I shouldn’t be afraid of the ticking of the gauge, or the way the dial shoots down into the red for no apparent reason. A quick spike. A long pause. A quick spike. A long pause.
I shut it down, because it’s giving me the chills, the way it keeps up the pattern. I back out into the hall, open my parents’ bedroom door, hear my father’s predictable snoring.
“Nolan?” The sheets rustle as my mom wakes up.
“Yeah,” I say. “Sorry. The power’s out. I’m gonna go reset the circuit breaker.”
“Just a minute,” she says, getting out of bed. I wait for my mother to grab a flashlight so I don’t have to go down to the basement alone. God, I’m an embarrassment to the male teenage species.
* * *
—
It’s 2 a.m. and I can’t sleep. I feel something, like that premonition from two years ago. Like there’s a dream I’m not remembering, and by the time I do, it will be too late.
Which is how I find myself at the computer, typing Negative EMF signal? into the search bar.
The results get me nowhere. I add the word pattern, but nothing seems relevant. The meter starts at zero, which leads me to believe there shouldn’t even be a negative possibility here.
It must be the meter. Maybe I can pretend it came that way from the store. Maybe I can get a refund, or exchange, for the same model.
Except.
There, deep in the search results, is a link to a SETI message board. The acronym sounds familiar, but my mind isn’t really placing it. I click on the link, and I see the initials spelled out—search for extraterrestrial intelligence—and I almost close it automatically.
But the message is titled Signal at Negative Frequency? by someone named KJ.
It talks about a pattern.
And it was posted within the day.
I’ve got seven responses when I wake up, all telling me more of what I’d already assumed. That there’s something wrong with the dish, or the wire, or—most likely—the program setup.
And something from a Visitor357.
Most visitors without account names are trolls, and I’ve heard enough stories about online message boards being the new Internet hookup site, which is why I use my initials and keep all my personal data off the site. Visitor357’s message begins:
Hey, I was taking readings in my house with my EMF meter and kept getting a negative reading.
I do a quick search for EMF meter and let out a groan. Not only is this guy possibly a troll, but now it looks like I have a ghost-hunting troll.
My finger hovers on the delete key, but something makes me stop. It’s the way he describes it.
A spike, then a pause, like a pattern.
And the way he signs off:
I turned off all the electricity. Sounds like this interference you speak of. Glad to know I’m not alone.
I tap my pointer finger on the desk a few times, debating. Then hit the button to send a private message:
Hey Visitor357,
This is a site for signals we are receiving FROM SPACE. Not our houses. Probably a different type of interference (say, your microwave), but if you want to send me what you got I can take a look at it for you.
—KJ
In the meantime, the most likely reason for my own signal is either something mechanical or something computer-related, and there’s only one person left I know who can help me. The phone rings four times, and I’m on the verge of hanging up when she finally answers, clearing her throat before speaking.
“Hello?” Her voice is quick, unsure.
“Hey, Lydia. It’s Kennedy.”
“Yeah, Kennedy. Hi. I know. Your name is on the display.”
A pause.
“So,” I say.
She clears her throat again.
So, it’s going to be like this. Awkward, because we haven’t really spoken in six months. More awkward, because the only reason we ever did was because she’s Marco’s best friend and I was his girlfriend. Most awkward because I once heard her refer to me as Child of the Corn, and no one called her on it, which led me to believe she probably used it more than once. I even Googled Children of the Corn later to see what she meant, but there was zero resemblance that I could tell, which made me wonder what she was really saying about me.
“I was wondering if you could help me with some computer thing today,” I finally say.
“I don’t have a car,” she says.
“Right, no, at my house. By the satellite dish. You can walk. I mean, you were there Friday night, right?”
And with that, I know I have her. “Sure, okay,” she says, like I haven’t just accused her of trespassing at my house, a crime scene, a place she has no right to be anymore. “What kind of computer issue are we talking about, though?”
“I have no idea,” I say. “That’s why I called you. I’ll be there in one hour.”
* * *
—
When I arrive at the house and round the corner to the backyard, Lydia’s already there, leaning against the split-rail fence. I walk the bike toward the shed and wave for her to come closer. She steps tentatively away from the fence, as if even this—being this close to the house, alone—is too much.
Though I did just accuse her of trespassing, so.
Even there, at the edge of the property, she’s hard not to notice. Lydia’s tall and thin and has these hazel eyes offset by her brown skin, which makes you look twice. When I first met her through Marco (This is my friend Lydia), I was on the edge of jealousy and insecurity, but it soon became obvious that Lydia was only interested in Sutton, and vice versa.
“Well,” she says, peering at the house over my shoulder instead of at me, “what are we looking at?”
“Either the computer in the shed or the satellite dish,” I say, walking toward the makeshift observatory.
“A dish issue is not the same thing as a computer issue, you know,” she mumbles.
Her steps fall in sync with my own, crunching the dead grass underneath our feet, dry from lack of water and scorched by the sun. The antenna on top of the shed flashes with the reflecting sun before a cloud passes overhead.
Lydia wrinkles her nose when I open the shed door, because the first thing you notice is the dim light, the dust particles suspended in the air, the smell of earth and wood.
“Oh,” she says. “Wow.” Because the second thing you notice is Elliot’s setup: three computer monitors, several humming towers under the desk, and a tangle of wires threading through a hole in the wall, and then underground—where they run in a path to the satellite dish. At least, I think. I never paid much attention to the logistics. There’s also a drawer full of cables, headphones, and speakers, like Elliot truly believed he’d make direct contact with something out there one day. He was like that: sometimes more focused on the great possibilities out there than on what was staring him in the face.
Once, when he was working on his laptop at the kitchen table, my mom told him he absolutely needed a haircut, that he was looking particularly ridiculous, and that really, how could he even see what he was doing? Instead of brushing her off, like a normal person would, he paused for thirty seconds to take the scissors from the drawer beside the refrigerator. He ran the blade through the hair in front of his eyes, shaking out the dark strands as they fell into the trash can. Then he returned to his seat while my mom and I stared at each other, openmouthed. Until eventually her shoulders started shaking with silent laughter, and mine followed less silently, and Elliot shook himself from his world long enough to grin at us from under his uneven bangs.
Lydia doesn’t wait for instructions from me; she makes herself comfortable in the chair in front of the terminal, and she begins by pressing a few keys. Her mouth scrunches up, but she leans closer to the screen, now illuminated with the green-on-black readout, with peaks and valleys and numbers below. “Is there a manual somewhere?” she asks. But she’s still looking at the screen.
The rest of the shed is empty. Wooden planks, a small window with a view of the satellite dish, which is planted in the center of the ground, pointed up. There’s just this computer desk and chair inside now.
“I can check,” I say. Somewhere in the house is a box of Elliot’s personal items, where his journals or manuals would be. We’ve kept all his things, but the Realtor or the stager tucked those boxes out of sight—upstairs in the storage area, she said, like it was no big deal. I shift from foot to foot until Lydia turns around, focusing her eyes on mine. Waiting. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”
The heat and the sun beat down on the back of my neck. But there’s something in the air when I walk toward the house, something that feels like static electricity, that makes my hair stand on end. I try to shake it off as I crawl through Elliot’s bedroom window again, like I did Friday night.