The Last Place on Earth (6 page)

“You got something going on with your parents tomorrow?” I asked.

“Uh—no.”

“Then why…” I met his eyes. My stomach dropped. Just like that, I knew. “The dance?”

He tried to smile, but he got this weird embarrassed look I'd never seen before. “Hannah Branson kept hinting that she wanted to go with me. You know, saying things and texting. So I asked her. Why not.”

“You're going to Winter Formal. With Hannah Branson.” I had to say it to believe it. And still I didn't believe it. Hannah was in our English class. She had highlights and a fake laugh and … that was pretty much all I'd ever noticed at that point. Her gift for gossiping and sucking up to teachers caught my attention later.

I was angry. I had no right to be angry. And yet …

“Was this before or after Rudy asked me?”

“Around the same time.”

“Henry.”

He wouldn't meet my eyes. “After.”

I nodded, too afraid I'd cry if I tried to speak. Why would I cry? It wasn't like I wanted to go to the dance with Henry. But still. I didn't want to share him.

“So are you and Hannah … a couple?”

His brown-black eyes bugged out, and then he burst out laughing because the idea was so absurd. All at once, I knew it was okay. Hannah would get him for one night, and then he'd be mine again.

That was how it played out, too. He texted me five times throughout the evening:

Bored.

Still bored.

Was I supposed to buy a corsage?

No one told me you had to dance at a dance.

This is no fun without you.

We never mentioned Winter Formal again.

*   *   *

Forty-five minutes later, I had absorbed approximately no new math knowledge, but I found myself wondering about the latest missing person. I didn't even know the pinch-faced drill team girl's name.

When the bell rang, I sprang from my seat and caught Hannah on her way out the door.

“You know the girl who sits behind you? She's on drill? She's out today?”

She thought for a minute. “You mean Bethany?”

I said, “I don't know her name. She's kind of…” I made a sour look with my face. Which wasn't very nice of me, I know, but it was all in the name of saving Henry.

“Yeah, that's Bethany.”

“You know her last name?” Hannah knew everyone and everything, a quality that I normally did not appreciate.

“Bratt,” she said. “Two
t
's.”

“Thanks.” I turned.

“Why do you want to know her name?” she asked, not missing a beat.

“Henry wants to ask her to the dance,” I said.

 

Nine

“SUPERSIZE ME,” PETER
said, grabbing a huge bag of chicken-and-waffles-flavored potato chips.

We were at the drugstore, standing in the junk food aisle. Peter's chauffeuring charges were putting a dent in my babysitting money.

“Don't be greedy.” I tried to snatch the giant bag out of his hands, but he pulled it away with a loud
crinkle
.

“This Bethany girl lives like two towns away,” he said.

“And you have something better to do?” As soon as the words were out, I regretted them. It wasn't Peter's fault that he had no life. Okay, it kind of was, but it was still a sensitive subject.

I looked away so I didn't have to see the hurt in his eyes. “Fine. I'll get you the big bag. But I'm not buying you a soda.”

“Don't have to. Mom already gave me grocery money for when she and the Man-Fran are on their cruise.” He trotted over to the soda aisle. After some consideration, he got an orange Fanta.

I opened the next fridge case over and plucked out an iced green tea. “Think this thing with, what's his name, Randy, will last?”

“You mean
forever
?” Peter looked like I'd asked if he believed in fairies.

“Don't be ridiculous. I mean for the length of the cruise.”

He considered. “Seven days. Small cabin. Not looking good.”

I didn't have to use tax records to track down Bethany's address because her last name was unusual—either there weren't a lot of Bratts to begin with, or the rest had enough sense to change it—and I found her parents listed in at least ten online directories. Thanks to Google Earth, I was able to view a satellite picture of her large house and pool. It's too bad I would never want to spend time with Bethany, because the Santa Ana winds were blowing hot and dusty, and I could use a friend with a pool.

