The Starry Rift Part 7

"I don't think he liked me," I said. "I didn't like him most of the time. But he was a good coach. He wasn't ever harder on me than he should have been."

"I told Coach Turner that you wouldn't be back for a while," my father said. "To be honest with you, I don't know what we'll do. If we'll be allowed to stay. There's been some talk in the hangar. Rumors that our government is responsible. That we were targeting Calexico. It doesn't seem likely to me, but we weren't going to be very popular down here, Dorn, even before people starting making up stories like that. And I'm not going to be much more popular back in Philadelphia. I checked in with my team. Dr. Willis yelled for about five minutes and then she just hung up. I skipped out even though I knew they were going to need me."

"Maybe you would have gotten sick if we'd stayed," I said. "Or maybe I would have gotten sick."

My father studied his hands. "Who knows? I was planning to tell you about the visas. Give you a choice. But then I just couldn't leave you. You know, in case." He stopped and swallowed. "I was talking to Paula and some of the other Hans Bliss people. As of this morning they haven't been able to get hold of anyone out that way. At the colony. They've been under quarantine, too, remember? And no doctor. Just two OB-GYNs and a chiropractor."

"Everything will be fine," I said. I was a regular cheerleader. But I couldn't help looking around again, and this time I could see all the things that I'd been trying not to see. All around us, other people were having, had been having, conversations just like this one. About people who had died. About what had been going on while we were trapped in here.

I said, "The aliens are coming back to see Hans Bliss, remember? So there's no way that Hans Bliss can just keel over dead from something like flu. Those aliens probably vaccinated him or something. Remember how he said he didn't ever get sick anymore?"

"Good point," my father said. "If you're gullible enough to buy all the things that Hans Bliss says."

"Hey, you two," Naomi said. She looked flushed and happy, as if she'd gotten the last word again with the Hans Bliss guy. She didn't seem to be annoyed with me. And I couldn't really be annoyed with her, either. Everything she'd said was true, more or less. I hadn't known her very long, but I already knew that that was the terrible thing about Naomi.

My father took the soccer ball out of my hands. I don't even know when I'd picked it up, but it felt right to let go of it. He put it down on the floor, sat down beside me on the cot, and patted my leg. "It will all be fine," he said, and I nodded.

My brother Stephen was older than me by four years. He didn't like me. According to my father, when I was a baby Stephen used to unfasten my seat belt and also the strap that held my baby seat in. When I was five, he pushed me down a flight of stairs. I broke my wrist. My mother saw him do it, and so once a week for the next two years Stephen went to see a counselor named Ms. Blair in downtown Philadelphia; I remember I was jealous.

When our parents got divorced, Stephen was ten and I was six, and they decided they would each take custody of one child. Stephen thought that this was a great idea. His goal had always been to become an only child.

My mother went back home to Dalton, Colorado, where she took over the bookkeeping at her family's fancy dude ranch and spa.

Whenever I flew out to visit, Stephen made sure I understood that it was all his. His house, his horses-all of them-his mom, his grandparents, his uncles, aunts, cousins. He came back east to stay with us once, and then he developed an inner-ear condition that made it impossible for him to fly. So he didn't ever have to come visit again. He didn't like my father much either.

The last time I saw my mom and Stephen, Stephen was applying to colleges. He didn't seem to loathe me as much as usual. He was practically an adult. I was just a kid. I was athletic, which he wasn't, but my grades were pitiful. I was small for my age. He could tell how annoyed I was that he was tall and I wasn't, and somehow it made things better. He had a girlfriend, a ma.s.sage therapist at the spa, and he didn't even care that she made a point of being nice to me. I had a pretty good time on that trip. My mother and I rode out and went camping down in the canyons. Stephen's girlfriend cooked dinner for us when we got home. It was almost like we were a family. Stephen showed us a movie he'd made to send along with his college applications. When I said I liked it, he was pleased. We got into arguments the way we always did, but this time I realized something, that Stephen liked a good fight. Maybe he always had, or maybe he'd just grown up. If you stood up to him, it made him happy. I had never tried standing up to him before. He was applying for a visa so he could go study at a big-deal film school in Calexico.

A few months later, the horses at the dude ranch started dying. My mother e-mailed and said my uncle had brought the local vet in. They were putting the sick horses down. When we talked on the phone, she sounded terrible. My mother loved horses. Then people on the ranch started dying, too. Sometimes a flu will jump from one species to another. That's why a lot of people don't keep cats or birds as pets anymore.

