CHAPTER

Fourteen

JULIE

Julie drives through a red light at the intersection on Main Street. She has her music turned up too loud, Exene howling about how the world’s a mess. Julie gets it.

Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.

Julie tears around the corner. Her stomach feels like it’s falling into pieces. The movie, the beach—everything had been so romantic and perfect and Julie ruined it by taking a chance that she had never dared to take before. She doesn’t blame Claire. It’s Julie’s fault. She knew better. She’s known all her life that this is the way things are in Indianola. Like the monsters, like the treaties. Girls don’t kiss girls here. In Austin they do. But not here.

Julie thinks about all the girls she’s liked, all the way back to Mary McNally in second grade, which was when Julie figured it out. They used to walk around the playground together after lunch, running through the circuit of slides and jungle gyms and seesaws. They always ended up at the merry-go-round, which was Mary’s favorite. On Valentine’s Day Julie gave Mary a card she made out of construction paper and lace; Mary gave her one too that said Best Friends, and Julie, even at eight years old, understood that Best Friends wasn’t exactly how she felt about Mary, although she didn’t know any other way to put it into words.

Later, when she figured those words out, she still didn’t say them. Not in this town, where the Pentecostal preacher shouts his sermons so loudly you can hear them from Julie’s backyard on Sunday mornings. And her father, being a pillar of the community like he is—that’s how Julie’s mom put it when she found the Hustler in Julie’s room last fall. Lawrence had kept the magazines secret for years, which made Julie lazy about hiding them. “Your father’s a pillar of the community and you wouldn’t want anything to disrupt that, would you?” She had the magazine rolled up so you couldn’t see the woman on the cover. “This sort of thing—it’s not what we want getting out. It could be very troublesome for our family.”

That was all her mother had said about it. She didn’t even seem angry. But it was clear she expected Julie to keep it a secret. Even Lawrence has told her she ought to keep it to herself until she goes to college.

Julie speeds through Indianola. It’s like a maze she’s been walking through for the last seventeen years and still not found the exit. Even the moonlight can’t make these streets exciting.

She pulls onto Lawrence’s street.

It’s almost eleven o’clock, and her curfew on weekends isn’t until one. She doesn’t feel like going home, and Lawrence is the only person she knows who isn’t judgmental about stuff that doesn’t involve breaking the law. Out of all the people in Indianola, he’s the only one who Julie actually wants to see right now. She just hopes he’s not out with Audrey.

Only one of the windows in his house is lit up, the big one in the living room. Julie parks in his driveway and goes around to the back door. She lifts the big flowerpot of Mexican heather up from its usual spot, plucks up the key, dusts off the dirt. But when she sticks the key in the keyhole the door swings open, unlatched, revealing the dark, humming kitchen. A TV mutters in the background. Julie eases the door shut and sets the key on the counter and follows the glow of the TV.

Julie creeps into the living room. She knows she should have knocked at the front door like a civilized person, but right now she wants to feel like she belongs somewhere. The TV is switched to the news, droning on about President Clinton and denuclearization and NATO, and Aunt Rosa looks asleep, her head lolled at an angle. Lawrence sits in the other recliner, flipping through a textbook. Thank God Audrey didn’t drag him away tonight.

“Boo,” Julie says.

Lawrence jumps and the book slides off his lap and lands with a thud on the floor. Aunt Rosa jerks awake.

“What is it, Lawrence?” she gasps.

“It’s just me,” Julie says, and she sweeps in and kisses Aunt Rosa on the forehead.

“Should you be out this late?” Aunt Rosa reaches for a remote and changes the station to some late-night show.

“Curfew’s till one. Felt like saying hi to my dear cousin Lawrence.”

Aunt Rosa shakes her head, but she’s smiling. She’s used to Julie.

“What are you doing here?” Lawrence asks. “Is there a problem?”

Julie looks over the TV. The audience laughs at something the celebrity guest says. “Not exactly,” she says.

“Do you want something to eat?” Aunt Rosa asks.

“Oh, no thanks.”

Lawrence plucks his book off the floor and tosses it onto the coffee table. Introducing Psychology.

“Studying on a Friday night, eh?” Julie asks.

