The Otherworldlies (18 page)

Though it would nearly break her heart, the Commander decided to make a tactical decision. After taking a single deep breath, Mary Lou reached for the phone once again.

“When can you come and pick her up?”

Alistair Kimble had known Mary Lou McAllister for three decades. Still, he had never heard her voice so full of steely resolve.

“It’ll take me several hours to get the clearance and transport together.”

“When will you be here?”

“Noon tomorrow.”

“Fine.”

Mary Lou McAllister hung up the phone shortly thereafter and told herself she would talk to Fern after she took a shower.

Fern didn’t sleep much that night. She lay in her bed, tossing and turning. Feeling antsy, she got up out of bed and wandered out of her room. She half expected to find Vlad’s condor perched on the windowsill. As she made her way down the dark hallway, she noticed the sound of her mother’s printer whirring away. It was unlike the Commander, who kept strict hours, to be working so late, so she tiptoed to the end of the hallway.

Sam sat behind the Commander’s desk, his face bathed in the dim blue light of the computer screen. Mrs. McAllister had vacated the room after her phone call an hour or so earlier, hoping to take a long shower and formulate how she would break the latest news to Fern.

“What are you doing?” Fern whispered across the desk at Sam.

“Something for school tomorrow,” Sam said. He was acting very jumpy. “I’ll be done in a few minutes,” he insisted.

“Okay,” Fern said. She didn’t want to press Sam, but she was confused.

“I’ll come to your room as soon as I’m done, Fern,” Sam said, annoyed that Fern was lingering by the doorway. “You better head back there, though, before Mom hears us.”

Fern moped dejectedly down the hallway and back into her room. What was Sam doing that he couldn’t show her? Though she had tried to banish the thought from her head, Vlad’s predictions of her isolation troubled her. She returned to her bed, her body taut with worry. Was everything going to change now?

It was an hour before Sam was finished with his project. Creeping down the hall, avoiding the spots in the floor that squeaked, he slipped into Fern’s room. But now, Fern had lost the urge to talk. She just wanted to be left alone, to fall asleep and be released from the thoughts that endlessly plagued her.

When she heard Sam open the door, she shut her eyes and pretended to be asleep. Fern could sense that Sam was standing above her, watching her. He placed something gently next to her head on her pillow. Fern remained still. The door didn’t open again. Before long, she heard Sam’s heavy breaths coming from the foot of her bed. She raised herself up. Sure enough, curled up at the foot of her bed, Sam was fast asleep, snoring.

Fern picked up the object Sam had left on her pillow. She held it up in the light from the open window. It was a palm-sized book, loosely bound with twine. The cover had the title
The Disappearance Directory
stenciled in with a Sharpie. Inside, Sam had written a message in his distinct handwriting.

Instructions: When you’ve disappeared to somewhere you don’t want to be, look at one of these pictures and get yourself home! Practice makes perfect. The last picture is sort of a joke. —From Sam

Fern flipped through the book. Sam had printed pictures and pasted them in the book. There was a picture of Fern’s bed, the jacaranda tree, the grove, a fuzzy Internet picture of Pirate’s Cove, and the McAllister living room.

The last picture made Fern struggle to keep her laughter inside and not awaken her slumbering brother. Sam had taken a picture of the McAllister toilet, unflushed. Her twin brother had been known to clog the toilet from time to time, causing Eddie to call him the John Jammer. She shook her head with a sly smile. Fern had placed the drawing Vlad had given her, of Rhea’s Rock, inside her copy of
Island of the Blue Dolphins
, now resting on her nightstand. Almost instinctively, she fished it out and slipped it into
The Disappearance Directory
.

Fern looked appreciatively at her brother. She got a blanket from her closet and covered him. Sam still accepted her, Fern thought. He still wanted to be friends, to be close to Fern. Would he feel that way if he knew she was a Blout? Fern shut her eyes. Sam’s kindness was just enough to make her forget her other more troubling thoughts. It was only minutes until she fell asleep. Sam snored loudly below her. Fern clutched
The Disappearance Directory
until morning came.

