tamcranver (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tamcranver) wrote2008-05-31 10:30 pm
tamcranver) wrote2008-05-31 10:30 pm
Entry tags:
As Far as the Sky, part 9
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
“Jesus fuck, you don’t make it easy, do you?” said the woman, who had her gun pointed right at Bob. Gerard felt a wave of anger so fierce it made his hands shake, and he yanked at the gun with his mind.
There was a deafening bang as the man shot into the dirt at their feet, and everyone except the FBI agents jumped. “Yeah,” the man said, “I wouldn’t fuck with us too much, ET. Believe it or not, we’ve caught aliens before. We have to keep you alive, but these fucks--” He pointed at Ray and Bob with the barrel of his gun. “They’re expendable. Another trick like that, and we’ll see if you can stop bullets with your mind, huh?”
“Well, fuck me,” said one of the tall men who had come with Pete and Patrick. (Gabe, Mikey said. He’s a bounty hunter.) “Don’t we have guns?”
“In the car,” one of the other bounty hunters, Alex, said glumly, and Patrick hit him in the shoulder.
“We’re not getting into a fucking gun battle with the kids right here, asshole,” he said. “We’ll just give them what they want, and….”
The woman laughed. “We’re not highway robbers, dumbass,” she said. “We’re with the FBI. What we want are the two extraterrestrials you’ve been harboring.”
Bob reached out and grabbed Mikey and Gerard by the shoulders and pulled them close to him. He couldn’t really protect them, Gerard knew, but it was kind of comforting anyway.
Pete frowned. “Extraterrestrials? The hell, are you Scully and Mulder or something?”
“Palmer and Viglione,” said the woman. “FBI, Division for Paranormal and Extraterrestrial Phenomena. We’re here to confiscate the two extraterrestrials known as Gerard and Michael Minnelli on behalf of the United States Government. It’s really in everyone’s best interests if you cooperate.”
“What the fuck? You can’t confiscate them,” Patrick said, his face growing red as a tomato. His anger was burning so hot that even Gerard, who wasn’t so good with the feelings, could feel it on the edges of his mind. “They’re kids, and I have legal custody.”
The man raised an eyebrow sardonically. “You can’t have custody of aliens, Mr. Stump. Any and all extraterrestrial beings found on American soil are property of the United States government.” Gerard shuddered at his cold tone, and the total lack of real emotion he felt coming from the man. As far as this guy was concerned, he and Mikey weren’t people at all. He stepped in closer to Bob, trying to stop the chill running through his body.
“Jesus,” said Gabe. “You never told me the kids we were after were aliens. Fuck you, Wentz, that’s a hell of a thing to keep secret!”
“Well, honestly, I didn’t know either,” said Pete, and he gave Mikey and Gerard a small, disbelieving smile. “Guess that explains a lot, huh?”
The bounty hunters looked at them curiously, but Gerard struggled to block them out and think. They clearly knew about his telekinesis, but did that mean he and Mikey couldn’t use it? Then he thought of the man’s threat, and he winced. Too risky; he wasn’t, like, a science whiz or anything, but he knew that bullets coming out of a gun went crazy fast. Maybe Bunny….
No, Gerard, Mikey said firmly, and he held Bunny tighter against his body. Bunny hissed in anger, though, and Gerard got the distinct impression that she wouldn’t mind taking a whack at these FBI guys.
“So,” said the man from the FBI, “are you gonna cooperate?”
“Fuck you, asshole,” Patrick said. “If you think we’re gonna let you take these kids off to God knows where because of where they’re from, you’ve got another think coming.” Ray turned his head to look at Patrick, and Gerard looked up to see Bob nod firmly, a tense but almost approving expression on his face.
“Yeah, see, that’s the thing,” the woman said. “We are actually authorized to use force. Lethal, if necessary.” She smiled, her teeth bright against her lipstick, and tapped her chin with one finger. “Maybe even if not necessary, just for shits and giggles.”
“Um, right,” said one of the other bounty hunters, a tall guy named Ryland. “You think maybe we could just sit down and talk about this? Maybe come to some kind of joint custody arrangement? What?” he said in answer to fierce glares from Bob and Ray and Patrick and Pete. “I think the thing is to get the guns out of the picture first, details later. Don’t you?”
“Jesus Christ,” said the man, rolling his eyes, and in a movement so fast Gerard could scarcely follow it with his eyes, he stepped forward, grabbed Frank, and pulled him out, holding the gun to his head.
Oh, fuck, fuckfuckfuck, Mikey said, and every part of Gerard was in complete agreement. What do we do, Gee?
Gerard didn’t know—if he tried to take the gun away from the man, maybe he’d shoot again, and as close as the gun was to Frank’s head, it would kill him. Gerard didn’t even dare reach for his harmonica. Frank’s face was frozen, his eyes huge with fear and anger, and he was biting down on his lip hard enough to draw blood.
“Here’s your negotiations,” the man said. “Mikey, Gerard, you’re gonna come with us. And if you don’t, you get to live with the knowledge that your little friend here died because you didn’t cooperate. What do you say?”
Gerard wanted to hit back with a snappy comeback, but his mouth had gone totally dry, and his brain was working overtime trying to think of a way to save Frank. Could he make the woman’s gun shoot the man fast enough so that the man didn’t shoot first? Could he maybe just pull Frank out with his mind? Or maybe if he jumped on the man, it’d be enough to distract him so Frank could get away. Oh, God, Frank was gonna die if they fucked this up, Gerard thought. Mikey’s panic had mingled with his, and his throat was tight as his mind raced through the options.
“Well, fuck this noise,” said a voice. It didn’t belong to any of the people there, but Gerard recognized it, though he didn’t know where from. All of a sudden, so quickly it made Gerard’s heart stop in his chest, Agents Palmer and Viglione flopped to the ground, unconscious, and behind them was a man.
Gerard studied the man, his déjà vu almost overwhelming. The stranger was short, with spiky hair and tattoos on his arms, and he opened his mouth to say something in a language that Gerard hadn’t spoken in a long, long time.
Uncle Brian, Mikey said, his mental voice filled with wonder.
They pulled themselves from the knot of adults to run to him, and he laughed and gathered them both into a tight hug. He said something that Gerard didn’t understand, in their home language, and then: Shit, sorry, I forgot. “God, it’s been such a long time,” he said aloud, almost laughing. “I thought…I thought I wasn’t ever gonna see you guys again.”
We thought you were dead, Mikey said.
Uncle Brian shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “I’m not a champion swimmer or anything, but once I saw you guys were safe, I hung out on the driftwood until I got to the shore, which, let me tell you, took a while. Then I hitchhiked until I made it out here.” He looked over their heads, and Gerard turned to see Frank, still standing as still as a statue by the secret agent, and Bob and Ray and Pete and Patrick and all the bounty hunters. “You gonna introduce me to your friends?”
It was like time, which had seemed to slow down, sped back up to a normal pace. Gerard ran to Frank, Mikey on his heels. “Frank! Frank, you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Frank in a slightly quavery voice. He wrapped his arms around Gerard’s neck and buried his face in his shoulder. “I thought being a superhero was gonna be awesome,” he muttered, “but that kind of sucked. I didn’t even fight the guy, how lame am I?”
Not as lame as me, thought Gerard guiltily, and Mikey rolled his eyes at him.