I talked to my mother two more times the next day. Then things got worse, real fast. My father was staying over at the hospital, and lots of people were dying. My mother got the flu. She died. Stephen died. The girlfriend got sick, and then she got better again. She sent one e-mail before she got sick and one after she got better, which is how I found out what had happened. Her first e-mail said that Stephen had wanted her to tell us how much he loved us. But he probably died in quarantine. He probably felt like he was getting a cold, and then I bet his temperature shot up until he was delirious or completely unconscious and couldn't say anything to anyone. My dad said that their kind of flu was fast. So you didn't suffer or anything. I think the girlfriend was just making all that up, about Stephen and what he supposedly said. She was a nice person. I don't think he'd ever said anything to her about how much he disliked me. About how he used to try to kill me. You want the people you like to think that you get along with your family.

It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, telling my father when he finally came home. And we haven't talked about it much since then. I don't know why it's easier for some people to talk about aliens than to talk about death. Aliens only happen to some people. Death happens to everyone.

That night in the hangar, I dreamed about Sorken. He was standing in front of the goal, instead of me, and he was talking at me in Spanish, like the Costa Rican guard. I knew that if I could only understand what he was saying, he'd be satisfied, and then I could take the goal again. I wanted to say I was sorry that he was dead, and that I was sorry that I was in Costa Rica, and that I was sorry I hadn't ever called him back when he left all those messages, but he couldn't understand what I was saying because I couldn't speak Spanish. I kept hoping that Lara would show up.

Instead the aliens came. They came down just like Hans Bliss had said, in this wave of feeling: joy and love and perfect acceptance and knowingness, so that it didn't matter anymore that Sorken didn't remember how to speak English and I didn't know Spanish. For the first time we just understood each other. Then the aliens scooped up Sorken and took him away.

I grabbed on to the frame of the soccer goal and held on as hard as I could, because I was sure they were going to come back for me. I didn't want to go wherever it was, even though it was beautiful, so beautiful; they were even more beautiful than Hans Bliss had said. A wave of warm, alien ecstasy poured over me, and then I woke up because Naomi was. .h.i.tting me on the shoulder. She had a plate of food with her. Breakfast.

"Stop moaning about how beautiful it is," she said. "Please? Whatever it is, it's really, really beautiful. I get that, totally. Oh s.h.i.t, Dorn, were you having a wet dream? I am so very embarra.s.sed. Oh yuck. Let me go somewhere far away now and not eat my breakfast."

I wanted to die. But instead I got changed under the foil blanket and then went and got my own breakfast and came back. Naomi had her nose in a book. I said, "I don't see what the big deal is. It's just something that happens to guys, okay?"

"It happens to girls, too," Naomi said. "Not that I want to be having some s.e.x-education discussion with you. Although you probably need it, from what I hear about American schools nowadays."

"Like you had it so much better," I said. "And my dad's a doctor, remember? I know everything I need to know and lots of other stuff, too. And what were you doing last night? You woke me up when you came to bed. I don't even know when it was. It was late."

"My parents homeschooled me," Naomi said. "They wanted me to have every advantage." Her eyes were all red.

"What?" I said. "Are you sick? Is everything okay?"

"I think so," Naomi said. She sc.r.a.ped her nose with a sterile wipe. "I talked to my mom last night. She says that Vermont is still under martial law, so she can't get out to see my grandmother. She can't get her on the phone either. That's probably bad, right?"

"It might not be," I said.

Naomi didn't say anything.

"At least your mom and dad are all right," I said.

She nodded.

"Here," I said. "Let's get a book for you. Something cheerful. How about Naomi Novik?"

We sat and she read and I thought about stuff. Sorken. My father. My mother. My brother Stephen. I thought about how the kind of thing that Stephen thought was funny when he was alive wasn't really anything that I thought was funny. For example, when he pushed me down the stairs. I remember he was giggling. The last time I was out visiting my mother, it was different. He laughed at some of the things that I said, and not like it was because he thought I was an idiot. We got into one of those arguments about something really stupid, and then I said something and he just started laughing. I wish I could remember what I said, what we were arguing about.

Naomi looked up and saw me looking at her. "What?" she said.

"Nothing," I said.

"Hey," she said. "Do you surf?"

"No," I said. "Why?"

"Not much to do out there on the beach with Hans Bliss," she said. "Not a lot of soccer players. Everybody goes surfing. You know that Hans Bliss guy? Philip? The one with the tattoo and the mother. Paula." The one with the big nose. "He was telling me this story about a guy he knew, a surfer. One day this surfer guy was out in the water and he got knocked under by this really big wave. He went down and his board shot out from under him, really sliced him. But he didn't realize what had happened until he got out of the water, because the water was really cold, but when he got out of the water and pulled his suit down, it turned out that the fin on his board had cut his ball sac right open, and he hadn't felt it because the water was so cold. When he pulled his suit down, his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e fell out and was just hanging there, way down on his leg on, like, this string. Like a yo-yo."

