Cheerleaders From Planet X

by Lyssa Chiavari

  “Oh,” I stammered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize—that is, you don’t look alike, and you always call her by her first name, or Coach—”

  “I’m adopted,” Shailene said. “It was kind of recent. I mean…” She sighed, sitting up and shifting in her chair, not looking at me even though she spoke to me. “I lived with my birth parents until right before I started high school. But things weren’t… good. They hadn’t been for a while. Not since they found out about me liking girls.”

  Her voice was strained, and she rubbed the back of her neck compulsively. It looked like just a nervous gesture, but now that I’d seen her tattoo, I knew it was likely more than that.

  “Shailene,” I said, “you don’t have to—”

  She shook her head, still not looking at me. “No. It’s okay. I need to tell someone. And… I trust you, I guess.” I thought I saw the faintest tinge of pink on her cheeks, but then she tossed her hair and her features disappeared behind the curtain of dark curls. “Anyway, things weren’t good with my birth parents. But they got a lot worse after I was abducted. When I disappeared, they thought I’d run away. Janice was the one who brought me back after the I.G.A. rescued me. She tried to explain what had happened, explain that I was going to need supervision because of the powers I might have now. They didn’t believe her. They thought it was drugs, or gangs, or even demons from Hell—they’d believe anything but the truth. And whatever they believed, they believed most of all that it was my own fault. For being the way I am.”

  Hot tears stung at my eyes. I blinked them away. I wanted to say something, anything, but the words got stuck in my throat. My parents had never been anything but supportive of me. No one in my family had ever been anything but accepting of me—not even Lola, as much as she teased. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for Shailene.

  ”I don’t remember much about it,” she went on. “The whole time around my abduction is fuzzy. I… I talked to a therapist about it in high school. Someone with the I.G.A. who worked with rescues. She said it’s normal to block out pieces of traumatic events.” She shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. I just remember that right before the abduction, I’d been in trouble for kissing a girl. I don’t even remember anything about her, really. I don’t remember it happening so much as I remember my parents talking about it happening—yelling at me about it. But when Janice brought me back after the abduction, my parents said it was a sign. That I was ‘touched by the Devil’. They tried to hurt me,” she said, the numbness in her voice making me wince. “But Janice intervened. She let me stay with her. In my darkest time, she was there for me. She kept me safe. We changed my name; I couldn’t take Janice’s last name because my parents knew that, so I took Peterson, which is Janice’s mom’s maiden name. And Shailene…” Her eyes clouded, and she looked down, seeming far away for a minute. “Shailene is a name I chose for myself.”

  “Shailene is a pretty name,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “It suits you.” As the sentence left my mouth, I felt a strange sensation—like I’d said those words before. But when I tried to think about it, there was the headache again.

  Damn this. Damn whatever it was.

  I stretched my hand out, stopping myself an inch away from her bare arms. I didn’t want to touch her for fear of bringing that stabbing pain back, but I wanted to be close to her. I wanted her to not feel alone.

  She turned her head, looking at my fingers trailing a hair’s breadth from her pale skin and smiling. I smiled back.

  “I feel like chips and salsa,” she said, her voice thick and husky from the tears. “What about you?”

  “I think I’ll get a bowl of pho.” I gestured to one of the carts across from us on the ground floor.

  She nodded and stood, brushing her hair back with one hand. Just like that a mask seemed to fall over her, that smooth veneer of unflappability. But I’d seen what lay beneath it now. It made me feel protective of her.

  As Shailene made for the stairs, I pretended to fidget in my pockets for my wallet. But as soon as she was out of sight, I reached under the table and pulled out Janice’s backpack.

  The manila folder was crumpled from the way the backpack had been tossed around, but I smoothed it, looking again at the name on the tab. Philip Gregg. I hesitated for a long moment, afraid of what I might find inside. I couldn’t quite bring myself to open it. But if I just sat here staring at it, Shailene would come back and I’d have to explain myself. So I took a deep breath and opened the folder.

  It was some kind of transcript. It looked like it had been typed on an old-school typewriter, and the paper was yellowed at the edges. The official I.G.A. emblem (the real one that said Galactic on it) was on the letterhead, and it was dated a little over twenty years ago. I flipped through the pages, my eyes crossing. I didn’t understand what any of this meant, and I needed to figure it out before Shailene came back. It appeared to be an interview between an internal affairs investigator and this Philip Gregg guy about an incident that had occurred in June the year before the interview. From what I could glean, Philip Gregg and his partner had been on a mission to intercept a “subject of interest.” Whatever that meant. The way they were talking, I couldn’t tell if they meant an Anesidoran or an abductee.

  Maybe both, I thought with a shudder. Was it someone that the I.G.A. hadn’t been able to rescue? Shailene had said that they weren’t able to save everyone. What happened to the people that the Anesidorans managed to keep? I hadn’t thought about it that much until now, but she kept saying they were trying to build an army—one that could infiltrate Earth. What if abductees were all around us, just waiting for the right moment to kill us all in our sleep? My skin crawled at the thought.

  Whatever had happened twenty years ago, it hadn’t gone well for Philip Gregg and his partner. The “subject of interest” caught onto them and attacked. Philip was injured—but his partner had died.

