Terrestrial Alien ✔

Epilogue: Poppies and Daisies

Sundo's ink-smudge hands spread out over the map he holds out between himself and Joshua. It's this rag-tag, arts-and-crafts sort of thing—a roadmap of the entire United States that he has hijacked with sharpie circles and pen scrawl and sticky note scribbles. It's their new meteorite map.

While it is a little overwhelming as Joshua looks at it now, it's also a little endearing. Sundo's so proud of it.

Using the smaller, printed version he had nabbed from the library—while saying his heartfelt yet cryptic goodbyes to a slightly confused Marge—Sundo had been able to cobble together this larger version for them. He had claimed he needed "more real estate for all his thoughts", and Joshua couldn't find it in him to argue.

So here it is, their new meteorite map, each meteorite landing site marked with a different colored sharpie circle depending on how recent the impact. The ones within the last year are circled in green. Beside each circle, in his slanting scrawl, Sundo has transcribed the city and the exact date of impact.

Joshua looks at the map now, with all of its circles sprawled across the entire US, and he feels that same sense of awe overtaking him once more. Each one is a potential terrestrial alien. And in his gut, Joshua feels a sense of beginning stirring, the feeling that had pulled at him as the bus had pulled away.

It rumbles under them now, the bus, rolling down the freeway as orange street lamps periodically flash across the glossy windows, cutting through the dark of night. Their light illuminates Sundo's face in fuzzy bursts, shining golden in his green eyes and illuminating the giddy excitement just barely contained in the way he looks at the map clutched in his hands. A bubbling, contagious feeling swells in Joshua's chest at the sight of him, and he bites down on a smile of his own.

The fuzzy light sliding over the windows also reflects off something else of Sundo's, drawing Joshua's gaze downward to his chest. There, Sundo's thin silver chain glints, with its name tag and now... the key to Joshua's house. Joshua remembers giving it to him for safekeeping, how Sundo had slipped it gently onto the chain beside his name.

Ethan had texted him this afternoon, letting him know that he had found the key under his dresser. He informed Joshua that he had stopped by his house to set it back under the doormat, for whenever Joshua was ready to stop by. By the time he was actually able to come to pick it up with Sundo, the sky had sunken into early evening.

Inside his familiar home, Joshua walked through halls he'd been through so often, but now with the knowledge that this would be his last time for a very long time. He doesn't even know how long. The feeling weighed on him as he gathered his things, until by the time he was ready to step out, he hesitated.

One foot out the door, he had stood there, Sundo looking at him questioningly from the stoop. Joshua looked back for a long moment, before he closed his eyes and sighed, knocking his head back against the doorframe. Dropping his bag onto the porch, he turned, and he went back inside.

He looked for a pen, and once he found one, and he found some paper, he sat down and he began to write.

Dear Dad, his letter began. You might not believe any of this, but I have to tell you anyway.

He wrote. And he wrote. And he wrote, until he had written everything he had to explain, and he sat back to look at it, still feeling like it was incomplete. But it was everything, and he had said everything he possibly could. So he began to fold it up, before changing his mind and unfolding the last page. Quickly, at the bottom, he added a small note: And don't tell Shari.

With that, he set the pen down and found a place to set the fold of paper.

He left it on the coffee table.