by Magan Vernon
"What the hell?" A petite brunette popped up from her chair, pointing her thin finger in my direction. "My bestie and I spent three years studying the effects of plant life on Three Mile Island and she doesn't get in, but some little military brat gets in because her daddy works here?"
My eyes widened. "I…uh…"
"Calm down, Riley," the lumberjack bellowed. "Let's not make judgments of people before we get to know them."
"Whatever." She rolled her eyes and plopped back down.
"Are you going to be okay?" my dad whispered and stepped behind me.
My throat felt like it had completely dried up. I swallowed and nodded, taking the seat in front of me. The eyes of the other people in the circle stared me down. They all seemed comfortable, like it was perfectly normal to be sitting in the middle of an alien operations center. I avoided their eyes and pretended like my chewed up fingernails were the most interesting thing in the world, instead of wondering if they were thinking the same thing that Riley had yelled.—That I didn't belong.
"Okay then." My dad patted the back of the chair. "Ody, I'll see you at squash later?"
"Oh, you'd better be ready for a little Martian versus human action!" He chuckled.
"I'll count on it." My dad shut the door, leaving only the echo of his laugh behind.
"Well, Alex." The lumberjack's eyes drilled into me, like he was really looking inside my head instead of at my face. And since he was an alien, I was pretty sure that he could. "Welcome to the intern program."
He plopped a large white packet labeled Intern Program on my lap before walking toward a small, silver podium just outside the circle. "From what I've heard, you've already been acquainted with the infirmary and some of the locals."
He came back toward the circle with a large steel box that he dropped on the floor in the middle of us. "Now, before you all start getting to know the ins and outs of our operations center, get suited up. This would be an excellent time to become acquainted with your fellow interns."
He pushed a small red button on the side of the box and it flew open. A cloud of smoke billowed from inside. We all inched closer as the smoke started to fade away.
"These," Ody said, reaching into the box, "are going to be your uniforms." He pulled out a silver wetsuit-looking outfit with black patches on the shoulders and a large black belt circling the garment's waist. He tossed one to a guy with a coffee-colored complexion and a button-down shirt. The guy grabbed it, feeling the material between his fingers.
"These are temperature controlled so you can deal with the different environments that humans and aliens work in. This way we can keep everyone at their normal body temperature." He passed around the uniforms, throwing one to each of us from the box.
"Um are these supposed to be like one-size-fits-all or something? Because I'm a size zero and I'm not sure that this will fit me." Riley held up the uniform in front of her, snarling her upper lip.
Who really just announces they are a size zero? You never heard girls like me just announcing their pant size. Oh, excuse me, do you think that these skimpy things will fit my big Italian ass? No, I definitely wouldn't be saying that, especially when I noticed Mister Tight-jeans-and-side-swept-bangs peering at me from across the circle. Okay, maybe the internship wouldn't be so bad. I wondered if he was the guy who had pulled the woman off me, but when his eyes met mine there was no mistake that they weren't the same. I wondered if I would ever see the guy who saved me again. I also kept thinking why he needed to save me in the first place.
"Is everything okay, Alex?" Ody questioned, snapping me back to reality.
"Are we going to have to stop everything for this girl?" Riley huffed.
"Oh, give it a rest already, Riley," a blond girl with a Chicago accent clucked.
I bit my lip, trying to hide my smile. I could already tell that Riley was like the granola-chewing hipsters at my high school. The ones who claimed to be very eco-friendly, but carried leather purses and wore really expensive clogs. I looked back over at the blonde, who gave me a quick wink. It was good to know that not everyone at Circe thought I was a problem.
"Well on that note, let's suit up and meet back in here for your tour." Ody motioned his arms to either side. "Boys' rooms are on the left and girls are on the right."
We all stood up and started heading in our separate directions. The three boys were already talking and joking around like they were best friends. The third boy with a red crew cut swatted the other guys with his uniform.
