Pod (13 page)

Dad breaks the news to me over breakfast. The electromagnetic pulse, or whatever it was, is probably permanent. Nothing works, not even the tiny light on Mom’s keychain.

We’re sharing a can of mini-sausages when he says, out of the blue, “You know what else uses a battery?”

I think for a moment, scratch my head. “No!” I say with a fake gasp. “Not the TV remote?”

He smiles, but it’s the kind that takes some effort. Like when someone goes,
Say cheese!
and you smile, but all you want to do is poke them in the eye with a cue stick. A couple of other wise-ass comments come to mind, but I don’t say them. I fork the last sausage, dip it in the almost-empty jar of deli mustard, pop it into my mouth, and wait. I know it’s coming—it’s gonna be good. Something real useful, like the battery to his GPS. Or his shaver. The suspense is killing me …

“My pacemaker,” he says, looking me straight in the eyes.

Blinded by the Light

I’m in the trunk. The backseat is open a crack so I can get some air. I can’t keep the seat totally closed because then it feels like I’m sleeping in a coffin. I’m doing something that I shouldn’t be doing—reading a comic book with my flashlight pen. I shouldn’t be wasting the batteries over something as stupid as
Aliens vs. Predator
, but when my stomach is growling so loud I can’t sleep, it really helps to think about something else. Even if it’s killer space creatures with acid for blood and spider-faced warriors that hunt humans and hang their chopped-off heads like trophies from trees. I whisper a promise to the furball sleeping at my feet—“One more page, just one more … then I’ll turn off the light.”

I don’t get the chance.

The screaming demons come back. It’s the same awful
sound that exploded in my head just before the spaceballs attacked. I look at Cassie—she’s still sleeping. How is this possible? I can hardly breathe. I need more air. But if I open the seat maybe the sound will be even louder? I decide it doesn’t matter if I’m dead. I clamp the flashlight pen between my teeth, punch down the seat, and crawl outside. It makes no difference because the demons aren’t outside. They’re screaming in my head.

And then they stop.

The garage is dark, except for the thin beam coming from my flashlight. I blink, take some deep breaths. A soft blue light is coming inside from beyond the wall. It gets brighter and brighter. Then everything is blue. I know it’s the spaceballs. I reach out for the door handle and choke back a scream. My hands—I can almost see through them all the way to the bones. It’s like I’m disappearing! And my eyes feel like they’re on fire. I dive back into the trunk and lift up the seat. But my sleeping bag is wedged in the opening. It won’t close. I kick the seat down, which lets in more light. Cassie hisses at me.

She looks normal. Why isn’t she disappearing?

And then the light goes off.

But not just the blue light—all light, everywhere. Even my pathetic little flashlight pen. It makes no difference if my eyes are open or closed. Am I blind?

All I can think of is, the aliens are coming. They used the demons to wake us up, then the blue light to blind us. Now they’re attacking. I try to think of places to hide, but what’s the point? I can’t go anywhere because I can’t see.
I might as well stay where I am. I reach out for Cassie, find her. She mews softly as I pull her close. I duck my head into the sleeping bag—the two of us alone in the swallowing dark. Waiting for monsters to find us. For tentacles to slide in through the windows and wrap around the sleeping bag and lift me screaming out of the car. I wish it was a dream, but I know it’s not.

The gun! If only I could use the gun!

Then I think, Like that’s going to help. A blind girl shooting in the dark at slimy tentacles that could probably crush this car. Brilliant! My ears grab onto every sound. Every tick, click, or rustling whisper of wind. And in the middle of all this, Cassie starts purring. Her tongue, small like a fingernail and sandpaper rough, licks my face. I realize I’m crying. “Stop that noise!” I whisper. “The aliens will hear you.”

But Cassie doesn’t care about the drooling monsters. She doesn’t care about the fangs or the yellow eyes glowing over the trunk. All she cares about is licking the tears streaming down my face. I take a deep breath and use the rhythm of Cassie’s motor to settle me down. After a moment or two I have another thought—one that makes me smile.

“Who knows?” I whisper. “Maybe the aliens are allergic to cats.”

Wicked Evil Grin

Amanda: SUP?

What’s up?
How about “I’m too busy to pee”?

Me: IM2BZ2P

Amanda: LHO URAQT

Laughing head off. You are a cutie.
I’m liking the sound of this.

Me: SUP w/U?

Amanda: out of TP

Out of toilet paper?
Ha! I can fix that.

Me: use $$$

Amanda: YUK!!!!!

She’s in a good mood. Not always looking over her shoulder. She’s wearing a purple University of Washington sweatshirt. It’s a little on the baggy side, but she makes it work.

Me: UR happy 2day?

Amanda: yes!!! BAM is KIA

The skinny dude is dead? Cool. Right away I wonder, did she do it?

Me: was it U?

Amanda: WEG

Wicked evil grin.
She starts another sheet of paper, so I wait.

Amanda: 2 men tak hm awy n

And another …

Amanda: bring us food/watr/meds

Me: gr8 news!

Amanda smiles. Actually “beams” is a better word. She claps her hands and spins. It’s like the goblin king just died.

Amanda: thx. RUOK?

Thanks. Are you OK?
Not much going on here, except the news about Dad’s pacemaker. I decide not to rain on her parade. Besides, how do you text “pacemaker”?

Me: SSDD

Amanda looks puzzled.

Amanda: WDYMBT?

