Page 24 of Come Find Me
My bag is packed for my fake stay at Lydia’s, but I’m not quite ready to go yet.
Visitor357 hasn’t responded, probably because I sent some embarrassing message rambling about disappearing people, totally downplaying the fact that his brother is gone. So I send an addendum:
I meant to say, I’m sorry about your brother.
But also, I’m sorry, because I don’t think this is related to your brother.
I know you’re looking for him. But I think, I think, you’ve stumbled upon something else. We’re missing something. Because it’s not just your room. It’s also a radio telescope at my house. I hate to ask this. I know how this will sound. The Internet, I know, predators, creeps, etc, etc. But. Locations would help.
I’m on the 37th parallel, north.
Etc, etc.
I was back in my room, locked away, fake-studying, when my phone dinged with a new message. I didn’t know what to say to KJ’s last message (the feeling, he explained, like you’re on the edge of understanding something, even when something is gone, and the not knowing, where everything and anything is possible. Yes, yes. But you can’t just write backYes, yes,to some dude on the Internet who’s looking for aliens. You can’t write backSomething was taken from me, and I keep searching the emptiness, and I think I see something else, not just emptiness, somethingelse), and I figured that was the end of that. But now there’s this new one.
What. The. Hell.
The 37th parallel? As in, latitude and longitude lines? What am I even supposed to do with that?
I pull up a fresh Internet window and search for a latitude and longitude grid. I find a site with an interactive map of the world, crisscrossed with labeled lines. I zoom in, finding the 37 north mark, and trace it across the screen. It bisects the entire country. The entire world. And okay, it’s possible I’m on it, too. It cuts straight through Virginia. But it also cuts through California, Asia, Europe. I get that he’s trying to let us keep some anonymity, but I don’t think this is helping.
We’re missing something,he says.
Well, I’ll add it to the ever-growing list of things I’m missing right now. Whatever’s happening next door, and downstairs. The stack of textbooks on the side of my desk, my untouched math study guide beside the pile.
I stare at the study guide I haven’t yet started and probably won’t—circles, angles, degrees, equations. Answers that require calculations.
Wearemissing something. We keep focusing on the fact that this ishappening.But the why isn’t always important. Or: the why isn’t always understood. That’s how I’ve been approaching my search—not in the hard, scientific facts, but in the unpredictable.
So it’s not just that it’s happening; it’s the signal itself. We’ve been ignoring that part, but there’s definitely a pattern. I pull up the data from KJ’s readout, which is much more practical than my own, with raw data. And I start plugging numbers in.
Count the time,KJ said. That’s what’s the same. The timing. Not the type of signal, not our exact location, but this. The pattern: the spike, the hold.
I’m only seeing a video of his data, so I can’t get the numbers exact, but I can get a rough estimate. And it looks like the spike happens every three seconds.
I wonder now whether the pattern means something.
I look at the math study guide again. A bunch of questions asking me toCalculate the area, Calculate the circumference.The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and my spine straightens.
The geometry of a circle. Pi. It’s a universal ratio between the circumference and diameter of any circle: 3.14. The numbers go on and on from there, to infinity. Could it be?
I’m sure there’s something more to pi than what I know from Algebra 2, so I look it up online, more convinced than ever.
It’s an irrational number, unable to be expressed as a common fraction. Well, this is an irrational event.
It’s a transcendental number, whatever that means. But also: this is a transcendental event.
I dump everything into my bag, preparing to go. My hands are shaking as I hit Reply.
I wish I were better at math. I hope KJ is better. I’m sure he is, with a radio telescope pointed at the sky. I’m guessing astronomy requires a lot of math.
I’m hoping he’s open to suggestions on this, though, because there is no way this signal in my house is coming from outer space. It’s my brother’s room. KJ is wrong. It’s related, but he’s wrong.
My brother trying to tell me something. With the fever dream. With this.
I need to go back to the scene of his disappearance, where he must’ve slipped through. If this is a clue, this pattern, this pi, I wonder if Liam’s trying to tell me something about how he disappeared, or why. If he can’t breach the barrier with language, but with math.
I write quickly:
