It was past midnight when Sal drove into the driveway of his house. The rain had stopped, but his entire body was aching. He turned off the engine and rested his head on the steering wheel. It had been a crazy night. As far as anyone knew, he'd been on a date.
Some date.
Sal laughed gravely. He pulled himself together, got out of the bus, removed his shoes and socks, and ringed them out. Sal unlocked the front door and stepped quietly inside. The house was quiet. Only Angel came to greet him.
“Hey, girl,” Sal whispered. “How was your night? Mine was awful.” Angel licked his hand in what seemed to be an attempt to comfort him. Sal threw her a snack and went upstairs to his room.
He found Carl where he'd last seen him, in his room, sound asleep in his bed.
Sal pulled out a spare mattress they used for sleepovers. He dropped his wet clothes and lay down on the floor next to Carl. His body was in an uproar. What the hell was going on? First Seth had kissed him, and then they'd danced and laughed in the rain. They'd really connected, or so he wanted to believe, before Seth had picked up and left.
That fucking barn. Those fucking Giants and all their bullshit.
They hadn't provided him with any answers besides the fact that he was somehow related to E.T.
If that were true, that would make Darwin Klaatu, the ambassador from The Day the Earth Stood Still. He imagined what the results of one of those personality tests in those stupid magazines for idiots Rosie read: "You are firm but fair. You are logical and emotionless. Your mission is to convince Earthlings to live in peace and to love one another. And if they don’t, your people will crush them like the bugs they really are."
“Rosie.” Sal sighed. “And Jack.” He'd missed them both all of a sudden.
Why couldn't he have just read Darwin and the others from the beginning? It would have saved him a great deal of trouble. The problem was that he couldn't because they were supposed to be his peers. Besides his “trade”—or whatever the fuck it was called—had a mind of its own. He'd been so blissful in Seth's company that his sense of critical thought had been completely drowned out.
Damn you, Seth.
He had to take his mind off Seth, or he’d go crazy. He found some headphones which he plugged into the TV. Agent 47 showed up on the screen to take his mind off things. He watched until he was exhausted and fell into an uneasy sleep with a disturbing dream in which Darwin was the storyteller.
"I went to South Africa," Darwin had said in the dream. "I wanted to make a difference in my life.
"The country has a very high rate of murders, assaults, rapes, and other crimes compared to most countries. With the domestic violence in South Africa along with the high murder rate, its a particularly dangerous place to be a woman.
"The country has been labeled the rape capital of the world, with one in four men admitting to having raped someone.
"There is the normalization of violence, which is seen as a necessary and justified means of resolving conflict. Males believe that coercive sexual behavior against women is legitimate.
"The reliance on a criminal justice system that is mired in many issues, including inefficiency and corruption, was troubling, and a subculture of violence and criminality, ranging from individual criminals who rape or rob to informal groups or more formalized gangs, was continually growing. Those involved in the subculture are engaged in criminal careers and commonly use firearms, with the exception of Cape Town, where knife violence is more prevalent. Credibility within this subculture is related to the readiness to resort to extreme violence.
"As a result of the poverty, unstable living arrangements, and being brought up with inconsistent and uncaring parenting, some South African children are exposed to risk factors which enhance the chances they'll become involved in criminality and violence.
"South African police have been heavily criticized for failing to reduce crime levels. Violence—whether it's murder, rape, or assault—isn't something that the police can prevent or reduce on their own, and that's where I came in, trying to build better communities.
"Just east of Johannesburg’s flashy suburbs is Urbanette. The population was around two hundred thousand people when I was there with newcomers arriving daily, most of them poor South Africans or migrants. At the time, Urbanette was a congregation of wooden, corrugated iron shacks and dusty streets.
"Many youth hoped to improve their lives and the places they called home. There were only a few permanent brick houses and several schools in the area. Most of its residents, however, continued to live without electricity and running water.
"Life in Urbanette was cheap—you didn't have to pay rent for your hut, and you could buy meat for under a dollar and enough to live off of for two days.
"Volunteers in the residents' association built and maintained the public toilets in Urbanette. The government did little to improve sanitation in the area. Like many informal settlements in South Africa, Urbanette was the result of the politics of racial segregation under an Apartheid regime, and the government failed to implement a proper housing program.
"After the end of Apartheid in 1994, the democratically elected African National Congress (ANC) government promised every South African their own brick house. They built millions of houses but failed to meet huge the demand of the growing urban population.
"I started to patrol the streets, and things got better for a while. Crimes dropped a bit out of fear for the tall, thin, pale, scary man. Sure, I got into fights, but it was nothing that I couldn’t handle. I had followers who liked my initiative.
"Then, one day, two mutilated bodies were discovered. A man who was arrested on suspicion of raping and murdering the two small girls in Urbanette confessed. Urbanette residents went on the rampage after the murders, blocking roads with burning tires and pelting police with rocks. Some of the residents gathered outside a police station, demanding the suspect be handed over for vigilante justice.
"That was when I turned cowardly. In my sorrow over not being able to help those people, I got drunk. Not just drunk, but smashed, wrecked, hammered…you get it.
"So, being stupid like that, I was attacked while trying to take a piss. I nearly had my throat slashed. If it hadn’t been for Orion being in the neighborhood, I would have been dead.
"He saved me. He healed me.
"That's what I do: go about the world, helping people. It's my responsibility to do so."