THE BLIGHT FAMILY SINGERS

by Kit Reed

* * * *

Last year marked the fiftieth anniversary of Kit Reed’s debut in our pages (that was “The Wait” in our April 1958 issue, if you want to check). Among her many memorable contributions to F&SF are “The Vine,” “The Singing Marine,” and “Attack of the Giant Baby.” Now she returns with a story about youth culture, parenting, the performing arts, and, oh yeah, a few things that are out of this world.

Tifney

Fat Myra Weingarten booked the Blight Family Singers without even asking where we were with elevator music, the stupid cow. This, like, weenie-bun chorus is headlining our Midwinter Bash. That’s Dr. Weingarten to you and she has the power, for at Wingdale Junior College, she is the dean. She told us over the P.A., like that would prevent the protest rally that followed. We stormed her office during the harp intro to the Blight Family’s biggest hit, they were going FAAAAAA la-la-la as Trig Masters, our leader, bunched his big shoulders and hit the door.

Myra, do you not hear them? What planet are you from? Did you never swim across a mosh pit or get so hammered and blissed out that you forgot what you did, you only remembered that it was awesome?

Have you even looked outside? Minnesota, in the winter from hell. Did your brains freeze? If we can’t get loaded on Groundhog Day and roll naked in the snow, we’ll die. We don’t need much, just head-banging rock, a guy to hook up with and enough controlled substances to drink, smoke or snort or otherwise ingest so we can make it through winter, ergo the Bash. Listen. We held gazillion car washes and sold Whatever door to door to pay for booze, humongous speakers and a kick-ass band. Now look.

They’re tuning up in the auditorium as we speak.

During the demonstration outside Dr. Weingarten’s office, a few things came up.

A. The Blight Family Singers? Myra, who are you? The movie’s on TV every mortal Christmas and it’s awful, uplifting though it may be. So, what if the Blights ran away from this cult at Etheria, and what if evil Daddy Flagg’s colonists chased them with guns and dogs? As they slide down the icy mountain, are they really going FAAA la-la-la?

As if!

B. The Blight children are not what you would call kids. You can see gross hairs in the guys’ noses. Tufts sprouting out of their ears! The girls’ boobs flop in the stupid dresses and go wall-eyed when they dance. And the outfits. Like their mom shopped at American Girl, Pioneer Days department, dress your girls like the doll they want, except that no way are these girls. The guys’ shirts are tight, and not in a good way. The girls have pink wedges where their puffed sleeves ripped under the arms because they grew or the dress shrank, and you can see they hate that there’s fat popping out. So, do us all a favor and cancel, OK?

Right. This whole thing is the mother’s idea. Do not be deceived by that gooshy smile.

C. Which is probably A: Fat Myra blew the whole party budget, thereby wrecking Bash. Our dean paid the Blights off in advance.

Do you believe she tried to shame us? “Think of Wingdale Junior College. The Blights will put us on the map. Now, disperse.”

What did she think, we’d apologize and go?

Trig Masters started, “No way.”

We all went, “No way.”

I made Trig our leader because, OK, he’s this year’s Ice King and as of right now, he hasn’t picked his Ice Queen to sit up there on the float with him which, the thrones are heated and he’s gorgeous, both a definite plus. Look at him raising his fist, killer man. “No wayyyyy....”

Then Marly Mason, whom I do not like, slithered up him like a snake up a tree, chanting, “Astro, Blazers, Full Frontal,” and she got everybody shouting out their favorite bands.

Security came.

Fat Myra wasn’t giving up. After it got quiet she tried to guilt us. “It’s the least you can do. This poor, brave woman went through hell so her kids could walk free.”

Well, they don’t look too free to us, squirming in their dirndls and highwaters. So what if this Mother Blight like to died saving her spawn from the clutches of the infamous leader, the Most Reverend Jethro Flagg? She’s the kind that’s too smug to suffer, and besides. It’s all sooo last-century, and have they not made money on it, bigtime? The escape story made the Blight Family fortune, plus! About the frostbite amputations. You have our condolences, but how long ago was that?

If she wants to save the ones they left behind in Etheria, fine, just don’t do it on our dime. And look, if the damn fools that stayed back at the compound really think some heavenly craft is going to come down and float them up to Paradise, who are we to get in the way? Let them make soap and ranch elderberries and lie down and do Whatever with each other in one great big bed like their leader proclaims. If they think Daddy Flagg can get them to heaven that’s their business, right? If they’re stupid enough to drink the Kool-Aid, fine. Not our problem. It’s theirs.

