When the Sky Fell on Splendor Read online

  “What about demons?” I said.

  “Certainly not.”

  “Unicorns?”

  Remy smirked and shook his head. “What kind of monster doesn’t want unicorns to exist, Franny?”

  Sofía had stopped on the porch to wait for us, her five feet and eleven inches towering over us even more than usual.

  “You absolutely don’t have to go in,” she reminded me.

  “I don’t mind,” I said, which was mostly true.

  Inside, the wallpaper was tattered and peeling. Dust and grime covered the wooden floors, and torn-up books lay scattered across the overturned coffee table, the slashed drapes ruffling with the breeze from the door.

  “Look!” Levi lifted his flashlight to a HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner on a red-splattered wall. Droog’s ears perked, like Levi had been specifically speaking to her.

  Sofía’s flashlight lit up her face. “That’s not real. Police wouldn’t just leave blood all over the wall.”

  “Care to weigh in, Handsome Remy?” Nick asked. “What would the sheriff do?” He reached for Remy’s hair, and Remy swatted his hand away.

  “Get your digits out of my mane, Goth Grandpa.”

  “Metal Grandpa,” Nick said. He was the oldest of us, a super senior who’d just graduated with Arthur and Remy’s class, which put him at nineteenish—though he wouldn’t tell us when his birthday was—and he did look a bit like a grandpa, with his shaved head and bulgey blue eyes. “Who do I get to be in this episode, Levi?”

  “Who do you think you get to be?” Sofía said. “The hillbilly. You’re always the hillbilly.”

  “Give the people what they want,” Nick said, and shrugged.

  “You’re just so good at it!” Levi said.

  “I call Nicky Jr.’s wife!” I said, before anyone else could.

  Nick gave me a high five that left my whole arm ringing.

  He was, technically speaking, the best at improvisation (years of practice making shit up), so I loved partnering with him.

  When we’d made “Kite Chasers,” he and I had worn matching windbreakers I’d found in a box of Mom’s old stuff and spent the whole day chewing gum with our mouths open and gasping, “Baaaabe! Did ya see that? That’s what freedom looks like, babe.” It had been one of the best days of my life, until Arthur and I got home and Dad saw me carrying the jackets through the hall.

  It wasn’t like there’d been a big fight. Dad had just shuffled upstairs with a bottle of beer and the calendar he was always scribbling odd jobs into, leaving us to wonder when we’d see him next.

  Since that day, I’d become more cautious. The past had settled over our house like a layer of dust, and I picked my way through our halls careful not to disturb any of it, so Dad and Arthur wouldn’t have to remember. I didn’t touch the stuff Mom had left behind in the downstairs closet again, and I’d switched the nautilus shell necklace I’d found in my brother Mark’s room onto a longer chain so the memory of him could sit over my heart without Dad or Arthur seeing it.

  The less we remembered, the happier we all were.

  “I say we just do this,” Levi said, and turned on his camera, the white light spearing out to catch the sharp angles of Nick’s pale face and bulging eyes.

  “I,” Nick hissed, hamming up his accent, “feel spirits here. What about you, baby doll?”

  Levi swung the camera toward me, its light momentarily blinding me. “Oh, sugar, I feel ’em too.”

  And then we were off. Sofía became a two-bit medium who only heard the ghosts in the house calling out various Billy Ray Cyrus lyrics, and Arthur became a skeptical scientist who first discovered he was a ghost and then found out he was specifically the ghost of Colonel Sanders, of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame. Remy always had a hard time doing anything but giggling onscreen, which he usually tried to channel as a stoner character who was high, but since none of us except Arthur had ever been high, we had no idea how accurate Remy’s representation was.

  As we moved from room to room, we sank deeper into our roles, and Arthur killed off his character so he could focus on special effects, running ahead to trigger them as we went.

