We Are the Ants (23 page)

I sat alone and watched the stars and dreamed of Diego. I saw the world from the stars' point of view, and it looked unbearably lonely. It took so long for starlight to reach me in the sluggers' ship orbiting Earth that some of those stars were already dead. When their light set out, we were younger, not even born. Our parent's parents weren't born. Humanity was still waiting to crawl out of the ocean and evolve. It was beautiful to think that starlight persisted even after the star itself had died, until I realized that humanity would vanish from the planet, the planet would disappear from the cosmos, and no one would remember we existed. No one would care.

Jesse was
my
star. He was gone—buried and rotting and cold—but he lingered. He sat with me in the transparent bubble of the slugger ship as I dreamed of Diego and watched the clusters of stars, other galaxies filled with other people like me and not, staring back, touching their lips and wondering if anyone would remember them. Spoiler alert: they won't.

I blinked. I was in Diego's bedroom, waiting for him to return with sodas; I blinked, and I was on the slugger ship. No sluggers greeted me; none poked at me or prodded my body with their strange alien instruments. The holographic Earth and the button were missing as well. I think I would have pressed it. I screamed for those slug-headed bastards to send me back, but they didn't. When my voice was raw, I walked into the darkness and arrived in the star room, where I remained.

I wonder what preventing the destruction of Earth means to the sluggers. In all of the universe, are we unique? Is there something humans possess that makes us worth saving? Maybe out of all the billions of planets, music is unique to Earth. Or books. The sluggers have fallen in love with Kerouac and Keats and Woolf and Shakespeare, and hope I'll press the button to preserve our literature for other alien races to explore. Then again, maybe we really are the ants. If I don't press that button, the sluggers will simply collect a couple of breeding pairs and restart the human experiment on another planet.

It seems unfair that an entire civilization could vanish from the universe and leave no trace behind, while Jesse lingers on. It isn't fair that he burned out, but his light remains to remind me of everything we had and would never have again.

But that's the difference between people and stars. A star's light still shines even if there's no one to see it, but without someone to remember Jesse, his light will disappear.

Maybe I would have pressed the button when the sluggers abducted me from Diego's house if they'd given me the chance. Maybe it was better that they'd taken me before things with Diego went too far. Maybe we were better off just being friends.

It doesn't matter. Maybes won't save the world.

  •  •  •  

The one thing I never thought to hope for was to not be awakened by a sandy kick to the ribs from a homeless man with curled, yellow toenails because aliens from outer space had dumped me in the middle of nowhere mostly naked again. I'd prayed to God for money and for my parents not to get a divorce, I'd begged Santa for a new computer, I'd even offered the devil my soul in exchange for a passing grade on my
Beowulf
exam, but I'd never thought to hope for something useful. Not until after the fact, anyway.

“Kid, you okay?” I peeked through my crusty eyes as a fungal zoo of a toe prodded my arm, and a grizzled, bearded face framed by ashy predawn light leaned over me. He reeked of piss and seaweed.

My mouth felt like I'd gargled used urinal cakes, and my cracked lips stung.

“Kid?” The man dipped nearer. His foul breath jolted me awake as surely as if I'd been electrocuted by sluggers.

“Where am I?” I asked instinctively, though the familiar sand dunes and sea oats were a dead giveaway. A cool breeze blew off the water, misting me with salt. Though it could have been any beach on any part of the planet, I knew it wasn't. It smelled like home.

The old man cackled and coughed and hacked up a glob of phlegm that he spit into the sand too near my feet for comfort. “Must've been some party.”

“What time is it?” I asked. The sun was still little more than a vague promise in the eastern sky. “God, what day is it?”

“Bit young to be living so rough,” the bum said, and I wanted to laugh at the irony of being told off by a man who clearly hadn't showered since Clinton was president.

“Just . . . what day is it?”

“Monday. I think.” He scratched his beard and tapped at the sky, mumbling about dates, trying to recall where he'd been yesterday. “Definitely Monday. Maybe.”

That meant I'd been missing since Thursday, which wasn't possible. People only went missing for that long in sitcoms, which always ended happily, or horror movies, which rarely ended happily unless you were white and chaste and not gay.

