• • • • •
“Grab your camera!” I scream as we both run after Tickles—and maybe we’re more chasing whatever that thing was that just practically grazed our heads. Well, I am.
I sense that my mom is close, and I can’t help my excitement.
We’re heading in the right direction, but I don’t hear Tickles. I’m worried about losing Geoffrey’s dog, but in all honesty, I probably won’t see Geoffrey again. I realize that’s a mean thought, and I kind of hate myself for thinking it.
Up ahead Tickles barks, and I pick up my pace.
“Tickles, stop running!”
Seth is right behind me. But every time I look back, he’s getting farther behind.
“Come on! Keep up!”
“I am,” he says, out of breath.
When I get to the top of the hill, I stop running and look around. I hear Seth closing in. Soon he’s next to me, breathing hard, but I can’t hear anything else. I can’t see anything either.
Son of a bitch.
There’s no dog.
There’s no UFO.
There’s nothing but forest stretching for miles and miles under the tutelage of moonlight.
“Ugh.”
“What’s wrong?” asks Seth
Moving away from Seth, I shout, “I’m here! I’m up here! Come on, please don’t leave me!”
I turn, and Seth’s expression says it all. He looks hurt. Sad.
Seth kicks at the ground, and his mood seems sour. “So you could leave? Just like that?”
And that’s when it hits me: if I go with the aliens, then I’ll be leaving my best friend. I’ll be leaving him like my parents left me. And that thought feels awful.
And that awful feeling bothers the shit out of me.
I have to play dumb, because the more I think about it, the less I know what I’d do. “What are you talking about? I’m right here.”
He shakes his head angrily. “No. With these aliens. If they wanted to take you, you wouldn’t put up a fight? You’d just go with them?”
“Sure.” But I’m not so sure now.
“That’s fucked.”
It’s not fucked. It’s survival. “You wouldn’t?”
“No way. I have an amazing life to live here, on this planet. I hope to teach photography at some amazing art school in New York and have this hugely fulfilling career shooting for presidents and magazines and art galleries. I’ll have my own dog. And kids. I’m even going to get married someday.”
I let his dreams sink in. That all sounds amazing for Seth, but those aren’t my dreams.
“Do you?” Seth asks.
“Do I what?” I ask, confused.
“Do you have any dreams, Charlie? Besides this UFO thing? Do you have any wants or goals or aspirations in this life?”
My mind is blank. I haven’t had anyone in my family aspire to much, and my life is pretty much shit. My mom disappeared and my grandma doesn’t know I exist and I get bullied at school and my friend Geoffrey might be eating himself to death and Tickles has only three legs and we still don’t know who hit him and no one in my family has ever asked me, “Charlie, what are your dreams?” And now my dad has seemingly left me as well. Oh, and Seth seems pretty much done with me at this point too. I really can’t do anything right, and I’m sick of trying. So, dreams? No, I haven’t thought about a dream that doesn’t include me being taken to somewhere far from Whitehall and Montana and this earth.
“Yes. I have dreams.”
Seth wills me to continue.
“Um, I want to—”
I search my mind. My thoughts. My past. Fragments of my life pass before my eyes. My mom. My tricycle. Cooking with my grandma. My parents fighting. Geoffrey moving next door. Tickles peeing on me. Flying nowhere but in my mind. That’s when it hits me.
“What?”
I clear my throat. “A pilot. I want to be a plane pilot.” And just like that I suddenly do. I want to fly. I want to be up in the sky. It’s the best of all worlds—up above this one, but still connected to the earth—to the people that make life matter.
Seth’s eyes seem to light up. “Really? I had no idea, Charlie.”
Me either. I don’t know how I didn’t piece this puzzle together before. “Yeah. A pilot.”
I turn back out to the darkened forest and search for the lost dog and the lost UFO and everything I’ve worked for. Everything I’ve searched for. Even when I’m already in the woods, I can’t find the damn UFO. I’m a failure, and it feels like the aliens don’t want me to find them. If they did, why would they make it so hard?
Seth studies me and, apparently seeing my despair, sits cross-legged, on the ground.
I throw up my hands. “Now what are you doing? We need to get the dog.”
Seth doesn’t say anything, and the next thing I know, he has his camera up to his eye. Snap. He takes a picture of me.
“This isn’t the time to take—”
Snap.
“Seriously, Seth. Stop—”
Snap.
“Stop!”
I hear his camera click again, capturing me in a range of emotions and looks, and I’m not comfortable with any of it.
“You’re alive,” he finally says. “You know that?”
“Duh,” I say. “Of course I’m alive.”
The camera clicks again.
Out of desperation, I turn my back to him.
“See, you say that, but I don’t think you really believe it.”
“Why do you say that?” My back is still to him.
I hear the scraping of dirt as he gets up and stands right behind me.
“Because you act like your life hasn’t begun. You always talk about these aliens as if your life would officially start once they take you. But how do you know your life wouldn’t stop? I’m sorry for what I’m about to say, but how do you even know your mom is alive? If she was really taken by aliens, like you say, then what’s to say she—”
“Don’t.”
“Isn’t being tortured?”
“Stop it.”
“Or being used for some messed up experiment where they’ve sawed off her arms and legs and she’s a type of robot?”
“Please!”
“Or that she’s just . . . dead.”
I turn to face him, the tears streaming down my face. “Why would you say that?”
Seth hugs me tightly. He squeezes out all the air between us. It’s just us in the universe at this moment.
A moment.
Then my pocket vibrates. I accidentally left my phone on. I pull it out and see that I have a bit of service—and notice that I have a voice mail from an unknown number.
I put my phone up to my ear. “Hey, Charlie. This is Ted, your dad’s friend. We went to your house, but you weren’t home. And it’s taken us a little while to find your number. . . . I have a bit of bad news.”
My heart stops beating as I hold my breath.
“Your dad went fishing with us, and he wanted to go for a hike yesterday to get some cell service and call you . . . but we started getting worried when he didn’t come back after a few hours. By late last night he had been gone for the better part of the day. Anyway, Charlie, we’re gathering up some men, and the sheriff is out trying to find him. I’m sure he’s safe, and maybe just got turned around. When you get this, give me a call back.”
I slowly lower the phone as the words sink in.
“What’s wrong?” asks Seth.
“My dad. He’s missing.”