“Some of us are responsible. C’mon, let’s go out back. Mom’ll be going to bed soon.”

Aunt Rosa waves her hand dismissively, her gaze fixed on the TV. Julie trails after Lawrence, feeling listless and unhappy. Normally Lawrence’s house is enough to cheer her up. Not today.

Lawrence grabs the key off the counter as they go out the back door. The porch is narrow and crowded with Aunt Rosa’s planters, so Julie kicks off her shoes and walks out into the backyard, her toes sinking into the grass. It reminds her of being out on the beach with Claire.

“Seriously,” Lawrence says, “what’s wrong? You haven’t been bugging me the last few days.”

“Yeah, because you keep disappearing with Audrey.” Julie glances at him over her shoulder. “She okay with you studying on a Friday? Or did you two break up?”

“No, we didn’t break up. She had plans.” He walks over to her and they stand in his backyard, looking out toward the woods. Most of the stars are blocked by the trees. It’d be a good time to go shoot at targets, if it wasn’t nighttime, if it wasn’t dark. Or maybe the darkness is what makes it perfect. Julie’s feeling reckless. That was the whole reason she suggested they go to the beach in the first place.

“Well, good for you,” she says coldly.

Lawrence is staring at her, waiting for her to tell him what’s wrong. God, he’s really got that authority figure thing down.

“You’re going to be the best cop,” she tells him, finally. “I saw what you were studying in there. Psychology? You’ll be inside the bad guys’ minds.”

“I’m already a cop,” he says. “I’ll be the best detective.”

Julie smiles at that.

“Now tell me what’s going on,” he says. “Is it something with the monsters?”

“No. It’s nothing. Just—teenager trouble. You don’t want to hear about it.”

Lawrence doesn’t say anything, although she can sense his disapproval in the darkness. She wraps her arms around herself and steps up to the edge of the trees. She keeps replaying the kiss in her mind. The soft dry brush of Claire’s lips against her own. The sweet fruity scent of Claire’s shampoo. The barest hint of pressure when Claire actually kissed back—

That was Julie’s first kiss. First kiss with a girl, anyway. First kiss that matters.

And Claire hated it.

Julie’s eyes are wet, and she wipes at them like she can get the tears to evaporate before they fall. Lawrence’s shoes crinkle against the grass, but Julie walks farther into the woods, like she can avoid him. It’s stupid, going out here barefoot. She doesn’t care.

“Julie!” Lawrence shouts, just as Julie hears a long, low hissing.

She freezes. The hissing sounds mechanical, like steam releasing from a valve. It comes from everywhere. She whips her head around and sees nothing but dark underbrush.

Another rush of hissing.

And then, through the trees, a glint of silver eyes.

“Can you talk?” she asks. It’s an automatic response, the first thing she was taught to say when she joined up with the exterminators.

“Can you?” It’s not so much a voice as it is a modulation in the hissing. Julie glances over at Lawrence and finds him half crouched, as if he’s about to leap.

Julie turns back to the eyes. They jerk to the right, then steady themselves, floating in the darkness.

“It appears I can,” she says flatly.

The monster moves into a fragment of moonlight. At first all Julie sees is oily gray skin, undulating like a giant slug. She takes a step back.

“You’re not supposed to be out here,” she says.

“I was looking for you.” The monster rears up. Branches snap and shredded leaves shower around it, this mass of gray skin offset only by those silver lamplight eyes.

Lawrence bounds over to her side, holds his fists out in a fighting stance. The monster ignores him and looks straight at Julie.

“Why?” Lawrence says in his cop voice. “Why were you looking for her? She’s an exterminator, it’s spelled out in the city codes—”

“I’m not going to speak to him,” the monster says to Julie. “I’m going to speak to you.”

Julie’s whole body is sick with fear. This monster is demanding, self-possessed, terrifying.

God, why didn’t the committee listen?

The monster lurches closer to her, oozing over the ground, revealing itself in patches of moonlight. She doesn’t dare look away as it slithers forward, its tail sluicing over dirt and dead fallen leaves. It fixes its glowing eyes on her and Julie takes a deep breath, trying to steady herself, to keep from passing out. If she can just make it through this, then her dad and the committee will have to listen. They’ll have to.

