Page 12 of Love at First Sighting

“Look, I was going to delete them, I swear. I was trying to get pictures for reference so I could find you, not to be weird.”

“It’s still weird.”

“I know.”

She brings my phone closer. “These are good .”

Well, I didn’t expect that. El holds up a photo I took last night of her driving with the windows down.

It’s an action shot and she looks like a model—as always—but there’s a candidness to it that I think flatters her a lot.

The photo quality is good, composition strong.

She flips to the next one: El at our near miss at the stoplight, looking over her shoulder.

Just a split second before she saw me, yelled “fuck,” and sped off.

“They are?”

She nods. “Yeah. You’re a great photographer. I know what you were doing was creepy, but you took some good candids. I struggle so hard to get those. I always look fake. These look real.”

“Thank…you?”

“Can you send me these when we have service again?”

I furrow my brows. She’s not joking.

“Sure.” Well, this is deeply weird, so we return to silence. Until…“Wait…”

El freezes and her eyes dart to the sky. I press a finger to my lips. The air vibrates with a staticky hum, the one that scores all my nightmares. El grasps my jacket sleeve and crawls toward a large rock for cover. I follow her and conclude with finality that this suit has to go to the cleaners.

We press ourselves to the rock and peer over the edge of it. Her pinkie grazes the back of my thumb and sends chills all over my body. Touches from El set off a chain reaction that make it so hard to not do more, tiny jolts of electricity zapping me back to the present.

“Look,” she demands. So, I do.

Fear churns in my stomach as a glimmering anomaly floats through the sky.

It’s larger than the one I saw when I was a kid and far better at hiding.

It casts a glowing ripple in the sky as the leaves around us shake.

Years and years of therapy go down the toilet as my eyes follow the craft.

I remember the shutter of the camera, the quiet hum of crickets in the air, and the sharp intake of breath from my dad when he set eyes on what I saw.

The brief glint of his reflection in the split second before the car crash.

Knowing what I know from my time at PIS, I can confirm this is not a UFO.

Not an alien one, at least. UFO sightings and close encounters often come with side effects like missing time or physical illnesses and sensations, which neither of us have experienced.

There is no doubt in my mind that whatever we’re dealing with is completely terrestrial.

I realize I’ve stopped breathing when El rests her hand on my jacket sleeve.

“Carter,” she whispers. “Are you okay?”

I don’t answer her. I have so many questions I should be asking, but all my brain is doing is running me through a traumatic slideshow of memories: my dad coming to my kindergarten Thanksgiving play (I was the turkey), him cheering in the stands at a Little League game (even though I was terrible), birthday parties, family trips.

Cruel reminders of things I won’t get to have again.

“Carter!” she hisses louder.

This time, I snap back to her as the craft floats seamlessly through the sky with a quiet whir and nearly imperceptible cloak of invisibility.

“That’s it,” I say.

She nods. “Yeah, it is.”

Her own fear is palpable, but she’s putting it aside. I can only guess it comes down to how terrified I must look. I’ve never let anyone see this side of me before. I don’t know whether to feel embarrassed or afraid or comforted that it happened so easily.

The anomaly dips behind another hillside and vanishes into the night. A few seconds later, the whir of machinery fades to nothing until all I hear is El and me breathing.

“I think we have a lot of digging to do, Carter,” she says.

The next day I feel like a kid who forgot to do the homework.

It’s the same creeping feeling as when the teacher works their way up the desks and you know her grade book is just a few stops away.

I’m confused, and when I step into the office, I worry I don’t exactly work where I think I do, or I got every answer wrong.

I spend the day filing the (somewhat falsified) information I do have about El’s case in the system, while Toby does his internet sleuthing.

I debunk several videos for him by lunchtime (one is a balloon, one is a smudge on a camera lens, and another is a clip from Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds , which is surprisingly good despite the fact that Tom Cruise is there).

I log research of her social media activity, classify the type of craft she saw—Type I, a small nonpiloted disc-shaped craft—and leave it open for now, for Marcus’s eyes only.

At six p.m., I send Toby home and most of the other agents roll out as well. I try to keep my head focused on the day-to-day, instead of letting my mind wander and succumb to the mystery.