Besides. It’s not like the Blights can’t save everybody all by themselves. They’re richer than dirt. Every school in America does the Blight Family Musical. The movie alone! Residuals, music downloads, the DVD. That icky sound track is a platinum record now. Grandmother music, like, they buy it all the time. If you happened to be locked in an elevator with your grandmother and it was playing, you’d claw your ears off to make it stop, but she’d be humming along. Plus, grandmothers give it to you at Christmas a lot, because they think it’s going to improve you or some damn thing, and they forgot they gave it to you for Christmas last year.

Dean Myra was banging on her chest like a grandmother, going, “Save the children.”

Trig yelled, “Screw that, save us!”

I am very proud of Trig. We yelled right along with him until Security did its thing.

By the time the tear gas finally cleared, we were staring into the jaws of the trap Dean Weingarten set for us. I mean, she was like steel. “No matter what you people think, you will all be very nice. I don’t have to tell you that Wingdale is in crisis. Think what would happen if the Blights set up housekeeping in our town! Tours. Special attractions. Jobs for every mother in Wingdale, important positions for every dad. Money, so they can buy you things.”

We got really quiet then.

“The Blights are shopping for houses, and if they buy one here....”

Everybody breathed in.

Dr. Weingarten got taller. She breathed out for all of us. “Wingdale wins. Now. Clap. Cheer. Smile like crazy. Make them love Wingdale so much that they want to stay.”

Clang.

Our big night and they’re in there harmonizing like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, FA la-la-la, while we are pretending to be glad. I don’t care how good this is for greater Wingdale, my man Trig and me (take that, Marly Mason), we’re bummed.

* * * *

Edwina Blight

Prosperity is an illusion, but I protect my darlings from harsh truths. I must, for if their smiles crumble for one second, the people will see it and we’ll be done. We have to go out there tonight and no matter what the conditions, we have to shine like the stars we are and make them love us. If they don’t we’ll never get another gig, but I spare my children the hard facts.

I’ve protected them all their lives. Believe me, it isn’t easy. I have so many to watch, and they keep wandering off! There are my two big boys, Edward, who is Jethro’s and my favorite, even though we fight. Then there are Ethan and the twins Edwin and Erna, from Willard Schott; Edna and Erness, Elton and Edgar and little Earl and—face it—Mickey too, that is, Micah Blight, my husband ever since our leader joined us at the biggest group wedding in the history of Etheria. In spite of my feelings on the subject, the Most Reverend Jethro Flagg pronounced us, thus making Mickey my primary instead, like it or not and thank you very much.

Most Reverend, hah! I could tell you a thing or two, but I won’t. For good reason I fell out with Jethro, a.k.a. the charismatic and powerful Daddy Flagg. We fell out and I led my children over the snow to freedom, frostbite and complaining or no. To “children,” add Mickey. He’s fathered at least three of our nine, but he’s one more responsibility. It’s like having a large, extra child.

My children, my burden. If only they’d stayed little and sweet and loving to sing! But no, they grew. They started to complain. That’s what got us into this hole.

Oh sweethearts, you don’t want to sing in our concerts? You’re quitting because they make fun of you at college? You want to try acting? Start a rock band? Study fashion design? All right, my darlings, enjoy! Canceling the concerts cut into our income, as did every public appearance and product endorsement my ungrateful children refused, not to mention the auditions and classes and demos I paid for because every one of the nine had illusions, and every one of them flopped. Everything comes at a cost.

Fall out of the public eye and you fall off the A-list, and that’s only the beginning. They think we’re touring to liberate the ones still locked in at Etheria, in Jethro’s thrall.

They don’t need to know we’re singing our hearts out in the icy waste because we’re broke.

It’s not the first time I’ve protected them. What Jethro and I did together before we fell out, I kept from them. They don’t know that during the Last Battle I found out certain things about our leader, or what came down when I confronted him. I keep the details of those sweet nights and the last, painful one locked inside my heart.

Good mothers are perfect, and my children don’t need to know what grossness I endured with certain colonists to guarantee safe passage, or how truly dangerous Etheria was. My book’s about the stockade with armed guards and the brave Blight family singing our way to freedom in the blinding snow, and the rest? Never mind. That’s good enough for them.

