Translucent

Chapter 1

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

—
Friedrich Nietzsche

Invisible.

The whole universe was invisible.

That was what I realized, looking up at the starry sky. They say there’s a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way, and a hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. Right now, I was probably seeing a few thousand points of light, give or take. That was all you ever saw when you looked up at the universe. A measly dusting of a few thousand stars.

Out of the billions and billions and billions of stars out there.

An infinitesimal sliver of all that existed.

The rest was invisible.

The thought made me shiver, and I pulled my sleeping bag up to my chin, staring with new horror at the night sky. Next to me, my best friend Megan jerked in her sleeping bag, and the polyester made a loud swish.

“Leona,” she whispered, her voice urgent. “Leona, you awake?”

“Yeah, I’m still awake,” I said. “You asked me that five minutes ago.”

“I see a UFO.”

“No, you don’t,” I said.

“Then how do you explain
that?
” She thrust her index finger straight up, which I followed to a blinking red dot.

“Are you serious?” I said. “That’s a jet.”

“Like a military jet?”

“No, just a normal jet. Like the one you get on to fly to the East Coast.”

“Oh yeah? How come it’s so faint?” she challenged

“Because it’s higher.”

At that, we lapsed into silence. Now wide awake, I continued to stare at the sky. We’d pitched camp just off the hiking trail in a clearing between the oak trees.

“You just think you’re so smart, don’t do?” she said.

“Yep.”

“Well, you’re not.”

“Thanks, Megan. Love your vote of confidence.”

“Okay, I’m not kidding this time,” she said. “I swear I just saw a star move.”

I sighed. “Humans have been watching the sky for five hundred million years and we’ve
never
seen anything move, and you think we’re going to be the ones who finally see something? Tonight? On this random night? Seriously, this night literally could not be any more random.”

“Humans haven’t even existed for five hundred million years,” she said.

“Whatever. You know what I mean.”

Silence.

Something skittered off to my right, and my gaze slid down to the pitch black wall of gnarled chaparral. My eyes twitched across the darkness, now hyper alert. A twig snapped, and my pulse jerked before settling back to normal.

Just a stupid little bird or squirrel.

Or
insects
.

I shuddered and scooted sideways in my sleeping bag, back to the center of the tarp.

“You’re in my personal space right now,” said Megan.

“Get over it,” I said. “No one cares about your personal space.”

“You’re a real delight, tonight, Leona—okay, there’s a star up there, I swear it just moved past another one.”

“Where?”

“Well . . . now it’s gone,” she said. “But it was right there.”

“Mmm-hmm,” I muttered.

“No, there it is again,” she said, pointing. “Yeah, right there. Explain that, genius.”

It took me a moment to spot the anomaly.

A tiny white dot moved against the backdrop of stars, growing brighter before fading to darkness, then growing brighter again with perfect regularity. Ah.

“You really want to know what that is?” I said. “It’s a satellite. It’s spinning, and as it spins, light gets reflected off its solar panels, and that’s what we’re seeing.”

“Yeah, like I’m going to believe that,” she scoffed.

I said nothing, falling deeper into a bristling agitation. It had been like this all summer, us snapping at each other. I guess you couldn’t blame us, though.

After what happened.

Our parents had only barely agreed to let us go on this “extremely dangerous” camping trip in the San Rafael Wilderness, probably in hopes it would mend our friendship.

But there was nothing to mend.

It wasn’t our friendship that was broken.

We’d begged and begged—
one last summer camping trip before junior year, please!
—and focused on a number of selling points. From the road, it was only a five mile hike into the wilderness, and we would have cell phone service the whole time. My dad could even track us using GPS if he wanted. And, of course, we were both
sixteen
.

In two years, we’d be in college and we’d be able to do this all we wanted and they’d never find out . . .
so there.

Two years. Somehow, I couldn’t fathom getting through the next two years. The future just seemed to drop off into a precipice. Finally, when I could bear the silence no longer, I voiced what had to be on both our minds.

“So are we going to talk about it?”

I felt Megan go tense next to me. “Talk about what?”

“Don’t play dumb,” I snapped. “You know what.”

