How come he didn’t remember walking into the forest?
He’d just been lost in thought, he decided. He’d been doing that lately—daydreaming for hours. Although daydreaming seemed too pretty a word for it. Mulling things over was more like it. Agonizing over the past. How things were. How it could have been now if just one small thing had been done differently. If he’d chosen path A instead of path B.
His mind was a super fun place this year.
That had to have been what happened. He’d just been too wrapped up in his own head to notice how long and how far he’d walked.
Beacon spun in a slow circle, leaves crunching under his shoes. The sound ricocheted through the trees.
He realized it was quiet. Too quiet. No birdsong. No crickets. No rustling branches as squirrels jumped from tree to tree.
His insides knotted up tight.
Suddenly there was a flash of movement in the woods.
Beacon gasped and scanned the forest. Darkness wove through the tangle of trees, as if the forest devoured light.
It was nothing, he told himself. Probably just a squirrel or a deer. His dad had said they had lots of them out here.
Or a bear, Beacon thought darkly, remembering what Everleigh had said the other day—paws the size of dinner plates and claws like Wolverine.
A twig snapped, and adrenaline shot through his body. He whirled in a circle, trying to find the source of the sound.
Nothing. No one.
He held out his skateboard like a weapon, taking slow, careful steps back, away from the trees. Or at least he thought he did. He didn’t know which way was out. Everywhere he looked was forest and more forest. Shadows and darkness.
“Wh-who’s there?” Beacon asked. His voice sounded high and strange to his own ears, setting his pulse on edge.
No answer. Just the sound of weak, dead trees groaning in the wind.
Beacon swallowed.
“Whoever’s out there, come out now, or—or else!”
Another flicker of movement. Beacon yelped and swung with the figure, trying to keep it in his sights. But it was gone again. Lost in the shadows.
Beacon took a shaky step back. Then another.
He turned around to run.
And slammed right into a person.
5
Beacon stumbled back into the dirt. As soon as he hit the ground, he shot back up, taking a defensive stance with his skateboard. The other kid pushed himself to his feet and picked up some sort of electronic device that looked like a radio from the fallen leaves.
“Watch where you’re going!” the boy said indignantly, wiping dirt off his device.
Beacon’s fear slipped a fraction as anger took its place.
“Me? You’re the one following me through the woods like a creep!”
“I wasn’t following you! I was just . . . seeing what you were up to. I don’t usually come across anyone else out here.”
Beacon’s tense shoulders melted. He lowered his skateboard/weapon.
“Well, you could have said something before I practically had an aneurysm.”
He took a better look at the boy. He wore a pair of huge leather goggles like the ones pilots used to wear, and his red hair was parted in the middle and flattened against his head with more hair gel than he’d seen on even the smarmiest of TV weather personalities. His white lab coat, worn over a suit at least two sizes too big, rippled in the stagnant breeze.
The boy pushed his goggles onto his forehead, revealing deep impressions across his freckled cheeks from where the plastic had dug in. The goggles, Beacon realized—was this the “creature” with the gigantic eyes he’d seen in the woods last night when the car broke down?
The boy slid on a pair of wire-framed glasses and eyed Beacon from head to toe, finally settling his gaze on the skateboard tucked under his arm.
“So who are you?” the boy asked.
“Beacon McCullough,” Beacon said warily. “I’m new to town. Who are you?”
“Arthur Newell,” the other boy said after a lengthy pause. “So what are you doing out here?”
Beacon’s hackles rose at the boy’s tone. He had just as much of a right to be in these woods as him. He didn’t own them.
“I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to take a walk in the woods.”
“A walk in the woods with a skateboard?” Arthur said.
“I skateboarded to get to the woods. And you’re one to talk, with those weird goggles and . . . whatever that thing is,” he said, gesturing at the device in the boy’s hands.
“These weird goggles have night-vision capability,” Arthur said.
“Really?” Beacon had to admit, that was cool.
The boy puffed out his chest. “Made them myself.”
“And what’s that?” Beacon nodded at the radio thingy.
“It’s an ARD,” Arthur said, as if that explained everything.
“Oh, an ARD. Say no more,” Beacon said.
“An alien radiofrequency detector,” the boy said.
“Alien?” Beacon raised his eyebrows.
“That’s what I said.”
“So, you, like, believe in them or something?” Beacon asked.
“Yeah, I do. Go ahead and laugh,” Arthur said.
“I wasn’t going to laugh.”
Okay, he was. In fact, his lips twitched at the effort to rein it in. Arthur scowled, then turned around and began stalking away through the woods, tramping over twigs and leaves and thwacking aside branches. Beacon panicked. He’d finally found someone to hang out with, and even if the boy was weird, he didn’t really want to be alone out here.
“Wait!” Beacon called, tripping after him. “I wasn’t making fun of you. It was just surprising is all.”
Arthur didn’t even slow down.
“So aliens, huh?” Beacon said, trying to coax him into speaking.
“As a matter of fact, I’m the president of YAT—Youth Searching for Alien Truth,” Arthur said boldly.
“Wouldn’t that be YSAT?” Beacon said. “You know, Youth Searching for Alien Truth?”
The boy glared at him over his shoulder. “It’s YAT.”
“Okay, okay.” Beacon raised his hands in defense.
Satisfied, the boy kept walking. Beacon watched him disappear into the trees, then sighed, gripped his board, and chased after him.