When the Sky Fell on Splendor(48)

“New haircut,” Nick guessed.

“New girlfriend,” Levi said.

Arthur clapped his hands together. “New superpower!”

“New phone,” I said. “Who dis.”

“Who indeed,” Levi narrated. “The travelers would not see, until they’d tracked down the rare and elusive Handsome Remy for themselves.”





SEVENTEEN



“YOU’RE PSYCHIC,” REMY SAID.

We were scrunched into a booth, and none of our food had come out yet, but the table was already completely covered in beverages.

Orange juice and water for Remy.

Water and coffee for Sofía, Levi, and me.

Water, chocolate milk, and Mountain Dew for the world’s grossest humans, Nick Colasanti Jr. and Arthur Schmidt.

“Actually, it’s more like telepathic,” Sofía clarified. “Or maybe that’s not right. I can’t hear your thoughts—before you ask. Actually, I can’t hear anything you hear. It’s all visual.”

Remy blinked at her for a few seconds. “Prove it.”

She sighed. “Weren’t you listening? I can’t do it on command any more than Franny can snap her fingers and start up the stove back there.”

Levi twisted in the booth to look over the counter. “Also, that’s a gas range, not electric.”

“An astrophysicist, a bovine scientist, and a connoisseur of stoves!” I said, trying to drag the conversation away from my ability.

Remy shot me a tense half smile. He didn’t love it when I deflected with humor, and with him it was easier not to. Maybe because his emotions rode so close to the surface and that made mine feel more manageable, or maybe because the first moment I’d truly seen him was the low point of both our lives.

I pressed my knee against his, an apology.

He pressed his back, an understanding.

“Just try, dude,” Nick urged Sofia. “How many fingers am I holding up under the table?”

“Just your middle one,” she said. “Doesn’t take a psychic to guess that, Nick.”

Remy pulled his gaze from mine and looked to Arthur. “What about you? What’s your power?”

“TBD.” Arthur fidgeted. “As long as it’s better than Nick’s, I’ll be satisfied.”

“Which is . . . ?” Remy prompted.

Nick took a big swig of Mountain Dew and chased it with a swig of chocolate milk. Sofía pretended to gag, which set my stomach back on edge.

“Some piano shit,” Nick grumbled, rubbing his head.

“He’s convinced the alien gave him nuclear codes in the form of piano chords,” Sofía elaborated.

“Just one theory,” Nick said.

“It’s a huge, and possibly ego-driven, assumption that just because Franny and I are both experiencing strange phenomena, your piano dreams have anything to do with what happened that night.”

“And what about you?” Remy asked Levi. “Are you experiencing anything strange?”

He gave a bearlike shrug then took off his camel-skin fedora and set it on the table. “Maybe the whole sleepwalking thing? It requires more observation.”

“Sleepwalking . . . is your superpower?” Remy asked.

“Sleepwalking is my anti-drug,” I deadpanned.

“My other car is sleepwalking!” Levi said brightly.

“Sleepwalking: We have the meats,” Nick joined in.

We stared at him.

“Did you just use the Arby’s slogan for a joke?” Sofía asked.

“And here they thought they’d found the one slogan that couldn’t be made funny,” I said.

“Will you all stop it.” Remy gripped the sides of his head. “This is serious. Can we quit with The Ordinary Variety Show for, like, two seconds?”

I sank in the booth like a scolded kid. Remy’s eyes caught mine then flashed away. He cleared his throat. “If this . . . alien really is making all this happen, why? I mean, if it’s really causing Franny’s power surges and Sof’s eye-hijacking and Nick’s . . .”

“Pianos,” Nick said.

“. . . sure, and Levi’s . . .”

“Somnambulism,” Sofía offered. “That’s the medical term for it.”

“Then why?” Remy finished. “And how do we make it stop before we all wind up stapled to tree trunks on Wayne Hastings’s property?”

“Obviously, we’re going to have to go back to see why it would take us there,” Arthur said.

Sofía mouthed, Oh, obviously.

“We’ll wait until he’s not home,” Arthur said. “He goes out most nights, for an hour or so.”

“And if he doesn’t?” I asked.

Arthur shrugged. “We’ll give him a reason to.”

“Such as?” Sofía was wise to ask; the first image that popped into my head was Arthur dumping gasoline on the hermit’s porch and tossing a hand-rolled cigarette onto it.

“I’ll think of something,” Arthur said. “In the meantime, we’ve got plenty to do. We need to get the camera back from the cave and see if the alien, or anyone else, came for the debris. We need to take Nick to meet his piano, hone Franny’s and Sofía’s abilities, and figure out mine and Remy’s. The good news is, I have a plan that covers most of that, but the hitch is, we need to go back to the Jenkins House.”