The girls and I were a different story.
"So, you're Alex?" the blonde piped up. She towered over me as we walked to the bathroom. Riley sulked behind us.
"Yeah, Alex Bianchi." I smiled, looking up at her. "And you are?"
"Jen Davis, bio chemistry major at UCLA. Where do you go to school?" She didn't take her eyes off me as we walked into the cleanest, whitest bathroom I had ever seen.
"Uh, well I'm going to be a senior, applied at Columbia for its English program." I stared down at my internship packet, wondering if the giant stack of paper would count as my summer reading, or if I'd even have time to read it.
Riley stormed past us, turning back around and holding her arms up. "Whoa, whoa did you just say that you're only going to be a senior in high school? And an English major wannabe?"
"Well, when you put it that way…" I shoved my hands into the front pockets of my jeans.
Riley shook her head before pushing open a stall door. "Great, I get to spend my summer babysitting some high school writing chick."
"Oh I don't think you're going to have to babysit this one." Jen laughed as she pushed open the next stall. "I heard she already survived a Cephalopod attack."
"Seriously?" Riley yelled as I slunk into my stall. The suit was thicker than I thought and felt like rubber sliding up my legs.
"Well, that's what I heard, a Cephalopod started choking her and it took like ten guys and a Caltian to pull her off. Is that true, Alex?"
Jen was tall enough to see over the top of my stall. I had to zip up my suit as fast as I could before she could see anything.
"That's what they tell me." I stepped out of the stall to meet the girls.
"Is it true that you gave the thumbs up?" Jen looked at me, the suit molded to her body and made her look like space Barbie.
I shrugged. "Yeah, just letting my dad know I was fine."
Jen covered her mouth to stifle a giggle. "You do know that giving the thumbs up in an alien operations center is like walking in and doing the Heil Hitler sign in a synagogue, right?" She shook her head. "I guess it's good that Caltian was there to save you."
I stared down at my feet, trying to hide my embarrassment. I had a million questions running through my brain, but felt like I should ask the obvious one first. "Uh, what's a Caltian?"
Riley groaned. "Okay, seriously, I'm going back out with the guys." She stormed out, leaving Jen and I staring at each other before Jen approached the counter.
"It's one of the planets that they conveniently leave out in astronomy. If people really studied it in school, then everyone would know that there is life on other planets. Just like Ranga or even Mars. No one ever tells students the whole truth, and they just go on believing what they want." Jen smiled at my reflection and I couldn't close my mouth fast enough to hide my gaping.
"So what's the big deal with Caltians, if they're just from another inhabited planet?" I stared back at Jen, who smiled at me like I was a simpleton.
"You know how in high school you have your different cliques?"
I nodded as Jen ran her fingers through her hair before putting it up into a ponytail.
"Well, Earth is kind of the dumb jocks, the Martians are kind of the woodshop guys, and Calta would be like the queen bees. You know, the popular kids, the ones that ruled the school?"
“So what you’re telling me is that the universe is basically like one big high school?"
I stared at Jen’s reflection, wondering if her blonde hair w
as actually real or if underneath that large blond mess was the same mousy brown hair that I had. I stared at my own hair and then realized that it smelled like alien goop and quickly put it up into a ponytail to get it away from my face.
She turned toward me. “Exactly." She winked. "Now come on, let’s get back out to meet everyone else so you can catch up. I have a feeling that you have a lot to learn.”
I opened my mouth to ask her more about the Caltians, but just as I did she pushed open the door, letting a gust of air and laughter blow at us as we exited into the other room.
“Oh, hey Alex.” Riley looked at us smugly. I definitely wasn't going to ask any more questions with Riley in the room, especially when she had her little rat eyes narrowed right at me. “I was just talking to Malcolm here, Air Force Academy honor student." She pointed at the boy with the coffee-colored skin. "And Justin, University of Texas government major," she said, motioning toward the redhead. "Oh and of course." She smiled slyly as she stepped in front of the boy with the side-swept bangs who tried not to meet her gaze. "You already seem to be acquainted with Gavin, MIT honor student." She then slowly turned her whole body toward me, crossing her arms over her chest. “And where was it that you said you went to school again?”