“You’re not lame,” Mikey said firmly to Frank. “You’re the coolest kid ever. I would have wet my pants if it was me.” He tugged at Frank’s hand until he detached from Gerard. “Come on, we want you to meet Uncle Brian.”
“This is Frank,” Gerard said as they drew close to Uncle Brian again. “Frank, this is Uncle Brian. He’s from our planet.” It was funny, he thought, how easily he could say that, now that he knew he had a family, or something like it, who were from the same place he was.
“Pleased to meet you,” Frank said politely, and Uncle Brian grinned.
“Pleased to meet you, too, Frank,” he said. Then, with a softer smile, he added, “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner, and keep that asshole from grabbing you in the first place.” Kid’s gotta have balls of solid steel, he said to Gerard and Mikey.
Yeah, Mikey said proudly.
Bob and Ray and the rest of the adults had started wandering over at this point, and Gerard felt awful for having ignored them. “Uncle Brian,” he said, “this is Bob, and Ray, and Patrick, and Pete, and…Pete’s friends the bounty hunters.”
“The Cobras,” Mikey added, which made Ray laugh.
“Are those guys dead?” Bob asked seriously, gesturing towards Agents Palmer and Viglione.
Uncle Brian shook his head. “And give those fucks at the FBI more reason to go after us? Hell, no. They’ll wake up in a couple of hours. Conveniently enough for all of us, they won’t remember anything that happened in the last day or so. It won’t be enough to totally keep the feds off your backs, but if you all say you don’t remember anything either, I think you’ll be okay.”
“Jesus,” said Gabe. “I gotta learn that trick.”
“So, wait,” Ray said. “You guys seriously have, like, an compound of people from outer space living in the mountains up here?”
Uncle Brian laughed. “Um. Yeah, kind of. It’s a town, really—we call it a “compound” because people are more likely to leave us alone if they think we’re a cult or something.”
“Why here?” Ray asked, his voice still full of awe.
“We sent a couple of scouts out when it looked like we were gonna get wiped out back home, and this was by far the best place we found. Beautiful planet, plenty of natural resources, and enough people so that we could get lost in the crowd. I mean, you’ve got the Federal Bureau of Investigations here, but frankly, we don’t worry too much about those guys. They’ve got the numbers, but we’ve got some skills you guys here apparently don’t.” He shrugged. “Go figure.”
“Wow,” Pete said. “This shit is nuts.”
“From your perspective, maybe,” said Uncle Brian. “Honestly, we’re just trying to live our lives without totally freaking your planet out. Hence the town up in the mountains. Speaking of which….” He grinned at Mikey and Gerard. “These guys have a grandmother who’s spent the last nine years waiting for them to turn up and come live with her.”
“We have a grandma?” Gerard said. This was insane—just this morning he’d been a weirdo orphan runaway, and now he was a kid from another planet, with a grandma and an honorary uncle and a place where he and Mikey would fit in.
“You have a grandma,” Uncle Brian confirmed, “and she’s a pretty kick-ass lady.”
Mikey blinked. “Wow.”
Uncle Brian turned again to the adults. “Thanks for getting them here. God, I don’t even know what kind of shit you had to go through—well, I kind of do, the psychic thing, but living through it’s a whole different matter. But seriously, we’ve been waiting around for years, looking for survivors from that crash, and Gerard and Mikey are the first two we’ve found. I can’t even tell you how happy people are gonna be. No joke, if you’re ever in trouble, call up the Castaways. We’re always glad to find Earth people who don’t suck.”
Bob nodded slowly. “Not a problem,” he said. “They’re great kids.”
“Yeah,” said Pete, nodding firmly. “Holy shit, though, aliens! God, if I’d have known there were a whole bunch of you guys out here….”
“You’d have given us a call to set up a reality TV contract?” Uncle Brian said, raising an eyebrow. He didn’t seem angry, but there was a certain sternness in his face, and Pete winced.
“You’re probably right,” he said, and then he turned his head to look at Gerard and Mikey with a dejected expression. “Sorry, guys. All this shit was my fault,” he said, not meeting their eyes. “If I hadn’t made you help me out….”
“Don’t feel bad, Pete,” said Gerard, hating to see anyone unhappy now, when his own happiness was so huge and all-encompassing he felt like he was gonna burst into tears. They had a family. People had been looking for them. “Everything happened like it was supposed to—if you hadn’t asked us to help you, then we wouldn’t have found out where we were supposed to be.”
“Well, I still feel like a dick,” said Pete. He looked at them apologetically, and then at Patrick, just as apologetically.
“I,” Patrick began, and then his voice broke and he stopped. “You guys…” he started again, and Gerard felt a rush of conflicting feelings coming from him—guilt, because he hadn’t wanted them to begin with, he’d only taken them in because Pete wanted him to; amazement, at the fact that they were actually going away to live with their alien family; regret, that he hadn’t been able to be the kind of father figure he’d gradually discovered he wanted to be; and a deep, warm, affection that made Gerard flush with pleasure.
“You rock, Patrick,” he said, hugging him.
Mikey nodded earnestly. “Yeah. Good thing we were around to save you that one time, because this all would have sucked a whole lot more if you weren’t here.”
“Thanks again for that,” Patrick said, his voice thick with unshed tears. “I hope you guys have a great time with your grandma, and if you ever need anything…I’m around, and I’d really, really like to hear how you’re doing.”
“Totally,” said Gerard. Surely after all the fuss had died down about them, they’d be able to come back, right? They had to, so they and Frank could….
Oh. Frank. Gerard drew slowly back from Patrick and looked over to where Frank stood, looking small and very alone.
“This is awesome, you guys,” Frank said with an overly bright smile. “You have a grandma, and an uncle, and the FBI’s never ever gonna be able to find you. You could rule the world from up there, seriously.”
“But we’re still gonna be in a band together, right?” said Mikey hopefully. Who’s gonna teach me to play the guitar if Frank’s not around? he said to Gerard, a mournful note in his mental voice.
Frank shrugged. “I guess we could, but why would you want to? I bet there are plenty of kids up there who can make shit move with their drums and guitars and stuff. You could have a whole band made up of super heroes.”
“Hey, Batman didn’t have any super powers, and he was an awesome hero,” Gerard said with a frown. “And anyway, we don’t want to have a whole band made up of superheroes. We wanna be in a band with you.” It was true, and it suddenly hit Gerard that going with Uncle Brian meant they’d be leaving the best friend they’d ever had, maybe forever. In the split second it took for that to sink in, he came to a conclusion. Mikey’s glee at his decision was so intense it couldn’t be verbalized, so Gerard figured that meant it was a good idea. He reached out and grabbed Frank by the wrist. “Uncle Brian?” he said. “Can Frank come with us?”
“Wait, seriously?” Frank said. “You don’t have to….”
Mikey frowned at him and said, “Shut up. We want to. Can he, Uncle Brian?”
Uncle Brian didn’t ask anything stupid about Frank’s parents—of course he didn’t, Gerard, thought, he was psychic. Instead, he looked at Frank seriously. “I don’t mind,” he said. “We’ve got more than enough to go around up there, but are you gonna be comfortable with that, Frank? Except for Gerard and Mikey here, we all speak another language most of the time, and you’re not psychic, so you might not always be able to understand what we mean. And it’s cool having a couple of friends with super powers, I know, but can you handle everyone having super powers if you don’t?”
