by Magan Vernon
"Are you okay, Alex?"
It was the first time that Jen had spoken to me since our confrontation in the hallway. I was shocked to hear her say my name. I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking how hard it would be to just travel through the pipes until I found Ace. I wanted to see if my ankle bracelet would go off if I wasn't technically in his room, but in the ceiling above it.
"Yeah, just fine." I pointed my finger up at the ceiling and started making circles in the air.
"Okay." Jen got up from her bed and plopped down next to me. "Obviously we've established that you're a horrible liar, so when are you going to tell me the truth?"
I put my hand down and looked over at her. How could I explain everything? I didn't even know where to begin. I didn't want to look crazy talking about my nightmares or how I didn't understand all things alien, so I just stared at her, blinking slowly.
"Come on, Alex." She scooted closer, until she was lying next to me. "I know we haven't talked lately, but I've wanted to."
She stared at the same spot I had in the ceiling as she cocked her head toward mine. "I see how mopey you've been without Ace, and I definitely can't ignore those screams you try and muffle with your pillow in the middle of the night. It's kind of scary."
"Do you think I'll ever get to see him again?" I looked up at Jen. My glasses were so dirty from being stained with my tears and dust from the hangar that I could barely see through them.
"Well, maybe once you leave Circe you can convince your mom that he's just a foreign exchange student," Jen said, smiling. I took off my glasses and wiped them on my shirt.
"You don't think I'll get to see him again before I leave? There's still a few weeks left," I protested, sitting up and positioning my glasses back on my face.
"I don't know. They've tightened security quite a bit and have tried to keep everything mum between the Caltians and humans so this doesn't start some kind of a conflict." She slowly sat up, leaning her back against the wall.
"Why would this start some sort of a conflict?"
Jen rolled her eyes. "Did you and Ace never talk about these things when you were together?"
"Yeah, sometimes." I widened my eyes as I saw Jen raise her eyebrows. "Not like that! I just meant that he never mentioned anything that would signify that us dating would cause some Caltian conflict."
"Anyways, since it seems like you weren't really talking, it looks like he didn't happen to tell you that he's what Caltians would refer to as a prince. His mom's the queen of Calta."
My mouth dropped open. "Shut up, no he's not!"
She nodded. "I take it that's one he didn't tell you?"
I shook my head. "No, I had no idea. Not that it would change anything, but it's kind of an important detail to find out that your boyfriend is prince of a planet."
"I found that out right after that night we went bowling. I thought there had to be a reason that he would be able to get away with a dangerous classification, but still stay at Circe. I wanted to tell you, but after our argument in the hallway I thought that was the last thing that you would want to hear." She looked down at the bedspread, making shapes with her fingertips on the comforter.
"So, why did he come here? Was the queen not happy about it or something?"
She looked up from the comforter. "Well Queen Mama wasn't too happy with her son's constant longing to travel to Earth, and she was even less happy when he turned of age and decided to come down and help out with World War II."
"So, finding out that he was in love with an Earth girl could make things even worse for Earth and Calta relations," she added, raising her eyebrows at me.
"Jen, how do you even know all of this?"
She laughed. "Well Miss-Wants-to-be-a-journalist." She nudged me with her elbow. "Some of it I learned from what I researched on Caltians, some of it I learned from the alien database, but most of it I learned from my co-workers gossiping about the other planets."
"I guess gossip does come in handy sometimes." I laughed.
"Only when you use it right, but seriously." She cleared her throat. "Do you understand now why we were all so worried about your interest in Ace? Being a prince, his interest in a human is a good enough reason for his mom to be pissed."
"So basically like my dad's reaction times a million?"
"More like a billion."
Jen got up off the bed and headed toward her dresser, pulling a towel out of the top drawer. "What's it like being with an alien anyway? Like really being with one?"
"Do you mean sex, Jen?" I raised an eyebrow as she threw the towel over her shoulder.
"No!" She walked back toward my bed. "But if you want to give me those details, you can." She wiggled her eyebrows.
"We definitely haven't done that, but just feeling the warmth from his hands on mine is enough for me." My eyes glazed as I imagined his hands intertwined with mine, and tried to picture what they looked like in my head.
She rolled her eyes. "You sound like my grandma getting excited about hand holding."
"Hey," I called as she headed for the bathroom. "Don't knock it until you've tried it."
She shook her head. "You are something else, Alex."
She closed the door behind her while I sat staring at the blank wall. Maybe I really was something else. Someone like Helen of Troy who whole cities fought over, or just another teenage girl that got stuck in a feud between families. Now how would I get to my Romeo when I needed him?
Chapter 17
After making up with Jen and spending the night gossiping about different humans and aliens around the center, we finally fell asleep. That was until a scratching sound at the window pried my eyes open and knocked me out of my sleep.
I sat up, pulling the covers close around my body as I looked around the room. It wasn't a nightmare, or else I would have felt the darkness and seen the woman, but I saw neither. I looked over at the window to see a shadowed figure standing outside, its fingers tracing along the glass.