I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. “Well…I’m kind of…”
“Is everyone ready to start the tour?" Ody came barreling in, wearing the same uniform that we all had on. Despite the lightweight feel of the uniform, it still left something to the imagination. I was glad mine didn't reveal every one of my curves or my thunder thighs, and I was pretty happy that I couldn't make out all of Ody's burly, bear-like figure beneath his suit.
“Let’s get this started,” Gavin muttered as he looked right at me. I guess he didn’t seem to care that I was a high school student. I looked down, trying not to meet his gaze as Riley whispered something under her breath and fell in line behind Ody.
Ody clasped his hands together. “Instead of going to your dorms I’m going to get all of you acquainted in your assigned zones before lunch, and then you can spend tonight getting to know your roommates."
Roommates? Just what I wanted, to share a room with a girl like Riley.
Ody threw open the door, letting even more light into the room. As my eyes adjusted to the brightness, I felt something at my side.
Please don’t be another alien trying to kill me. Please don’t be another alien trying to kill me.
“Hey." Gavin’s shoulder bumped mine.
“Oh." I adjusted my glasses, trying my best to keep a goofy smile off my face. I’d been at the base not even a day and I already had one guy save my life and another going out of his way to talk to me. I wasn't used to this much attention from members of the opposite sex. Okay, except for the first and last serious boyfriend I had sophomore year. He was one of those pretentious hipsters that thought he was God's gift to Starbucks and promptly dumped me when I refused to go to third base in the backseat of his mom's Honda.
“Hey,” Gavin said. He nodded his head in Riley’s direction, who was chatting with Malcolm. “Don’t mind her. She just has some issues that involve too much ego and not enough of a filter.”
I tried to do the cute little flirty giggle that I'd heard the girls do at school, but I wasn’t the giggling type and it just came out in a weird snort. I covered my mouth. “Sorry.”
He ran a hand through his shaggy brown hair. “Don’t worry about it.”
Ody stopped in front of a set of glass doors. Inside were a few tables cluttered with different tubes and machines that I had never seen before.
A stout green man, who looked like a giant frog in a wetsuit, stepped out. “Ah, Jennifer, good to see you again, my dear." His English accent threw me off guard, and the way that Jen smiled at him made me wonder how I would ever get used to walking around with a bunch of aliens.
Before Jen even got inside the door, Ody started walking and we all had to pick up our pace to keep up with him. I tried not to stare at all the different creatures that walked past us as we headed down each long hallway, and I silently prayed that they all weren't going to leap out and attack me.
We dropped off Malcolm in the hangar, which was in an area filled with different planes. Some of them were military aircraft that I recognized from when I lived with my dad. There were a few others that looked like nothing I had ever seen with their circular shapes and colorful domes. A few aliens stopped to chat with us. Some of them looked like normal humans, but others were scaly or carried personal electronic devices that had holograms popping out of them instead of regular computer screens.
I looked through the windows of offices whenever we passed, seeing things that I would have never believed possible if they weren't there in front of my eyes. There were zero gravity rooms in which aliens floated in midair. They drank their coffee or took notes like it was no big deal that they were flying into the ceiling. Certain things I saw made me gasp, like large glass chambers with tiny aliens floating inside a green jelly-like liquid. Their eyes closed like they were sleeping, and their bodies were completely still, as if they were in a coma. They made me wonder what that jelly was really doing to them.
By the time we reached the end of the long hallway, I realized that I was the last person standing there with Ody. He stopped in front of two large stainless steel doors that looked like they opened to a giant freezer.
“Are you ready, Alex?”
“Uh, yeah, sure.”
