SYLO

THREE

It’s amazing how much action you can generate by punching three simple digits into a cell phone: 9-1-1.

The quiet solitude of the desolate shoreline was once again disrupted by a blinding white light and a sound so loud that it rattled my teeth, only this time it was explainable.

A Coast Guard helicopter hovered low over the ocean with its searchlight sweeping the water, looking for…what? We didn’t know. Charging in to join the search was a Coast Guard rescue craft out of Portland. I could see its lights from a few miles off as it sped our way. On land were two Jeeps from the sheriff’s department with their blue hazard lights flashing. Rounding out the spectacle were two more cars, SUVs, that belonged to my parents and Quinn’s.

Right after the explosion, Quinn and I debated what we should do. Calling in the authorities meant calling in our parents and a possible end to our midnight rides. As much as we didn’t want to have to face their wrath, it didn’t take long to make a decision. This was too huge to keep quiet.

Twenty minutes later the two Jeeps arrived with their sirens wailing and lights flashing. I was impressed, considering that the sheriff and his deputy must have been asleep when they got the calls. It’s not like there’s a whole lot of criminal activity on Pemberwick. Those guys mostly dealt with tourists who got dumb when they drank too much beer or kids who raced around the island in their parents’ cars.

Shortly after the sheriff arrived, the Coast Guard chopper flew in, which meant the sheriff didn’t want to handle this alone. Smart move. I’d met Sheriff Laska a few times and he seemed like an okay guy, though not exactly a highly trained crimestopper. He was overweight…okay, fat…which didn’t matter much because it wasn’t like he ever had to chase down fleeing perps. The most chasing he ever did was with a beer after a buttery lobster roll.

Deputy Donald wasn’t any more impressive. He looked like he had graduated high school last week. He was a little guy who wore his sheriff uniform really tight, like some badass state trooper. Maybe he thought it made him look bigger. I think it just made him look like he was wearing a Halloween costume that didn’t fit anymore. I wasn’t even sure if Donald was his first name or his last. They were both good guys but not crack detectives. I was glad that they had called in the Coast Guard.

When Laska and Donald got there, they instantly separated Quinn and me. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to realize they wanted us each to separately give our version of what had happened to see if the stories matched. Laska questioned me and Donald took Quinn. I told the sheriff everything with as much detail as I could remember. The only tricky question came when he asked me why we were riding our bikes out there in the middle of the night. But I had a good answer for that too: I couldn’t sleep after what had happened to Marty so we took off on a ride to blow off steam. It helped that it was the truth. Besides, what had happened over the water was a lot more disturbing than finding out a couple of guys went out for a late-night bike ride.

After asking me the same questions about five times, Laska told me to wait in the back of his Jeep while he went to talk with Deputy Donald. Quinn was in the back of the other Jeep, out of earshot. I caught his eye and he gave me a big smile and a thumbs-up. Dork. He was actually enjoying himself.

Our parents drove up shortly after and were asked to stay by their cars. After they loaded up our bikes the four of them stood together, talking and looking—what? Nervous? Angry? Worried? Probably all of the above. They’d just gotten calls in the middle of the night to say their sons were witnesses to an inexplicable explosion on the other side of the island. That had to be a shocker. But were they anxious about the explosion? Or the fact that Quinn and I were on the other side of the island when we were supposed to be at home in bed? That was a toss-up.

I didn’t think we’d catch any serious flak, though. Quinn and I were usually upright citizens. Okay, we were always upright citizens. Our parents shouldn’t be too upset that we went out for a nighttime ride, they should be grateful that we were normally pretty boring.

Living on an island like Pemberwick makes it tough to find good friends. It’s not like you have unlimited choices, and I was lucky to find a guy like Quinn. The island sits five miles off the Maine coast. The only way on or off is by boat or small plane. The entire island is about eighty-five square miles with a town on either side: Arbortown, where I live, is on the west coast facing the mainland and Memagog sits on the east coast facing open ocean. The rest of the island is grassland, farmland, or beach. To the north is a separate island called Chinicook, which you can only get to by a half-mile-long bridge. I think they used it as a submarine-spotting outpost during World War II, but nothing’s out there now but scrub and seagulls. The south end of the island is made up of tall cliffs of red clay that loom over the sea. It’s all very postcard picturesque, and that attracts two very different kinds of people: those who live here year-round and those who vacation during the summer. Quinn and I fall into the year-round category, though neither of us had been born on Pemberwick.

