I Am Number Four

I take them off and put them back where I found them. I don’t really understand why Sam wears them.

For sentimental reasons? Does he really think it’s worth it?

“Where is your dad, Sam?”

He looks up at me.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“He disappeared when I was seven.”

“You don’t know where he went?”

He sighs, drops his head, and resumes reading. Obviously he doesn’t want to talk about it.

“Do you believe in any of this stuff?” he asks after a few minutes of silence.

“Aliens?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes, I believe in aliens.”

“Do you think they really abduct people?”

“I have no idea. I guess we can’t rule it out. Do you believe they do?”

He nods. “Most days. But sometimes the idea just seems stupid.”

“I can understand that.”

He looks up at me. “I think my dad was abducted,” he says.

He tenses the second the words leave his mouth and a look of vulnerability crosses his face. It makes me believe that he has shared his theory before, with someone whose response was less than kind.

“Why do you think that?”

“Because he just disappeared. He went to the store to buy milk and bread, and he never came back.

His truck was parked right outside the store but nobody there had seen him. He just vanished, and his glasses were on the sidewalk beside his truck.” He pauses for a second. “I was worried you were here to abduct me.”

It’s a hard theory to believe. How could nobody have seen his father abducted if the incident occurred in the middle of town? Perhaps his dad had reason to leave and he plotted his own disappearance. It’s not hard to make yourself disappear; Henri and I have been doing it for ten years now. But all of a sudden Sam’s interest in aliens makes perfect sense. Perhaps Sam just wants to see the world as his dad did, but maybe part of him truly believes that his dad’s final sight is captured in the glasses, somehow etched into the lenses. Maybe he thinks that with persistence one day he’ll eventually come to see it as well, and that his dad’s last vision will confirm what is already in his head. Or maybe he believes that if he searches long enough he’ll finally come across an article that proves his father was abducted, and not only that, but that he can be saved.

And who am I to say that he won’t one day find that proof?

“I believe you,” I say. “I think alien abductions are very possible.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE NEXT DAY I WAKE EARLIER THAN NORMAL,crawl out of bed, and walk out of my room to find Henri sitting at the table sca

“Anything?”

“Nah, nothing really.”

I turn on the kitchen light. Bernie Kosar paws at the front door. I open it and he shoots out into the yard and patrols as he does every morning, head up, trotting around the perimeter looking for anything suspicious. He sniffs at random places. Once satisfied that everything is as it should be, he bolts into the woods and disappears.

Two issues ofThey Walk Among Us are lying atop the kitchen table, the original and a photocopy that Henri has made to keep for himself. A magnifying glass lies between them.

“Anything unique on the original?”

“No.”

“So, now what?” I ask.

“Well, I have had some luck. I cross-referenced some of the other articles in the issue and got a few hits, one of which led me to a man’s personal website. I sent him an email.”

I stare at Henri.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “They can’t track emails. At least not the way I send them.”

“How do you send them?”

“I reroute them through various servers in cities across the world, so that the original location is lost along the way.”

“Impressive.”

Bernie Kosar scratches at the door and I let him in. The clock on the microwave reads 5:59. I have two hours before I have to be at school.

“Do you really think we want to go digging around in all this?” I ask. “I mean, what if it’s all a trap?

What if they are simply trying to root us out of hiding?”

Henri nods. “You know, if the article had mentioned anything about us, that might have given me pause.

But it didn’t. It was about their invading Earth, much the same way they did Lorien. There is so much about it that we don’t understand. You were right a few weeks ago when you said we were defeated so easily. We were. It doesn’t make sense. The entire situation with the disappearance of the Elders also doesn’t make sense. Even getting you and the other children off of Lorien, which I have never questioned, seems odd. And while you’ve seen what happened—and I’ve had the same visions, too—something is still missing from the equation. If we one day make it back, I think it’s imperative to understand what happened in order to prevent it from happening again. You know the saying: he who doesn’t understand history is doomed to repeat it. And when it’s repeated, the stakes are doubled.”

“Okay,” I say. “But according to what you said Saturday night, the chance of us going back seems slimmer every day. So, with that, do you think it’s worth it?”

Henri shrugs. “There are still five others out there. Perhaps they’ve received their Legacies. Perhaps yours are merely delayed. I think it’s best to plan for all possibilities.”

“Well, what are you pla

“Just make a phone call. I’m curious to hear what this person knows. I wonder what caused him to not follow up. One of two possibilities: either he found no other information and lost interest in the story, or somebody got to him after the publication.”

I sigh. “Well, be careful,” I say.

I pull on a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt over two T-shirts, tie my te

I look down at Bernie Kosar. “Ready for a run, boy? Huh? Want to go for a run?”

His tail wags and he turns in circles.

“See you after school.”

“Have a good run,” says Henri. “Be careful on the road.”

We walk out the door and cold, brisk air meets us. Bernie Kosar barks excitedly a few times. I start at a slight jog, down the drive, out onto the gravel road, the dog trotting beside me as I thought he would. It takes a quarter mile to warm up.

“Ready to step it up a notch, boy?”

He pays me no attention, just keeps trotting along with his tongue dangling, looking happy as can be.

“All right then, here we go.”

I kick it into high gear, moving into a run, and then into a dead sprint shortly after, going as fast as I can.

I leave Bernie Kosar in the dust. I look behind me and he is ru

I look down at him and he looks up at me, tongue to the side, a sense of glee in his eyes.

“You’re an odd dog, you know that?”

After five minutes the school comes into view. I sprint the remaining half mile, exerting myself, ru