Phoenix Lights - 1. CONNECTION

Thursday, March 13, 1997, 19:36

Phoenix, AZ

“Jeffrey!” Emily grunted and ran around the end of the couch.

Jeffrey held up the remote and stuck out his tongue. He’d been watching Doug on Nickelodeon, waiting for Alex Mack to come on. He knew it annoyed the hell out of her; Thursdays were her night for the living room TV. As soon as Friends came on, Jeff would have to watch his shows on the small TV in the basement. Still, he liked the thrill of seeing her get all worked up. “I have the TV until 8.”

“My show’s coming on soon. Give me the remote!” She sprang toward him.

He yelped and jumped to the side, running to the other side of the couch. “That’s still, like, twenty minutes.”

She smacked the arm-rest with the flat of her hand. “Give me the remote!”

“No!”

“You’re such a little brat, Jeffrey!”

“So? You’re a lesbian!” He didn’t even know what a lesbian was, other than some sort of insult.

“Mom! Jeffrey’s calling me bad names!” She yelled.

“Mom! Jeffrey’s mehmuhmuhmeh!” he mimicked.

“Knock it off!” Their mother yelled from upstairs. “I’ll ground you both from the TV for a week. Jeffery, give your sister the damn remote.”

“Her show’s not on for twenty minutes,” Jeffrey protested.

“If I have to come down there, you’re both going to be sorry.”

Emily put her hands on her hips and gave him an expectant look.

He sighed, then dropped the remote to the floor and kicked it across the living room. It slid underneath a large sectional couch.

“Go get it!” She yelled.

Jeffrey walked across the living room toward the basement door. “Get it yourself,” he mumbled.

"You're in 8th grade. Why don't you act like it?"

"You're a sophomore," he snapped back. "Why don't you act like it?" He grabbed the door handle and pulled the door open, but paused at the top of the steps. He was suddenly light-headed, and as he stared into the dark basement, a primal fear—anxiety—bubbled up in his gut.

He hung out in the basement all the time. He knew there was nothing down there to be afraid of. His PlayStation was down there, it’s where he and his buddies had their sleepovers sometimes. When he needed to get away from his sister or his parents, he even had a place to hide down there. But instinct told him that downstairs wasn’t where he needed to be.

The word don’t echoed through his mind with a steady cadence, once every three seconds. He didn’t hear the words as much as feel a warning pang that was pretty much the same thing.

He let out a small breath and took a small step back, closing the door quietly. He pulled his hands down his face and walked to the kitchen, pulling a glass down from the cupboard. He turned on the sink and waited for his glass to fill. The hiss of the spigot was mesmerizing, and a warm feeling clouded him, embraced him. Something that he should remember but could not… What is it? He wondered.

“What are you doing?”

Jeffrey jumped at the urgency in his sister’s voice. He stared at her. “What?”

“You’re making a mess.”

He glanced down at the cup in his hand, overflowing and spilling onto the counter.

Jeffrey jerked his arm back and shut off the faucet, staring at his hand. He shook his head and gulped down the water. After putting the cup on the lip of the sink, he pulled a dish towel off the handle of the dishwasher and started to wipe the water from the counter.

Something pulled at his brain. A feeling twinged at him.

He stopped wiping his mess off the counter, leaving the rag in a small puddle, and walked across the living room toward the front door, his brain on fire with a million thoughts that he couldn't stop, or catch hold of. He passed behind his sister, who didn’t notice him, quietly opened the front door, and walked out without even putting on his shoes.

The concrete was warm under his bare feet as he padded down the driveway and toward the street. The temperature held comfortably in the mid-seventies. Even though there had been no rain that day, the air smelled like desert rain, or maybe it was Creosote. Something reminded him of one of those ozone machines that he’d seen at the mall, and the way they smelled. The fuzz on his arms stood on end.

Across the street, another boy his age, one that he’d never met, walked down his driveway.

Jeffrey had seen the boy a few times before, in the chance encounter that his family was coming or going, but never took the time to walk across the street to introduce himself. The other boy didn’t go to Jeffrey’s school, or else he’d know him. The family across the street had lived there as long as Jeffrey could remember, and something in his mind wondered why they never talked before.

Both boys walked into the center of the road and stopped so they were standing about five feet apart. They stared at each other.

Down the street, someone let out a brief high-pitched scream. Jeffrey knew it had nothing to do with him or the other boy, it had more to do with what was going on overhead.

