The Summer Experiment Read online

  In the moonlight, I saw Billy tilt his head to one side as he listened.

  “That’s Johnny, all right,” he said.

  And that’s when the cave flooded with the most intensely bright light I’d ever seen. It was so bright that it was beyond white. I remember thinking, “That’s no four-wheeler.”

  ***

  We were sitting on our machines at the mouth of the cave on Peterson’s Mountain. Me. Marilee. Billy. And Johnny. The moon was much higher now and brighter. The sky was filled with stars. Our machines were all running, headlights on.

  “We’d better get home,” said Marilee. “My mom is already as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers.” I smiled. That was one of Grandpa’s favorite sayings that Marilee had picked up. I looked over at Johnny and he was looking back at me.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Thanks for what you did back there.”

  “Yeah, dude,” said Billy. “Thanks for that, man.”

  “You were so brave!” Marilee gushed.

  “No biggie,” said Johnny. But he was awfully quiet. So were Marilee and Billy. So was I, for that matter. I mean, it had been a hair-raising night in more ways than one.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Johnny. “The game is on at eight o’clock.”

  “It’s ten,” said Marilee, looking at her watch in the glare of Billy’s headlights.

  “What?”

  “Huh?”

  “It can’t be.”

  Billy, Johnny, and me in that order.

  “But it is,” said Marilee. “Unless my watch is broken.”

  Billy stuck his wrist out where the light would catch the numbers on his own watch.

  “A minute past ten,” he said.

  I looked at the Timex Sports Watch my mom had given me for Christmas.

  “Ten o’clock,” I said.

  “Well then,” said Johnny. “Definitely time to go home.”

  We followed Johnny the rest of the way down the mountain. At my house, Marilee jumped off from behind me and got on Billy’s machine. He lived just past her house so he could drop her off.

  “Good night,” Marilee said.

  “See you,” I said.

  “Take it easy,” said Johnny. We stood and watched as their taillights disappeared. Then we turned and went into our house. Mom looked up from her TV show, surprised.

  “The two of you together?” she asked. “What will my eyes see next? And why were you not home sooner, Robbie? It’s past ten o’clock.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Johnny. “I was looking out for her.”

  “Yeah, I was fine,” I said. “I was with my big brother.”

  Mom laughed out loud, thinking we were being sarcastic, as usual. She glanced over at Dad as if to ask if he’d heard this. But Dad was asleep on the sofa, his glasses resting on his chest.

  “Good night,” I said, and trudged slowly up the stairs. My legs felt as if they each weighed a hundred pounds. My arms at least fifty each. I was exhausted. I heard Johnny sigh as he climbed the stairs behind me and knew he was feeling the same way. At my bedroom door, I paused. Johnny walked past me to his own bedroom.

  “Johnny?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. I nodded. He opened his door, but he didn’t step inside.

  “That was a brave thing you did tonight,” I said.

  “I wasn’t brave,” he said. “I was just scared.”

  “Scared of the UFO?”

  “No,” he said. “Scared something bad would happen to you.”

  I left my door and ran down the hallway and into his arms. He hugged me tight. That was the first time he’d done that since we were little kids. Maybe Mom was right. We would bond, Johnny and I, and be great friends for life.

  “Now get some sleep,” he said. I walked back to my room, my heart surging with love. “Pipsqueak,” he added.

  I slept that night as if I hadn’t slept in fifty years. No dreams. No waking in the middle of the night when Maxwell stomped all over my pillow. No hearing Dad’s pickup truck leave for work at 6 a.m. No hearing Mom get Tina up and bathed at 8 a.m. When I finally did wake, I was starving.

  And I also had a lot of questions. What the heck happened to us on Peterson’s Mountain?

  13

  The Denial

  The next thing the four men knew, they were back onshore at their campsite. They all felt exhausted and decided to sleep for the night. The large fire they had made only minutes previous was now just a pile of burnt embers. Without much conversation following the unusual incident which just took place, the men went to sleep. The next morning, they said little of the incident and packed their belongings to move to a new campsite.

