First Day On Earth Page 8

  This could take a while.

  “Hooper, wanna take a walk?” I ask.

  This is my chance to talk with Hooper.

  To ask him to take me away from here.

  53.

  This is probably going to be my only chance to make my case.

  While Posey helps Darwyn wash the crying off his face in the garage bathroom, I am finally alone with Hooper. We walk over to the edge of the concrete and step into the desert. We have our backs to the sun. We’ve been going north and west. But as we stand side by side, we’re looking back to where we came from. Back toward the east.

  “Do you know, Mal, that I didn’t get to see very much of this planet?” he says. “I had so many plans.”

  “Well, you could come back,” I say, even though I don’t want him to come back, because I don’t want to come back.

  “I don’t think so,” he says. “Here is very far.”

  He turns around and looks up at the sun, gauging the time that’s passing.

  “Hooper,” I say, and I wonder if that’s even his real name.

  I wish I knew the protocols of his planet. I’m irrationally worried that I should be using his real name when asking something so huge. Then again, maybe his real name is unpronounceable and that’s why he uses Hooper. I want him to know how sincere I’m being. Then I’m excited that if he agrees to take me with him, I might get to know his real name. Learn his language. Know his ways.

  “I want to come with you,” I tell him.

  He doesn’t say anything. Instead, he kicks at the ground and starts digging at the dirt with his foot.

  “Take me with you,” I say, in case he didn’t hear me.

  But I know he did, because he stops playing with the ground and looks everywhere else but at me. I hear my heartbeat in my ears. I hear the wind. I hear a truck. I don’t hear the answer that I’m waiting for. The answer that’s going to set me free.

  “Are you really in that much pain?” Hooper finally asks.

  I want to tell him that I am standing here in the middle of the desert. It’s hotter than the hell I feel I’m living in. And that I am willing to do anything to get light-years away from here. Even believe a man when he tells me he’s from the stars.

  Yes. I am in pain.

  But saying a word like yes out loud, very casually, doesn’t state my case strongly enough.

  So I find myself standing on the edge of an emotional cliff where I know I’m about to be disappointed. Again.

  I’m about to be left behind. Again.

  I know about pain. And I don’t think I can bear it.

  I clench my hands into fists and I scream. I scream louder than the cars on the freeway. I scream louder than the shrill of the desert birds. I scream louder than every piece of air in my lungs.

  “I can’t take you with me,” Hooper says.

  “Please,” I say. “Please take me with you.”

  I am down on my knees in the dirt and I am hugging Hooper’s legs. I’m not even sure if he can understand my begging because I am sobbing great gulpy gasps. I need him to take me with him. I need him to be who he says he is. I am afraid that he’s not. That makes me feel worst of all.

  “Are you certain you are prepared to be alone for an eternity?”

  I nod and sob, hoping it sounds like a yes.

  “No one will come to get you where we are going. Every being will be different from you. You will be an orphan. All alone.”

  “I don’t care.” I manage to make the sentence sound coherent.

  Hooper looks at me. He looks like he’s going to say yes.

  “I have spent months here on this earth, in despair. All alone. I have been around people who I do not understand and who do not understand me,” he says.

  “But that’s how I feel right now,” I say. I get up and I face him like a man. Like a human man.

  “Mal, I cannot condemn you to the silence of the universe,” he says.

  “I’ve been taken before,” I say. “I’m not scared. It won’t be any different.”

  “Mal, it will be different,” he says.

  “It won’t be.”

  “No one knows for sure that you were taken.”

  “I’m sure,” I say. But really, I’m not sure of anything.

  He doesn’t go on. Maybe it’s because he’s taking the first rule of group seriously: Always support a fellow contactee’s claim. It is their experience. And although it may be different from yours, it is their truth.

  Or maybe he’s being quiet because he’s only a guy with a few screws loose. A guy who wanted a free trip to the desert. A guy just like anyone else.

  “You cannot know what you are asking,” he says.

  I’ve come this far and I’m not going to give up.

  “I do know what I’m asking,” I tell him. “I do.”

  “You cannot. But as a traveler, I do. And because you are my friend — my only human friend — I must spare you from the harm that you are asking me to bring you.”

  “So your answer is no,” I say.

  “My answer is no,” he says.

  54.

  I’m mad at Hooper when I get back to the car.

  “What’s wrong?” Posey asks. She’s asking for real. Because there is something wrong. Hooper won’t take me with him into outer space.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I say.

  “Something is wrong,” Posey says. “I’m your friend. You can tell me.”

  I look at her standing there. Her big, floppy pink hat. Her bright smile. Her great tits. And I struggle with the unfairness of the hand that I was dealt.

  “The thing is, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re perfect. You have a perfect life. Perfect friends. Perfect tits. You fit in perfectly.”

  Posey looks at me like I’ve said something dumb for the first time that she’s known me.

  I go on. “It is frustrating to talk to people who just don’t get it. Who have it so easy. Who glide through life.”

  “I’m not perfect,” she says. “I don’t fit in.”

