Dark Energy

by Robison Wells

  “It’s been a heck of a day,” I said. “As you can probably imagine. My dad’s with NASA.”

  “Yes, yes,” the voice replied, in a tone that indicated he couldn’t care less that aliens had landed five days before. “Drive through the gate and come up to the parking lot on the south side of the building. We’ll send someone to meet you.”

  The wrought iron gate slid noiselessly open in front of me, and I drove up a hill to the school. As the road curved around the back, I could see the difference between the new portion and the old portion of the building—the front was stone and brick and looked old, but the back two-thirds appeared to be less than five years old. The exterior walls were mostly glass, and I saw students milling around inside. No one seemed to notice my car pull into the parking lot. Not that I expected everyone to drop what they were doing and race down to meet the new girl. But a few casual glances would have been more welcoming.

  The parking lot was what I was expecting. Six Mercedes, four Audis, two Lexuses, three Porsches, and five BMWs. There was also the odd Honda and Chevy thrown into the mix, just to spice things up. I pulled my rented Toyota into a spot between two Mercedes and wondered what it would be like going to a school where so many people had so much money.

  A shortish guy with jet-black hair, olive skin, and rectangular glasses came walking down the steps just as I was trying to carry my luggage and all my shopping bags up into the building.

  “Hey,” I said, fumbling with the three boxes of shoes. “A little help?”

  He hurried over and grabbed the majority of the stuff from me. “You’re a newbie?”

  He was wearing the uniform, or the evening-casual version of it. Khaki pants, a white oxford shirt, a loosened tie. I tried to put on an air of confidence, as though I started at new schools all the time and this was nothing special.

  “Yep,” I said. “Alice Goodwin. Take me to your leader.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “UFO joke,” I said, and moved past him toward the door. He was cute, and I was making a great impression.

  “I take it you’re here because of the aliens?” he asked, and then paused. “I mean, not like you came here in the ship or anything. But are you here because they’re here?”

  “My dad works for NASA. How did you guess?”

  “Because most other people are packing up and leaving,” he said. I held the door for him and he sidled through.

  “What about you? Not afraid of aliens?”

  “Nowhere to go,” he said. “Dad’s in Abu Dhabi. Mom’s in Singapore. Business must be done. I did get a text from Mom, though. Four words. ‘UFO in Minnesota—crazy.’ So, as you can tell, they’re pretty concerned.”

  There was a rapid clacking on the marble floor. A moment later a woman appeared around the corner.

  “Miss Goodwin,” she said, a fake smile on her face. “I’m Mrs. Lund. We were expecting you much earlier.”

  “All’s well that ends well,” I said.

  “I see you’ve met Mr. Malik.”

  “I see that I have,” I said, turning and nodding to him. “Hi, Malik.”

  “It’s Kurt,” he said. “Kurt Malik.”

  “Well, Mr. Malik, since you are already holding Miss Goodwin’s parcels, perhaps you’d be willing to show her to the dormitories?”

  “Sure thing,” he said.

  “Miss Goodwin,” the secretary said. “You’re in room one-oh-nine. You’re expected in Mrs. Cushing’s office tomorrow morning at eight o’clock, sharp.”

  “Sharp,” I said, and nodded. She turned on her heel and strode away.

  “So,” I said to Kurt as we walked. “You weren’t sent outside to help me?”

  “Guilty as charged. That was probably why Mrs. Lund came. But why should I have argued with you? A fellow human in need? We’re all going to be soylent green by morning.”

  “I don’t think aliens had anything to do with soylent green.”

  “Well, either way. We’ll all be pod people eventually. Let’s make a bet: I’ll put twenty bucks on pod people.”

  “I’ll put twenty on weird alien disease. Alien smallpox. Either way, thanks for helping me.”

  We moved through a large common room, where two dozen students were clustered around a large-screen TV, and then we passed the cafeteria, where more students were watching TV.

  “Has anything big happened in the last few hours?” I asked.

  He laughed. “You sound less concerned about this than anyone I know.”

