Megan was still at school, which was a change that I hadn’t been anticipating. For some reason, it didn’t equate in my head that she could do something other than homeschooling. Her time away did give me a little time to work through the grownups first. Rebecca admitted that she wasn’t the best fit to homeschool her alone. Megan also wanted to go out and make friends at school, so Shelly arranged for her to go to some cushy private school about half an hour away from the house. She was staying the entire weekend at a new friend’s house, which meant I wasn’t going to see her until Monday. The school had been built exceptionally fast since a lot of wealthy Luna residents moved to the area. Maybe someone had an Anomaly that was a big help in getting everything built.
Quinn quickly got out of dodge, hiding away in Shelly’s office. I didn’t blame the guy. If my girlfriend told me that my disappeared brother had come back home and he was about to be swarmed by a bunch of his closest friends, I’d have run right out of the house. He just wished me good luck in handling it all and told Shelly to get him if she needed anything. He seemed like he was nice and genuinely cared about my sister. Had things been less tense, I might have even joked with him about what would happen if he dared to hurt her.
Rebecca was a little weird after I got to share my first-ever kiss with her. She strongly approved of my beard but told me she missed the long hair. After I promised her I’d grow it back out for her, we jokingly compared muscles. She looked a little smaller than I remembered seeing her last, which worried me. She poked at my biceps and laughed. It was like she couldn’t believe I was the same scrawny guy that asked her out. When I did small things like take out the trash or get the mail, which I had only done once each on the day I returned, she looked terrified and like I was never going to come back. I tried my best to calm her nerves, telling her I would be right back. That didn’t stop her from waiting by the door, nervously chewing her lip, or tapping her foot on the ground.
When I came back in, Rebecca wouldn’t let go of my hand. I don’t think she realized it, but she kept both of hers wrapped around mine, careful not to touch my bad finger. Of course, she agreed with Shelly that my hands needed to be fixed and a healer would be the first person called. But after that was taken care of, Shelly arranged to have all my friends come over one at a time. That way, I wouldn’t get too overwhelmed by a bunch of people happy to see me with a bunch of questions.
Lori ended up being first. She cried a little, more out of relief than just raw emotion. Plus, she didn’t get my clothes messy. She gave me as big a hug as her little arms could manage and apologized profusely. “I’m so sorry for everything I’ve said to you. I was such a jerk to you and when you were gone, I thought I’d never get the chance to really apologize. I cried and said I was sorry over your casket until your sister pulled me away.”
“You apologized for that stuff before,” I told her, patting the top of her head. I was just happy to see the girl again. I wanted to talk to her about the direction her powers took in the mountains, not have her get all sappy because she felt guilty.
Lizzy was next. I had seen Lori furious before, but if I thought that was true anger, I’d never seen someone quite as mad as Lizzy Quick was when she saw me. She either wanted to punch my head clean off my shoulders or hug me strong enough to shatter my ribs and spine, usually alternating between the two. She finally settled on the hug, with some crying, as was expected. A little bit of crying and a lot of being completely enraged at me.
“I hate men so much! All you...all you assholes do is vanish for months, make girls cry, show up all annoyingly buff with fresh haircuts, and make girls cry some more.” She pounded her fist on my shoulder. “All of you are useless.”
“Uh, thanks, I think? For the nice part of that. Not the part where I was useless or an asshole, you jerk.” The name-calling earned another punch to my shoulder from my angry friend. I rubbed the back of my head and looked at my shoes. “I’m really sorry, guys. Also, I’m not buff. I just have a little muscle now. Let’s not take it too far now.”
“You better be sorry! I shouldn’t have made that stupid vote. God, I won’t ever be able to apologize enough for it.” She wiped her eyes and nose. “You’re, like, one of my besties. I can’t remember the first week after you were gone. I seriously can’t, it’s just this miserable blur. You better have some damn good stories to make up for it.”
I told her the stories would come in due time. Before I could let myself tell everyone about all the stuff that happened, I had to get through greeting everyone first. Alex of all people looked like he was about to shed a tear, and I knew if he did, I wouldn’t be able to keep it together myself. Instead, he just made a weird grimacing expression and pulled me into a tight hug. Val wasn’t about to cry, but there was a lot of relief on her face. To my surprise, she pulled me in for a quick embrace too, ending it as quickly as she had started. I was going to have plenty of bruises from all the tight hugging.