I wanted to scream, but at the same time, I was more confused than frightened. I wondered if this was someone from my nightmares coming to kill me or just an alien out for a midnight flight. A small popping sound came from the screen and I realized that the shadowed figure had broken the glass out of the window. I reached at the side of the bed for my pepper spray gun that my dad had given me as a sixteenth birthday gift. I didn't know what pepper spray would do against an angry alien, but it was all that I had.
I crept toward the window, looking around to see if Jen and Riley were still asleep. Figures, they were both off in dreamland unaware that we could all be attacked and killed. A long white hand slipped around to the lock on the barred window, melting it until the bars swung open, and the shadowy figure perched on the windowsill facing me.
"Freeze dirtbag!" I yelled, holding up the pepper spray gun to the figure's face. I was hoping that the look of the gun would scare whoever it was and they wouldn't just laugh at my cheesy cop show line.
Jen immediately stirred, sitting straight up in bed and looking around until she gasped when she saw the figure. Riley, of course, slept with her headphones on and the sleep mask, so she was oblivious. I guess if one of us had to die I wouldn't have chosen me or Jen.
"Alex, it's me," the figure whispered as he raised his arms above his head while still crouched in place on the windowsill.
"Ace?" I raised an eyebrow. leaning forward, and dropping the gun in the process.
He moved his head so that the moonlight danced on his face. It was definitely Ace.
"What are you doing here?" I whispered.
"Are you coming to kill us?" Jen whispered in a panic as she came rushing to my side.
I glanced over in Jen's direction, shaking my head before I turned back to Ace. I was sure if he was there to kill us he could have already done so. He shook his head and hopped down from the window. His feet didn't even make a sound as they landed on the floor below.
"I just couldn't go another day without see
ing you." His eyes met mine and all those feelings of nightmares and sadness were wiped away in their own pool of shadows. He stepped closer, taking my hands into his gloveless ones, letting the heat from them send an electrical current through my body.
"You know, this is really illegal. We could get in so much trouble for this." Jen's eyes darted around the room while she tried to control the pitch of her voice.
"Well ,then we just won't let anyone find out." Ace grinned and crouched down at my feet.
"Ace, what do you think you're doing?" I looked down, only to see the top of his spiky black hair as he wrapped his fingers around my ankle cuff. "That might have some sort of a sensor."
He let his hands sit on the cuff until I felt the heat radiating onto my ankle. The cuff opened and fell off me, like it was nothing more than some plastic toy.
"It does have a sensor." He slowly inched up, rising to his full height as he held the cuff in front of me. "And that's why I had to take it off you, so that we could leave."
I didn't ask any questions, just smiled back at him, and took his hand as he threw the ankle cuff onto my bed.
"Where are you going? Are you going to come back?" Jen piped in as Ace led me to the window. He was already half in, half out when I realized what was going on. We were actually leaving.
He sighed. "I don't want to, but I'll bring her back. I promise that she'll be in good hands." He smiled in Jen's direction and hopped out of the window, standing there with his elbows resting on the edge and holding out his hands for me.
"Alex." Jen grabbed my hand. "Just be careful, okay?"
I offered her a small smile. "I will, Jen, I promise. I trust him with anything."
Jen wiped her eyes and smiled back. "I know you do, and so do I. That's the only reason I haven't called security or set off your ankle cuff. Just promise you'll be back before breakfast?"
I smiled, looking from Jen and back to Ace, not taking my eyes off his as I answered Jen, "I promise."
I approached the window, looking past Ace and hoping that I wasn't going to have to jump all the way down to the desert floor. But when I looked down I saw what looked like a floating red Vespa.
"What's that?" I whispered, pointing at the Vespa as he secured his feet on the bottom.
He smiled and reached to help me out of the window and onto the vehicle. "It's a hover bike."
“Do they seriously make these?" I looked below my feet to see nothing but rocky earth. "And more importantly, if you can't leave Circe, how did you get one?"
Ace ignored my question, smiling as he bent over the bike, placing his hands on either side of my face, instantly making my whole body tingle. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” I whispered into his lips. He leaned in to brush them against mine.
He pulled away, looking into my eyes while cupping my face in his palm. “Ready to see this place from the outside?”
I nodded as he turned around, situating himself in front of me. He placed his hands on the steering levers of the bike. He turned his head in my direction and glanced over his shoulder. “Are you holding on?”
I pulled my arms tightly around his waist and pressed my legs against his. The coldness from his body didn’t radiate the same shivers from my nightmares, but more of a tranquil touch, like the feel of the first snowflakes of winter as they fall to the ground.
“You better hold on tight; it’s going to be a little bumpy.”
I gripped tighter, leaning my face into his back and inhaling his wintery scent. I'd missed him so much that past week. That scent of desert sage lapped onto my cheek as the warm night air swirled around me. He revved up the bike’s engine and it came to life.
I looked back as we sailed above the valleys and made our way from my room. I saw the faintest hint of blond hair looking out of my bedroom window, but saw it disappear as we darted behind a mountain. Jen was watching me and probably had her reasons to be worried. I was out in the open, exposed with my arms around Ace. But I wasn’t scared or even worried. All I cared about was that I got to be with him, no matter how brief that moment was.