The monster stops.

“She’s been hidden from us,” the monster says.

Julie blinks, trying to find a place on the monster’s flat, slimy face she can actually look. She settles on the spot between its eyes and the narrow slit of its mouth.

“W-Who has?” she stammers out.

“The Sudek,” the monster says.

Julie’s heart jumps around inside her chest. “The Sudek? You mean Claire?” Saying her name feels painful, even with the monster bearing down on her. Stupid.

“The one to save us from the astronaut. She’s been hidden away. We suspect the astronaut, the astronaut’s maze. The astronaut knows that we know, that we are getting too close.”

“The astronaut!” Julie shrieks. “What is with this freaking astronaut?”

Her voice echoes around the trees, melting into silence. She’s rooted to the ground, her only movement the rise and fall of her chest. She cannot catch her breath. She’s not sure she ever will again.

The monster shudders all over like an enormous, revolting Jell-O. “Da zsa ful zsu sho,” it says. “That is our word for it. Is that easier for you to understand?”

“No,” Julie says. “And what do you mean Claire has been hidden away? I just—” She stops, her head swimming. “I just saw her. Did something happen—did you do something—”

The monster’s mouth drops open and it lets out a long hiss. Julie jumps backward. The air takes on a stale, cold smell. Metallic.

“She is still here,” the monster says. “That is good. But she’s been hidden from us. We can’t see her. Which means we can’t help her.”

Julie senses movement off to her side—Lawrence? But when she looks over at him, he’s frozen, watching them carefully. She whips her head back toward the monster. Its mouth has sealed back up again. Its eyes glow.

“I don’t understand,” she says. “What do you want with Claire? Help her with what?”

“She is the key.”

And then the darkness moves. Something slimy and hot slaps against Julie’s bare leg and knocks her to her back. Her head slams hard against the ground and she stares up at the stars in a daze. They twinkle with the far-off light of other suns.

“Let her go!” Lawrence shouts. “I’m a deputy with the sheriff’s—”

“You don’t understand,” the monster tells her, “but I can show you.”

“What?” Julie looks up just as she’s dragged forward over the ground. The monster’s tail is wrapped around her ankles, a thick, disgusting coil. Julie screams. She hears Lawrence shouting her name, but his voice is far away, on the other side of a wall. The stars blur together into lines.

“I’ll show you,” the monster repeats.

Julie blinks.

Julie blinks, and she’s not in Lawrence’s backyard anymore.

The stars are still overhead, still streaked into lines across the sky, tangled and twisted up like knotted yarn. But she’s lying on her back in thick mulchy soil, and the air is thick and humid and hot, the inside of a sauna.

Something wriggles over her bare ankle.

Julie shrieks and kicks it off. She sits up, her head spinning. Walls rise up on all sides, coated in thick, ropy vines, flashes of yellow and silver eyes blinking at her from the shadows.

She’s in the power plant. The roof is gone, but she’s in the power plant.

“What—How did you—” She struggles to her feet and immediately swoons, the strange air of the power plant going straight to her head. The monster stands a few paces away from her. It oozes over the soft ground, and its eyes flash, overly bright in the darkness.

“Take me back!” Julie shouts. “You aren’t allowed to do this! It’s against the treaty!”

“It’s against the treaty to harm you,” the monster says in its hissing-steam voice. “And I am not going to harm you. Only show you. Look up.”

Julie doesn’t move. It’s her only act of defiance.

The monster slumps down. It almost looks as if it’s sighing. “I had to bring you here,” it says. “I could not stay in the outside for long. The air isn’t right for me.” It pulls its head back, flesh rippling all the way down its body. Julie shudders. “But I can show you the timelines.”

This time, Julie looks up, compelled by curiosity. The roof is still gone, and the stars streak across the sky.

“Look,” the monster says.

“I am!” Julie clutches at her stomach, trying to soothe her quaking fear.

“Look at the timelines.”

“The timelines,” Julie whispers. She squints up at the streaking stars. Timelines.

Desperation tugs at the edges of her thoughts. “I don’t understand,” she says. “Just freaking explain it and let me go!”