The rest of Lizzy’s team came over, and since they required less emotional investment from me, they were easier to handle. Julio was mostly indifferent, but he had a little smile on his face. Rosie was ecstatic that I was back home and would not stop talking, which I welcomed with pleasure. Braden was quiet and noticeably happy himself, maybe because Lizzy was so relieved. We gave each other a fist bump, never even needing to speak a word to each other. Everyone gathered in the living room while Shelly finished up an absolute feast of ordering a bunch of pizzas for delivery.
I sent Chloe a text asking her if she could bring everyone over. It only took her a few minutes, and since she knew about the pjulsen, I decided it made sense for her to stay. If I was going to trust her with that secret, it would have been silly to keep everyone’s Anomalies a secret when we all lived in the same community. Alex, Val, Braden, and Julio all looked a little uncomfortable with our guests. For Chloe’s part, she didn’t look particularly bothered. If anything, she just wanted to see Megan again to arrange a playdate with Ryan.
“Right, here we go.” I took a deep breath and wiped my sweaty hands on my pants. I waved my hand at the guests I brought to our planet. “These four are aliens.”
“Wherever you were had some pretty good drugs, huh?” Alex crossed his arms and looked pissed just a little while after he learned I was alive again. Ah, it was like I never left!
“Had some damn good food,” I conceded. “Magnus, can you take off your helmet?”
He did as instructed and waved at everyone. Everyone in the room gasped and started talking loudly, some yelling, except for Chloe, myself, and the pjulsen. That was the first time Rebecca had willingly taken her hand off mine since I returned, and she used it to cover her mouth in shock. Magnus didn’t look too surprised and he kept his helmet off. The others followed suit, revealing their brightly colored skin to everyone in attendance.
“Ethan, the energy in this room is off the charts!” Sally pointed at her teleportation device. I couldn’t tell what I was looking at, so I just nodded like a doofus pretending to know what she was talking about. “You have strong friends.”
“They’re pretty good. Even the ones without ‘combat powers’ are pretty scary. You should have seen them against the Sentinels.”
“How do you understand each other?” Shelly asked. She was cautiously looking up and down at the strangers I brought into her home. Into her community, really. “You didn’t learn their language that quickly, did you?”
“Oh, right! That’s all thanks to Magnus, the one who took off his helmet first. He has sort of a mind-melding Anomaly that makes it so we can communicate despite our language barriers. We can’t speak each other’s native tongues, but our thoughts kind of become one, so our brains can process it like we’re just thinking in our own language.”
“Uh huh, right. Yeah, that makes perfect sense.” Shelly didn’t get it, and neither did I, and it wasn’t really important in the grand scheme of things. How we communicated didn’t matter, or at least I thought it didn’t, so Alex had to think otherwise, of course.
“You brought aliens here and let them inside your head? Are you stupid?” The big boy was pissed off and bristling, trying to look all intimidating with his arms folded over his chest. It was too bad for him that I didn’t have the energy to get into a huge fight about it.
“It was the only way to communicate, and after I attacked a few aliens invading their planet, we needed some way to talk.” I was about to ignore Alex’s little outburst by carrying on with my introduction for everyone. Naturally, Alex again felt the need to step in.
“And you got involved in their conflict!?” He threw his hands up in disbelief. “This is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done. You, a human, just painted a target on the back for this entire species. For what? Did you do it so you could play hero and feel good about yourself?”
“No, Alex, I didn’t do it because I needed a heroic ego boost. Don’t project your issues on me. I did it because they had people that needed saving, man.” I sighed. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to explain. It was a weird, messy situation that made some sense to me because I had a friend who would share his thoughts, memories, and feelings with me. I still felt like he was making it more difficult than it needed to be.
“That’s not your problem! But now, you might have just made it Earth’s problem. How can we even trust them? How do we know you didn’t lead new enemies to our doorstep?”
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“I wasn’t going to let innocent people die. Where they’re born and how they’re born are things that don’t matter.” I shook my head in disbelief. I couldn’t get how a guy who had such a stick up his butt about being a hero was trying to justify why I should have let people get shot up or killed by a mech suit in the street. “I was sent to their planet with a purpose, which is why I brought them back here.”
As quickly as I could, I explained to them about how I touched the Sphere and how it sent me to Clamor. Then I told them about the four months I spent there and how Magnus opened his home to me without a second thought, leaving out the part about how much I missed everyone. That was something I would tell them in private if I needed to. I told them about the fight with the Savant and the robot, which raised some eyebrows, but no one interrupted me. It felt kind of lame to tell them that not a whole lot happened for the final two months. I just had a nice birthday party and I showed them the bracelet I got from the family I helped keep together.
