Free From a Distant Star by Karen McQuestion Page B

reacting now was a different thing completely. He was acting like Lucas was a stranger, an invader encroaching on home turf. Someone who meant to do the family harm. I remembered Lucas’s lack of response when I mouthed “I love you.” That was the first weird thing. And now Mack, the closest thing Lucas had to a guardian angel on Earth, was acting like he was an intruder. That was the second weird thing. Each one by itself might mean nothing. But together, they added up.
    I thought about Mrs. Kokesh’s warning that the Lucas who came back from death might not be the same Lucas I knew and loved. She’d been right, unfortunately, and it was worse than I could have imagined. I hated to go back and face her again, but she might be able to help. Maybe she could help me reach the Lucas within, the real Lucas. He had to be there, somewhere underneath the surface. I didn’t know how to reach him, but I had to try. And if Mrs. Kokesh couldn’t find him, no one could.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    It took two weeks for me to get permission from Lucas’s parents to take him out of the house so we could be alone. By then, the doctors had proclaimed there was no sign of cancer anywhere in his body.
    The oncologist, Dr. Griffin, said, “We don’t use the word ‘cure’ for this type of situation, but I feel comfortable saying Lucas Walker is in remission. On behalf of the staff of St. James Hospital, we couldn’t be more pleased with the outcome of Lucas’s treatment here.”
    I can tell you what he’d said verbatim, because this was a quote from an interview with our local news anchor, Melanie Fox, from the channel 8 news. Lucas’s story was a six-minute segment. They showed him pretending to do chores around the farm, and they interviewed his parents as they sat stiffly on the couch, Mr. Walker with his arm around his wife’s shoulder. Eric only made a cameo appearance, and I didn’t even make the cut at all. They spliced in some old footage of Lucas playing football before his diagnosis and somehow came up with a photo of him in the hospital bed looking like he was two degrees away from death. My best guess is that they got that picture from Devin Bombeck, this tool from the football team who took photos of everybody all the time, even when you told him not to.
    I watched the clip over and over again, noting the dramatic music and the contrasting before and after shots, the way they cut the conversation with Lucas’s parents to just a short bit of Mrs. Walker saying it was a miracle. The thing that interested me the most, though, was the press conference held by Dr. Griffin on the front steps of the hospital. Lucas’s case was suddenly a big deal, not just locally, but worldwide. Other hospitals wanted to know what protocol they used to get such incredible results, and Dr. Griffin made himself out to be a hero. So I watched the clip, and was so annoyed at how he took all the credit that I barely noticed the way the camera scanned the crowd at the bottom of the steps. Most of the people in the audience were local reporters and staff from the hospital, but there were a few random bystanders as well. I didn’t pay much attention the first time around, but the second time I watched the clip, I did a face palm because who did I see in the crowd? Mariah and Todd, the friendly safety agents, dressed in normal clothes, trying to blend in. I paused the video and made the image bigger, which only made it more pixilated, but there was no doubt it was them. Why were they at Lucas’s doctor’s press conference? It didn’t make sense.
    Other kids on Facebook had talked about the agents questioning people from the surrounding farms, asking if they’d seen or heard anything the night we heard the boom, but no one had, and right after that, the news of Lucas’s recovery overshadowed everything else and the agents were forgotten.
    Every day, Lucas seemed healthier and stronger. His hair grew in so that there weren’t any thin patches anymore