Things Not Seen (18 page)

“So, no other friends?”

“Two. Both women. People I can trust. But that's enough. Never had all that many friends anyway. How about you?”

“Kind of the same. At first it was just my parents. Then I started talking to this blind girl.”

“Interesting—I thought about that too. So, does she know?”

“Yeah, but she's been great about everything. And her parents too.”

“So, how long has it been for you? Less than a month?”

“Uh-huh, but I think there might be a way to reverse it. At least that's what I'm working on. And now I found you. If we figure it out, you'll be the first to know.”

“So you really think there's a way back?”

“I hope so.”

“Well, let me know, okay?”

“Absolutely. I will.”

“What's your name?”

“Bobby. Bobby Phillips.”

“It's nice to talk to you, Bobby.”

“Yeah. It's good to talk to you too.”

I don't know what else to say, and I'm about to sign off.

Then she says, “Bobby, you have to promise me something, okay?”

“Sure—I mean, I guess so. What?”

“I don't want you to tell anybody about me. Nobody.”

“It's kind of too late. I already told Alicia I was going to call you. She's the blind girl.”

“But she doesn't know anything else about me, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So keep it that way. Don't tell her. Tell her you couldn't reach me or something. Tell her I'm dead, tell her whatever you want to.”

“I…I don't want to lie to her. She'll keep everything a secret if I ask her to.”

“Easy for you to say. What if she decides she needs money two years from now and she rats me out to some sleazy supermarket tabloid? Then what? Then I'm screwed, that's what.”

“Alicia's not like that. Remember, she knows about me too. I trust her.”

“But maybe that's because you're young and don't know any better. Or maybe you're stupid or something.”

I'm about to start shouting when she says, “Sorry. I don't mean to sound nasty about this, but I've had to move twice in the last three years because I thought I could trust some people. Things like that happen, and it makes you pretty paranoid…. Well, look, if you've gotto tell this girl, then I can't stop you, but don't tell anybody else, and make her
promise
to keep it a secret, okay? It's important. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“And you promise?”

“I promise. And I know Alicia will too.”

“Good. So…good luck. I hope everything works out the way you want it to.”

“Thanks. Me too. And I'll get back in touch if there's any news.”

After we say good-bye, I flop onto my bed and look at the ceiling. I need to take stock of what I know.

Three years. She's been gone for three years. So this is not a temporary condition. That's one thing I know.

This condition did have a specific cause, and the blanket is part of it. I'm sure of that now.

But the blanket's not all of it. If it was just the blanket causing this, then more people would have been affected. Then again, maybe more were and I just haven't called them yet.

And I know that it happened to Sheila on January twelfth three years ago in Denver, Colorado, and it happened to me February twenty-third—both in the winter. Duh. Big coincidence. Winter is when you use an electric blanket.

But still, I've got two locations, two blankets, and two dates. Plus two invisible people.

And lying there on my bed, tracing the maze of cracks in the plaster on my ceiling, I face a fact: What I've actually got is only slightly more than nothing.

A
ny physics nut will tell you that there's never nothing. I've been hearing this from Dad all my life. Now I get it. For example, split the atom and you get neutrons and electrons and protons. Keep splitting and you get neutrinos and quarks and muons and antiquarks and mesons—on and on and on, smaller and smaller and smaller. Less and less mass, more and more energy.

It all gets down to the little things. Like two blankets, two cities, two dates, and two people.

After I talk to Sheila, I don't see how the facts can add up to anything. But it's never just about the facts. Sherlock Holmes proves that, case after case. It's all about what you do with the facts, how you look at them.

When I do an instant message to Alicia on Wednesday afternoon, she starts right in asking me a million questions about Sheila—how did she react, what did she sound like, was she happy, does she have a boyfriend, is she excited about finding someone else like her—on and on. Instant messaging with Alicia takes forever. It's not the connection, because she's got one of those lines that's always connected. It's because the text-to-speech function on her end has to say everything out loud before she can type back an answer.

I finally have to shut her off because I need to just think about what to do. But Alicia doesn't want me to think about it. She wants me to call my dad and tell him the news, and then have my dad call her dad so they can talk about it.

