On that June evening, after they had eaten all the chilaquiles, Ana and Milo had conked out on the couch with Close Encounters on.
Hank showered, scraping frying grease from himself. He brushed his teeth with his left hand while Luz wrote on the foggy bathroom mirror in Expo with his right.
Do you know, Hank, of the three of you, you’re the only part who seems to grasp the gravity of my being here?
Hank spat out his toothpaste. “Are you joking?”
How could it be a joke?
“People grasp with their hands.”
Luz gave him the middle finger. Only so much as this is a joke.
“That’s actually pretty good, Luz.”
Yes. Both you and Milo respond well to juvenile humor.
Hank stopped smiling. “I guess so. I guess you thought that’d be another way to win us over.”
Do you mind being “won over”?
Hank let the marker hang there. “I’m not sure. I guess you’re already here, and Milo loves you, and Ana seems better with you, and for once they aren’t trying to pull each other’s hair out, so … I mean, I guess I’m trying to figure out why you’re here.”
Luz hesitated. Do you know why YOU are here? I can’t find evidence of that in you or in Milo or in Ana.
Hank frowned. “We’re just living, I guess. I just want to grow the hell up.”
Luz drew three exclamation points. Can’t that be my reason, too?
“All right, all right. It’s not like I’m smart enough to figure out how to kick you out, even if I wanted to.”
Almost the entire mirror was covered by now, but Luz wrote the next part in large letters. That’s true.
Hank forgot to breathe. Blue ink ran down his arm. “I mean, besides cutting off my hands.”
You can’t do that, Hank.
“You’d stop me.” Why wasn’t Hank moving his hand away? “To save yourself.”
I would stop you. But it would have nothing to do with me, Hank. Your fingers are yours. They’ve grown with you. You have touched astounding things with them.
Luz didn’t show him those things. Hank saw them anyhow. Milo’s soft hair on the day he was born, red clay lodged under Brendan’s fingernails, Dad’s high five after the free-throw tournament—
Hank jerked his hand on the glass.
Besides, Luz added, it’s not as though that would kill me.
Hank lowered his arm at last, letting the marker drag.
“Hey. You planning on getting up anytime soon? All that wheezing is distracting me from my work.”
Hank’s skeleton nearly left him there on the court. That might have felt better. It seemed his ribs had been diced and sprinkled along his stomach lining. He felt as if his trunk was one of Brendan’s ceramic collages.
Maybe ten minutes had passed. Maybe an hour. Light had left the sky over Nameless Canyon.
The old man who’d been beside the fence glowered down at Hank. Wispy tufts of white hair escaped the sides of a baseball cap bedecked in buttons, and wispy tufts of beard were tucked into the collar of his shirt.
Hank coughed four times before gasping out an apology.
“You should be sorry you didn’t punch ’em back. You a coward?”
Hank nodded. The man folded his arms. “Get up.”
After several tries Hank found his feet. Once standing, he doubled over.
“Did they beat you for being godawful, then? Never seen someone miss that many baskets before. I’m not a sport-ball fan, but I think you’re doing it wrong.”
Hank choked on a chuckle.
“Am I joking, boy?”
“… not … sure, sir.”
“Making a racket, disrupting my work, and now you’re laughing about it? The youth is doomed. The country is doomed.”
Hank stared at the man. Flecks of spit escaped his lips, distracted Hank from his shattered stomach and throbbing temple. “Sorry, sir. What kind of work … were you doing?”
It was like flipping a switch.
The man’s expression lifted with him. Suddenly he pulled his bifocals down and grew an inch to meet Hank’s eyes (or at least his shoulders). “Only the most important work possible, son. Are you interested in saving mankind?”
“Well …”
The man took Hank by the arm. Even hobbled, Hank wasn’t worried—he’d found the one person in Eustace with fingers more rickety than his own. He let the old man lead him to his post by the fence.
In addition to the massive binoculars around his neck, he also had a foldout telescope and a collapsible lawn chair at the ready. The scope was wedged between rungs of chain link.
“Stargazing?” That couldn’t be right. That telescope wasn’t aimed at the sky.
“Not exactly. But in a way: yes.”
Finally Hank read what the water-stained buttons on the man’s hat said.