  “My dad’s with NASA. For him, this is all exciting. I’ve never seen him so thrilled, not when we landed the rover on Mars or when they landed that thing on a comet. His enthusiasm rubs off on me, I guess. He hardly gave my blue hair a second glance.” Sure, it was a lie, but I didn’t expect this boy and my dad to be having serious conversations about my hair color any time soon.

  “They’re going to make you dye it out,” he said. “‘No extreme hairstyles.’”

  “One streak? This is hardly extreme,” I said. “I could have gotten extreme.”

  He set down one armload of bags and brushed his black hair forward so that it covered his eyebrows. “They consider this extreme. I’ve got maybe another week before I get reprimanded.”

  “My dad has sent me to a prison.”

  Kurt picked up the bags again. “It’s not bad. It’s just wealthy. People expect a certain amount of grooming when they’re wealthy.”

  He turned a corner and came to a door that was very sparsely decorated with Halloween paraphernalia—a single small ghost hung in the center of the door, and a construction-paper sign labeled it as “Ghouls” instead of Girls.

  “I’m a Ghoul, huh?”

  “Better than us,” he said. “We got ‘Mensters.’”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. Anyway, this is as far as I can take you. Wealth also means respect, decorum, and dignity, and one of those words means that I’m not allowed to carry your bags to your dorm room.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “If you want to watch more coverage of the UFO not doing anything, come down to the cafeteria later. I plan to gorge myself on pie. We’re all dead, so it doesn’t matter, right?”

  “Right.”

  He held the door open for me and I waddled into the girls’ dorm hall. This part of the building looked very new and very sterile.

  The doors were decorated off and on with Halloween decor. Room 109 was at the end of the first hall, just before a turn that led deeper into the dorm. It had a cartoon of a sexy devil and a sign announcing the inhabitants of the room to be succubi.

  I knocked and tried to put on my best succubus look, although I assumed it looked very similar to my haggard I’ve spent all day traveling and shopping look.

  The door opened, and someone came out who looked even less like a succubus than I did—she was tall and willowy, dressed in a gray sweatshirt and flannel pajama pants. Her red hair was pulled back in a frizzy ponytail.

  “Hi!” she exclaimed. “You’re the new girl!”

  “I’m the new girl,” I agreed. “You’re the succubus?”

  She gestured up and down her body. “A demon who seduces men,” she said with a laugh. “And then kills them. That’s me all right.” She reached out to take some of my bags. “Been shopping? What did you get?”

  “Sweaters,” I said. “It’s cold here.”

  “You’re from Florida, right? I’m so sorry.” She led me inside to a surprisingly large common room with four desks and two couches. Through doors to each side I saw bedrooms with two beds each. Everything looked new, and clean, and like I would be totally miserable. I’d never shared a room in my life, ever.

  “I assume you’re used to this weather?”

  “No,” she said, setting my bags on one of the beds. “By which I mean ‘hell no.’ I’m from Atlanta. You can’t tell from my accent?”

  She didn’t have the slightest twinge of a southern accent, and as I opened my mouth hesitantly to say
something, she laughed and sat down. “Don’t worry. I’m technically from Atlanta, but I never lived there long enough for it to matter. Elementary at St. Barbara’s School for Girls in Pasadena. Junior high at St. Rose in Santa Fe.”

  “No saints for you anymore? Hence the succubus?”

  She opened one of my shoeboxes and pulled out the black leather pair, and immediately measured the heel with her fingers.

  “The succubus thing is Brynne’s. I’m Rachel, by the way. They’ll never let you wear these shoes. The heel is too high.”

  I sighed and dropped my bags onto the bed. “It’s hardly an inch and a half.”

  “Closer to two,” she said. “Besides, one inch is the limit. I just wear flats.”

  “One inch is hardly a shoe at all.”

  She grinned and opened the next box. She seemed to have no sense of my privacy. Was this what sharing rooms was going to be like? I mean, I like to pry into people’s lives as much as anyone, but what is roommate etiquette?