Quinn’s family came from Philadelphia when his parents chose to trade the high-pressure life of working in a city hospital for a more laid-back island lifestyle.

My family’s journey was more out of necessity. Dad was a civil engineer who worked for years in city planning in my home town of Greenwich, Connecticut. When the economy went sour, he got laid off and decided to move us to Pemberwick to try something new, which turned out to be starting his own gardening business. It wasn’t the most glamorous job but there was definitely a need, seeing as so many rich people wanted their summer places to look brochure-worthy. So Dad went from planning the growth of a city to planning the growth of petunias.

Though he was raking in a lot more grass than money, Dad seemed to like living here. Mom did too. She was an accountant who did freelance work for many of the small businesses on the island. She often talked about how much fun she was having meeting new people and helping them with their work. As far as I could tell, neither missed our former life—which was cool—but it didn’t seem fair that somebody like my dad could work so hard to get through school and earn a big fat degree and slave for years to build a career only to be tossed on the trash heap because some budget needed to be balanced. That wasn’t right. My parents always tell me to work hard in school because it’ll lead to a good career and a good life. Well, my father did exactly that and got dumped like a dead battery. If it could happen to him, a guy who does nothing but the right thing, it could happen to anybody.

It makes me wonder what the point of it all is. Why work so hard to try to get ahead if the rug can be pulled out without warning? Or you drop dead during a football game? Maybe that’s why I don’t try all that hard in school. I figure that whatever comes my way I’ll deal, but I won’t bother sweating about it until then. That way I’ll never have to feel as though I got burned.

Quinn doesn’t agree with that. He’s all about piling on the AP courses and building his resume to get into some great school and set himself up to do something important…whatever that might be. It’s pretty much the only thing we don’t agree on. But that’s okay. Whatever happens, we’ll always have each other’s back.

As I sat in the cruiser watching the helicopter make passes over the ocean, another vehicle drove up. The headlights were right in my face so I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but it looked to be a pickup. It stopped about thirty yards away. The driver got out as Sheriff Laska came over to greet him. He was an older guy wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. Because he was backlit by his own headlights I didn’t recognize him, but he looked to be tall and solid—your basic islander. He spoke to Laska and they shook hands as Deputy Donald joined them. Laska introduced them and started back toward me. As he walked, he motioned for Quinn and our parents to join us. We all converged at his Jeep.

“Who was that?” I asked, pointing to the guy in the plaid shirt.

“Another witness,” Laska replied. “Guess he was the fella you two saw riding his horse on the bluff. Deputy Donald’s taking his statement now.”

“So he’s okay?” I asked. “We thought he got hurt by the explosion.”

“Seems fine,” Laska said. “And his story matches yours.”

“Of course it does,” Quinn exclaimed. “Why would we make this up?’

“Quinlan!” Quinn’s mom scolded.

“Aw, c’mon,” Quinn protested. “We’ve been getting grilled like we’re trying to pull off some kind of prank. Is that what happens to people who do their civic duty?”

“Enough,” Quinn’s dad snapped.

“It’s okay, Doctor Carr,” Laska said. “We have been putting them through the ringer.”

“See?” Quinn exclaimed. “Whose side are you on, Dad?”

Doctor Carr rolled his eyes. He was used to Quinn being argumentative.

Quinn gave me a quick wink. I knew what he was doing. He was putting everybody else on the defensive so we didn’t have to be. There was no way we were going to get in trouble for lying about being in bed and riding our bikes out there.

“Look,” Laska said with patience. “You have to admit it’s a wild story. You can’t expect us to buy it just like that. We have to do our job.”

“I understand,” Quinn said. “Continue.”

I had to keep from smiling. Laska may have been the law but Quinn was calling the shots.

“The Coast Guard’s leading the inquiry,” Laska said. “It’s their jurisdiction. So far they haven’t had any reports of a boat or a plane missing.”

“I don’t think it was either,” Quinn said.