The drive took maybe fifteen minutes—not long enough to justify Peter's supersize chip upgrade, but enough time for every sweat gland in my body to go into emergency mode. The car's air conditioner worked, at least in theory, but it had run out of coolant over a year ago, and Peter couldn't be bothered to get it refilled.

At least there was no community gate to deal with. We pulled right up to Bethany's house, which looked smaller from the street than it had from the satellite.

Peter pulled over to the curb and turned off the car. He hauled the potato chip bag onto his lap and ripped it open.

“She's not going to be home,” I said, peeling my legs off the seat. A droplet of sweat slithered down my neck.

“How'd y'know?” Peter asked through a mouthful of salt, grease, and artificial flavors.

“Because people are disappearing. One after another. Without a trace. Like…”

“They've been abducted by aliens?”
Crinkle, crinkle.
Peter reached back into the bag.

“Well … yeah.”

“Awesome.” Peter peered at the house with sharpened interest. His face shone with perspiration and perhaps the first infusion of potato chip oil.

At last I got up the courage to leave the car, walk down the path, ring Bethany's bell, and face … silence.

Alien abduction.
Come on. There had to be a better explanation for why people kept disappearing. But what?

I was squinting up at the hot, bleached sky, looking for evidence of other life forms, when Bethany opened the door. The house's air-conditioning hit me like a bucket of cold water.

“You're here!” I blurted out.

“I live here.” She looked awful: red nose, dirty hair, circles under her eyes. She was wearing pajama bottoms and a faded pink T-shirt. But at least her hair wasn't stringy with sweat like mine was.

“You weren't in school,” I said.

“I'm sick.” It came out like
Ibe zick.

“Is Gwendolyn sick, too?”

She shrugged. “I wouldn't know. Did you bring my math homework?”

“Um, no.”

She looked at me funny. “Then why are you here?”

“Um … I mostly just came to see if you knew where Gwendolyn was.”

“I don't.”

“Okay.”

We gawked at each other in an agonizing silence.

“The math homework is in the book,” I said. “I can't remember the page, but if you give me your cell phone number, I'll text you when I get home.”

“I'll get it from someone else,” she said.

“Okay.” I forced a smile. “Hot day today.”

“It's kind of weird,” she said. “You coming here.”

At a loss, I said, “It's not weird. My brother drove me. Um. We have potato chips if you want some? Chicken-and-waffle-flavored. Which sounds kind of gross, but—”

“I'm going back to bed.” She shut the door in my face.

There are reasons why I don't have a wide social circle, only some of them having to do with my impeccable taste.

“No aliens?” Peter said when I got back in the car.

“No.” I strapped in my seat belt.

He handed me the potato chip bag and started the engine. “I'm disappointed.”

I stuck my hand in the bag and met air. “They're almost gone!”

“I'm a growing boy.” Peter gave his tummy an affectionate pat.

“We could go back to Gwendolyn's. Check for aliens.” I shoved the chips in my mouth, trailing greasy crumbs down my shirt. They tasted odd but not in a bad way.

“Sure.” Peter started the car and pulled away from the curb. “Not like I have anything better to do.”

We followed a gardener's truck through Gwendolyn's community gate and drove through several streets of almost-identical stucco houses. I thought,
If Gwendolyn's home, then maybe Henry is back, too.

But her grass needed cutting, and several home service flyers had been left outside the front door. I rang the bell and waited, waited, waited. I didn't think about aliens. I just thought about Henry.

By the time I climbed back in the car, Peter had polished off the chips. “Henry's house next?” he asked.

I nodded.

*   *   *

The newspapers were gone from the driveway. Was it possible Henry's family had come home? I opened my car door before Peter had come to a complete stop. I raced up the front steps, rang the bell, and …

Nothing.

I swallowed hard, so sick of this nothingness I felt like crying. I rang the bell again and pounded on the door until I felt tears mix with the sweat on my face. I was going to need some serious rehydration later.

