Booker already tried to reach his father, but no luck. Dr. Robert Dunn was a hard man to reach. While Booker didn’t know exactly what his father did for work, he knew that he was a scientist and that he worked for the military. There was a secure line Booker could use to reach him - for extreme emergencies only - and when he dialed the number, it produced a strange hissing noise in his phone’s receiver before a series of beeps and boops connected the phone call. But no answer.
Now Booker sat on the edge of the deck, bare feet hanging over the sand. The sun had just set over the horizon and the sky was streaked with fantastic shades of yellow, orange, and pink. Monica had already left without a word, leaving him with no car and no food in the house.
He held the second postcard in one hand, tapping it anxiously against his leg as he watched the sky. His brain cycled the events of that morning over and over; reliving the moment he’d received the first postcard and seen little Riley Green in the water. This second postcard must be from the same sender, but the message was much less clear this time.
The first postcard told him who was in trouble, where to look, and when to look. This one didn’t make nearly as much sense.
Take the box from the office
‘What box? And whose office?’
Leave after Summer
‘It’s only July. Summer won’t end for weeks.’
Private terminal on the West side of McCarran
JANET flight 412 arrives at 5:07 pm
‘Where is McCarran? And what is JANET?’
Don’t trust the doctor.
‘Interesting advice.’
Don’t trust the Captain
‘What Captain?’
There’s still time to help your father
‘Why is dad in trouble?’
The only clear instruction was the first line of the card: ‘Watch the sky’
So, Booker watched the sky. And he was bored. Stifling a yawn, he was just thinking about getting up and trying to find something to eat when he felt his phone buzz. Startled, he sat up and saw a strange number listed for the caller ID.
Answering the call, he said, “Hello?”
His father’s stern voice replied. “You better have a good reason for calling me.”
Elated, Booker dove straight into his story. “Dad! I got home from work tonight, and I saw Monica -”
But Robert Dunn cut him off. His voice was low but somehow still able to talk over Booker. “Why are you at the house? You’re supposed to be on a trip.”
‘Typical Dad,’ he thought. Even the slightest change of plan bothered him to no end. “Plans changed. That’s not important though. Listen, I saw Monica,”
“Jesus, Booker, I don’t care what you think about Monica. She and I are married now, so you’re just going to have to get used to it.” Booker tried to cut in again, but Robert said, “Enough! I don’t have time for this! I want to talk about this job at Hummel Labs.” Booker groaned, but still couldn’t get a word in edgewise. “You haven’t signed the work agreement yet? You haven’t returned any calls from their office? Do you know how badly this reflects on me? You’re supposed to start Monday morning!”
“I know, I just - “
“I don’t think you do! I had to call in a lot of favors to give you this opportunity, understand me? I’m not going to let you mess it up!”
“I’m not trying to mess anything up! I just,”
“First your grades start slumping, then you’re getting into fights at school! Frankly, I’m amazed they even let you graduate! And don’t even get me started with this lifeguard business!”
Wringing his hands in frustration, Booker said, “Would you just listen to me for one second?”
“It all ends now, Booker! I don’t know if you’ve just been trying to punish me for something, or you’re just pissed off that life dealt our family a shit hand, but it’s over. It’s time for you to grow up! Understand me?”
Booker knew full well that there was only one answer he could give. He slowly let out the pent-up air in his chest and said, “Yes, sir.”
“You’re going to call Hummell first thing in the morning, and report to work on Monday.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good boy.” He heard his father sigh heavily and a staticky silence stretched between them for a moment. Then Robert said, “Son, I know things haven’t been easy these last few years. It might be hard to believe, but it was hard on both of us when your mother passed away. Maybe I wasn’t ready to be a single father. Maybe I wasn’t around enough for you. But I did everything I could to provide for you - to give you the opportunities I know she wanted for you.”
Booker closed his eyes, feeling a lump growing in his throat. Again, the crackling silence fell between them. He heard his father clear his throat before continuing. “It may be hard to believe, but this job at Hummel will be good for you. I know you’ll make me proud. And I know your mother would be proud of you too.”
Booker bit his lip. But he took another steadying breath and said, “Thanks, dad.”
Robert said, “I expect you to take it seriously.”
