Track 54

“Planet Earth”

Present Day

Three, two, one. Wake up, Cassidy.

My eyelids feel so heavy I can barely open them. Wincing, I turn my head from side to side. I’m lying on something cool and solid.

“Wake up, Cassidy,” says a familiar voice. “Open your eyes.”

Startled, I sit up and look straight into my mother’s blue eyes. There are more lines around those eyes, more dark circles than I’d ever noticed before. “Mom!”

Mom hugs me. She’s so gaunt I feel like I might accidentally break her bones if I squeeze too hard. “Oh, baby,” she murmurs into my hair. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

I pull back slightly from her and grip her angular shoulders. So, so thin. “What about you?”

Giving me a wobbly, tearful smile, she says, “My day’s getting better by the second.”

A warm hand settles on my back.

I jump and turn. “Hayden!”

“People keep telling you to stay awake, Cassidy. And what do you do? Snooze.” I can see he’s trying to smile, but he can’t quite make it happen. He draws me up into a hug that melts me with its comfort.

“What’s going on? Where are we?” Frowning, I look around the room. It’s not the arctic-white space Jake and Alondra described. The walls are clearly visible. Dull gray cinderblock walls. The ceiling tiles are made of a pitted material, very much like those found at school. A dark gray door with a porthole stands in one corner. It’s hardly the space-age, high-tech room you’d expect to see on a UFO. I pat my back pocket. My phone’s gone. Of course it is.

“Welcome to the Twilight Zone,” Jake says, giving me a limp salute. He’s sitting in a corner, his back to the wall.

I stand up and peer through the porthole, but there’s nothing to see except the reflection of my own face. Turning around, I look from one weary face to the other. “We’ve been abducted by aliens again? How did we get here? Where’s Alondra?”

“We don’t know,” Hayden says. “Maybe she’ll arrive soon.”

“Maybe she won’t, if she’s lucky,” I say darkly. “This doesn’t look like the regular ship.”

“Ship?” My mother sags against the steel gurney I woke up on. It’s the only one in the room. The room is bare, with run-of-the-mill gray linoleum on the floor.

“This is Earth,” Jake says. “We think.”

“And the aliens brought us here?” I ask. “Is this like a base camp? Home away from alien home?”

Mom speaks drowsily, “Cassidy, where did you meet these boys? Will someone explain to me all this talk of ships and aliens?”

Oh God, she’s medicated to the hilt. Would she even comprehend it if I told her we’ve been kidnapped by extraterrestrials?

Hayden pulls me into a corner. In a subdued voice, he says, “I didn’t see who kidnapped us. Just a bright white light. Then they must have knocked us out and brought us in here. Your mom was in here when I came to. I recognized her from the photo on the laptop.”

An unsettling sensation burrows in the pit of my stomach. On one hand, I’m relieved Mom’s here with me. And on the other, I’m terrified we’re here in this room. Just what are they going to do with us?

I blast out a breath. “Okay, I think we’re still on Earth. That’s…that’s good, right? Alondra’s at the office. Maybe she’ll send for help.”

“Or maybe she’ll assume aliens got to us again. And she’ll know the cops aren’t gonna help them search for E.T.” Jake starts pacing. “We could die here.”

I’m struck by the strange expression on Mom’s face. It’s almost like relief. Like dying is a viable way out of this mess. Well, I’m not content to give up. I don’t want any of us to die in this concrete box. Dad would never get over it. I don’t want him to forever wonder what the hell happened to his family.

“If they can’t help us, we’re gonna have to get ourselves out of here.” I stare at the door again, wishing I could fire laser beams from my eyes and burn it down. There’s nothing fancy about it. Nothing to suggest it’s made of some space-age material. It’s like any other door found on Earth. Pop rivets. Flat gray paint.

So if we’re still on Earth, there must be a way out to safety. If I manage to escape, I surely wouldn’t find myself on some hostile planet in another galaxy. But I’d have to get past our kidnappers.

“It’s no use,” Mom says. “The boys tried their best to break down the door and smash that window. There’s no way out.”

Hayden’s hands clench and unclench as if he’d like to try it one more time. He puts his palms to the metal, his expression equal parts fear and defiance. I’m kind of feeling the same way. Scared out of my wits, but at the same time, I just want to fight against these aliens. Stop them once and for all.

“So what do we do? Just wait?” I pace the room. Twenty feet by twenty. The walls are rock-solid and cold. A vent above the door is, I guess, our air supply.

“That’s all we can do,” Mom says, rubbing her temples.

Tentatively, I sit beside her on the gurney. “Mom, I visited you a couple of weeks ago. At Eden. Do you remember?”

She looks at me in surprise, then looks thoughtfully at a blank wall. “I…I thought I was dreaming.”

“No, I was there. In the flesh.” I hug her, just so I can validate again that she’s really with me. “Do you know where we are now? This doesn’t look like Eden.”

