Both Harold and Alice looked across the table at their daughter, taking in what she had just said.
“What?” asked Zoey, continuing her meal.
“What do you mean that you’re leaving?” asked Harold. “Isn’t this a bit sudden?”
“It’s only for a couple days, Dad.”
“Where are you going?” asked Alice.
“Just up north. Visiting some friends.”
“You don’t have any friends,” remarked Alice. “You’ve been on Mars for the last five years.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t know people,” snapped Zoey.
“Just calm down, the two of you,” said Harold. “We’re just worried about you. You show up out of the blue, and then you collapsed, and…”
“I don’t need your permission or anything. I’m an adult.” Zoey got up and stalked up the stairs.
“We just want to know where you’re running off to, that’s all,” said Alice as she followed Zoey up the stairs to Zoey’s room.
“You were just in the hospital the other day,” continued Alice as she passed the threshold of Zoey’s room.
“I told you that was just heat stroke or something,” replied Zoey, pulling some clothes from the drawers and stuffing them into a book bag.
“How can you have heat stroke in October?”
“It’s not important, Mom. I’m fine. The doctor said I was fine.”
“Anyone can tell that you’re not fine,” said Alice. “We don’t mind that you just dropped in on us out of the blue, without a word for years…”
“I get the idea. Skip to the point.”
“My point is that ever since you’ve been here there’s been, I don’t know, like a wall between you and us. There’s something you’re not telling us. I don’t what happened to you these past years, but you don’t have to hide from us. We’re your parents.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” replied Zoey as she folded up a shirt. “I went to Mars with my friends because of a job opportunity. It didn’t pan out, but I managed for awhile.”
“But your ‘friends’ all died.” At this, Zoey turned to her mother.
“You knew,” said Zoey.
“Did you think that when you went to another planet and never wrote me, that I wouldn’t start reading the obituaries?” Alice sat down on Zoey’s bed, quietly placing Zoey’s book bag on the floor. “And they weren’t your friends. They were punks, punks you hanged out with. We never understood why.”
“Because they were cool,” said Zoey. “Because I thought they were cool.” Zoey sat down next to her mother. “And I thought you weren’t.”
Zoey looked down at her hands. “I couldn’t see past my youthful romanticism and a yearning to escape, from Earth, from, maybe, my family. We were all used by this man who discarded us when he was done.
“I know I’ve had a lot of time to look back, to see how much I’ve acted out and been such a pain in the butt. And I know I’m still am, but I love you and Dad, and I just need you to trust me. Just a little while longer. I swear when I come back, I’ll tell you everything. I just need to do this one thing, and when I come back…”
Alice’s hand lovingly squeezed Zoey’s.
Alice looked into her daughter’s eyes and saw her for the woman she was. “I was always worried that you’d never see those people for who they were or that your father and I only wished to help you, because you’re our daughter and that we love you.” She choked back a tear. “But somehow you’ve grown up without either of our help.”
Mother and daughter hugged, without another word needed.
Later, Zoey went into her parent’s room. It was a poorly kept secret that they owned a gun. Her father bought one when there was a string of break-ins, robbers who habitually raped and killed females found in the houses. At the time, he had a beautiful wife and a five-year-old daughter that he loved more than anything in the world.
As far as she knew, her father never used it, not even to practice using it as he promised his wife that he would. He kept the gun and the ammunition in two separate places, which weren’t too hard for Zoey to guess where.
She took a handful of bullets and slipped them into her pocket. The gun was heavier than she imagined, even though she had held a gun before. It felt even heavier pressed against the small of her back; her shirt draped over it. Its cold metal surface sent a chill up her spine, or was that something entirely different?
She hugged her parents goodbye, saying her farewells and making empty promises that she would return. It was not that she didn’t want to come back, but she knew her chances were slim if the beacon was alien in origin and secret by nature. But she kept a brave face for her parents.
She didn’t need to as she waited at the bus station with the other human driftwood. She sat there in the quiet terminal, hugging her bag and hoping no one noticed the bulge in the back of her jacket. Some were too wrapped up in their digital handhelds, but most of them looked like they were carrying everything they ever owned.
Waiting, Zoey couldn’t help thinking about her own hurried departure not so long ago. In her righteous indignation, Zoey had refused to talk with Sara before stepping onto the space shuttle and leaving for Earth. She regretted letting her emotions get the better of her, and it did not escape her how history seemed to have repeated itself without Zoey being any the wiser.
Everyone avoided eye contact with each other as they quietly boarded the bus. Zoey sat at a window seat. She leaned her head against the cool glass and closed her eyes until the bus jerked into motion.
She couldn’t stop the random images flashing in her mind. They weren’t random information from the Ethernet. No, they were memories, which seemed a lot less substantive than the data that flowed through her head. She couldn’t stop thinking of the day she met Sean and his big lopsided grin. The same one she had just seen the other day.
The evening lights blurred by as the bus moved north. Zoey could still feel the beacon in the back of her mind. It grew as they moved closer and closer to it. Zoey wondered if she could still block its dizzying pain as she got closer to it.
I’ll know soon enough tomorrow.
High above, the strange owl soared, watching the bus intently. The nightlights glimmered off its chrome feathers as it flew off ahead of the bus.
Click here to read Chapter 7
Written by J M Emmons. The story and all characters are copyrighted by J M Emmons.
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