“Yes, sir,” said Booker.
“Good boy,” he said.
Booker could tell he was quickly wrapping up their call, so he chimed in saying, “Dad, I really need to talk to you.”
“It can wait,” he said.
Booker glanced down at the postcard in his hand, and the line that said; ‘There’s still time to help your father’ and blurted out, “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“Excuse me?” said Robert. But before Booker could elaborate, Robert said, “Listen, Booker, I’ll be home in a few days. Just focus on getting yourself ready for work on Monday.” Booker protested but was quickly shut down again. “It can wait, Booker. I’m under a lot of pressure right now and don’t have time for silly conversations.”
Before Booker could say a single word more, the line went dead. Booker tossed the phone aside in disgust and lay on the porch, covering his eyes with his arm.
He would have laid there for a long time, but when he heard the sound of a sliding door on a neighboring patio, he looked around.
Joanna Jones was walking out onto her patio with a brown grocery bag in her arms. She wore the same cut off jean shorts and oversized long sleeve shirt from before and bright white sneakers. She was bobbing her head to music playing through corded earbuds attached to an old, brick shaped iPod in her hand.
To Booker’s surprise, she walked down her back steps to the sand and over to his own patio steps. As he sat up, she grinned, pulled out one of her earbuds, and said, “Hey there, Wonderboy.”
“Hey,” he said, scooting aside so she had room to climb up the steps. She used her foot to slide his patio door open, and he said, “What are you doing?”
“Making you dinner. Come on,” she said, jerking her head toward the kitchen.
“Why?” said Booker. He stood up, dusting off his hands, and followed her inside.
“No one should spend their birthday all alone. Besides, you looked pretty pathetic lying there on the porch the last hour,” she said, giving him the same bright smile as they entered the kitchen. He noticed that her eyes were amber-colored. They seemed to glow from the light reflected on the countertop.
“Do you normally just walk in here unannounced?”
“Not when I know your mom has company. Who knows what I’d walk in on?”
“Stepmom,” said Booker, scowling. “So, you knew about all that?”
“Of course,” said Joanna.
“How long?”
“Does it matter?”
“I guess not.”
“Good. Now get over here and help me with all this,” she said, unpacking groceries onto the counter. Under her careful eye and instruction, Booker grabbed pots and pans while she washed green and red peppers in the sink. She asked him how he liked living in Del Mar, where his favorite restaurants were, and about his hobbies. It was all general small talk, but it didn’t take long for Booker to fall into a regular rhythm of conversation with her.
Most of the meal prep was spent on the roasted garlic and basil tomato sauce. Booker felt like he was in the way most of the time, but Joanna just laughed and said he wasn’t getting out of helping. When she asked for a cutting board, Booker pulled one out from an overhead cupboard and placed it on the counter. She collected peppers, mushrooms, and onions for him and told him to start chopping. Reaching over him, she pulled a long knife out of the knife block and held it out for him saying, “Careful now. I don’t want to have to explain any lost fingers to your parents.”
Booker grinned and said, “I’m sure I’ll be fine.” She walked around him as he started cutting vegetables and plugged her old iPod into a speaker at the end of the counter. A few moments later, they were listening to a range of rock hits from the early 2000s all the way back to the 70s. With each passing moment, he was feeling more and more comfortable around her. She laughed with him, smiled at him, and helped him avoid making a complete mess of the stovetop. “Honestly, you college boys are useless. You’d think you had never seen a kitchen before,” she said at one point.
Eventually, she discovered his camera sitting on a chair by the breakfast bar. As he worked over the stove, she turned it on and began playing with the telephoto lens before cycling through the photos using the digital display. “These are really good,” she said, sidling over to the stove so he could look through the photos with her.
He watched her as she looked down at his pictures. There were landscapes, ocean shots, and pictures of Russell and a few other lifeguards from earlier that summer. She moved quickly through the photos but finally stopped on a photo of just Booker standing on a cliffside. It was a self-portrait he set up when visiting Catalina Island with a few friends, and one of the only shots with him in it on the whole camera.
“There you are,” said Joanna, turning her head to one side to get another angle of the shot. “You didn’t want to take one with your friends?”