“Look.”

“I’m looking!”

And then Julie sees it. One of the lines of light brightens and jerks up, tracing a new path through the ink of the sky.

“A change in the timeline,” the monster says. “In this room only, you can see them, shifting and eroding. A timeline brought us here, and it must remain stable, unchanged.”

The brightened line drops back to its original position.

“Like that,” the monster says. “It must stay like that.”

The monster falls silent. The glow in the starline disappears, and then that line fades in with all the others. Timelines, Julie thinks, and she has a sudden image of her life and Claire’s life as two lines of light intersecting in the summer of 1993. A moment was changed that day she went to Mrs. Sudek’s to capture a monster. Julie has never thought of her life in those terms before—she always dreams of the future, not the present and certainly not the past. But now she understands that the future and the past are part of the same line. They cannot be separated.

“The astronaut came here to re-create the past with cosmic magic,” the monster says. “And in so doing, the timelines will be knotted and confused. The past will become the present, the present the past. And both will change.”

“What?” Julie says.

“We do not know why the astronaut wishes to do this. We tried to warn the Sudek but we could never get close enough to her to show her all this.”

Julie looks up at the sky again, the tangle of starlight. Timelines.

“So you’re warning me,” Julie says. A shiver works up her spine. “Is Claire in danger? The Sudek?”

“We do not know.” The monster inches forward over the thick ground. “We only know that things must happen as they did. If the timelines are disrupted this town will no longer exist. The astronaut must not understand that. But we do.”

Julie shakes her head. “You want me to save the town? Why do you care?”

“For us—if the town vanishes, our own history changes. We came here to escape annihilation and if the past is changed we will be annihilated for certain. And you will be annihilated too. Surely that distresses you.”

“Of course it distresses me! I just don’t understand what you’re asking me to do!”

“Stop the astronaut. You are cosmically linked, you and the Sudek.”

“I don’t know what that means!” Julie cries. “Can I talk to Aldraa? Can he help?”

“Aldraa is no expert,” the monster says. “He’s merely a politician.”

“What?” Julie’s momentarily slammed by that particular revelation—they have politicians?

“I’m sending you back now,” the monster says. “You’ve seen the timeline. You know it must stay unchanged, lest we die and you disappear.”

“What? No!” Julie lunges toward the monster, ignoring her fear, her quiver of disgust. “You didn’t explain anything! I have no idea what’s going on—”

The monster stares at her with its silver eyes.

She trips on a slick patch on the ground, stumbles, catches herself before she falls. But when she looks up, she’s no longer in the swampy heat of the power plant. She’s in Lawrence’s backyard, the air cool against her skin, the trees rustling in the breeze.

She looks up, and the stars are fixed points of light in the distance.

“Julie?”

It’s Lawrence. Julie whirls around to find him rushing toward her.

“Are you all right?” He speaks in the brisk, even tones Julie’s always associated with TV cops, but she can see the wild light of fear in his eyes. “It looked like you disappeared. I thought—”

“It took me to the power plant,” Julie says.

“What!? Are you hurt? We need to call Uncle Victor right now—”

“I’m fine. I was only there a few minutes. It just—talked to me. About nonsense.” Except Julie doesn’t think it’s nonsense. She thinks she just doesn’t understand it.

And the town might be in trouble. And Claire—Claire too—

“That’s not even possible.” Lawrence pinches the bridge of his nose. “I only lost sight of you for a few seconds. There’s no way it could have dragged you all the way to the power plant.”

“I don’t know. I’m just saying what happened. I’m fine, though.”

“You still need to tell Uncle Victor,” Lawrence says. He’s back in his no-nonsense cop’s voice. “He should be back in town by now, right? And we’ll need to file a report about it, I’m sure.” He pauses. “With this happening, and me seeing it—I might be able to help you, like you were asking.”

Julie nods. She shakes with leftover adrenaline. The memory of the timelines is starting to fade. It feels like a dream. Not a nightmare. The nightmare was the moment Claire pushed away from her.

“I’m taking you home,” Lawrence says.

“Dad’ll be in bed. I can tell him tomorrow. I was already planning on talking to him anyway.”