  “You do. Everything about you is perfect and I hate you.”

  I don’t know where this is coming from. Or I do — it’s coming from the fact that I’m stuck here. I shouldn’t be directing it at her. I shouldn’t be mad just because she fits in and I don’t. I know this. The only way to stop myself is to get away from the car. So I pick a direction and I walk. But Posey runs and shoves me. She runs in front of me.

  “Guys,” Darwyn says. He sounds nervous. Posey shoves me again.

  “Quit it,” I say.

  Her lower lip is trembling and her fingers are fiddling with the buttons on her sweater. She is contemplating something. Thinking really hard.

  “I am not perfect. I don’t have a perfect life. I don’t have perfect tits,” she says.

  And then, her fingers fly as she unbuttons and pulls off her sweater, takes off her shirt.

  She hesitates at her bra.

  But we can already see that something is wrong.

  “Stop,” Darwyn says. “Don’t.”

  She slides off her bra and it falls to the ground.

  “I don’t even have a nipple,” she says.

  Her head hangs down as she looks at her breasts.

  I can see where she’s imperfect. It is a burn, still holding on to the shape of a stretched-out triangle, and it ruins her perfectly unblemished skin. The scar is pink and mottled and angry and it ruins the line of her body.

  Josh never touched those breasts like he said. I know that for a fact. From the way she is standing there, trying to show us and trying to cover herself up. Probably no one has seen her burn.

  “What happened?” Hooper asks. He asks in that gentle singsong way he has about him. The one that gets right into the parts of you that are warm.

  “I was little. I don’t remember. I was three. My mom says I was running. I was naked. I ran into the ironing board. The whole thing fell on me, and my mom said that I sizzled. I cooked, like I was a
pressed sandwich. She pulled it off me and she said that most of my skin came off, too. She said it was the most disgusting thing she’d ever seen.”

  Posey’s crying. She’s stopped walking. We all have. She’s crying. I think Darwyn’s crying, too. I look at the ground and feel like an asshole.

  Darwyn and Hooper go to her side and help her back into her shirt.

  I try to think of something to say. But I’m not good with words when I want to be.

  “I’m not perfect,” she says. She says it to everyone, but I know that she’s saying it to me. And I really hear it. And I am sorry.

  But I can’t say it.

  Even though she understands the way I am.

  No one has ever said I’m sorry to me. So maybe I don’t know how to say it, even if I feel it. Instead, I look up at her and try to tell her with my eyes. I hope she understands how much I mean it.

  I am owed so many apologies that I don’t know how to give one myself.

  “Come on,” I say after a bit. “You should ride up front with me.”

  We go to the car. We roll down the windows to let out the desert heat.

  Posey holds the map on her lap; the pages settle and fall between her knees. I have my hand on the stick and shift it into gear as we roll faster down the highway. I steal three glances at her and then put my hand on the seat next to her hand.

  I am too scared to take it.

  But I am lucky that she is brave. She closes her fingers around mine in a friendly way.

  Apology accepted.

  55.

  I see the sign. VICTORVILLE, 5 MILES.

  Victorville. The town where my dad ended up.

  “Let’s pull over here and get something to eat. You must all be hungry,” I say. “I know I am.”

  I pull the car into the parking lot of Al’s Diner. We’re the only customers in there, except for some guy sitting on a stool at the counter eating a grilled cheese sandwich. The sign says to seat ourselves, so we grab some menus and slide into a booth. I take the window. I want to see the town. See what it looks like. Try to understand what was so much better about here than there.

  All I see is brown and dirt and squatting trees. Nothing too special. I press my fists into my eyes until I see blue. I don’t open them again until the waitress puts the water glasses down in front of us.

  I look at the menu.

  I know I’m hungry, but I’ve lost my appetite. What if I see him here? What if he comes in on a break from whatever he is doing? What if he saunters over, just thinking that we’re new in town. Passing through. Tourists. And he wants to make small talk, or something, just to be polite. To make pleasant conversation. I’ve seen him do that before. Always making the checkout girl laugh. Always looking like he was such a good guy. He just couldn’t do that with the people who loved him best. With us, he was cold and guarded. But as soon as anyone else was around, he’d light up the room.

  I think of something worse, too. It’s such a bad thought that it makes me sick in the pit of my stomach. What if he does all that and comes in here and chitchats and doesn’t even know that it’s me?

  Everyone else orders. And then it’s my turn, and I’m trying to act like I have it all together. Even though I don’t. Even though I think I might throw up. Even though I’m sitting here with two strangers who are laughing because they are excited to be on a road trip, even though they don’t know where we’re going or what we’re doing, and an alien who’s asking the waitress strange questions, making him look like he’s crazy.

  “How many pounds of beef do you have here?”

  “Do you prefer sunny days or gray days?”

  “How many pieces of that pie do you think you could eat?”

  “Do your children understand your speech impediment?”

  The waitress just answers as best she can. Like she’s dealt with crazy people before and she’s been there, done that, and it doesn’t bother her one bit.