She rolled onto her side and stared at me. “Can we not bring that up right now? In fact, can we not bring it up anymore . . .
ever?
”

“We can’t keep ignoring it,” I said.

“Why not?” she whispered. “We’ve been ignoring it all summer and we’re perfectly fine.”

“But we’re not. We’re not fine. Look at us, Megan.”

“Why are you bringing this up right now?” she said. “I was actually enjoying myself until you brought that up. Why do you do that?”

I chewed my lip. “Because school’s starting the day after tomorrow. That’s why.”

“So what?”

“So far, it’s only been us,” I said. “Because it’s summer. That’s how we’ve been coping. Just the two of us. But around other people . . . I don’t know, things could be different.”

Megan swiveled and stared up at the sky again. “Maybe it’ll be easier. Maybe school will distract us.”

“Megan, we need to talk about this.”

“Leona . . .”

“You know, get it off our chests.”

“
Leona
 . . .”

“I mean, talking can be therapeutic, you know?”

“Leona!
Look!
” Megan pointed at the sky, at a particularly bright star.

As I watched, the star grew brighter. “Huh, looks like some kind of flare . . .”

For a split-second, it blazed like the sun, blinded me. I shielded my eyes, and a white glare scorched our campsite.

A shooting star!

Now a white-hot orb, it streaked out of the sky, whipping shadows across the campsite. The horizon flashed—black oak trees silhouetted against molten white—and a deafening crack split the air like a whip, followed by a deep rumbling. Hot air blasted out of the woods, carrying the smell of ash and ozone.

Then silence.

The glow on the horizon shrank to nothing, leaving a dark contrail of smoke floating in the sky.

Megan and I shared a stunned glance.

“That could have hit us,” she said.

“I counted half a second,” I said, “How does it work? Like for lightning, between the flash and the sound, it’s five seconds per mile, right?”

“Or is it five miles per second?” said Megan.

“Oh come on,” I sneered. “There’s no way it’s five miles per second. That would be here to LA in twenty seconds.”

“Then it’s probably what you said the first time and you didn’t actually need to ask me,” she conceded bitterly.

“So half a second,” I said. “Right? What is that, a tenth of a mile? Five hundred feet or something?”

Her eyes widened. “That
was
close.”

I felt crazy daring all of a sudden, and the corner of my mouth nudged upward. I glanced between her and the dim glow coming through the trees. “You want to?”

She shook her head. “Uh-uh. No. No way.”

“Come on,” I climbed out of my sleeping back and slipped into the woods, leaving her no choice but to follow. “Let’s go see where it hit.”

We followed the
smell of burning.

By three in the morning the moon had already set, and the surrounding wilderness took on a deep, impenetrable blackness. Only the tops of oak trees bore a silver coating of starlight.

I panned my cell phone flashlight over a nest of wriggling pythons and flinched back.

No, just roots from a felled oak.

Up ahead, the beam vanished into a tense knot of chaparral, dry branches dense with barbs.

“It’s through here,” I whispered, ducking under a stalk. Oak leaves crunched underfoot.

Holding the back of my T-shirt, Megan followed. “I don’t know if this is such a good idea, Leona,” she breathed. “This place is freaking me out.”

“Come on, how often does a meteorite land right next to you?” I said. “We can’t not check this out.”

“Shh,” said Megan, yanking my T-shirt to halt me. “Listen.”

A breeze stirred. Here in the coastal mountain range above Santa Barbara, the summer air had a pleasant warmth to it. We both wore jeans and T-shirts.

I didn’t hear anything.

“What?” I whispered back.

“I don’t know, I thought I heard something. Like footsteps.”

“Why are we whispering?” I said loudly. “There’s no one else here.” My voice echoed into the woods, and the chitter of insects fell silent.

“Great,” said Megan. “Now every rapist in the area knows we’re here.”

“Oh, shut up,” I said, pressing on. The truth was, I felt it too. Fear tingled the air like electricity, but that feeling—the heightened alertness from spikes of adrenaline—was way better than what was there before. I needed this distraction.

The hint of ash in the air grew stronger, along with the heat. An orange glow came from up ahead, where the meteorite had hit.

The meteorite.

I’d never seen one hit before, let alone hit this close.

This was crazy.