I remembered kissing Diego—Diego who liked me and wanted to kiss me and didn't care who knew—and he'd gone to get us drinks. Then the sluggers abducted me. Which meant that when Diego had returned to his bedroom, I'd disappeared without saying good-bye. He must have thought I'd freaked out and run away. I instinctively reached for my phone, but the aliens had stripped me of everything but my festive turkey boxers. Gobble, gobble.

“I have to go.” When I tried to stand, I stumbled, but the old man caught me. His fingers were rough and grimy, and left streaks of filth on my arm that I fought the urge to wipe off. “Thanks,” I muttered, and pointed myself toward the road, ignoring his offer of help.

  •  •  •  

Charlie's legs stuck out from under the Wrangler when I trudged home twenty minutes later, and country music filled the morning silence. It wasn't loud, but I was still surprised Mr. Nabu hadn't called the cops to complain. He complained about everything, including the fact that we still had our Christmas lights up in July. By that time, Charlie refused to take them down because it was already closer to next Christmas than it was from last.

I exaggerated my stride, letting my feet smack the driveway so I didn't startle Charlie. When I got within two feet of the Jeep, he froze and said, “Zooey?”

My throat felt like a lemon was lodged behind my Adam's apple, and I tried to work up a mouthful of saliva to swallow so I could answer. “Nah, I'm much prettier.”

Charlie scrambled out from under the Jeep. His face was smeared with grease, and he was wearing his
WIZARDS DO IT WITH WANDS
T-shirt. In one motion, he embraced me and squeezed out my breath, wordless but shaking. He'd pinned my arms to my sides so I couldn't even hug him back, not that it seemed to matter.

“Where the fuck have you been?” He held me at arm's length, examining me.

“Nowhere.”

“We called the fucking police, bro.”

“When?”

“Saturday.” Charlie knuckled his temple. “Some guy came by looking for you Friday. Said you were at his house on Thanksgiving.”

“Diego?”

Charlie grabbed a rag from his back pocket and tried to clean his hands, but they were so filthy, all he did was smear the dirt around. “Maybe. Yeah, I think so. He was worried about you.”

Diego had come to look for me. I
was
an asshole. He'd probably spent the weekend searching Calypso for me. I had to let him know I was okay. “Do you have your phone?”

Charlie swore. “I gotta let Mom know you're home.” Even though Mrs. Melcher was standing in her front yard with her fluffy dog, Barron, and I was in my boxers, shivering, I waited while Charlie called her. “Yeah, Mom? He's home. I don't know. I don't know. Okay, hold on.” He shoved the phone at me.

I shook my head and backed away. I couldn't deal with Mom until I'd had coffee and a shower; I needed time to figure out what to tell her. She couldn't handle the truth, but I didn't know what lie I could conjure up that would satisfy her rage. No matter what I said, I was in for it when she got ahold of me.

Charlie curled his lip like he wanted to punch me. “Yeah, Mom . . . he's going to take a shower. He's fine. Okay . . . okay . . . I'll tell him.” Charlie tossed the phone into the Jeep. “Mom wants you home right after school.”

“Thanks, Charlie.”

“Don't thank me.” Charlie frowned at me with disgust. Growing up, he'd called me a botched abortion, shit stain, fucktard, faggot, asshat, dipshit, and Henrietta. But in all our years together he'd never looked at me like he was ashamed to be my brother. “Where the fuck were you, Henry?”

“Nowhere.”

Charlie shoved me with so much force that I stumbled backward and fell onto the lawn. I threw my hands behind me as I fell, and landed on my ass. Dew soaked my boxers, grass stained my palms. I scrambled to my feet. “What the hell, Charlie?”

“You've been gone for days—days, Henry—and ‘nowhere' is all you can say? Mom thought you were beat up again, or worse!”

I had a pretty good idea what worse meant. When I found out that Jesse had hanged himself in his bedroom, I overheard my mom tell Nana that she couldn't imagine anything worse than finding her son's dead body, but I knew that wasn't true. Worse would be never finding me, never knowing what had happened, but I wouldn't have done that. Not to her, not to anyone.

“I'm sorry,” I muttered.

Charlie shook his head. He could barely look at me. “No shit.”

“What's wrong with the Jeep?” I asked, unsure what else to say.

