Wish You Were Here, Liza

by Robin Wasserman

  “I can do this,” Kirsten insisted. She spun the wheel and inched forward again. “Just tell me before I go too far!”

  “She can’t do this,” Dillie murmured. “She practically failed her driving test because of the parallel parking. There’s no way.”

  “She can,” I said firmly. After all the wheedling and whining we’d done to get permission for this trip, we were not admitting defeat.

  “You got it!” Jake shouted, pumping a fist in the air as Kirsten slid the van out of the parking space.

  She turned the wheel, starting a three-point turn on the dead-end street. “Now just let me turn this thing around and I’ll—”

  There was a long, guttural crunching noise. Then a popping and crackling sound like a giant bowl of Rice Krispies.

  Kirsten was frozen at the wheel. “What…was…that?” she gasped.

  Caleb and Jake darted behind the van to see what she had run over.

  “It’s not a person or anything,” Jake reported.

  “Not even a jackrabbit!” Caleb added. He rejoined us on the curb. Kirsten climbed out of the van. She was a pale, sickly white color. “It was just some big cardboard boxes of stuff,” Caleb explained.

  “Stuff?” Kirsten repeated, her voice rising to supersonic range. “Stuff? What kind of stuff? And why was it in the middle of the road?”

  Jake cleared his throat. “It wasn’t exactly in the middle of the road,” he pointed out. “It was actually, uh, on the sidewalk. You kind of…missed the road. Just a little.”

  Kirsten sank to the ground. She dropped her head between her knees. “Uhhh,” she moaned. “Mom’s going to kill me.”

  I patted her shoulder, feeling kind of awkward. “It’ll be okay, Kirsten.”

  “Actually, Mom really will kill her,” Dillie said.

  “Dillie!” Caleb and I shouted together.

  “I should have known this would happen,” Kirsten said, tears beading at the corners of her eyes. “Of course something would go wrong. Everything always goes wrong!”

  I’d never seen Kirsten like this. She was totally out of control. “It’s not that bad,” I tried.

  “It’s worse!” She shuddered. “My life is just one big disaster. First Thomas breaks up with me, then—”

  “Thomas broke up with you?” Dillie asked, eyes wide. “When?”

  Kirsten burst into tears. “Two weeks ago.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Dillie asked, sounding half offended and half worried.

  It was like Kirsten hadn’t even heard her. “He said we’d be together forever, and then—” She hiccuped, and wiped the edge of her shirt across her dripping nose. “And then I go away for two months and he basically forgets all about me. And now this!”

  Jake was inspecting the bumper of the van. “There are no dents,” he reported. “You can’t even tell you hit anything.”

  “But the boxes…” Kirsten groaned.

  “Maybe it was just trash,” I said. “You know, recycling or something no one wanted—”

  “My aliens!” The high-pitched shriek echoed up and down the street.

  Uh-oh.

  “Okay, maybe someone wanted them,” I murmured. As an angry-looking woman came racing toward us, I hauled Kirsten off the ground. We were going to have to deal with this, one way or another.

  “The aliens!” the woman screamed, kneeling by the smashed cardboard boxes. She ran her hands through her frizzy red hair, until it was nearly standing on end. “You killed them!”

  The blood drained out of Kirsten’s face. “I…killed…?”

  “Aliens?” Dillie mouthed, just as pale as her sister.

  The woman stood up, smoothing down her flowing flowered skirt. Her hair, on the other hand, stayed just as wild and alarmed as she was. “It’s ruined,” she murmured, fists clenched. “All ruined.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Kirsten said quickly. She wiped away a tear. “I don’t know what was in those boxes, but—”

  “I told you, those are our aliens,” the woman said. “Or at least they were our aliens.” She sighed. “I knew I shouldn’t have left them alone on the sidewalk. But it was just for a few minutes, and…”

  Caleb cleared his throat. “Um, excuse me, but are you saying there were, uh, real, live aliens in those boxes?”

  The woman looked at Caleb like he was insane. “Of course not.” She rolled her eyes at us, as if to say, Who is this lunatic? “They were props for tonight’s show. We’re performing at the festival, or at least we were—”

  “You’re Luna Moonbeam!” Dillie exclaimed. “I love your music.” She started fumbling in her pockets, pulling out a crumpled receipt and a stub of pencil. She shoved them at the woman. “Can I have your autograph?”