I’m not about to tell my darlings what I had to do to launch our career either, although they owe me, which, believe me, I do let them know. All they need to remember is that when we finished our first concert, everybody in the Bowl stood up and cheered, and my children loved it. They loved the money. They got off on the applause, and now?

Don’t you want it all back?

That’s how I put it when I made this booking. I do what’s needed to take care of them, and if that means keeping a tight rein, listen. It’s for their own good. Doesn’t every mother do the same?

In return, I expect loyalty. I expect them to fall in line, and they do, except for Edward. He fought to stay behind with Jethro, but in the end I brought him to his knees. I am, after all, a mother, and mothers know how.

I dragged him out by the hair. “That will teach you to get in my way.”

We fought every time he ran away and I brought him back. Of course I won; I always do, which is why the Blight Family Singers are back on the road. We stand as one. I can manage Edward, and the others?

They think we’re on a gala comeback tour, by popular demand. They don’t need to know that we can’t go home because we don’t have one. The bank’s men were pounding a foreclosure sign into the lawn at the Tupelo mansion as our tour bus rolled away. They took our lodge outside Denver and the Florida compound too. The hard truth is that all we have left is the clothes we stand up in and our old costumes, which the girls bitched about altering for our comeback tour. And although there are issues with the finance company, fifty per cent of the bus. Oh, and Mickey’s vibraharp, but he mustn’t know it’s come down to that.

If they knew how bad things are, could they dance onstage laughing and singing, and could they face the public with those same bright, shiny Blight Family smiles?

Trust me, they don’t need to know.

The town fathers in this wretched town don’t need to know it either. They think we’re poised to throw millions around Wingdale, which is how we got this gig. Pardon the vulgarity: if we can’t get another booking on the strength of this one, we’re screwed. In this business you do what you have to, to get what you want. I’ve put out that we’re settling in Middle America, and the Wingdale Chamber of Commerce wants it to be here. If they won’t accept this Midwinter Bash check as earnest money, where will we go?

Look. If my kids want to bitch about the road, outgrown costumes and close quarters on the bus, let them. They can vent all they want, but it won’t change anything.

The Blight Family Singers are legendary, and I will damn well keep it that way. They’re grumbling now, but when the lights come up and we go on and the thrill comes back....

When we march on stage and that first wave of applause breaks over the footlights and splashes us full in the face, it strikes me like an electric shock. It’s better than sex.

I come alive.

But, God! Are we not going to sing in the comfort and safety of this cheesy auditorium? The idiot stage manager just said “Showtime” and opened a door on deep snow. Outside? Have they looked outside? Why is that monstrous dean in her bearskin coat telling Mickey, and not me? Does she imagine that he’s in charge because he is the man? Mickey blinks the way he does when he isn’t getting it, poor fool. His chin goes all trembly. “Out there?”

The dean pushes the door wide and winter roars in. She slaps his shoulder and points. “Out there.”

I shove him aside. “We can’t sing in that!”

That face! “I can always stop payment on the check.”

My God, is she serious? Are the school guards really armed? They herd us like prisoners through a trench in the snow. At the far end a ladder leads up to a crude platform, with curtains separating it from whatever lies beyond. I dig in. “We won’t.”

She bunches her shoulders and gives me a push. “Heaters onstage.” It’s like being wrangled by a grizzly bear.

The guards rattle guns. Snow fills our slippers and we trudge forward on icy feet. My family’s bones rattle like wind chimes. I tell her, “We’ll die!”

We clump at the bottom of the ladder, a little clot of misery. She points. “I said, there are heaters onstage.”

Onstage. Then a wind carries in voices. There’s a crowd massing somewhere beyond the velvet curtain that separates us from whatever waits. I hear movement out there, feet stamping, a beginning shout.

Audience!

I marshal my family. “We survived Etheria,” I tell them. “We can certainly make it up on that stage. Brave smiles, everybody,” I say as we start up the ladder. “Brave smiles.”

* * * *

Edward Blight

Look at her, preening in purple velvet like a budding diva. You’d think we were back in the Hollywood Bowl. It’s fucking freezing out here.

If she thinks I’m going to stand up here grinning like a fool and sing until my corpse turns to solid ice, she’s wrong. The Moment is close. I have seen certain signs. Mother is too old to know about mosh pits, but I’m waiting for the right spot. When I see it, I’ll plunge. Then I can swim to freedom over the heads of all those brainless teenagers.

Waiting is hell. My blood chills and my brain stops cold. The past starts playing like an old movie inside my head.

“Your future is just around the corner and it will be wonderful,” she told us, booking yet another performance in Paris, Venice, Prague, anywhere far away from home. School. Our friends.

OK, Mother. When? Nine childhoods lost to your agenda, months at rehearsals like forced marches, on a never-ending road trip with the bitch mother of all time rushing us back and forth between venues, and for what?

We’re nothing but bit players in the story of Edwina Blight.

She dressed us like children for so long that it was obscene. It got old and so did we, with mandatory facelifts, as though us looking younger makes her young, but what’s a little pain when Edwina’s self-image is at stake? We’re no better than extras, background for the never-ending story, expendable props to be moved around to decorate every scene our mother plays.

She is the star of her own life.

“Now do this. Do that,” she said with that imperious wave and she was our mother, so we had no choice. She pushed us around for decades, and for what? We grew up, but what good did it do us? We still can’t get away. I belong with my father and I can’t get away.

“Children,” she said last week, in that fake, motivational voice kindergarten teachers use. It worked when we were ten. “Pack. I’ve booked our gala comeback tour!”

Mother, I’m thirty years old!

“I can’t.” I stood my ground, but in private. We faced off under the wisteria at the bottom of the garden in Tupelo, where the others couldn’t hear. They don’t trust me anyway because I am Jethro’s, so it was just as well.

“Do it for me, sweetheart.” Her touch was soft and her tone was too sweet; I knew what went on between her and Jethro, and I hated her. “Do it for us.”

You ran away from him, I didn’t. I said, “I’m not going.” I did not say, I want to stay where he can find me.

“But darling, we can’t go on without your gorgeous soprano solo.”

“I’m not a soprano anymore. I have to stay here!”

“You can’t stay here.” Her eyelids peeled away from those wild blue globes; she was frantic. “He’s after us.”

My heart leapt up. I tried and failed to stare her down. “Is that so bad?” If he lifts me up, I won’t have to do this. I’m sick of running, hiding, performing like a trick monkey and doing her bidding at every turn.

She shuddered. “They’re after me.”

I didn’t say Who? Jethro hasn’t exactly told me who they are, only that they’re coming to take us and it will be magnificent. I said, “Is that such an awful thing?”

“We can’t stay here.” She forced me onto the bus. “We can’t stay here, Edward. We can’t stay here!”

No apologies, no explanation. Now we’re in this awful place. When the bus pulled into the Wingdale Motel 6 and she had us wedged into two units, she didn’t rest. She sent poor Fa—I mean Mickey—out to buy a house, like she actually expects us to settle in this icy hole in the road.

Here, when all I want is to get Margaret and Sally and Felicia and take them home to Etheria, to meet the only real father I know. Mickey’s okay, but he’s nobody to me. If I can’t make it back to Etheria in time, Daddy Flagg will find me, he promised, but if I want to fly up with them at the time of the Great Upload, I have to live according to the Rule. Three women and no babies. Yet. Once I get my girls pregnant, I’ll take them home, and it will be wonderful, Father promises.

We don’t see each other but we talk all the time.

I don’t care what lovers’ quarrel moved Edwina to yoke us kids like a chain gang and drag us out of Etheria, Father knows I fought her night and day. Nothing has been right between us since. Oh, I put on the costume, I sang, I kept on singing years after the critics said we were finished as an act; the venues got smaller and meaner, but I sang. I fell into line, but in my heart I belong to Daddy Flagg.

He’s coming soon.

Through all our show-business success and all the trials intervening, I, at least, have stayed in touch. She doesn’t know it, but he and I talk all the time, and I know when Father’s coming and what he wants.

It’s nothing like the poison you poured into our ears, Mother. He has great plans for us. You think you’re free, Edwina, but thanks to me Jethro knows where you are right now, and what we’ve been doing every step of the way. He always knows, and when The Moment comes, if he wants you, whatever you’re doing, he will find you! And if he doesn’t want you, then fuck you.

As for the miraculous Great Upload? Where we fly up to Paradise? Light the field, prepare the straight way, and all you who believe will become luminous.

It’s soon, and when I fly up I’ll look back down at you standing there, Mother. I’ll watch you get smaller and smaller until you’re nothing more than a spot on the ground, and I’ll laugh.

Unless—and I’ve tried to overlook certain signs but I can’t ignore them—unless he wants you back.