Chapter 18
One minute I remembered laughing, sitting on the back of the bike with my arms around Ace as we zipped through the valleys and mountains that encompassed Circe. Then, I remembered falling. I didn't know how I started to fall or why, but I remembered the look on Ace’s face as he watched my body suspend in midair. I could see his eyes widen and his mouth launch a voice that sounded like a dying animal. I remembered the silvery laughter and how it engulfed me before everything went blacker than my nightmares.
I saw her standing over me. She cocked her head and stared down at me. This time it wasn’t a nightmare. It felt too real to be a nightmare and I didn't have a cold chill.
“What do you want?" I asked.
She didn’t answer, just stared at me, a tight-lipped smile crossing over her white face.
“What do you want from me?" I screamed.
“You’ll see,” she whispered in a voice that was the same silvery tone as her laugher.
Her body wavered like a mirage. My face was overcome by a wave of heat that slowly brought me out of the darkness and into the light.
“Alex, can you hear me?" His voice sounded so far away and a faint clicking fell around me. “Alex?”
I blinked; I was alive after all. Ace’s voice sounded closer and closer as the clicking sound got louder and louder. I opened my eyes to see that Ace was hovering over me and that clicking sound was actually coming from his own mouth. He ran his hands over my body, letting the heat explode onto my skin while he continued on with clicking his tongue.
I moaned, trying to lift my head, but Ace caught it in his hands, and helped me to slowly prop myself up. I looked out to see that we were sitting on a small cliff overlooking a range of mountains. The sun was just starting to peak over the mountaintops, leaving the brown dust of the desert gleaming in a low orange light. “How long was I out?”
“Long enough to scare the crap out of me." He smiled and pulled me closer, leaning my back against his stomach as he rested his chin on the top of my head.
“I’m sorry," I whispered.
He kissed the top of my head. “It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have been so crazy around those turns. Something really bad could have happened to you and it would have been my fault.”
I looked up at him, drinking in the lines of his face. “Why did you bother saving me?”
He arched an eyebrow and looked down at me. “Why wouldn’t I save you?”
I sat up, facing him. “I know about the whole humans-and-aliens-don't-mix thing." I focused in on him. “Why save me and continue to save me when you knew that it could cause all of this mess?" I waved my arm in small circles above my head.
He sighed. “Because the whole idea of aliens versus humans is stupid.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do tell?”
He pulled me closer. He traced the lines of my jaw with his fingertips making an electrical current flow through my face. “Because I’ve been on this planet for decades. I've watched as humans dated each other and aliens found their soul mates. But I found no one. I didn't have anything in common with my own species or human girls."
He ran his hands through my hair and stared out over the desert. “I was so afraid that just by talking to a human girl I would cause some sort of war. I couldn’t bear it. Sometimes I would even get blamed for human deaths just because I was around at the time and I was alien. That is how I got my label as dangerous, because I'm a warrior and because I never bothered to save anyone. But that all changed when I saw Magpie attack you.”
The sound of her name sent a nightmarish shiver up my spine. It vanished as soon as I felt Ace's touch lingering on my chin, pulling my face up toward his.
“Death wasn’t surrounding you. It wasn’t your time to go and I wasn’t going to let her take the life from you. So I stopped her." His lips grazed mine briefly before he continued. “That’s when I knew
that the whole not-dating-humans thing was stupid. There wasn’t some dark figure looming around us at all times and Earth seemed to stay in order, so I let myself fall for you.”
I shuddered as I thought of the darkness that surrounded my nightmares and started to wonder if maybe he was wrong, and the nightmares were only the beginning of it. He held me close, probably figuring that my shuddering was only because of the coldness of his body against mine. His hands trailed to my back, letting the warmth fill my body before he kissed me and let his lips linger down to my neck.
“I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you,” he whispered. I closed my eyes and silently prayed he was right and the darkness wouldn't come.
Ace drove back to Circe like he was actually his real age instead of the eighteen-year-old body he’d been encased in forever. He took the turns slowly, and I didn’t think the speedometer moved above twenty the entire time.
“You know, you can go a little faster,” I yelled.
“I’m not going to let you get hurt again,” he yelled back.
I rolled my eyes and pulled myself closer to him, watching the sunrise over the mountaintops. Dawn was approaching and even though I could have stayed on the cliff forever enveloped in Ace’s arms, we both knew that we had to get back.
I didn’t know when I would see him again. He said that his plan was to talk to the governing board and try to persuade them to let us see each other because we planned on keeping in contact when I was outside of Circe anyway. He was also hoping that he would be granted clearance to leave the grounds of Circe. I wondered how hard he would have to beg for that one and if it would even work.
He slowed down to an idle as we approached my bedroom window. None of the lights were on around the mountain-like building, so it seemed like everyone was still asleep. He pulled in so that we were right underneath the window, getting the bike as close as he could without hitting the building. He turned toward me, putting both hands on my sides.
I looked down at his hands, arching a brow. “What are you doing?”