  I was back on Wikipedia, reading up on the Allagash Abductions. A full week had passed and yet Johnny, Billy, Marilee, and I had said nothing about what happened on Peterson’s Mountain the night I dressed up as Calley’s ghost. The night we hid in the cave. The night of the bright light that found us. You’d think someone would say, “Hey, remember that weird spaceship we saw? You know, the one that chased Johnny?” But no. It was as if something had been erased from our brains. I mean, I know we all remembered seeing it. Just as the four men from Vermont remembered seeing a ball of light. It’s what happened afterward that I wanted to discuss. How else could we get to the bottom of things? But everything seemed to have quieted down all over town, not just with the four of us. No more sightings were mentioned and the strange lights everyone had been seeing had, well, imploded. Or they were invisible to us.

  After psychiatric examinations, all four men were deemed to be mentally stable and they all passed lie detector tests. In 1988, out of curiosity, Jim Weiner attended a UFO conference hosted by Raymond Fowler. Fowler was excited about Jim’s story, especially the fact that it was a multiple-witness occurrence. Fowler suggested to Jim that he and the others undergo hypnosis. After the sessions, it was revealed that all four men had memories of being abducted.

  Well, we four would also be a multiple-witness deal if the other three would just talk about it. I didn’t want to read on. I knew what it said, anyway. The examinations. Those hair and skin samples.

  I heard the rooster crow. An instant message from Marilee.

  MeMarilee: Want to go to Cramer’s for an ice cream?

  I quickly typed back:

  AllagashRobbie: No, but I want to talk about what happened on Peterson’s Mountain.

  The rooster crowed again.

  MeMarilee: We could have broken our necks.

  My sound effect is a horse whinny. I imagined Marilee hearing it over at her house as I typed back:

  AllagashRobbie: I want to talk about it! ASAP!!!!

  When there was no response after twenty minutes, I shut my computer off. Out in the hallway, I met Johnny. He had just gotten out of the shower and was pulling on a clean T-shirt. I stepped in front of him, blocking his way to the stairs.

  “Were we abducted on Peterson’s Mountain?” I asked. It doesn’t get any more to-the-point than that. At first, Johnny looked nervous, but in no time he was flashing his usual crooked grin.

  “You crazy?” he asked. “If they took one, they’d take us all, right?”

  “Right,” I said. Absolutely. We had all lost two hours on that mountain. So how did that happen? And why was I the only one concerned?

  “Well, there’s your answer,” said Johnny. “They’d be looking for intelligent life, right?”

  “Most likely.” I figured they would be examining all kinds of animals and probably even plants. I mean, who would notice if a tree was abducted from the Allagash wilderness?

  “If they’re looking for intelligent life, why would they take a blond?”

  Oh, dude. Not the dumb blond joke. Get a new act, Johnny. He was being mean a
gain, and so soon into our bonding, or whatever that was. My disappointment must have shown on my face because Johnny quickly tousled my hair.

  “Let it be, Robbie,” he said. “It’s over and done with. I gotta go. Uncle Horace is picking me up in ten minutes.” He was down the stairs before I could even reply.

  In the kitchen, I poured myself a glass of orange juice. Mom came in with a bag of groceries and started putting them away.

  “Do you believe in aliens?” I asked. “You know, beings that inhabit other planets?”

  Mom gave me a sharp look. I knew it was because Tina was there, standing next to her and eating a Popsicle. Tina is shy in front of the milkman and the mailman. Spacemen would really terrify her.

  “No, I don’t believe in aliens,” Mom said. “And now that things have finally quieted down, I don’t want to hear about them, either.”

  Have you ever seen a photograph of an ostrich with its head in the sand? No, you haven’t, because it’s a myth that the bird does that when it senses danger. But if it did, I’d be living in a family of ostriches. Even my best friend had her head in the sand.

  “What if they walk among us?” I asked. Tina had followed Maxwell into the living room. “What if Johnny and I are not really your children but were put here by aliens?”

  “That I would almost believe,” said Mom, “if my labor pains hadn’t hurt so much.”

