There were no questions.
About Brendan, Ana learned: He first kissed a boy in Cub Scouts, which he joked was a common origin story for kids like him. His mother smoked during pregnancy, so he had asthma and a partially indented rib cage and all sorts of other problems. After his cousin died in that car crash, he tore all the wheels off the objects in his home—his Heelys, his Matchbox cars, the television cabinet. He lost his virginity to a girl, actually, back in eighth grade, but wouldn’t say who. He once pretended to have a peanut allergy because he was sick of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He was afraid that he’d never be a good artist in any medium. He thought he might have some kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder—not like people who liked to say they did, but really—sometimes he washed his hands until they bled. He was still in love with Hank Vasquez. He thought you could probably love a dozen people at once.
About Platinum, Ana learned: She was a virgin and planned to remain so until fictional characters came to life and wanted to meet her at her Italian villa. But seriously: her mom was the one in the military, not her dad, but she’d stopped correcting people (and yes, her mom had killed people before). She sucked at makeup and only copied what she saw online, which, no, don’t argue with her, still meant she sucked. She hated her name because Arlene was originally the name of her big sister, who’d died before Platinum was born. She had a creepy cousin—who didn’t?—who went to prison, but not before he had hurt her. She was scared of moving. She was scared of staying.
About herself, Ana taught them: She stopped loving things when people wanted her to stop, so maybe that meant she never loved things anyhow. She used to dream of making movies but never believed she actually would. She may have been in love with Marissa Ritter, her former best friend, but she didn’t know that, either. There was nothingness behind eyelids. She hadn’t felt anything real for years, except when she cut, so of course she cut, and it made perfect sense to her. She dreamed of her brothers and her mother driving away from her, and she could never catch up to the van even when Milo held the door for her. She could remember what Dad smelled like.
A few hours in, the events of last summer finally came up. Neither Brendan nor Platinum interrupted, and neither of them called her a liar.
They just listened, as if the revelation that an extraterrestrial parasite had infested a friend’s family was a secret equal to Brendan’s last wet dream or Platinum stealing a bicycle when she was eleven.
Maybe it was.
Finally Ana shared a secret that felt truly forbidden, a soap bubble that wouldn’t exist once it hit the air. “I think … I think I’m getting better.”
“I think that’s another secret everyone already knows,” Brendan whispered.
At last they dragged themselves off the ground, wiping their eyes and sighing, holding each other up to shake the cold needles loose. They traipsed over the haunted foundations toward Brendan’s car. Platinum stopped. She untangled herself from their arms and stood apart, pointing at the horizon.
“What the hell is that?”
At first Ana saw nothing but desert starlight drawing a clear line of separation between earth and sky, the silhouette of that lonely saguaro. Then she spotted an amber light on the horizon, a gentle haze of orange as nearby as yards or as far away as miles.
“A bad idea, is what,” Brendan answered. “I’ve seen movies. Let’s go.”
“Go look, you mean?” Platinum was grinning. “Because we should. This is totally my shit. And Ana loves movies.”
“Let’s look.” Ana wasn’t afraid it might be something extraterrestrial. Maybe she even hoped it would be. If the others suspected that, they didn’t say so.
Brendan sighed. “Fine. But we are certainly not getting out of the car.”
The car seat remained icy cold beneath Ana’s thighs as the car came to life and bumped its way toward the orange haze. Within two minutes of slow creeping, they were upon it.
“Huh.” Platinum was clearly disappointed. “Campers.”
The orange light emanated from a large Coleman lantern, though Brendan’s headlights had drowned the glow. By those headlights Ana made out two small tents, a fire pit, and a large canopy. Arranged beneath the canopy was a heap of bulky objects covered in tarpaulin, circled by a few rolling office chairs. A white van, generic and familiar, was parked nearby.
Ana’s stomach dropped.
“We should go.” The night felt suddenly dystopian. The arrangement of the shrouded objects recalled a demented workplace, a scene from Terry Gilliam’s Brazil or Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. The wheels of those chairs wouldn’t work on desert sand. “Now.”
“Ana, you speak wisdom.” Brendan switched the car into reverse.
“Look.”
Platinum pointed at the van. Her eyes were better than Ana’s, but now Ana saw it, too.
A ghost clad all in white stepped into the high beams.