Chapter Text
The black SUV pulls up next to Ryland on a sunny evening in late October. His shoelaces are untied; the right one is snapped, and it doesn’t make sense for him to only tie one. So they’re both untied, and his water bottle is empty, and the tear tracks are still drying on his face.
“Hey kid.”
Ryland stops. He looks at his shoes, at the laces trailing across the cracked pavement. He’s a fast runner, but he can’t outrun a car.
“FBI. Can I take a look in your bag?”
In Ryland’s backpack are these: two notebooks, a biology textbook, an empty water bottle, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a sock full of empty shells, a torn and bloody shirt, a spy glass, and a small stuffed fox. In Ryland’s backpack there is a suspension notice and a detention slip, and a small cylindrical container that two weeks ago he found in a crater by the sea.
One of the doors begins to open. Ryland spins on his heel and runs.
He runs back the way he came, so the car can’t immediately follow. Then he darts to the left, he crashes through the hedge of a pristine looking white house, he tears through their lawn and over the picket fence at the back of the property, and into the neighboring yard.
Startled shouts follow him, and a string of curses.
He stumbles out into the next street over. He runs, shoes slapping the pavement, breath catching in his chest, because they can’t have it. It’s his, he found it, and they can’t take it away, they can’t—
Ryland has always been a fast runner. He goes left and then right, and then through another lawn, and down Johnson Street and he nearly tumbles headfirst into a swimming pool. But he stops, he catches a breath and then skirts around it, careful not to tread on the flowers at the property’s edge.
He doesn’t know if the people in the suits are still following him, or if they gave up after he cut through the first lawn. He doesn’t take any chances. He slips his bag off his shoulders. He throws himself down on his stomach next to the curb, careless of the warm, oil-slick water soaking into his shirt and shorts. He worms his way up to the storm drain until he’s parallel to it and then shoves his bag through. Then it’s feet first, catch himself on the edge and adjust his head so he doesn’t get stuck and break his neck, and he drops.
He lands clumsily, splashing down to his knees in the sudden darkness. Once his eyes adjust he stands, legs shaking, arms trembling, heart racing. He knows, approximately, where he is. But he doesn’t know if it’s safe to go home (it never is, but that’s not the issue right now, the issue is the black SUV and the people in the suits) so he shoulders his backpack and walks for ten minutes, heading in the vague direction of home.
And then he stops. He sinks to the muddy, polluted floor of the storm drain, and draws his knees to his chest, and closes his eyes. He doesn’t move for a very long time.
“Colt.”
Colt looks up. “Yeah?”
“Where’s Dad?”
Colt shrugs, shoulders going up around his ears. “Don’t know.”
Court shifts. The way he’s standing Colt can’t see his face. The way he’s standing, he’s blocking Colt’s light, and Colt moves Ryland’s workbook just a little to the left.
“Where’s Ryland?”
“Detention. It wasn’t his fault.” Colt reaches up to itch his nose, rubbing his eyes while he’s at it. He almost wishes Dad were here, because then he could get this over with. Because just last week Dad punched Ryland so hard he threw up all over the floor, and then Dad punched him again, and Colt couldn’t do anything. Because Dad never could tell them apart, and Ryland is always the one getting in the way, but this time Colt has a plan.
“At seven?” Court asks, his voice going funny.
Colt looks at the clock. The soft, absent feeling he’s been sitting in since he got back from school parts somewhat, enough for him to register the time. It’s 7:10. Ryland should have been done by four, which means he should be back by now, which means—
“Oh,” Court whispers. Just that. Just one word, an exhale that’s more of a wheeze than anything. He doesn’t say anything else to Colt. He stumbles back a step and runs, first to the kitchen (Colt hears a drawer open, and a drawer slam, and he knows exactly which drawer it is) and then out the door. Colt sits frozen, horrified, too scared to breathe until the door slams shut and he flinches.
Two days ago Ryland locked himself in the cupboard, and Dad nearly smashed the door in trying to get to him. Two days ago Ryland screamed in Dad’s face and Dad screamed right back, I’m gonna kill you you son of a bitch, you coward, I’m going to fucking KILL YOU—
Ryland needs glasses.
Court’s mind is jarringly blank. There’s only room for one thing and somehow, absurdly, it’s this: his stupid kid brother needs a pair of stupid glasses.
He has needed them for about a year. First came the headaches. Colt declared, standing over a miserable Ryland, that they were from a concussion. Then Ryland, white-faced, started coming home with teacher’s notes, official slips of paper that he showed Court on the walk home from school. Distracted, irritable, unfocused, lazy.
“I’m not,” Ryland begged, “I’m smart too,” and Court asked, “How many fingers am I holding up?” and Ryland said, squinting, “Six?”
How is a kid supposed to learn if they can’t tell six fingers from eight?
The solution, Court’s mind supplies, is a pair of glasses. The solution is not another black eye. The solution is not repeating times tables to the wall until midnight. The solution is not—
Ryland needs a pair of glasses.
