Return To Lan Darr (6 page)

Allan looks up at the Tupperware. It’s like a crude showerhead. Proud of his improvisation, he reaches up and drums on the Tupperware. Like a botanical rain, the pollen flitters through the holes, meets the rush of air, and swirls. In the darkness of the closet Allan sees the sparks. More sparks. A million sparks. Light fills the dark closet.

“YEAH!” Allan screams out.

Allan feels his body jerk up, down, and twist like the wringing of a wet towel. Everything goes dark.

When he opens his eyes, Allan is not on Earth. The sky is gray, and the ground is a pebble-strewn hilltop. He can breathe, but the air is thick with dust. There are no plants around, no buildings or creatures, and no moons. Large, dark crystals protrude sporadically.

A rumble shakes the ground. Allan’s chair shimmies deep into the pebbles. The rumble had come from a tall pointy mountain a few miles away. Correction, a volcano. Lava spews from its apex in a steady stream. The lava glows red and hot. Allan watches it spill down the steep slope to a large, dark lake or sea and vaporize. It’s a view typical of the Jurassic period on Earth. It’s amazing and alien. A steady cloud of steam rises into the atmosphere and joins a much larger, darker cloud. Lightning fires off in the dark cloud.

The hill is as tall as all the other hills around him, and he can see three hundred sixty degrees. The lake or sea extends to the horizon. The hills do too, their rolling expanse only interrupted by the tall volcano.

Allan cannot see the forest the balloon creatures dropped him in, or the desert the Lithic Fury rock creatures inhabit, or the mushroom forest. He doesn’t see Dantia or any sign of civilization at all, and there is a small sun, the size of his pinky nail, hanging in the gray sky. Lan Darr did not have a visible sun.

There is only one explanation. Allan is not on Lan Darr at all. He’s on another, stranger, more desolate planet.

The ground rumbles again and more lava spews from the caldron. Allan grips the push-rings as his chair starts to slip down the side of the hill. Below are more, even larger, black crystals jutting from the gravel. They are almost as reflective as mirrors. They reflect shapes that move around, ducking between the monolith stones. They’re shadows of creatures that don’t want to be seen.

Allan begins to sweat and feels panic rise in his chest.

Chapter
6

Let the Chase Begin

Laura didn’t sleep during the night. Right before bed she’d gone online to friendbook.com and answered a few posts. She saw the posts of Allan’s tee pee’d house. She had no idea someone would go to such lengths to embarrass Allan, but there were the pictures. The amount of toilet paper covering the yard was impressive, and it made her cry. It hurt her to know that it was all her fault.

When the morning arrives, Laura feels like a zombie. The sun hasn’t fully risen, the birds haven’t started chirping, and the traffic hasn’t begun. She mopes to the bathroom where she finds her reflection less than appealing. The water takes too long to warm, and the toilet seat freezes her rear end, and her dog starts barking at a squirrel and won’t stop. Later, the steamy shower water turns icy cold. “AHHHHHH!” she screams and almost leaps out of the shower, knowing someone was using the hot water elsewhere in the house. The water warms, but the tension in her body remains.

She loves Allan. That much she is sure about. He’s her best friend. If only she hadn’t lost that diary, she may have been able to help Allan.

Laura obsesses about making a different choice when she’d seen Allan’s diary sitting on his bedside. But no matter how long she tried to think of a different outcome, the fact remained. She’d lost Allan’s trust and made a total fool of him to everyone in the school.

She dries her hair with her towel and brushes it excessively.
How could anyone believe that a flower’s pollen could send them across the galaxy!
To top it off, Laura’s friend, Sadie, texted her about
Morty’s Travels
. The children’s book proved that Allan hadn’t gone anywhere. It was published forty years ago. Allan’s parents no doubt read that book to him when he was a child. Laura’s mother had read her those books when she was young. “Oh, Allan,” she says out loud. “You’ve had such a terrible experience.”
Morty’s Travels must be a way for him to remember his parents, to grieve for them.
“It’s no wonder your fantasy memory is so strong.” Laura sighs. “You’ll get over it. That flower you seek will never be found, and you’ll forget all about it.” Allan’s other aspects of his personality will survive: his courage, his smarts, his humor, and his loyalty. That’s what she loves about him.