Frank blinked and mouthed the words “super powers” silently to himself. Gerard looked anxiously at him. He didn’t want Frank to feel like a freak the way he and Mikey had for so long, but at the same time, he really, really wanted him to come with them.
“Would I get to stay with Mikey and Gerard?” asked Frank, looking like he was seriously thinking it over. Uncle Brian nodded, and Frank said, “Then yeah. I mean, if it isn’t too much trouble for you.”
“No trouble at all,” said Uncle Brian. “The more the merrier. So is this everything? Are you guys ready to go?”
“Well, hold up,” said Frank, and he strode over to Patrick and Pete. “Hey,” he said, “You’re the one who gave a shitload of money to the Home, right?”
Pete had been standing with his head on Patrick's shoulder, hugging him with one arm, but he pulled away to give Frank a confused look. “Um, yeah,” he said.
Frank nodded. “Okay, can you tell Spencer and Brendon and everyone what happened, so they don’t worry and stuff?”
Pete made a rude noise in the back of his throat. “Tell them you went off to live in a town full of aliens? Sure, I could do that.”
Patrick elbowed Pete in the side. “Don’t be an ass,” he said. To Frank, he added, “We’ll come up with something to tell them. Don’t worry.”
“Cool, thanks.” Frank gave them a bright grin and said to Uncle Brian, “Just one more minute—gotta say goodbye to Bob and Ray.”
Oh. Yeah. Gerard had forgotten that Bob and Ray weren’t coming, too—they had jobs and lives and stuff that didn’t have anything to do with Gerard and Mikey and Frank. Some of his excitement was fading into a heavy feeling of lonely sadness deep in his chest, and he took a slow, hesitant step towards Bob. “I—Bob….” he began, and then he shut his mouth. Maybe everyone would understand, but breaking down crying was just not that cool.
“Gerard,” said Bob, gruffly, and then suddenly they were hugging, and Gerard was clinging to Bob’s solid form like it was the only thing keeping him on the planet. Mikey and Frank stepped closer and were absorbed into the hug as well. Bob patted Mikey on the back and said, “You kids better be good—if your grandma comes down from that mountain telling me you’ve given her more grey hairs or whatever, I’m gonna kick your asses.”
Gerard wasn’t fooled at all by Bob’s attempt to sound badass. “We’re really gonna miss you,” he said, pulling his face away from Bob’s chest to look him in the eye. “Thank you so much for everything.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Bob, shaking his head as he drew them even closer. And then, like he was telling a secret, he mumbled, “I’m gonna miss you, too,” into Gerard’s hair.
When Bob let them go, Ray stepped up to shake each of their hands. “Wow,” he said. “Believe me when I say it’s been a pleasure knowing you guys. I’m so glad I got to help you with this, it’s just crazy.”
Not only did he get to rescue kids, he got to meet aliens. It’s like his superhero dream and his alien dream come true at once, Mikey said with a grin. And I’m pretty sure he and Bob are in love, too. Best day ever, totally.
Gerard wanted to ask what the hell Mikey was talking about, but saying goodbye to Ray was really more important, he thought, so he said, “Thanks for letting us ride in your camper and saving us from the cops and stuff.”
“Yeah, Ray,” said Frank. “You’re the man!”
Ray grinned hugely and said, “Hey, if you guys ever come back for a visit, you gonna tell me all about the town and your home planet and stuff?”
Mikey nodded. “Definitely.”
There was a rustling noise from the ground, and they all looked down to see Bunny staring at Mikey with a serious expression on her pointy, furry face. Mikey reached down to pick her up with a smile of greeting. After a moment, though, he frowned, and the two of them had an intense, silent discussion. Finally, Mikey turned back to Bob and held out Bunny to him. “Bunny wants to stay with you,” he said in a low voice. Gerard could tell that he was maybe trying not to cry.
“Oh, shit, Mikey,” Bob said, looking like he was feeling a little choked-up, too. “Bunny’s your cat, I can’t take her.”
“Please? She won’t be any trouble.” He sighed. “She says she’s kind of gotten to like riding around in cars and vans all the time, and now she wants to see the band you work for.” Plus, he said to Gerard, she’s pretty sure there aren’t any other cats on Wolf Mountain, and she doesn’t want to get cut off from her people like that. Frankly, Gerard thought he could understand where Bunny was coming from.
“Your cat wants to go on tour with the Used with me,” Bob said incredulously. “Well, hell, why not?” He reached out to take Bunny gently from Mikey’s arms, and he scratched between her ears until she started purring so loudly Gerard could hear her from twenty feet away.
“Take good care of her,” Mikey said.
Bob nodded solemnly. “Always.”
Mikey sighed and waved to Bunny before turning to walk back over towards Uncle Brian. Gerard paused for a minute, feeling as if someone was tugging at his mind. It wasn’t words, not really, but the idea, Take care of him, too, hovered in Gerard’s head with the gravity of an order. He looked tentatively at Bunny. She was staring back at him with big, intensely-focused eyes, and Gerard gulped.
I will, he thought. He had never been good at projecting his thoughts like Mikey was, but he thought Bunny looked vaguely satisfied with him.
“Gerard?” Bob asked softly.
Gerard smiled at him as best he could. “Had to settle things with Bunny,” he said.
He turned around to run after Frank and Mikey. When he caught up to them, he instinctively reached out to take his brother’s hand—Mikey might be willing to let Bunny go, but he sure as hell wasn’t gonna be happy about it. He loved that cat, and the feeling was clearly mutual. Frank grabbed at Mikey’s hand from the other side, and Mikey looked up to give them both a watery smile.
“You okay?” Uncle Brian said softly. Mikey nodded, and Uncle Brian smiled. “Okay, then, let’s get this show on the road. Everybody close their eyes.”
Gerard obeyed, feeling a sense of wild excitement fill his chest. This was like…this was like when Clark Kent found the Fortress of Solitude, finding out who he was. This was like figuring out their own origin story.
“Now, hold on tight,” said Uncle Brian. “We’re about to go a long way really fast.”
Gerard gripped Mikey’s hand tighter. He was ready.
**
After the kids left, vanishing in a flash of brilliant white light, the adults hung around, dumbstruck, for a while. Ray, at least, couldn’t even muster the thought necessary to move. His brain just kept circling around and around, aliens and I wonder how far they can travel that way and there’s a whole town full of them up there and a whole planet full of them somewhere else and, again, aliens!
After a while, the Cobras took off, giving Pete Wentz and his assistant a ride and leaving Bob and Ray alone in the cold, dark field.
“Wow,” said Ray once he’d mustered the presence of mind to speak. “James is never gonna believe this when I go back to work tomorrow. Seriously, best day ever.”
“Yeah,” said Bob, but he didn’t sound too happy about it. “I can’t…I can’t believe they’re gone, though.”
And there was the kicker. Ray had known after a couple of hours that he would do anything it took to keep those kids safe, but Bob and them had seriously bonded. It had been adorable to watch, the gruff man and the geeky kids, but now it was just sad. “I’m sure they’re gonna be okay,” Ray said, wondering whether if he hugged Bob now, just to comfort him, Bob would take it the wrong way or not. Ray had no intentions whatsoever of reminding Bob what Mikey had said about Bob wanting to kiss him—he wasn’t about to remind Bob of anything about those kids until he thought it wouldn’t just upset him.
