THE CONTRACTOR DID not stick around. He said he had plans. Which probably meant a date or maybe just a hookup with some hot girl he had gotten app-matched with. Because they were both hot. She was probably twenty-two. A sublime creature who could run across the beach in a string bikini, sans folds or floppage, gazelle-like, stunning.
Jenn didn’t like that he had left. She didn’t like that she didn’t like it. She wanted to Get Away, not get distracted by something else.
Like a time-traveling ten-year-old houseguest.
The kids wanted to play a game called Bring in the Troops. They had devised the game themselves, Jenn deduced from the snippets she overheard while she tried to cook dinner. The kids wanted pasta, but she always cooked it wrong. Too chewy. Too wormy. Clumped together. Their dad always made it perfect, and it irked her. He had more hours to practice, more opportunity to amass a backlog of points.
Bring in the Troops involved enlisting the army, the navy, the air force. Possibly local police, for crowd control. The national guard. The game required bombs, possibly atomic.
“But how do we find the air force’s phone number?” Evie asked.
“I don’t know,” Jenn said, not fully appreciating the question. “How do you find any phone number? They’re all on the internet.”
“Not this one,” Evie replied. “We found the number to use if you want to join the air force. But that’ll take too long. And when we called, it didn’t say what button to press if you needed the air force to come to you.”
“You can’t— The air force doesn’t just come when you call it. If you want your game to be realistic, you need, like, generals. Or the president. And they would order the air force to go wherever.”
“Oh, yeah! Good idea!”
Jenn dumped spaghetti into the strainer. It didn’t look overdone, but there were clumps. She heated sauce in a separate pot. She poured a glass of wine. The kids tried to place a direct call to the president.
“But he didn’t pick up,” Mason complained, during dinner. He removed a clump from his pasta and set it on the table.
“Which is kind of rude,” said Evie. She poked at a chunk of actual tomato in the sauce with a look of dismay.
“And also dumb,” said Timmy. “He shouldn’t wait until the monster gets bigger. He needs to bring in the troops now. Otherwise he might have to nuke the whole East Coast!”
“I’m not sure how I feel about this game,” Jenn said. “It’s not very nice. Nuking things.”
“But it’s a sea monster, Mom,” said Mason. “And not just a sea monster type. An actual sea monster.”
“Timmy also made a list,” Evie said. “For who to call in case we can’t reach the president.”
Timmy produced a handwritten list from his pocket. He spread it out on the table. Beneath the title—Action Heroes—he had written names. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Bruce Willis. Jean-Claude Van Damme. Sylvester Stallone. Jackie Chan…
“They’re all men,” Jenn observed.
“Except for—” Mason pointed at a name on the bottom of the list: Philipia Bay. “I added that one.”
The addition made Jenn proud. She hadn’t realized Mason even knew who Philipia Bay was.
“Okay, they’re mostly men. But why use actors? Wouldn’t it be better to use, say, Rambo and RoboCop or whatever for the game?”
“But it’s not a game,” Timmy said. Jenn’s kids nodded in agreement.
Jenn closed her eyes. If she ignored the game, would it go away?
She opened her eyes.
“Hey…” Timmy said. He looked at her, head tilted, squint-eyed. He pointed. “Yep. I know you. You’re Jenni—”
“I—”
“I thought it might be you!” Timmy exclaimed. “You look really old now.”
“Thanks.”
“But you also kind of look the same. Gee, this is so cool!”
“It’s not. It’s, it’s…I can’t—”
She dropped her fork. Stood up. Walked out of the kitchen, onto the deck. She could not. Take. This. Whatever this was. Minus twenty-billion points from Mom for the mental breakdown. The ill-advised midlife summertime flight. The pasta that clumped and the work that went undone and the hot contractor who might have, maybe, in her younger years, taken her out for beer and oysters and a fun no-strings fuck.
There were no “sea monsters.”
Whatever it was, out there in the deep, chomping boats. It was just. Whatever. Anything might be a sea monster. A shark. A giant squid. A killer whale.
The sea looked so peaceful. Golden-crested from the setting sun. Misleadingly calm. The way it had been on the day that Timmy disappeared. They had been in shallow water. Not even waist high. Tepid waves. It hadn’t made sense, what everyone said about riptides. She had seen something in the water. A streak of green. Just before he slipped away.
It didn’t make sense.
The back door opened. Timmy stepped out, by himself. Jenn’s own kids sensed her neurosis and stayed inside. But Timmy wasn’t her kid.
“There is a sea monster,” he said. He looked up at her. His eyes looked sad. “But…I mean, of course you wouldn’t believe me. You’re grown-up now, so…”
“Who…who are you, really?”
“I told you! I’m Timmy Caruso!”
“But—it’s been thirty years.”
“I know.”
“If you are, if you’re him,” Jenn asked, “tell me, where did we meet?”
“On the beach.”
“How?”
“I said, um, I wanted to show you something?”
“What?”
“The, um, it was a creature. It was green with these three weird arms. And we fed it chips and then we got your net and scooped it out of the tide pool and put it back in the ocean.”
“What did you call it?”
“The squidoodle.”
“The squidoodle.”
She had never told anyone that story. She had never talked about Timmy after he disappeared. She had tried to forget him completely.
They stood together on the deck, looking out at the placid sea. Timmy hummed a marching song.
“Do-do. Zoo do do do-do-dooo. Loo-do. Do do do loo-do-dooo.” He stopped. His face looked suddenly solemn. “You know, I…I know my parents are dead.”
“You do?”
“I looked them up. Evie showed me how.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. I…” He wiped a stray tear from his cheek. “But I have to stay strong. I have to complete the mission.”
“You have to tell me first,” she said. “How? How are you here?”