Chapter 14
the backyard experiment

S
am knew he should let his sister sleep, but his excitement prevailed. He shook her awake, standing over her as she opened her eyes. There was still an hour before they had to depart for school. Enough time, Sam thought, to experiment with
The Disappearance Directory
.

“Fern, wake up!”

The middle McAllister child’s blond hair sprouted like a weed. His face was marked with red zigzags from the rug. Fern rubbed her eyes with her fists. She’d never been a morning person. However, things had gotten much better since she’d received her W.A.A.V.E. products from Lindsey Lin. Reaching for her nightstand, she grabbed the bottle of eyedrops. Her Breakfast Sunglasses, now rarely worn, were gathering dust next to her alarm clock. Two drops in each eye, some lotion on her face, and she was ready to go.

Both Sam and Fern changed into their school uniforms and raced outside. The backyard was filled with the immaculate light of sunup. The pool had been painstakingly refilled with the hose, and the jacarandas, oak, and elms were tranquil. Fern hadn’t let
The Disappearance Directory
out of arm’s reach since Sam had placed it on her pillow. She clutched it now as the birds chirped wildly behind her.

“Let’s start small,” Sam said, as the twins stood on the grass in the middle of the yard. “Why don’t you try to go from here to your room?”

“Okay,” Fern said, opening the
Directory
. “Should I just stare at the picture?”

Sam started laughing. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I’m not an expert or anything. You’re the one who’s done it before.” Fern shrugged her shoulders at her brother, slightly embarrassed. She looked at the picture of her bed and desk. Her bed was unmade and a few of her white polo shirts from school lay strewn about. If the Commander had seen the picture, she would have called the state of Fern’s room a disgrace. Fern refocused on the picture. She had to concentrate. She zeroed in on the bed, closed her eyes, and thought hard.

She reopened them and Sam stood directly in front of her.

“No luck, huh?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know why it happens when it does happen,” Fern said, frustrated.

“Well, what are you thinking about right before it happens?”

“I don’t know.”

“When you were reading
Lord of the Flies
, you don’t remember thinking anything? What about when we were having dinner with Mr. Summers? Nothing?”

“I don’t know, all right?” Fern grimaced. “I’m sorry, Sam,” she said. “I’m just in a bad mood.”

“If we get you on track with this teleporting stuff, then if you are ever in danger, you can just teleport your way out of it,” he said. “We’ve got to figure it out eventually.”

“Wait! I know,” Fern said, as a thought struck her. “Usually, right before I teleport, I think to myself that I would rather be some other place. Either because of a happy memory or because of something unpleasant.”

“Do it, then,” Sam said.

Fern looked at the picture of her room. She thought of how much she wanted to lie down in bed, to rest, to not be standing in the middle of the backyard worried about whether or not she had it in her to teleport.

Nausea hit first.

Fern’s knees buckled and she felt the ground crumble beneath her feet. The blackness took hold. What felt like a minute to Fern was actually less than a second.

Soon she was able to open her eyes. Dimness transformed into sight. Fern jumped up with her fists in the air. She was in her room. Her messy, beloved room. Fern ran out of the room and to the window in the hallway. She spotted Sam below in the backyard, looking up at the second floor of the McAllister house. Fern cranked open the window and stuck her head out.

“You did it!” Sam said, cupping his hands around his mouth like a megaphone. Fern smiled down at her brother. The feeling was better than almost anything. “Hurry back down here! Let’s try somewhere else . . . somewhere farther!”

Fern bolted down the stairs and was in the backyard within the minute.

“What about the
Directory
?” Sam said.

“What do you mean?” Fern said, rejoining her brother in the middle of the lawn.

“When you teleported, the
Directory
went with you?”

“Yeah,” Fern said, looking down and realizing for the first time she was still clutching the
Directory
.

“That means you can take things with you!” Sam tussled his own blond hair. “I wonder if you could take me with you?”

“Maybe,” Fern said. She opened the
Directory
.

“Let’s see if we can both go all the way to Pirate’s Cove!” Sam said excitedly. “We can finally check and see if the hole’s still open—and copy down the writing this time!”

Fern grabbed Sam’s shoulder, flipping through the
Directory
with her other hand. She came to the out-of-focus picture of Pirate’s Cove. Studying the picture carefully, she focused on the curvy shoreline and brown cragged cliffs. Sam put his arm around Fern’s shoulder and held on tightly.