“I realize that. But you don’t need to drive home by yourself so late. Come on.” He jerks his head back toward the house. Julie doesn’t protest. The monster’s dry hiss of a voice keeps going around in her head like a fragment of a melody. Whenever she closes her eyes she sees the trace of the timelines.

She stays close to Lawrence as he hurries back into the house. They step into the yellow pool of the porch light, and she’s grateful she isn’t alone.

Julie wakes up the next morning feeling blurred, as if she’s a painting someone spritzed with turpentine. Her alarm is clanging on her bedside table, and she turns it off and then rolls onto her side and shoves her pillow over her head. Pink light still filters through.

She thinks of the timelines.

She thinks of the monster dragging her to the power plant.

She thinks of Claire, pulling away from their kiss, stuttering apologies, scrambling backward over the sand.

Julie throws the pillow on the floor. Sunlight floods her room. She wonders if she ought to feel angry at Claire. She doesn’t. It’s just an intense, drowning sadness, the sort of thing that can’t be cured. Only the symptoms can be treated. Like the flu.

But on top of that, there’s the same worry from before that Claire is in danger, that the monster wasn’t sputtering nonsense. She’s hidden from us. But she’s not hidden from Julie. What was it they said hid her away—the astronaut’s maze? Julie doesn’t know of any mazes around here.

Julie pushes herself out of bed. She set her alarm so she could catch her dad before he disappears off to work. She’s in no condition to go driving around town trying to find him; she shouldn’t have driven last night. Her heart’s broken. And you can’t operate heavy machinery with a broken heart.

She goes downstairs, following the scent of breakfast, and finds her dad at the table, the newspaper scattered in front of him. His customary cup of coffee—black—steams at his side. He takes a drink without looking up from the paper.

Julie raps on the doorframe to get his attention.

“Morning, Dad,” she says. “You have a good trip?”

He keeps reading for another couple of seconds—Senate Okays Space Station, Microsoft Previews New Windows OS—before glancing up at her. “I did, although it seems my daughter was replaced while I was gone. Not used to seeing you so early.”

“I didn’t sleep well.” Julie doesn’t expand on that, shivering at the thought that she could be replaced. She definitely doesn’t mention the unsettling dream she had about an astronaut walking across the beach, hand in hand with Claire. Claire had peered over her shoulder, the wind blowing her hair into her eyes. She was beautiful, and Julie woke up, and that was the last of the sleep she was going to get.

“Mmm,” her dad says, returning to his paper.

“I’ve been needing to talk to you for the last few days,” Julie says.

Her dad peers at over the top of his glasses. He doesn’t like it when you dance around the subject; his time, he says, is valuable, even with his family. “What is it?”

“It involves the monsters.” She’s certainly not going to tell him about what happened with Claire.

“Monsters? Was there an issue? Did you follow the procedure for when I’m away? Let Brittany know?”

“It’s not like that,” Julie says, cutting him off before he starts in on one of his procedure rants. Her fear is too sharp to deal with it this morning.

Her dad frowns. He’s already got on his suit and tie, and that makes him intimidating, not comforting. “What exactly happened, Julie?”

Julie presses up against the doorframe. She takes a deep breath. “My friend Claire—Claire Whitmore, Mrs. Sudek’s granddaughter—was attacked by a monster a few days ago. Well, not quite attacked—I mean, it attacked her house, not her. Forrest went out there, couldn’t find the monster. He filed a report, but Mr. Vickery doesn’t care because no humans were hurt.”

Her father watches her. “Well, yes. He’s bound by the statutes of the treaties.” He sighs. “Really, Julie, you should know this by now. You’ll be taking over my spot on the committee someday.”

Julie bites back the urge to argue and instead tries to steady her breathing. “Look, I do know, okay? But then…last night…something else happened.”

His brow furrows. “Go on.”

“I was at Lawrence’s,” she says. “And a monster came out of the woods, and it—it dragged me to the power plant. I think it was the power plant. I’m pretty sure.”

“What?” he says sharply. “It dragged you?”

“That’s not exactly right,” Julie says. “It didn’t, like, drag me, it took me—just for a few seconds—”

Her dad holds up one hand. “No. Stop. That may be a treaty violation.” He frowns. “It didn’t hurt you, though?”

