“So unsanitary,” I heard from the Robot. Dad looked over at Judith. She nodded solemnly, agreeing to the oath.
He took a deep breath. “Sweetheart, your mother isn’t from the Middle East.” My mother? “Neither are Sensei or the Robot. Obot. I mean Professor Obot.” He blew out a breath and tried again, ignoring the Robot’s affronted squawk. “What I’m trying to say is… your mother is from another planet. A planet named Macawi.”
Chapter 4: Spinning
I was silent for a moment, before what he’d said sunk in. “What?!” I screeched again, not caring if the nurse heard.
“Shh, shh. Calm down. It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay,” he soothed.
“My mother is an alien and you’re telling me to calm down?!”
“No, no. She’s human. You’re human. I know it’s hard to believe, humans on another planet, but it’s true.” He rushed on, “And after living there so long, they’ve developed certain… special abilities different from humans on Earth.” He lifted a strand of my hair. “See?” I shook my head.
“I’m not explaining this very well.” He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead.
Sensei stepped in. “Your hair is the reason you don’t need as much oxygen as other Earthans.”
“The green is chlorophyll. I know the Professor taught you about chlorophyll, right?” Dad asked.
“Of course I did,” the Robot sniffed. “Whether she retained anything in that thick head of hers is another matter."
Dad ignored him. “Your hair absorbs sunlight, converting carbon dioxide to oxygen. That’s what allowed you to survive where no one else would. See? Special,” Dad repeated.
“So,” I spoke slowly, “when I’m thirteen, I’ll be going to this other planet?” He nodded. I looked from him to Sensei. I had so many questions.
The door banged open and Andi burst in. “The cafeteria here is amazing! Look Sunny, I got you your favorite…” she trailed off, waving a bag of dark chocolate M&Ms. She took in the strange scene in the room. “Hey, what’d I miss?”
***
Would I always be half alien? Would I ever actually belong anywhere? They knew about Earth and even visited here often, which I suppose was how I’d been born here in the first place. To them, I would be the Earth girl.
But here, if people here knew, they would only care about the alien part. Freak out about the alien part. Send me to some secret lab to dissect the alien part. I made myself stop there.
Andi’s reaction had been telling enough and I’d known her all my life. It took a while for her to get used to the idea. For both of us, actually. Dad freaked when he found out she knew, but Andi wasn’t dumb, and it was nearly impossible to keep secrets from her, especially something this big.
The humongous woman who’d just stepped out of the hippie bus gave me a calmly assessing look but didn’t say anything. She stepped out of the way for a couple other people to pile out. A second woman stopped in the doorway of the van. She was not as big as the first but was still tall and buff, scowling and reminding me of an unhappy Xena, Warrior Princess, wearing desert camo and a knit Rasta hat.
Unhappy Xena looked me up and down, sneering with disdain. “This her?” she asked the first woman in Faarian, finally stepping out of the van. “Scrawny little thing, isn’t she?” she observed. Scrawny? Who was she calling scrawny? I was a gymnast. I was nothing but muscle! But something told me not to mess with Unhappy Xena.
“Myrihn, be nice,” the bigger one growled. “She can obviously understand you.”
“Well she should, Teague, after all that money her mother spent on tutors all these years,” Myrihn replied.
The last person to exit the van was a diminutive young man, rounding out the strange bunch. He was completely unlike the two women, with a pretty face, designer jeans, and a stylish fedora. How did these people come from the same place?
They left the side door to the van open and immediately went to the trap doors Dad opened on each side of the barn floor, revealing stairs into some sort of bunker. The two women, young man, Dad, and Sensei all disappeared down the stairs and started to bring up box after box to load into the van. I started to help, feeling awkward standing there, and was shocked at how many crates and boxes of all sizes were in the concrete bunker that ran the whole length of the barn underground. I’d known Dad had been collecting supplies for a while, but this was ridiculous. How were these all supposed to fit in a VW bus?
I walked over to stand by the edge of the van door, curiosity pulling me to peek inside. I sucked in a breath and didn’t even look around when enormo-woman, Teague, walked past me chuckling.
Inside the bus was a huge circular room, with a downstairs like a 70’s sunken living room – minus the shag carpeting. Cargo nets hung from the walls, ready to secure the boxes. A floor-to-ceiling cylinder in the center looked like it had a control room inside.
I jerked my head back to look at the outside. Yep, still a VW bus. What the heck? I stuck my head back around the door and noticed no-nonsense looking plastic jump seats with five-point harnesses attached to the wall all the way around. I really didn’t want to think about strapping myself into one of those seats.
“Sunny, get out of the way honey,” Dad’s voice intruded on my astonishment and I jerked back. The look on my face had the crewmembers laughing. I flushed and went to stand by the wall again while they loaded some crates as large as the van’s sliding door.
Eventually, the impossibility of the scene wore off and I went upstairs to search for my missing iPhone. I checked that the Leatherman I nearly always carried (except at practice and tournaments) was in my pocket. It had been a present from Dad and came in handy. I finished throwing a few things into my bags and sealed everything in the Ziploc bags that Judith had left at the end of my bed.
The Robot had been specific: traveling to Macawi was a very wet business. If I wanted my belongings to survive the trip I had to seal everything in plastic and push out all of the air.
Sensei had warned me to only take what I needed, and nothing frilly or girly, but how did I know what I would need? And I was a girl, wasn't I? Some of my things were bound to be girly! Like my Ziploc-packed bras. Of course I needed those, and of course they were feminine, by definition. The majority were the sports-bra kind that I wore every day, but for some reason, I really wanted to take the satin padded one that I’d worn once with a dress when Andi had snuck me out to a dance. For the first time in my life I’d felt almost… curvy. It had been delicious.
Judith came in then, breaking into my thoughts, with red eyes and a book in her hands. Andi stood awkwardly in the doorway as Judith wrapped me in her arms and kissed my hair.
“We’ll miss you so much, honey. Every day.” She took me by my shoulders and looked me in the eye. “You’d better write all the time, everything that happens. Promise me.” I nodded.
“This is for you, in case you get homesick. You can always see us, whenever you want.” She handed me a photo album. I opened it to the first page and saw a picture of all of us together and happy, taken at a picnic last summer. My family. I about lost it right then.
I closed the book before I started to cry, so that I could smile as I said, “Thank you, Judith. I love it.” I hugged it to my chest, the best gift anyone could have given me.
Andi came in, biting her lip, with one arm behind her back. She pulled out a stuffed orange cat. “I know the real Meowman can’t go with you, so you can take this one instead.” She looked over at the orange tabby sprawled out and purring on the bed. “I’ll take care of him while you’re gone, I promise. He’ll be right here when you get back.”
I threw my arms around her as my tears started to overflow, the force causing her to stumble before she caught herself and hugged me back, laughing a little, and then crying too. Then Judith was hugging the both of us, and we were one big laughing, bawling mess together. Judith gave us each a kiss on the forehead and we let go, all of us sniffling and smiling watery smiles.
“Wash your faces and come down for breakfast you two. We don’t want to keep our guests waiting.” Andi and I groaned in unison.
***
Hours later, after devouring three meals like they hadn’t seen food in a year, taking a hike, and going on a sightseeing tour with Sensei, our visitors finished loading the Volkswagen spaceship. When I came out after sunset with my bags in hand, I was surprised to see Dad’s helicopter that he used for work sitting on the helipad, and wondered if he was going somewhere after I left. I checked the barn and found the VW bus missing, but her crew was milling around the helipad with mugs of coffee.
I stared at the helicopter for a moment, shining in the outdoor floodlights. It took me a full minute to figure out they’d changed disguises. I went over to look through the open door. Yep, what looked like Dad’s helicopter on the outside, held the cavernous circular space filled with crates on the inside. How was that even possible? I looked curiously at the pretty-boy pilot standing nearby. He was young to be a pilot; in his early twenties I’d say, and watching me with amusement.
“How do you do that?” I asked in Faarian, gesturing to the pseudo-copter.
He grinned. “It’s a projection, sort of like your TV screens, but thinner, like a hard skin. We tell it what image to project and there it is: instant camouflage,” he answered me in English, his accent almost as interesting as the explanation; part rasping, part whistling between his teeth. “It also projects the surrounding landscape on the rest of the skin, making the bulk of it invisible. That’s actually new for this old bird. It used to be that we could only disguise these babies as large buildings, or cruise ships, or military cargo planes.” He patted the side affectionately.
“Well,” I said, trying to keep up, “why don’t you just project the landscape and have the whole thing be invisible?”
He laughed. “It works better if you can see some kind of local vehicle when it’s on the ground. It would look kind of strange for people to be climbing in and out of nothing, don’t you think?” I had to admit he had a point. “Plus, anyone watching would be used to this helicopter taking off here, so it’s better than the van disguise we used before.”
“Um, yeah, since nobody drives those things anymore," I replied. "Anyway, who would be watching?”
He only pointed up to the sky and waggled his eyebrows.
“So, why did you use the Volkswagen bus in the first place? Why didn’t you just arrive looking like the helicopter and set down right here?”
“When we arrive on the planet, we do most of our traveling invisibly,” he explained. “We try not to switch disguises mid-air like that since your country’s detection systems keep getting better. So, we landed in the trees for cover and then assumed the van disguise to complete the trip on the ground.”
I nodded. I guess that made sense.
Soon the crew boarded, and my family gathered round to say goodbye. I’d never thought of myself as a crier, but today was proving me wrong.
“Here, munchkin. Don’t want to forget this.” Dad handed me something enclosed in several Ziploc bags. My missing iPhone! He winked at me. He'd modified it with a small solar panel attachment, sort of like on a calculator. “Had to make sure it would work there, now didn’t I?”
I gave him another hug and said quietly, “Thanks, Dad. You’re the best.”
He cleared his throat and was blinking rapidly when he pulled back. “Hey remember our saying.” He gave me an encouraging chuck under the chin. “Life’s an adventure.”
“Yeah, yeah, make the most of it.” I said, repeating his trademark phrase.
“That’s a girl,” he replied with another, longer hug. "I'm going to miss you."
"I'll miss you too, Dad," I sniffed, looking up at his familiar face. It was hard to believe I wouldn't see him again till I could visit next year. I had to find a way to stay on Earth then. One year already seemed way too long.
I hugged them all one last time and stepped inside the ship. I looked around, amazed at how full the cavernous space had become. Shrink-wrapped boxes and crates of every shape and size were packed tightly together into every possible space, including being strapped onto many of the seats that formed rows around the circumference of the ship, strongly reminding me of the centrifuge ride at the county fair.
There were only a couple of seats left unoccupied by box, bag, or crewmember and I saw my bags strapped in next to one of the empty seats. I walked slowly over to sit and strap myself in with the five-point harness, as the engines started to hum. I waved one last time to my family through the window behind me before the glass frosted over. The windows were barely opaque when the ship started to spin.
The center navigation column with the cockpit inside was rotating faster and faster, in the opposite direction from us and the ship’s hull. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths, trying not to puke. When I peeked again, the entire outside wall had turned white, thankfully cutting off the spinning view, but the central navigation column was a complete blur. I tried not to look at it.
I focused on the seat to my left, which at least seemed to be standing still. All my possessions, everything I had to my name for my new alien life, were packed and stacked next to me on one small seat.
The realization that it was my own life spinning out of control hit me with full body impact. I felt like I'd missed a release move on bars and was crashing to the floor.
My eyes burned and my jaw clenched with sudden rage at my mother and the unfairness of it all. Who did she think she was anyway? I wanted to scream, to throw and kick and break things, but I was stuck in this seat with the world spinning sickeningly around me. I brought my feet up and hid my face in my knees, seething and churning as the ship spun faster and faster and lifted off the ground.
