Chapter one, In the beginning,
there were nine of us.
We left when we were young,
almost too young to remember, almost.
I am told the ground shook, that the skies
were full of light and explosions.
We were in that two week period of
the year when both moons hang on opposite
sides of the horizon.
It was a time of celebration and
the explosions were at first mistaken for
fireworks.
They were not, it was warm,
a soft wind blew in from off the water.
I am always told the weather, it was warm.
There was a soft wind,
I have never understood why that matters.
What I remember most vividly is the way
my grandmother looked that day.
She was frantic and sad,
there were tears in her eyes.
My grandfather stood
just over her shoulder.
I remember the way his glasses
gathered the light from the sky.
There were hugs,
there were words said by each of them.
I don't remember what they were,
nothing haunts me more.
It took a year to get here,
I was five when we arrived.
We were to assimilate ourselves into
the culture before returning to
Lorien when it could again sustain life.
The nine of us had to scatter and
go our own ways, for how long?
Nobody knew, we still don't.
None of them know where I am and
I don't know where they are, or
what they look like now.
That is how we protect ourselves,
because of the charm that was
placed upon us when we left.
A charm guaranteeing that we can only
be killed in the order of our numbers,
so long as we stay apart.
If we come together,
then the charm is broken.
If one of us is found and killed,
a circular scar wraps around
the right ankle of those still alive.
And residing on our left ankle, formed
when the Loric charm was first cast,
is a small scar identical to
the amulet each of us wears.
The circular scars were
another part of the charm.
A warning system so that we know where
we stand with each other, and so
that we know when they'll be coming for
us next.
The first scar came when
I was nine years old.
It woke me from my sleep,
burning itself into my flesh.
We were living in Arizona,
in a small border town near Mexico.
I woke screaming in the middle
of the night in agony,
terrified as the scars
seared itself into my flesh.
It was the first sign that the Mogadorians
had finally found us on Earth,
and the first sign that we were in danger.
Until the scar showed up,
I had almost convinced myself that my
memories were wrong,
that what Henri told me was wrong.
I wanted to be a normal
kid living a normal life.
But I knew then, beyond any doubt or
discussion that I wasn't.
We moved to Minnesota the next day.
The second scar came when I was 12.
I was in school in Colorado,
participating in a spelling bee.
As soon as the pain started,
I knew what was happening,
what had happened to number two.
The pain was excruciating,
but bearable this time.
I would have stayed on the stage,
but the heat lit my sock on fire.
The teacher who was conducting the Bee
sprayed me with a fire extinguisher and
rushed me to the hospital.
The doctor in the Found the first scar and
called the police,
when Henri showed they threatened
to arrest him for child abuse.
But because he hadn't been anywhere
near me when the second scar came,
they had to let him go.
We got in the car and
drove away, this time to Maine.
We left everything we had except for
the Loric chest that
Henri brought along on every move,
all 21 of them to date.
The third scar appeared an hour ago,
I was sitting on a pontoon boat.
The boat belonged to the parent of
the most popular kid of my school, and
unbeknownst to them,
he was having a party on it.
I had never been invited to any of
the parties of my school before.
I had always, because I knew
we might leave at any minute
kept to myself, but
it had been quiet for two years.
Henri hadn't seen anything in the news
that might lead the Mogadorians to
one of us, or might alert us to them.
So I made a couple of friends,
and one of them introduced me to
the kid who was having the party.
Everyone met at a dock,
there were three coolers, some music,
girls I had admired from afar but
never spoken to, even though I wanted to.
We pulled out from the dock and
what half a mile into the Gulf of Mexico.
I was sitting on the edge of
the pontoon with my feet in the water,
talking to a cute,
dark haired blue-eyed girl named Tara.
When I felt it coming,
the water around my legs started boiling.
And my lower legs started glowing
where the scar was embedding itself.
The third of the Lorien symbols,
the third warning.
Tara started screaming and
people started crowding around me.
I knew there was no way to explain it, and
I knew we would have to leave immediately.
The stakes were higher now.
They had found Number Three, wherever he
or she was, and Number Three was dead.
So I calmed Tara down and
kissed her on the cheek and
told her it was nice to meet her and that
I hoped she had a long beautiful life.
I dove off the side of the boat and
started swimming,
underwater the entire time, except for
one breath about halfway there,
as fast as I could until
I reached the shore.
I ran along the side of highway,
just inside of the tree line,
moving at speeds as fast
as any of the cars.
When I got home, Henri was at the bank
of scanners and monitors that he used
to research news around the world,
and police activity in our area.
He knew without me saying a word,
though he did lift my soaking
pants to see the scars.
In the beginning, we were a group of nine.
Three are gone, dead.
There are six of us left.
They are hunting us, and they won't
stop until they've killed us all.
I am Number Four.
I know that I am next.
Chapter Two.
I stand in the middle of the drive and
stare up at the house.
It is light pink,
almost like cake frosting,
sitting ten feet above
the ground on wooden stilts.
A Palm tree sways in the front,
in the back of the house appear extends
20 yards into the Gulf of Mexico.
If the house were a mile to the South,
the pier would be in the Atlantic Ocean.
Henri walks out of the house
carrying the last of the boxes,
some of which were never
unpacked from our last move.