“Yeah. They’ll be fine. They’ve got their family.” Bob swallowed loudly and sighed. “No point in hanging around now. Let’s go. I’ve gotta get my van back from your rest stop.” He turned to walk back to the camper, clutching Bunny to his chest.
Without even really thinking about it, Ray reached out to grab his shoulder. “Bob,” he said. “Those kids are gonna miss you. Seriously. They’re gonna be happy with Mikey and Gerard’s grandma, but I promise, they’re not gonna forget you, either, any more than they’re gonna forget Bunny or their mom, or Frank’s grandpa.”
“Yeah?” Bob said, meeting Ray’s eyes for the first time since the kids had left, and Ray had to gulp. Seriously, the guy had some intensely blue eyes, Ray couldn’t be blamed if they made him melt a little inside.
“Yeah,” he said. And suddenly, Bob was setting Bunny on the ground, straightening up, and with a firm, decisive movement, pulling Ray by his shirt closer and kissing him.
Whoa, Ray thought dizzily. Beard. He had to step forward a little to regain his balance, which only made his face move closer to Bob’s, made the kiss deeper. When Ray’s breath started to run out—he seemed to have forgotten how to breathe through his nose—he pulled back. “Not so straight after all, then?” he said.
Bob shrugged. “Guess not.” He didn’t look too freaked about it, either, and his matter-of-fact tone made Ray laugh.
“Why don’t we get in the camper and…discuss this further?” he said, waggling his eyebrows at Bob and grinning when Bob smiled. “Maybe this isn’t the best place to, you know, get to third base or whatever.”
Bob was quiet long enough that Ray started to feel really awkward. This is why you don’t crush on straight guys, he said to himself. Super Ray—causing sexual identity crises right and left! Able to create a bottomless pit of awkward in the space of ten seconds!
And then Bob laughed. “You’re pretty confident, aren’t you?” His smile softened, and he said, “Maybe…you wanna maybe get to know each other a little, first? This is a little weird for me.”
This whole day had been a little weird for Ray. For the first time since a blond guy and three kids had stumbled into the women’s restroom that afternoon, though, he felt on solid ground. “Come on,” he said to Bob. “Let’s talk.”
Epilogue
It had been a pretty hard fucking autumn, Spencer thought, and it wasn’t even the end of September yet.
No matter what Brendon or Jon or Ryan said, he blamed himself. Frank had been an obnoxious, troublemaking little kid, but he had a good heart, and Spencer had never for a moment wanted him to just disappear. He should have been clearer about that, he should have sent Frank to talk to Brendon more, he should have found something to entertain Frank when he started getting bored after Jamia and Gerard and Mikey left, he should have….
Well, there wasn’t much use thinking about it too much, now. He sighed as he sifted through the mail and pulled out another check from Pete Wentz. God, that fucker had become the unofficial sponsor of the Smith Home. Spencer really wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and he appreciated the way Wentz had smoothed over the situation with the state, but did the man really expect them to believe that Frank had been abducted by aliens? Patrick Stump had explained that, after nine years, Mikey and Gerard Minnelli’s grandmother had turned up and adopted Frank as well, and while this explanation seemed a tad more plausible, Stump didn’t have any more proof of it than Wentz did for his alien abduction theory.
Of course, Wentz had countered by claiming that Mikey and Gerard and their grandmother were aliens. Jesus Christ, the man was a lunatic. If his money weren’t keeping the kids at the Home in new shoes and nutritionally-balanced meals, Spencer would have totally looked into his background and tried to find out just why Mikey and Gerard had run away in the first place. Maybe it made him a terrible person that he hadn’t tried anyway—God knew Ryan had never trusted Wentz. He’d do a background check in a heartbeat.
The mail was pretty boring—bills, bills, the National Geographic that Spencer subscribed to for the library, more bills. A slippery pile of catalogs advertising back-to-school kids’ clothes fell to the floor, and Spencer picked it up. A postcard fell out from between the pages of a Land’s End catalog, and Spencer bent over to pick that up, too.
The front of it showed a totem pole with a wolf’s head carved on the top and read Wolf Mountain in a bright red, blocky type. Spencer flipped it over to see who it was from.
His heart stopped in his chest before he’d managed to read a word. He knew that handwriting. “Brendon!” he yelled. “Jon! Get your asses in here!” He wasn’t even worried about cussing in front of the kids. God knew they’d heard worse.
He didn’t listen to them come, or bother to yell again. Instead, he read the postcard.
Dear Spencer, it said in Frank’s handwriting, I am OK, and I hope you are too. I am living with Mikey and Gerard’s grandma, Elena, and she is super nice. Its weird because everybody here speaks another language, and the food is funny, but it is worth it because Elena’s house is cool and I get to hang out with Mikey and Gerard all the time. I hope you were’nt too worried. Here the handwriting changed, to a scrawly script Spencer vaguely remembered from the paperwork Gerard had filled out at the beginning of the summer. Hi, Spencer, it said. I thought you would like to know that we found our real family and where we come from and stuff. I don’t know what Pete and Patrick told you, but we’re really happy here. Sorry for all the trouble. The card was signed “Frank, Gerard, and Mikey,” and in tiny, tiny script along the bottom, Frank had written I am living with aliens! How cool is that!
“Yo,” said Jon, popping up behind Spencer. “What’s up?”
“Where’s the fire?” asked Brendon. He sounded out of breath.
Spencer wordlessly held up the card, and Brendon took it with a confused frown, Jon peering over his shoulder. It was easy to tell when the import of it hit—Jon’s jaw dropped, and Brendon brought up a hand to cover his mouth.
“Jesus,” Jon said in a hoarse voice. “Aliens? Seriously?”
Brendon shook his head. “I can’t…I mean, Gerard and Mikey were a little odd, but this….” He looked up at Spencer. “Pretty unbelievable, huh?”
Totally unbelievable. Spencer still wasn’t sure if he thought Frank was telling the truth. Maybe it was a joke, or Wentz had put him up to it. But hell, at this point, he didn’t think he even cared. The kids were alive, and apparently happy, and for the first time in what felt like ages Spencer could take a breath without guilt totally overwhelming him.
“So,” he said, “what’ll we tell the kids?”
Brendon shrugged, the beginnings of a grin playing at the corners of his mouth. “We could always tell them the truth,” he said. “Just for kicks. We could see if anyone believes it.”
“Hell, I don’t believe it,” said Jon.
Though neither Spencer nor Jon nor Brendon knew it, a couple of hundred of miles away, a drum tech on a leave of absence and a retired rest stop custodian were reading a similar postcard addressed to “Bob Bryar (and he should show it to Ray Toro, too).”
“Wow,” said Ray, leaning back against the back seat of Bob’s van. “Think of it, man—a whole town up there. And it’s like, foods and languages and cultural shit that nobody on Earth’s ever seen. I’d kill to be one of those kids right now, seriously.”
“They sound happy,” said Bob, slowly, thoughtfully.
Ray, to his credit, didn’t say, “No shit, they’re living in a town full of aliens.” Instead, he leaned over to wrap an arm around Bob, and they sat there for a long time in the stuffy van, thinking about the cold vastness of space, and how miraculous it was that among all the stars and planets and people, you could still find a space of warmth and love for yourself, if you were willing to look.