What do you mean by that?
She doesn’t know SSDD? Dad walks into the room. He stands in front of the window, facing the apartments across the street. Maybe he sees her, but I doubt it. He reaches down his sweatpants and absently scratches his balls.
Jesus!
I look back up at Amanda. She’s writing, shaking her head.

Amanda: ewww!!! PIR?

Parent in room?
Maybe she means,
Perv in room?
If only she knew. It doesn’t look like the ball scratcher is about to leave anytime soon, so I write, “Bye for now.”

Me: sorry. B4N.

Amanda: L8R

Later.
She waves and walks away. What? No kiss? This sucks.

Dad picks up the sheet of paper on the floor with “SSDD” on it. He asks me what it means.

I say, “Take a wild guess.”

“Sad Santa disco-dances?”

I say, “Guess again.”

He says, “Same shit, different day.”

My mouth drops open. He smiles, hands me the paper, and walks away.

My Lucky Day

Good news: I’m not blind.

Bad news: I’m totally out of food and water. Not a drop, not a crumb. I can’t sit in this car any longer. I have two hungry mouths to feed. But first I need to think about the dream I had last night. It was so good I don’t want to let it go.

Mom and I are on the way to the ocean. She’s driving. We’re in a red convertible, a BMW I think, with the top down. The sun is shining warm and yellow in a clear blue sky—there aren’t any spaceballs anywhere. “Little Surfer Girl” is playing on the stereo and we’re singing along. In real life I don’t know the words, but this is a dream, so I do. Our hair is flying behind us in the breeze, and I’m wearing a pair of corny but very cool heart-shaped
sunglasses. Mom points to a bunch of dots in the sky—at first I think they’re spaceballs, but it turns out they’re really kites with long red tails. Mom says we’re close, any second we’ll see it—the ocean. In real life I’ve never jumped in a wave, never even seen the ocean. So I stand on the seat, hands gripping the windshield and face in the wind—this is a dream, so I can do that—and look and look, but it’s just out of sight. But I smell it and taste it, the salt, the hot dogs, the suntan oil. Mom yells into the wind that we’re going roller-skating and buying fresh-squeezed raspberry lemonades. We’re going to smear ourselves with coconut oil and get tanned like movie stars! Then someone in the car in front of us throws a can of soda out the window. Mom yells, “Megs! Watch out!” but I just smile down at her and do nothing, and even though it’s going in slow motion, the can hits me in the head.

That’s what wakes me up—I bumped my head on the roof of the trunk. I have a little bruise on my forehead, but it reminds me of the dream, so I don’t mind. At first I had a headache, too, but now it’s gone.

The sun is high enough now that I can see what I’m doing, but there’s still plenty of good shadows for hiding. I figure it’s best if I don’t keep the briefcase with me, so I leave it buried under the trash. I hide my treasures in the trunk in a secret storage place under the carpet, next to the spare tire. Cassie is curled up on top of my sleeping bag. She’s peed on it at least twice, but who cares? I’m the only one that smells it. I stuff the empty water bottles in
my backpack, slide my shoulders through the straps, and start walking. My destination: Level 1. I’ll work my way up from there.

Halfway down I remember that I left the
Aliens vs. Pred-ator
comic on the front seat. I don’t have the energy to hike all the way back, so I tell myself it’s no big deal. Richie won’t notice. Everything else is hidden in a trunk he’s already searched.

Level 1 is bad news. There’s this awful nasty smell, like a backed-up toilet. It doesn’t take long to figure out where it’s coming from. The green door opens. I duck behind a car and watch a woman and a little girl walk into the garage. The woman is carrying a bucket and a rag. The woman stands in front of the girl while she drops her pants and squats over the bucket. When she’s finished she wipes herself with the rag. Then the woman plugs her nose, picks up the bucket, lifts the top to the big green garbage can, and dumps in the contents, rag and all. She knocks on the door. It swings open and they walk inside. So Level 1 has a new name: The Sewer.

I get all choked when I sit in our old car. It’s covered with even more dust. The clock that Mom bought at a Walmart in Nebraska on the second day of our trip is on the floor. I look at it and keep seeing the two of us escaping Zack and taking off on our great adventure. That was fun. Scary, but fun. I look around for a note. Nothing but more dust.

I walk to my second home, the SUV. It’s a horror show.
Someone, or
something
, ripped it to shreds. Hmm … I wonder who that could be. It looks like it was attacked by tigers with chainsaws. All the seats are slashed and the roof liner is pulled down. Too many memories here. Cassie’s cage is on the ground, bent and broken. I promise myself not to come back to this spot … ever.

If Level 1 was a bust, then Level 2 is a gold mine. With all the trunks open it’s easier for me to search the nooks and crannies, the places Richie and Hacker were too stupid or lazy to look. I find a bag of pistachio nuts stuffed in a tennis shoe, and a short tube of Pringles potato chips under some jumper cables. But the showstopper is a big old Suburban that Richie and his gang have worked over so many times it looks like it’s been through a war. The spare, which is slashed—Richie must have a thing about slashing tires—is bolted to the back door, which is unlocked. It’s pretty much empty except for jumper cables and a couple of STP oil cans. I’m about to give up when I notice that the carpeting has a seam down the middle and there’s a spot in the back corner where it’s loose, so I give it a pull. It’s held in place with strips of Velcro that keep peeling back and back until I see a black wooden door. I lift up the door. At first I think it’s just a bigger-than-normal compartment for the spare tire. But on this car the spare tire is kept outside. I poke my head into the space, and that’s when I know I found it—the jackpot.