He locks the door, then leaves
the keys in the mail slot beside it.
It is 2 o'clock in the morning.
He is wearing khaki shorts and
a black polo.
He is very tan,
with an unshaven face that seems downcast.
He is also sad to be leaving.
He tosses the final boxes into the back of
the truck, with the rest of our things.
That's it, he says, I nod.
We stand and stare up at the house and
listen to the wind come
through the palm fronds.
I am holding a bag of celery in my hand.
I'll miss this place, I say,
even more than the others.
Me too.
Time for the burn?
Yes, you wanna do it or,
do you want me to?
I'll do it.
Henri pulls out his wallet and
drops it on the ground.
I pull out mine and do the same.
He walks to a truck and comes back
with passports, birth certificates,
social security cards, check books,
credit cards, and bank cards, and
drops them on the ground.
All of the documents and
materials related to our identities here,
all of them forged and manufactured.
I grabbed from the truck a small
gas can we keep for emergencies.
I pour the gas over the small pile.
My current name is Daniel Jones.
My story is that I grew
up in California and
moved here because of my dad's
job as a computer programmer.
Daniel Jones is about to disappear.
I light a match and
drop it and the pile ignites.
Another one of my lives, gone.
As we always do, Henri and
I stand and watch the fire.
Bye, Daniel, I think,
it was nice knowing you.
When the fire burns down,
Henri looks over at me.
We got to go.
I know.
These islands were never safe.
They're too hard to leave quickly,
too hard to escape from.
It was foolish of us to come here.
I nod.
He is right, and I know it, but
I'm still reluctant to leave.
We came here because I wanted to,
and for the first time,
Henri let me choose where we were going.
We've been here nine months, and
it's the longest we have stayed in
any one place since leaving Lorien.
I'll miss the sun and the warmth.
I'll miss the gecko that watch from
the wall each morning as I ate breakfast.
Though there are literally millions
of geckos in South Florida,
I swear this one follows me to school and
seems to be everywhere I am.
I'll miss the thunderstorms that
seem to come from out of nowhere.
The way everything is still and
quiet in the early morning
hour before the turns arrive.
I'll miss the dolphins that
sometimes feed when the sun sets.
I'll even miss the smell of sulfur from
the rotting sea lead at the base of
the shore, the way that it fills the house
and penetrate our dreams while we sleep.
Get rid of the celery and
I'll wait in the truck, Henri says.
Then it's time.
I enter a thicket of trees off
to the right of the truck.
There are three key deer already waiting.
I dump the bag of celery
out at their feet and
crouch down and pet each of them in turn.
They allow me to, having long
gotten over their skittishness.
One of them raises his head and
looks at me.
Dark, blank eyes staring back.
It almost feels as though
he passes something to me.
A shudder runs up my spine,
he drops his head and continues eating.
Good luck little friends,
I say, and walk to the truck and
climb into the passenger seat.
We watch the house grow smaller
in the side mirrors until
Henri pulls onto the main road and
the house disappears.
It's a Saturday, I wonder what's
happening at the party without me.
What they’re saying about
the way that I left and
what they’ll say on Monday
when I’m not at school.
I wish I could have said goodbye.
I'll never see anyone I
knew here ever again.
I'll never speak to any of them and
they'll never know what I am or
why I left.
After a few months or maybe a few weeks,
none of them will probably
ever think of me again.
Before we get on the highway,
Henri pulls over to gas up the truck.
As he works the pump,
I start looking through an atlas he
keeps on the middle of the seat.
We've had the atlas since
we arrived on this planet,
it has lines drawn to and
from every place we've ever lived.
At this point, there are lines
crisscrossing all of the United States.
We know we should get rid of it, but
it's really the only piece of
our life together that we have.
Normal people have photos and
videos and journals, we have the atlas.
Picking it up and looking through it,
I can see Henri has drawn a new
line from Florida to Ohio.
When I think of Ohio, I think of cows,
and corn, and nice people.
I know the license plate
says the heart of it all.
What all is, I don't know,
but I guess I'll find out.
Henri gets back into the truck,
he has bought a couple of sodas and
a bag of chips.
He pulls away and starts heading
toward US 1, which will take us north.
He reaches for the atlas,
do you think there are people in Ohio?
I joke, he chuckles.
Would imagine there are a few,
and we might even get lucky and
find cars and TV there too.
I nod,
maybe it won’t be as bad as I think.
What do you think of the name John Smith?,
I asked.
Is that what you've settled on?
I think so, I say,
I've never been a John before or a Smith.
It doesn't get any more common than that.
I would say it's a pleasure to meet you,
Mr. Smith.
I smile, yeah, I think I like John Smith.
I'll create your forms when we stop.
A mile later we are off the island and
cruising across the bridge.
The waters pass below us.
They are calm and the moonlight
is shimmering on the small waves,
creating dapples of white in the crests.
On the right is the ocean,
on the left is the gulf; it is,
in essence, the same water,
but with two different names.
I have the urge to cry but I don't.
It's not that I'm necessarily sad to
leave Florida, but I'm tired of running.
I'm tired of dreaming up
a new name every six months,
tired of new houses, new schools.
I wonder if it'll ever be possible for
us to stop.