The air seemed to go silent.

The other boy was called Sean; Jeffery just knew.

Jeffrey also knew that Sean had been thinking the same thing as he came walking down his driveway. Jeffrey also seemed to know, in that moment, very suddenly, every detail about Sean. Every inch of his body, his every fear and insecurity, his every desire and passion. He knew that Sean also knew everything about him.

Jeffrey didn’t understand the exchange, or even how the exchange had happened, but something inside him felt comfortable with Sean, and that they could be vulnerable around each other.

Almost as if they had been thinking the same thing, they stepped in toward each other, standing at a distance reserved for someone comfortable, but uncomfortably close for friends.

A spark of emotion and excitement bubbled up inside of Jeffrey, and something inside him knew this moment had been ordained to happen from an earlier time.

Together, they looked up to the heavens.

Above them, in the inky darkness of the night sky, five lights hovered far above in a triangular pattern. They were reddish, and rippled as if they were being seen through a shield of heat. There was no glow to them, and seemed to line the edge of a very large object. Whatever the object was, it blotted out the stars in the night sky.

There was a siren in the distance, and the sound of a car horn honking.

They’re here, Jeffrey heard in his mind, in a voice that was not his own.

Who are they? Jeffrey wondered.

I don’t know. I just knew they’d be there.

So did I, I think. Jeffrey spun slowly in place, trying to take in as much of the large craft as he could.

How do I know so much about you?

Jeffrey stopped spinning and looked back at Sean. I don’t know. How are we doing this?

“What the hell is that?”

Jeffrey felt Sean watching Emily on the front porch; he glanced back at his sister.

“Mom! Hurry! Come look at this!”

Friends is such a stupid show, Jeffery heard Sean think.

Jeffrey spun his head toward Sean and grinned. He wasn’t sure if it was him or Sean that had come up with the idea, but they both walked off the road and sat shoulder to shoulder at the end of Jeffrey’s driveway, so they could watch the craft without getting run over by passing cars.

Are they aliens? Sean wondered.

I don’t know. Maybe.

I hope your mom’s not going to be too mad.

Jeffrey just understood. Because I accidentally saw Fire in the Sky when it was on HBO when I was little.

And you couldn’t sleep for almost a week.

This is different. I’m not afraid of it. Normally, shows about UFOs or aliens terrified Jeffrey; they had since he was little. It was something that he had only grown out of within the previous year.

“Hurry, Mom!” Emily called.

Jeffrey could hear his mom from inside the house. “What is it? What’s going on?”

“Come here. Look.” She pointed up into the sky.

Sorry about Brett, Jeffrey thought.

Sean glanced over and smiled weekly. Thanks, I think.

Jeffrey’s mother stepped out onto the front step and gasped. “What’s going on? Are they flares?” She held Emily by her forearm, and together they walked down the driveway until they were standing just behind Jeffrey and Sean.

Sean grabbed Jeffrey's hand. Don’t let go, he pleaded.

“How long have they been up there?” His mother asked nobody in particular.

I won’t, Jeffrey thought; he could feel a strange fear oozing out of Sean, but knew that neither he nor Sean could pinpoint what he was afraid of. He glanced up at his mother. “We’ve been watching them for a few minutes.”

“How long?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the sky.

Jeffrey shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Ten minutes,” came Sean’s small voice.

She glanced down. “Oh, hello. Who are you?”

“This is Sean,” Jeffrey said.

“Hello, Missus Marek,” Sean said.

“Hi,” she replied with a smile, returning her gaze to the craft overhead. “God, that thing’s huge. I wonder if your father’s seeing this.”

Sean squeezed Jeffrey’s hand.

Jeffrey felt something inside him, something he knew that Sean was feeling, too. Neither one of them had to think it or say it. He looked up at his mom. “Can Sean spend the night tomorrow?”

Your mom is going to have to meet my mom, Sean thought.

I know. Jeffrey knew, could feel, Sean’s experiences with his mother, and how strict she seemed when it came to Sean staying away from home. Probably because of what had happened to his older brother.

“If Sean’s parents are okay with it,” Jeffrey’s mother said.

The small grouped watched the craft in awe.

Why is this happening? Sean wondered.

I don’t know, Jeffrey thought as he shook his head slightly.

