black smear in the darkness, for a moment something unknown—a form without identity, without shape, black hackles and claws like a cat. But the flash of her pale palm had been enough to reassure me. It was cool and still, just starlight and the reflections of the streetlights, and the familiar, beloved glow in the horizon.
“Hey. Look—northern lights.”
She glanced up, in the wrong direction, then kicked her feet in the sand, setting her swing going. I clenched my fists.
“Joanna Meredith Chambers, you better tell me what the fuck happened today, and don’t tell me yellowjackets,” I said. “What was that in the trees? I thought it was a bear for a second.”
“No.”
“Well no, I figured that out, because we wouldn’t have run like that if it was,” I said. It still felt like there was something in my throat, not a hand now but a lump, a blood clot, through which voice and breath could barely emerge. “Do you know what it was?”
“Not for sure. But it wasn’t human.”
“All right. Not a person. Not a bear. But dangerous. Now we’re getting somewhere.” I didn’t dare sit in the swing next to her; it was made for kids and the chains might snap under my weight. I leaned my forehead on the support pole, cold metal thrumming with all the earth’s invisible vibrations, a train ten kilometers away, electricity in the streetlights, footsteps of people in their houses, distant traffic. I wanted to tell her about the shooting star I’d seen yesterday and the wish I hadn’t made.
After a moment, she said, “I think we dodged a bullet. Maybe we didn’t. It might be a while before I know.”
“You wanted me to come out here to talk about it. So I came. Are you just yanking my chain or what?”
She sighed hugely. From anyone else it would have sounded melodramatic. Or maybe on any other day. “I thought I could, but now I’m just worried you’ll think I’m nuts. Or sleep-deprived. Or have caffeine poisoning.”
“I think all of those things all the time.”
That squeezed a real laugh out of her, if flimsy. Her eyesockets were dark pools on her face, like a skull, untouched by the scanty light. I shuddered, hoping she didn’t see. Then she swung forward into the streetlight and was just Johnny again, the small, fey, familiar face, ninety pounds of blonde bullshit in a raccoon-print t-shirt. “Well, only two of them are usually true.”
“Which ones?”
“Listen...” she said, the chains squeaking minutely as she swung. “Listen, did we both pass out yesterday because I had changed the world? Because the whole world changed and no one else knew?”
I looked at her for a moment, trying to tell whether she was joking or whether she’d just unintentionally put her ego on display again. The way her mind works, I have always understood that it is very different from mine, and we had to overcome that to be friends; but sometimes I needed to remind myself that it works differently from everybody else’s too. The things that interest her are not above but aside from the things other scientists are interested in, behind and underneath, so that she didn’t progress linearly on her preferred problems but zigzagged around, failing quickly and discarding things at lightning speed. That’s the way she wants it, as many problems as possible, as if she were the only one put in charge of the world’s collective future. There’s always been an added layer to the world she inhabits, one I can’t live in, one in which she asks questions meant only for herself. I couldn’t tell where she was going with this, but she really did seem to be waiting for my answer. I said, “Maybe. I thought it was the heat, though.”
“Well, what we saw at the Creek is, I think... a thing that... is called when that happens. That has been set in place to watch for it, its face... pressed to the membrane separating the places where things like that never happen and where they can and do. Which, I will now admit, sounds stupid.”
I stared at her for a moment, trying to figure out a polite way to agree. “It doesn’t sound stupid, it just doesn’t sound...” I groped for a word. “Real.”
“Well. What’s real, anyway.” She laughed. “How do we know what’s real?”
“I don’t know, but that thing was real enough to see, I guess, since we both saw it.”
“What did you see?”
“A thing, a black... tall... thing...” I hesitated.