  I pointed at the box. “Those will be too tall as well, then.”

  “Yep,” she said. “But you’ll look good around the dorm.” She held the shoe up to her foot. “I bet we could share.”

  “Be my guest. So, you and Brynne and who’s in the fourth bed?”

  “It was Nikki, but her parents pulled her out of here yesterday morning. People are dropping like flies. What about you? I heard you’re here because of the thing.”

  “My dad works for NASA.”

  “So why aren’t you staying with him?”

  “Because I have a hunch he’ll be living in a trailer filled with coffee cups,” I said. “He gets a little passionate about his work. Even when there weren’t aliens to worry about, he never got home before eight.”

  Rachel pulled on one of my new shoes and stood up to look in the floor-length mirror on the closet door.

  “They really make the flannel pop,” I said.

  She turned and stuck out her tongue.

  “So which are you?” I asked, still too intimidated to tackle the task of unpacking. “Gifted or talented?”

  She screwed up her face into a grimace. “Honestly?”

  “No, lie to me,” I said. “Yes, of course, honestly.”

  Rachel laughed and sat down to take off the shoe. “Both. Gifted, mostly at math and science. And talented at the cello. I play a passable violin if I’m forced to.”

  “Are people forcing you to play a lot of violin? Is this that kind of school?”

  “Not here,” she said and put the shoes away, setting the box on her lap and closing the lid. “My parents think the violin is a much more appropriate instrument. Don’t ask me why.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I’m just not as good at it,” she said with a shrug. “I think it’s too—I don’t know—squeally? That’s not even a word. But the cello is great.”

  “Well, the good news is that the War of the Worlds has started, so no need to worry about that now.”

  Rachel’s face went ashen. “Is that what your dad says?”

  I reached out and touched her hand. “No. I’m just kidding.”

  “Everyone is kidding about it,” she said, her demeanor entirely changed. She picked up my bags and started hauling them into one of the bedrooms—it looked like I was sharing with her. Our names were on the doors. “The world as we know it is over and everyone is acting like it’s hilarious. You know why I’m hiding out in here? Because I can’t watch TV anymore. I can barely stand to be online”—she gestured toward her laptop—“because even websites that have nothing to do with the news are showing a black ribbon to honor the deaths of everyone in the path of the ship, or they’re filled with essays about ‘Where They Were,’ or ‘What This Means.’ It’s awful.”

  “Sorry,” I said. It didn’t seem like a good enough response, but I didn’t know what else to say. I joked about aliens because it was better than freaking out. Rachel had decided to take the latter approach, and I couldn’t blame her.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not one of the people who think the world is ending. Just one who can’t take the stress of everything changing. This is like the Gutenberg Bible times a million.”

  I smiled, and then so did she.

  “That doesn’t make much sense, does it?” she said.

  “I get your point.” I dug through one of the bags to find a pair of socks. “Do you know Kurt Malik?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “I told him I’d meet him in the cafeteria to watch TV.”

  “Seriously?” She flopped back on the bed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Do you know how often I have plans to meet guys in the cafeteria? Never. You show up and have a date before you even get to your room.”

  “It’s not a date.”

  “You know what I mean. It’s a thing. You have a thing with Kurt Malik.”

  “Do you like Kurt?”

  “No, I don’t like Kurt. He’s not even in my top ten. But still.”

  “But still,” I agreed. “Well, how about this: I don’t really want to watch TV either. So what if I go get us both some pie or something, and I come back here and you help me unpack?”

  “No,” she said, sitting up. “I don’t want to ruin your thing with Kurt.”

  “I’ll cancel. If he likes me, then it’ll be playing hard to get. And if he doesn’t like me, then it’ll be doing us both a favor.”

  Rachel smiled slowly. “I like the way you think. But still. What if it’s your only ‘thing’? I don’t get a lot of things.”

  “There’s plenty of time for more things. Tell me this, though. Do you really have a top ten list?”