“They feel responsible for the Sphere causing this mess. They want to fix it and they want to help.” I stood up and stretched, suddenly wanting nothing more than a nice nap in my own bed. Alex’s little outbursts had pushed me over the tipping point. I was officially exhausted, both socially and physically. “The floor’s open to questions, so let ‘em rip.”
“You touched the ball and gave a race of technologically advanced aliens access to Earth. Unbelievable.” Clenching his jaw, Alex jabbed a finger in my chest. “You don’t know how irresponsible this is. You have no idea how poorly this could go. At least appreciate and understand how much this could blow up in all of our faces.”
“Alex! I only survived because I touched it! If I didn’t, the Sentinels were going to kill me. God, lay off for a few fucking seconds and at least give me a few hours in my own home before you bring your soapbox in here and start preaching.” I shoved his hand away. “What was I supposed to do there? Just start attacking them and hope they didn’t kill me? I needed the pjulsen to get home. There was nothing else I could do. I had no other options. No. Other. Options, Alex.”
“You aren’t the only one who had trouble getting home from that mountain. It took us two days to get back to the hotel, but how much have you wanted to chat about that?”
“I’m so sorry that I’ve only had time in the two hours I’ve been home for one story about finding one’s way back home.” I was way too tired, which didn’t help how agitated I was. I still hadn’t fully cooled down from my little visit to Arizona. “Why are you being such an irrational dickhead again? You could at least give it a few days before you act like an ass.”
To show how calm and collected he was, Alex’s glowing hand shot out of a cannon at me. Months of training with Sven had prepared me for sudden attacks, and Alex was not as fast as lightning, even if seeing a human launching an attack had become a little foreign to me. I created a shield on my arm and blocked his attack with ease. There were some gasps in the room. No one dared move an inch.
“You know what? Get out of my house.” I shoved him back and pointed at the door, but he didn’t move. “Get out of my house now, or I’ll make you get out. You can come back when you want to act like an adult.”
“Ethan, wait, please,” Lori pleaded, putting a hand on both of us.
“Watch the steps on your way out! Wouldn’t want you to fall and ram that stick up your ass any higher!” We didn't have any steps in front of the door, so my insult wasn't too logical. That’s what a fried brain and some broken fingers will do to a guy. They kill his nonexistent insult game. It was a good thing logic wasn't the point of the insult.
Alex just brushed Lori’s hand and my insult off, pouting and grumbling something I couldn’t make out. Pissed, he stormed out and slammed the door hard enough to break one of the hinges.
For some reason, that was what pushed me over the edge. “That stupid son of a-”
“It’s okay, it’s just a door.” Rebecca had her hands on my shoulder, gently trying to pull me back toward her. Her eyes were soft and full of love, but I got the message she wanted to convey from the stern look behind all the affection. I needed to settle down before it was more than just a door that got broken. I let her pull me down on the couch and wrap her arm around me, which didn’t take much convincing. “Thank you for having the cooler head.”
“Lori, I’m sorry.” I thought she’d be mad. Instead, she just looked saddened. I was surprised she decided to let him go. She sat down and rested her chin in her hands.
“He’s a grown man, he’ll figure it out.” She pursed her lips and frowned. “I just want you to think about it from our perspective. You were dead for months, you suddenly come back looking completely different. Even the way you act...it’s not really different, but it’s not quite how you were acting a few months ago. Then you show up with aliens and your strange stories, so all of us are a little stunned. It was hard for us. All of us. Half of us voted to go there. We thought we got you killed.”
“I swear to you all, I wasn’t trying to be a hero or make some noble sacrifice. I had every intention of getting my butt behind everyone and following you back through that passage. Sometimes plans don’t always work out how we want them to, right?” I scratched my chin and looked toward the ceiling. Even on Clamor, I knew they’d feel guilty. Seeing everyone’s reactions to me being home forced me to face the fact that I didn’t think that deeply about it when I was away. “I’m sorry if I’ve been prickly since I’ve been back. There’s a lot that happened on Clamor and a lot that happened in Glendale.”
“Glendale? Arizona or California? What happened there?” Lori tilted her head to the side, confused.
I looked at her like she told me the moon was falling. “Arizona. I fought McLeod and Heather before coming here. Why do you think I smell so bad? It’s a bazillion degrees there. I was sweating buckets.”
“Oh man, don’t tell me you engaged in a fight with him.” Shelly put her elbows down on the couch and buried her face in her hands.
“What was I supposed to do? He was about to kill two people. President Wallace was in town—real unsettling lady, by the way—so he must have been after her. I had a few choice words for her after she told me about how fighting him was illegal. What a joke.”