“And what exactly do you think it was?” Doctor Carr asked.

“A UFO,” Quinn stated bluntly.

That got nothing but surprised gasps from our parents, and from me. Quinn hadn’t mentioned that before.

“What?” Quinn said defensively. “I’m not saying it was from Mars. But it was flying, and we couldn’t tell what it was. It didn’t look like any kind of plane I’d ever seen. Isn’t that pretty much the definition of a UFO?”

It was hard to argue with his logic.

“Whatever it was,” Laska said, “we believe you saw something. So does the Coast Guard and they’re going to figure out exactly what it was. So why don’t you all go on home and we’ll let you know if anything turns up.”

“What about the truck?” I asked.

“What truck?” Laska replied.

“The pickup I told you about that was parked out on the bluff a little way back.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said. “I told Donny all about it.”

“Deputy Donald,” the sheriff corrected.

“Whatever.”

“There’s no truck back there,” Laska said. “We checked that out first thing.”

Quinn and I exchanged looks. Of all the things we had witnessed, the lone pickup truck was probably the least strange—until now. Had something happened to it when the shadow exploded? Or had there been yet another witness on the bluffs who drove off after the fireworks?

“We’ll check it out,” Laska added. “Now head on home and let us do our job.”

Quinn’s mom put her arm around Quinn’s shoulder. She looked tired. So did her husband. I’d almost forgotten that they had been working late that night. I wondered if they had gotten the call from Quinn when they were in the middle of Marty’s autopsy. I did my best to shake that image.

“We still working tomorrow?” Quinn asked me.

I looked to my dad, who said, “That’s up to you guys.”

Quinn and I worked for Dad on Saturdays, helping out with his gardening business.

I shrugged. “Better than sitting around.”

After a few quick goodbyes, we got in our respective family SUVs and headed back toward town. I sat in back, fully awake, wondering if I could calm down enough to sleep. Ever.

“Are you okay, Tucker?” Mom asked.

I shrugged.

“Hell of a night,” Dad said.

“Understatement,” I replied.

“So you snuck out of the house to go riding in the middle of the night?” Mom asked.

There it was.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I said.

There was a long silence. There were two directions this questioning could take. I didn’t particularly want to follow either of them.

Dad said, “So it was a moving shadow? Then a flash of light and it exploded? Are you sure it was an explosion?”

The new direction was set.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It’s not like I’ve seen a whole lot of explosions outside of the movies. It was a big flash of light and a huge boom and we were knocked to the ground. To me that says explosion.”

Mom and Dad exchanged worried looks.

“Could be a naval exercise,” Dad said. “They do all sorts of things without making an announcement.”

“Maybe it’s some new secret weapon,” I offered. “Like a drone.”

“Could be,” Dad said thoughtfully. “If that’s the case, you can bet we won’t be reading about it in the paper. Five cents says we’ll never know.”

Mom wasn’t going to let it go as easily. Not the shadow-explosion, though; the after-hours tour.

“You shouldn’t be going out like that so late at night,” she said. “What if you got hurt?”

“I’m not a kid, Mom,” I argued.

“I don’t care how old you are, Tucker Pierce,” she shot back. “Traipsing around in the dark is dangerous.”

“I hear you. I’m not an idiot. I just wish you’d worry about something else besides me getting hurt all the time.”

She threw me a stern look over her shoulder and said, “Sorry. It’s my job.”

“And might I add that you’re very good at it,” I said.

That made Mom smile. Dad too.

It was indeed her job. After all I’d seen that night, I wanted to embrace that fact. I wanted my parents to take care of all the bad stuff and make it go away. I didn’t want to have to deal with un-explainable phenomena and police interrogations and mysterious witnesses, and most of all I did not want to have to deal with death. All I wanted was to hang out on my island home, play a little football, and help my father dig gardens.

Pemberwick was an incredible place to live… the kind of place that people chose to visit when they could go anywhere else. They came to my island to enjoy the warm days and mellow atmosphere and swim in the ocean and eat lobster and watch the sea grass sway while the sun sets over the rolling surf. For most people it’s an escape from reality. For me it’s home. I didn’t want to deal with disturbing events that made it seem like something other than paradise.

Was that too much to ask?