  Upstairs, he set up the fake fire he’d been perfecting all week (three clamp lights covered in orange gel, hooked up to dimmers so that he could make the light leap and dim at random, just like flames), and Levi started up the stairs, backward so he could get footage of us moving in a wide-eyed pack to the second floor through the fake fire.

  From there, we made our way into one of the front bedrooms, where the windows faced the electrical substation across the street.

  “Um, Remy?” Levi said. “Could you make your face look less like you’re watching a dozen golden retriever puppies bound toward you? Just one line: ‘The spirits are awake.’”

  “The . . .” Remy’s stony expression twitched. “The spirits . . .”

  Droog was getting impatient. She started to pace. Sofía grabbed her collar, but Droog kept whining, straining against her.

  Remy settled his face into a serious expression. “The spirits are—”

  Droog gave an anxious bark, and Remy’s voice dropped off as a gust of wind ripped through the open window, scattering the trash on the floor. Droog’s barking amped up, and I threw my free arm in front of my face to block the flurry of dirt and empty Big Gulp cups rolling toward me. With one final bark, Droog broke free and tore from the room.

  I looked to Remy for help, but he’d turned to the window, his dark hair ruffling in the wind. Arthur and I exchanged a glance then went to see what he was looking at.

  In the light from the electrical plant across the street, we could see Droog running out across the yard, her barks getting lost in the wind. She barreled to the center of the lawn then stopped, spine rigid and tail erect, and I followed her gaze upward.

  Silver light was streaking across the black sky, once every handful of seconds.

  “Well, gah-damn,” Nick mumbled.

  “Meteor shower,” Sofía shouted as the wind ratcheted up a few notches, sending waves through the grass.

  Droog was barking so forcefully now that her front paws kept lunging off the ground. She was raging at the falling stars, or at the sky for dropping them.

  Across the street, the low hum coming off the metal towers mounted. The lampposts around the electrical substation brightened, the bulbs glowing white against the black night.

  The air buzzed. My hair had gone staticky, strands of blond floating out around me. Arthur’s own dark-blond hair lifted in a halo around his head, and his hazel eyes, a mirror of mine, narrowed.

  Someone—Nick, maybe—yelped, and I looked back to the window in time to see the row of lights beyond the chain-link fence suddenly spark and go out, blanketing the street in darkness, complete except for our flashlights and the light atop the camera.

  The wind stopped. The humming cut out.

  Droog stilled in the yard. Everything fell silent except us, our breaths.

  All six of us had started leaning toward the window, waiting. Like we expected something to happen. Time went sticky as molasses.

  And then, a sudden shriek of metal tore down the length of one of the towers across the street, something exploding into sparking shards.

  Then everything went quiet again.

  For a beat, we just looked at each other, stunned by the sudden silence.

  Arthur broke for the stairs first.

  The rest of us took off after him.

  When we hit the porch, Droog leapt up and bounded after us across the road.

  “Wait—” I shouted as I noticed the yellow DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE sign on the substation’s fence, but Arthur was already halfway up it.

  The power surge must’ve knocked out the charge.

  “That’s private property!” Sofía warned, but Nick and I were on the fence now, and Remy and Le
vi were close behind. I heard Sofía groan then start up behind me.

  We landed one by one on the far side, and I threw a glance back at Droog, who was whining anxiously. I stuck my finger through and touched her nose. “Stay here,” I told her, then chased the others across the dark lot.

  “Are falling stars worth anything?” Arthur asked.

  “Like money?” Sofía whispered. “They’re basically rocks.”

  Arthur’s near-unibrow crinkled. “Why are you whispering?

  “Only neighbors this place has are corn and cows,” Nick said. “Feel free to shout.”

  “Besides.” Arthur grabbed Remy’s shoulder. “We’re here with the sheriff’s son. What can they do?”

  Remy shook Arthur loose. “Ground us.”

  We crept toward the metal tower where we’d seen the rain of sparks. The top looked like it had been bitten off, the metal twisted and torn like it was nothing but a giant Twizzler chomped in half. The beheaded part was caught between the base of the tower it had come from and the one next to it, forming a twisted bridge between the two structures. The metal groaned as it slid lower along them.