"So?" I said. "Are you trying to gross me out or something? My dad's a doctor, remember? I hear stories like this all the time."

Naomi looked nonplussed. "Just be careful," she said. "What's up? Bad news?"

I'd found my cell phone, and I was trying to decide whether or not to listen to Sorken's messages. But in the end I just deleted them. Then I went and got some people together to play soccer.

It was the fifth day, if you're counting, and n.o.body in the hangar had the flu, which was good news, but my father still had his hands full. There was the pregnant woman from Switzerland who had come over to join Hans Bliss. A couple of days in quarantine, and she decided that she'd had enough. She threw this major tantrum, said she was going into labor. The best part: she took off all her clothes before she threw the tantrum. So you had this angry, naked, pregnant woman yelling stuff in German and French and English and stomping her foot like Gojiro. It totally broke up the soccer game. We all stopped to watch.

My father went and sat on the floor next to her. I went and stood nearby, just in case she got dangerous. Someone needed to look out for my father. He said that he'd be happy to examine her, if she liked, but she probably wouldn't go into labor for another month, at least, and we weren't going to be stuck in here that long. And anyway, he'd delivered babies before. All you really needed was boiling water and lots of towels. I think he was kidding about that.

Just a few hours later, a Tico doctor showed up with a full mobile clinic. By that point we were just kind of kicking the ball around. I was showing off some for Lara. The doctor's name was Menoz, and it was all pretty much like my father had said it was going to be. My father and Dr. Menoz talked first, and then they looked at the clinic records my father had been keeping. I hung around for a bit, hoping that Dr. Menoz would just go ahead and tell us that we were free to go, but it seemed like it was going to take a while. So Lara and I went around and got one last soccer match together. A lot of people came and watched.

That guard who'd talked to me a few times was, like, my biggest fan now. Whenever we were playing he yelled and clapped his hands, and he'd dance around when I stopped a goal. All the guards came over to watch this time, not just him, as if they knew that the rules didn't really matter now. So much for quarantine.

Before we started for real, something strange happened. My guard put down his gun. He talked to his friends, and they gave him a high five. Then he came out onto the field. He even took off his N95 mask. He smiled at me. "I play, too," he said. He seemed proud of having this much English. Well, it was more English than I had Spanish.

I shrugged. "Sure," I said. I waved at the other team, the one Lara was on. "Play for those guys. They need all the help they can get."

It was around three in the afternoon, and it was warm, but there was a breeze coming in through the vents up in the tin roof and through the big metal doors. Like always, there was music playing on someone's googly, and the little kids were having a conference over in the petting zoo, probably figuring out what to do with all of the freaky little animals they'd collected. I was almost enjoying being here. I was almost feeling nostalgic. It wasn't like I had a lot of friends in the hangar, but most people knew me well enough to say hi. When I wanted to get a match going, there were always enough people to play, and n.o.body got all that upset about the fact that my team won most of the time. Whatever happened next, I didn't think I'd be spending a lot of time playing soccer. Wherever we ended up, n.o.body was going to know much about me, about what I could do in a soccer game. I'd just be some American kid whose dad was a doctor who had wanted to see aliens.

Naomi, who had decided she enjoyed refereeing a match every once in a while, threw the ball in, and that hangar guard was on it immediately, before anyone else even thought about moving. He was amazing. He was better than amazing. He went up and down the concrete as if no one else was on the floor. And he put the ball past me every single time, no matter what I did. And every time, when I failed to stop him, he just grinned and said, "Good try. Good try."

The worst part is that he did it without even taking advantage of my height. He didn't go over me. He just went around. The way he did it was so good it was like a bad dream. Like science fiction. Like I was Superman and he was Kryptonite. He seemed to know what I was going to do before I did. He knew all about me, like he'd been taking notes during all those other games.

After a while both teams stopped playing and they just watched while he did all sorts of interesting stuff. If I came forward, he skimmed around and behind me. Score. If I hung back in front of the goal, it didn't matter. He put the ball where I wasn't. I didn't give up, though. I finally stopped a goal. I felt good about that, until I realized that he'd let me have the save. I hadn't really stopped anything.

And that was the last straw. There he was, grinning at me, like this had just been for fun. He wasn't even breathing hard. I made myself grin back. He didn't realize I knew he'd let me save that last goal. He didn't even think I was that smart. He clapped for me. I clapped for him. Everyone who had been watching was clapping and yelling. Even Lara. So I just walked away.