I start to dial Dad's number three times, and three times I stop. I found this woman. Not him. It's my discovery. Not his. But after I wrestle with it for about five minutes, I know I'd be stupid not to tell him. And I'll still be the one who found her. That's not going to change.

When I reach Dad at his office and tell him, he almost goes nuts.

“What?! You're kidding! This is fantastic, Bobby! Hold on—I've got to shut my office door.”

Then comes the hard part, because he wants to know everything, but I'm not telling. “Dad, I promised to protect this other person. So all I know right now is that it happened in Denver, Colorado, on the night of January twelfth three years ago, and the same kind of blanket was being used.”

“And this person is about how old?”

“Does that matter?”

“Could, Bobby. Everything could matter. Like what kind of a house it happened in, any other appliances in the room, the exact location of the house—everything could be very important.”

“Well, all I can tell you right now is the date and the year and the place. If we need more, I could maybe call her back and—”

“Aha! So, it's a woman! See, that could be important! Because men and women have different chemical make-ups, different muscle densities. We need more data, Bobby. The more the better.”

Dad's giving me the third degree, major interrogation, and it really ticks me off. For the past few years I've just been gritting my teeth and kicking my door and swearing under my breath at him about stuff like this. I know he's excited, and I know that the guy lives for data. But here I am, and I'm telling him I've made a promise, and he acts like that doesn't matter.

I'm about to shout something and slam down the phone. But instead, I get this calm feeling and I say, real quietlike, “Dad, this lady wants to stay out of all this, and I promised her I'd respect that. So I'm not telling anyone, not even you. When I make a promise, it has to be real.”

I guess I must have sounded like the president or something, and it's so quiet for a second that I think maybe he fell off his chair.

Then he says, “Of course. You're right. Sorry, Bobby. We'll work with this, and see where it leads us. Quite right, son. Have to keep your word.”

And it's like the whole world has shifted about ten feet to the right. I'm not where I used to be, and I see it, and Dad sees it too, and he sees me seeing him see me.

Anyway, he says he's going to call Leo—that's Professor Van Dorn—and he'll talk to me tonight when he gets home.

Then he says, “I don't know how you located this woman, Bobby, but it's not a small thing. This is first-class work, son. First class.”

It's the tone of his voice that gets me.

He doesn't say, “I'm proud of you.” He doesn't use those words. But that's what I hear. My dad's proud of me.

R
elational database analysis
. I had never even heard those words until Dad comes home from the lab and starts making dinner on Wednesday. He's got my invisible hands busy chopping celery and carrots while he cuts up chunks of chicken for a big pot of soup, and he's gushing about his talk with Dr. Van Dorn. The professor says he was sure the blanket was part of the cause, and he's all excited because he says he can do tons of research just using those two dates and the two locations. And that's because of this relational database thing.

Condensing fifteen minutes of Dad talking as fast as he can into about four sentences, this kind of data-hunting is basically like using an Internet search engine, except it's more precise and it uses monster computer power—like Cray supercomputers, the real deal. So you load in your data, you give the search program some clues about what sort of results you'd like it to look for, and then you push a button. And it combs all these scientific articles and catalogs of events and phenomena and facts and theories, and if anything matches up anywhere in the scientific records in any language anywhere in the world, it finds it and spits it all back at you. Pretty cool. But you have to know how to program the thing, or else you get swamped with junk data. And who's one of the top people at doing this kind of search? Our pal Dr. Van Dorn.

And an hour and a half later, when we're just sitting down to eat homemade chicken noodle soup, the doc himself is pounding on our front door.

He walks right in, puts his old briefcase on the dining room table, yanks it open, and pulls out a stack of wide greenbar computer paper. His eyes are wild, and he's talking so fast that little bits of spit are flying around. “This has got to be what we're looking for! I ran the search four different ways, four different sets of parameters, and the same data from the ACE spacecraft project kept showing up. Ready? Solar wind! January twelfth and February twenty-third, three years apart, and on both dates the upper latitudes of the U.S. from the Rockies to the Great Lakes were strafed by a major burst of accelerated solar particles and radiation—the kind that knock out power grids and send the big jets diving for lower altitudes! Not true solar maxima or anything, but the bombardment on both dates was way, way up on the scale, and the earth's magnetic field was significantly distorted. So…”

Dad is looking over the professor's shoulder, nodding, his dinner napkin still tucked into the collar of his blue dress shirt. “So this blast of high-energy particles cuts through the exaggerated electrical field caused by the faulty blanket controller, and bingo! No more Bobby!”