  “Look,” Sofía whispered.

  White sparks were still leaping off the loose piece of the tower, darting out and back in along a set path like a strike of lightning being played, then rewound, then played again.

  Arthur led us closer.

  The metal shrieked, and we all lurched backward as the broken piece came loose and crashed to the ground.

  The light was still there, as if it were growing out of the metal then withering into it. But it wasn’t coming off the metal at all. It was coming from the disc-shaped object balanced atop it, the thing that must’ve hit the tower in the first place.

  “What is it?” I breathed as we circled around it.

  Levi lifted the camera, shining light on the plate-like object. We hadn’t seen the disc from farther back because it was transparent, a little cloudy, like a rounded-out block of ice. The light came from within it, streaking back and forth along the same veins every time.

  “It must be heavy to have done this kind of damage,” Sofía whispered.

  “Do you think it’s like . . . part of the comet?” I asked.

  Arthur stepped closer. I could already see where this was going. My brother might be the type to obsessively remind me to drink water or take my Mace when I rode my bike to work, but he was also the type to try LSD alone and give himself stick-and-poke tattoos during math class.

  He did not have good impulse control.

  “Arthur,” I whispered. He ignored me, reaching, slowly, as if in a trance. His fingers spread, the blue-tinted light diffusing between them. “Art!” I hissed, lunging to grab his shoulder. “Don’t––”

  He thrust his hand toward the cloudy light.

  The last thing I felt was his worn-thin sleeve in my hand.

  The last thing I heard was an earth-shattering CRACK!

  Like the world splitting open. Like my eardrums bursting, my sense of balance and direction coming apart like a piece of fabric being unwound in every direction.

  Everything—every sound, smell, taste, and sight––was lost in a blinding white.

  And then I was lost in it too.

  TWO

  FRANNY.

  Frances?

  Franny.

  Fran! Fran!

  Do you hear me—

  Dammit, Franny, just fucking say

  “SOMETHING.”

  I tried to blink the light away. My ears were ringing. My head throbbed. The light ebbed back, but not enough. A star-pricked sky should have appeared; night-drenched electrical towers and coils and switches should have resolved around me.

  Instead I found early morning pinks and oranges, streaks of gold filtering through cotton candy clouds.

  Every sign of night was gone.

  “Thank God,” Arthur gasped. His hands were on my shoulders, gripping so tightly I might be bruised later. My arms were cold. And damp.

  “Are you okay?” Arthur’s eyes were ringed in white. His blond hair stuck to his forehead in wet clumps.

  A chorus of dim murmurs drew my gaze to the field behind the substation. Cows. Black-spotted cows packed tight along the fence, fur damp and mist hanging around their baby-pink nostrils. They were agitated, mooing and jostling against one another, and behind them, the rest of the field was empty.

  Every single inhabitant had clustered along the chain link, the sun rising through the pinks and purples at their backs.

  “Answer me, Franny!” Arthur shook my shoulders.

  My eyes traced his right hand. It was burned, a spiderweb of angry red reaching from his fingertips to his forearms. The thing had burned him. “Say something!”

  “It’s morning,” I got out.

  I was standing in the same spot. The twisted piece of metal still lay on the ground, but the lightning-disc thing had vanished. The electrical towers were still silent, but dozens of birds now sat on the metal beams, fluttering their wings and making throaty caws as agitated as the cows’ mooing. My body felt like jelly, like my bones and organs had been liquefied and if I moved, I’d lose all semblance of shape.

  The others all stood exactly where they’d been a second ago—not a second ago, I thought in terror, hours ago. Sofía’s arms were folded in front of her, her teeth chattering.

  Nick shook his head, ran his hands over his bristly hair. “Swear to Gah,” he said hoarsely. He screamed it a second time as he turned in a circle, eyes bulging as he searched for understanding. “What the hell just happened to us? Where have we been for . . .” He checked his phone. “The past six hours?”