  “Um, Dillie,” I whispered, “we’ve kind of got bigger issues right now.”

  “But this is Luna Moonbeam, as in Luna and the Light Brigade!” Dillie said eagerly. “Their live bootleg recording from the Are You Out There? Convention is legendary. They’re famous for these mechanical alien props they have that actually dance and—” She broke off, staring sadly at the pile of smashed boxes. “Oh.”

  “I’m so, so sorry. I really am,” Kirsten said, sounding like she was trying not to cry. “Please don’t call my parents. They’ll kill me. I’ll do anything I can to fix this. Anything.”

  “We have to fix this,” Dillie agreed. “The Out-of-This-World Fest can’t go on without Luna and the Light Brigade.”

  Luna sighed. “You’re right. But Luna and the Light Brigade can’t go on without our aliens. They’re our trademark.”

  “Can’t you fix them?” Caleb asked.

  “I certainly hope so,” Luna said. “But not in time for the concert.”

  Kirsten plunged her head into her hands. “I’m going to be grounded for life.”

  “Snap out of it, Kirsten!” I whispered. “There’s got to be something we can do,” I told Luna. “What if we figured out a way to help you put on your show?”

  “Well, I don’t see how you can do that,” Luna said, “unless you can find me a ship full of aliens by five P.M.”

  Dillie’s eyes lit up. I wondered if she was thinking the same thing I was.

  “This is Roswell,” I reminded Luna, as a crazy idea bubbled into my brain. “You want aliens? We’ll get you aliens.”

  Location: Center stage

  Population: 5 band members, 5 “aliens”

  Miles Driven: 2,147

  Days of Torment: 47, plus one very, very long hour under the spotlight

  I cannot believe I’m doing this, I thought. I cannot believe I’m doing this and not hating it.

  We’d found Luna and the Light Brigade some aliens. Five of them. True, we couldn’t replace the elaborate mechanical models that had taken months to create. But we’d offered them a different kind of alien, lifelike and life-size. The Light Brigaders had accepted gratefully.

  (Jake had accepted the proposal slightly less gratefully. “You’re doing it,” I’d said. He shook his head. “Yes,” I’d said. “No.” That’s when Caleb stepped up. “You do this, and tomorrow I’ll convince my parents that you’re sick enough you have to stay in the motel all week and watch baseball games.” And just like that, Jake was in.)

  It only took half an hour to beg and borrow some haphazard costumes off the tourists and gift shop managers clogging the streets. Soon we had more antennae, fake arms, bug eyes, blue wigs, and neon tutus than anyone could ever want. We spent another forty-five minutes rehearsing our parts.

  And then it was showtime. There we were, under the spotlight. Wearing silver body paint and sparkly, wiggling antennae. Staring out at an audience of three hundred alien-worshippers.

  On the plus side, we didn’t have to play any serious instruments. This was lucky, since none of us had any musical talent whatsoever. (Except Kirsten, who played the pipe organ for some reason, and Jake, who claimed to play Expert level on Guitar Hero.) Dillie and Caleb were given tambourines, Kirsten snapped a pai
r of castanets, Jake got two plastic maracas—and I was stuck with a triangle. “Just strike it whenever you want,” Luna had urged me. “We’re flexible.”

  The band was less flexible about the dance we were supposed to do, imitating their famous alien machines. We had to wave our arms up and down and kick our feet out, Rockette style—but do it all as mechanically as possible, like some kind of robots from outer space.

  I thought it would be terrifying to stand up onstage in front of hundreds of fans, wearing my antennae, banging on my triangle, swinging my hips back and forth in an alien hula dance.

  And it was terrifying—for the first few seconds.

  But then the spotlights blinded me to the crowd, and Luna’s guitar chords blasted through the speakers. Somehow, I forgot to be terrified or humiliated. I forgot to do anything but dance. I had to admit, the band was better than I’d expected. Soon the whole crowd was singing along—and I couldn’t help it. I joined in.