“You fought him in front of the president of the United States and then ran your mouth at her!?” Shelly got up and started pacing around our living room. She held her fist up to her mouth, her knuckles just under her lips. “Ethan, things have changed. We don’t fight him because people keep dying when we do. Did you at least hide your face?”
“No.” My face reddened when I realized everyone had their eyes on me. Lizzy and Lori looked at me like I was the coolest guy around, something I hoped Rebecca shared. Shelly wasn’t in on that fun, looking horrified. “I didn’t tell her my name or about the aliens. They had their helmets on, so she couldn’t see them, but she knew something was off.”
“Great, she saw the aliens. That's just what we need” Shelly slumped over the couch, her blonde ponytail whipping over the front of her head. “Well, people were there, you didn’t cover your face, aliens were involved, and President Wallace was involved. Won’t be long until your identity is outed, so I hope it was worth it.”
“Heather almost killed a girl and her dad, so yeah, it was.” I wasn’t happy with the way she was talking. When she took a deep breath and listened to what I said, her expression softened a touch. “Plus, I hurt McLeod. Got him on the cheek. He was real pissed about it and he wants to blow me up in front of the whole world.”
“Ugh, this is going to be a paperwork and PR nightmare. You’re lucky you’re my brother or else I’d have to kick your butt. Maybe I’ll kick your butt anyway.” She patted me on the back and gave me a pained smile. “I am so proud of you for doing the right thing. Both on Earth and off it. We’ve been laying low for a while now, that’s why I blew up a little. Just...try and relax some for a little, okay? We all missed you so much, so spend some time with us before you rush out to save the planet. Either planet.”
My sister walked over to Magnus and gave him a huge hug. At first, he didn’t know how to handle it all that well and looked at me for help. When I just shrugged back, he carefully returned the embrace with his long arms. Rebecca was up next, hugging Magnus and shaking the hands of everyone else. Magnus had an easier time adjusting to everyone and everything thanks to our shared mental link.
“Thank you for keeping him safe. This guy is...he’s special to me.” Rebecca blushed and sat down next to me. Shelly nodded her head in agreement. Per my request, Magnus didn’t link up with any of their minds, so he just nodded in understanding while using my mind to understand.
“Okay, okay, this is all very touching and heartwarming. Well, when our boys don’t have testosterone oozing out of them before a little fight anyway.” Lizzy tried to look like she wasn’t just crying herself, deflecting back to the tiny scrap Alex started to save her emotions. “There’s only one thing I want to know. What did you bring us?”
“I beg your pardon?” I reflexively started to reach for the ring I was still holding in my back pocket. I managed to stop myself before it looked too suspicious and out of place.
“Souvenirs, duh! You get that beautiful bracelet and I want to know what you brought me.” Lizzy crossed her arms and tapped her foot impatiently. That girl had to have been a nightmare during Christmas. When I just stared at her, dumbfounded, she sighed. “Let me give you some advice on girls, okay? Women only want four things in life. We want bread, we want swords, we want cheese, and we want esoteric social media posts that we can relate to like the weird girlies we secretly are. How is this such a hard concept for men to grasp?”
“I don’t get social media, but yeah, bread, cheese, and swords are cool,” Rebecca agreed.
“I could use a sword,” Shelly admitted.
“Sorry everyone, I didn’t bring back anything for anyone this time.” It was a half-lie, and Magnus threw me a sideways glance. “Maybe we can visit if everything doesn’t hit the fan and the world doesn’t go up in flames. Literally.”
“Your friends and family are welcome on Clamor at any time,” Sven confirmed. Something was eating at him, and I wasn’t sure if it was just Charlie’s healing. “Ethan, may I speak with your sister privately?”
“Uh, sure, I guess.” I looked over at Shelly and I knew the concern was showing on my face. “Sven wants to talk to you in your office. Is that okay?”
She nodded, not looking as worried as I did. She just turned and waved for him to follow before vanishing down the hallway. Sven left too, and Magnus was right on his heels, but not without giving me a little bit of encouraging information.
“Don’t worry, I’ll leave her thoughts be. Just a translator this time, promise.”
With some of the folks going, I took the chance that was presented to me. “Sorry to be a bad host, but do you guys care if I go take a shower?” When no one protested in the two seconds I gave them, I scampered up the stairs to finally get back to my own room.
How I could feel nostalgia for a place I hadn’t lived in that long and hadn’t seen in only four months was beyond me, but I felt it. It was home, and I wanted to just throw my body on the bed and sleep for a few days. A quick sniff of my underarms told me I had one more order of business before I could take a nap. I’d never realized how a shower could feel so much like home until I got undressed and let that warm Earth water hit me.