We are not alone.
Weather Balloon? Weather BULLSHIT.
My other car’s a UFO.
The telescope was aimed directly at the Vasquez house.
The tingling wasn’t only in Hank’s hands now. His smile had fled.
“Truth is, I’m researching otherworldly life.”
“Wow.”
“Here, what am I thinking?” The old man fumbled through his fanny pack and handed Hank a dog-eared business card. On one side was an innocuous picture of mountains and clouds at sunset.
“ ‘Henry Flowers, Extraterrestrial Expert.’ ”
“There are three UFOs in that picture. You can’t see them.” Henry Flowers winked. “Those of us in the UFO circles know how to spot ’em.”
“So … what are people in, um, UFO circles saying about Eustace?”
“See that junky little house on the edge of the canyon?”
Hank didn’t answer. The throbbing in his skull intensified.
“There was some activity in this canyon over the summer. Atmospheric disturbances and celestial tells, you get me? It’s very technical and you don’t seem too bright, so don’t worry about it. Not everyone can be an extraterrestrial expert. But that house? That house there, you see it?”
“Yeah. I see it.” Home stood alone on an outcrop, jutting farther over Nameless Canyon than any of its neighbors.
“A month after the disturbances, that very house went under quarantine for a few weeks. Oh, people said it was a termite tent. But it ain’t hard for us experts to put two and two together. Hell, even normies have seen Spielberg movies. Something landed in this canyon over the summer and took up residence there, son.”
“Oh.”
“Now, don’t ask me what it was. I only parked here yesterday. I haven’t been around long enough to gather conclusive intel.” Henry Flowers leaned in for a conspiratorial whisper. “You wanna hear the weirdest part?”
No, Hank thought. He smiled. “Sure.”
“The tent’s gone, but the family is still in the house. No one’s tried to hush ’em or ship ’em off somewhere for dissection or witness protection or anything, which spooks me.” Henry tapped his nose. “Why leave the family there?”
“I have to go.” Hank tried to step back. Henry cemented his grip.
“You wanna know what I think?”
“No, thanks.”
A mighty cough helped clear the words from his throat: “Whatever landed there, it may still be here.”
Hank laughed so loud he thought he might snap in two at his bruises. “Has anyone ever told you, Mr. Flowers, that you’re extremely freaking creepy?”
Henry Flowers peered right at him and squinted. “Sure. You don’t get to be my age without people calling you one thing or another. It’s not creepy. It’s research.” Henry squinted at Hank’s hands. They trembled as though an electric current was passing through them. “Know what I’d call creepy? The idea that this thing could still be walking among us. That’s downright petrifyin’.”
Henry’s smile seemed altogether too knowing.
“Tell me, Hank Vasquez—how are things at your house? Seen any doctors lately?”
The desert wind died, leaving the park quieter than Hank had ever heard it. There was only his heart in his ears, vibrating the egg forming at his temple. The old man’s wheezy throat.
Hank had some idea how Luz would’ve handled this situation.
He remembered summer tryouts.
Tim had pulled Hank aside in the locker room between the third and fourth quarters of the practice match. While the other guys were huddling up courtside, Tim pushed Hank back against the lockers. The force rattled the loose bathroom tiles.
“What the fuck is your problem, Vasquez?”
“I don’t have a problem. We’re killing it out there.” Hank’s fingers, heavy with Luz, didn’t budge.
“We aren’t doing shit. You are being a fuckwad. The only things you’re killing are your fucking teammates. You elbowed Pat so hard he’s puking, and you were hogging the ball like it was your junk. This is practice. Everyone here is on your side.”
“Are they?”
Comprehension seemed to dawn on Tim. “Come on, man. We’ve played ball since Cub Scouts. Think I care you suddenly like to fuck guys?”
“You do care. Your dad hates queers. But that’s not what I meant.”
Tim Miller grabbed Hank’s shoulders. “My dad made you pancakes last week. Don’t talk shit.”
“I’m not.” Hank felt Luz crack his knuckles. “I can see it clearly now. The spaces between us. We aren’t on the same side, Tim. Your dad being a homophobic bigot has fuck-all to do with it. You and me? We just aren’t on the same planet anymore.”
