Gone

said.
    Astrid said, “Yeah, stoves left on, cars running. Somebody needs to go around and make sure things are off and the little kids are with someone. And there’s pills, and alcohol, and some people probably have guns.”
    “In this neighborhood some people have artillery,” Sam said.
    “It has to be God,” Quinn said. “I mean, how else, right? No one else could do this. Just make all the adults disappear?”
    “Everyone fifteen or over,” Astrid corrected. “Fifteen isn’t an adult. Trust me, I was in class with them.” She wandered tentatively through the living room, like she was looking for something. “Can I use the bathroom, Sam?”
    He nodded reluctantly. He was mortified to have her here. Neither Sam nor his mother was really into housekeeping. The place was more or less clean, but not like Astrid’s house.
    Astrid closed the bathroom door. Sam heard the sound of running water.
    “What did we do?” Quinn asked. “That’s what I don’t get. What did we do to piss God off?”
    Sam opened the refrigerator. He stared at the food there. Milk. A couple of sodas. Half of a small watermelon placed cut side down on a plate. Eggs. Apples. And lemons for his mom’s tea. The usual.
    “I mean, we did something to deserve this, right?” Quinn said. “God doesn’t do things like this for no reason.”
    “I don’t think it was God,” Sam said.
    “Dude. Had to be.”
    Astrid was back. “Maybe Quinn’s right. There’s nothing, you know, normal, that can do this,” she said. “Is there? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not possible and yet it happened.”
    “Sometimes impossible things happen,” Sam said.
    “No, they don’t,” Astrid argued. “The universe has laws. All the stuff we learn in science class. You know, like the laws of motion, or that nothing can go as fast as the speed of light. Or gravity. Impossible things don’t happen. That’s what impossible means.” Astrid bit her lip. “Sorry. It’s not really the time for me to be lecturing, is it?”
    Sam hesitated. If he showed them, crossed this line, he wouldn’t be able to make them forget it. They would keep at him till he told them everything.
    They would look at him differently. They would be freaked, like he was.
    “I’m going to change my shirt, okay? In my room. I’ll be right back. There’s stuff to drink in the fridge. Go ahead.”
    He closed the door to his room behind him.
    He hated his room. The window opened onto an alley and the glass was that translucent kind you couldn’t really see out of. The room was gloomy even on a sunny day. At night it was so dark.
    Sam hated the dark.
    His mom made him lock up the house at night when shewas at work. “You’re the man of the house now,” she would say, “but still, I’d feel better if I knew you had the door locked.”
    He didn’t like it when she said that, about him being the man of the house. The man of the house now.
    Now.
    Maybe she didn’t really mean anything by it. But how could she not? It was eight months since his stepfather had fled their old house. Six months since Sam and his mother had moved to this shabby bungalow in this decrepit neighborhood and his mother had been forced to take the low-paying job with the lousy hours.
    Two nights ago there had been a thunderstorm and the lights had gone out for a while. He’d been in total darkness, except for faint flashes of lightning that turned the familiar things in his room eerie.
    He’d managed to fall asleep for a while, but a huge crack of thunder had awakened him. He’d come out of a terrifying nightmare to total darkness in an empty house.
    The combination had been too much. He’d cried out for his mother. A big, tough kid like him, fourteen, almost fifteen, yelling “Mom” in the darkness. He had reached out his hand, pushing at the darkness.
    And then…light.
    It had appeared not quite all the way inside his closet. He could kind of hide it by closing the closet door. But when he’d tried to close the door all the way, the light had simply passed right through it. Like the door wasn’t even there. So the door was kind of closed, not all the way. He had hung some shirts casually over the top of the door to block most of the light,but that lame deception wasn’t going to last long. Eventually his mom would see…well, when she came back, she would.
    He pulled the closet door open. The camouflage fell away.
    It was still there.
    The light was small, but piercing. And it