Satellite: The Satellite Trilogy, Part I (15 page)

It’s dark when Hannah drops Ryder off at the emergency doors. I jump out of the side of the car and land on my feet. I’m getting better at maneuvering, especially through objects, though it still seems ridiculous. I jog beside Ryder into the hospital.

“I’m looking for Troy Beckmann,” he says to an old woman at the front desk.

A girl’s voice rings from down the hall. “Ryder!”

We both turn to Mya. She’s the spitting image of Willow, minus the dreadlocks and tattoos. How had I missed that before?

“Oh, Ryder!” She collapses to the floor and covers her mouth with her hand.

Ryder closes the distance. “What’s going on? Where’s Dad?”

“They tried.” Her whole body is shaking. “They tried to save him.”

“What?” He falls to his knees as if he’ll hear her better from down there.

“They did everything they could. They tried…” She trails off and sobs into his shoulder.

Hannah’s voice sounds far away. “Ryder?”

No one answers.

“Ryder, what’s going on?” Hannah asks again.

“He’s gone,” Mya whispers. “Dad is gone.”

Thinking about my own dad, I blink back stinging tears.

.

11. If I hear that one more time, I’m gonna hurl!

“No! Where is he?” Ryder bellows and sprints past the child-sized hand turkeys lining the hallway. “Where is he!” he yells again. His shoes squeak on the linoleum when he flies around the corner and runs into a supply cart.

Now more familiar with the process, I concentrate. “Haze!”

Calm down. Calm down. Calm down
.

It takes longer for Ryder to accept my persuading this time. The shock hits me, but my adrenaline burns away some of the pain.

“Block!”

Ryder, almost to the twin elevators, smacks his palms against the glossy-painted cinder-block wall. He turns and slides down it until he’s sitting.

“Ryder!” Mya shouts, running to him. She kneels at his side.

When Hannah kneels, too, I cringe. Seriously, do people not realize hospital floors are contaminated with more than just dirt?

While Mya and Ryder sob together, I wonder what the scene after my death was like. Did my parents or Tate break down like this? I hope they were able to keep themselves together. The thought of them crying over me—without being able to console them like I would when they broke down during my harsher bouts of cancer—is haunting. Tate would know better than to sit on the floor, at least. She saw me hurl in too many places.

Ryder stares through Mya. “What are we going to do?” he finally asks.

After a long time, Mya answers through her tears. “We’re going to survive. That’s what Beckmanns do.”

Mya helps Ryder up and we take the elevator to the second floor. The walk down the hall is a quiet one. Mya grabs and squeezes Ryder’s hand before they disappear into one of the rooms. I step around Hannah, who’s parked herself on the germ-laden floor, and enter cautiously with a plan: keep my eyes on Ryder. Ironically, I hate death and don’t particularly care to stare it in the face (I guess I should stop looking in mirrors). My plan of course fails, and—like a car wreck—I can’t help but look immediately at Troy’s corpse. Surprisingly, he doesn’t look so bad. My grandpa was way more pallid and emaciated.

I missed details about Troy in the flashbacks of Ryder’s recent past. The creases around his eyes are deeper, and his hair is even grayer. He and Ryder share many features, including their sharp noses and olive-colored skin. Unlike Willow, who is widely inked, he has just one visible tattoo:
Willow,
in script, where a wedding band should be. It figures that it’s purple. I’d bet money it was her idea.

I wonder if Troy’s joined Willow yet—if there’s some kind of protocol on how soon they are reunited. Ryder and Mya’s devastation, which has taken the form of loud sobbing, must be a stark contrast to Willow’s emotions. Will she realize how screwed up her kids are going to be from losing their dad?

When the sobs increase, I go to work on calming Ryder, since he’s now beating Mya in the emotional department. Ryder falls off the cliff when a pastor comes in and prays over Troy’s body.

Four blocks later, after things have calmed a bit, I back out of the room and slide to the linoleum next to Hannah. Screw my hospital floor rule; I’m wiped out. I close my eyes and listen for any signs of a freak-out while my arms and legs twitch. I’ve never been much of a texter, but Hannah’s rhythmic tapping relaxes me. She clicks away on her phone with the skill of a master thumb wrestler.

An hour later, we both leap up and Hannah jams the phone into her pocket.

“I thought you’d left,” Ryder says in a grating voice. His eyes could use some Visine, stat.

Hannah shakes her head. “I wanted to be sure you were all right.”

“Thanks, but you should go.”

“I can stay. I don’t mind.”

Ryder finally persuades her to leave. I’d leave too if I got to take his car.