“I’m sure I’m in a couple of them,” said Booker as she cycled through more photos of the Catalina trip. “It’s something my mom used to do.”
“What, take photos of you? I think all mom’s take photos of their kids,” she said, setting the camera aside.
“No, I mean, she would take self-portraits like that one. It was her thing. Whenever she traveled somewhere new, she’d set up her camera and take a portrait shot. Here, I’ll show you.”
Abandoning the stove, Booker crossed the kitchen to retrieve a fat photo album from the shelves under the TV. When he returned and set it down on the counter, Joanna moved beside him and put her chin on his shoulder to look down at the photos with him. He felt a not-so-unpleasant shudder run down his spine as she moved close to him. As he opened the album, he tried not to move his shoulder for fear she would break the contact.
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The first page showed a picture of his mother when she was young. She wore a dark blue wool sweater, light blue jeans, and an orange beanie. Snow covered the ground around her, and huge mountains towered high above in the distance. Booker said, “Yosemite. I think this was her first one.” He flipped through the pages quickly, showing images of his mother at various locations around the country. They all had a similar composition, giving the album a uniform look, and showing how his mother aged and changed over the years.
Eventually, there was a picture of her holding a little toddler in her arms. Joanna simpered, and said, “Is that you?”
“That’s me,” he said, grinning. Thumbing quickly through a few more pages, he said, “She wanted me in all the pictures after that. These are all our family adventures. Some locations are repeated because she wanted to recreate old photos with me.” Booker felt a tight feeling in his chest as he looked down at a photo taken in the exact same spot in Yosemite as the first photo of the album - the only difference was that it was summer, and his mother was bending low so she could be cheek to cheek with her little son. Booker looked at his own smiling face from so many years ago and quickly snapped the book shut.
Sliding it away, he said, “Anyway, I’ve decided to keep the tradition going. I figured I could add my own pictures to the album and finish it for her. See all the places she couldn’t see.” He cleared his throat and blinked hard as he returned to the stove.
Booker’s spirits, which had been soaring since Joanna arrived, felt dwindled again. But Joanna didn’t let him get away with being upset for long. She changed to a brighter subject and as they added the sauce to the mix of vegetables and meat, she started singing along to the music. She used her wooden stirring spoon as a microphone, and she danced her way from stovetop to sink and back again, picking up the cutting boards and knives as she went. She dropped them in the sink as she made her way back around.
“Dance with me!” she said, seizing his wrist and pulling him around with surprising strength. Booker stumbled, but he was quick to gain his footing again. He laughed awkwardly as she took his hands and rocked in and out, moving around to the music. His feet were plastered to the floor. His arms moved like windmills as she twirled around, still singing to the music.
“What’s the matter? You don’t like dancing?” she said, coming to a stop and brushing a strand of hair off her face.
He shrugged, still grinning, and said, “I don’t really know how.”
“I guess I’ll have to teach you then,” she said, still catching her breath. “Dancing is fun. I remember dancing on Sardinia Beach once. It was a wedding, and I had this beautiful green dress. The band was playing their last song of the night, and almost everyone had gone.” Her voice trailed off as she reminisced silently for a moment.
“Where’s Sardinia Beach?” said Booker.
“Italy,” she said, smiling at him. “You ready? I think everything is just about done.”
A minute later they were sitting side by side at the breakfast bar, each with a steaming bowl of pasta in front of them. Booker said, “Have you traveled a lot then?”
“Me? Sure. I’ve been all over,” she said, blowing on a forkful of pasta.
“What exactly do you do?”
“What do you think I do?” she said.
Booker shrugged. “Before, I thought, maybe a movie star?”
She covered her mouth as she laughed, rocking back in her chair. “A movie star? What made you think that?”
Shrugging, he said, “Well, you obviously have money, living on Ocean Front.”
“And the only place a girl like me can make money is in Hollywood?”
“No, I just -”
“Maybe I’m in tech. Tech people make lots of money. Did you ever think about that?”
“No way. If you were in tech, you wouldn’t be carrying around one of those old bricks,” he said, nodding to the iPod and tattered headphone cord at the end of the counter.
“That old thing? It’s a gen one. Holds over 1,000 songs. No ads. No data plans. No wifi. Just music. Pure and simple. I’m off the grid.”
