Teasers & Previews
Uncle Kevin wasn’t surprised about me asking to go cruising, even though he teased me about cruising on foot. I asked him about how things usually went down there and he told me it was pretty lively but not crazy. Sometimes people drove too fast and every once in a while someone got into a fight, but that was about it. People danced in the streets for fun, and the highlights were the two pizza places, the Dairy Queen, Joe’s Dogs, and the bowling alley. He told me about the carnival coming to town late in August and what happened two years ago when Cranston was playing Tarrant in the playoffs. There was a big fight involving eight guys and the cops dragged them downtown to cool off for the night.
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Tristiana smiled sweetly as the Complexitor leaned in to hear her. “He’s listening to me,” she exulted in her thoughts, “and I didn’t even have to mystify him!” She had thought about their similarities for some time, and so the words rolled off her lips like a slick marketing presentation.
Sarah never really had adjusted to the sudden appearance of visitors and their just as sudden disappearance. Although she had plenty of new tasks and distractions now, her dreams were turbulent in the days following the visit, and the mornings saw her sitting cocooned in the covers, breathing softly as if transfixed by the waking memory of her slumber-visions.
Sarah wasn’t sure how she made it through the tour; she remembered very little of it, like the flotsam and jetsam of a dream when she awoke. Mack and Daniel asked some questions, and she remembered answering them adequately, even though she felt like she was watching a movie of herself.
The Complexitor’s plans for revenge on the DMIC had take a back burner to more domestic concerns the past week, namely, what to wear for his — he could barely think the word — date on Friday.
I told Uncle Kevin where I was going tomorrow. He smiled slightly, but didn’t say anything except to remind me to finish up the vinyl siding. I got the same kind of feeling that I did when Mrs. Cutler and Madame S were talking about a lot changing in one summer, like he knew something that I didn’t. Before I could ask him what he was thinking, he had left the room and started working on various papers scattered around the kitchen. I knew better than to disturb him, so I went upstairs and crashed.
“Come on, hurry up,” Sarah thought, with her foot pressing the pedal all the way down. Even though the speedometer needle pegged the red zone at 30 mph and the electric engine whined in protest, the rover didn’t seem to go quite fast enough. Her heart thudded excitedly in her chest as she neared the needle-like spaceship in the distance, a sliver of silver in the night.
Friday sent its electric wires to bus stops and breakfast tables, to car rides and sidewalks, gathering students to Westchester High, breathless with the oncoming weekend. Some looked forward to dates; others to time spent away from parents; others to band or football; but only a select few in the school’s hallways looked forward to karaoke night at the DMIC headquarters.
The next day, I woke up to the sounds of birds and cars. The birds were a lot closer of course. In fact, they were right outside my window on the sill cheeping their heads off. The cars made the usual long droning sounds of taking off and then tapering off into the silence. It was like the soundtrack to a movie. I just laid there, and eventually reached around to the pictures I took recently.
As I flipped through them, I realized that there weren’t any people in them. Lots of strange angles, some cool devices from where Uncle Kevin worked, and the sunset on my first day here. It felt empty, like I had just captured the outside of things but I was missing the inside. Before I left, I was going to take pictures of — people. Friends wasn’t exactly right, but I wanted to remember them: Kirandra, J, Uncle Kevin — everyone. It would be a lot better than forgetting, like I had never been here at all.
Sarah had spent the previous day in a state of effervescent expectancy. She had cleaned every room, rearranged the decorative plants, dusted, and mopped. During his last visit, Daniel said that he missed the taste of home-cooked food the most during the monthly route along the planetoids. “I know I can trust you with this,” he had said. She had asked why sharing it would be a problem. “I don’t want anyone to think that they have to do things for me,” he had told her. She felt like he had just placed a beautiful star into the center of her chest, a shining secret that only she knew. “If I make something for you,” she had asked, looking at the crew and feeling the heat in her cheeks, “that would be ok, wouldn’t it?” He had smiled and said, “Yes, only if you do it.” She knew just what she would make him — apple tarts. Her pies usually ended up a total loss, but somehow, she could always make those. Maybe it was because it was something that her mother had taught her? Probably.
