The players shake hands, pat each other’s shoulders.
“This is ridiculous,” Jared grumbles.
“I can’t stand it,” Jamie agrees, mirroring Jared’s tone perfectly; he sounds more like Jared every day—one of the many forms his hero worship has taken. “Is there anything else on?”
Jared flips through a few channels until he finds a track and field meet. The parasites are holding the Olympics in Haiti right now. From what we can see, the aliens are all hugely excited about it. Lots of them have Olympic flags outside their houses. It’s not the same, though. Everyone who participates gets a medal now. Pathetic.
But they can’t really screw up the hundred-meter dash. Individual parasite sports are much more entertaining than when they try to compete against each other directly. They perform better in separate lanes.
“Mel, come relax,” Jared calls.
I stand by the back door out of habit, not because I’m tensed to run. Not because I’m frightened. Empty habit, nothing more.
I go to Jared. He pulls me onto his lap and tucks my head under his chin.
“Comfortable?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, because I really, truly am entirely comfortable. Here, in an alien’s house.
Dad used to say lots of funny things—like he was speaking his own language sometimes. Twenty-three skidoo, salad days, nosy parker, bandbox fresh, the catbird seat, chocolate teapot, and something about Grandma sucking eggs. One of his favorites was safe as houses.
Teaching me to ride a bike, my mother worrying in the doorway: “Calm down, Linda, this street is safe as houses.” Convincing Jamie to sleep without his nightlight: “It’s safe as houses in here, son, not a monster for miles.”
Then overnight the world turned into a hideous nightmare, and the phrase became a black joke to Jamie and me. Houses were the most dangerous places we knew.
Hiding in a patch of scrubby pines, watching a car pull out from the garage of a secluded home, deciding whether to make a food run, whether it was too dicey. “Do you think the parasites’ll be gone for long?” “No way—that place is safe as houses. Let’s get out of here.”
And now I can sit here and watch TV like it is five years ago and Mom and Dad are in the other room and I’ve never spent a night hiding in a drainpipe with Jamie and a bunch of rats while body snatchers with spotlights search for the thieves who made off with a bag of dried beans and a bowl of cold spaghetti.
I know that if Jamie and I survived alone for twenty years we would never find this feeling on our own. The feeling of safety. More than safety, even—happiness. Safe and happy, two things I thought I’d never feel again.
Jared makes us feel that way without trying, just by being Jared.
I breathe in the scent of his skin and feel the warmth of his body under mine.
Jared makes everything safe, everything happy. Even houses.
He still makes me feel safe, Melanie realized, feeling the warmth where his arm was just half an inch from mine. Though he doesn’t even know I’m here.
I didn’t feel safe. Loving Jared made me feel less safe than anything else I could think of.
I wondered if Melanie and I would have loved Jared if he’d always been who he was now, rather than the smiling Jared in our memories, the one who had come to Melanie with his hands full of hope and miracles. Would she have followed him if he’d always been so hard and cynical? If the loss of his laughing father and wild big brothers had iced him over the way nothing but Melanie’s loss had?
Of course. Mel was certain. I would love Jared in any form. Even like this, he belongs with me.
I wondered if the same held true for me. Would I love him now if he were like this in her memory?
Then I was interrupted. Without any cue that I perceived, suddenly Jared was talking, speaking as if we were in the middle of a conversation.
“And so, because of you, Jeb and Jamie are convinced that it’s possible to continue some kind of awareness after… being caught. They’re both sure Mel’s still kicking in there.”
He rapped his fist lightly against my head. I flinched away from him, and he folded his arms.
“Jamie thinks she’s talking to him.” He rolled his eyes. “Not really fair to play the kid like that—but that’s assuming a sense of ethics that clearly does not apply.”
I wrapped my arms around myself.
“Jeb does have a point, though—that’s what’s killing me! What are you after? The Seekers’ search wasn’t well directed or even… suspicious. They only seemed to be looking for you—not for us. So maybe they didn’t know what you were up to. Maybe you’re freelancing? Some kind of undercover thing. Or…”
It was easier to ignore him when he was speculating so foolishly. I focused on my knees. They were dirty, as usual, purple and black.