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
“Jesus fuck, you don’t make it easy, do you?” said the woman, who had her gun pointed right at Bob. Gerard felt a wave of anger so fierce it made his hands shake, and he yanked at the gun with his mind.
There was a deafening bang as the man shot into the dirt at their feet, and everyone except the FBI agents jumped. “Yeah,” the man said, “I wouldn’t fuck with us too much, ET. Believe it or not, we’ve caught aliens before. We have to keep you alive, but these fucks--” He pointed at Ray and Bob with the barrel of his gun. “They’re expendable. Another trick like that, and we’ll see if you can stop bullets with your mind, huh?”
“Well, fuck me,” said one of the tall men who had come with Pete and Patrick. (Gabe, Mikey said. He’s a bounty hunter.) “Don’t we have guns?”
“In the car,” one of the other bounty hunters, Alex, said glumly, and Patrick hit him in the shoulder.
“We’re not getting into a fucking gun battle with the kids right here, asshole,” he said. “We’ll just give them what they want, and….”
The woman laughed. “We’re not highway robbers, dumbass,” she said. “We’re with the FBI. What we want are the two extraterrestrials you’ve been harboring.”
Bob reached out and grabbed Mikey and Gerard by the shoulders and pulled them close to him. He couldn’t really protect them, Gerard knew, but it was kind of comforting anyway.
Pete frowned. “Extraterrestrials? The hell, are you Scully and Mulder or something?”
“Palmer and Viglione,” said the woman. “FBI, Division for Paranormal and Extraterrestrial Phenomena. We’re here to confiscate the two extraterrestrials known as Gerard and Michael Minnelli on behalf of the United States Government. It’s really in everyone’s best interests if you cooperate.”
“What the fuck? You can’t confiscate them,” Patrick said, his face growing red as a tomato. His anger was burning so hot that even Gerard, who wasn’t so good with the feelings, could feel it on the edges of his mind. “They’re kids, and I have legal custody.”
The man raised an eyebrow sardonically. “You can’t have custody of aliens, Mr. Stump. Any and all extraterrestrial beings found on American soil are property of the United States government.” Gerard shuddered at his cold tone, and the total lack of real emotion he felt coming from the man. As far as this guy was concerned, he and Mikey weren’t people at all. He stepped in closer to Bob, trying to stop the chill running through his body.
“Jesus,” said Gabe. “You never told me the kids we were after were aliens. Fuck you, Wentz, that’s a hell of a thing to keep secret!”
“Well, honestly, I didn’t know either,” said Pete, and he gave Mikey and Gerard a small, disbelieving smile. “Guess that explains a lot, huh?”
The bounty hunters looked at them curiously, but Gerard struggled to block them out and think. They clearly knew about his telekinesis, but did that mean he and Mikey couldn’t use it? Then he thought of the man’s threat, and he winced. Too risky; he wasn’t, like, a science whiz or anything, but he knew that bullets coming out of a gun went crazy fast. Maybe Bunny….
No, Gerard, Mikey said firmly, and he held Bunny tighter against his body. Bunny hissed in anger, though, and Gerard got the distinct impression that she wouldn’t mind taking a whack at these FBI guys.
“So,” said the man from the FBI, “are you gonna cooperate?”
“Fuck you, asshole,” Patrick said. “If you think we’re gonna let you take these kids off to God knows where because of where they’re from, you’ve got another think coming.” Ray turned his head to look at Patrick, and Gerard looked up to see Bob nod firmly, a tense but almost approving expression on his face.
“Yeah, see, that’s the thing,” the woman said. “We are actually authorized to use force. Lethal, if necessary.” She smiled, her teeth bright against her lipstick, and tapped her chin with one finger. “Maybe even if not necessary, just for shits and giggles.”
“Um, right,” said one of the other bounty hunters, a tall guy named Ryland. “You think maybe we could just sit down and talk about this? Maybe come to some kind of joint custody arrangement? What?” he said in answer to fierce glares from Bob and Ray and Patrick and Pete. “I think the thing is to get the guns out of the picture first, details later. Don’t you?”
“Jesus Christ,” said the man, rolling his eyes, and in a movement so fast Gerard could scarcely follow it with his eyes, he stepped forward, grabbed Frank, and pulled him out, holding the gun to his head.
Oh, fuck, fuckfuckfuck, Mikey said, and every part of Gerard was in complete agreement. What do we do, Gee?
Gerard didn’t know—if he tried to take the gun away from the man, maybe he’d shoot again, and as close as the gun was to Frank’s head, it would kill him. Gerard didn’t even dare reach for his harmonica. Frank’s face was frozen, his eyes huge with fear and anger, and he was biting down on his lip hard enough to draw blood.
“Here’s your negotiations,” the man said. “Mikey, Gerard, you’re gonna come with us. And if you don’t, you get to live with the knowledge that your little friend here died because you didn’t cooperate. What do you say?”
Gerard wanted to hit back with a snappy comeback, but his mouth had gone totally dry, and his brain was working overtime trying to think of a way to save Frank. Could he make the woman’s gun shoot the man fast enough so that the man didn’t shoot first? Could he maybe just pull Frank out with his mind? Or maybe if he jumped on the man, it’d be enough to distract him so Frank could get away. Oh, God, Frank was gonna die if they fucked this up, Gerard thought. Mikey’s panic had mingled with his, and his throat was tight as his mind raced through the options.
“Well, fuck this noise,” said a voice. It didn’t belong to any of the people there, but Gerard recognized it, though he didn’t know where from. All of a sudden, so quickly it made Gerard’s heart stop in his chest, Agents Palmer and Viglione flopped to the ground, unconscious, and behind them was a man.
Gerard studied the man, his déjà vu almost overwhelming. The stranger was short, with spiky hair and tattoos on his arms, and he opened his mouth to say something in a language that Gerard hadn’t spoken in a long, long time.
Uncle Brian, Mikey said, his mental voice filled with wonder.
They pulled themselves from the knot of adults to run to him, and he laughed and gathered them both into a tight hug. He said something that Gerard didn’t understand, in their home language, and then: Shit, sorry, I forgot. “God, it’s been such a long time,” he said aloud, almost laughing. “I thought…I thought I wasn’t ever gonna see you guys again.”
We thought you were dead, Mikey said.
Uncle Brian shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “I’m not a champion swimmer or anything, but once I saw you guys were safe, I hung out on the driftwood until I got to the shore, which, let me tell you, took a while. Then I hitchhiked until I made it out here.” He looked over their heads, and Gerard turned to see Frank, still standing as still as a statue by the secret agent, and Bob and Ray and Pete and Patrick and all the bounty hunters. “You gonna introduce me to your friends?”
It was like time, which had seemed to slow down, sped back up to a normal pace. Gerard ran to Frank, Mikey on his heels. “Frank! Frank, you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Frank in a slightly quavery voice. He wrapped his arms around Gerard’s neck and buried his face in his shoulder. “I thought being a superhero was gonna be awesome,” he muttered, “but that kind of sucked. I didn’t even fight the guy, how lame am I?”
Not as lame as me, thought Gerard guiltily, and Mikey rolled his eyes at him.
