Chapter 12 – Alice
Alice bolted upright in bed. She’d just felt a buzz – or heard a buzz – that yanked her from a dream. Outside, an ambulance passed. Its siren pulsed through the thick night air from seven stories below while flashes of light darted across the room then ran off with the fading siren sound. But the room didn’t quiet. Another noise, a ringing, stayed there with her. She ran a sleep-clumsy hand along her nightstand, raking her fingers to locate an alarm clock or phone that wasn’t there. Then, she looked at her wrist and understood where the sound was coming from. She raised her right index finger and tapped her watch with the vague feeling that she was poking a beehive on some ill-fated dare. “Hello? Who is this?”
“Alice!”
“Griff?” Alice leapt from the bed. She held her left wrist close to her mouth and bounced like a ball in a lottery machine. “Griff! We have cell service again!”
“Hey, Alice,” Griff chuckled, while a loud “Yo, Alice!” boomed in the background.
“Bear!” Alice yelled back, now positively giddy. She felt like they all hadn’t spoken in years, rather than a week. “How are you guys? Are you alright? Have you spoken to home?”
“Whoa! Hold your fire! I’m okay,” Griff began. The connection was poor, but Alice thought she heard the same joyful relief she felt in her stepbrother’s voice. “Except for some bruised ribs and almost getting killed –”
“What?”
“Oh, he’s fine,” Bear interjected. “I’m not sure how long we’re gonna have the connection, so let’s get to the message.”
Alice wasn’t sure that she’d heard him right. The call was very choppy, and there seemed to be a lag each time a person spoke. Griff’s voice came back on the line. “I haven’t heard anything from home. Nothing except this message on the watch.”
“What message?”
“Bear and I both got it. I’m assuming you did, too. Look at the LCD screen.”
Alice looked at the small, illuminated screen. Instead of the time, she saw a cryptic message that made no sense to her:
Children,
The CMEs are just the beginning
Things will get much worse
You must gather as five
And let us guide you
“Hey, Alice, you still there?”
“Yeah,” she responded. “Still here, but what is this supposed to mean?”
“No idea.”
“All right.” She paused and stared at the words on the tiny screen, puzzled. “Is it just me, or does this seem totally crazy? And don’t you dare tell me it’s me.”
Back in the newlywed days of Alice’s dad and Griff’s mom, Alice would catch Griff twirling a finger at his temple whenever Alice started hyperventilating which, she had to admit, was pretty often. She’d just moved to Arizona from Manhattan and left her mom, her school, and her friends behind. She was inheriting a stepmom and a mopey stepbrother. With a Big Attitude. He made her anxious. She’d hated him from the beginning.
And then Paul Clusky came along. Paul, a tall seventh-grader with strangely long femurs, had a reputation for unparalleled scoring on the town’s traveling soccer team and a mean, dirty elbow on the hoops court. Self-awareness of these attributes molded the fleshy jowls of his face into a permanent look of smugness. One day, during class change, Alice had an attack in front of her locker. It was the kind of panic attack she hated most, the kind that came on without a clear trigger, the kind she could never be prepared for. She placed both hands flat against the wall of lockers and leaned forward to suck air, praying for invisibility. Paul, of course, came whizzing down the hall at precisely that moment practicing imaginary jump shots. Alice quickly learned that she was not only visible but also wildly entertaining to boot. Paul did an energetic pantomime of her misery to a gathering audience. He placed both hands on his neck, spluttering, “Help! I can’t breathe, I need air!” His high falsetto scored plenty of laughs while humiliation tears burned behind Alice’s eyelids.
To top off the sundae, the last person she could have wished to see appeared, seemingly from nowhere. Griff, wiry and cat-like, pushed to the front of the crowd. He studied Alice for a moment with unreadable dark eyes, then turned on Paul. “Knock it off.” His voice was level and steady, barely loud enough to be heard over all the gaspy, raspy breaths going on in the hall, but somehow loud enough to get most of the kids in front of the crowd to stop laughing.
Paul ignored Griff and kept on performing, drunk on attention and cruelty.
“Shut it, Paul!” Griff shouted, and then everyone was quiet, including Paul.
Paul, to no one’s surprise, narrowed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and uttered the words that bullies throughout history have uttered when affronted by a demand for civility. “Make me.”
Alice’s jaw went slack as Griff, without hesitation, threw a fist in Paul’s direction. But it was a fake-out. He stopped short of making contact. Paul reacted by instinct and swung a beefy hand toward Griff which must have been exactly what Griff meant for him to do because Griff expertly side-stepped the punch and looped an arm behind Paul’s shoulder. Using the momentum of the large boy’s own swing, Griff pulled him forward while he kicked Paul’s feet out from under him. It was all handled so fast and efficiently, Alice was stunned. She knew Griff took martial arts classes – he was always kung-fu’ing his way around the basement when he didn’t know anyone was around – but she’d had no idea that he actually knew what he was doing.
Paul ended up with a goose egg on his forehead, and Griff ended up with two weeks of lunchtime detention. Alice, herself, packed him his peanut butter with extra jelly sandwiches each day for the entire two weeks. Truce.
“No, this is definitely crazy, even more than usual,” Griff agreed. It was a well-worn joke between Alice, Griff, and their friends that their super-scientist parents were all a little crazy.
“Seriously,” Alice said. “What are they telling us? How much worse can things get?” She dreaded the answer. “And what do they mean they will ‘guide us’?”