  I order a veggie burger.

  “Do you know a man named Harland Leighter?” I ask when she comes back with the food.

  That kind of throws her and she curses under her breath.

  “Harland?” she says. “You know him?”

  I don’t say yes or no. I just twist the water glass around.

  “Figures,” she says. “You must be here to see the play.”

  “What play?” I ask.

  “Oh, he’s the director of our community theater,” the waitress says. “They’ve got a rehearsal of Our Town going on right now. You just missed him.”

  “I’ll have a Coke,” I say.

  I know where he is.

  She walks away shaking her head. And I know, for sure, that whatever it is that he does, he’s done it to her.

  “Who’s Harland?” Posey asks.

  I eat.

  “Is that your dad?” Posey presses.

  I don’t talk.

  Posey takes her hand and slides it over to mine and touches it lightly.

  “Does he live here?” she asks.

  I look up at her.

  “How long has it been since you’ve seen him?” she asks.

  There is something terrible about eating a veggie burger and having a private moment with yourself where you are trying to figure out what you are going to do. Like you’re standing at the edge of a cliff and there’s water underneath and a posse chasing you and you have to figure out if you can jump and live or stay and fight. Either way, whatever you do is going to hurt. It’s bad enough to be dealing with that, but it’s worse when you have three people staring at you, trying to figure out what’s going on in your brain.

  “Your father,” Hooper says. I never told him about my father. It wasn’t the kind of story I thought put humans in a good light.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I say. I’m not even sure if it’s true or not.

  Posey and Darwyn try to hold up the conversation for the rest of the meal, and Hooper starts asking them strange questions, too. I’m not a part of it. I’m somewhere else, and they let me stay there. Eventually, I head to the bathroom to breathe for a second. When I get back, we pay the bill and get out of there.

  “Shall we walk?” Hooper says. “Perhaps stretch our legs for a bit?”

  I look up and down the street. I don’t want to be here in his town and not confront him. I want to ask him the questions that I’ve had for years.

  “What did you do to us?”

  “Why would you abandon us?”

  “Where is your heart?”

  Or maybe just punch him.

  “Do you want us to come with you?” Darwyn asks.

  “Excuse me?”

  I say it rudely. So rude that Darwyn starts to stammer.

  “I just thought, maybe you might need someone to back you up. Or something.”

  “Why would I need that?”

  “I filled them in while you were in the bathroom,” Posey says. She says it slowly and carefully so that I understand it was not a betrayal but just a filling everyone in so that they can all help.

  I can only imagine what she said. Oh, Mal’s crazy parents. The drunk and the sociopath. Imagine what he’s going to turn out like.

  Except it’s Posey, so she wouldn’t say it like that.

  “I don’t want anyone else there,” I say.

  I don’t want anyone to see that I might chicken out.

  We agree to meet back at the diner in thirty minutes.

  Hooper grabs my arm before I head out in my direction.

  “Mal,” he says.

  And then he looks at me like he wants to warn me, or impart some kind of wisdom. Like maybe he’s going to use some kind of Jedi mind trick to keep me from doing something crazy.

  But then he doesn’t. He just lets go of my arm and walks away from me. Whistling.

  He does that because he trusts me.

  56.

  There’s an American flag whipping around in the wind on its pole in front of the town hall. It looks faded because the des
ert sun is so strong. I see a rattler slither by in front of the sign in the glass that says VICTORVILLE COMMUNITY PLAYERS PRESENT OUR TOWN. A truck is pulled up, loading in some gear. I see a man whose stance I recognize.

  My dad.

  I wonder what I’m going to do.

  Am I going to confront him?

  Am I going to punch him?

  My heart is beating wildly. It’s totally out of my chest. It’s flopped onto the ground and it’s beating its way all over to the guy. He sees me and waves me over. I follow my heart and head over to him. When I get there, my heart jumps back into my chest.

  He looks at me. He looks like me.

  “Lend us a hand? We need to bring this table in.”

  I take a corner of an old antique table with my dad and two other guys. We bring it into the hall. Decide where it should go and then head back outside into the blast of desert heat.

  Everything looks a little bit wobbly, the way that things do when it’s hot.

  My dad wipes his brow.

  “Thanks,” he says, extending his hand to shake mine. I ignore it. He seems a bit put off. I see some anger flicker across his face. His face is different. More lines. More gray in his hair. More worry. Or maybe it’s that he looks like he’s wearing a mask. Or like he’s a shell of a person. Not really real.

  And is he smaller? He looks smaller.

  I still don’t say anything.

  This is the moment. I think.

  “I could pay you forty dollars if you stay and help unload the truck. We really need the help,” he says. “I’ve got to go pick up my daughter from day care. My wife thinks it’s my job.”

  I want to tell him that it is his job. To care for a child. To show up.

  “I gotta go,” I say. “I gotta move on.”

  “Fair enough,” he says.

  So I do it.

  I turn around.

  I walk away.

  I’m wrecked, but I’m also one million times lighter.

  It’s better to be the one who’s leaving.