“You’re not lame,” Mikey said firmly to Frank. “You’re the coolest kid ever. I would have wet my pants if it was me.” He tugged at Frank’s hand until he detached from Gerard. “Come on, we want you to meet Uncle Brian.”
“This is Frank,” Gerard said as they drew close to Uncle Brian again. “Frank, this is Uncle Brian. He’s from our planet.” It was funny, he thought, how easily he could say that, now that he knew he had a family, or something like it, who were from the same place he was.
“Pleased to meet you,” Frank said politely, and Uncle Brian grinned.
“Pleased to meet you, too, Frank,” he said. Then, with a softer smile, he added, “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner, and keep that asshole from grabbing you in the first place.” Kid’s gotta have balls of solid steel, he said to Gerard and Mikey.
Yeah, Mikey said proudly.
Bob and Ray and the rest of the adults had started wandering over at this point, and Gerard felt awful for having ignored them. “Uncle Brian,” he said, “this is Bob, and Ray, and Patrick, and Pete, and…Pete’s friends the bounty hunters.”
“The Cobras,” Mikey added, which made Ray laugh.
“Are those guys dead?” Bob asked seriously, gesturing towards Agents Palmer and Viglione.
Uncle Brian shook his head. “And give those fucks at the FBI more reason to go after us? Hell, no. They’ll wake up in a couple of hours. Conveniently enough for all of us, they won’t remember anything that happened in the last day or so. It won’t be enough to totally keep the feds off your backs, but if you all say you don’t remember anything either, I think you’ll be okay.”
“Jesus,” said Gabe. “I gotta learn that trick.”
“So, wait,” Ray said. “You guys seriously have, like, an compound of people from outer space living in the mountains up here?”
Uncle Brian laughed. “Um. Yeah, kind of. It’s a town, really—we call it a “compound” because people are more likely to leave us alone if they think we’re a cult or something.”
“Why here?” Ray asked, his voice still full of awe.
“We sent a couple of scouts out when it looked like we were gonna get wiped out back home, and this was by far the best place we found. Beautiful planet, plenty of natural resources, and enough people so that we could get lost in the crowd. I mean, you’ve got the Federal Bureau of Investigations here, but frankly, we don’t worry too much about those guys. They’ve got the numbers, but we’ve got some skills you guys here apparently don’t.” He shrugged. “Go figure.”
“Wow,” Pete said. “This shit is nuts.”
“From your perspective, maybe,” said Uncle Brian. “Honestly, we’re just trying to live our lives without totally freaking your planet out. Hence the town up in the mountains. Speaking of which….” He grinned at Mikey and Gerard. “These guys have a grandmother who’s spent the last nine years waiting for them to turn up and come live with her.”
“We have a grandma?” Gerard said. This was insane—just this morning he’d been a weirdo orphan runaway, and now he was a kid from another planet, with a grandma and an honorary uncle and a place where he and Mikey would fit in.
“You have a grandma,” Uncle Brian confirmed, “and she’s a pretty kick-ass lady.”
Mikey blinked. “Wow.”
Uncle Brian turned again to the adults. “Thanks for getting them here. God, I don’t even know what kind of shit you had to go through—well, I kind of do, the psychic thing, but living through it’s a whole different matter. But seriously, we’ve been waiting around for years, looking for survivors from that crash, and Gerard and Mikey are the first two we’ve found. I can’t even tell you how happy people are gonna be. No joke, if you’re ever in trouble, call up the Castaways. We’re always glad to find Earth people who don’t suck.”
Bob nodded slowly. “Not a problem,” he said. “They’re great kids.”
“Yeah,” said Pete, nodding firmly. “Holy shit, though, aliens! God, if I’d have known there were a whole bunch of you guys out here….”
“You’d have given us a call to set up a reality TV contract?” Uncle Brian said, raising an eyebrow. He didn’t seem angry, but there was a certain sternness in his face, and Pete winced.
“You’re probably right,” he said, and then he turned his head to look at Gerard and Mikey with a dejected expression. “Sorry, guys. All this shit was my fault,” he said, not meeting their eyes. “If I hadn’t made you help me out….”
“Don’t feel bad, Pete,” said Gerard, hating to see anyone unhappy now, when his own happiness was so huge and all-encompassing he felt like he was gonna burst into tears. They had a family. People had been looking for them. “Everything happened like it was supposed to—if you hadn’t asked us to help you, then we wouldn’t have found out where we were supposed to be.”
“Well, I still feel like a dick,” said Pete. He looked at them apologetically, and then at Patrick, just as apologetically.
“I,” Patrick began, and then his voice broke and he stopped. “You guys…” he started again, and Gerard felt a rush of conflicting feelings coming from him—guilt, because he hadn’t wanted them to begin with, he’d only taken them in because Pete wanted him to; amazement, at the fact that they were actually going away to live with their alien family; regret, that he hadn’t been able to be the kind of father figure he’d gradually discovered he wanted to be; and a deep, warm, affection that made Gerard flush with pleasure.
“You rock, Patrick,” he said, hugging him.
Mikey nodded earnestly. “Yeah. Good thing we were around to save you that one time, because this all would have sucked a whole lot more if you weren’t here.”
“Thanks again for that,” Patrick said, his voice thick with unshed tears. “I hope you guys have a great time with your grandma, and if you ever need anything…I’m around, and I’d really, really like to hear how you’re doing.”
“Totally,” said Gerard. Surely after all the fuss had died down about them, they’d be able to come back, right? They had to, so they and Frank could….
Oh. Frank. Gerard drew slowly back from Patrick and looked over to where Frank stood, looking small and very alone.
“This is awesome, you guys,” Frank said with an overly bright smile. “You have a grandma, and an uncle, and the FBI’s never ever gonna be able to find you. You could rule the world from up there, seriously.”
“But we’re still gonna be in a band together, right?” said Mikey hopefully. Who’s gonna teach me to play the guitar if Frank’s not around? he said to Gerard, a mournful note in his mental voice.
Frank shrugged. “I guess we could, but why would you want to? I bet there are plenty of kids up there who can make shit move with their drums and guitars and stuff. You could have a whole band made up of super heroes.”
“Hey, Batman didn’t have any super powers, and he was an awesome hero,” Gerard said with a frown. “And anyway, we don’t want to have a whole band made up of superheroes. We wanna be in a band with you.” It was true, and it suddenly hit Gerard that going with Uncle Brian meant they’d be leaving the best friend they’d ever had, maybe forever. In the split second it took for that to sink in, he came to a conclusion. Mikey’s glee at his decision was so intense it couldn’t be verbalized, so Gerard figured that meant it was a good idea. He reached out and grabbed Frank by the wrist. “Uncle Brian?” he said. “Can Frank come with us?”
“Wait, seriously?” Frank said. “You don’t have to….”
Mikey frowned at him and said, “Shut up. We want to. Can he, Uncle Brian?”
Uncle Brian didn’t ask anything stupid about Frank’s parents—of course he didn’t, Gerard, thought, he was psychic. Instead, he looked at Frank seriously. “I don’t mind,” he said. “We’ve got more than enough to go around up there, but are you gonna be comfortable with that, Frank? Except for Gerard and Mikey here, we all speak another language most of the time, and you’re not psychic, so you might not always be able to understand what we mean. And it’s cool having a couple of friends with super powers, I know, but can you handle everyone having super powers if you don’t?”
