Track 58

“I Got You”

Present Day

The downtown building that houses Dad’s office is only ten stories high, but it’s considered a skyscraper in Dawson. I have to sprint to keep up with Hayden as he climbs the last set of fire escape stairs that leads to the roof. Hayden, on the other hand, is barely puffing. Then again, he’s the newest member of the track team and fitter than I’ll ever be.

At the landing, he waits for me to catch up. His dark eyebrows are drawing toward each other. Jaw clenched so hard it twitches. He rests a hand on the door’s iron-bar handle and looks back at me.

I’m not sure if it’s because all the oxygen has gone to my legs, but my vision begins to blur. I grip the cold steel handrail and squint. Two overlapping, translucent Haydens swim in front of me.

“Cassidy?”

“I’m sorry…”

Swaying, I squeeze my eyelids shut as Hayden’s voice echoes in my memories.

“…unlocked the door… I’m the one who unlocked the door…”

Panting, I say, “Hayden, what did you mean by that?”

His gaze darts. “By what?”

“By what you said when we were in that room with Mom and Jake,” I say, pulling myself up to the landing at last. Fleeting images of a gray cinderblock wall tease me. I glance at the thick steel fire exit door beside us and a clank plays in my head. The clank of a lock. “You said you unlocked the door, but you couldn’t have. It’s not like you had a key.”

Hayden bites hard on his lip, turning that soft skin from pink to a brutal shade of red. Finally he releases his lip and nods. “You’re right. That’s what I said. I unlocked it.”

“How?”

“You can do anything,” he says with the briefest of smiles, “if you put your mind to it.”

“Your mind?” I scoff. He really has taken his collection of self-help books to heart.

“It’s hard for people to believe, I know.” He takes a step toward the fire door, then turns to me. The fierceness in his expression relents bit by bit. “Before you regained consciousness in that holding cell, I realized my abilities were weakened.”

“Your abilities? What are you talking about?”

He swallows audibly. “Can I show you?”

I splutter and step back from the door. “Please. I’d love to see your mind do some heavy lifting.”

Hayden’s eyes shutter over, like he’s uneasy but he realizes there’s no going back now. He gives me a sober nod. Putting his hands behind his back, he faces the door. “This should only take a second.”

As Hayden’s gaze drills into the door, the air around us thickens. Electricity pulses. But there are no sparks. No fireworks. No strings. No smoke. No mirrors. The iron bar clunks downward and the door opens.

Just like that.

All by itself.

And it really did only take a second.

But what the hell was it? What enables a person to use their mind to move inanimate objects?

Fresh air rushes in from outside. My chest heaves. I keel dangerously toward the concrete stairs. Hayden hooks my waist and brings us toe to toe. My bones have turned to jelly. I wish I had recorded him on my phone, because I keep replaying what just happened in my mind and I can’t understand it.

I’m not sure how long it takes to regain my voice, but when it comes, it’s hoarse. “What do you call that? Witchcraft? Are you like Harry Potter?”

“Nothing like that.” Hayden puts his foot out to stop the door from swinging shut. I tremble in his grip. “Whatever they drugged us with when we were taken turned out to be my kryptonite. At one point, I had to resort to trying to physically break us out.”

“If you couldn’t use your…your mind and you couldn’t use brute force, how did you unlock the door then?”

“Is now a good time to tell you I’m also blessed with a fast metabolism?”

“You’re saying the ‘kryptonite’ wore off, Superman?”

“Yes.”

“And then you put your mind to unlocking the door?”

“Yes,” he repeats. His brow wrinkles. “I hope I’m not scaring you.”

“I don’t know how I feel,” I say honestly. He has opened a door—two doors now—using the power of his brain. Normal people don’t do that. Normal people can’t do that. And yet here’s Hayden McGraw, showing me he is a thousand levels above normal people. Something tells me this is beyond simple magic, like something you’d see at a flashy show in Vegas. He might even be supernatural, despite what he said about not being a wizard.

“You’re in shock. I can understand that. You don’t see this kind of thing every day.” He slides his hand into mine. I look down at our entwined fingers, still not fully understanding what I just witnessed. “Come on, let’s go outside. There’s a lot to explain.”

The building casts a long shadow over the mall and quaint specialty shops. In summertime, it’s party central on the rooftop, where people hang out under a pergola strung with fairy lights. Heavy chairs and tables anchor a big square of artificial turf. On an October afternoon, you’re likely to freeze your ass off. Which is why there’s nobody else here, with only the occasional bird around to spy on us from above.