“You’ll get through this,” Hannah whispers as she hugs him.

“Will you tell the guys?” he asks quietly into her shoulder.

She agrees, and they say good-bye.

“Come on, kid.” Mya, clearly exhausted, drags Ryder down the hall to the coffeemaker.

God help us. She’s Willow incarnated.

Ryder and Mya stay through the night, chugging coffee, signing papers, and trying to grasp the nightmare. Lucas and Lennon make a quick visit. Lennon is one of the cutest kids I’ve ever seen, although that’s not saying a whole lot, as I don’t know many people under three feet. I see a lot of Willow in Lennon, especially in his eyes. Willow’s parents stop by, too, and are both as broken up as Ryder and Mya. I’d guess the couple to be in their upper seventies; they seem to get around well, considering. Willow shares her mom’s compact size, though Willow’s intellect and smart mouth are clearly passed down from her dad.

It’s far beyond lights out by the time Mya drives Ryder home. I sit much more comfortably in the minivan than Ryder’s backseat, though Mya is obviously not someone who cares about cleanliness. Lennon must eat all three meals back here. The quiet, dark drive reminds me of heading out for an early morning hunt, as five in the morning is about spot-on for deer season. After Mya parks her mom-mobile, I follow her and Ryder into the fully lit house.

“Are you sure you won’t reconsider?” Mya asks.

“Seriously, sis, sometimes you can be so annoying.” Huh, I wonder who she gets that from.

“I guess you might as well get used to the empty house. It’s yours now.”

Ryder drops his coat on the kitchen table. “What?”

Mya slowly turns the pie plate on the counter in a circle, talking to her hands. “Dad updated the will after my wedding. Lucky break for you. I tried talking him into leaving it to Lucas and me. He didn’t buy the ‘It’s nicer than our house and your grandson would love the extra room’ bit. I was a little surprised—you know how he usually caved with Lennon.”

“You’re kidding.”

She shakes her head.

“But you have a family. You need it more.”

“That’s what I said. But you know Dad.” She makes mock quotations with her fingers, scrunches her face, and uses a stuffy voice.
“It’s good for you and Lucas to work your way up. Handouts don’t build character.”
The voice isn’t anything like her dad’s, but the effect works because Ryder half laughs.

“This is really mine?”

“Unless you want to trade.” Her joke lacks enthusiasm.

“And live in that matchbox of yours? Fat chance.” Ryder buries Mya’s neck under his arm, and she leans into him.

“What are we going to do without him?” Ryder asks a minute later.

“We’ll figure it out.” She wipes away a tear. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow around eleven. Nana and Gramps will be here later tonight. Try to get some sleep and call if you need anything. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

The door clicks behind her, and Ryder stays frozen in the kitchen for fifteen straight minutes while I watch the second hand of the wall clock make its rotations. I jump a foot in the air when he yells, “You can’t be dead! You’re all we have!” The next thing I know, his fist is pummeling repeatedly through the yellow wall.

I stare like an imbecile as he pounds away until it occurs me that I should probably be doing something to stop him. I focus and command the haze in under a second, a new record for me. Of course, this would have been more beneficial ten seconds ago.

Calm down. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down
.

And…there it is. Ouch!

“Block!” I yell, freeing my paralyzed muscles.

Ryder finally shows mercy by backing away. He bends over and pants while staring at the peppered drywall. I’m no doctor, but I’d take a stab and say his hand is broken; his knuckles are already the size of a golf balls.

Ryder walks into the living room, wiping his eyes with his good hand, and pulls the curtains closed to block out the peeking sliver of sun.
Please fall asleep soon,
is all I can think when he slumps into the tan recliner. My muscles hate him right now.

I unhitch my bag and fall onto the pink sofa, which is as comfortable as it is wretched. I’m sensing a pattern here. The photograph collection across the room is a little over the top. In addition to pictures of Ryder and Mya at various ages, there are also wedding photos of Mya and Lucas and tons of pictures of Lennon.

Set apart from the other frames are the photos of Willow—at least, I think that’s Willow. I can’t be sure because she looks so…
normal
. It’s strange seeing her inkless and dreadlock-free in the photos, looking so alive I expect her to move. What a waste of a potentially great family.

After four and a half hours of sobbing fits, not quite ramped up enough to be worthy of a block, but frequent enough to be tiresome, Ryder finally gives into sleep. His thunderous snores are louder than his car. After an hour or so, they lessen into quiet, shallow breaths, until the ticking mantel clock is the only noise in the room.