  I’m an alien from outer space,

  Spying on the human race!

  Swooping down from up above,

  Found your Earth and fell in love!

  Okay, so it was even cheesier than the time my Hebrew school class put on a Hanukkah musical starring the the Amazing Dreidel and his sidekick, the Incredible Singing Potato Latke. But when the audience burst into applause, it felt pretty good.

  Caleb and Dillie were asleep in the back of the van. Jake was listening to a baseball game and glaring at the back of my head. He’d been giving us the silent treatment all afternoon, still mad that we’d made him wear the orange tutu.

  Not that I was paying attention to Jake. I was not. And would not. Ever again.

  I was sitting in the front seat next to Kirsten, pretending to navigate. But we were driving through empty miles of desert wilderness; there wasn’t much need for maps. This road was basically our only option. Kirsten was still a little shaky after the parallel-parking alien massacre. I think she just wanted someone else telling her what to do, for once.

  “Fnk oo,” she mumbled, keeping her eyes pinned on the road.

  “What?”

  She made a sucking-on-a-lemon face. “Thank you.”

  “Oh.” After the performance, Kirsten had immediately gone back into I’m-better-than-you mode. Saying thank-you wasn’t really her style. “You’re welcome?”

  “No, really,” she said. “You saved me.”

  “It was all of us,” I pointed out.

  “It was you,” Kirsten argued. “You came up with the idea, and you talked that Luna woman into going along with it.” She shook her head. “You were, like, some kind of evil genius. Only not actually evil.”

  I grinned. “Never doubt the Lizard Queen,” I murmured.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” But it wasn’t nothing.

  “I really owe you one,” Kirsten said.

  I suspected that Dillie would be able to come up with the perfect way for Kirsten to pay us back. Or maybe I would come up with it myself. Apparently, that was the kind of thing I did now.

  “Hey, Kirsten, I’m really sorry about Thomas,” I said. In all the chaos, I’d almost forgotten the news about her big secret breakup.

  “Who?”

  “Uh, Thomas? Your boyfriend? I mean ex—I mean. You know. Thomas.”

  “Oh.” Kirsten’s fingers tightened around the wheel. “Whatever. He was totally immature, anyway. You know?” She laughed, though it sounded kind of fake. “I guess you don’t know. You’re just a kid, after all.”

  Same old Kirsten. Even after breaking up with her boyfriend, crashing the van, having a nervous breakdown, and turning into an alien, she hadn’t changed at all.

  But maybe I had.

  Chapter Ten

  Location: Grand Canyon, Arizona

  Population: 5 million tourists per year

  Miles Driven: 2,310

  Days of Torment: 51

  The next few days passed in a blur of national parks, Technicolored diners, and miles and miles of cactus-studded desert. (And because it kept getting hotter and hotter, a blur of motel pools—some that we even had official permission to use.) In between all the tourist spots were miles and miles of empty desert and a scattering of very, very empty towns. Ramshackle gas stations with 1950s-style pumps. Fading Route 66 museums with crumbling plaster dinosaurs and broken neon signs. Abandoned town squares with cacti growing in the middle of the street.

  I’d never seen so much dusty brown emptiness.

  But then we hit Arizona’s Painted Desert, which was lit up in a rainbow of colors, rocks striped with reds and purples and oranges. I took a bunch of pictures, knowing I was never going to be able to capture the real thing. But I had to try. It glowed in the afternoon sun, as we all just stared down at it, totally silent. There are some things you don’t talk about, because they’re too big—and when you try to put them into words, they just get small.

  The Grand Canyon was like that, too. At first, it was kind of disappointing. I’d always figured the Grand Canyon would be, you know—a canyon. But it turned out the Grand Canyon was so grand that from one side of it, you couldn’t see the other. So it looked more like an incredibly steep cliff, sloping down and out into a vast, reddish orange nothingness.

  It was still beautiful.

  We watched the sun set, dipping down into the canyon and lighting the sky on fire before it disappeared.

  We probably shouldn’t have sat there for quite so long watching the sky fade to black, while all the other tourists drifted away. Because when we finally stood up, it was pitch-dark—and we’d missed the last shuttle ride back to the campground.

