I dream about my parents. We’re together somewhere that isn’t our house. There’s a beach with a beach bar. Thatched huts like you see on TV shows about Florida or Mexico or the Caribbean. My mom is drinking a huge drink that she’s standing next to and it’s almost as big as she is.
I ask her where Dad is and she shrugs like she doesn’t know and doesn’t care.
I have his keys and he needs them or something really bad will happen so I go looking for him at school, and then at the grocery store, but I can’t find him. I go back to his truck and he’s sitting in the driver’s seat. In the dream, I know he’s dead and he seems to know he’s dead, too, because he whispers to me instead of talking and I somehow know that he’s whispering because dead people aren’t supposed to talk to live people and he doesn’t want to get caught.
“Watch yourself, Alex,” he tells me. “Bad things are coming. Strange things. Worse things than what happened to us. We were going to die, scared boy. Nothing to be done for it. Nothing could change it. Worse things for everybody, Alex, unless you stop it. Seen time is the only truth.”
I ask him what he means and he says, “You have to save the Earth.” And then he looks away from me.
“I’m sorry I ran away from you,” I whisper back when he’s not looking.
He says nothing, still looking away.
“Look at me, Dad?” I beg him. “Please?”
He turns and looks into my eyes. “You’ve always been scared boy, mijo, scared of who you are,” he says, shaking his head. “Strange days, mijo. Scared boy’s going to have to be brave.”
“I’m scared.”
My dad nods wisely. “Scared boy’s not too scared. Runaway boy.”
He doesn’t talk anymore. His eyes are closed and he’s the dead version of himself that I saw on the floor.
When I wake up it’s full light outside and my neighbor is looking out the window at fields. Pictures from my dream keep surfacing like dead fish. I pull out my screen and change the playlist.
After a while, I pull out the letter again and reread it.
Even though you won’t believe it, there are some things that happen no matter what and when they tell you that of all the ways things could have happened, this is the least bad way, it’s really true.
Seen time is the only truth.
My dad said in my dream that nothing could change it. They were going to die.
The letter says this is the best way.
“Bullshit.” I say it out loud. Fuck the letter and everything it says.
My seatmate looks at me.
“Sorry.”
I spend the rest of the morning staring out the window, using my music to drown out the guitars, feeling more alone than I’ve ever felt in my life.
I buy a sandwich in Redding. I feel better after food and I use the Wi-Fi in Subway to look at the news from Los Angeles on my old screen. There’s no report on my parents and for a moment I start to think that the cops went to the house and found out they were just fine. Maybe I only imagined the bug. Maybe I just imagined them being dead.
When I open my messenger, there are messages from people asking about whether I’m okay or not. Julio, Mousie, Fizzin, Schmo, everybody.
Everybody except my parents.
I message my dad anyways: Hey Dad are you ok
There’s no response.
I message again. Dad
Nothing.
I message Mom. Mom? Are you ok? Then, a few seconds later: Mom
They’re not messaging me back. They always message back.
It’s not that they’re not dead, it’s just that the cops never went by and nobody’s going to miss them until my mom doesn’t show up for her route at 5:00 on Sunday morning.
In my mind I see my mom in her driver’s seat, talking to me through the gap in the panel that separates her from her passengers. I shake off the image before it forms completely. It’s hard to breathe through the lump I get in my throat when I think about it.
They’re still lying dead on the floor of the kitchen. I should call the police again but I’d give away where I am. I’m sure they track where calls come from and I’d be calling from Redding at the time the Seattle-bound bus was in town. They’d figure it out.
Sorry, Mom. I think. “Sorry, Dad,” I say out loud because somehow it’s easier to talk to him since he was a big part of my dream this morning.
While I’m sitting there, a message comes in from my Tía: Mijo, you ok?
Eventually: It wasn’t me. Then: It was an Incursion. Then: I love you. Then: I’m scared.
She responds fast: What are you talking about?
I can’t answer her so I sign off the Wi-Fi before my head explodes.
It’s dark when we get back on the bus and I put my headphones back on. Mastodon. Seattle’s getting close and I don’t know what’s going to happen when I get there. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I know I’ll do better with it all if I can sleep a little bit.