Track 65

“Never Tear Us Apart”

Two Weeks Later

I don’t want the dream to end.

Warm beach sand feels silky between my toes. Hypnotic, exotic music plays somewhere in the background. Waves send a salty mist over me. And the smell of barbecued shrimp makes my mouth water and stomach growl. All I need is for Hayden to show up and complete the fantasy. Maybe wearing a T-shirt that molds to his rippling chest and six-pack. It doesn’t matter what he’s wearing or not wearing, really. As long as I get to kiss him again in my lifetime.

Something cold and wet brushes against my bare ankle, taking me out of the dream a little. The music stops, replaced with a low whirring noise. Eyes shut tight, I turn fitfully. My back rests on a hard, creaky surface. Quivering, I order my brain to take me back to the warm beach, and the dream goes on.

The wet sensation on my ankle is replaced with growing pressure. It squeezes and squeezes till I can’t ignore it anymore. I glance down, straight into an ashen face dominated by enormous black eyes.

“Welcome to Agua,” it says through a toothless, coin-slot mouth.

I jolt awake to full consciousness and gasp. A muscular figure crouches beside me on the lake’s dock. It takes a millisecond for me to register the intense eyes grazing over my face. “Hayden!”

“I’ve missed you,” he says. Unlike the Gray alien’s voice, his is deep and textured with huskiness. Still, I shiver. He hugs me to his chest.

I scoot even closer and angle my lips to his. “I’ve missed you, too. Two Earth weeks is a very long time.”

He pulls me to my feet. It’s only then that I notice Yoda’s with him, dancing excitedly at the end of a leash. The puppy noses my ankles, leaving a trail of cold slobber.

“Oh, so that was you!” I laugh at him as he yips excitedly. Seems the dream was just a dream. Reality is much sweeter. Again and again I kiss Hayden. Delicious heat radiates from his lips and reaches all the way down to my toes.

“You weren’t scared waiting here in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere?” His deep voice rumbles into my ear.

“No, because I was anticipating this super-romantic reunion,” I say, grinning. We face each other, holding hands. His lips are a breath away from mine. “And it’s not the middle of nowhere. We’re still in good old Dawson.”

“Ah yes, the rural home of nefarious government conspiracies.” Hayden brushes hair across my forehead. “How was it for you? At the hospital? No one would tell me much.”

“It was hell. But it could have been worse. Like at Eden/the Parallax Fucking With Humans Unit.” My lips curl. The whole time we were sequestered, I had no phone contact, not even a text, with anyone except family. For “operational reasons,” we were told.

Former President Flanagan had me, Alondra, and Jake whisked to specialist hospitals—bona fide ones personally checked out by Dad—for full check-ups and debriefings, as the therapists liked to call it. The whole time I was there, not once did anyone mention extraterrestrials. And I didn’t want to be the first to say the words. I hope Alondra and Jake did the same.

Yesterday, in a feat of stealth only the Secret Service could perform, Jane Flanagan was quietly flown to Europe for treatment with her relieved parents. None of us knows how Jane’s disappearance and reappearance is going to be explained to the world. But President Flanagan assures my family he’ll do whatever it takes to protect us from publicity.

My blood boiled when I learned Blake got a funeral with full honors thanks to “his contribution to governance as a federal senator.” My guess is no one but a select and unfortunate few will ever know how twisted he really was. The conspiracy rolls on.

Until I write my college thesis about him anyway.

He turned Parallax into a private “research” company. He told his workers the government still had oversight. Running it without government money literally cost him his fortune. That’s why the place was so rundown. He’d decorated Eden with furnishings from the home the bank had taken away from him.

We learned Mom most definitely hadn’t checked herself into Eden. She’d been working part-time at Dad’s office and dug up boxes of old secret files about Parallax. When Blake found out she was planning to expose him, he pretty much kidnapped and brainwashed her. Charlie was collateral damage.

Mom and I were placed in the same recovery facility. She’s still there. It’s going to take a while before she’s truly herself again. A long time before the mess Blake made of her neurons can be completely untangled. Makes me wonder what kind of debriefing Parallax employees like Moira might get. Dad says there’ll be years of litigation to come.

“I can’t get over the stunts they pulled to make people believe they were alien abductees. It’s unbelievable how easily the brain can be tricked. I feel so stupid!” My grip on him slackens.

“You’re not stupid,” he says, nudging me. “To be fair, Blake’s mind games didn’t work so well on you. It wasn’t until he started changing up his formula that you started remembering Parallax abductions.”