Court runs the two miles to the school. He checks every car, every license plate, but he doesn’t find the one he’s looking for. The school is locked. They wouldn’t be here anyways, because Dad isn’t dumb, and it’s 7:30 and detention always gets out at 4:00.
Court doesn’t know where else to go. It’s getting hard to breathe.
And then he sees it. Out of the corner of his eye, driving down School Street, a red pick-up. It’s going slowly. It drifts to the right, hits the curb, and then swerves back into the lane. It drifts to the right, hits the curb, and then swerves again, still going slow.
The facts are these: Ryland is missing, and Court doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive or kidnapped or hiding. Dad is drunk. Colt is at home, doing his brother’s homework so Ryland doesn’t get in trouble again. Dad is drunk, and headed home, and right now, right here, Court is certain only of one thing.
Ryland is gone.
Colt is not.
It tears Court in half. It threatens to kill something within him, but what choice does he have? He turns around, and starts running back the way he came.
The splash of something big tells Ryland it’s time to go.
He pushes himself up and starts walking. The first drain is too high for him to reach, but the second, after he squeezes through a particularly narrow part of the drainage system, is just above his head. He pushes his backpack out first, half convinced there’s a suit waiting to snatch it from him. When no grabbing hands immediately appear, he hoists himself up, squirming and shuffling and pulling until he is lying panting on the pavement, wet and dirty and scraped.
He’s not in a crocodile’s stomach, though. He’s not in some stranger’s black van. So, despite the bruises, another ruined shirt, and the awful smell, this is a win.
Dusk has fallen in the time Ryland has been underground. The sky is bleeding to purple black, and there’s a stillness to the air, a heaviness, that belays an oncoming storm. The palms are still, their great leaves hanging low as if under a great weight.
Dad’s truck is in the driveway when Ryland finally reaches the house. It’s parked crookedly, the front left tire on the lawn, and there’s a new scratch in the side, a line that goes all the way from the driver’s side door nearly to the tailgate.
Ryland stops. He has the funny sensation of feeling cold, and then hot, and then cold again. He sucks in a breath through his teeth. Somewhere in the distance a siren wails. Another picks up the call from even further away. The house is quiet. Ryland can be quiet too. With feet that are feather light, with breath that is slow and even, Ryland creeps to the door, quietly opens it, and slips inside.
As soon as he is in he realizes something is wrong. He should have known the moment he saw the truck. He should have known the moment he clocked the quiet for what it truly was: silence.
He sees the shoes first. Dad’s shoes, sticking out from behind the kitchen island. Through the thundering of his heart in his ears, past the rushing of his own blood, Ryland notes: no snoring. And Dad always snores when he’s passed out drunk.
Down the hall, the shower is running.
“Dad?” Ryland whispers. He doesn’t mean to. He means it to be a real question, so he clears his throat and tries again, louder, “Dad?”
No answer.
With three steps to his left, Ryland knows why. With three steps to his left the stench hits him: the alcohol, the gunsmoke, the blood.
There’s so much blood. On the counter, on the drawers, in a spreading pool on the floor.
Ryland screams.
Down the hall, a door bangs open. Running footsteps, and just as Ryland is drawing another breath, Court is there. He has a phone in one hand, a gun in the other. He drops both in favor of grabbing Ryland, hands coming down hard on his shoulders and fingers curling around the straps of his backpack.
“Ryland, jesus—”
“He’s dead, he’s dead, it was them it was FBI they want me, they want Rocky—”
“—thought you were dead—!”
“Let me go! I need to—I need—”
“Shut up!”
Court shakes him once, hard enough that his head snaps back and forth, and Ryland shuts up.
“The ambulance is coming, and the police.” Court says. “Colt’s arm is broken, and he... it was me. It was me, Ryland, I’m the one who shot him!”
Ryland is still hyperventilating, just a little bit. But now that he’s not screaming, now that the words aren’t pouring from his mouth, they’re lining up in striking bold across the inner walls of his mind. If the police come, they’ll take Court away; that’s what happens when you kill someone. If the ambulance comes, they’ll take Colt away; that’s what happens when you break your arm. And then it will be Ryland alone, Ryland by himself, and the FBI will come and there will be no one to stop them from taking him—from taking his best friend—away.
“You can’t,” Ryland finally says, so much quieter than before.
“Come on, I need to get back to Colt—can’t what?”
“You—they’ll take him away!”
A siren wails, much nearer than before. Court stops, his eyes flicking to the gun, to their father’s corpse. Something clears in his expression, something cracks, and Court’s breath hitches.
“Fuck.”
Ryland has started trembling, ever so slightly. Shock, Dad’s voice supplies, fight through it. (This is not the first time Ryland has been in shock.)
“Take what you can,” Court says, and pushes Ryland toward their bedroom. “Be at the truck in one minute.”