Jeffrey felt as if something had woken up suddenly inside of him; he felt like there was sharing his body with a whole other person, but he was also sharing space with Sean. Even though they had never met. Even though they had never talked to each other. Even though they hadn’t even shared any of life's experiences with the other. They felt like they had been friends forever, even more, for some reason Jeffrey couldn’t explain, he felt like he was one with Sean—the same being in two places.

Suddenly, the two lights behind the front-most light shot forward, merging into the forward one.

Jeffrey’s mother let out a short gasp.

The back two lights faded out, and then, after a short moment, the front light also faded. A large, triangular chunk of the stars were still blocked off, but slowly, the shape listed off to the south-east, quietly, unassumingly. The edge was abrupt, and almost shocking, as the craft hovered away from the mountain and over the desert, revealing the night sky above it.

“That was so eerie,” Jeffrey’s mother said.

“They’ll be back,” Sean mumbled.

“What was that?”

Jeffrey looked back. “They’re not gone yet,” he said flatly.

His mother scratched her arm nervously. “Maybe it’s time to go inside. I need to call Dad,” she said with a hint of fear behind her voice. “Jeff, why don’t you walk your friend home?” She grabbed Emily by the wrist and walked her inside.

In tandem, the boys stood up and shuffled along until they were standing just outside the gate to Sean’s front patio. In the dim light, he could make out some of Sean’s features, even though he knew them in his mind already—his reddish brown hair and copper brown eyes, the freckles across his nose, the shape of his jaw and his thin lips. He could feel Sean taking in his features, too.

Jeffrey’s heart skipped a beat.

I felt that, too, Sean thought.

Jeffrey and Sean, by some bonded feeling between them, decided to give each other a hug.

As Jeffrey padded home, he could feel Sean explaining what happened with the lights; his mother had seen them from her bedroom. He also knew that Sean had asked about a sleepover, and felt Sean’s disappointment when his mom answered with ‘don’t get your hopes up, but we’ll see.’

*****

It was a little after ten, and Jeffrey lay awake in his bed. The lights were again hovering over the city, and he knew this time there were seven lights instead of five. He didn’t have to see them to know they were there, but he didn’t feel the need to go to his window to watch them.

Before bed, Jeffrey had tried to see if he could make a connection with anyone else nearby, but all he could sense was Sean.

Guess that means we’re not psychic or something, Sean thought.

Suppose.

Jeffrey already knew why they needed to some time together; there was something in both of them that was driving him to the other. They would need to talk, test things out, figure out their bond and try to make sense of it. Before that morning, Jeffrey didn’t know a single thing about Sean. Now, they knew everything about each other.

It does kinda feel sudden, Sean thought.

*****

“You’re still asleep? I wish I could sleep in as late as you do.”

Jeffrey pulled his blanket around his ears. We start school at different times, he thought. You know that.

“I want to go to your school.”

That could be cool. Jeffrey sighed, trying to get that last ten minutes of sleep before he had to be up. He sat bolt upright. “You’re here.”

Sean leaned against the door frame.

Jeffrey nodded. “Because our moms are talking because yours is working late.”

“Your dreams are weird.”

“I was dreaming?”

Sean nodded.

“I don’t even remember.”

Abstract feelings and images flooded Jeffrey’s mind.

“It’s just what I saw when I came over. I tried to… um… brain to you to see if you were awake and that’s what I got back. We were walking over.” Sean scratched the bridge of his nose.

Jeffrey yawned. He stopped mid-stretch and stared at Sean. The lights had been all over the news, and from what he could gather from Sean’s thoughts, nobody could tell what they were.

“I even saw some news video of the lights that came back.”

Jeffrey slumped back against his headboard. “What do you think it all means? I mean, like, us?”

Sean sighed. “I don’t know.”

A woman’s voice called from downstairs. “Sean, time to go.”

Hopefully, I’ll see you after school. “Coming.”

We can hang out even if you can’t spend the night. We should probably figure this out.

Sean nodded, and waved goodbye.

Jeffrey got to his feet and headed to the bathroom to get ready for the day. As he stood under the warm shower, he could sense that Sean was happy, and that he’d be coming over that night. He smiled and sighed as he let the hot water fall over him, lathering his hair with shampoo.

A few moments later, as he sat and ate cereal, something suddenly felt different. He felt uneasy, and anxious. Almost nauseous. Worst of all, he couldn’t feel his connection to Sean anymore.