheryl Kelly said as she snapped back into red existence. “For those of you just tuning in, I’m standing here outside the step-down transmission substation on Jenkins Lane, where yesterday, we reported about a strange—and intriguing—pattern that had appeared in a local farmer’s corn crop, as well as his grazing field. While early speculation from the Sheriff’s Department focused on the possibility that this was a calculated act of arson, yesterday’s investigation has turned up some puzzling—and startling—”
“And startling,” a voice parroted in breathy falsetto behind me. I spun to find Sofía leaned against the reception desk.
“—new information,” Cheryl Kelly finished.
Sofía shook her head. “Why does Cheryl Kelly always sound like she’s talking through the first half of an orgasm?”
“Because they cut her off before the second half?” I said.
The segment cut to a wide-angle view of the electrical facility. Yellow caution tape had been wrapped around the fence like a Christmas bow. Several police officers, as well as Crane Energy employees in rain ponchos, stood within the grounds, sharing a conversation we couldn’t hear, as Cheryl’s narration went on, the screen jumping once more to yesterday’s aerial footage of the charred field.
“With the help and cooperation of the property owner, local farmer Garrett St. James, the Sheriff’s Department determined that the burns were much deeper than initially thought. Preliminary reports that this was the careful work of pranksters faltered when a dig at the burn site turned up charred soil in the same careful path more than two feet below the surface.
“St. James is now reportedly in talks with a private excavation team. He hopes their assistance will help determine whether this is indeed arson, or if something beneath the Earth’s surface may have caused the burns through some kind of natural—though uncommon—”
“Though uncommon,” Sofía breathily gasped.