  ***

  I saw Dad trimming the hedges in the yard so I went out to pretend I was there to help him. He looked up and smiled when he saw me.

  “How’s my girl?”

  “Dad, do you believe in aliens?” I asked. “Is there life on other planets?”

  He stopped trimming to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

  “There’s a good chance, I suppose,” he said, “what with all the stars out there that are like our own sun. Stars with planets of their own. But I doubt we’ll know the answer in our lifetime, Roberta. Hand me that soda.”

  I handed him a can of Pepsi that had turned warm in the sun. Was it so wrong to want answers now, in my lifetime? I was never big on waiting.

  “Where does that leave God?” I had to ask it. I waited as Dad finished his soda and handed me the can. Five cents refund and he didn’t have to remind me.

  “Well,” Dad said, as he went back to clipping, “if there is life on other planets, then maybe God created them too. It’s just a bigger neighborhood out there than we realized, that’s all.”

  That wasn’t a bad answer. But I knew I had questions that even my dad would furrow his brow over. And that’s what he did when I asked my next one.

  “If there are UFOs flying over Earth, why don’t they land and make themselves known? Why don’t they share their technology with us?”

  After the furrow came and went, Dad said, “Well, maybe they are so intelligent that we’re like ants to them. You don’t sit and talk to ants, do you, Robbie? Or, on the other hand, maybe they’ve seen MTV.”

  ***

  I gave up. In the front yard, Billy Ferguson was just pulling in on his bicycle. He popped down the kickstand and turned to look at me.

  “Johnny here?” he asked. What an opportunity. Johnny had gone to Caribou with Uncle Horace for the day.

  “He won’t be back until this afternoon. Want to sit on the swing and talk?”

  Billy looked nervous. Like I might grab him, pin him down, and kiss him to death. But we sat on the swing and Billy pushed us in motion with a foot. After we went back and forth, back and forth, he seemed more comfortable. That’s when he said it.

  “Maybe we can go four-wheeling sometime. Or ride our bikes over to Cramer’s for an ice cream.”

  You would think, wouldn’t you, that I’d smile when I heard this? Or maybe swoon, which is a word I picked up from one of Mom’s old black-and-white movies. I think it means “to faint.” I could have even gulped. But, no. Here’s what I did. First, I blushed, which is something I wish I could control. I hate a blush. And being blond doesn’t help hide it, let me assure you. Second, I was so nervous at what Billy just said that I simply blurted out my big question.

  “What do you think happened on Peterson’s Mountain the other night?”

  You’d have thought I just clobbered him on the head with a poturn. His foot stopped the swing. He jumped off and went to his bike. He kicked up his stand and jumped on the seat. “I gotta go.”

  I watched until he disappeared down the road, an ostrich riding a bike. I had to hope that in the future I’d learn to be more careful. That way, maybe my boyfriends wouldn’t run from me.

  ***

  There was one person I thought might talk to me. I couldn’t take the four-wheeler on the main highway, so I got out my bike, put on my helmet, and told Mom I’d be back in time for supper. I set off pedaling down through the modest gathering of houses, past the one grocery store and the small café, past the school and the police station, past the gas station and movie rentals, past the post office and the library, and then that was it. Town was over and I was pedaling out south into the “suburbs,” so to speak.

  I love my bicycle. Mosquitoes and blackflies can’t catch you on a bike or a four-wheeler, which is a major perk. Manufacturers should put that in their advertisements: This Schwinn Girl’s Ranger bicycle is light blue, has knobby tires for traction, is mosquito-proof, and with its twenty-one gears can easily outrun blackflies. Honestly, I think they would sell more bikes in the northern states.

  I pulled into Sheriff Mallory’s driveway and braked. As I was leaning my bike against his porch railing, the door opened and there was the sheriff. Or the former sheriff. He looked different without his uniform. He looked just like anybody’s grandpa, in tan slacks and a white cotton shirt.

  “Well, look what the wind blew in,” he said, and beckoned for me to come sit in one of Mrs. Mallory’s big rocking chairs on the front porch.

