Page 43 of Strange Lights

The topic change doesn’t distract Calvin long. He’s not experienced with any sort of weapon. He’s never been in any sort of fight aside from the scuffle with werewolves and childhood fights with his brother. I opt to give him a tranquilizing gun and a faster-acting firearm that shoots rubber bullets. I hope he’ll use them if it comes down to it. He also gets a taser and a wickedly sharp dagger. He tries to protest, but either way, he needs them for appearance’s sake if we’re aiming to be unnoticed in a facility where being armed to the teeth is standard.

I stick with much the same, but I don’t tell Calvin about the familiar old dagger I dug out of the basement and strap to my leg. It feels like reuniting with a toxic ex. Like I’m making the same mistakes over and over again.

Weapons stay on, even when you sleep.

When I tell Calvin we’re going to end up inside the Kingsleys’ living quarters, he demands answers.

“We need to get going,” I insist as I climb the stairs from the basement.

“A minute used to explain won’t make a difference,” Calvin calls after me. “You might not consider it lying, leaving details out, but I do. I’m going in there with you, for Eldi’s sake, but you have to tell me the truth. You weren’t even going to warn me about the werewolf experimentation. Why won’t you talk about your time at Agency 51? How well did you know the Kingsleys?”

“I worked for the agency. Obviously, I wasn’t bringing about world peace or anything. It’s something I’m not proud of. Why can’t you let the past go?”

Calvin catches me before I make it past the kitchen, tugs on my hand, and forces me to look at him. “Because I don’t know what I’m supposed to be letting go of. I don’t know what you’re holding back.”

“It’s not relevant,” I say coldly. “I’m telling you the facts that we need to get in and out of Agency 51. You don’t need to know my entire personal history. Have I ever asked you to divulge every mistake you’ve ever made? Everything you’re ashamed of?” A tenseness is creeping into my shoulders.

“I’m not asking you so I can judge you for your past,” Calvin says. “I’d like to know you, who you really are.”

No, he wouldn’t. The guileless look in Calvin’s eyes guts me. I don’t have the strength to shut him out even though I should. He shouldn’t go to Agency 51. I shouldn’t let him. But I need a fail-safe, for Eldi. I look away but catch sight of Manny, struggling to put clean sheets on Eldi’s bed, and only feel worse. I’ve put Eldi in danger. I should have found a better home for her than here with me. Now I’m repeating my mistakes with Calvin. I never learn.

“Promise me something before we go in,” I say. “That if it’s a choice, if you can only save one of us, get Eldi out. No matter how angry you are with me. No matter how much you think you hate me for dragging us into this mess.”

“Reggie,” Calvin says, moving into my space, cupping my face in his hands, “you’re not going to die in there. We’ll all get out.”

I can’t budge on this point.

“Calvin, I’m serious. If you don’t promise, I’m not taking you in with me, and you have no hope of finding your way in alone. You can wait outside, and I’ll make sure she makes it out to you.”

Winnie’s radio crackles in the background, static, low murmuring voices, a few chords of a song, as she scans through the airwaves.

“If it will make you feel better, I promise. Of course I would do anything to save Eldi if I can. But it isn’t going to come to that. And I could never hate you.” He pushes the hair back from my face, tucks a stray curl behind my ear tenderly. “You’ve never hidden the good inside you as well as you think you do. Your face is an open book when you talk about Eldi. It’s what’s going behind all that that I can’t quite read.” He drums his fingers on the side of my face. “What are you so afraid of?”

For a moment I allow myself to lean against Calvin, sink into his embrace. “I’m afraid you’re wrong about me. I’m used to keeping everything secret. Telling someone things like this, it’s new.”

The power in the Winnebago flickers, and I jump as her radio volume surges, a voice coming through her speakers loud and clear, “From SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, here with us tonight discussing the crop circles, the alien code. About the translation and interpretation . . .”

Wincing, Calvin motions to Doug. Doug snakes out a tentacle, lowering the volume to manageable rather than deafening. “I’m listening,” Calvin says to me.

I catch another fragment of the voices from the radio. “⁠—dangers that might arise from simple miscommunications with an extraterrestrial species. Hell, look at all the conundrums humans have walked themselves into simply by refusing to listen to each other. Now we think we can handle adding aliens . . .” I’ve lost my train of thought somewhere back with my sense of self-preservation; Calvin’s wide eyes and the soft way he stares at me, his steady weight holding me up when I’m so tired, are all I can concentrate on.

“Our intentions don’t matter when consequences come to call⁠—” Dave fiddles with the radio controls as Calvin tenses.

“Stop to listen; we shouldn’t be rushing to shout back in a language we don’t understand at beings who⁠—” Doug bats Dave away from Winnie’s radio controls. Static swells in my ears alongside another voice.

Listen, shout, listen.

My head pounds with indecision and noise, too much input, too much at stake. I swallow hard. I have to tell him. “I’ve never wanted to hide who I am from you to hurt you. My only intention⁠—”

“We all make mistakes we aren’t proud of, thinking we’re protecting someone we love. Reggie, I need to tell you⁠—”

“I . . . worked with the oldest Kingsley sister. Closely. I worked with her very closely. The Gauntlet, the werewolves, I was there for it all.” I cut him off in a rush, spit out the facts⁠—or a version of them⁠—before I let myself bury them again, before Calvin says he loves me and I have to hear him take it back. I shouldn’t have let myself lean on him, because now I’m unsteady, off balance as he draws away immediately. “Adele wanted me to help take her work with the Gauntlet further,” I say, “to figure out how to wield it in a broader way. She wanted other weapons, other ways to control people. Werewolves. Beings like Eldi. I think⁠—I think she wanted an army. She never said outright what her goals were.”

“You think?” Calvin says.

“Yes, I think. I don’t know for sure because she wouldn’t tell me. And I tried not to think too hard about it.”

“And you were okay with that?” Calvin asks. He crosses his arms, stares down at me. Just like that, we’re back in a bar, and he’s judging me and finding me lacking. But this time I am judging myself too.