I take the long way home and drive past the high school. Not that I can get anywhere close to it—the authorities have the whole area around it pretty locked down. It isn’t the police who are running the show now. If so, I could probably camp out on the school lawn if I wanted to since my dad is the sheriff. No, there are people much higher up running the investigation. The FBI, and I’m guessing some other three-letter government groups that we civilians aren’t even supposed to know about. There are a lot of people in black suits walking around Paradise these days, which I guess makes sense since this is some grade-A Area 51 shit. Once I’d tried to sneak over to the school through the woods that border it, but they’ve got all the surrounding areas lit up with giant floodlights at night. I couldn’t get within a few yards of the edge of the trees or else someone might have seen me.

It would have been a nice time to have that alien girl—Six—and her invisibility powers around.

Today I recognize the cop who’s posted to make sure that no one turns down the street that leads to the school. Todd is only three or four years older than me. He was a big town football star back in the day and always likes to corner me and talk stats and plays when I’m at the station. I hesitate for a second and then decide to try my luck. I want to know what’s going on at the school. Maybe if I can get close enough to see what kind of detective work they’re doing, I can get an idea of how much they do or don’t know. Maybe I can even talk one of them into spilling a few secrets if I don’t see any pale dudes walking around.

I make a loop and come back to the school. As I’m doing so, I take off my letter jacket and toss it into the backseat, shoving my backpack on top of it.

“Hey, man,” I say, pulling up beside Todd. A couple of traffic barrels sit in front of my bumper. “How’s it going?”

“Just freezing my ass off to protect this sacred ground,” he says, shoving his hands into his pockets and nodding his head towards the school. I can’t tell if he’s joking about the sacred ground or not because he’s definitely the kind of guy who will be talking about his high school glory days until his dying breath.

“Yeah,” I say, trying my best to sound casual. “What are they doing over there, anyway? I mean, I heard the place is a mess, but Dad says they aren’t telling you much about whether they’re finding anything useful or not.”