Manistee, Michigan.
Lance Goodman sat cross-legged on the thin carpet in the far left bedroom at the end of the hallway — his room. The house was old, creaking under the weight of wind off Lake Michigan. His room smelled like old socks and pencil shavings, but it was his place.
At ten years old, Lance was small for his age, with brown hair that stuck up in the back and glasses that always slid down his nose when he read. The room was crowded — not with toys, but with odd things: broken CB radios, a hand-built crystal radio set, coils of wire strung along the baseboards. Near the west window, facing the lake, a wooden desk held a battered ham radio console his dad bought at a yard sale. Next to it: spiral notebooks stacked crooked, each one jammed with messy notes — dates, times, dreams, words he couldn’t explain.
Sometimes, when he looked around, he thought his room felt like a little spaceship — wires and screens, notes and knobs, like a secret command center he’d never seen but somehow knew how to build. He didn’t know where he got the ideas for it all. He just did.
One wall was covered in baseball cards, thumbtacked in neat rows. His favorite was the rookie Alan Trammell. Lance looked at that card a lot — the young Tigers team was finally looking like something special.
But the real shrine was by the south window. There, taped to the glass, was a spiderweb of copper wire and aluminum foil, shaped like an antenna. It looked ridiculous. But Lance believed. He knew — somehow — that if he talked just right into his old mic, something up there would hear him.
He crawled to the desk, put on the big headphones that made his ears sweat, and flicked the console on. The soft green glow lit up his glasses. Beside the mic sat his small white Alupent inhaler — always within reach when his chest got tight.
He took a breath. “Tsatso. I know you’re there. It’s Lance. It’s me. I remember.”
Outside, the wind rustled the big maple tree by the driveway. Somewhere down the hall, his little brother Tony babbled in his sleep.
Lance pressed the transmit button. Static hissed. But in that static, if he closed his eyes… he could almost smell it. Cinnamon.
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