When Ryland chooses what to take, he chooses these: a box of bandaids, a brace from the last time Colt broke his arm (back when Mom was around, and would take them to the hospital), five CDs, a jackknife, and a blanket. He shoves everything he can into Colt’s backpack and takes the rest in his arms, staggering a bit as he trips back out into the hall.
He runs into Court again in the living room. Colt is in his arms, eyes closed, face white. One of Court’s hands, the one holding the keys to the truck, is covered in sticky red.
“Ready?” Court asks, and Ryland nods.
Mrs. Prechy is standing in her lawn when the three of them spill out of the house. Thunder rumbles nearby. They are all soaking wet, each for wildly different (though in Court and Colt’s case, related) reasons. The three of them stand there like heralds of the oncoming storm, as the first raindrops begin to hit the pavement.
“Everything alright?” Mrs. Prechy asks, voice slow and unhurried as it always is.
Ryland gapes (Ryland likes Mrs. Prechy; she always comes around with cookies, at the worst time possible). Court gapes, and then pulls himself together and says, slightly hoarse, “Yes, Ma’am.”
Mrs. Prechy gives the three of them a once-over and then says, in that same, slow way, “You boys take care.”
She turns, and walks back into her house.
“In,” Court says sharply, and Ryland jumps. He complies, scrambling into the passenger seat, and then reaches out to take Colt into his arms, tangling clumsily around him. Colt whimpers, and Ryland nearly vomits when his hand comes in contact with the top of Colt’s head, bloody and still bleeding. He feels light-headed.
The driver’s door slams and the engine ignites, and before Ryland can figure out how to buckle the seat belt around both him and his brother, Court peels out of the yard.
He goes three houses down, stops, and backs into the neighbor’s driveway. He lets the truck idle, and turns to Ryland.
“What did you mean, the FBI?”
Colt’s hand, his good one, is wrapped crushingly around Ryland’s own. His eyes are open now, though slightly unfocused. Ryland can feel every breath he takes.
“They were waiting when I got out of school,” Ryland whispers. He wants to scream, he wants to yell, where were you why aren’t we driving what are we doing what happened what happened what happened?! but he can put the pieces together well enough on his own. Maybe. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to.
“A black SUV,” Ryland continues. He looks around, suddenly paranoid, and—oh. “Like that one,” he says rather faintly, pointing. Court’s head whips around, and he clocks the black van with the black windows, and just as Ryland is beginning to move he reaches out, helping to push and maneuver Ryland until both he and Colt are nestled in the footwell.
“And they want that... thing?” Court demands.
“I don’t know!” Ryland cries, “Yes, I think so. They’re... they’re going to take it—take me—away!”
This is the only thing he is sure of. This is the only thing he is sure can’t happen.
Court purses his lips. He’s pale, but remarkably composed. His fingers tap tap tap a rhythm on the steering wheel, his heel tap tap tapping on the gas, light enough so it doesn’t depress. Sirens wail, too close, and Ryland closes his eyes, sure that this is it. Why isn’t Court driving? The sirens pass, and as if bidden by Ryland’s thoughts, Court shifts the truck into drive.
“It’s real, isn’t it?” he says at last. “That thing you’re dreaming of. Your... alien.”
“Rocky.”
“Rocky.”
Ryland nods. He can feel the cylinder wedged in his backpack, stuck between his back and the floor. It’s not really a cylinder: it’s a five-sided, oblong shape that Ryland doesn’t have a word for. It opens on both ends to two compartments, separated by a thin wall. Each compartment holds several small objects, none of which represent anything Ryland has ever seen before.
Ever since he dug it out of the sand three weeks ago, Ryland has been dreaming of a crab-like, rock-shaped alien.
Another siren wails past. Court slowly accelerates out of the driveway, taking a left. He keeps driving slowly, as another siren passes. Ryland opens his eyes to see Court looking at the rearview, eyes flicking to the road and back. After a minute something in his expression changes, something loosens, and the ghost of a smile passes over his face.
“Prechy’s pointing them in the wrong direction,” he says.
They drive like this for fifteen minutes, slowly taking turn after turn, until they reach the freeway. In that time Colt comes back enough to start crying, and to lift his arm so Ryland can get the brace on. Ryland doesn’t know what kind of fracture it is, but there aren’t any bumps, and no bones are sticking out anywhere. He’s more worried about Colt’s head. He’s more worried about the way Colt responds to things, his voice hoarse and sluggish if he responds at all.
“He’ll be okay,” Court states.
“’Course I will,” Colt mutters, still breathing hard from the exertion of getting his arm in the brace.
“Where are we going?” Ryland asks.
“North,” Court says. It’s too dark to see anything inside the truck anymore. The light rain has turned into a downpour, and every few seconds lightning flashes, and thunder roars. Despite everything, Ryland is exhausted. Perhaps this is why, five minutes later, when Court says, “We’re going to find Mom,” Ryland convinces himself he imagined it.