I wish I was somewhere else. I wish I was anywhere but here.

The process seemed so simple and lacked any mystery now. She thought the words and then she was somewhere else. It was a perverted version of Dorothy and her ruby slippers, only without the slippers.

Her stomach wrenched as she flew out of the darkness and fell face forward onto a mound of sand. Brushing herself off, she turned around. Fern was back at Pirate’s Cove, but Sam wasn’t with her. She’d landed at the western end of the beach. The beach was cold and damp. Fog rolled in off the Pacific, cloaking everything in pale gray. At a quarter to seven in the morning, the sandy beach was so empty it was spooky.

Fern’s head was beginning to throb. This was almost the exact spot where she’d met a disguised Vlad with his metal detector. Not wanting to be alone and at Pirate’s Cove any longer than she had to, she ran to the cave where the hole had been before. The back of the cave was dark at this hour of the morning. She felt around the back of it. She pressed her face up against the wall. Finally, she spotted the initials:

MLM + PM

She pressed her hands below them.

The hole was gone. Hard rock stood in its place.

Fern no longer wanted to be anywhere near Pirate’s Cove. She ran back onto the beach. Shivering, she opened
The Disappearance Directory
and found the jacaranda tree. A small inferno burned in her stomach. Fern made an effort not to double over. Just in time, she felt the blankness come over her.

Her arrival in the jacaranda tree was much more graceful than it had been on the beach. Though Fern wasn’t sure how to control the smoothness of the arrivals and departures, she was overjoyed at the prospect of controlling when and where she disappeared. She climbed out of the jacaranda, her head still throbbing and her stomach still on fire. She ran around the house to the backyard. Byron was waiting for her; he nipped at her heels. Sam smiled but looked disappointed.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t take you along,” Fern said.

“That’s all right,” Sam said. “Was it still there? Did you see the hole?”

“It was gone,” Fern said.

The twins turned around as Mrs. McAllister opened the sliding door that led to the patio in the backyard. “What are you two doing out here so early?” the Commander questioned.

Mrs. McAllister had fallen asleep just after her shower, telling herself she would lie down for a few moments before going to talk to Fern. Her exhaustion soon took hold and she fell into a restless sleep, still in her slippers.

“We’re practicing,” Sam said. “I think we’ve got Fern’s disappearing under control!”

“Maybe not under control,” Fern said, not wanting to overstate the tenuous grasp she had on her teleporting skills, “but I went to my room and back and the beach and back.”

“Really?” Mrs. McAllister said, looking at her daughter.

Fern couldn’t put her finger on it, but her mother’s gaze made Fern uncomfortable. Her mother was looking at her as if she missed Fern, even though Fern was standing right in front of her. She wondered whether what Vlad had said about her mother was already coming true.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” Sam said, picking up on the strange look in his mother’s eyes. “We’re about to take off for school. We won’t be late.”

“You’re not going to school today,” the Commander said.

“Really?” Sam said, gleefully.

“Yes,” Mrs. McAllister said, looking away from her daughter.

“All right!” Sam said, excited by the prospect.

“Why aren’t we?” Fern asked, defensively.

“You
want
to go to school?” Mrs. McAllister replied.

“Well, I don’t want to
not
go to school,” Fern said.

“I don’t understand,” Mrs. McAllister said.

“Are we not going to school because I embarrass you?” Fern asked. Fern, who rarely confronted anyone about anything, had taken her mother completely off guard.

“That’s ridiculous, Fern.” The Commander was not prepared for this scenario. She knew she had four hours until Alistair Kimble arrived and had planned on waiting to tell Fern until it felt like the right time. She had to adjust, and quickly.

“There’s something I need to talk to you both about. Please come sit down in the living room.”

Mrs. McAllister marched back into the house, leaving the sliding glass door open so her children could follow. Fern thought the atmosphere very similar to one of the many family meetings that her mother had called. But the haphazard nature of this one was disconcerting.

Sam and Fern sat down and their mother began.

