“It doesn’t belong here.” Justin’s dreamy voice and glazed eyes were starting to spook me. He seemed to be in deep shock.
“What do you mean?” Austin croaked.
“My dad makes me read science fiction sometimes,” he said. “He told me it’ll make me like science class better, but I still hate it. Anyway, did you ever read War of the Worlds?”
“Saw the movie,” I said.
“The machines that woke up and started destroying everything were already here, buried in the ground for thousands of years. Put there by some race of aliens a long time ago. Then one day they just flipped the switch when it was time to annihilate us all.”
“Armafuckingeddon,” Austin added unhelpfully. I didn’t like what I heard in his voice.
“Bullshit,” I said.
He shrugged. “Then where the Hell did that rock come from? What is it? No person built a thing like that.”
“We don’t know that,” I said. “We don’t know anything about it.”
“My dad says the more science teaches us the less we actually know,” Justin said vaguely.
“Wow, that’s deep Mr. Professor,” I said, “but not very helpful. Do you have any more insights, Einstein?”
“It talked to me,” Justin continued. “It told me to pick up Mewler.”
I believed him. I heard the voice too. Besides, there’s no way Justin would murder my cat without good reason, not with knowing I’d kick his ass for it.
I glanced at Austin. “Has it talked to you?”
Austin looked away, and said in a small voice, “Yes. It wanted me to pick it up.”
“The rock?”
“Yes,” he growled, “and smash it on your head!”
I swallowed hard. It was only a matter of time before one of us snapped. We were close to it already. Justin was spacing out, and Austin had a look to him like one of those meth heads in those scared-straight videos they showed us in health class. Like he could murder someone. We had to go back up there, take care of business, and do it quick. But not empty-handed.
Goddammit, where are those golf clubs?
Then I noticed the furnace, and the dark space behind it. I hurried over to investigate and broke out in a grin. Wedged back in there, moldy and forgotten, were my dad’s old clubs from his college days. I started pulling them out, one-by-one, discarding the wooden ones immediately. I settled on three of the irons, giving the five-iron to Justin and the six-iron to Austin. I kept the nine-iron for myself. Thus armed we faced each other solemnly one last time.
“Anyone got anything to say?” I looked them both in the eyes. “It’s now or never.”
“Let’s waste the motherfucker,” Austin snarled.
I couldn’t agree more, and without another word we marched up the stairs to finish the deed. As we neared the top of the stairs I heard a sound. A muffled scrape, like a chair being pulled back on linoleum. Then footsteps thumping around hollowly in the house. My heart jackhammered in my throat. I bounded up the remaining stairs and burst through the door — and found my mother standing in the kitchen, chopping carrots and singing softly to herself.
“Hello, Michael,” she said cheerfully. “Are your friends staying for dinner?” Her eyes narrowed when she noticed the golf clubs in our hands. “Thinking of taking up the sport? Your father would be so proud. He thinks you spend too much time playing video games.”
“Jesus, Mom!” I cried, shaking violently. “Where’s Cody?”
“Language, young man! He’s in his room, of course. He couldn’t wait to get home and play with Miranda. What’s gotten into you?”
Once when I was five a hornet stung me on the ass. I was sitting in the middle of a clump of clover, watching my mom pull weeds, when the goddamn thing came out of nowhere and plunged its stinger right in my crack. I howled in agony for a good half hour and had to sit on bags of frozen peas for the rest of the afternoon. An existential moment, I guess you could say, when I learned the universe could give two shits about my personal welfare.
But I never realized until now how cruel the universe could actually be.
I shot off toward Cody’s room, Justin and Austin at my heels with my mother’s frantic voice floating in the air behind us.
When I reached Cody’s door I stopped and listened. A scuffling sound came from the room, then a low, lilting hum, like a little boy singing to himself. My head buzzed as relief flooded through me. The voice was Cody’s. I swallowed a lump in my throat and handed my golf club over to Justin. I didn’t want my little brother to be spooked when he saw me, and I didn’t want to set that thing off and make it feel threatened either. It must have still been digesting.
What must Cody be thinking about all the blood in his room? He wasn’t crying, which was good. I decided I was going to calmly get my little brother out of there. I was going to do it quickly and quietly, and then I was going to buy him the biggest goddamn ice cream cone he’d ever seen. After we drowned the Miranda-thing in the pond, of course.
I twisted the knob and pushed the door open, only to feel the universe sting me in the ass again.
Cody stood in the middle of the floor, arms at his sides, head cocked slightly to the left. His expression was serene, his skin shiny and swirling with those perfectly alien colors. A wet ring of sticky blood encircled his mouth, and more stained the front of his Curious George T-shirt. His eyes lit up with recognition when he saw me. Miranda was gone, and the room stunk like a morgue.
Cody lifted his hand and gave me a little wave.
I braced myself for what I had to do. I had my friends; I had my mission. There are no answers sometimes for the mysteries of
