You’ve Reached Sam: A Novel

It’s too dark to see anything. A hand moves across my face and pulls a string, illuminating the desk lamp on the floor between us. White sheets hang down from the ceiling light in Sam’s bedroom as we lay on the carpet with pillows stacked around us like walls. We are hiding in the fort he built with his little brother, James. Sam reaches over and moves my hair out of my face to see me better. He’s wearing his favorite royal-blue tank, the one that shows his shoulders and brings out his summer tan skin. He whispers, “We can do something else if you’re bored.”

James pokes his head in through the opening of the sheets with a flashlight. “I heard that.”

Sam drops his head, groaning. “We’ve been in here for two hours.”

“You promised to hang out tonight,” James says. He just turned eight years old. “I thought you guys were having fun.”

“We are,” I assure him, and give Sam a nudge on the arm. “Sam, relax.”

“Yeah, Sam. Relax,” James repeats.

“Alright. Another hour.”

I look up nervously at the ceiling lamp that’s holding the weight of the sheets, and glance around the fort. It looks like it could fall apart at any moment. “Are you sure it’s safe in here?”

“Don’t worry,” Sam says with a laugh. “We’ve done this a million times. Right, James?”

“Nobody’s safe out here in the wastelands,” James says in his creepy voice.

“That’s right,” Sam says to play along. He looks at me. “We should really be worried about what’s out there. Better cuddle up, and keep each other safe,” he whispers playfully. He leans in and kisses me on the cheek.

James winces. “Ew. Not in the fort!”

“It was just the cheek!”

I break out with laughter, then go quiet again. “Do you hear that?” I pause to listen. “I hear rain.”

“Acid rain,” James corrects me.

I look at Sam and sigh. “I’m gonna have to walk home in that.”

“Or you can stay the night,” he says through a smirk.

“Sam.”

James points the flashlight at our faces. “Mom says to tell her if Julie ever stays past midnight.”

“You would do that to me?” Sam asks, looking hurt. “My own brother?”

“She said she’d give me ten dollars.”

“So you’re taking bribes now, eh,” Sam says. “What if I gave you fifteen?”

“Mom said you’d make an offer. She says she’s willing to match anything, plus tickets to the Rockets game.”

Sam and I look at each other. He shrugs. “She’s good.”

“Let’s focus,” James says, looking out through the opening of the fort for signs of trespassers. “We need to figure out what the aliens have done with the others they kidnapped.”

“I thought we were hiding from the zombie apocalypse,” Sam says.

“… That the aliens started. Duh,” James says, rolling his eyes. He repositions his arms, holding the flashlight like a light saber. “We need to hurry and get the ingredients for the antidote. We can’t lose any more men.” Behind us lays the body of Mr. Bear wrapped inside a pillowcase. Together, we had to make the hard decision of putting him down before the virus spread to the rest of us.

“Oh. You mean—this antidote?” Sam holds up a glass vial that looks a lot like his bottle of cologne.

James lowers his light saber slowly. His voice darkens. “You’ve had that all along … while one of our men was infected?”

“Been in my pocket the entire time.”

“You traitor.”

“Worse,” Sam says. “I’m the alien.”

James narrows his eyes. “I knew it.”

I gasp as James throws himself onto Sam, pulling down the fort with him. The sheets fall over me, covering my face, and then rise again in the air before they shift and fall into flakes of snow as the scene changes around me.

I am sitting in Sam’s car with my door open. We are parked across the street from the Reed College campus. The ground is covered with leaves and a thin layer of snow. Sam opens his door and walks around to my side of the car. He squats down to look at me, and offers a hand.

“Come on, Julie. Let’s check it out,” he says. “We drove all the way here.”

“I said we don’t need to. It’s already starting to snow. We should go.”

“I’d hardly call this snow,” Sam says.

“Let’s just go, Sam,” I say again, and face the front of the car, ready to leave.

“I thought you wanted to look around the campus? I mean, isn’t that why we drove four hours?”

“I only wanted to get a sense of the place. And I got it.”

“From the seat of my car?” He rests a hand on the roof, and looks down. “I don’t get it. You were so excited when you planned this. Now you want to leave already.”

“It’s nothing. I want to check out downtown before everything closes. Let’s go,” I say.