Julie shakes her head.

“And you said it didn’t do the same thing to your friend? That it just attacked her house?”

“Yeah, but Claire is pretty sure it was trying to get to her, it just couldn’t. It cracked her window.”

“Okay, I’ll look at the report when I go into the office today. Now, this monster, when it dragged you off—what the hell did it want? Did you let it know you’re an exterminator?”

“Yes! I know how to deal with the monsters when they’re acting normal!” Julie’s voice pitches forward in a panicked whine. “It wasn’t about me. I told you, it had to do with Claire. The monster kept talking about an astronaut and how Claire’s been hidden.”

“Hidden?” Her dad looks up at Julie with concern. “Has she gone missing?”

“I just saw her last night. I think she’s okay.” Julie looks down at her lap. “I don’t know. I should call her—” She moves toward the phone, but her dad stops her, one hand laid across her arm.

“In a second,” he says. “Your mother’s going to kill me when she hears about all this. Were you supposed to go into work today?”

Julie shakes her head. She’d taken off because of the movie last night—because she knew she’d be spending the evening with Claire. That’s what she gets for being optimistic.

“Good. I’ll let Eric know you’re not going to be working there for the time being.” Her dad drops his hand away and slumps back in his chair. “Dammit, I didn’t need this today. We’ll file a complaint and have Forrest look into it.”

It takes Julie a moment to register what her dad just said. She won’t be working at the exterminator’s anymore. That’s all it took, a semi-kidnapping and a few moments of terror. All her dad’s talk about setting up her future in town and how monster-catching was teaching her more useful skills than college ever would didn’t amount to much when she was actually put in danger.

She wonders what this means, if he and the rest of the committee will actually do something now about keeping Claire safe.

“We’ll put you on at the hotel,” her dad says, almost distractedly.

“What?” Julie says, although she should have known she wouldn’t get the rest of the summer off. Not that she wants to, not after what happened with Claire.

“Or the video store, would you like that better?”

Julie’s heart gives a leap despite everything. “You know I would.”

Her dad snorts. “This wasn’t supposed to be dangerous. You know that. But if something is changing—” He shakes his head. “Hopefully we can get this sorted out, get you back at the exterminator’s in no time. It’s important.”

Julie doesn’t respond.

“Let me finish my coffee,” her dad says. “Then we’ll file the complaint and make sure the committee hears about this. And I’ll call Frank and have him get your paperwork started.” He looks up at her. His eyes are hard, steely, the eyes of a businessman. “Don’t think you’re getting out of learning the family business, though. You’re an Alvarez. Dealing with the monsters is what we do.”

Then he picks up the newspaper again. Nothing disrupts his morning routine. Not even monsters dragging his daughter away or trying to attack her friend.

“I’m going to get dressed,” she says.

“Good.” Her dad flips a page of the newspaper. “Don’t dawdle. We need to get this taken care of.”

Julie doesn’t mention that he’s the one reading the newspaper and sipping at his coffee. Instead, she goes up to her room and picks up the phone and dials Claire’s number from memory. She could have called from the kitchen, but she doesn’t want her dad eavesdropping on the conversation.

Her heart riots inside her chest, and every time the phone rings on the other end it’s like nails scratching down a chalkboard. Then the line clicks. Someone’s answered.

“Hello?”

It’s Mrs. Sudek, her voice raspy-rough. Julie is stunned into silence.

“Hello? Anybody there? I don’t have ti—”

“Mrs. Sudek,” Julie says, to fill the space. “It’s Julie Alvarez. I really need to speak with Claire—”

“Claire is busy right now. I’ll tell her you called.”

Julie is struck hard in the chest with a peculiar mixture of relief, that Claire is not missing, and misery, that she can’t speak to her. Can’t try to apologize for her actions last night.

“Okay, then—”

Mrs. Sudek hangs up.

Julie sighs and replaces the receiver. Her head feels fuzzy. She wonders if Claire told her grandmother what happened. Her parents will kill her if the whole town finds out her secret.

The room feels like it has lost all of its oxygen, but still Julie drifts over to the closet, to get dressed to face the day.