Tim’s grip tightened on Hank’s shoulders. Hank’s hands moved of their own accord. Hank let Luz claim that situation, let Luz do the shoving back, let Luz grab Tim’s shoulders and crush until Tim let go—
Luz didn’t stop there.
He glued Hank’s hands to Tim Miller’s esophagus, reshaping the fingers until they were long enough to wrap twice around Tim’s throat and meet at the tips like tangled desert vines.
Tim squirmed, Tim gurgled.
“Wait, Luz,” Hank said without enthusiasm.
Tim Miller managed to pull one finger away—it snapped back into place.
Suddenly it was like waking up, how badly Hank wanted to let go. Suddenly he couldn’t understand where he was, who he was, how he’d been letting Luz live for him.
“Luz, stop.”
Luz uncurled Hank’s fingers. Tim gasped and slid to the floor.
Hank tried to forget his hands. He couldn’t think how to help Tim up without them. “Tim? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Get … get … the hell away.”
Hank straightened up. He grabbed his backpack on his way out, unfazed by his teammates’ silence as he exited the gym. Pat still held his stomach, glaring from the bench. Hank smiled and waved.
In the hot parking lot, Hank muttered: “You shouldn’t have done that.”
He was upsetting you. I could feel it. Red Bic ink, directly on Hank’s arm.
“Funny, because I couldn’t. I didn’t feel a damn thing. I still can’t.” Hank met the glare of sunlight on parked cars. “Is that a side effect, or is it on purpose?”
I’m only numbing your pain, Hank. You take on a lot, as the big brother. You have to worry about your siblings. Your family. Luz wrote so much that the words began wrapping around Hank’s forearm, traveled toward his shoulders. Let me have some of that. Share it with me. If you don’t want to be bigger, let me be bigger instead.
“Why, Luz?” Hank craned to see words that traversed his left shoulder blade and slipped beneath his jersey.
I’m still not certain, Luz confessed, moving the pen to Hank’s thigh, marking him there. Growing is the only thing I do. It’s what defines me.
Luz was the one who pushed. Hank went along with it, like he’d always gone along with things: smiling, letting them happen, letting sidelines become empty.
What wouldn’t you give to define yourself, Hank?
Luz drew the question mark on Hank’s knee, huge and distorted.
“What’s wrong with your hands, kid?”
Smiling wasn’t working now, wasn’t hiding a damn thing.
“Everything,” Hank told Henry Flowers, “and they aren’t even mine.”
“I can help you with that, probably. Not my first alien infestation.” Henry Flowers leaned in close. “It was like this for my daughter, too.”
Hank trembled. “What?”
“Before the extraterrestrial took her, I mean.” Glistening old eyes met Hank’s young ones. “She wasn’t herself anymore. Now she’s been gone for years. She could be anywhere, anyone. She could be anything, don’t you think?”
“I—”
“Heeeeeey!” A semi-truck smacked into Hank’s back, an arm over his shoulders. He gagged, collapsing inward on his broken stomach. “Tank, man, what are the odds? What you doing here after dark? Trying to pick up dudes? I think you’d have better luck in places where dudes actually are. Unless this guy’s your date?”
Orson winked at Henry Flowers.
“We were discussing top-secret business,” Henry said.
“Hank, did you forget? We’re supposed to be at Kamala Khan’s bonfire tonight. Annual tradition on the first/worst day of school, man!”
“Um …”
“Smile, dumbass,” Orson muttered in his ear. He grabbed Henry Flowers’s hand and shook it. “Nice to meet you, man, but we’ve gotta go. Unless you need anything else from my boy here?”
“No.” Henry Flowers pulled his hand free. “He has my number.”
This man had said he had a missing child. Wasn’t that what Hank was?
“Guy doesn’t read enough comics,” Orson muttered when they were out of earshot. “Kamala Khan is obviously Ms. Marvel’s alter ego. Maybe he’s stuck in the Golden Age?”
“What are you doing here?” Hank asked. The anger he felt was raw and strange to him now, because it was all his own and he couldn’t say why. It wasn’t that he had wanted to keep talking to the old man, but …
“Hank. See this?” Orson fanned his free arm outward. “This here land? This here land’s what some folks call a basketball court. And some other folks like nothing more, nay, love nothing more, than dribbling orange rubber balls here for entertainments and sport, my man.”