Frank blinked and mouthed the words “super powers” silently to himself. Gerard looked anxiously at him. He didn’t want Frank to feel like a freak the way he and Mikey had for so long, but at the same time, he really, really wanted him to come with them.
“Would I get to stay with Mikey and Gerard?” asked Frank, looking like he was seriously thinking it over. Uncle Brian nodded, and Frank said, “Then yeah. I mean, if it isn’t too much trouble for you.”
“No trouble at all,” said Uncle Brian. “The more the merrier. So is this everything? Are you guys ready to go?”
“Well, hold up,” said Frank, and he strode over to Patrick and Pete. “Hey,” he said, “You’re the one who gave a shitload of money to the Home, right?”
Pete had been standing with his head on Patrick's shoulder, hugging him with one arm, but he pulled away to give Frank a confused look. “Um, yeah,” he said.
Frank nodded. “Okay, can you tell Spencer and Brendon and everyone what happened, so they don’t worry and stuff?”
Pete made a rude noise in the back of his throat. “Tell them you went off to live in a town full of aliens? Sure, I could do that.”
Patrick elbowed Pete in the side. “Don’t be an ass,” he said. To Frank, he added, “We’ll come up with something to tell them. Don’t worry.”
“Cool, thanks.” Frank gave them a bright grin and said to Uncle Brian, “Just one more minute—gotta say goodbye to Bob and Ray.”
Oh. Yeah. Gerard had forgotten that Bob and Ray weren’t coming, too—they had jobs and lives and stuff that didn’t have anything to do with Gerard and Mikey and Frank. Some of his excitement was fading into a heavy feeling of lonely sadness deep in his chest, and he took a slow, hesitant step towards Bob. “I—Bob….” he began, and then he shut his mouth. Maybe everyone would understand, but breaking down crying was just not that cool.
“Gerard,” said Bob, gruffly, and then suddenly they were hugging, and Gerard was clinging to Bob’s solid form like it was the only thing keeping him on the planet. Mikey and Frank stepped closer and were absorbed into the hug as well. Bob patted Mikey on the back and said, “You kids better be good—if your grandma comes down from that mountain telling me you’ve given her more grey hairs or whatever, I’m gonna kick your asses.”
Gerard wasn’t fooled at all by Bob’s attempt to sound badass. “We’re really gonna miss you,” he said, pulling his face away from Bob’s chest to look him in the eye. “Thank you so much for everything.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Bob, shaking his head as he drew them even closer. And then, like he was telling a secret, he mumbled, “I’m gonna miss you, too,” into Gerard’s hair.
When Bob let them go, Ray stepped up to shake each of their hands. “Wow,” he said. “Believe me when I say it’s been a pleasure knowing you guys. I’m so glad I got to help you with this, it’s just crazy.”
Not only did he get to rescue kids, he got to meet aliens. It’s like his superhero dream and his alien dream come true at once, Mikey said with a grin. And I’m pretty sure he and Bob are in love, too. Best day ever, totally.
Gerard wanted to ask what the hell Mikey was talking about, but saying goodbye to Ray was really more important, he thought, so he said, “Thanks for letting us ride in your camper and saving us from the cops and stuff.”
“Yeah, Ray,” said Frank. “You’re the man!”
Ray grinned hugely and said, “Hey, if you guys ever come back for a visit, you gonna tell me all about the town and your home planet and stuff?”
Mikey nodded. “Definitely.”
There was a rustling noise from the ground, and they all looked down to see Bunny staring at Mikey with a serious expression on her pointy, furry face. Mikey reached down to pick her up with a smile of greeting. After a moment, though, he frowned, and the two of them had an intense, silent discussion. Finally, Mikey turned back to Bob and held out Bunny to him. “Bunny wants to stay with you,” he said in a low voice. Gerard could tell that he was maybe trying not to cry.
“Oh, shit, Mikey,” Bob said, looking like he was feeling a little choked-up, too. “Bunny’s your cat, I can’t take her.”
“Please? She won’t be any trouble.” He sighed. “She says she’s kind of gotten to like riding around in cars and vans all the time, and now she wants to see the band you work for.” Plus, he said to Gerard, she’s pretty sure there aren’t any other cats on Wolf Mountain, and she doesn’t want to get cut off from her people like that. Frankly, Gerard thought he could understand where Bunny was coming from.
“Your cat wants to go on tour with the Used with me,” Bob said incredulously. “Well, hell, why not?” He reached out to take Bunny gently from Mikey’s arms, and he scratched between her ears until she started purring so loudly Gerard could hear her from twenty feet away.
“Take good care of her,” Mikey said.
Bob nodded solemnly. “Always.”
Mikey sighed and waved to Bunny before turning to walk back over towards Uncle Brian. Gerard paused for a minute, feeling as if someone was tugging at his mind. It wasn’t words, not really, but the idea, Take care of him, too, hovered in Gerard’s head with the gravity of an order. He looked tentatively at Bunny. She was staring back at him with big, intensely-focused eyes, and Gerard gulped.
I will, he thought. He had never been good at projecting his thoughts like Mikey was, but he thought Bunny looked vaguely satisfied with him.
“Gerard?” Bob asked softly.
Gerard smiled at him as best he could. “Had to settle things with Bunny,” he said.
He turned around to run after Frank and Mikey. When he caught up to them, he instinctively reached out to take his brother’s hand—Mikey might be willing to let Bunny go, but he sure as hell wasn’t gonna be happy about it. He loved that cat, and the feeling was clearly mutual. Frank grabbed at Mikey’s hand from the other side, and Mikey looked up to give them both a watery smile.
“You okay?” Uncle Brian said softly. Mikey nodded, and Uncle Brian smiled. “Okay, then, let’s get this show on the road. Everybody close their eyes.”
Gerard obeyed, feeling a sense of wild excitement fill his chest. This was like…this was like when Clark Kent found the Fortress of Solitude, finding out who he was. This was like figuring out their own origin story.
“Now, hold on tight,” said Uncle Brian. “We’re about to go a long way really fast.”
Gerard gripped Mikey’s hand tighter. He was ready.
**
After the kids left, vanishing in a flash of brilliant white light, the adults hung around, dumbstruck, for a while. Ray, at least, couldn’t even muster the thought necessary to move. His brain just kept circling around and around, aliens and I wonder how far they can travel that way and there’s a whole town full of them up there and a whole planet full of them somewhere else and, again, aliens!
After a while, the Cobras took off, giving Pete Wentz and his assistant a ride and leaving Bob and Ray alone in the cold, dark field.
“Wow,” said Ray once he’d mustered the presence of mind to speak. “James is never gonna believe this when I go back to work tomorrow. Seriously, best day ever.”
“Yeah,” said Bob, but he didn’t sound too happy about it. “I can’t…I can’t believe they’re gone, though.”
And there was the kicker. Ray had known after a couple of hours that he would do anything it took to keep those kids safe, but Bob and them had seriously bonded. It had been adorable to watch, the gruff man and the geeky kids, but now it was just sad. “I’m sure they’re gonna be okay,” Ray said, wondering whether if he hugged Bob now, just to comfort him, Bob would take it the wrong way or not. Ray had no intentions whatsoever of reminding Bob what Mikey had said about Bob wanting to kiss him—he wasn’t about to remind Bob of anything about those kids until he thought it wouldn’t just upset him.
