Free Pod by Stephen Wallenfels Page B

his footsteps move to the patio door. “The whole town is dark,” he says.
    I’m staring out the window. I’ve never seen the worldso absent of light. No stars, no moon. For all we know, the PODs landed and bug-eyed storm troopers are slithering their way through our neighborhood. I wish Dutch were a Rottweiler, not a house hound with an arthritic hip. When the aliens come he’ll wag his tail and lick their tentacles.
    Five minutes of this waiting-for-the-world-to-end and my brain is shooting sparks.
    “Can I light some candles at least?”
    “Might as well,” Dad says.
    Candles are already strategically placed, so it’s just a matter of walking around the room with a lighter. Luckily, Mom was a big fan of candles. The house was beginning to smell pretty stale. The fruity scents provide a welcome relief. In some distant way they remind me of another life.
    Dad returns to the floor, scans the board. “It’s your move,” he says.
    He still wants to play the stupid game. “You’re not serious,” I say.
    “You rolled a two-three.”
    “You’re crazy.”
    “No. I’m winning. You want to roll again?”
    I glare at him, afraid of what I’d say if I open my mouth.
    He takes one of his deep, thoughtful breaths.
    Please,
no! Not the Sphere of Influence speech
.
    “Look, we need to keep things as normal as possible, so—”
    “Normal?” I say.
“Normal?”
He starts to say something, but I cut him off, the dam really open now. “There’s a giant spaceship hovering over my best friend’s house.We’re like animals in cages and we’re all starving! And now we don’t have electricity. I’d say
normal
is out the freaking window!”
    “It’s the way things are, Josh,” he says, his voice all calm like he’s the therapist and I’m the psycho. “Worrying about it won’t accomplish anything.”
    Worrying? This from the man who invented the concept.
    I kick the backgammon board. It slams into the wall, breaking in half and scattering pieces, brown and white, all over the carpet. This feels good for exactly one second.
    He starts picking up the pieces. His shadow, stretched out and cartoonish in the candlelight, flickers against the wall.
    My voice shaking, I say, “How about if I walk out the door? Go for a little stroll. Maybe visit our friendly neighbors, the Conrads? See how normal things really are.”
    On his hands and knees and looking at the floor, he says, “You do that, Josh, and I’m right behind you.”
    Later, I’m trying to find a way to fall asleep. Dad’s downstairs playing the piano. He knows only one song, “Blowing in the Wind.” Everything else he plays is just notes that occasionally sound like something familiar. He once played this song over and over for two hours after he and Mom had an epic fight. Dad keeps talking about piano lessons, but news flash—he waited too long.
    I’m reading
People
magazine with a flashlight. The issue is only two weeks old. Mel Gibson is on the cover—he has a new war movie that should’ve opened this month. Britney Spears is pregnant again, or maybe she’s just getting fat. I turn the pages but can’t focus. The guilt feels like a boil on my brain. I shouldn’t have kicked the backgammon board. And then I threatened to walk out the door. Jesus! It was all stupid, every little bit. And Dad would die, me wasting batteries on a magazine like this.
    I turn off the flashlight and pull up the covers in the dark with the wind picking up outside, and think about Lynn. I wish I’d kissed her that night after the jazz-band concert. She was sending me every kind of signal—squeezing my hand, pressing her leg against mine, looking at me sideways with her lips parted just a little. I wish I had told her I like the way her hair smells, or put her hand over my heart so she could feel the way it thumps in my chest when she’s close. But I waited too long, so there’s that, too. I close my eyes, trying to remember her lips and that killer sideways smile,