  “Thanks, Sheriff Mallory,” I said. “Well, Mr. Mallory.”

  He smiled sadly and nodded.

  “It sure seems strange not to be the sheriff anymore,” he said, and handed me a stick of gum. “But Harold will be a fine sheriff. He was an interesting deputy, I can say that much.”

  “He won’t last a month, and you know it,” I said. This made him smile. He likes me, Mr. Mallory does. I know because I heard him telling my dad once at a school function. “I sure get a kick out of that girl of yours,” he said. “It’s like talking to a miniature adult.”

  “Well, let’s just hope he doesn’t do too much damage until a new sheriff is voted in,” said Mr. Mallory. “You can call me Stanley now that I’m no longer with the department.”

  “I would like to know, Stanley, what you really saw on Highway 42 that night,” I said. “I want to know because I think I saw it too.”

  Stanley Mallory looked me in the eye, steady and sure. He sighed as he ran a hand through this thinning hair. He looked tired. No wonder. He’d been through a lot lately. Our mayor wasn’t an easy guy to deal with. So if he and the chamber were putting a vise grip on our sheriff, as everyone expected, it couldn’t be fun.

  “I didn’t see anything unusual,” he said. “Thinking back on it, I’d say it was several of those low-flying planes from the base in Burlington, Vermont. You’ve seen them, haven’t you, Roberta?”

  Yes, I’d seen them often. They flew over during the day and they looked like airplanes. So I told Stanley what I’d seen. I even started with the ghost prank I was hoping to pull on Johnny, to explain what we were doing on Peterson’s Mountain so late at night. Then I told him about Johnny signaling to the craft, and how we flew down the mountainside to the cave.

  “The light that shone in on us was so bright we couldn’t look at it,” I said. “No way was that Johnny’s four-wheeler.”

  Stanley Mallory sat in his rocking chair and stared out at his mailbox. It had two red cardinals on it, their f
eet grasping a brown twig. I figured Emma Mallory had painted it herself. She used to teach art at the high school and still gives lessons.

  “That’s quite a story,” said Stanley.

  “There’s more,” I said. “It seemed like just a second later that we were sitting there on our machines, Johnny too, at the mouth of the cave.” I paused, since it still scared me to think about it. “But it was really two hours later.”

  “That’s sure a wild tale, Roberta,” Stanley said.

  “Wild and true,” I noted. “But you saw it too, didn’t you?”

  Stanley waited a bit before he replied.

  “I saw a bunch of airplanes. Those jets fly like the dickens.”

  “What about the bright light that lit up Paul Ellory’s dairy farm? It was so bright you could see Mr. Ellory’s cows and his red tractor and his two silos. You said so yourself.”

  “It had been a long night,” said Stanley. “I was tired, and when your eyes get tired they see all sorts of things.”

  We sat in our rockers, saying nothing. Cars and pickups and trucks went back and forth on the main road. I was getting my Tooth Fairy feeling again, no doubt about it.

  “I’m on a team all by myself,” I said finally. “I can’t even get Johnny and Marilee and Billy to admit what they saw that night.”

  I stood up and shook Stanley’s hand.

  “Thanks for your time, Mr. Mallory,” I said. I didn’t feel like calling him Stanley anymore. I was too disappointed in him.

  “I’m sorry, Roberta,” said Mr. Mallory from his rocker on the porch. I was just kicking up the stand on my bike. “But I gotta think of our town. I gotta put Allagash first. One day, when you’re older, you’ll understand.”

  “I’d like to understand before I turn twelve,” I said. “See ya, Mr. Mallory.”

  14

  The Siren

  The next day started off with a bang. There was some breaking news, and by this I mean glass breaking. Apparently Henry Horton Harris Helmsby, in his great attempt to join two vegetables that had been happy living apart for a few hundred years, blew up his mother’s greenhouse. Glass flew so far that some of it ended up on Marilee’s lawn. Poturns littered the road in front of Henry’s house, and now Maggie Dunn’s chickens were pecking at the pieces and in danger of being flattened by pulp trucks.