  “The . . . the comet.” Sofía’s voice shook. Her dark eyebrows drew together. “The comet must’ve . . .” She pushed her hair out of her face.

  She was wet too. So was Remy. We all were, and everything around us.

  “Dew,” I said. We were covered in dew, as if we’d been standing out here all night.

  So why didn’t I remember anything?

  I clutched my stomach as a cramp shot through it. My mind spun, and I sank my fingers into my knees as something fiery rose through my esophagus. I vomited onto the gravel between my feet. Another spasm, another cough, but this time there was nothing but the impulse, the hot flash through my skull and an empty retch.

  Remy gently touched my back, and a moment later, Arthur patted my shoulder like I was a dog. “You’re okay,” Remy said. “You’re okay. It’s all . . . we’re okay.”

  Arthur gave a breathless laugh, like he’d just deboarded a roller coaster, not touched an unidentified falling object and lost six hours of his life.

  Nick sank the heels of his hands against his eyes. A sob wrenched out of him. “What happened to us?”

  Arthur laughed again.

  Levi crouched and picked up the camera. I didn’t remember him dropping it. I didn’t remember anything. “Battery’s dead,” he confirmed.

  Back by the fence, Droog let out a whimper, and a second later, the sound of police sirens rose in the distance.

  “Shit.” Remy scrambled to get his phone out, and his brown eyes widened. “The sheriff called twenty-two times.”

  Sofía tipped her head toward the mounting wailing. “Someone probably saw us here and called it in.”

  “We . . . we shouldn’t be here,” Levi said.

  Nick laughed coldly. “You think?”

  “We never should have climbed that fence,” Sofía said. “For so, so many reasons.”

  Arthur was still scanning the field with flushed, wide-eyed amazement. He broke off when he caught me watching. “Right,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He led the way, and I followed behind the others. The thought of that white light made the nausea twist inside my abdomen again. I pushed the thought back and
focused on my tennis shoes.

  Just keep moving. Don’t think about it. Keep moving.

  Something black and feathery appeared in my vision, and I stopped short.

  A dead bird, crumpled on the gravel. I looked across the lot and gagged.

  Hundreds of them, wings twisted at horrible angles, beaks cracked, blood on the pebbles where they’d hit. Scattered across the dewy substation like some biblical plague.

  Sofía gasped, and Nick clutched his stomach, but Arthur stared in wide-eyed fascination. After a beat, he shook his head. “There’s no time,” he said. “We’ll have to come back later.”

  “Come back?” Nick said.

  Arthur took off, and we jogged after him. Droog hopped up, eagerly wagging her tail as Sofía reached the fence and started hauling herself up, followed closely by Nick, then Levi, then Remy.

  I reached to follow, but a static shock leaped between the fence and me—not a full-on electrical charge, just a spark—and as I recoiled, I saw them:

  Dark red scars spiderwebbed up my fingers, reaching halfway up my arm.

  Burns, just like Arthur’s. The memory of pain and light shot through me so hard I stumbled. Arthur reached out to steady me.

  I was trying to keep a lid on my panic, but my voice came out hoarse and high. “What was that thing, Arthur?”

  He shook his head. The sirens were getting closer.

  “Climb, Franny. No one’s going to do it for you.”

  * * *

  * * *

  It was something Arthur had said to me five years before, right after the accident. The day we filmed our first episode.

  Mark was in the hospital, and by then, we knew he wasn’t going to wake up. Between our parents’ tearful fights about what to do next—of which there were many—Mom had started to talk about going to stay with her sister in Cleveland.

  “He’s not even there, Rob!” we’d heard her scream the night before. “We have to let him go, or I can’t take it here anymore.”

  “The kids need you, Eileen,” Dad had hissed, which had surprised me, because those days, he hardly seemed to realize we were still there.