* * * *

Jethro Flagg

You’re a hard woman, Edwina Ferris, I said to her after the fight, and she gave me that look. Not Ferris, dear Daddy Flagg, remember? You married us, and that made it official. It’s Blight.

I never should have told her my intentions, about which of the flock I had chosen to go with me and which would stay behind and what would become of them.

She glared; her words split me like an axe. It’s Edwina Blight.

When I came out of my yurt that night and flew over the snow to peel away the Etherian children curled around her and lift her out of her nest, I wanted to romance her until she forgot everything but our bodies and the stars overhead, but her family yurt was empty. My beloved, vindictive Edwina was gone. She decamped with her precious brood, every damn one of them. She took Edward, my boy! And that lame excuse for a husband that I gave her, Micah Blight. She didn’t get that I chose him for her because he was so weak.

Mickey. What imbecile names himself after a mouse?

So this is my fault, I suppose, for not making Edwina my primary at the first group wedding, but I have many to love as per our masters’ orders, and women are notoriously jealous. They want the cradles of Etheria filled to overflowing with citizens of the next world.

I have my own bed to fill. There’s no time for exclusivity, Edwina’s demand. I have bigger things on my mind. The mission, what is expected, and which parts of it I must perform. I have to bring legions with me to the Great Upload, when They come and we rise. And the others? That’s my job too.

I have work to do here, and through hell and high water, petty mutinies and federal incursions, no mere human can slow me down. And how do I know They will come for us? When They will come and whether They are who they say they are, which has never been clear?

Listen. I fell from a star, the blaze on my forehead is proof of that, don’t ask. And when They come it is I, and I alone, who will decide which ones come with me to join the kingdom and who stays behind, and if I choose to humble my beautiful Edwina and destroy her instead of scooping her up? That’s mine to say. My boy Edward yearns to make new citizens for the future, whereas she.... Run, Edwina Ferris, if you’re that intent on your precious freedom. Run wherever you want, you won’t get far. I have my sources, and believe me, I keep track. Flaunt your fame and wait for me to bow down and worship, if that pleases you.

As if that worked out. Fame must have been fun while it lasted, but you haven’t been famous for a while. Survival is the best revenge, and if, my dear, you’re stuck in Wingdale, Minnesota, with nothing but that bus and the clothes you stand up in, there’s a reason.

Face it, you crossed the wrong man.

I know where you are and I know what you want, and I am here to tell you that you’ll be sorry for walking out on the enterprise. You’ll be sorry very soon.

* * * *

Edwina Blight

In this cold, time stops. I see my whole life flash before my eyes, and it’s over.

Jethro is blazing mad. Trying to keep me in Etheria, he told me about the mission. To make me see how important it was, he said an awful thing.

“I have instructions from the future.”

“For the future?”

“No.” He thought he was preaching to the converted, but he was wrong. “I have instructions from the future.”

He described—what exactly? Etherians from the next century? Preternatural beings from Elsewhere? Not clear. I don’t think he knows.

Whoever they are, he told me they were coming for us, he just didn’t know when. And that when they take us, they want to.... What? He wouldn’t tell me. “Just be there.”

“Why?”

“Just be there, it’s important.”

I hissed through bared teeth, “Then tell me why.”

With one slip he revealed the endgame and drove me out of the kingdom. He said, “If you want to live.”

* * * *

Tifney

So, the concert? The first thing is, it started out bad. One minute Trig Masters, that I thought he and I were bonded, one minute Trig was hanging with me and in the next, he wasn’t. He was down front in what should have been the mosh pit holding Marly Mason way up in his arms, like there was anything worth seeing up there, and he kept holding her, even though we could forget about the rock band. There was nothing to see but the bitch was up high and laughing at me, so take that, Trig Masters, you and I are done. Kids crowded in like bumper cars, squeezing me back and back until I squirted out of the mosh pit and onto the sidelines alone. There I was out in the cold and I was thinking, Okay Tifney, story of your life.

Then I was either very lucky or it was fated and weird. This tall guy onstage made a lighthouse turn and stopped cold and, wow, he beamed brighter! I think he saw me. Then creaky old Mr. Blight started plinking away on, like, this mellophone thing and ta-DAAA, the Blight Family Singers concert began.

It was awful. The mother had this screechy soprano that ripped into us like a buzzsaw, gooshy song after gooshy song, with the chorus doing backup in crap harmony, even the guy I had my eye on, although unlike the others, he had this excruciated look. It was horrible, although I have to admit that I wasn’t around to hear the whole thing because of what happened next and where I went afterward, not to mention what it was like out there when him and me got back from the bar.