I had no idea what I was supposed to be ready for. All I ever wanted was to be a writer. Not like my mom, sitting at home and writing longhand epic romance novels that were sold under her pen name of Fiona O’Hera, but a behind-enemy-lines type of girl. I wanted to get down in the dirt with war refugees and sling mud alongside fallen soldiers. I told my dad this and he said that he would let the internship coordinators know, which made me really wonder what was behind those doors.
Ody pushed the doors open with a loud boom. Inside, there was a floor-to-ceiling black wall with different displays popping over it, like a giant touch-screen monitor. Some of the screens had blog accounts pulled up, and others showed celebrities that I had seen on TV just going about their normal routine. It looked like I had just jumped into one of those virtual reality simulators that you find in an arcade.
“Ace, our new intern is here." Ody slapped his furry paw on my back.
A small chair in the center of the room twirled around and I came face to face with those inky black eyes that had saved my life.
Chapter 3
I stood there speechless. For a moment we just stared at each other, him with his eyes dark and calculating, and mine opened as wide as they could go, before Ace finally stood up. I expected all aliens to be little green men, but Ace was definitely not short and he definitely wasn’t green. He towered over me. His pale face glowed against the television screens as he approached me. The temperature control suit molded onto his body like a second skin that stretched along his broad shoulders. Not that I was staring at the way his biceps curled underneath the suit or wondering if aliens even had biceps. He absently ran a hand through his spiky black hair before extending it out to me.
“Good to meet you. I’m Ace, but I guess you knew that." His eyes focused on me with his face expressionless. His hands were covered by black fingerless gloves, but as I felt his fingertips against mine a rush of warmth ran through me and I hoped it wasn't showing in my cheeks. His cold, unmoving face startled me, but the warmth from his hands left me curious and longing for more of his touch.
“Alex. Alex Bianchi." I kept shaking his hand as we stared at each other. It was like we were having a silent conversation, but neither of us knew what we were saying and at the same time knew exactly what we wanted to say.
“Okay, then." Ody slapped us on the back, snapping us both out of our trances as we released our hands. “You two have fun and don’t get into too much trouble. I know how enjoyable alien security can be." Ody winked before stepping out and shut
the door with such force the whole room shook. Ace and I stood silent for a minute, shuffling back and forth and trying not to meet each other’s eyes.
“So, alien security?" I didn’t look up from my feet.
“Yeah." He shifted his stance before his whole body shook, like he was trying to get rid of whatever thoughts he had. “Which you probably know nothing about."
I looked up to see that he was actually smiling. He had the whitest, straightest teeth that I had ever seen, like something out of a toothpaste commercial. His smile warmed his otherwise statuesque face, and I was finally able to let out the breath of air that I had been holding. I was apprehensive to be working alongside someone from a different planet, but there was something about Ace that intrigued and frightened me at the same time.
“Up until a few hours ago I didn’t even realize that aliens existed or that I’d be working in some sort of an alien Air Force base." I watched as Ace wheeled another chair out from behind the large screened wall and stopped it next to his before sitting down.
“Well, it’s more of an operations center than an Air Force base.”
I shrugged before plopping down next to him. “Whatever you want to call it.”
“Basically with alien security we troll different social media sites and blogs to make sure that aliens around the globe are staying incognito. Not putting anything out there to out themselves or trying to destroy Earth or anything else." He put his hand up to the screen and moved his fingers back and forth so different websites would pop in front of us.
“Wait." I jumped up, leaning into the screen. “Is that my blog?”
I touched the screen and, yep, there was that picture of me surrounded by books in my black Stop your bitching and start a revolution t-shirt. My mom hated that shirt and hated that I blogged even more. She would always stare at me with her hands on her tiny hips, narrowing her green eyes as she lectured me about the dangers of putting myself out there on the internet. Little did she know there was a lot more lurking on the internet than just predators, or that I would spend my summer spying on them.