  “Oh, definitely. Like I said, gifted in math and science. Meaning: total dork. I have a spreadsheet.”

  I laughed. “And who’s at the top?”

  Rachel grinned. “It’s a personal spreadsheet. Password protected. If I ever let it get out, then Brynne would be my worst nightmare.”

  Huh. I didn’t want a roommate who would ever be anyone’s worst nightmare. “How’s that? Gossip?”

  “No, not gossip. Because she’d harangue me every minute of the day to actually do something about the spreadsheet.”

  “So, can I take it the reason you don’t have ‘things’ in the cafeteria with boys is because you don’t ask a lot of boys to get pie with you?”

  “Well, one of the girls in here put ‘succubi’ on the door and one of them didn’t. And she meant it.”

  “I hate to ask it,” I said, “but how exactly is Brynne gifted and talented? Or would that be a question better posed to the boys?”

  “Well, she is a genius. She’s just a genius in lots of ways. Unlike me. I mean, I could tutor just about every one of those guys in math—and have—but none of them remember that when Saturday night rolls around.”

  “Do you ever ask them?”

  “I grew up inside boarding schools. They don’t really teach you how to talk to boys. The only parenting I got was from guidance counselors and report cards.”

  “Then I guess I’ll have to be your mom while I’m here.”

  “Thanks.” She laughed, and then added in a bratty little kid voice, “You told me you were going to get me pie, Mom.”

  THREE

  The selection of pie was actually pretty good. In fact, the selection of everything was pretty good. Rachel told me classes had been canceled and most of the students had spent the day in one of the many common rooms, while the cafeteria churned out meal after meal, dessert after dessert. The UFO landing was going to be the single leading cause of heart disease at the Minnetonka School for the Gifted and Talented.

  Kurt was there, sprawled out on a sofa with no room for me to sit beside him. He saw me walk in and hopped over the back of the couch to trot after me. I broke the news to him that I was going back to the dorm rather than staying with him, and he didn’t seem too heartbroken, which threw me for a loop. Wasn’t he supposed to be devastated? Instead
I got, “That’s cool,” as he helped himself to more banana cream.

  “Any exciting new developments?” I asked, balancing four slices of pie—two cherry, one key lime, and one coconut crème—on two plates. I wondered how I was going to open the dorm door.

  “They’ve had to call in more military to get a better perimeter around the ship because protestors keep trying to get over to it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. But some guy made it all the way to the ship and started attacking it with a crowbar,” he said. “They’ve been playing that video a lot. You should have seen them take the guy down. A beautiful chop block. The military says they’re going to shoot anyone who tries to get in, because they’re worried about bombs.”

  “Wow. Well, welcome to Earth.”

  “I can’t say I blame the people protesting,” Kurt said. “They keep saying that the death toll is going to rise—right now they’re still at eighteen thousand, but three thousand more are still missing.”

  “Maybe I should stop being so flippant.”

  He shrugged. “People deal with stuff in different ways. Some people make jokes and some people attack things with crowbars.”

  He grabbed one of the forks I was holding and helped himself to a bite of the coconut crème, then licked some extra cream off the fork.

  “Hey,” I said, awkwardly trying to pick up a second fork without dropping my plates.

  Another guy came over to the pie table and pointed to my hair while he cut a slice of cherry. “Nice blue. They’ll make you dye it.”

  “We’ll see how long I can hold out,” I said. “I figure I’m in the clear at least as long as classes are canceled.”

  “For being new, you’re already pretty eager to break the rules. I like that.” He put his hand to his chest. “I’m William.”

  “I’d shake your hand if I wasn’t carrying pie,” I said. “Nice to meet you, William. Can I call you Will?”

  His eyes narrowed into tired, annoyed slits. “No. Just William. Anyway, classes are probably going to be out again tomorrow. And maybe Friday, if we can milk it.”

  Kurt looked at me. “So I’m betting you can keep the hair until Monday.”

  “Tuesday,” I said, with a smile. “Anyway, I have to take this back to Rachel.”