He fixes his eyes on me then, his jaw moving softly side to side. “Two people who have suffered a terrible loss, Kennedy. Two people who have endured something horrible, much younger than is fair. Two people who both want something desperately.”
My hand tightens on the flash drive, gripped in my closed fist. “What is it, exactly, that you think I want?”
He opens his mouth, then closes it again. “Well, for starters, you don’t want me to sell that house.”
I shake my head. “You think I’m lying? To keep you from selling the house?”
He runs his hand through his hair and winces. “I don’t know. I’m just saying. You don’t want to sell the house, and now there’s apparently a…” He searches for the word. “A signal? From space?” He says it like it’s impossible. Incredulous. And coming from him, it suddenly sounds that way. Like everything we’ve been doing is for nothing.
“What happened to trust, Joe?” Was it just a word, an empty promise, to keep me in line?
“It has to be earned. Look, Kennedy, I believe that you believe this, I do. But—”
“Elliot could tell us what this all means. That’s why I went to see him.”
“Kennedy!” he yells. I’ve pushed him to yelling.
“Please, Joe. Please, I know you can bring this to the college. I know there are people who can read it, who can figure out if there’s something there.”
“Kennedy, you don’t know what it’s like there, at the school right now….”
I frown, confused. “What’s it like?”
“They’re reeling from…” From the loss of my mother, and Will, both professors there. From the fallout of my brother. From a student who turned a weapon against his teacher, and his mother. And where must that leave Joe? I’ve never even thought about it. What this must be like for him now.
I nod, feeling like everything is slipping from my grasp.
Fingers shaking, I leave the flash drive on the laminate tabletop, an offering. I go to my room, to bed, but I don’t sleep. I think of Nolan, and everything he’s feeling, and how cut off from the world he must be, over there right now, alone.
“I know,” I whisper to the dark night.
* * *
—
The next morning, Joe has uncharacteristically beaten me to breakfast. He has the flash drive in his hand, twirling it between his fingers. “I will take it to a guy I know, Kennedy.”
I suck in a gasp, reaching for his arm. “Thank you, Joe. Thank you.”
He stares at my fingers on his sleeve, and he nods. His throat moves as he swallows, but he slides the flash drive into his pocket. “I will do this one thing for you. And then, after, you will do something for me.”
I step back, already leery. “What?”
“You will let the house go.”
I open my mouth, but he puts up one hand.
“Kennedy, you have to let it go.”
I tip my head in the faintest nod. If it can even be perceived as that. But once he sees the signal, he’ll believe me. Once we do the first part, he won’t demand the second. He’ll understand.
The house is important. This is important.
At school, I can finally log in to my account, ready to send Kennedy an email to apologize for last night. In the stark light of morning, I think about what I must’ve seemed like, showing up at her house unannounced, on the edge of panic, or worse.
I only know that I felt calmer as soon as I saw her, and by the time I left, this felt like a problem we would deal with together, like everything else. That is, if her uncle will ever let me near her again.
But as soon as I log on, I see I’ve already received a note from Kennedy.
8:03 a.m.: Joe’s finding someone to check the signal at the college. Stay tuned.
The stay tuned makes me grin. Half the time, I can’t decide whether she’s being ironic or serious.
PS—please let me know you receive this. AKA that you made it home last night.
I write back: Got it. Will do. And yes, made it.
PS—thank you
At the end of the day, I log on again and see a string of new messages.
1:22 p.m.: Joe says he’s picking me up after school. Says the guy he knows wants to show us something.
But I didn’t see that message earlier, and there’s a follow-up now:
2:12 p.m.: Meet me at the campus at 3 if you can. I’ll wait for you in visitor parking.
I look at my watch. It’s already 2:48. I send her a message, hoping she’ll get it, but I’m definitely going to be late: on my way
I race to my car, and I honk at the pickup truck in front of me, sitting in the back of a long line of cars waiting to exit the student parking lot. The two girls rammed into the front seat with some guy turn around, and both of them give me the middle finger through the back panel. I give up, K-turning out of the line of cars, hooking it around the back lot of the school, where I make an illegal exit from the bus lot.
I drive right by the teacher lot on the way out. I’ll deal with the fallout from that later.
* * *
—
I don’t know the college campus well, but figure I can’t go wrong by following signs for visitor parking. I ease my car into a spot under a giant oak tree in a half-empty lot, trying to figure out if Kennedy got my last message, but she’s nowhere. There are maybe four other cars scattered around the lot, and I don’t know which of these cars belongs to her and Joe.
Looking around, I see that the campus is an expanse of green grass and leafy trees and brick buildings. There do not appear to be any signs directing me.
It’s 3:03 and she’s probably already in there, meeting with some guy, and I’ll have to hear about it secondhand, filtered Kennedy-style.
And then I faintly hear my name in the background, from the direction of one of the brick buildings. Her image comes into focus next—dark hair loose, wearing shorts and a bright blue T-shirt, waving frantically as she races into view from farther down the brick path. “Come on!” she shouts.
She waits until I’ve caught up, then drags me by the hand as she veers onto a paved path, toward a nondescript building up ahead. It’s not until we’re climbing the wide front steps that I see the name of the building carved into the stone above, barely noticeable until you’re already upon it.
Inside, the building feels colder, and empty. The halls are dark, and our steps echo. Kennedy finally lets go of my hand, clearing her throat, as if she just noticed. “The students are on summer break,” she says. “It’s just the researchers. Faculty, postgrads. We’re on the second floor.”
We pass a wall of windows, which look into classroom lab spaces. Behind the glass, there’s a robotic device in a darkened room. In the next, there’s a flat table, a mechanical arm hovering, immobile, over the top. It’s obvious this is a building for engineering, or physics, or something.
My hand shakes when I grip the banister in the stairwell.
I get this feeling that everything’s about to change. I try not to get my hopes up. But I can feel my heartbeat in my palms, down to the soles of my feet.
* * *
—
Inside room 243-A, the first person I see is Kennedy’s uncle—Joe. It’s obvious from the way he frowns at us, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, that Kennedy did not tell him I was coming.
The second thing I see is a man sitting in front of a massive display of computer monitors. Cables running over the desktop, and a few larger unknown electronic things set up around the room. I realize the fact that I refer to them as unknown electronic things means I am probably not cut out for this endeavor. But the signal was coming to me, and so here I am.
The other man turns around, looking over all of us. He looks eerily similar to Joe, as if there’s some dress code that people here have to adopt. Or maybe it’s just because they’re friends. But they both have this overlong hair, not quite professional. And this casual way of dressing. And they’re both skinny, with angular faces. But Joe has darker hair, more like Kennedy. And he seems older in the way he acts. Maybe just because he’s had to, as guardian to a teenager.
“Everyone here now?” the other guy asks.
“Yes,” Kennedy says. “This is Nolan.”
I wave. The man doesn’t wave back.
Kennedy sighs. “This is Joe’s friend, Isaac. He said he found something in the readout.”
Isaac swivels his chair back and forth, chewing on an overlarge piece of gum, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “Look, I don’t know exactly how this was set up.”
“My brother did it,” Kennedy says, and the room changes. Isaac looks quickly off to the side, and Joe shifts on his feet, and I remember that her brother, Elliot, was a student here, while her mother and the boyfriend were both professors. It’s a tragedy that has affected the entire campus—teachers and students alike—with everyone looking for some sign of what was to come, in hindsight.
“Right.” Isaac scratches his head, sliding his chair in closer. “I’ll just get right to it, then. It’s an audio signal?” Except he says it like a question, which doesn’t instill the greatest confidence.
“What?” Kennedy says, and Joe steps closer to the machinery.