“Julie…” Sam says. He gives me the look that means he knows me too well. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

I cross my arms and sigh. “I don’t know. What if I hate it? It already doesn’t look like anything from the pictures. I’m underwhelmed.”

“But you haven’t even seen all of it yet.”

“What if it’s worse?” I point out at a redbrick building that resembles a barn near an empty field. “Look, that’s straight out of Ellensburg.”

“You’re not giving your dream school a fair shot, Jules,” Sam says. He stands and glances around at the people walking by. “Don’t you want to at least talk to some students? Ask them questions about what it’s like here, about the social life and stuff?”

“Not really,” I say. “What if they’re all a bunch of rich elite snobs who keep asking me what my parents do for a living?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out.”

I take a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t know, Sam … There’s this air about the city that’s—what’s the word?” I pause to think. “Pretentious.”

“I thought you liked pretentious,” Sam says.

I give him a look.

“Kidding.” He smiles. “So now you don’t like Portland at all, I see.”

“Overrated. As far as I can tell.”

Sam sighs, and then squats down to my level again. His voice softens. “You’re scared about leaving your mom, aren’t you?” he says.

“I don’t want her to be alone,” I say. “My dad already left, so maybe I should take a year or two off and work at the bookstore. Mr. Lee said he’d promote me to an assistant manager.”

“Is that what your mom would want?” Sam asks.

I don’t say anything.

“Is that what you want?”

Nothing from me.

“She’s gonna be fine, Jules,” Sam says. “Okay? You can’t name a more independent person. I mean, your mom teaches a class called Distorting Time. She literally does Pilates in other dimensions.”

“I know,” I say.

Sam takes my hand and our fingers lace. “Portland’s gonna be great,” he promises. “We’ll find a cool little apartment downtown … fix it up … look for coffee shops where I can play music and you can sit and write … it’ll be like we planned.”

“Maybe.”

“Let’s see what this campus is all about,” he says.

“We really don’t have to,” I say. “I’m fine with what I see from the car. Really.”

“Fine.” He sighs. “Then I’ll drive the car onto the quad.” He pulls out his keys and stands.

“What? Sam—”

It’s something he would absolutely do. I grab him before he steps around the car. “Okay—I’ll go.”

Sam smiles as he takes both my hands and helps me out of the car as fog begins to rise around us. I follow Sam into it like walking through a wall of smoke, as strobe lights flash all around me and music begins to blare, growing louder until I realize I’ve gone somewhere else.

The smoke fades as Sam takes me down to a crowded basement in someone’s house while their parents are out of town. It’s my first high school party and I don’t know anybody here. There’s a Ping-Pong table littered with red and blue cups. People are not really dancing, but swaying to the music. Several guys are wearing sunglasses indoors. It looks like I came late.

“Did you want something to drink?” Sam asks through the music.

“Sure—what do they have?”

Sam looks at the bar against the wall. “Do you like beer?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I lie. I’m not planning to drink anything. I just wanted something to hold. I remember a trick my mother told me she used back in her day. “Dump it out and fill it with cranberry juice,” I hear her voice in my head.

Sam leads me through the crowd toward a red couch in the back where a girl in a white sweatshirt is sitting with her legs crossed.

“This is my cousin Mika,” Sam introduces us. “This is Julie. She just moved here.”

Mika stands to shake my hand. “Nice to meet you,” she says. “Where are you from again?”

“Seattle.”

“Right. I can tell.”

“You can?” I ask, unsure of what to make of that.

Sam looks at her then back at me. “So how do you like Ellensburg so far?” he asks. I can tell he’s already had something to drink.

“I don’t know yet,” I say. “There isn’t really a lot to do around here.”

Sam nods. “Yeah, I guess. You’re probably used to like, what, laser shows and holograms and 3D arcades and stuff like that.”

“She said she’s from Seattle, not the future, Sam,” Mika says.

“No, we have some of those things,” I say.

Sam looks at Mika. “See.”

Someone bumps into me, almost knocking over my drink, so I step out of the way.

“This is a senior party,” Sam says to impress me. “I had to ask Spence if you could come. He’s the one that lives here. It’s his older brother’s party.”

I can’t think of anything else to say but, “Cool.”