The Robot was next to me, talking as usual. I looked at him briefly, heard him saying something about water and not holding my breath, and tuned him out. What did it matter, anyway? After a while he stopped talking, having either said what he wanted or given up.
My father’s words came back to me, ringing in my ears as if he was there. Life’s an adventure, Sunny.
I mentally rolled my eyes, but for the first time I thought I understood what he was trying to tell me. This was my life, the start of my adventure.
“Make the most of it,” I said to myself and raised my head.
The walls around me now projected the view outside so we could see what we passed in a sort of I-Max panorama, without the spinning. Funny, I didn’t get pressed into my seat or thrown forward from the speed changes. I just had to avoid looking at the spinning central navigation column to keep my stomach from splattering everything around me.
Our first stop was as surprising as everything else had been, and was only a short hop away. I recognized the house as we set down on the helipad behind it – Russ’s house.
I remembered the other two empty seats on the other side of the ship when I boarded. Oh God no, Russ couldn’t be coming with us, could he? Please, please let us just be picking up more cargo from his parents.
As soon as we landed, a dozen people streamed out the back door of the house, not seeming to notice the dark as they crossed the expansive lawn toward us. I put my hood up and scooched as far down in my seat as possible to avoid being seen by Russ, who was chattering away at the front of the group. Now that we’d stopped, I wasn’t sure if the scene outside was still being projected on the walls or if it was the real thing. I felt like I was on display in a fishbowl.
John and a man I didn’t recognize (his dad?) both carried a couple of duffel bags. I breathed a sigh of relief to see that Russ was empty-handed.
They hugged the travelers goodbye as they prepared to board the ship. I tried not to stare at John as I was struck again by how cute he was, even while wearing that Rocky the Flying Squirrel hat again.
He looked up from hugging a couple of Russ’s little sisters and caught my eye with a little smirk. I jerked my head away, mortified at being caught stari
ng. Okay, they could definitely see in.
Father and son climbed the stairs to board the ship and tossed their bags high atop the pile of crates, John easily climbing the stack to strap them on. I didn’t even realize I was watching again until he spotted me and winked from the top of the pile – right before the whole thing started sliding under his feet and he had to scramble to hang on.
“John,” his father admonished and I didn’t bother trying to hide my laughter.
The Amazon woman, Myrihn, shook her head and mumbled something about not even needing to bring back supplies.
“Probably just a pleasure trip to meet women,” she grumbled. John’s father must have overheard because he pinned her with a look across the ship and nodded with cold politeness before disappearing around the navigation column to take one of the two empty seats. Myrihn ignored Teague’s elbow to the side and resumed perusing her Cat Fanciers magazine with her apparently habitual sour expression firmly in place.
John didn’t look my way again as he too disappeared out of view with red cheeks. If I leaned to the side over my bags on the seat next to me, I could see his brown leather-clad arm after he took his seat.
I kept expecting to rocket up through the stratosphere but my mother had apparently booked us on an eco-tour. Either that or it was some kind of bribe for the women sent to fetch me. They seemed fascinated as we hopped at warp speed from the Rockies to the redwood forests of California, over a pod of whales in the Pacific, then all the way across the U.S. to Niagara Falls and the Everglades. I hoped we were invisible since a helicopter couldn’t move this fast.
"Next stop, the Bermuda Triangle," the pilot finally announced. Ugh, when would the eco-tour end?
When we stopped again, I looked down past my feet and saw we were hovering over the ocean, the ship’s large spotlight illuminating water so gorgeous and clear I felt like I could see all the way to the sandy bottom. The Amazons oohed over a few schools of brightly colored fish, a couple of small tiger sharks and a manta ray, but compared to the orca pod earlier, the wildlife here wasn’t real impressive. Was that it?
The Faarian Chronicles: Exile Page 4