My feet stumble over themselves as I make my way to the chairs and sit on the very edge. Vertical timber slats of a pony wall act as a windbreak, but cold air turns my breath into vapor. Hayden pulls a chair as close as he can. Using his hands this time. He takes off his coat and drapes it over my shoulders. He’s still the slightly old-fashioned but sweet Hayden I’ve gotten close to. But I don’t move an inch.

“So,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady, like I can handle whatever he’s got to tell me. Because, for better or worse, we’re dating. Shouldn’t I be accepting of him no matter what? Is being able to move inanimate objects a deal-breaker in the grand scheme of things? “What was that back there?”

“It wasn’t sorcery.” He hesitates a second, then says in a matter-of-fact way, “It was telekinesis. The ability to focus on an object and make it move without touching it.”

“Telekinesis,” I repeat, then suck in my cheeks. “Is this something you learned? Like magic tricks?”

“Uh, no. I was born this way. I’m proud of my abilities. I hate hiding them from you. But I have to. For survival.” He dips his head and his shoulders droop. “It gets me into trouble sometimes. Notably today. If I hadn’t lost control of myself and unlocked the door, they wouldn’t have retaliated.”

“You don’t know that. It could have been a coincidence,” I rationalize in spite of this wholly irrational conversation. “Those aliens were probably testing us somehow. Seeing what we’d do if the door were unlocked. They wouldn’t come all this way to Earth without a plan.”

He looks up sharply. “They weren’t aliens. I’m one hundred percent sure.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I am an alien.”

A smile spreads across my face, but it falters when I see the seriousness in Hayden’s gaze. “Come on,” I say. “Stop messing around.”

“It’s true. I’m…I’m from a planet very much like this one called Agua. It’s fourteen thousand light-years away from Earth.” He looks at me without blinking, and right then I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience.

Shaking, I shrink back in my chair and take in his handsome human features. Two eyes that look like pools of melted dark chocolate. Soft lips that can be tender one minute and scorching-hot the next. I almost want to run my fingers through his glossy hair, just to see if it would move and reveal something terrifying.

Like the faces in Alondra’s alien paintings.

My heart hammers against my ribs like it wants to break out. Faintly, I say, “Stop. You’re not an alien. Aliens don’t drive badly the way you do. Aliens don’t go to stupid school dances. And…and they sure don’t kiss the way you do!”

“How do you know?” he asks wryly.

“They just don’t!” Another memory of Hayden blazing a trail of kisses down my neck surfaces. It was quickly followed by another—the first time his tongue slicked against mine, making me see stars.

He inches toward me and I shift back even farther. My skin feels hot and clammy, like I’m coming down with a fever.

My boyfriend can’t be an alien. It’s not humanly possible.

He’s not human, a nagging voice inside me says.

Until five minutes ago, I felt safe around Hayden. Swoony, even. Breathless every time he so much as brushed his fingertips across my skin. Now? I’m freaking out. Because he’s telling me he’s an intergalactic being. Next thing he’s going to say is there’s nothing to be afraid of.

But I’ve watched V, the old TV show where beautiful, humanoid aliens come to Earth, hang out, fall in love with humans. Everything’s hunky dory until someone realizes the aliens are actually guinea pig-eating, bloodthirsty reptiles with world domination on their agenda.

I swallow hard. “If you really are an alien, what are you doing in a random place like Dawson?”

“You’ll let me explain? You won’t run?” he says, sounding relieved.

I shoot a quick glance at the fire escape. I could make it there in a few big strides if I really had to. After that, I’m not sure what would happen. Maybe he’d catch me. Maybe he’d release me. Slowly, I nod.

Exhaling, he says, “We were just…existing. Minding our own business. Going to school and work like normal…people. But, uh, that night I followed you home, when we lost time? What happened that night scared the hell out of me.” He scrapes his hair back with his interlocked hands. “It was days before I worked up the courage to tell my family unit. They were furious, of course, that I was so irresponsible as to get captured and not remember any details. Trudy even tried to hypnotize me, but it turns out I’m resistant to hypnosis. My mother contacted our diplomats and confirmed that there were no scheduled missions in the quadrant…”

Listening to him, my brain spins like a hurricane. I can’t get enough air into my lungs. When Moira hypnotized me, I had a vision of Hayden as an alien. Albeit as a bobble-headed, creepy-faced one. But maybe deep, deep down, I knew he wasn’t from Earth.

As if reading my mind, he plucks at his stubbled cheek. “I’m not wearing a mask to look like this.”

“How did you know what I was thinking? Are you a mind reader?” If I sink any farther into the chair, I’m going to be embedded in it. Why I don’t run instead, I’m not sure. Maybe because I have to know more. If he wanted to hurt me, he would have done it by now.

Or is he using alien telekinesis to hold me? Or somehow controlling my mind and body?