Laura starts to apply her lotion. Maybe she can still hang out with him if he gets some more therapy. He quit too soon. Rubic should insist he go back to Dr. Brooks. “Dr. Brooks obviously didn’t help you much,” Laura says to a photo on her desk of her and Allan accepting swimming excellence medals from the academy. “I helped you. I gave you the respect you deserved. You’ve always been a good friend, the best.”

The sun finally rises above the horizon. Its golden radiance reflects off the metal bathroom windowsill. It makes Laura flinch, but even in that moment she can feel its warmth. She runs to her bedroom window and yanks open the blinds. Light spills into her room and warms her skin, and she stands in its grip.
I’m going
to go to Allan. I messed things up and so I need to fix them. He needs me now.

She realizes she’s half-naked with only her towel wrapped around her. Embarrassment causes her to draw away from the window and laugh out loud.

After throwing on some jeans and a t-shirt, she rushes out of the house. Allan didn’t live far away, only two streets, and if he plans on hiking today, he’ll be leaving in about a half hour. She has time to get to him.

The morning air feels good on her face. She speed walks past ticking lawn sprinklers and morning joggers, startles a dog and sends it into a barking panic, and finally gets to Allan’s house.

Allan’s house pulls her attention like a black hole. The quantity of toilet paper wasted on the practical joke could clean the tushies of everyone in the state for a week! The images on Friendbook didn’t quite capture the extraordinary scene. She felt tears swell up.
Oh, how Allan must have felt when he saw this.
Her worry deepened. She has to see him, to apologize again and again, and try to make things better.

She walks past the gray van and knocks on the front door. A moment later, Rubic answers. His eyes are red, his hair sticks up and out in crazy directions, and there seems to be a chunk of a cheese puff lodged in his beard.

“Laura,” Rubic says without any emotion or nicety.

“I need to talk to Allan. I feel so bad. I know I can do something…”

“Haven’t you done enough?” Rubic puts his hands on his hips. “You stole something you should not have stolen.”

“I know.” Tears swell in her eyes. “I just want to talk to him. Five minutes, please.”

Rubic sighs. “I’ll go get him.” He closes the door instead of letting her inside.

Laura’s hands clutch together and press into her chest. Her heart aches in a way she’s never felt before.

Rubic flings the door open, his eyes wild. “Uh, Allan isn’t here. His All-Terrain chair is gone and so is his pack.”

“Were did he go?”

“Go home. When I find him, I’ll have him call you,” he says.

Laura doesn’t want to go home, she tries to turn but can’t. “You don’t think he’s gone to the mountain to hike by himself, do you?”

“No. That’s crazy. He has no way of getting there. He’d have to hire the taxi and that would be, like, a one-hundred-dollar ride. Allan doesn’t have that much money. He’s gone to the Riverwalk. He’s gone there to think, to be by himself. Please, he’s feeling bad. I will find him and talk to him first, then you can. Just go and wait for his call.”

Laura turns and walks down the walkway. At the sidewalk, she turns and watches Rubic close the door.

She presses the phone button on her cell. “Call Allan,” she orders her phone.

“Calling Allan,” the phone responds.

The phone rings and rings. She hangs up and texts, ‘Call me. I need to see you. I’m sorry and I want to make it up to you.’

She turns and jogs home. As she nears her house she stops running and dials his phone again. No response. “He always answers. Something is wrong, I can feel it.” Laura bursts into her home. “Mom!” she yells at the top of her lungs.

Mrs. Domley comes down the stairs in baby-blue sweats, her hair pinned up in a top bun, and she’s holding a coffee mug. “No need to yell like that. What is it?”

“I need you to drive me to the mountain. I feel so awful about losing Allan’s diary and betraying him like that.”

“Oh, honey, just call him.”

“I did! He’s not answering. Mr. Westerfield was shocked that he wasn’t home. Allan has gone to the mountain by himself. I know it.”

“How did he get to the mountain by himself?”

“Allan mentioned taking a taxi up there.” Laura said, talking fast, the blood pounding in her eardrum.

“Oh, that’s an hour away. How could he afford that?”

“I don’t know how he has the money. I just know that’s where he’s gone. He thinks he can travel to another planet by sprinkling pollen over his head! He’s…” Laura cries. “He’s a little delusional. He needs help.”

Laura’s mother hugs her hard. “I’ll take you up there, just in case you’re right.”