  “I told you to keep an eye on your watch!” Professor Kaplan admonished her husband.

  He sighed wearily. And then, for the first time, he talked back. “You also told me to keep an eye on the children and keep an eye on the edge and keep an eye on the woman from Idaho you thought might be trying to steal your backpack. I only have so many eyes, dear.”

  It was too dark to see Professor Kaplan’s expression, but I could imagine it. And from the sound of Dillie’s muffled giggling, so could she.

  We inched single file along the trail that wound along the canyon rim, with Professor Kaplan leading the way and Jake bringing up the rear as usual. Cell phones lit our way…barely. Ten minutes into our tortoise-paced hike, Jake screamed. And when we turned around, he was gone.

  We panicked.

  Everyone turned toward the edge, peering over, the same horrified question slashing through our minds. Was it possible that he…?

  “Ugh!” Kirsten exclaimed, aiming her dimly lit cell phone screen at a large boulder. Jake perched behind it, smirking. Kirsten snorted in disgust. “You are so immature.”

  The adults started yelling a lot of You scared us half to death! and What were you thinking? and Never do that again! while Dillie, Caleb, and I tried to stay out of the way.

  “What a jerk,” Dillie murmured.

  “Tell me about it,” Caleb agreed.

  “We really should have thought of that ourselves,” Dillie added enviously.

  I grinned. “Tell me about it.”

  Before the yelling went too far, a ranger truck pulled up alongside us. We all piled in and got a bumpy ride back to our campsite, where Jake’s punishment was having to cook us all hot dogs and grilled cheese. It might have been the best-tasting meal of the trip.

  The campground didn’t have a view of the canyon, or the desert, or anything but a bunch of trailers and the donkey corral. “People ride those down to the bottom of the canyon,” Caleb explained. “Maybe tomorrow we can—”

  “No,” my mother said quickly. “No donkeys.”

  It turned out my mom had tried to do that once, when she was a younger. But when she’d tried to climb onto the donkey, it had tipped and fallen on top of her. “Never again,” she vowed. On the one hand, this was too bad, because a donkey trail ride sounded kind of fun.

  On the other hand, the donkeys smelled like f
ertilizer.

  Location: Chupacabra, Arizona

  Population: 224

  Miles Driven: 2,366

  Days of Torment: 52

  We were about twenty miles from the California border when I decided it was time to finish the Journal of Torment and send it on its way. I’d been holding on to it so that I could fit in as much of the trip as possible—but if I didn’t send each copy soon, I’d make it back to the East Coast before either copy did. Fortunately, Dillie and Kirsten were out having a special Kaplan-Novak family night with their parents, leaving me all alone in the motel room.

  I lay down on the saggy mattress, soaking in the quiet. No parents, no Dillie and Caleb, no bossy sisters or annoyingly cute cousins, no Family Entertainment Hour. And for a moment, it was blissful.

  Then it was just boring.

  So I started flipping through my latest stack of photos. I’d developed them at a twenty-four-hour place in Sedona. Many of them—too many—were just lame shots of the desert. They were pictures anyone could have taken.

  But then there were the other pictures:

  Dillie and Caleb in the Texas ghost town, dressed as a sheriff and her prisoner.

  Caleb in alien antennae, the sun glinting off his silver face-paint.

  Jake, his back to the camera, his earbuds in his ears, slouched against a dying tree.

  Kirsten doing a lipstick pout in front of the mirror, her eyes twinkling in the reflection.

  A close-up of Dillie’s flaring nostrils, as she stuck her tongue out at the camera.

  I laughed as I got to one of the more recent ones, a shot of Dillie and Caleb crawling into the hollow of a large rock. I’d bet them a milk shake that they couldn’t both fit inside. Sam and Mina were never going to believe all the stuff I did this summer. And they were never going to believe that some of it was even my idea. I looked at the picture of myself in full-on Elvis gear and smiled. After all, Liza Gold didn’t do that kind of thing. Liza Gold was afraid of embarrassment and humiliation and anything that might make anyone stare at her, eyes bugged out, thinking, That girl is so uncool.

  Lizard, on the other hand, was fearless.