I’ll always keep you safe.

That’s what he said after the joy flight. I hold onto that thought for as long as I can. Because a big part of me wants that to be true, now more than ever.

“I can communicate telepathically with fellow Aguans,” he says, “but I mostly choose not to.”

“Oh, mostly. Okay, then.” I can’t help being sarcastic. It’s like a coping mechanism.

“It’s true,” he says, looking at me with an earnest gaze. “We’re not about being intrusive, not mentally. Your private thoughts are just that. Private. But I have exceptional intuition.”

I shake my head as if that’ll rattle my brain into gear. “I don’t understand. You’re from another planet. Why do you look like…” The hottest human ever to walk the halls of Dawson High. “…like that?”

“Do you think all aliens look like Yoda? Not my dog Yoda,” he clarifies. “The little green guy.”

“No, not exactly. You heard Mrs. Walters. She said aliens exist only in the form of bacteria.”

“Yeah, I really wanted to school her that day.” His grin dies a quick death. “But she mentioned panspermia. You know, the idea that a species can be distributed across habitable universes—by hitching a ride on an asteroid, for instance.”

“I wasn’t exactly paying attention at that point.” I was thinking of my mother and the Jane Flanagan case. In the space of two weeks, life has become one big complication after another. Now this?

“Okay, well, she was right. Long story short, through panspermia, civilizations of humans have been seeded across multiverses over time. Earth is a planet that holds one of those civilizations. Agua is another. My planet.” He stops for a moment and watches my reaction carefully. I’m pretty sure I resemble a stunned trout at this point. I gesture for him to continue and he nods. “Like Earth, Agua hosts a number of different species, including humanoids like me and ‘Gray’ aliens. Those are the beings you typically see demonized in horror movies here.”

“I’d say they’re demonized for a reason.” Images of Alondra’s artwork make me shiver. “They abduct people. You heard the people at that support group.”

His lips twist. “There are civilizations of Grays who deserve the bad reputation. But on Agua we live in harmony with them. They are kind. Knowledgeable. They have a role to play, and so do we.”

As he speaks, his language becomes more formal. Less twenty-first-century boy. Is this the real Hayden?

“Cassidy, when you were abducted the first time—the only time—by real aliens, by the Aguan Grays, when you were twelve, they would have painlessly taken data and marked your DNA.”

“With a lemon zester-like instrument?” I say archly, though what he’s saying does match part of Alondra’s story. She said it was painless that first time.

“Um, I don’t know what to tell you. Our Grays don’t use anything that resembles a lemon zester.” He peers at me. “My dad wants his back, by the way.”

“Fine.” A red-hot blush climbs up to my cheeks. I change the subject away from my pilfering, which is not the most terrible thing in the world, really. “Why did they mark my DNA?”

“To identify you as an abductee, and one who cannot be taken again. The Grays use a retinal scan, using certain light spectrums, to determine who must be left alone.”

Gasping, I grip the arms of the chair. “That’s what you were doing in class that day? Trying to ID me? And Trudy, too, with her so-called light experiments?”

“What I said about you reminding me of Kalexy was true. The first time I saw you, it threw me because I was still processing her death.” He slays me with an intense stare. “But then that’s when I realized you were also…marked.”

I gulp uncomfortably. Alondra was right. I was abducted by kindly Gray aliens. “What’s your role in this game?”

“It’s not a game, trust me.” He looks up at the sky, where dark clouds are coming together. “Think of us as anthropologists. Teams of us have been tasked with finding humanoid civilizations. Earthlings are doing the same thing. Just not on the same scale.”

I close my eyes. “Oh yes, I feel so much better now that I’m picturing you as Sir David Attenborough.”

“My family unit is here to observe. That’s it.” He shrugs both shoulders. “We’re not to interfere. We can interact, of course. Buy real estate to support ourselves and drive clunky old trucks.”

“A family unit? That’s really what you call yourselves?” I ask. He nods, but I can’t help feeling like the name has military connotations despite his “we come in peace” spiel.

“Yes, we are a real family,” he says. “We arrived here when I was seven. Trudy was born in Upstate New York, but she’s an Aguan through and through. She’s aware she’s not like Earth girls. Lindsay is homeschooling Trudy until it’s deemed safe for her to mix with others.”

“You should tell her not to leave her calculus textbooks lying around on play dates, then.” I allow a small grin. He returns a relieved smile, sensing that what he’s saying is sinking in. And it is. A little. But most of it is still out-of-this-world unbelievable. “What does it mean to be Aguan? Like, how are you different from us, aside from telekinesis?”

He inhales deeply. “By what we can determine, the Earth civilization is younger, much less evolved than our own, with fewer genetic mutations.”