She sobs into her mother’s shoulder, releasing the tension that had built up all night.

“Let’s get going, if we’re to catch up to him,” Mrs. Domley says. “Do you know where he’ll be? It’s a big mountain.”

“Yes.
There is one last trail he wants to hike before the summer ends
.
It’s by the Boy Scout camp, and he is pretty excited about it. There’s a huge field of flowers there.” Laura feels like she knows the mountainside as well as she knows the Bill of Rights, which is extremely well.

Mrs. Domley and Laura hop into the yellow MINI Cooper and head to the mountain as fast as the car will carry them.

The mountain is a lovely place, lush, expansive, quiet. Laura loved hiking the trails with Allan and Rubic, spying the birds and occasional deer. They’d crossed the river on the trails, and every time they did, Laura would think about how a flash flood came barreling down with such force that it swept up Allan and Rubic. It’s hard for Laura to picture because the river is so shallow. But that’s what happened. Rubic was pinned under a boulder, and Allan had to crawl to get help. Laura would often think about how hard that must have been for someone who is paralyzed. Allan is as determined and strong as she is.

At some point along Allan’s journey, Alice had abducted him and taken him to the dam. Her reasons remain a mystery. The newspapers had their fun with some crazy ideas about it all. None of their ideas are as crazy as Allan’s idea of space travel.

Mrs. Domley takes the freeway exit at dangerous speeds. She speeds down Pine Road and stops at the last gas station with a food mart and fills the tank.

“I’m going to get me and Allan a drink, his favorite,” Laura says. Her mother nods.

Laura runs into the food mart and gets herself a mocha and Allan a frappuccino, and then returns to the car.

Laura’s mood lightens as the car turns onto the narrow, winding Blue Mountain Road. She knows he’s up here. He’s determined to find that flower. Allan described them as large like a sunflower. But instead of sunflower seeds in the middle, it has a bulb full of thick, dusty pollen. The outside petals weren’t long and skinny like a sunflower, but short and round and heavily layered. It would make a beautiful flower, if they were real.

“Follow the sign for the Boy Scout camp,” Laura says.

A half hour later, Mrs. Domley pulls onto a dirt road. The canyon that cradled that fabled river is not far away now. The road condition deteriorates, but is still traversable. She takes a left at the Marigold fork— a drive that leads to a large Boy Scout camp. Once she passes the camp, the clearly marked signs end.

“Slow now. The field is just over the next rise.”

However, the MINI Cooper doesn’t quite make it over the hill. The last rain washed out the middle of the road. What is left is a deep crack the little yellow car could only pass if a giant picked it up and placed it on the other side.

“This is the end of the road for us.” Mrs. Domley looks worried. “Can Allan get by this?”

“Oh, no problem. He’d go around. Stay here, let me go and see if he’s in the field. I’ll be right back if I see him.” Laura says. “He’ll be zig-zagging all over the grass looking for the flower.”

“Okay, dear. Don’t go too far without getting me. If you need to get on the hiking trail, I’ll go with you,” Mrs. Domley says.

“But your allergies.” Laura’s mother had epic allergies and was not a fan of hiking because of it.

“I’d rather get a migraine than have you hike alone. Check the field then come get me.”

Laura nods and hops out of the small car, holding her phone in one hand and the two coffees stacked in the other. She checks her cell to see if she missed a call or text from Allan. He hasn’t responded to her, and now her phone doesn’t have service.

On either side of the dirt road are tall pine trees and thick ferns, but once she gets to the top of the hill, it opens up. A huge field of grass extends to the other side of the canyon. This time of year the wild flowers are in full bloom and as stunning as a fireworks finale. Every color of flower—yellow poppies, white chamomile, purple cornflower, golden tickseed, red trumpet vines—were showing off, soaking up the warm sunlight. She’d never noticed so many types of flowers until meeting Allan. His meticulousness gives her goose bumps.

However, she should be able to see his chair in the grass. She scans the field. It’s two or three hundred yards across. The river runs along the far side next to a canyon wall. She squints in the morning light, wishing she had a pair of binoculars. No Allan. Her eyes water and she blinks furiously.
Rubic was right, he’d never come up here by himself.

When Laura turns around, a woman emerges from behind a thick tree trunk. She’s pointing a gun. Laura drops the coffees and screams.