Booker chuckled, “Off the grid, huh? Are you hiding?”
“Maybe,” she said with a sly smile. “What about you, Booker? What do you do?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“That’s not true. You take great pictures. And you’re in the business of saving lives, aren’t you?”
“Lifeguarding is just a summer job.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that you’re someone’s hero.”
“I saved a kid one time-”
“Three times, last I counted,” said Joanna.
It was true. He’d often jumped in the water to help swimmers over the busy summer months, but there were three times where it has been a serious situation. Waving away her comment, he said, “There were tons of lifeguards on duty. Those kids would have been fine either way. I was just the first one in the water.”
“That’s not what they said today,” said Joanna. “The world needs more ‘wonder boys’ like you that jump in first. And don’t sell yourself short. I’ve seen you help crying kids find their parents when they get lost. I’ve seen you break up fights. I’ve seen you help families carry their coolers up and down the beach just to help out.”
Booker half laughed and half scoffed. “Have you been spying on me?”
“Yes,” she said, still looking at him and taking a bit of pasta from her fork.
Not sure if she was joking or not, Booker cleared his throat and changed the subject. “Well, my days in the saving-people business are done. Dad got me a desk job, and I start Monday. It’s in the legal department for a company in San Diego. The idea is for me to work there, get some resume points, and apply to law school.”
“Is that what you want?”
“I guess. It’s a good grown-up job. We all have to grow up eventually.”
“Do we?”
“Sure.”
“So, you’re taking the job?”
“I don’t have much choice.”
“What if you did have a choice?”
He scoffed again and shrugged. “I guess we’ll never know.”
“What if you have another offer? A better offer? Would you take it?”
“My dad would kill me. He had to pull a lot of strings to get me this job.”
She considered him for a moment before saying, “What kind of donuts do you like?”
“What kind of what? Donuts? Why?” said Booker, amused and taken aback by the sudden change of topic.
She picked up their empty bowls and took them to the sink. “You know what, never mind. I know a great donut place down the road in Cardiff. I’ll bring some options for us tomorrow morning.”
“Okay,” said Booker with a small chuckle. “Why are you getting donuts for us tomorrow morning?”
“Because I have a busy day, and I want to chat with you before I leave,” she said, dropping dishes into the dishwasher.
“Where are you going?” said Booker.
“Nowhere important,” she said. “I’ve been working a job for over a year now, and I’m not getting anywhere. I think it’s time to call it quits. This weekend is for tying up some loose ends, then I’m out of here.”
“You’re moving?” said Booker.
She nodded. “Aren’t you tired of sand getting into everything? It’ll be nice to have a fresh start somewhere new.”
“You’re just going to quit your job and move away?” said Booker.
“I’m not quitting. I’m just moving on to something else,” she said.
“Hold on, what was it that you do again?” said Booker.
Joanna grinned and said, “That’s what you and I are going to talk about - tomorrow. With donuts. I have a job for you, if you’re interested.”
“You want to offer me a job?” said Booker, grinning. “What kind of job?”
“If I told you that, I’d have to kill you,” she said, grinning again.
“Seriously? Come on, what kind of job?” he said.
“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” she said. “I need to make a few calls. But don’t worry, Wonderboy. With a recommendation like mine, you’ll be a shoe in.”
“What if I’m not interested?” he said.
She plucked a UCSD pamphlet from a stack of mail on the counter and slid it over to him. “Then you might as well start sending in those law school applications now.”
He eyed the letter with distaste and shook his head slightly.
Joanna said, “Mind if I use your restroom?”
“Sure,” he said, sliding the letter away. He pointed her upstairs, and then started cleaning up the last of the dishes and wiping the countertop and breakfast bar. He wondered what kind of job she had in mind for him. He could never accept it, whatever it was. But still, it was nice of her to think of him. Almost unconsciously, Booker glanced out the back windows toward the ocean. He’d spent so much time over the last few hours watching the sky, it was as if his neck was predisposed to look that way.
It was dark out now, almost too dark to see the beach, but Booker thought he saw the faintest flash of blue in the distance. He was looking away again before it even registered, and when it did, he thought that it must have been a light from a boat or perhaps a flash of lightning. But he looked again anyway.