It’s just Marcus and me left. Now that I live on my own, we really only see each other at work, and he’s quickly dragged into meetings and calls. Some days, all we get are short waves and manly nods, at most.

He’s got a new cigarette lit and the window cracked open. The smoke puffs in curvy plumes in the warm glow of his office lamp.

I climb out of my seat and nudge his door open.

That’s when I notice the sheer amount of paperwork stacked on his desk.

I find him half-behind his desk, sorting file folders.

Marcus is usually pretty paperwork-light for a reason.

His secretary, Deb, handles most of it and places final reports on his desk for signature. But this is a mess.

“Did a tornado blow through here, or…?”

Marcus glances up and runs a hand through his hair. There’s a dazed, exhausted look in his dark eyes, like this has taken ten years off his life. “Yeah, a tornado called the federal government.”

“What are you even looking for?” I ask.

“The department is having us purge deceased and inactive agents from our files. They’re encouraging us to go digital-only to free up space in the regional archives. I’m organizing .”

Deceased agents. My dad included. Marcus says this like his own ex-partner isn’t one, like it’s no skin off his back if we never have answers.

“Aren’t we going to…need those one day?” I’m trying not to panic, to play it cool, but I’m already thinking about how this factors into El’s and my plans. How I’m going to get my hands on this file before it disappears.

“They’re backing them up. We just won’t have ’em anymore.” He reaches for a highlighter on his desk and highlights a name on a roster. “What?”

My chest feels heavy and tight. “If we get rid of them, they’re gone.”

Marcus blinks slowly. “Yes?”

“My dad’s file.”

Asking to see my dad’s file has never gone well in the past, and when I’ve questioned him on it, he’s assured me it’s clean as a whistle. My dad was a rules guy with no skeletons in the closet.

Marcus sets the folder down on the stack and leans back into his desk chair. “Carter.”

“I’m serious. His file’s going to be one of them, right? Once it’s shipped off, it’s gone forever. We’ll never know what happened.”

“I know what happened,” he says, slipping off his reading glasses and setting them on the table. “I’ve read the file. Trust me, it was a hit and run. Nothing in there you didn’t live through. It’d just be dredging up old memories neither of us want.”

My memories of the accident are so sparse and cracked apart that I couldn’t fully piece it together, and perhaps it’s for the best most of the time.

“I just want to see it. Once.”

“Carter.” He sighs. “I can look out for you a lot of ways here, but I can’t help you with that. It’s not in this office and hasn’t been in a long time. And I think it’s for your own good, kid.”

He’s right. Anyone else would have fired my ass years ago, but he keeps me on the payroll, keeps the other agents from harassing me, and finds whatever ways he can to make me useful.

“I really have to get back to sorting through all these files,” he says, and his voice drops lower, like a frustrated plea.

Asking him about my dad feels like backing him into a corner, and he always pushes back.

We don’t stay there long. Marcus was never the sappy type, but my dad was still like a brother to him.

Losing a sibling has to feel like losing a limb.

When my dad died, it felt like losing a head and a heart at the same time.

“I…” I begin. “I can always help you.”

Marcus huffs. “Trust me, you don’t want to.”

I want to fight back, and the testy part of me wants to grill him further.

“I promise, you aren’t missing any fun,” he says. “I’m giving you an out to avoid monotonous paperwork here. Take it, kid. Go home and get out of the monkey suit.”

His tired smile lessens the pressure in the room. It doesn’t, however, lessen my panic that we’re running out of time.

El (8:22 pm): Do you watch angel city noir?

Carter (8:23 pm): Oh no, not you too.

El (8:25 pm): It’s actually pretty good. And everyone dresses like you.

El (8:26 pm): There was just a big fight scene in a movie theater.

El (8:26 pm): I’m doing ~research~

Carter (8:27 pm): This is real. Not some soap opera procedural. I really don’t think watching angel city noir is going to get you anywhere.

El (8:28 pm): Well, not with that attitude, it won’t!

El (8:28 pm):

Carter (8:29 pm): Busy tonight?

El (8:30 pm): Yes. I’m watching angel city noir.

Carter (8:31 pm): Great. Incoming.