When the Sky Fell on Splendor(21)

I thought back to yesterday morning. Had any of the wreckage been gone when we woke up? As soon as my mind reached backward, painful white unfurled across it, blocking out the room.

A horrible sound.

White light, everywhere.

Pain in every fiber of my body, cold hardening ice-like in all my cracks, breaking me apart. Force on every side of me, shaking me like gelatin as I hurtle through—

“Why would anyone take that?” Arthur asked.

The white retreated like a tide. I was sitting on the couch, shivering, my fingernails sinking into the cushion and a layer of sweat shining my skin.

No one seemed to notice that I’d just gone to cold, sweaty jelly. That for a moment, I’d left my body.

Oh God. What had happened to us?

My hand went to my throat, searching for something to ground me, but of course the necklace was missing. I stuffed my hands into my hoodie pocket.

“We’re not sure,” the sheriff answered Arthur. “If someone did in fact cause this, they might have taken it as some kind of trophy. Or someone might’ve witnessed it and taken pieces as a souvenir. Happens all the time when street signs get knocked over or when stoplights fall during storms.”

“Well, we didn’t take that junk,” Arthur said. “Like Franny said, we were watching The Shining.”

The sheriff’s lips pressed tight. “The thing is, the debris wasn’t taken the night of the incident. It was taken last night. The new security cameras malfunctioned, in just the same way, and this morning, the rubble was gone. Which suggests whoever was involved, in whatever capacity, is still in Splendor.”

Arthur’s brow scrunched as he tried to think through what this meant, or possibly wrestled with frustration that some other trespasser had made it onto the crash site before him.

The silence stretched uncomfortably. Arthur, too deep in his head to bother with this conversation; Dad, possibly too out of touch to remember how to keep one up; Sheriff Nakamura, giving us every chance to fess up without outright asking where we’d been last night.

“Well, I hope you find whoever did it,” I said.

You know what did it, a voice warned in my head.

I buried my fingernails into my palms to keep from falling into that fragmented memory of the light.

Sheriff Nakamura smiled faintly. “Well, I should be going. Thank you—Frances, Arthur, Robert.” He nodded at each of us in turn. “You’ve been an enormous help.”

We had not.

“Of course, Sheriff,” Dad said. “If there’s anything else we can do . . .” He trailed off, but honestly, good for him, for managing to fulfill that much of the social contract. “I’ll walk you out.”

Droog hopped up to follow them. She had no real allegiance to any of us. She’d been Mark’s dog, really, ever since he found her by the dumpster behind Burger King with a broken leg. She was content to spend her days following any one of us around, but at night, she still slept on the woven mat at the front door, waiting for her boy to get home.

Dad reappeared a moment later, and I braced for the kind of punishment Arthur and I had avoided for five years straight.

But Dad just looked at us for several seconds, with this open, bewildered expression like we’d been newborns when he left the room and he came back to find us like this.

“You two stay out of trouble, okay?” he said finally.

We nodded, and then he shuffled back upstairs.

When we were sure he was out of earshot, Arthur smacked the pillow next to him. “Obviously the alien took the debris.”

“What? Obviously, how?” I asked.

“They’ll increase security now.” Arthur touched his chin. “It could be days before we can get back into that field.”

Good, I thought. No matter how badly I wanted my necklace back, as long as that thing was wandering around Jenkins Lane, I wasn’t going near it.

Even as I thought it, the white rushed forward over my mind, trying to drag me back.

“It’s just a few days,” I said. “It will be fine.”

What I meant was: Hopefully you’ll have forgotten about it, moved on to something new.

Hopefully we all would have forgotten about it.

But something about this—the news coverage, Cheryl Kelly’s blazer, the visits from police officers—kept pulling me back to what had happened five years ago, trying to hold me captive in memories I thought I’d buried.





EIGHT



THE CAR WAS BARELY stopped before Mom tumbled out of the driver’s seat and ran for the hospital’s automatic glass doors. It was funny, the things a person remembered to do and those they forgot in crisis. She’d thought to hit the key fob, to lock the Voyager’s doors, but she hadn’t checked whether we were with her.

Arthur’s lanky strides had carried him halfway across the sun-warmed asphalt, but I’d barely managed to get my seat belt off when the van’s locks snapped downward.

I hadn’t cried when Mom had told us Mark had been in an accident, or on the ride over. But my eyes stung then as I jerked at the handle.

I knew I had to unlock the door to open it—I was twelve, not five—but Mom’s shiny curls, her blue cardigan and khaki pants were disappearing through the doors, and I pulled again and again, a jumble of fear and loneliness overtaking any logical thought.