“What about you?” I ask, feeling marginally less stupid. “What was Aguan lockdown like?”

“Lonely. We didn’t leave Sinkhole City.” Hayden’s sigh is so heavy it could generate waves across the lake. “But we felt a lot safer knowing both Blake and his program are dead.”

My time in isolation gave me plenty of time to think. Angie was right. I did race around in circles, trying to plug up every gap in my schedule. Not that taking on Mom’s investigation wasn’t worth it. Obviously it was the best form of distraction I could have ever taken.

But deep down, I didn’t have the guts to confront an uncomfortable truth—that I had been forever altered when I was abducted by Grays. I wanted to push it down, have things go back to the way they were. I know now that’s impossible. You have to deal with the cracks that occur in life, patch them up, and move forward.

It’s funny, though. Five years on from that abduction, and my life has again been altered by an alien.

In a good way.

I gesture for Hayden to follow me to the edge of the rickety dock. He sits beside me, swinging his legs over the lake. Yoda nudges his way between us like a canine chaperone. Squawking animals and singing insects provide a soundtrack. In the distance, the newly free rowboat bobs on gentle waves.

“Is the treaty dead, too?” I close my eyes, not sure if I want to know the answer.

When Hayden doesn’t answer, I open my eyes again. He purses his lips tightly, fighting for control. But his desolate gaze tells me everything I need to know.

“You’re going back,” I croak through a painfully dry throat. I fix my gaze on the constellations above. Billions of secrets lie up in the stars and in the blackness between them. Humans are kidding themselves if they think they can uncover them all.

He nods like his skull is made of cement. “Once our rotation ends.”

“Which is?” I clench my hands, nails biting into the flesh of my palms. Please don’t say five minutes from now. Don’t even say five days from now. Selfishly, I want him to stay forever. He’d crossed galaxies and somehow found me in this tiny dot of a town. That had to mean something.

Hayden clasps my hands and kisses them. “We have six months. Till the end of senior year. And in that time, we have to keep our heads down.”

I let out a deep, energizing breath and start pacing the rickety dock. Yoda follows my every move. “Six months. I can work with that.”

He squints. “What do you mean? What are you going to do?”

“Plenty!” I exclaim. “We can cut a new deal. President Flanagan will help. Hell, he said he owes us and wants to help in any way he can. This is just one way.”

His face is a kaleidoscope of emotions. He leaps up, making the dock creak. “You’d do that for us?”

“I’ll do it on one condition,” I say, laughing. “You teach me to fly.”

He licks his lips as he considers my offer. “Hands-free?”

I take his hands and place them on me in strategic places. “Hmm, I was thinking more hands-on.”

Hayden’s grin lights a fire inside me. He kisses each cheek before nibbling my earlobes and finally connecting his scorching lips to mine. Our hands restlessly explore each other. I gasp as his touch glides under my shirt and wanders over my bare skin.

Yoda’s restless whines bring me back to Earth. A sudden stiff breeze whips around us.

“We should get back home before we all turn into icicles,” I say, rubbing spray from the lake off my cheeks.

“I don’t know. I’m feeling pretty hot here.” Hayden grins. Yoda prances and yips loudly, his leash tugging around my legs. “Okay, buddy. We’ll get you home soon.”

But Yoda isn’t listening. His barks become more insistent. Suddenly, he’s gone from innocent puppy to rabid dog. I follow Yoda’s laser-like gaze. He’s watching the middle of the lake. Water churns like crazy. Lit up by… What? It couldn’t be moonlight. The light source is coming from below.

“Hayden…the water…”

“I see it,” he says, grimacing as he tries to keep Yoda from diving in.

The lake rumbles faster and faster, like a pot of water coming to boil.

Then, quick as lightning, a silver disk as big as a basketball court shoots out of the water. Blinding blue-white light trails after it. The disk itself spins, does a round of the lake, then launches high above us.

My neck strains as I try to keep sight of it. In seconds, a shock wave ripples the night sky.

And the disk, the…unidentified…flying…object, is gone. Out of this world.

It takes minutes, maybe hours, for words to come out of either of us.

“Okay, h-here’s where you get to tell me not to worry. It was one of your s-ships,” I stammer. “Right, Hayden? Zhor?”

He doesn’t answer. Oh God—

“Do you think they’ll be back?”

Hayden turns to me. I squeeze his hands. They’re drenched in sweat. His face is devoid of color and full of fear at the same time. He swallows. “Count on it.”

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