Still staring at the Beckmann’s wall of memories, I wonder what it would have been like to have a family with Tate. My meager carpenter’s salary never would have given Tate the life she deserved, even if I had taken over my dad’s company. Still, Tate insisted she didn’t need or want material things, always trying to convince me that we were meant to be together. And, after a while, I stupidly believed that. This makes me feel like a fool. I’m glad her dream of kids didn’t die with me, but to think of her with someone else…I just can’t.

From our many conversations about kids, one specific discussion pops into my head. Following a day of bad fishing (bad for me, anyway—she caught seven), I was jabbing her about the fish biting her line out of pity.

“You’re a sore loser,” Tate had teased.

“Am not.”

“Are too. And so what? It still counts. You keep biting as well, by the way.”

I threw the tackle box in the bed of my truck and hopped onto the tailgate beside her. “True, but not out of pity,” I said, nipping her bottom lip.

She laughed and then stared across the lake for a few minutes. “Look how cute he is,” she said, pointing.

A guy a few years older than us was trying to coax his two-and-a-half-foot kid into holding his own fishing pole.

“Oh, come on. I’m better looking than him,” I said, to which she slapped my arm. “The poor guy has to keep up with two fishing poles. It’s like fishing with you,” I joked.

“Ha! More like fishing with you.” She looked down at her swinging legs. “Do you think we’ll be like that?”

“I hope you’ll be more helpful than her,” I said, watching the boy’s mom laugh at her husband trying to wrangle their son.

Tate turned her head and gave me a look that said she wanted a real answer.

“Don’t you think we should get through the wedding first?” I don’t think she caught the hitch in my voice. Even then, I somehow knew the cancer was going to rip away our chance of a family.

Her face remained even. “I’m serious.”

That’s what scared me, but I played the part. “Babe, you want eight kids! Not that I don’t look forward to making that many with you, but”—I beat on my truck for effect—“construction salary, remember? We’d need a motel to house them all. And don’t even think I’m sharing our room with them. I have too many reasons to keep you to myself in the dark.” I bumped my shoulder against hers and wore my best game face, because inside I was splintering apart.

“You’re a big talker. As soon as our first is born, you’re going to be putty. Just watch.”

“Not if they’re anything like their mother,” I lied, earning another slap on the arm.

“They will be beautiful, our kids,” she whispered, after I thought the conversation was over.

And of course they would have been beautiful, because Tate would have been a part of them.

Beep, beep, beep, beep!
screams through the room like my old alarm clock.
Make it stop!
is all I can think. When I finally realize the source of the pesky noise is my calimeter, I trace my finger along the face for a knob. Nothing.

Shut up, already!

By accident, from tapping on the glass too hard, I learn the face is also a button. Ahh, at last—some relief!

The kitchen light flashes and then shuts off, but brightness from the late afternoon sun still streams into the darkened living room. I freeze in panic from the eerie silence. Even the mantle clock has stopped ticking, with the small hand frozen on number five. That much time has passed already?

I jump up and lean into Ryder’s unmoving chest. My heartbeat overcompensates for his until it occurs to me that he isn’t dead. Time has stopped. Literally.

I let myself breathe before hitching my bag on my shoulder and then say the command. The air whooshes past, and I force my eyes open to find the source of the high-pitched whistling. My sight is clouded by a blue filter that’s identical to my energy’s color. All around me, a rainbow of colors that are bright even through my filter streaks the atmosphere, like shooting stars in reverse. The paths of glowing lights merge too close. We’re going to collide.

A fluorescent green streak morphs into the blurred face of a girl I don’t recognize. She winks at me before looking back up. I squeeze my eyes closed, certain I’m going to hurl. A second later, the vacuum releases me. I open my eyes in—I guess it’s official now—my room.

“Hello? Willow?” I call, checking the coding room. After no sign of her, I head to Benson. The hallway and elevator are full of other Satellites with the same idea.

“Grant! Hey, Grant!” Clara pushes through the crowd when I step off the elevator.

“Hi. What’s up?”

“Not much,” she says, a little out of breath. “Man, you look beat. How’d it go?”

“Not bad,” I answer while we walk, now remembering how exhausted I am.

“I knew you’d be great. Willow’s headed back to Programming. She said to tell you she’d catch you on next break.”

“Oh. OK.”

“You wanna grab a bite?” She bumps my shoulder, getting close enough that I faintly smell peppermint, which I guess to be from her highly glossed lips. She is hot, though I’ve never been into blondes. No, not just blondes. I’ve never been into anyone except Tate, and I plan on keeping it that way.

I force my eyes from her shiny lips. “Actually, I just remembered I left something in my room,” I lie. “I’ll see you later?”