“Nothing.”

“Then why aren't you in bed?”

Charlie sneered. “If you think any of us could sleep not knowing whether you were dead or alive, then you don't know dick about this family.”

  •  •  •  

I walked into Faraci's class, rubbing my head to try to ease the persistent pounding in my temples. Not even ten minutes brushing my teeth had been enough to scrub the sticky film from my mouth, and if I took any more aspirin, I'd probably start leaking blood from every orifice.

Relief flooded Audrey's face when she saw me, and she started babbling the moment I sat down. “Your mom came to my house, looking for you. Did you talk to her? Are you all right? I told her you were probably fine, but she said you hadn't come home in a couple of days and I hadn't heard from you and you weren't answering your phone. She was really worried.”

My eyeballs throbbed, and it hurt to smile, but I forced one for Audrey. “I'm good. She knows I'm okay.”

“Thank God.”

“Thanksgiving was kind of a mess at my house, and I lost my phone.” I hoped if I were vague, she'd drop it, but Audrey was tenacious.

“Diego called me, freaking out. He told me what happened, and he was scared he'd messed things up, but I thought maybe you'd . . . Jesus, Henry, I was worried sick.” She glanced around the room, but we were the only people in it other than Ms. Faraci, whose head was cocked to the side slightly. She appeared to be grading papers, but her pen hadn't moved since I'd walked into class.

My cheeks burned as I wondered how much Diego had told Audrey. “I'm not going to hurt myself, Audrey. Everything's just complicated.”

“You can't disappear like that.”

“It's not like the sluggers gave me a choice.”

Audrey fell silent while I stewed. I was tired of apologizing for things that were beyond my control. I didn't ask to be abducted. I didn't ask for Diego to kiss me. I didn't deserve any of it. I only wanted to lie low until the end of the world.

“Diego really likes you, Henry. I knew he liked you.”

“Aren't you smart?” A mob of students entered the classroom as the warning bell rang, and Marcus was among them. I tried to shush Audrey, but she wasn't listening.

“Have you talked to him yet? He went crazy when you disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” Marcus stood over my desk, flanked by Adrian and Jay. “Abducted again, Space Boy?” His red-rimmed eyes held no laughter. They were hollow. He was hollow.

I tried to ignore him, but Audrey snapped. “Thank God aliens never abducted you, Marcus. I'd hate for you to represent our entire fucking species.”

“Is there a problem?” Ms. Faraci asked from the front of the room.

“Did you hear what she said to me?”

Ms. Faraci glanced from me to Audrey to Marcus and offered a shrug. “I did not, Mr. McCoy. But if I hear you call anyone Space Boy again, you'll find yourself in Saturday detentions for the remainder of the year.”

  •  •  •  

It would have been best if I'd faced Diego at lunch and gotten it over with, but instead I hid in an empty classroom and watched him wait by my locker, pacing back and forth, checking his phone every few seconds. After ten minutes passed he punched the locker door and left.

Regardless of what he said, I doubt he believed my stories about the sluggers. Who would? Maybe it's for the best that they abducted me before things between us got serious. There's so much I don't know about Diego. Jesse used to say I was oblivious to the world around me. I thought he was referring to things like poverty and hunger and wars in countries I didn't know the names of, but now I think he was talking about himself. I didn't know what had been going on with my own boyfriend, and we'd spent nearly every waking second together for more than a year. I've only known Diego for a few weeks.

Despite my brother hating me and my mom waiting to yell at me and the whole end-of-the-world thing, all I could think about was Diego. It was ridiculous. I hated movies and books where people ignored bullets whizzing by their heads and zombies chasing after them so that they could make out, but I finally understood. Kissing Diego dominated my every thought. I tried to think about something else, but I always returned to him, and I wasn't sure what to make of that.

Instead of going straight home, I took a detour to the beach and sat on the rickety staircase to watch the tide go out. The ocean retreated, exposing the bones of the shoreline. It was one of those days that was neither rainy nor sunny. A layer of clouds muddied the sky, bleeding the surrounding color, leaving everything monochrome and drab. If this was how dogs saw the world, it was no wonder they humped anything they could mount. It was probably the only thing that kept them from committing doggy suicide.