You cried?
I heard Henry say in my head, his voice shocked and amused. Because surely that was how he would respond once he came home and heard about how I'd grilled Hannah, stalked Bethany, and stoked Peter's belief in aliens.

I wiped my face, turned back to the car, and shook my head to let Peter know that there'd been no answer. I trudged across the overgrown grass and over to the driveway. At the very end, a white plastic gate that was supposed to look like wood opened up to an enclosure where the Hawkings kept their city-issued garbage cans out of sight. (At our house, the garbage cans stood on the side of the driveway, in full view of the neighbors and occasional hungry raccoons.)

I lifted the lid on the green recycling can. Sure enough, the discarded
Orange County Registers
, presumably disposed of by a vigilant neighbor, sat on top of a jumble of soda cans, plastic food containers, and magazines. I checked the black trash can. The smell of old garbage made me shudder, but nothing inside seemed especially strange, not that I took time to investigate.

Back in the car, Peter pretended not to notice the anguish, panic, and fear on my face. He's good that way. Or maybe he just had his mind on more important things.

“Can I see the toilet paper?” he asked. I'd told him about the Hawkings' supply cabinets somewhere between Bethany's and Gwendolyn's houses.

We left the car at the pond, where it wouldn't look suspicious, and strolled back along the quiet roads. At the Hawkings' driveway, we scanned the street to make sure no one was watching and hurried to the garage. I punched in the code, and we slipped inside.

“This is an incredibly clean garage,” Peter said.

“Everything in their house is clean. And there's no clutter at all. It's creepy.”

Peter's first instinct was to take some of the toilet paper home with us (“I'll replace it”), but I talked him out of it. We admired the cleaning supplies, agreeing that the volume and variety rivaled Target's.

And then we went into the house.

The surfaces had acquired a thin layer of dust since my last visit. Not surprising, given that we were in the middle of an especially bad Santa Ana season. And yet—

“The cleaning lady didn't come.”

“They weren't here to let her in,” Peter pointed out.

“Yeah, but she normally comes on Saturdays. That way, they can watch to make sure she doesn't steal anything. But Henry's mom can't stand a dirty house, so when they are going away, they have someone at the security company let her in, then they turn on the nanny cam.”

Immediately, our heads popped up. The nanny cam was mounted in a fake light above the pantry door, but there was no telltale red light blinking, thank goodness. The video camera was off. I'd forgotten all about it on my previous visit, but if the Hawkings ever saw me on the feed, breaking into their house … I shuddered.

“You think the housekeeper would know anything?” Peter asked.

“Dunno. And I wouldn't know how to get in touch with her, anyway.” I ran my hand along the dusty countertop. “Maybe they're just on vacation somewhere.”

“That would be disappointing,” Peter said.

“Why?”

“No aliens.”

“There could still be aliens. The aliens could be holding them hostage in a poolside cabana. Or taking them to the mother ship to do experiments—though ten minutes with Henry's mom, and they'd send them all back.”

Peter considered. “I don't think we need to worry about aliens.”

“No.”

“But zombies are a real possibility.”

“Too bad the office is locked,” I told Peter. “There could be a planner or something that could tell us where they are.”

Peter rattled the knob. “I saw some tools in the garage.…”

For someone who had never displayed any practical skills, Peter was remarkably handy with Mr. Hawking's power screwdriver. Within minutes, he had removed the doorknob.

“Voilà.” He pushed the door open.

I expected to fall in hate with yet another boring, beige room, but the office was worse: brown plaid couch, green floral chair, a chipped white laminate desk, a fake wood file cabinet with the facing peeling off. The room was like an ugly furniture graveyard. No wonder they kept it locked.

If the room held any secrets beyond its ugliness, it wasn't giving them up: no calendar on the wall, no planner on the desk. I started to open the desk drawer and then stopped myself. This was invading the Hawkings' privacy too much.

Peter had no such qualms. Before I realized what he was doing, he was hauling manila folders out of the filing cabinet and rifling through their contents. “They keep their old electricity bills. Who does that?”