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Lydia hasn’t texted or called by the time we arrive back at Joe’s, so I log on to the computer to see if I have any more messages about my question on the forum.
But the only thing in my inbox is a message from Visitor357. There’s also a video attachment, which I immediately open.
The camera is trained on the dial of some device pressed up against a blue wall, and I watch as the dial dives below zero, back to neutral, over and over. You can’t see what’s out of frame, and I know anything could be causing this. This guy could be causing this. Faking this. But I watch it again. And again and again. I pull up my own readout from the radio telescope on the computer screen, and I set it to run in real time. The two images are side by side; I’ve stopped breathing.
Spike. Pause. Spike. Pause.
They line up completely.
I was wrong. There’s not something wrong with the computer program, or the satellite dish.
I lean closer to the screen, goose bumps rising across my arms.
I think: The timing is important.
Nobody remembers dinner. Nobody remembers that this investigation has already happened and an email isn’t going to change the outcome of that, either. They move as if time is still on our side, two years after the last shred of evidence led us nowhere. As if there’s still some piece of Liam left, and it’s been hidden away inside an anonymous email all along, and it’s going to slip from their grasp if they don’t all migrate over to Abby’s house at warp speed to inspect this new piece of evidence ASAP.
When Mike showed up, at three o’clock, as promised, he was quickly sent away.
“What’s happening?” he asked me, surveying the scene.
“Nothing. They’ve lost their minds.”
Mike patted my shoulder, and I knew he understood. The first months after Liam disappeared, the house was filled with Liam’s teachers, his coaches, his friends. When they dropped off, one by one, Mike pulled on the volunteers from the shelter where Liam had previously worked with him.
The reason Mike joined the call for help was because his sister disappeared when he was a kid, never to be seen again. Not like the other volunteers who come and go, drawn to the unsolved mystery, or fueled by the guilt that it could’ve been one of their loved ones instead, or, like Dave and Clara/Sara and the rest of the college interns, needing the hours for school.
Mike has spent his whole life searching, too. Something that’s painful to think about, considering the salt-and-pepper hair covering his head, and the gray scruff of his beard. Eventually his search for the lost led him to dedicate his time to the ones he can still help.
Now, suddenly, no one cares about the phones anymore. They keep ringing downstairs, and instead of turning the lines to silent, I leave them be. I keep hoping they’ll jar my parents back to reality, pulling them back home.
I’m watching out the window when the police car shows up next door, and my mom gestures for them to follow her inside the house that is not hers. I’m watching as my father paces on the sidewalk, his voice carrying, as I imagine Agent Lowell on the other side.
I feel this urge to just go, and if I were any other kid, in any other family, I would. I would throw this gear into a bag, pack a change of clothes or two, take this car, and leave, and no one would even notice. Until much later. And that’s what has me stuck.
I remember my mom’s face as I shouted Liam’s name into the trees. When I called for Colby, straining to hear the sound of his bark in the distance. When the humor turned to annoyance turned to panic. And then later, when the panic turned to something else, this look of hard resignation that’s become her new permanent existence. I don’t even notice it anymore, usually. I only notice now because it’s gone. In its place is something else. Something worse.
Hope.
I don’t know what will happen to her next, what sort of place she’ll end up in, when that gets crushed, too.
The house is empty and silent, and for once, I’m alone here. This place is usually the hub of activity. It may seem odd, but it’s still possible, maybe even more so, to feel invisible with so many people around.
It’s only now, when it’s empty, that I wonder if something has been in Liam’s old room all along. If only I’d been listening for it.
I place my hands against the blue wall dividing our rooms, then feel ridiculous. Wondering what I expected to feel—some beat, some pattern, moving through the walls? Some surge of electricity? As if that pattern were some sign that there was a shift in the universe, in what we believed possible, and it was finally within reach.
My steps echo on the hardwood as I walk from my room out into the empty hall, extending in both directions, unlit. My parents’ door is across the hall, closed. Liam’s room is beside mine, door also closed. Usually, when I leave my room, I close mine out of solidarity. Like part of a set.
The knob on the door of Liam’s room feels cold. Has it always been that way? I suddenly can’t remember. I was never focused on the little, odd details that were here. Only on what was missing. As I open the door wide, some things remain the same: the squeak of the hinges as the door swings open; the moss-green paint, the brown comforter, the blanket for Colby at the foot of the bed, the layout of Liam’s furniture. But in other ways, the room has been stripped bare. The electronics are now mine. Even the scent is gone. Liam hasn’t touched anything here in over two years.
And yet.
As I take a step inside the room, none of those facts matter. I hold the device in my hand once more, but still, nothing happens. I can feel the ghost of the movement in my palm, the way it felt the first time. The mechanism inside the device, the needle moving, like a pulse.
I close my eyes, breathe in, feel a chill. Something was here. It might be gone now, but I’m sure of it: something was here.
“Liam?” I say. The word lingers in the silence.
Something buzzes in my back pocket and I jump, my heart suddenly pounding in my head. I back out of the room, fish my phone from the pocket of my jeans. It’s an email notification letting me know I’ve received a new message from the forum.
I drop my gear inside my room, slam my door, and scroll through the message.
There’s a video attached, only this one isn’t mine—it’s not the one I sent, nothing like it at all. I don’t know what I’m looking at. It looks like one of those hospital heart rate monitors you see on TV. Maybe in real life, too, but I wouldn’t know.
The message from KJ explains that this is coming from a radio telescope, a satellite dish pointed at some sector in space, none of which means anything to me. The note ends:
Count the time. This is what the pattern from my signal looks like if you let it run. It lines up with yours.
I do as the note says. I count the time. A spike. The pause. A spike. They move in synchrony, the same pattern, the same time.
The note continues:
Tell me everything about this event. Where it originates, date and time, location coordinates, etc, etc.
And the sign-off:
I think we have something here.
From this note I gather that KJ is bossy; KJ is overly excited; KJ and I are not going to be on the same page with this, with all these questions, etc, etc. Who says etc? Professors. Teachers. Random people on SETI message boards with satellite dishes pointed into space.
We’re not looking for the same thing here. The answer to me is obvious, and simple. If (a) my brother disappeared with no earthly explanation; and (b) this signal was coming from my brother’s room; then (c) whatever’s happening here is related. If not exactly proof, it’s definitely a sign. Even if I don’t understand what it means yet.
KJ wants a list of facts and figures. This house is already full of facts. It’s full of statistics, and documentation, height and weight, hair color, eye color, etc, etc. Everything about my life is Liam etc.
None of it brings anyone back.
Tell me everything about this event.
Well, okay. I hit Reply. Here’s everything:
My brother disappeared. This was coming from his room.
These are the only details that matter.
I hear a car door, the bustle of activity outside Abby’s house, and I know they’re looking in all the wrong places.
Screw it, I think, grabbing my bag, just like I planned. I’ll leave a note. Tell them I’ll be back. And I’ll bring my phone.
Downstairs, a gust of air funnels through the open space. Someone left the front door ajar, and the photos ripple with the breeze. All those faces, smiling at me.