I didn't feel angry or upset or anything. I just felt as if I'd found out something important. I wasn't as good as I thought I was. I'd thought I was amazing, but I wasn't. Some guy who'd spent five days standing against a wall holding a gun could walk in and prove in about ten minutes that I wasn't anything special. So that was that. I know you'll think that I was being melodramatic, but I wasn't. I was being realistic. I gave up on soccer right then.

For some reason, I was thinking about the little empty gla.s.s bottle that my father gave my mother, that my mother gave me. I wondered what Sorken would think when I told him I was quitting soccer, and then I remembered Sorken was dead. So I didn't have to worry what he thought.

Something was going on with the Hans Bliss group. They'd disa.s.sembled their modesty wall. Actually, they'd just kicked it over. They were huddled together, looking really bad. Utterly hopeless. I could sympathize. My father and Zuleta-Arango and Dr. Menoz were there too, so I went over. My father said, "Dr. Menoz had some news about the Star Friends community."

"Not good news," I said.

"No," my father said. He didn't sound particularly upset, but that's my father. He doesn't ever seem particularly anything. "One of the last arrivals came in from Calexico, and he had the flu. They weren't being very careful in the community. Hans Bliss didn't believe they were in any real danger. Lots of physical contact. Communal eating. They didn't have good protocols in place. No doctor. They had no doctor."

"It might not have made any difference," Zuleta-Arango said. "There were deaths on one of the cruise ships, too. And in a few neighborhoods of San Jose, a few cities, they have set up additional quarantine zones. There are deaths. But the mobile units are being supplied with vaccines, which Dr. Menoz says will do the trick. It isn't as bad as it's been in the States. We have been lucky here."

"Not all of us," my father said. "Hans Bliss is dead."

The pregnant woman began to wail. Lots of other people were crying. My father said, "The remaining community is in bad shape. As soon as quarantine is lifted here, I'll go out to see how I can help, if they'll let me."

Dr. Menoz popped his cell phone closed and struck up a conversation in rapid Spanish with Zuleta-Arango, Miike, and Purdy. The Hans Bliss people were still standing there. They looked like they'd been pithed. That guy Philip, the one with the surfer friend, the one that Naomi seemed to like, blew his nose hard. He said to my father, "We'll all go out. There will be things that they need us to do."

"What about me?" I asked.

"Yes," my father said. "What about you? I can't send you home."

Dr. Menoz said, "As of right now, I'm authorized to lift quarantine here. This news is good, at least? There will be a bus outside the hangar within the hour. It will transport all of you into San Jose, to a center for displaced travelers. They are arranging for the necessary series of vaccinations there. Shall I make the announcement or would you prefer to do it?"

Zuleta-Arango made the announcement. There was something anticlimactic about it. Everyone already knew what he was about to say. And what he said wasn't really the thing that we needed to know. What we didn't know was what was going to happen next. Where we would be sent. What would happen in the next few weeks. When the flight ban would be lifted. Where the flu had come from. Whether or not the people that we loved would be okay. What we would find when we got home.

Naomi had already packed up her duffel bag. She said, "Lots of people have been coming by, bringing back your father's books. I finished the last Kim Stanley Robinson. I guess there are still a couple of short-story collections. I heard about Bliss. That really sucks. Now I feel bad about calling him an idiot."

"He was an idiot," I said. "That's why he's dead."

"I guess," Naomi said. "What's in that bottle?"

Like I said, the gla.s.s bottle with nothing inside it was the first present that my father ever gave my mother. He told her that there was a genie in the bottle. That he'd bought it at a magic shop. A real magic shop. He said that he'd already made two wishes. The first wish had been to meet a beautiful girl. That was my mother. The second wish was that she would fall in love with him, but not just because of the wish. That she would really fall in love with him. So already you can see the problem, right? You wouldn't fall for some guy who was telling you this. Because if you fall in love with someone because of a wish, how can it not be the wish that makes you fall in love? I said that to my mother one time and she said that I was being too literal minded. I said that actually, no, I was just saying that my father's made-up story was kind of stupid.

My mother always said that she'd never used that last wish. And I didn't understand that either. Why didn't she use it when they were getting divorced? Why didn't she use it to make Stephen like having a little brother better? I used to think that if I had the bottle I'd wish for Stephen not to hate me so much. For him to like me. Just a little. The way that older brothers are supposed to like younger brothers. There were other wishes. I mean, I've made lists and lists of all the wishes I could make, like being the best goalie there has ever been. Like getting taller by a few inches. Other stuff that's too embarra.s.sing to talk about. I could come up with wishes all day long. That it wouldn't rain. That I'd suddenly be a genius at math. That my parents would get back together.