“Not going to lie, I’m about to pee my pants,” said Megan. “Yep, there it goes, I think a little just dribbled down my leg.”

“You’re gross.”

“Are there mountain lions up here?”

“You know, they really like the taste of urine.”

The hand on my shirt went slack, and Megan’s footsteps faltered.

I looked back.

“Something’s not right,” she said, gaze hollow. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know, it just . . .” She peered around. “It feels like there’s something else here.”

A shiver went down my spine.

I swept my cell phone around the trees, the white bark gleaming. Shadows receded away into the night.

Nothing.

“Come on, we’re almost there.” I swallowed my worry and dragged her toward the glow.

The air grew warmer closer to the impact site, and at last, I pushed through a branch and came upon the crater.

It looked like someone had planted a stick of dynamite in the ground.

A pit the size of a car steamed and sizzled, emanating heat like an oven. My eyes watered. At the edge of the blast radius, flames crackled in bushes and licked up the branches of dry chaparral. The bark had been burned right off the surrounding trees, and a blackened hole punched right through the canopy to a patch of starry sky.

Where it had come from.

I approached the edge and shined the light down into the crater, squinting against the heat, which pulled out prickles of sweat from my cheeks.

I blinked.

A swirling haze of smoke and ash and dust swept through the beam, but not before I glimpsed something down at the bottom.

I peeled away, eyes stinging. “I think there’s something down there.”

“Why don’t you
go down and get it?” said Megan.

“I think I just might.” I lifted my shirt over my mouth to filter the ash and lowered one leg down into the crater.

“Leona, I’m kidding,” she said.

“I’m not.”

“Do you
want
to die?”

“Kind of,” I said, scooting my torso to the edge. Hot dirt slipped under my shirt, singing my stomach. I wasn’t entirely joking.

“Now you’re freaking me out,” she said.

I ignored her and lowered my body into what felt like a vent straight to the earth’s molten core. A hostile, alien world. Inside the crater, the blasted dirt was too hot to touch, so I slid down on my butt, using by tennis shoes to brake. Heat leeched into my backside, which quickly began to tingle. Sweat beaded on my forehead.

At last, the smoky haze cleared, and the meteorite came into view at the bottom, glowing red hot. When meteorites entered the atmosphere, the friction from air resistance heated them up until they glowed. Most of them boiled away before they ever hit the surface. 

Luckily, not this one.

This one had been large enough to make it all the way to the ground.

It looked like any other rock.

Half buried in the dirt, it had crumbled to pieces, each fragment sizzling and smoking. I kicked it, and a chunk tumbled free—the heat had made the rock brittle.

My eyes stung. I couldn’t stay down here much longer.

I pulled my heel away, and a strand of gooey rubber came off the soles.

Okay
 . . .
that’s really hot
.

But the marble-sized chunk I’d kicked loose had already cooled to a reddish-bronze.

Might as well grab it.

I stretched my shirt toward the fragment and, using the material to insulate my fingers, tried to pick it up. The cotton smoked. Instant, searing pain shot up my fingers.

I shrieked and yanked back, flinging the fragment out of the crater.

“Ow,” said Megan, from the rim.

“Sorry. Hot, hot, hot, . . .” Choking on the heat, I scrambled back out of the crater and sprawled on the ground, panting. My skin throbbed from the heat, numb and tingly. Like a bad sunburn.

Megan picked up the meteor fragment, which had hit her and was now barely cool enough to handle.

“It’s just a rock,” she said, turning it over.

“It’s not
just
a rock,” I said, snatching it from her. “It’s a rock that’s journeyed across trillions and trillions of light years of empty space to get here.”

“You know, Leona, I think your numbers are off.”

“Well,
I
think it’s beautiful,” I said, rolling it around in my palm.

Actually, it was pretty ugly.

A low thumping sound drifted through the woods, coming from the hills. I glanced up and caught Megan’s gaze.

She heard it too.

The thumping grew into a rhythmic pounding, which drummed against my chest. My eyes went to the patches of sky visible through the oak branches.

Helicopters.

Megan tugged my sleeve. “Uh . . . time to go, Leona.”

Around us, the tiny fires had spread into the chaparral. The bone-dry branches crackled and burst into flame.