“Exactly. And of course, we don't really know how or why, and we're a long way from really understanding the interaction of the forces. But I'm almost certain we know roughly what caused it. We've got a strong electrical current field, magnetic disturbances, and an extreme particle flow. Has to be it, don't you think?”

“Has to be.” Dad is nodding, and his eyes have that far-away-in-physics-land look.

Mom asks what I'm thinking: “But Leo, how can we reverse the process? How do we get things back to normal? And how do we do it before the police come to haul us away?”

Dad and Dr. Van Dorn look at each other, just for a second. And it's like they're holding this high-level, silent conference, and I see everything, and it's almost like I hear them talking back and forth:
Incredibly complex—Possibly years just to develop a workable theory—Hundreds of variables to isolate and test—Not to mention questions about body chemistry and environmental factors
. I can see this kind of stuff flashing through their minds.

Then Dad says, “Hard to say, Emily. Maybe a week, maybe longer.”

And the look on Dr. Van Dorn's face says,
Maybe years
. I see it all.

I can't take it. And I'm not hungry anymore. I push my chair back and stand up. “You're not being honest, neither of you. Even if you've found the cause, really figuring it out and reversing it could take forever. And we don't have forever. I am now wanted by the law in two states, and Dad isn't going to get to do much research in jail. So tomorrow we call that lady and we get her over here, and we tell her. Then we tell the university and the people who run FermiLab, tell everybody. Show them. Then we don't have to act like criminals. Then there'll be tons of research money and facilities, and we can really figure this thing out.”

Dad looks at me, at the space above my collar where he guesses my eyes are. And there's so much sadness in his face. “Bobby, Dr. Van Dorn and I discussed this situation when we spoke this afternoon. And we both decided that we do not want this to become public. Not ever. It's too dangerous. I mean, it's not like the Manhattan Project or anything, not like developing a nuclear weapon. But still, this kind of science can hurt people. Do we want invisible soldiers and police and spies all over the place? Or invisible criminals? Can you imagine the level of security we'd all have to live with if this technology becomes widely known? And even more important, do we want to sacrifice any chance for you to eventually have a normal life again? We've each promised to keep this an absolute secret, just our two families. The business with the police will go away. It has to. They can't prove anything. No motive, no crime, no evidence. Your mom and I talked, and really, all we've done wrong is lie about you going to Florida. And we can just say we did that because you'd run away, and we wanted you to have time to come home without any penalties or bad effects on your record at school. Parents can't be punished because a kid decides to run away from home. So we just have to change our story. I'm sure this is the best way. We're all sure it is.”

During this speech, it's like I'm in a time machine. All I hear is what I've been hearing for fifteen years: Everyone else has decided what's best for me. They're all sure. They've made up their minds. And now they're telling me. They're telling me how they've decided my life will be. I'm a runaway. I'm a fugitive. I'm a milk-carton kid. I'm officially missing.
They've decided
.

My jaw muscles tighten. I feel my face twist, feel my hands clench. They have such a grand plan for me.

I want to scream. I want to froth at the mouth and swear and stomp my feet and break up some chairs and throw chicken soup all over the place. And I want to yell,
It's my life! You can't leave me out of the decisions about my own life! You are not in charge here!

But I control myself. In a calm voice I say, “I think I need to get some rest. I'll eat later.”

As I leave the table, Mom looks suddenly worried, and Dad looks confused. Dr. Van Dorn seems embarrassed, so he looks down at his precious stack of data.

And I'm alone in my room. Alone. Mom and Dad are down there, spoons clinking on their bowls, ladling out soup for their uninvited dinner guest, their fellow conspirator.

And I'm alone.