“Joe, come on,” I say, even though my mother would’ve said the same. “I have my phone.” But still, I jot down the address, knowing he won’t look it up. Because his mind is already somewhere else. “Go out,” I tell him. “Have some fun.”
Joe used to be surrounded by an ever-changing stream of girls. I’m not sure if they were girlfriends, but there was typically some girl. I’d met at least three different ones in those first six months when we all lived in the same town. When we moved last year for my mom’s new position at the university, my mom said it was because she wanted to keep the small family we had together as much as we could—at first I thought for Joe, since my grandparents died while he was in college; but now I thought it was really for us instead. But I haven’t seen any girl—or really, any friend at all—in the six months I’ve been living with Joe. As if, in solidarity, he’s adopted the same ground rules as me. “The house is yours again,” I say, gesturing with my arm in a flourish.
He smiles faintly. When he stands, I retreat toward my room, to get ready to spend the night at my old house, excited that I won’t need to sneak out to get there, for once.
When I’m almost at my room, he calls after me. “Kennedy, I miss them, too. I’m on your side. Always.”
My throat tightens. “I know,” I say, but I’m already closing the door, and I’m not sure if he’s heard me.
I need help. I need help from someone who is definitely on my side with this. Joe wouldn’t be. Joe thinks he is, but he wants to sell the house, and he wants to go over questions. He wants to sit in the past, dealing with the minutiae of what’s left of our lives.
* * *
—
My bag is packed for my fake stay at Lydia’s, but I’m not quite ready to go yet.
Visitor357 hasn’t responded, probably because I sent some embarrassing message rambling about disappearing people, totally downplaying the fact that his brother is gone. So I send an addendum:
I meant to say, I’m sorry about your brother.
But also, I’m sorry, because I don’t think this is related to your brother.
I know you’re looking for him. But I think, I think, you’ve stumbled upon something else. We’re missing something. Because it’s not just your room. It’s also a radio telescope at my house. I hate to ask this. I know how this will sound. The Internet, I know, predators, creeps, etc, etc. But. Locations would help.
I’m on the 37th parallel, north.
Etc, etc.
I was back in my room, locked away, fake-studying, when my phone dinged with a new message. I didn’t know what to say to KJ’s last message (the feeling, he explained, like you’re on the edge of understanding something, even when something is gone, and the not knowing, where everything and anything is possible. Yes, yes. But you can’t just write back Yes, yes, to some dude on the Internet who’s looking for aliens. You can’t write back Something was taken from me, and I keep searching the emptiness, and I think I see something else, not just emptiness, something else), and I figured that was the end of that. But now there’s this new one.
What. The. Hell.
The 37th parallel? As in, latitude and longitude lines? What am I even supposed to do with that?
I pull up a fresh Internet window and search for a latitude and longitude grid. I find a site with an interactive map of the world, crisscrossed with labeled lines. I zoom in, finding the 37 north mark, and trace it across the screen. It bisects the entire country. The entire world. And okay, it’s possible I’m on it, too. It cuts straight through Virginia. But it also cuts through California, Asia, Europe. I get that he’s trying to let us keep some anonymity, but I don’t think this is helping.
We’re missing something, he says.
Well, I’ll add it to the ever-growing list of things I’m missing right now. Whatever’s happening next door, and downstairs. The stack of textbooks on the side of my desk, my untouched math study guide beside the pile.
I stare at the study guide I haven’t yet started and probably won’t—circles, angles, degrees, equations. Answers that require calculations.
We are missing something. We keep focusing on the fact that this is happening. But the why isn’t always important. Or: the why isn’t always understood. That’s how I’ve been approaching my search—not in the hard, scientific facts, but in the unpredictable.
So it’s not just that it’s happening; it’s the signal itself. We’ve been ignoring that part, but there’s definitely a pattern. I pull up the data from KJ’s readout, which is much more practical than my own, with raw data. And I start plugging numbers in.
Count the time, KJ said. That’s what’s the same. The timing. Not the type of signal, not our exact location, but this. The pattern: the spike, the hold.
I’m only seeing a video of his data, so I can’t get the numbers exact, but I can get a rough estimate. And it looks like the spike happens every three seconds.
I wonder now whether the pattern means something.
I look at the math study guide again. A bunch of questions asking me to Calculate the area, Calculate the circumference. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and my spine straightens.
The geometry of a circle. Pi. It’s a universal ratio between the circumference and diameter of any circle: 3.14. The numbers go on and on from there, to infinity. Could it be?
I’m sure there’s something more to pi than what I know from Algebra 2, so I look it up online, more convinced than ever.
It’s an irrational number, unable to be expressed as a common fraction. Well, this is an irrational event.
It’s a transcendental number, whatever that means. But also: this is a transcendental event.
I dump everything into my bag, preparing to go. My hands are shaking as I hit Reply.
I wish I were better at math. I hope KJ is better. I’m sure he is, with a radio telescope pointed at the sky. I’m guessing astronomy requires a lot of math.
I’m hoping he’s open to suggestions on this, though, because there is no way this signal in my house is coming from outer space. It’s my brother’s room. KJ is wrong. It’s related, but he’s wrong.
My brother trying to tell me something. With the fever dream. With this.
I need to go back to the scene of his disappearance, where he must’ve slipped through. If this is a clue, this pattern, this pi, I wonder if Liam’s trying to tell me something about how he disappeared, or why. If he can’t breach the barrier with language, but with math.
I write quickly:
I think I know what we’re missing. Like you said, it’s the timing. Every three seconds or so—could it be pi? 3.14, etc, etc. That’s some universal constant, right? For something to do with circles? Wouldn’t it make sense, if something was trying to speak to us but they couldn’t just speak to us, they’d do it with math?
PS—Has it occurred to you that maybe the signal isn’t coming from space? (Could it be something closer? Say, whatever’s in my house?)
PPS—I don’t know what the 37th parallel north is exactly, except I think I’m on it, too. But for clarity’s sake, I’ll say this instead: I’m in Virginia.
I read it over and laugh at my use of etc, etc. Maybe he’ll think I’m smarter than I am, talking like that. I don’t know why this is funny. The moment feels irrational. Transcendental.
As if I, Nolan Chandler, am finally onto something.
The one thing I wanted to do at the house tonight was to look through Elliot’s notes, to try to understand. To see if I could figure out what was happening on December fourth, while I was gone.
By the time I arrive at the house, though, and hide my bike under the shadow of the front porch, I have a new message on the forum. But I can only check with my phone, since the house no longer has Internet.
I read it on the way to the shed around back, where I’ve left the box of Elliot’s notes, with my bag slung over my shoulder.
There are two things that stick out in the message. That make me freeze. That make the goose bumps rise across my arms.
The first: pi. How did I not see that? I’m practically running to the computer out back to see if he’s right, when I notice the second part of his message: Virginia.
Holy. Crap.
So what if he doesn’t want to think this is coming from space? I’ll deal with that later. There’s no way this radio telescope picks up something from his house. It’s pointing at the sky. Anyway, he’s mapping electromagnetic fields, and I’m documenting radio frequencies. We’re not even looking at the same thing.
There’s something more important here. The location. And the pattern itself. Pi. Holy crap, I think he might be right.
I write back immediately, telling him I’m in the process of confirming, and then I tell him the name of my county before I can stop myself and think about whether this is a good idea or not.
For a second, I wonder if he’s some master computer hacker or something, who has hacked into my forum account, has seen where I was sending my message from, and has responded accordingly. If he’s doing this to play me, prey on me. But then I think of his notes about his brother, the video with the blue wall, and no. It’s not possible.
We have something here. Something real.