"Salvage"
26. Conspiracy
January 2012 – Lima, Ohio
Artie realized only too late that he had forgotten something when he left school earlier: he forgot he had told Sam to come to his house that afternoon, so he could tell him the whole truth about why he'd had him keep an eye on a teacher, which had gotten him sent to the nurse with a gusher of a nose. Sam had arrived before he did, and he was now waiting outside Artie's house.
The thing was, Artie had changed his mind. He didn't want to tell Sam anymore. He might come to need him later on, but at this juncture he might as well have looked to a different ally, if the need arose and only then. He'd been telling himself that he'd been going about it all the wrong way, only he hadn't changed anything. He didn't want to involve Sam anymore, but then there was the problem: Sam was already involved, whether he liked it or not. Maybe he could test the waters, not necessarily tell him everything but start him off and see where it goes?
"Hey… You haven't been waiting too long, have you?" Artie asked as he approached.
"No, it's alright," he shrugged, cringing at the shot of pain from his nose. They'd stood there in silence for a beat before Artie pointed to the door.
"Follow me." Leading Sam into the house, Artie took him toward his room, where he closed and locked the door. "Have a seat, bring it here near the desk," he took the stack of clean clothes left on a chair in the corner and put them away so Sam could take the chair.
"So are you going to tell me what this is about?" he asked, sounding like he had very little patience left in him. Artie took this into account, so he got right to the point. He went to the nightstand by his bed and pulled it away from the wall. "What are you doing?"
"The drawers were stuck, my dad wanted to throw it out, but I said I'd use it anyway. I got this idea one day, sawed out parts of the back so I could slide it out," he did this as he explained. "There aren't that many places I can hide things that's within my reach and won't be found." One by one, he began pulling out and stacking binders and notebooks and a box on to his lap, all of it coming out the back of the nightstand. He brought them to the desk, where folded his hands over the pile.
"Okay…" Sam blinked.
"It happened when I was eight, not too long after my accident. That's when I met them, the Doctor and Gemma… That's her name."
"So… you met her in the hospital? Was she another patient?" Sam asked.
"What? No, that's not… Not that kind of doctor," Artie shook his head.
"What kind of doctor then?" Sam asked, and Artie looked down at the stack in his lap. Here goes nothing.
"The kind that was an alien." Artie could practically see the word knocking its way around Sam's mind.
"An alien…" Sam sat back. He doesn't believe it yet. "Like the green ones?"
"No, completely human looking," Artie corrected.
"Next you're going to tell me that Ginny the substitute teacher, or Gemma or whatever, is an alien, too?" I am floundering; I am going to lose him.
"Actually, she's human. Only when I met her, she was the same age she is now. I wasn't sure at first, if it was really her. It could have just been someone who really looked like her, but I'm positive now, it's definitely her."
"You just said she looks the same, how is that…"
"The Doctor has this ship, it can travel in space and time."
"Of course it can," Sam sighed. "So what's all this anyway?" he nodded to everything Artie had kept in his lap.
"I only saw them the one time, but since then, every once in a while, I would start looking into news stories, anything that could have had something to do with the Doctor and Gemma. A lot of it seems to be focused around London for some reason," he frowned, "And a lot at Christmas, too. But there were also some around America."
"And all that, it's about those… events?" Sam motioned to the books and binders.
"Everything I could write up. I didn't want to print too much, my mother keeps a pretty close eye on the paper and ink levels, so she would know something was up."
"Do you ever think maybe it would be a good thing if she did catch you?" Sam stood up.
"No, but I can show you," he started reaching through the notebooks on top.
"Artie, look, I said I'd come, and I did, and… I wish I could say this wasn't… crazy…"
"It only sounds crazy at first, and if I hadn't been out there I probably wouldn't believe it either, but…"
"I should go, alright? Don't take this the wrong way, my face hurts, I… I'll see you at school tomorrow."
Artie might have stopped him, but he kept thinking… All he'd done since he'd brought Sam into this was to get him hurt and he had gotten nowhere. The fact that he hadn't believed him was the last push he'd needed to make a change. All the binders had gone back, all the notebooks. The last thing he held was the box. He looked back over his shoulder to see if Sam had shut the door again when he'd gone. He had.
Sometimes, if he should ever doubt himself, he would open the back of the fake nightstand, pull out that box and look inside. Every time he did, it would be the same. His hand would touch the cover for a second, and then he'd pull it away again, like maybe there wouldn't be anything inside and it really would have been a dream. But then he would get his courage up and open the box, and there it would be, there they would be… the three pieces of what had once been the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. He remembered what had happened to it, and he remembered what he'd been told.
Hold on to this. It might still come in handy someday.
TO BE CONTINUED (TUESDAY)