Page 62 of Come Find Me
I sneak in through the side door behind the kitchen without my parents noticing. But I hear them talking to Agent Lowell in the dining room. Snippets of conversation filter up the stairs.Nolan’s computer. Library. Evidence. Official statement.
It’s wrong. It’s all gone so wrong. I can’t explain any of it. I am sure of nothing. None of the things happening in my house, surrounding my brother’s case, make sense.
But this is what I am sure of: My brother’s image appeared to me in the living room at the same time Kennedy was making that call for help. Her words reached me. I don’t know how, I don’t know why. That connection is the proof; yet there’s also nothing I can hold in my hands and show someone. Just this feeling, and December fourth. Everything circling around it.
I don’t know where to go from here. How to prove all the things I believe.
There’s only one lead remaining, and we have to follow it.
My room feels empty without my computer, and I keep looking for my phone, thinking I’ve misplaced it, before I remember that it’s gone. I pack a bag, stuffing it full of clothes, a toothbrush, the essentials. I sneak out the side door and drive off before they notice I’m home and take my keys. Before they bring me in for some sort of official questioning.
At least without a phone there will be no way to trace my path. I can disappear for a bit. I’m used to no one noticing the things I do, but now their focus is turning on me. Now they’re looking closely. They’re wondering what they’ve missed, these last two years, when they were looking for Liam instead.
—
It’s the kind of dark where even the animals have gone silent. The moon is covered by clouds, and the streetlights have gone dim in the haze. I worry, at first, that nobody’s home, but then I recognize Joe’s car in the driveway.
I’m not sure which window is Kennedy’s, but there aren’t too many options. There’s a light on in one of the rooms, and I’m going to have to take the risk that this one is hers. The blinds are pulled shut, but they’re vaguely familiar, like I’ve seen them on a video call, from the other direction.
Still, I tap gently before ducking below the glass, so I can pretend it was the wind, or some giant bug, if Joe looks out through the blinds instead.
But it’s Kennedy’s eyes peering out from between the slats, shifting side to side. I stand from my hiding spot, raise a hand sheepishly, hoping she’ll smile.
She frowns, raising the blinds. She pushes the window open so I can feel a gust of the air conditioning from inside, but the screen still separates us.
“Nolan?” she asks, even though of course it’s me.
“Hey, hi,” I say quietly. Then I’m at a loss. I don’t know what I expected, what I wanted. “I just wanted to tell you, I’m going to North Carolina.”
Her face scrunches up. “What?”
“North Carolina. The photo on the wall, of the missing kid. Hunter Long.”
She shakes her head sadly. “What’s the point?”
“Excuse me?” I say. The point is answers. The point is there was a signal, sent to both of us. The point is my brother, whispering across some impenetrable divide. And Kennedy’s voice, filling up the classroom.
She lets out a long sigh, resting her chin in her hand. Her gaze shifts behind me, but I can’t figure out what she’s looking for in the darkness. “Have you heard of the Fermi paradox?” she asks. I haven’t, but she must know that, because she continues. “In the history of the universe, there’s been more than enough time for life to develop somewhere else, and to advance. But there’s no evidence that any exists.” She frowns. “A scientist postulated years ago that the reason nothing has made contact with us in four billion years, the reason that there is no evidence that anything has colonized the universe,ever,infourteen billion years,is simple, really.” She waits for that to sink in. “It’s because nothing else exists, has ever existed, or will ever exist. We’re a fluke, and we’re alone.”
“No,” I say, “my brother.”
But she continues as if she hasn’t heard me. “We’re in an echo chamber, Nolan.” I remember, then, her own voice echoing back. “A vast expanse of nothing, nothing, nothing. There’s no one out there. This is it. Even my call for help. It just…bounced back.”
But that’s not true, because itreached me.
Kennedy has changed somehow, like something’s been taken from her today. Some belief. I don’t know how to give it back to her, except with the truth. I need her to see.
“December fourth, my brother appeared.”
She brushes the comment aside. “I know, you told me.”
“And I couldn’t make out what he was saying,” I continue, my voice growing more animated. “Just the end. He said:Help us. Please.”
Her gaze shifts from the empty night, back to me. She blinks slowly. “What?”
“It sounds crazy, right? I had a dream, and he came to me, and he spoke in the corner of the room.Help us. Please.Just like you said at the end of the transmission. I think the signal was reaching out to me, even then.” Not just the signal. “I think it was you.”
She shakes her head. “That’s not possible.”