“Yeah. They’ll be fine. They’ve got their family.” Bob swallowed loudly and sighed. “No point in hanging around now. Let’s go. I’ve gotta get my van back from your rest stop.” He turned to walk back to the camper, clutching Bunny to his chest.
Without even really thinking about it, Ray reached out to grab his shoulder. “Bob,” he said. “Those kids are gonna miss you. Seriously. They’re gonna be happy with Mikey and Gerard’s grandma, but I promise, they’re not gonna forget you, either, any more than they’re gonna forget Bunny or their mom, or Frank’s grandpa.”
“Yeah?” Bob said, meeting Ray’s eyes for the first time since the kids had left, and Ray had to gulp. Seriously, the guy had some intensely blue eyes, Ray couldn’t be blamed if they made him melt a little inside.
“Yeah,” he said. And suddenly, Bob was setting Bunny on the ground, straightening up, and with a firm, decisive movement, pulling Ray by his shirt closer and kissing him.
Whoa, Ray thought dizzily. Beard. He had to step forward a little to regain his balance, which only made his face move closer to Bob’s, made the kiss deeper. When Ray’s breath started to run out—he seemed to have forgotten how to breathe through his nose—he pulled back. “Not so straight after all, then?” he said.
Bob shrugged. “Guess not.” He didn’t look too freaked about it, either, and his matter-of-fact tone made Ray laugh.
“Why don’t we get in the camper and…discuss this further?” he said, waggling his eyebrows at Bob and grinning when Bob smiled. “Maybe this isn’t the best place to, you know, get to third base or whatever.”
Bob was quiet long enough that Ray started to feel really awkward. This is why you don’t crush on straight guys, he said to himself. Super Ray—causing sexual identity crises right and left! Able to create a bottomless pit of awkward in the space of ten seconds!
And then Bob laughed. “You’re pretty confident, aren’t you?” His smile softened, and he said, “Maybe…you wanna maybe get to know each other a little, first? This is a little weird for me.”
This whole day had been a little weird for Ray. For the first time since a blond guy and three kids had stumbled into the women’s restroom that afternoon, though, he felt on solid ground. “Come on,” he said to Bob. “Let’s talk.”
Epilogue
It had been a pretty hard fucking autumn, Spencer thought, and it wasn’t even the end of September yet.
No matter what Brendon or Jon or Ryan said, he blamed himself. Frank had been an obnoxious, troublemaking little kid, but he had a good heart, and Spencer had never for a moment wanted him to just disappear. He should have been clearer about that, he should have sent Frank to talk to Brendon more, he should have found something to entertain Frank when he started getting bored after Jamia and Gerard and Mikey left, he should have….
Well, there wasn’t much use thinking about it too much, now. He sighed as he sifted through the mail and pulled out another check from Pete Wentz. God, that fucker had become the unofficial sponsor of the Smith Home. Spencer really wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and he appreciated the way Wentz had smoothed over the situation with the state, but did the man really expect them to believe that Frank had been abducted by aliens? Patrick Stump had explained that, after nine years, Mikey and Gerard Minnelli’s grandmother had turned up and adopted Frank as well, and while this explanation seemed a tad more plausible, Stump didn’t have any more proof of it than Wentz did for his alien abduction theory.
Of course, Wentz had countered by claiming that Mikey and Gerard and their grandmother were aliens. Jesus Christ, the man was a lunatic. If his money weren’t keeping the kids at the Home in new shoes and nutritionally-balanced meals, Spencer would have totally looked into his background and tried to find out just why Mikey and Gerard had run away in the first place. Maybe it made him a terrible person that he hadn’t tried anyway—God knew Ryan had never trusted Wentz. He’d do a background check in a heartbeat.
The mail was pretty boring—bills, bills, the National Geographic that Spencer subscribed to for the library, more bills. A slippery pile of catalogs advertising back-to-school kids’ clothes fell to the floor, and Spencer picked it up. A postcard fell out from between the pages of a Land’s End catalog, and Spencer bent over to pick that up, too.
The front of it showed a totem pole with a wolf’s head carved on the top and read Wolf Mountain in a bright red, blocky type. Spencer flipped it over to see who it was from.
His heart stopped in his chest before he’d managed to read a word. He knew that handwriting. “Brendon!” he yelled. “Jon! Get your asses in here!” He wasn’t even worried about cussing in front of the kids. God knew they’d heard worse.
He didn’t listen to them come, or bother to yell again. Instead, he read the postcard.
Dear Spencer, it said in Frank’s handwriting, I am OK, and I hope you are too. I am living with Mikey and Gerard’s grandma, Elena, and she is super nice. Its weird because everybody here speaks another language, and the food is funny, but it is worth it because Elena’s house is cool and I get to hang out with Mikey and Gerard all the time. I hope you were’nt too worried. Here the handwriting changed, to a scrawly script Spencer vaguely remembered from the paperwork Gerard had filled out at the beginning of the summer. Hi, Spencer, it said. I thought you would like to know that we found our real family and where we come from and stuff. I don’t know what Pete and Patrick told you, but we’re really happy here. Sorry for all the trouble. The card was signed “Frank, Gerard, and Mikey,” and in tiny, tiny script along the bottom, Frank had written I am living with aliens! How cool is that!
“Yo,” said Jon, popping up behind Spencer. “What’s up?”
“Where’s the fire?” asked Brendon. He sounded out of breath.
Spencer wordlessly held up the card, and Brendon took it with a confused frown, Jon peering over his shoulder. It was easy to tell when the import of it hit—Jon’s jaw dropped, and Brendon brought up a hand to cover his mouth.
“Jesus,” Jon said in a hoarse voice. “Aliens? Seriously?”
Brendon shook his head. “I can’t…I mean, Gerard and Mikey were a little odd, but this….” He looked up at Spencer. “Pretty unbelievable, huh?”
Totally unbelievable. Spencer still wasn’t sure if he thought Frank was telling the truth. Maybe it was a joke, or Wentz had put him up to it. But hell, at this point, he didn’t think he even cared. The kids were alive, and apparently happy, and for the first time in what felt like ages Spencer could take a breath without guilt totally overwhelming him.
“So,” he said, “what’ll we tell the kids?”
Brendon shrugged, the beginnings of a grin playing at the corners of his mouth. “We could always tell them the truth,” he said. “Just for kicks. We could see if anyone believes it.”
“Hell, I don’t believe it,” said Jon.
Though neither Spencer nor Jon nor Brendon knew it, a couple of hundred of miles away, a drum tech on a leave of absence and a retired rest stop custodian were reading a similar postcard addressed to “Bob Bryar (and he should show it to Ray Toro, too).”
“Wow,” said Ray, leaning back against the back seat of Bob’s van. “Think of it, man—a whole town up there. And it’s like, foods and languages and cultural shit that nobody on Earth’s ever seen. I’d kill to be one of those kids right now, seriously.”
“They sound happy,” said Bob, slowly, thoughtfully.
Ray, to his credit, didn’t say, “No shit, they’re living in a town full of aliens.” Instead, he leaned over to wrap an arm around Bob, and they sat there for a long time in the stuffy van, thinking about the cold vastness of space, and how miraculous it was that among all the stars and planets and people, you could still find a space of warmth and love for yourself, if you were willing to look.