“I can’t glide anymore,” Calvin says at dinner. “Tonight’s my last night.”
The room had been full of noise, but it all stops when he says it. Calvin doesn’t notice. He secures a few stray peas onto his fork and eats them while we all watch and wait for him to say something else.
I break the silence. “What does ‘I can’t glide anymore’ mean? That doesn’t make sense.”
He shakes his head, looks down at his plate.
“There’s a limit to how much witnessing we can do,” Maddie says. “After a while, things get too muddy when we’re gliding, and we stop being useful.”
Corina asks him where he’ll go.
Calvin shrugs. “I’m set up in Santa Fe. Job in a bookstore.”
“That’s not where you’re from.” And then: “They got you set up how?” I was trying to hold the question, but it spills out anyway. “What’re they gonna give you?”
He doesn’t seem bothered by it, though. He raises an eyebrow. “A job, man. Some cash. ID, a verifiable work history, and a brain fully scrubbed of Locusts and Gentry.”
“Won’t people who knew you be . . .” I trail off when he starts shaking his head.
“Nobody knows me, man. Not in Santa Fe, not in Atlanta.” He’s angry. “There ain’t nobody for me out there.”
I’m angry, too. At myself, though. I know his story. I know where he comes from. “Hey, man, I’m sorry. I shoulda . . .”
He smiles, but sadness is what comes through. “Naw, man. It’s my bad. I just don’t want to leave at all, is all.”
His sadness spreads to me and I’m about to cough away the lump in my throat, but then I see that I’m not alone. Paul’s got tears in his eyes. Corina’s looking away at something on the wall to her side.
Maddie reaches over and puts her arms around his neck. Squeezes him. “We want you to stay, too, Calvin.”
Paul steps out from his seat and comes around behind him to rub his shoulders. “You’re going to make good things happen wherever you go. That’s just what you do.”
Calvin goes still for a moment. “Y’all gotta stop this attack, though. I don’t wanna go back to real life and then get eaten because y’all screwed up.”
Maddie kisses his cheek before unlatching herself and returning to her plate. Paul squeezes him once more. “We’re the Justice League, man. We got this.”
I look around the room. Everybody’s nodding, so I nod, too.
I’m not hungry anymore.
After I clear my plate, I swallow my nerves and walk up behind Calvin. “Hey, man.”
He turns around. Smiles up at me. “Alright.”
“Yeah.” I can’t even think of words to say what I want to right now, so I just tell him: “Take care, okay?”
“I always do.” He holds his hand up for me. I take it. Shake it. Don’t really want to let it go.
I’m focused on Calvin, so Damon startles me when he pulls out his wallet, flips it open, and pushes it across the table to Calvin and me.
It’s open to a picture of a little girl with yellow-blond hair. She’s like two, smiling, dressed in a school uniform and posed against a wood picket fence with a school-picture background.
“That’s your sister?” I ask him.
Damon shakes his head. His eyes are wet, and when he speaks, his voice is crackly. “Daughter. Caitlin. She’s four now, I guess.”
I never know what to say when somebody has a kid, so I just look at her picture for a minute.
“Since I got here, all I can think when I look at her is that I’d better not screw up or she’s gonna die.” He reaches for his wallet and I hand it back to him.
He glances at Calvin, then back at the picture. “Someday I want to hold this picture—or hold her—and not think about this shit.” He shifts his gaze up to Calvin again, winks. “Enjoy your memory wipe, man, and don’t worry. We got your back.”
Everybody’s quiet. Damon’s staring at the picture of his daughter again. I try to make myself stay there, but it’s too hard. I want to be alone. I squeeze Calvin’s shoulder one last time and nod to him.
He nods back as I walk out the door.