ON SUNDAY MORNING, I struggle to get downstairs to the kitchen, feeling heavy and sore. After a night of blinking in and out of sleep, snapping between the warm, heavy dark of my room and the fretful, terrible dreams of the plane crash and the Bug Man and other horrible inventions of my mind—mostly related to what might have happened to Kimberly—I’m bone-tired.
Mom finds me sitting at the table. She gives me a long look, taking me in fully. After a minute, she crosses the kitchen and pours a cup of coffee from the pot. She doesn’t add any cream or sugar.
“Here, kiddo,” she says, setting the mug down in front of me. “My rule of thumb is that the coffee needs to be as black as the bags under your eyes in order to be effective.”
I glance down at the tar-colored liquid in the cup through uncoiling ribbons of steam. “That bad, huh?”
Mom nods.
I take a sip of the coffee and cringe, but the bitter jolt does wake me up a little. Mom’s got some casserole baking in the oven, the smell of which is making me nauseous, and I can guess who it’s meant for. I just hope she doesn’t make me deliver it to the Dowds myself. The portable radio on the kitchen island is tuned to WINK 104 in Harrisburg. That Richard Marx song is playing, the one where he’ll be right here waiting for you. The music is cutting into my brain like a saw blade.
“Where’s Dad?” I ask.
“Work,” Mom says. “He didn’t think it was a good idea for you to go out today. Or tomorrow, probably. Not until that … doohickey they put in you runs its course.”
I roll my eyes. “I know what he thought, Mom. And it wasn’t that. Did he tell you what we saw? At the Webber farm?”
Mom sighs, long and deep. “Yes. But that has nothing to do with your father and me deciding to keep you home for a while.”
“No? It’s not because Dad thinks that I’ll tell Sonya and she’ll tell her dad and then the government will … I don’t know … erase our memories or whatever?”
“Geeze Louise,” Mom says, laughing. “Remind me not to let you watch any more science fiction movies.” She brushes a piece of my hair out of my face. She hasn’t done that in a few years—I forgot how comforting it is. “Gabe, honey, you and your father have nothing to hide. The army, Colonel Higgins, they know what they’re doing. Lots of people in town must have seen that plane land Friday morning.”
“Did you?”
She pauses, blinks. “Well … no. But that doesn’t mean anything.”
“The Webber farm is on the edge of town, Mom. People might have heard it flying around, but how many do you think actually saw it? Not to mention what happened to Mr. Webber’s cattle.” I’d almost forgotten about that until now. But the images of the mangled cows come swirling back. “What if they’re doing some kind of experiments out at TerraCorp that they shouldn’t be? What if the plane really was carrying something dangerous, and after the crash, it got released? What if they’re trying to contain it?”
“God, you sound just like your father. I don’t know what happened to Clark Webber’s cows. And I don’t know that it matters whether people know that the plane was leaving Windale when it crashed. What you should focus on right now is Kimberly. I think you’ll feel a lot better when she’s home safe.”
“But they lied to us, Mom,” I say, replaying that conversation with Sergeant Hollis in my head, his story about the plane coming from some base in … where was it? Washington State? “Hollis told me point-blank that the plane was flying over from somewhere else.”
She blinks at me, searching my face, and there’s the tiniest bit of hesitation in her eyes. “You’ve been through a lot, Gabe. Maybe you just misheard him.” She leans in. “Focus your worries on your friend, okay? Maybe you can go with me to drop this casserole off at the Dowds’ later.”
I pause, scrubbing my face with my hand. “Yeah. I guess.”
I glance across the kitchen, and the Bug Man is watching me from the other side of the counter. In the skewed reflection caught in the gas mask lenses, I can see Mom and myself at the dinner table, my steaming coffee mug in front of me, Mom’s hand over mine. Richard Marx is singing, I hear the laughter, I taste the tears, but I can’t get near you now.
I blink, and the Bug Man’s gone; the kitchen is empty. But the radio suddenly squawks, as if the antenna got bumped. It screeches through my head, making me wince.
“Sweetheart, what is it?” Mom asks. “Your head?” She gets up, snaps off the radio, and the silence washes over me, a cool, refreshing tide. I didn’t realize how tense the music was making me. Now that it’s off, my entire body relaxes. I lean back in my chair, relieved.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Is there anything else you need to get off your chest, honey?” Mom’s voice is quiet, concerned. “You know I’m always here to listen.”
I hesitate. “I know, Mom. And I appreciate it. I just … I really think I need to talk to Dad first. He’ll … he’ll know what to do.”
“About what?”
I stand, leaving my unfinished coffee behind. My first intention is to just hide out in my room and wait for Dad to get home. But I can’t be cooped up in there all day. Not by myself. I need to talk to Charlie.
“Gabe,” Mom says. It’s her putting my foot down voice, and it halts me in my tracks. But then she gets quiet again. “What else did you see out there?”
The question sends a rush of panic through me. I have to squeeze my sweaty hands into fists. I can’t answer, can’t look at her.
“Sweetheart, if you know something that can help them find Kimberly, you should—”
“I know, Mom.” The words come out harsher than I mean them to, but I don’t regret saying them. My gut is telling me that the more people I talk about this with, the more people I’m putting at risk. I don’t trust Higgins. I still don’t know if I can even trust Sonya’s dad, and until I do, I can’t put Sonya in harm’s way. Talking to Charlie might be dangerous also, but I have to talk to someone. And maybe he can help me work through it before I try to explain it all to Dad. “I understand what you’re saying,” I tell Mom. “I’ll figure it out.”
I leave her in the kitchen. She watches me go up the stairs with a wide, worried look.
I go to my room, shut the door, and slip out of the shirt and shorts I slept in. I pull on jeans from yesterday and a fresh T-shirt, socks, and shoes. Then I gingerly slide my window up, trying not to make too much noise. I took the sling off my left arm this morning, and even though that shoulder is lowly humming with pain, I don’t have any intention of putting it back on.
Sneaking out of the house is going to be a lot easier without it.