Track 18

“Life On Mars?”

Present Day

“You’re sure it’s dead?” I say. “You tried everything?”

After leaving school, I drove to Bartlett, staving off more stabs of guilt by focusing on Mom and helping her get the hell out of Eden. This mission is worth another detention. Maybe even expulsion.

Javier, the tech at PC Brigade, gives me a look that could burn down the Amazon in five seconds or less. He slides Mom’s old MacBook Air across the counter with one stubby index finger. “I don’t know what else to tell you. The hard drive is toast, and it wasn’t backed up to anything. This model’s older than my first-grader. They’re workhorses, sure, but they don’t last forever. Promise me you’ll give it a decent burial or at least recycle it, all right? I spent three whole days on it.”

I clutch the laptop to my chest. In some ways, it’s symbolic of my mother. Her heart and her soul are etched on it. “I’ll never get rid of this.”

“Oh!” Javier touches a hand to his chest. “That’ll be $180.”

I wince. There goes a big chunk of my savings. But I have to do whatever it takes to access Mom’s files. I’m not letting a dead laptop get in my way. I still have options. While the transaction is going through, another customer walks in behind me.

“Hello, Javier,” a woman says.

“Oh, hey, Moira,” Javier says with a nod. “Another drop-off?”

“Yes,” Moira intones. “May I?”

Javier gestures at the one place on the counter that isn’t covered in trays of circuit boards and USB sticks and other PC pieces for sale.

Moira eases past me. I take in her floor-length black dress; its long sleeves are tight from shoulders to elbows, then flare out past her wrists. Very Countess Dracula. Her skin looks like burnished copper. Fine gold liner emphasizes and elongates her eyes. With careful and deliberate moves, she places the flyers in a neat stack.

I can’t help but read the one on top. “Alien Abductees Anonymous?”

Has the whole state gone alien crazy? And flyers, for F’s sake? Hasn’t this woman heard about Facebook invites? She doesn’t look that old.

“Yes,” she says. “There’s high demand for spots in our support group.”

My jaw drops. “How can there be so many people who claim to have been taken by aliens in one town?”

“These people are traumatized in a way you could never understand.” She stares at me like I’m a piece of gum on an alien’s shoe. Or webbed foot? “And they don’t just come from Bartlett.”

“I’m sorry,” I stammer. If anyone can understand the ripple effects of trauma, I can.

“There was an event last night,” Moira says, addressing Javier, not me. Something about the way she says “event” makes it seem like an unholy word.

“So I heard.” Javier’s eyes darken. “You might have a few more people turning up.”

Moira gives a single solemn nod. “I’m afraid you’re right. This is why I felt it was necessary to schedule an emergency meeting for tonight. I’m doing everything I can to put the word out.”

“Do you have to be an abductee to join?” I ask, trying to inject as much respect as I can muster into my voice.

Moira arranges her long dark curls over one shoulder. “No. There are loved ones of people who have been taken and never returned. We are there to support them, too.”

I wrinkle my nose. “How do they know that their loved ones were abducted if they never came back?”

“Because they witnessed the event.” She stares me down, like she’s challenging me to say something stupid again. Now I get what she means by “event.” It’s definitely not an occasion I’d want to RSVP to.

Javier hands over my receipt. I step forward, eyeing that stack of flyers, my hand hovering above the counter.

I won’t say something stupid. But I might do something stupid.

“Thanks for…not fixing this,” I tell Javier, then take my receipt, grab a flyer, and get the hell out of there before this gets any weirder.

…

I’m not even a mile out of Bartlett before fatigue hits me. At least the headache and nausea are gone, but my heart is still sick about Mom’s laptop. Despite it being dead, I put it in my satchel and take it into the restaurant. Seems Moira had made her presence felt here, too. No less than four of her support group flyers are pinned to a community notice board in the foyer.

Again, I have to wonder how effective this form of advertising is for an “event” that’s happening imminently. However, the restaurant is almost full, so plenty of people would have passed it.

Two very small fish tacos and a large empanada later, I open up the old MacBook. My fingers glide across the keys as I picture Mom tapping hard and fast. If only I could mentally extract her research from the hard drive.

I swirl the ice in my pink lemonade, thinking back to how she reacted when I told her I wanted to take the Jane Flanagan case. The way she snapped at me, warning me off. I’ve never seen her look so cold before. It occurs to me now that she was saying I’d be putting myself in danger.

Yes, working on the investigation endangered her on a psychological level. That was bad enough, because look where she ended up.

But there had to be something else to it. Had she been threatened by someone in the government? Why, though? I’d think the feds would be just as invested—even more so than Mom—in solving Jane’s disappearance. She’s a former president’s daughter.

Yawning, I check my emails again, noting my phone battery is marching toward death. There’s still nothing further from Anna Kingston, the Flanagan-era White House intern. I’m trying not to take it personally. After all, she’s probably a busy person. Though she was on the bottom rung of the political ladder when Jane vanished, maybe she heard something, saw something that would help me. I leave a brief, non-whiny message on her voicemail, asking her to call me back at her earliest convenience.

A group of people in fluorescent construction vests amble into a booth across the aisle from mine. They chortle over the video of last night’s light show.