“I don’t know,” Griff said. “But did you get that weird email? The one they must’ve sent just before the flare?”
“Oh yeah!” Alice said, running a finger thoughtfully across her bottom lip. “I saw it on my watch. That one about walking through the halls of the high school or something?”
“That’s it. The only reason it’s in my mind is because it specifically mentioned the watches.”
“Yeah, right. I remember now. I also remember that there was this big, glaring typo in the middle of the message, which is so unlike –”
“Um, guys,” Alice could hear Bear. “There is still no cell service. Or wi-fi for that matter. I just turned on my cell phone, and –”
“Oh, lucky! You still have a phone?”
“We both do,” Griff said. “Neither of us were charging when the flare came, but they’ve been pretty much good for nothing, anyway.”
“ANYway,” Bear cut in again. An echo on the line, along with his distance from Griff’s wrist, made him sound about as clear as an intercom announcer for the F train. “There’s no service at all.”
“There must be some service since we’re talking. But it does sound kind of crappy.” A burst of static made Alice’s point for her.
“What?”
“CRAPPY!” Alice shouted. “Anyway, so, what do you want to do?”
“Well,” Griff began, “I think we should try to find out what this means. But, to be honest, we’ve been kind of stuck figuring out what we were going to do here in Montreal, so this at least gives us some direction. If they want us to meet up for something, we’ll make our way to you – no way you should travel alone – and we can figure it out from there.”
“Do you think you can? Is the border even open?”
“No, I think it’s closed. But we both have American passports, so they have to let us come home. Right?”
Alice wasn’t so sure about that. “What about Lou and Jace? The message says to gather as five, so I’m assuming it’s them, right?”
“Of course. Look at the face of your watch.”
Alice saw that the message had faded, and now the names of her closest friends appeared: Griff, Lou, Bear, and Jace. The last word on the list was “Home.”
“Home,” she said. “What’s ‘home’?”
“Must be Mom and Alan,” Griff answered, referring to his mother and Alice’s father, “or someone’s parents.”
“Right. So, I guess we can just call ‘home’ and ask them what the hell is going on. Or why they are springing mysterious messages on us instead of telling us anything. In fact,” – she sat down on the side of her bed and started twirling a piece of hair nervously around a finger – “that’s been bothering me all along. Why didn’t they tell us anything? Like about the flare? They are astrophysicists, for fuck’s sake. Griff?”
There was hesitation. More static. “I don’t know. I guess we can call them and ask now.”
“I’m trying the ‘home’ indicator on my watch while you’re talking to Alice, and I’m getting nothing,” Alice heard Bear tell Griff.
“Try Lou,” Griff instructed. He asked Alice, “Do you know whether Lou got out of Europe before the flare?”
Alice began to answer, but there was an awful rumble, like someone was clearing a phlegmy throat, and she thought she’d lost them altogether. Then the line opened again. “This service is really bad,” she said.
Alice thought she heard Griff make a sound of agreement, and then Bear’s voice. “I’m not sure this is cell service,” he said. Then, “Hey, Griff, let’s go stand outside. Alice, take your watch near a window.”
“Why?”
“I want to see something.” There was a shuffling, and Alice could hear movement on the other end of the line, the opening and closing of doors. “Alice, if you stand by the window, can you see the sky?”
“No, I’m surrounded by tall buildings. I’m in Manhattan. But,” she conceded, “if I twist my neck and tilt my head all the way to the right, I can make out a slight sliver of stars. Which, by the way, is something I’ve never seen over the city before. At least, not when the power was on.”
“Good. That’s good. We’re out on the street now, and I think the reception is slightly better. What do you think?”
They still sounded like they were on Neptune, but Alice tried to play along. “Maybe a little better,” she lied.
“I have a hunch that if we were in open fields, the line would be much clearer.”
“Bear seems to think we have a satellite phone crammed into our little watches,” Griff said to Alice.
She laughed, but before she could answer, something on the ground caught her attention. On the sidewalk below, a small mob had gathered, maybe six people. Shouts and jeers rose to her window on the night breeze. Griff was saying something on the phone, but Alice blocked him out. Two figures were struggling with a backpack, one trying to pull it away, one trying to hold on. The one trying to hold on to the backpack looked grossly outnumbered.
Alice’s immediate instinct was to call 911, and she looked at the watch on her wrist, wondering if this was now within the realm of possibility. Griff and Bear were yelling something from far away in Montreal, but Alice only heard a distorted word soup.
“Guys, I’ve got to go. Something’s going on down on the street. I’m going to try to get help.”
“Wait, Alice –”
“I’ll call you right back.” She tapped an icon on the face of her watch, and the call disconnected. She searched its face for a way to call 911 but couldn’t figure it out. There was no emergency icon, no number pad, and no cell service indicator. It was as if the display had totally reconfigured itself. Another shout came from the street below, this one more of a pain-laden cry. Alice started to get shaky, her throat tight. No, no, she willed herself. Not now. She looked out onto the dark sidewalk below her window. A few in the skirmish wore headlamps, but from her vantage, it was hard to make out much detail. She gasped as the figure holding the backpack was thrown against the wall, and Alice imagined she could hear the thud of skull against brick seven stories up. The pack was yanked away, and a savage punch, brutal and entirely unnecessary, was delivered to the victim’s facial area. Alice watched the man crumple, his back sliding slowly down the wall. The assailants ran off down the street, whooping and laughing. One was on a skateboard.