“I had a talk with Alistair Kimble last night,” Mrs. McAllister said. She wasn’t looking at either of them. “I’m not trying to alarm either of you, but Alistair thinks the man who visited you, Fern, is very dangerous and may come back to hurt you.”

“Why wouldn’t he have just hurt Fern right then?” Sam questioned.

“Mr. Kimble didn’t know the answer to that question.”

But Fern did. Vlad didn’t want to hurt Fern; he wanted her to join his ranks. Her stomach lurched inside her.

“Mr. Kimble wants to make sure you’re protected, Fern, until they can figure out what Vlad wants with you.” Mrs. McAllister looked at Fern, trying to detect any fear that Fern might be feeling. Fern flinched.

“Protection?” Fern asked. “That’s why I can’t go back to school?”

“Is Fern going to get a bodyguard?” Sam asked.

“I talked it over with Mr. Kimble, and we both think that you need to be taken somewhere that is absolutely safe—somewhere Vlad can’t get to you.” The Commander’s resolve was tested when she looked into her daughter’s eyes. She was doing this, she repeated silently, to save her daughter.

“Unfortunately, Normals aren’t allowed where you’re going. It’s just for the week, to make sure that we know what Vlad is up to before we let you go back to school and continue on as usual.”

“You’re sending me away?” Fern said. Why were they so worried about Vlad when he hadn’t hurt her the first time? Were they worried that she would follow him?

“You mustn’t look at it like that. I want you to be safe, above all. This isn’t going to be easy for me either, worrying about you all the time while you’re away.”

“Where am I going?”

“He wouldn’t say, but you’ll have a cell phone with you and you can call me or I can call you any time. Mr. Kimble assured me of that.”

“I don’t want to go,” Fern said, crossing her arms. “That’s the last thing in the world I want to do!”

“Well, I’m not giving you the choice,” the Commander said, angered that she was being challenged on a decision that was difficult in the first place. “You’re not safe here with this madman on the loose.”

“What if it’s Mr. Kimble that’s the madman?” Sam interjected.

“I’ve known Alistair Kimble for over thirty years. He’s the one who brought Fern here in the first place.” The Commander’s voice hardened. She thought she might break down. “He’ll be here to pick you up at noon.”

Fern thought about trying to make herself disappear, right then and there. Instead, she chose the more traditional adolescent response: She got up from the couch, marched up the stairs to her room, and slammed the door, pouting.

Mrs. McAllister frowned as Fern climbed up the stairs.

“You really think she needs to go to that place?” Sam said, trying to reason with his mother.

“Yes, Sam, I really do. Fern’s nothing like us. We’re out of our league here. If we want to keep her safe, we’re going to have to work with her kind, at least for the time being.”

Fern grimaced as she heard her mother’s words through the door.
Fern’s nothing like us.
She wished she hadn’t been able to hear them. Grabbing a pillow, she put it around her ears. Maybe she didn’t belong here. Maybe things would be like this from now on. One unhappy thought followed another, and miserable tears tumbled down her face. Byron sat next to her on the bed. He began licking her face. Fern smiled weakly at him through her tears. Byron, it seemed, was the only one that hadn’t started acting differently because of her powers.

Fern, no longer worried that
Lord of the Flies
was cursed, set upon taking her mind off her upcoming exile. She had almost finished the book last night in the shower. Things had taken a terrible turn for the boys on the island—all of them had taken on the qualities of savages, and some of them had died.
And in the middle of them
, Fern read,
with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.

Fern read the last few lines and shut the book. She shuddered, filled with unease. Even Ralph, the supposed hero of the book, had fallen prey to savagery. Though she tried to put the story from her mind, she couldn’t help but think about whether there was something similar inside her—a darkness that she couldn’t contain. The heart of a Blout. Maybe her tears were for the very same reason.

Soon Sam came into her room and stayed with her and Byron, but Fern grew more sullen as the day wore on. He tried, in vain, to convince her that this was all for the best. It wasn’t long until noon arrived. None of the McAllisters figured the lawyer would be late. He wasn’t. Just as the grandfather clock in the living room struck twelve, the doorbell rang. Alistair Kimble was at the door in a navy mock turtleneck and dark khaki slacks. His thick calico beard looked alive and his blue sports coat was without a single crease.