“… you just got out of practice.”
“Some of us have become second-string players due to missing camp, my man, and we’re already sick of the bench digging into our balls all the time, what ho, avast.”
“What’s with the voice?” They reached the half-dried yuccas that lined the parking lot. Hank fought the urge to check whether Henry Flowers was stargazing at the Vasquez house again.
“That voice? That there’s a nervous habit, Tank.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Another nervous habit, Spank.”
Hank stopped. “You didn’t bring a basketball.”
Orson snickered and jabbed his hand out from his shorts pockets. “I’ve got two basketballs for you right here.”
No more smiling. “Grow up, Orson.”
“Fuck that. You want me to grow up? How about this? I came here to say you forgot to give your sister a ride home from school. Your undead sister? Remember her?”
Hank groaned. “Crap. Crap.”
The overgrown palm leaves above cast Orson in darkness. “Nesbitt messaged me. He’s giving her a ride.”
Of course Orson knew Brendan. Orson knew everybody. He didn’t give you any say on that front: entered like oxygen, exited like carbon dioxide.
Hank eased himself onto the hood of Orson’s sedan. He felt the metal sink.
The only other vehicles in the lot were Hank’s busted car and an old RV covered in stickers like an ice cream truck, except these stickers featured chemtrail complaints.
“How did you find me?”
Orson sat next to him. “I’m not the smartest. Bird shit for brains. But if there’s one thing I know about Hank the Tank Vasquez: that motherfucker really loves basketball.”
Hank’s chest creaked. A laugh escaped. “I keep telling people that.” The laugh was no longer one. “They don’t believe me.”
“Well, Shank, you do have a history of telling enormous lies. People say you were down on one knee proposing to Carmella when you coughed up a hair ball, all, ‘Never mind, I’m gay as a child that’s born on Sabbath’s day!’ ”
“As a … what?”
“Oh, man. That’s an old nursery rhyme. I might be stupid, but I love shit like that. How weird catchphrases get passed down for no reason. Like, now people think ‘Ring around the Rosie’ was a plague song, but it totally wasn’t! And I bet you thought I loved Trigonometry?”
“I didn’t—”
“Nah, I know. Just another nervous habit. Saying racist bullshit about myself before anyone else can. If I beat assholes to the punch, I’m still in control. You know? The words belong to me.” Orson clapped his hands together. “Enough sage Asian wisdom. Let’s see the damage.”
“The damage?”
“Truth is, Rin might have told me you’d be here.”
Hank stared at his overlarge feet. “He told you about tryouts?”
“Oh. That? Cheah. Sounds like it was a real shit show, Hank. Someone told me your whole family had AIDS, which is just offensive as shit because people shouldn’t joke about that. Someone else said really bad Lyme disease? Oh, and you guys got quarantined. But now you’re just zipped lips all around. That about it?”
“… yeah.”
Orson whistled. “Like I said. A real shit show.”
Hank’s eyes found his useless hands.
“Thing is, Hank, eye for an eye doesn’t mean jack to me. Just because you sucked a fat one—other than Nesbitt’s, I mean—over the summer doesn’t mean Tim gets to make sausage meat of your belly.”
“He didn’t.”
“Shut up. You are bent as a fucking deflated boner, Hank.” Orson slid off the car. He reached through the passenger window and produced a duffel bag. “I’ve got enough Biofreeze in here to stop time. Off with your shirt, by order of the Red Queen.”
“You don’t have to—”
Orson tugged at Hank’s tee. “Really? ’Cause you’re basically rainbow sherbet.”
The cool air on Hank’s bare skin gave him fewer goose bumps than Orson’s stare did. Another dissection, or just the first time anyone had looked at Hank since Brendan?
Orson let Hank’s shirt drop and bent back over the bag. “Ugh. Your poor, sad, ugly, meat-loaf abs. Here!” He tossed Hank an ice pack.
Hank’s hands entirely failed to catch it. The pack smacked Orson in the shoulders.