No blue light. Glancing over his shoulder to check that Joanna had not yet returned, he walked over to the sliding doors, opened them, and stepped out onto the patio. The cool ocean air washed over him, ruffling his hair. The waves crashing against the shore gave the night a soothing sound. Leaning against the railing, he looked up at the mostly cloudless night sky with a half-moon high overhead.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Scattered stars twinkled and the black ocean stretched all the way to the horizon. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the postcard to read through it one more time. Reading over the message again didn’t help him understand the meaning any more than before, but the postscript caught his eye this time.
P.S. You can trust your neighbor
‘Joanna is my neighbor,’ he thought. Perhaps trusting her - maybe even taking the job she was offering to him - was the first step.
A sudden pulse of blue light a few miles off the coast drew his eye away from the postcard. Booker barely saw it. It certainly looked like a flash of lightning because it had come and gone so quickly, but his whole body tensed as he locked his eyes on the sky near the horizon.
Had he imagined it? He stuffed the postcard back into his pocket.
The light pulsed again. More than one this time. There were at least four or five of them. They were little orbs of light in the sky, distinct from any star because of their color and movement. They zoomed left and right, circling around on themselves. As Booker watched, the lights pulsed brighter and became stationary in the sky. The lights did not go out this time.
The little blue orbs, so many miles offshore, began to spin around each other. Slowly at first but gaining speed until it looked like a solid, dazzling blue ring in the sky over the ocean.
Above him, the window to his father’s office illuminated with golden light from the window lamp. Booker glanced up at the window, seeing a shadow fall across the blinds. When he looked back to where the blue ring of light had been in the sky, it was gone. No sign of anything out of the ordinary over the ocean.
Not knowing what to think about what he’d just seen, Booker tore his eyes away from the sky and focused on the window above him to his father’s office. The only person who could be in there was Joanna, and he knew his father would have a conniption if he found out someone had been snooping around his office.
Booker hurried back inside and up the stairs to the second floor. The door to his father’s office was ajar, and he could see someone walking around within. He approached the office and opened the door to see Joanna examining his father’s desk and the papers strewn over it.
She looked up as he entered and said, “Oops! You caught me! Sorry, I was just looking for the restroom when I found all this,” She was smiling but Booker felt a little uneasy. As he approached the desk, she said, “Looks like your dad keeps himself busy. He’s some kind of scientist, right?”
“Yeah,” said Booker. She turned to look at the blackboard behind the desk. His father had written all kinds of equations and formulas over it, scribbled notes to himself, and drawn a few small charts and graphs.
“Any of this make sense to you?” she said.
Booker shook his head. In the middle of the chalk board was a drawing of a spherical object. Based on the detailed notes and annotations around it, Booker figured that it must be really important to whatever his father was working on.
“What do you think of that?” said Joanna, rapping her knuckle against the sphere on the blackboard.
“I’m not sure,” he said.
Pointing to a stream of numbers scribbled beside the sphere, she said, “These look like radio frequencies.”
Booker took her word for it. “We shouldn’t be in here. My dad usually keeps this door locked, and he doesn’t want anyone in here.”
“We’re just taking a look around,” she said, now examining the papers strewn over the desk again. Sliding one of the documents toward him, she said, “Does your dad do a lot of work with them?” The letterhead had “Hummel Labs” in bold black letters across the top.
Booker shrugged and said, “No, but he has friends there. That’s where he got me a job.”
“At Hummel? The tech company? They make rockets and space stuff, don’t they” she said.
“Yeah, that’s them,” said Booker.
Sliding more papers aside, she uncovered a large black and white map showing the coast of California. A few miles offshore, someone had drawn overlapping red lines running parallel to the coast. The lines were all dated, and Booker quickly saw that the dates went as far back as a year. Joanna said, “This looks important, don’t you think?” She pointed to a red dotted line, much like the others, with a bold date circled several times and underlined. “July 6th. That’s the day after tomorrow,” she said.
“What are all these lines for?” said Booker, following the red lines up and down the length of the map. They all followed a similar trajectory, zigzagging down the coastline, sometimes circling back, turning east or west. A few circled Catalina Island or cut right through it.
