“Absolutely not.”

“Hell no.”

“What are you thinking? He’s some guy on the Internet, Franny!”

TWENTY-FIVE

WE AGREED THAT LIFE had to appear to go on as usual, to not draw attention, and so I’d come to work, but now, with ten minutes until 6:30, when my shift ended, I couldn’t help but pace behind the desk.

I checked the group message again. Someone had renamed it “THE FIRST RULE OF FIGHT CLUB,” but there had been no new messages since Remy’s noon update—that he was still waiting at home for his dad to show up so he could show him our evidence against Wayne—and Sofía’s two PM text that she was leaving lacrosse practice and to keep her posted.

As long as the FBI was around, we’d have to lie low, but the sooner we led them to Wayne, we hoped, the sooner they’d be gone. Rather than risk going back to the station, Remy had taken Levi, Art, Sofía, and me back to our house, where the Doctors Perez already thought we were sleeping over, and then Remy had gone home to ambush his dad with what we’d found in Wayne’s cellar.

Only, as of noon, the sheriff still hadn’t made it home for so much as a change of socks.

Still, it had been more than six hours since then, and Remy hadn’t replied to either of my Any news? texts, which seemed strange. Black Mailbox Bill seemed to have finally gotten the hint and stopped e-mailing me too, and while I knew the others thought it was for the best, the silence was deafening.

For all I knew, by ignoring him, we’d lost our one chance out of this.

Or maybe he’d only stopped e-mailing because he had to.

Because someone had finally found him.

The bells rang over the glass doors as my replacement, Grace, showed up for the evening shift. She waved and pointed to the locker rooms without removing her earbuds, indicating that she needed to change, and I gathered my stuff and came out from behind the desk.

The windows were washed in an eerie gray-green, and though the rain had let up, fog hung in its place. The repulsive humidity from outside had sneaked its way into the building, frizzing my hair and coating my skin in a sticky layer of sweat.

To be fair, I’d been sticky since I got here––I was fairly sure that barely sleeping last night had left me with a low-grade fever. Just as I'd finally started to drift off around three, I'd heard a commotion in the front yard and looked out my window to find Arthur cursing up a storm as he fixed my broken bike wheel. And then at five, I’d awoken again, this time to the sound of Levi sleep-tripping through the hallway, and I’d had to run downstairs and forcefully shake him awake before he could march outside again.

“Stop him,” he’d been grumbling, sending prickles out over and under my skin. “Youavetostop hmmmm.”

Sofía had heard the commotion and come to help. “Wake up, Levi!” she’d kept saying. “It’s Fran and Sofía. You’re dreaming.”

But just like the other night, that had set him off in a new direction, grumbling something like It is Molly or maybe, Sofía had pointed out, Moll-E.

“As in Wall-E?” I’d said, laughing.

“I don’t know! Maybe it’s some kind of alien naming convention!”

For a very brief time this afternoon, I’d renamed the group text “The Alien Formerly Known as Moll-E,” and she’d sent a quick mid-practice text saying, You Schmidts! Unhappy when I’m a skeptic; unhappy when I try to embrace this ridiculously absurd situation we’ve wandered into.

She had a point. Hosting the consciousness of an alien named Moll-E was no more unlikely than hosting an alien consciousness, period. And Molly had turned out to be a convenient shorthand for “extraterrestrial being” in the group text.

A blur of red caught my eye from the TV, and I jerked my gloved hand out of my sweatshirt pocket, lunging for the remote to unmute Cheryl Kelly as she appeared.

When I recognized the huge blue facade behind her, my stomach dropped.

“I’m here outside the Splendor Township Walmart . . .” she began, and my eyes went instinctively to my phone, checking for messages from Arthur or Nick I already knew weren’t there.

“. . . where Crane Energy officials are investigating another in this week’s long series of blackouts. While the power has since been returned, a fourteen-minute loss of electricity in the early hours of this morning led to a shoplifting frenzy, whose cost for the store may have totaled several thousand dollars, including—disturbingly—a three-hundred-dollar gun safe, four propane tanks, and several high-end power tools. While the blackout appears to have affected the entire block, Walmart was the only business that was, in fact, open at the time of power loss. Police are advising nearby business owners to check inventory for signs of theft anyway.”

The scene cut to a prerecorded interview with a large-toothed “Walmart shopper,” and I dialed Arthur as quickly as I could.

The call went straight to voice mail, and I hung up, steeling myself to call Nick. It rang endlessly, but he didn’t answer.

I typed into the group message: Saw the CK report! What’s going on there???

The truth was, I could guess.

There was only one other person, besides me and Molly the Benevolent Alien, who might be able to cause a blackout.

And that stuff he stole. Propane tanks, a gun safe, who knew what else.