“Jesus, Tank.” Orson plucked it from the dirt, wiped it off, and set it in Hank’s lap. “You’re an idiot, but you don’t have to be a brick wall.”
“Orson. I deserved this.” Hank let the cold spread across his thighs.
Orson sighed and slid back onto the hood. “Do you hear me disagreeing, O Almighty-Fuckup Vasquez?”
“No. So … really. Why?”
“D’you remember when I joined the team? In sixth grade. I was maybe the size of your left biceps. I used to wear glasses with fucking straps on them. At tryouts, three of the guys told me I should stick to violin.”
“Assholes.”
“Shit yeah. I mean, hello? Jeremy Lin? Yao Ming?”
“Sun Yue.”
“Exactly. But then Ben O’Brien pulled the same thing with you. I thought you’d beat him senseless. You were already the TANK. You could have ripped his arms off. I mean, I would’ve, if I could’ve. But you just brushed it off. Like, ‘You think I can’t play? I’m Mexi-can, not Mexi-can’t.’ ”
“That … wow. Even for me, that’s pretty dumb.”
“No it wasn’t!” Orson sounded angry. “Fuck. Hank! I’m shit at telling stories. But I’manna tell you one, young man, so listen up.”
“Young man?” Another smile paining him.
“Damn straight. Your birthday is six days after mine. Now listen the fuck up. In Taipei, it was hot as Hades, but I could not stay inside with my uncle. So I’d go out and play ball. I’d be on the way to the gym, walking between mint-green apartment buildings and street markets, and then bam! There’d be a park, an awesome little patch of real green. And in these parks were a bunch of old ladies with little brown poodles, and these ladies would sit on benches shooting the shit for hours. I wondered what they were talking about.”
The cold had risen past Hank’s navel.
“I don’t really speak Taiwanese. My uncle loves guilting me because I can’t get the tones right in Chinese half the time, and Taiwanese is even worse. It’s sort of got Mandarin words, but like—it’s different. You know when you hear a crazy Scottish accent and you’re not sure it’s even English? Taiwanese is like that to me.”
“Okay, I get that.” Hank thought of all the Spanish words he didn’t know, words people expected him to know after getting one look at him. Though Dad had been born in Tijuana, he was raised in Detroit, and his kids caught only snippets of his first language; it was an early absence. One of Hank’s first perforations. “So …?”
The streetlamp made marbles of Orson’s eyes.
“So nothing. It just made me wonder about things I don’t understand. Like when Ben O’Brien was a dick to me, I nearly quit the team. But when he was a dick to you? You laughed.”
Hank inhaled. This was the part where Orson would ask Hank what happened over the summer. This was the part where Hank had to go missing.
“Then I realized, no. I mean, whatever the poodle ladies were talking about was none of my business. Even if I knew the language it wouldn’t be. That’s my dumb story.”
Hank exhaled.
Do you think you’ll ever trust me? Luz typed on Hank’s phone before Hank fell asleep on the night of the chilaquiles, after their mirror conversation.
“Dad asked me that. He was teaching me to ride a bike and he let go too early.”
Hank watched his fingers move without him. But Hank, you’re not Milo. You know I’m not your father.
“I know.” What Hank didn’t know was whether or not that was a good thing. “I don’t know what you are.”
Neither do I. I’m trying to find out. I’m trying to grow up. Just like you.
Hank’s breath fogged the screen. Luz wiped it away.
Luz started to type something else, paused, and started over: Why do you suppose you’re so eager to see me for what I am?
Hank shrugged, alone in the tower that was his bunk. He tried to set the phone down. “I need to sleep.”
Luz held tight, pressing Hank’s thumb against the glass until it creaked.
What do you think, Hank Vasquez? Why do you see me?
Hank closed his eyes. “Because there was … I don’t know. For a long time, no one saw me for what I was, either. Least of all me.”
Luz let go of the phone and patted Hank on the shoulder.
When Hank started sobbing in the parking lot of Moreno Park, Orson remained at his side. He patted Hank like Luz had and then, after a minute, got to his feet.
“Wanna go to my place and shoot a few hoops, Tank?”
“I’ve shot enough.”
“Yeah, I know.” Orson smiled. “Wanna actually make some this time?”