Joanna had already moved on and was now standing in the middle of the room beside his father’s coffee table. She bent down to open a silver box-shaped briefcase sitting on the table. As the clasps slapped open, Booker said, “Hey, don’t open that!”
“Relax, Wonderboy,” she said, lifting the lid. “Come here and take a look.”
Booker stood beside her and looked down to see some kind of computer switchboard built into the box-briefcase. It looked kind of like a nuclear football - something you’d see in an old spy movie. A small screen in the middle, red toggle switches marked with stickers, a small radio dish collapsed into a corner that could be folded out, and a number pad.
Joanna grinned at him mischievously and said, “Let’s see what it does!”
“No way! We need to get out of here, right now! Don’t touch it!”
But Joanna paid no attention. She sat down on the couch, pulling him down beside her, and slid the box-briefcase closer to them. She flicked the power switch, and the briefcase hummed to life. The screen in the center glowed a murky green color before displaying a simple menu in old green text. As she unfolded the radio dish from its little corner, she said, “Read me those numbers on the chalkboard, will you?”
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” said Booker, glancing over his shoulder at the drawing of the sphere on the chalkboard.
Joanna put her hand on his and squeezed gently. “Come on, what’s the worst that could happen?” She was fiddling with the screen menu now, cycling through different options until she found one to input frequency commands. “I’m ready! Read the first line of numbers for me.”
Booker hesitated, but when she squeezed his hand again, he turned and read the numbers out to her. There were three lines in total and she entered them quickly using the number pad. Once that was done, she flicked a few more switches, causing the radio dish to come to life, spinning in place and making an electronic buzzing sound. The briefcase seemed to be getting warmed up for something, vibrating slightly on the coffee table.
Underneath the number pad was a large, red plastic flap that Joanna flipped open. Underneath was a clear plastic button flashing red. “Do you want to do the honors?” she said, nodding to the flashing button.
“We’ve taken this far enough,” he said, shaking his head. “Turn it off.”
“Don’t be a baby,” she said.
“I don’t even know what that thing is! My dad is going to go crazy when he finds out I was in here. If we turn this thing on, he might actually kill me!”
“It’s just a transmitter,” she said. “All we did was punch in those frequencies. Worst case, we cause some static on the local radio.”
“Don’t do it!” he said, grabbing her hand as she reached for the button.
“Fine. If you’re that worried about it, we can just shut it off,” she said.
He let out a sigh of relief and said that would be great. He even chuckled slightly. But as soon as he let go of her hand, she jammed the red flashing button with her thumb. The briefcase made a loud clicking noise, and the screen started running through hundreds of lines of code. The table vibrated and the humming got louder and louder.
Suddenly, everything stopped. The screen changed to show a green grid pattern, and the briefcase went silent.
“What the hell was that?” said Booker, jumping to his feet.
Joanna stood up as well, laughing, and said, “I couldn’t resist!”
Groaning, Booker said, “I’m so dead. Can we please just leave?”
Joanna agreed, still grinning with amusement. She teased him, saying nothing bad had happened and that he had nothing to worry about. They were almost out the door when the briefcase started beeping. Both of them froze in the doorway and turned around. Booker wasn’t even sure he had heard anything, when the briefcase beeped again. He exchanged a look with Joanna, who shrugged.
Returning to the coffee table in the middle of the room, he looked down and saw the screen still showed the green grid, but now there was a small green dot moving toward the center. A radar line swept counterclockwise around the screen, and the briefcase beeped every time the line crossed the approaching green dot.
Joanna said, “What is it?”
“It looks like a radar screen,” he said. “I think it’s showing something getting closer.” The lights flickered above him, and he felt the floorboards vibrating under his feet. “Whoa,” he said under his breath as the lights came back on.
“Booker, come over here. Now,” said Joanna. She sounded alarmed, and Booker felt a sudden rush of panic. The floor was vibrating even more now, causing the windows to shake and the items on his father’s shelves to slide around on their perches. Booker bolted for the office door just as the lights went out again. His foot caught on the leg of a chair, and he fell to the ground.
In the darkness, he saw a sudden flash of brilliant blue light. Then the ceiling above him exploded as something crashed through it with tremendous speed.