“So you’re saying we’re primitive?” I blink. “Why would you hang around us? I mean, we have to move things around manually. We can’t just use our brains.”

Again, he shrugs. “I’m telling it as it is. We Aguans are evolved humans. We have advanced hearing, vision, and language skills, use mental telepathy, telekinesis—as you now know—and are fifty percent physically and mentally faster than Earthlings.”

My mind boggles as he reels off his people’s abilities. “So that’s why you’re a big track star. Isn’t that an unfair advantage over your competitors?”

“Which is one reason why I dial it back a little when I’m competing here. I deliberately run fifty percent slower than usual.” He laughs. “It was Trudy who fixed your mom’s laptop. But I checked her work on the chip.”

“Well. Can’t deny it’s impressive. And it sucks to be an Earth human in comparison.” I look down at my hand, and instantly I’m reminded of the panini incident in the kitchen. There’s no evidence of a burn. Even the paper-cut scars have vanished. My jaw drops as realization hits. “You really did heal me.”

“Yes.” He flashes a modest smile.

“Hayden, you get that’s a superpower, don’t you?” I grab his wrist. “You could change the world! This world.”

“We can’t. That’s part of the bargain we made to live here.”

“So…you do everything in your power to not use your powers?” I frown. “Who did you bargain with? The devil?”

He pauses and looks anywhere but at me. “Your government.”

His words crash into me like a speeding truck. Air knocks out of my lungs. “The government is in on this?”

“An agreement was made many decades ago. We would share some of our technology in exchange for safe arrival, documents, seed money, the chance to study your planet. To learn from Earth’s mistakes.” His solemn gaze rakes over mine. “I think you can see why this needs to remain confidential. The panic it would cause across the world?”

My thoughts swirling, I nod. “There are already thousands of conspiracy theories.”

“Some of them draw attention away from our presence here, so that’s a good thing. From what I gather, a deal between universes is so far-fetched that few people believe it.” Sadness creeps across Hayden’s face. “In any case, about changing the world, there are limits to being able to heal others. Contrary to what you said, we don’t have superpowers. If we could bring people back to life, we would. But no one gets to live forever. No one.”

“Kalexy,” I whisper. His fists clench as he gives a short nod.

“She passed away in a flying accident.” Gaze solemn, Hayden leans forward, his hand on my knee. Heat radiates from his palm. His story isn’t the only bamboozling thing. “I’ve overwhelmed you.”

“A little.” A big lie.

His gaze is hypnotic. Spellbinding. “Cassidy, I need you to know I would never hurt you. That goes against everything we Aguans stand for. Our mission is only to observe and not harm.”

I rub my arms and shift on the hard seat. Quietly, I say, “You know, it is possible to harm someone emotionally. Lead them on. Pretend you like kissing them, when really you’re just observing them?”

He straightens. “Believe me, I tried to stay away from you. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. You’re an extra-special terrestrial. What I feel for you is real. You bring out the best Aguan in me.”

I stare at his hand—his alien yet very human hand—as it winds its way to mine. I can’t move. I don’t want to. The memory of his hands exploring my body brings a little ache in my heart.

“For years, I’ve been told to hide who I am,” he says, never keeping his intense brown gaze off my face. “The one time I did show someone what I could do, things didn’t go the way I intended. It could have meant the end of this world for my family unit. But we were given a second chance.”

“In Dawson. Sinkhole City. You were set up to fail.”

He snorts. “There are no sinkholes. It really is a rumor to discourage people from living near us.”

“So you can continue your nefarious activities in private?” I say pointedly. Then a thought ricochets through my skull. I gasp. “There are more of you coming. You’re all going to live on that estate like some kind of cult.”

His jaw clicks. He releases my hand. “I’ll ignore what you said about it being like a nefarious cult, but that was the basic plan. Until now.”

“What’s changed?”

“We’ve been exposed.” He looks away. “The abductions we’ve experienced recently? I’m telling you, it’s not aliens who are intercepting us. It’s humans. And they’re using elaborate means to do so.”

Blood drains from my face. I shiver inside and out. In a whisper, I say, “Why?”

“I’ve been trying to find out,” he says in a grit-filled voice. “But my parental unit thinks I’m the real target. We believe they’ve discovered I’m not from this world.” Despair makes him tremble. “Lindsay has called for an extraction before they do something worse.”

It feels like a boa constrictor is winding around my heart and squeezing it dry. “That sounds very painful.”

“Yes. In more ways than one.” His shaking hand reaches for my cheek. He strokes it in that special way of his, creating little fires wherever his fingertips roam. “But, Cassidy, I can’t go back to Agua. You have to help me. I’m begging you.”