I hadn't ever made any of those wishes, not even the soccer wish, because I don't believe in wishes. Also because it would be like cheating, because when I was a famous goalie I'd always wonder if I were really the best soccer player in the world, or whether I'd just wished it true. I could wish that I were taller, but maybe one day I will be. Everyone says that I will be. I guess if I were Paula or one of the Star Friends, I'd wish that Hans Bliss had been smarter. That he hadn't died. Or I'd wish that the aliens would come back. I don't know which of those I'd wish for.

I gave the bottle to Lara when she came over to say good-bye. I didn't really mean anything by it.

She said, "Dorn, what is this?"

"It's a genie in a bottle," Naomi said. "Like a fairy tale. Dorn says that there's one wish left in there. I said that if he gave it to me, I'd wish for world peace, but he's giving it to you instead. Can you believe it?"

Lara shook the gla.s.s bottle.

"Don't do that," I said. "How would you like to be shaken if you were an invisible genie who's been trapped in a bottle for hundreds of years?"

"I don't believe in wishes," Lara said. "But it is very sweet of you, Dorn, to give it to me."

"It belonged to my mother," I said.

"His dead mother," Naomi said. "It's a precious family heirloom."

"Then I can't keep it," Lara said. She tried to give it back.

I put my hands behind me.

"Never mind then," Lara said. She looked a little annoyed, actually. As if I were being silly. I realized something: Lara wasn't particularly romantic. And maybe I am. She said, "I'll keep it safe for you, Dorn. But I have something important to tell you."

"I know," I said. "You were watching the guard walk all over me. During that last game. You want to tell me to pick a new career."

"No, Dorn," Lara said. Even more annoyed now. "Stop talking, okay? That guard isn't just a guard, you know? He was on the team for Costa Rica. The team that was supposed to go to the World Cup three years ago, before the last influenza."

"What?" I said.

"His name is Olivas," Lara said. "He got into a fight this summer and they kicked him off the team for a while. He sounds like you, Dorn, don't you think? Not very bright. But never mind. He says you are good. Talented."

"If I were any good, he wouldn't have been able to walk past me like that, over and over again," I said. But I started to feel a little better. He wasn't just a guard with a gun. He was a professional soccer player.

"No, Dorn," Lara said again. "You are good, but he is very good. There is a difference, you know?"

"Apparently," I said, "there is a difference. I just hadn't realized how big. I didn't know he was, like, a soccer superstar. I thought that maybe he was just average for Costa Rica. I was thinking that I ought to quit soccer and take up scuba diving or something."

"I hadn't realized that you were a quitter," Lara said. She still sounded very disapproving. Her eyebrows were knit together, and her lower lip stuck out. She looked even prettier, and it was because she was disappointed in me. Interesting.

"Maybe you ought to get to know him better," Naomi said, looking at me looking at Lara like she knew what I was thinking. "Dorn needs to pack. You two will have plenty of time to talk on the bus. It's not like you're never going to see each other again. At least, not yet. Lara, pele el ojo. Your mother is coming this way."

"Es un chingue," Lara said. "Que tigra!" She sighed and kissed me right on the mouth. She had to dip her head down. Then she dashed off. Zip. When I thought about it, I wasn't looking forward to getting to know her mother, and her mother sure wasn't looking forward to getting to know me.

"So," Naomi said. She was grinning. "You know what Lara told me a few days ago? That she wasn't ever planning on having boyfriends. You can't get serious about boys if you want to go to Mars. So much for that. Not that you'll care, but you aren't the only one who got lucky."

"What?" I said. "Did that blond girl come over to show you her engagement ring or something?"

"No," Naomi said. She waggled her eyebrows like crazy. "I got lucky. Me. That cute guy, Philip? Remember him?"

"We're not thinking about the same guy," I said. "He's not cute. I know cute. I am cute."

"He's nice," Naomi said. "And he's funny. And smart."

I didn't know so much about nice. Or smart. I finished packing my suitcase, and started in on my father's. I wished I hadn't given away that little gla.s.s bottle. I could have given Lara a paperback instead. "You must have a lot to talk about."

"I suppose," Naomi said. "You know the best part?"

"What?" I said. I looked around for my father and finally spotted him. He was sitting on a cot beside the pregnant woman, who probably had a name but I'd never bothered to find out. She was sobbing against his shoulder, her mouth still open in that wail. Her face was all shiny with snot. I was betting that if her baby was a boy, she'd name him Hans. Maybe Bliss if it was a girl.