“It’s so stupid,” one guy says, slurping hard on a bucket-sized soda. “Why would aliens want to come here?”

A bearded man flaps a napkin before tucking it under his chin. “To scope the place out before they annihilate us all and take over.”

“Because they’re running out of water on their own planet?” suggests another, more thoughtful-sounding worker with a Scottish accent.

“They’ve landed in the wrong place, if that’s all they’re after. Freshwater is scarce on every continent,” I blurt.

I could have reeled off depressing stats embedded in my brain thanks to school assignments and working for an environmental law specialist who happens to be my dad. But the men throw me a collective Who the hell asked you? look, then continue disseminating the supposed UFO footage amongst themselves.

Moira’s flyer pokes out from my bag, and I give it a sidelong glance. I’m not sure what possessed me to take it. I’ve never been abducted by aliens. I sure don’t know anyone else who has. If something like that had happened to Angie, she would’ve texted me while on board the spaceship.

I turn the flyer over and start jotting down ideas about the Jane Flanagan case. I’m basically starting from scratch. I’ve almost covered the page with my semi-legible handwriting when a voice intrudes upon my thoughts.

“…and then the guy said he couldn’t account for missing time. One minute he was walking his dog at six o’clock like he always does. He blacks out. Next minute, he’s in the middle of a field, an entire hour later. The dog’s frantic, barking its head off—”

Missing time? What?

As he speaks, a kernel of fear starts to roil inside me.

I turn to the group of construction workers. “I’m sorry to butt in again, but wh-who said that? Who couldn’t account for time?”

The bearded one looks annoyed at being interrupted, but answers me anyway. “Some old Chilean farmer back in the seventies.” He turns his attention back to his coworkers. “So he’s standing there and he realizes half his hair has been shaved off—”

“I…I’m sorry. Me again.” I give the man an embarrassed grin and take a tentative step toward their booth. Now all of the men are frowning at me. “Is it possible that this farmer just…blacked out? You said he was old. Maybe he had a stroke.”

“No, kid. None of the above,” he retorts. “To make a long story short, he got hypnotherapy years later and it turned out he was abducted by a UFO.”

My knees turn to jelly. That kernel of fear pops like a full-on explosion in my chest. I double over.

“Whoa, now. Are you okay?” the Scottish man asks, holding me up.

I work hard to haul air into my lungs. A vision of Hayden’s concerned dark eyes last night swims before me. He looked spooked when he pulled up behind me on my driveway last night. Okay, he and his family were already acting weird before I fainted last night. But the fear etched on his face was inexplicable. He saw something disturbing.

And now I have a good idea of what that something was.

“I’m okay,” I gasp, pulling away from the man. But I’m not okay. Not by a long shot. Is Hayden?

I race to my car as fast as I can with one thought screaming through my rattled head: Aliens abducted me.

How else to explain the missing time?

A week ago, my rational side would have said this was a ridiculous conclusion. If I hadn’t been drawn into Aunt Carole’s UFO “research,” alien abduction would so not be on my radar. But right now, I can think of nothing else because my rational side has gone AWOL. I can’t even begin to imagine the hows and whys of when they got me.

I spear a charging cable into my iPhone. My fingers, shaking and slick with sweat, trip over themselves as I try to find Hayden’s number. I’m about to give up and say, “Hey, Siri, call Hayden,” when a call from the boy himself flashes on the screen.

I pause before answering. I’m not a believer in the paranormal, but is it possible Hayden is psychic? How many times has he preempted me in the past few days? It’s beyond weird that he’s contacting me right now when I’m trying and failing to do the same.

Shaking my head rapidly, I accept the call. I’m not worried about Hayden having psychic abilities. I’m worried about freaking UFOs and aliens messing with me. With us.

“Hayden! Where are you?!”

A pause, then, “On my way home. The more pressing question is where are you? You weren’t in Latin class. I was worried about you.”

“You were?”

“Yeah, I would have texted you earlier, but I heard a rumor about a pop quiz for chem and had to scramble.”

“Oh,” I say, swallowing thickly. So that’s why he blew me off at school. “I’m worried about you, too.”

“Me?” He scoffs, sounding surprised. “You’re the one who fainted in my pantry last night.”

“I’m not talking about that,” I say. And to think I was embarrassed then about being found drooling on the floor in front of my not-boyfriend’s parents. That’s nothing compared to alien abduction. “I mean what happened afterward. Do you remember driving to my place? How it took way, way longer than it was supposed to?”

“Cassidy, you’re kinda not making sense,” he says, sounding genuinely puzzled, if a bit impatient.

“Yeah, my brain is like scrambled eggs.” My heart thuds hard. Did aliens rewire my brain? Isn’t that what they do to people, fuck them up forever?

My gaze falls on Moira’s flyer. The conversation I need to have with Hayden can’t happen over the phone. I want to see him face-to-face when I tell him my suspicions. Who knows how he’ll react? At least I can be there for him. Even loners need support when they’re told they’re a possible—probable—alien abductee.

“Cassidy?” Hayden prompts.

“I’m at Taco Heaven in Bartlett,” I say. “There’s something I need to show you. How soon can you get here?”