I am, however, wiser now and changed forever by the experience, just so you know.

This Mother Blight was up there swaying in tight velvet, warbling “Whispering Hope” like she was giving the microphone a blowjob while the rest of them harmonized to break your heart, and we were all, like, ewwww. Nobody had thrown anything yet, but the kids in back had started to grumble and boo, and that guy that I had my eye on, I think he got it. She hit a high note and his face went all, SHEESH.

He didn’t just get it, he got us, and everything changed.

He jumped UP like a seven-foot Laker making a hoop, and I could swear he was looking right at me. His fist shot up in the air and he howled, “BOO-RAH,” and Mrs. Blight, she turned around in a purple fury, like, her glance would send him straight to hell.

Well, big lady, not so much. Instead of standing down or cowering like she expected, this tall, cute guy shoved aside the sisters in their ruffles and flounces and came down front and center. Then he jumped high. He shook that fist and yelled to crack icebergs, “BOO-RAH!” So we all knew that he was even more bummed by this experience than us. It knifed over our heads like a flying sword. “BOO-RAAAAAHHHH.”

And all of us poor pissed-off, frustrated Midwinter Bash-sters, we raised our fists and yelled back at him, unless we were yelling with him, we gave out with the big “BOO-RAAAAHHHHH,” and the next thing I knew he spread his arms out and did a swan dive into the crowd. He landed where the mosh pit would be if this was a real old-fashioned rave and Dean Weingarten had ever heard of a mosh pit and hired a decent band, and he flew into that crowd grinning like he didn’t care if they caught him or not.

Trig and his guys put up their arms and started passing him along, so he floated over their heads like a swan on a duck pond. Every kid out there was hooting and howling and passing this cute guy over their heads and it seemed like he was steering. Poor guy, he was OLD, my God he must have been at least thirty, but he was zooming over their heads laughing and howling like another kid.

Then the most amazing thing happened, he floated out of the mosh pit and pretty much landed on me.

Like it was intended. Like fate.

By that time Security was onstage with wands and shit, surrounding the Blight Family Singers as we in the audience were more or less storming it, well all except me, because I was mesmerized by the one that had escaped.

He had black, black hair and thick black eyebrows and huge pale eyes and I was thinking, I’m in love, which I’m not—yet, although in spite of a couple of things, I’m close.

Wingdale Junior College was moving into high riot mode, and do you believe that Blight woman struck up with “Amazing Grace” as though the mutiny was nothing and all of us suffering out here loved her, and the chorus chimed in like none of this had happened and we could actually hear it over the yelling and sirens and all? A couple of other things also happened, not the least of which was me seeing Marly drag Trig off God knows where to do God knows what with him in the snow, and if you think I will ever forgive either of them....

Never mind.

I was face to face with this amazing guy. I said the nicest thing I could think of. “That was brave.”

“I’m Edward,” he said, like that explained it. He flipped his phone open, read a text message and clicked it shut with a nod, like, There. “Listen! He’s on the way.” He took my arm like we’d been dating all our lives. “Let’s get out of here.”

Which is how we ended up downing double shots at Schillinger’s Bar, which I chose because it was within walking, and although I’d come to Bash with that jerk Trig Masters, no way was I going home in his car. “Okay,” I said and fell in next to him. “Okay, Edward,” I said.

In the light at Schillinger’s he looked not that old after all but boy, he looked tired. Bud Schillinger gave me that look, like, I knew I would be carded so Edward pretended the two doubles he ordered were for him. We did the entrance interview, which bands we liked, whether we liked our parents and what was our favorite color and, this is weird, how I did in school: honor roll; it made him smile, but it’s still embarrassing. He had to snort both doubles before he could get past that his mother ripped them out of Etheria to further her career, and wow, he hates the Blight Family Singers concerts more than he hates her, like, he says it’s coming, and if she’s not on board it serves her right. Then he thanked me for—what was it? Leaving my friends to bring him to Schillinger’s so he could vent.

“It’s not like they’re friends.” I leaned in closer and wow, he was shivering! I touched his sleeve. “You don’t have a coat.”

Then he gave me the weirdest look. “I won’t be here long.”

“We just got here and you’re leaving?”