A minute passes without saying anything. Sam tries to make small talk.

“So, what do you like to do for fun?”

“Uh, I like to write,” I say.

“Like books?”

“I guess so. I mean, I haven’t written one yet. But someday.”

“What’s your favorite book?” he asks.

“I like The Buried Giant.”

“That’s my favorite too,” Sam says.

“He’s lying. He’s never read that,” Mika says.

Sam shoots her a look.

Mika mouths, “I’ll leave you two alone,” and disappears through the crowd.

“Okay—maybe I haven’t read that yet,” Sam admits. “But I know the author. He’s Japanese, right?”

“Yeah. Ishiguro.”

“I knew it.” Sam nods. “My mom has all his books in our living room.” The loud music slows down to something more palatable. The blues of an electric guitar with a Lennon-esque voice swaying through it. “It’s Mark Lanegan. Do you know him?”

“Of course,” I lie.

“He’s from here, you know. Ellensburg. My dad ran into him at the gas station once.”

“How cool,” I lie again.

“Yeah, see, exciting things happen here, too. Ellensburg is a great place. You’re really gonna like it,” he says with some confidence. “I’ve been to Seattle, and it sucks. You’re so lucky you left.”

“I love Seattle,” I say.

“Oh … yeah? I’ve heard good things.” He tries to smile.

“This is a good song,” I say.

“It’s ‘Strange Religion,’” Sam says, nodding to the melody. “One of my favorites.”

We listen to the song, nodding along, awkwardly looking at each other from time to time, while others in the basement have coupled together, slow-dancing. When Sam nearly stumbles, I catch his arm.

“You should sit down,” I say, and help him to the couch. Sam rests the back of his head against the wall, and I can’t tell if he’s about to fall asleep. He seemed fine a moment ago.

“You don’t drink often, do you?” I ask.

“No,” Sam says.

“Me either,” I say.

“I’m really glad you came tonight,” he says. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”

“Well, I did,” I say. I take the cup from his hand and place it on the table.

“Maybe we can hang out sometime. Like, after school or something.”

“I’d like that.”

“Do you drink … coffee?”

“No, but I’m teaching myself to,” I say.

“I’m really glad you came tonight.”

“You just said that.”

Sam smiles at me and shuts his eyes.

Suddenly the music cuts off. Someone flickers the lights on and off. A voice shouts down from the top of the stairs.

“Dudes—cops are outside! Back door—everybody!”

“Sam, wake up, we have to go—”

“Huh—” He yawns as I wrap his arm around my neck and lift him up from the couch. A stampede of bodies races toward the backyard as I limp and stumble, trying to follow them out. Eventually, I make it through the door and emerge into complete darkness as the weight of Sam vanishes from around my shoulders. The scene changes again, and I find myself somewhere else.

A breeze blows against my skin, and when I look up through the dark, I see I’ve made it outside. I blink and a baseball diamond emerges through the moonlight. A telescope stands in the middle, angled toward the sky. Leaning down beside it is Sam, who is trying to adjust something.

“This isn’t going to work,” he says.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

He looks up at me, his eyes flashing with disappointment. “It’s too cloudy out. You can’t see anything. I thought this would work. I wanted to surprise you,” he says.

I squint at the sky. “Surprise me with what? Stars?”

“No. I wanted to show you Saturn’s rings. For that story you’re writing in class. You said you wished you could see it so you could describe it better.” He leans down, checking the lens of the telescope again. “Dang it.”

“I can’t believe you went out of your way to do this.”

“I emailed the astronomy department at the university and everything,” he tells me. “And they’re only letting me borrow the telescope for tonight.”

“Sam…” I whisper, and touch his back. He looks up from the lens. He and I have never kissed before. I’ll never forget his look of surprise when I pulled his face up slowly with my hands and pressed my lips to his, and we felt a slight shock of static from the metal of the telescope.

“Thank you for this,” I whisper.

“But you didn’t even get to see it.”

“I’m good with my imagination.”

We both smile. Sam puts his hands around me, and pulls me in for a longer second kiss beneath the cloudy night sky and bars of moonlight breaking through it.

I remember he said later, “I’ll show you them another time. I promise.”

He never kept that promise.