Mom looks around the room as if for the first time. Her forehead furrows deeply. She seems to be working through a mental fog. “It’s…possible. I’ve never seen this room before, but come to think of it, that ceiling looks awfully familiar. God knows I’ve memorized every inch of my cell.”

Hayden’s still pressing on the door, glaring at it as if he’s trying to open it with the power of his mind.

“You mean your suite, don’t you? You’re not a prisoner,” I say, anger rising in my chest as Mom looks away. If I ever get a hold of Charlie, he’ll be sorry he recommended that hellhole for my mother.

She stares at her bony hands, peeks at me, then looks away again. “Sometimes, I feel that way.”

“Why, Mom?”

“Because…” Her voice is no louder than that of a mouse. “I can’t leave Eden, even if I wanted to.”

Her words hit me with the force of an asteroid impacting the ground. I gasp. “I knew it…”

“There’s something really off about Eden,” she says, brow wrinkling in concentration.

“Mom, I have been saying that all along.” But my gut instinct about the place is nothing to celebrate. I should have fought harder to bust her out. “I found a note on your laptop. Something about a lawsuit against Eden. Do you remember?”

“No…” She tilts her head, deep in thought.

“Mom?” I prod.

“I’m sorry.” She gives a mirthless laugh. “I get these moments of clarity sometimes, where I make up my mind to check out. And I tell the doctor, I do. Demand to be released. I want to get back to my family and my work. Then…I don’t know. He’ll start talking to me and the next thing I know, I’m unpacking my bags.”

“What does the doctor say to you?” Jake asks. “He must be pretty convincing.”

I glance at Hayden. He’s mouthing to himself now, forehead pressed against the door.

Mom shakes her head ruefully. “I can’t pull the words from my brain. But I feel like this scenario happens every few weeks. Days, maybe. I can’t keep track of time.”

The sound of a lock turning makes us all jump. We stare at the closed door, then at each other with wide, startled eyes. Trembling, Mom puts her arms out protectively and tries to herd Jake and me toward the back wall.

“Hayden,” I whisper. Cold air rushes against my face. “Get back here.”

He looks from the door to me. A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, then extends fully across his face. He pumps a fist in triumph. “It’s unlocked.”

Jake suddenly breaks from the huddle. “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get out of here.”

“We can’t go charging out like a herd of bulls,” I say, grabbing his muscly forearm. “Who knows what’s on the other side?”

Hayden looks at the ceiling, nose twitching. His smile falters. “Shit.”

“What is it?” Mom asks. “Do you smell something?”

“I feel something.” He shakes his head vigorously and reaches me in one big stride. “Stand still. Can you feel it, too?”

Holding my breath, I become a statue. Hayden pulls me close. An infinitesimal vibration pulses under my feet. A low-pitched droning gradually fades up into my ears. It seems to beat on my eardrums, sending shockwaves to every cell. I whisper, “I feel sick.”

“What’s going on, man?” Jake says, clutching his head. “Is it an earthquake?”

Against Hayden’s wall of muscle, I mumble, “The door’s unlocked. Let’s just run.”

The entire room seems to vibrate as the droning gets louder and louder. The walls, the floor, the ceiling. Us.

“It’s not an earthquake. They’re using sound frequencies to render us unconscious,” Hayden says, his voice grim and distorted.

Jake staggers away from the door. Face red and sweaty, he asks, “And you know this how?”

Hayden coughs. “I read an article about some…experiments. In a science journal.”

Mom moans and sags against my side. I tear myself away from Hayden. “Mom!”

But she’s already unconscious. I try to check her pulse. It’s hard to distinguish the beats of her heart from the increasingly unbearable droning. A vein in her neck throbs under my fingers. She’s alive, but unconscious.

My thoughts swirl dizzily as first aid training from a summer camp kicks into gear. It takes all the strength I have—which is not much—to roll Mom onto her side in the recovery position. Feels like pushing a boulder uphill. Nausea overwhelms me. I wobble all the way down to the floor. Hayden’s hands scoop my head to stop it from cracking on the hard linoleum.

“I can’t feel my body,” Jake pants beside us. Moving his hand as if it’s filled with concrete, he pats down his thigh. “I can’t…”

When he doesn’t finish his sentence, I try to reach out to him. But my arm feels like an anchor. I can barely move it. “Jake?”

“Jake’s okay. He’s breathing.” Hayden’s face hovers above mine. It’s hard to focus on him. He’s becoming a blurry shape.

“What about you? Are you breathing?” I mumble. Hayden’s face rubs against mine. I’m grateful for the rough stubble of his face. Makes me feel like I’m still alive. His arms wrap around me. I try to hug him back, but my brain has no jurisdiction over my muscles.

“Yes,” he says softly, rocking me. “I’m still here. And I’m so, so sorry.”

“For what?” My breathing slows. The room starts to darken. Or is that consciousness fading away?

“It was me.” It’s in that gloom, right before everything goes pitch-black, that I hear Hayden’s anguished whisper. “I’m the one who unlocked the door. Now we’re being punished.”