“It’s not like you think.” How was I supposed to know that by here, he meant the planet? Accidentally my hand was still on his arm and he reached up and spread his fingers over mine; they were so warm. It was intense. I was waiting for him to explain but out of nowhere he said, “So meanwhile, are you seeing anybody?”

“Yes. No. Well, not anymore.” Oh, flirty girl, all fake-innocent. “Why?” Take that, Trig Masters.

He didn’t exactly answer. “Did you ever think that there’s someplace better than this?”

“What, Wingdale? Man, there’s gotta be.” Man. I’m here in Schillinger’s with a man. Just thinking it excited me, so I wasn’t rightly listening when he explained. Something about the pre-kingdom with a leader designated by Them, which when I asked, he told me They knew better than us and if I came with him, we’d end up in a far, far better place. When he laid it out for me his eyes were so bright that I knew that whatever he was seeing, it was real. I was thinking he was crazy or I was crazy, or we weren’t and something big was about to happen to both of us.

I made a silence for him to drop words into. It didn’t happen right away. When he finally spoke, it was so sudden that I jumped.

“Did you ever hear of Etheria?”

“Yeah, sort of. Um. Not so much.”

“It’s wonderful.” To hear him, you’d think it was downtown Oz. “It would have been so easy if we’d stayed, but Mother did this stupid, stupid thing.” He almost choked on it. “They fought. She took us away. But it’s okay. He stayed in touch.”

“Who?”

“My father.”

“That stringy old guy with the xylophone thing?”

“No, my real father.” He looked so proud. “Jethro Flagg. He promised to come for me. For the Great Upload.” He opened his phone. “It’s tonight.” He set it down on the table. He squared it on the table with a look, like he was expecting further instructions. Then he scanned me up, down, with those amazing eyes; he was, like, assessing me. “They aren’t taking everyone.”

“Because....”

“New society. They want the best.” He nodded and Bud brought over a couple more doubles. I grabbed one; I needed it.

I made another silence and waited. It took him too long to go on so I pushed. “Who are They that they’re so important?”

“Jethro hasn’t rightly said. Just that they have more brains and better technology so wherever they take us, it will be better, and so will we....” He got all wrapped up in thinking about it.

“Yo, Edward.” I fanned my fingers in front of his face. “Edward?”

Then he surprised me; he sighed. “I worry about the rest.”

It was only a little creepy. “Which ones are those?”

The squint told me it pained him to say it out loud. “They aren’t taking just anyone. We’ll be fine, but the others....” He took my hands and sparks zapped between us for a long time. They exploded into words. “Oh Tifney, do you want kids?”

“Like, now?”

He shook his head. “When it’s time.”

“Maybe. Probably. Not yet, but maybe when I’m ready....” This conversation was spinning its wheels. Because he was so cute and anyplace was better than Wingdale I said, to please him, “Whenever that is.”

His phone buzzed on the table. He didn’t even look. He jumped up, tugging on my hand. “We have to go. We have to go!”

Just then the bar shook; the neon in the front window gave way to a white glare bigger than a billion strobes going off simultaneous. It filled the bar and bleached out all our faces. I froze until I heard Edward groan. “What,” I asked him. “What?”

“Just hurry!”

By the time we got out in the street it was all dark again. He ran. I ran. We kept running even though it was slippery and we were pretty much blinded. I fell and he helped me up. He was so upset that I wanted to tell him we didn’t have to hurry. Girls know these things. Whatever he thought was about to happen was already done.

When we got to the field it was empty. There was a big black patch where every speck of ice had melted. To look at the gouges in the terrain, you’d think something tremendous had landed, but it was gone and the ice surrounding had turned to water. Except for Dean Weingarten and the Blight people lurching around the stage bumping into things, everybody was gone. I didn’t think that was so bad. I never liked them anyway. Whatever happened to them, my folks would be okay. They never come to these things.

I was okay but Edward crouched in the mud like a hunter looking for tracks. Then he fell on his knees and shouted at the sky. His voice was so full of pain that it tore me apart. He kept crying out the same thing over and over and over, “What happened, what happened?”

I heard thuds as two of the Blight people jumped down from the stage. Twins, maybe. They looked like Edward, but they looked more like each other. Edward was too forlorn and grieved to see them until they got all up in his face, one coming at him from one side and the other from the other. They did this, like, synchronized tap on the shoulder and said what they had come to say. This got his attention.

One said, “He came.”

The other said, “She went.”

“Mother left you a message.”

“She said, ‘This will teach you. Nobody gets in my way.’”