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I read the words over and over. Was this my dad? Is that why he’d gotten a dispensation from the I.G.A.? How could he have kept this secret for all these years?

  In my pocket, my phone buzzed, the digital chimes of my text tone practically giving me a heart attack. I fought to catch my breath; then, glancing around to make sure Shailene was still out of sight, I shoved the folder back in Janice’s backpack and the backpack under the table again. Then I pulled my phone out.

  It’s ok if you’re busy. Just let me know, ok?

  Shit. Ana. She’d wanted to know if I’d go to dinner with her and Damien tonight. I hadn’t answered earlier. Guilt washed over me. I didn’t want her to think I was snubbing her because of her boyfriend. But I also didn’t really want to have dinner with Damien, either. Especially when Shailene was so upset about Janice. And I also didn’t like the thought of leaving Shailene alone, not when the Anesidorans were apparently gunning for all the Bayview cheerleaders.

  My thumb hovered over the reply screen. I didn’t know how to respond. Maybe I could talk her into coming with us. Not like that would be super awkward or anything. My big, her boyfriend, and the gorgeous superhuman brunette that I may or may not have been developing an enormous crush on. It would be like the world’s most uncomfortable double not-date.

  “Didn’t you get any food?”

  I jumped twenty-seven feet in the air at the sound of Shailene’s voice. She stood over me holding a plastic tray with a steaming hot enchilada and a guacamole tostada on it. Hurriedly, I shoved my phone back in my pocket. “No, not yet. I got distracted checking my messages,” I said. “Here, you hold the table for us. I’ll go get my soup now.”

  Five minutes later, I was back at the table with a heaping bowl of pho and a side order of spring rolls. I watched Shailene as she dunked a tortilla chip in the Styrofoam container of salsa she’d gotten from Sol Azteca and popped it into her mouth with a crunch, seemingly lost in thought.

  “The question is,” she said after swallowing, “if we find another ghost train,
how do we get aboard without the Anesidorans stopping us again?”

  I shoveled in a mouthful of noodles. Apparently, she wasn’t planning on stopping for the day. Dinner with Ana and Damien was out, then. “Maybe we can sneak on board,” I said. “The cloaking device is out, though. I lost one of the tripods when we fell.”

  She shrugged. “It’s just as well. That’s not always effective, and it wouldn’t work when we’re moving, so we’d still have to find a way to get on board without them spotting us. They’re going to be on the alert after what happened earlier.”

  I sighed, resting my cheek on my hand. “If only there was a way we could hide in plain sight…” I started, then trailed off. My hand. I sat upright again, looking at the lines on my palm. I’d almost forgotten about what had happened when the sentry’d had a hold of me, how my skin had rippled and changed. “Shailene, is one of the abilities we have… shape-shifting?”

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  I hesitated, not sure if I should say anything to her about it. But she’d been so candid with me to this point. I couldn’t keep hiding things from her. “Well,” I said slowly, “something weird happened to me earlier.” I told her about what had happened on the train.

  Shailene stared at me, one of her perfect eyebrows arched. “That’s… different,” she said. I flushed, and she added hurriedly, “No, but it’s good. Your powers are different from the ones I’ve seen, Laura, but that doesn’t mean it’s anything unusual. Janice might have known more. Regardless”—she chewed the corner of her lip thoughtfully—“that would work in our favor. Do you think you can maintain it if you’re not touching the person… or thing, in the sentries’ case… whose form you’re taking?”

  “I don’t know. I kind of freaked out when it happened,” I admitted. “I’d have to try it again.”

  She nodded, looking around the food court with a new spark of light in her eyes. I smiled involuntarily. For the first time since this morning, she seemed to be back to her old self. “Well, not here. There’re too many people around. Come on. There’s a single-stall bathroom behind the hair salon on the second floor. We can do it in there.”

  My face flushed and I looked down, trying to suppress the feelings that sentence stirred up inside me. We aren’t going to the bathroom to make out, I reminded myself, my cheeks hot. We had work to do.

  Still, I couldn’t help the butterflies that swirled around my stomach as I grabbed Janice’s backpack from under the table and hurried toward the stairs after Shailene.

  It wasn’t until we got into the bathroom that I realized the major flaw in our plan.

  “Um, how are we supposed to do this, exactly?” I asked. “Since, you know, we can’t…”

  “Oh,” Shailene said, her face as red as mine felt. “Good point. Well…” She looked around the small space desperately, as if the tile walls would give her some kind of idea. Once again, I thought glumly about what a travesty of justice this was. Her skin looked so soft and perfect. And I couldn’t touch it without my head exploding.

  “What about hair?” Shailene asked suddenly.

  I blinked in confusion, jolted out of my thoughts about her skin. “What?”

  She pulled her hair up as if she were putting it into a ponytail and held out a hank of it to me. “Maybe it won’t hurt us if you try my hair. Providing this even works to begin with.”

  “Okay.” I hesitated before slowly reaching out a hand. I wasn’t sure which I was more worried about: the possibility that nothing would happen… or the possibility that something would.

  I tentatively grasped the soft ends of her hair. When no pain stabbed between my eyes, I relaxed marginally. But my skin didn’t change, either. What had I done earlier when my arm transformed? I’d been desperately trying to tap into my powers, find some way of getting away. I just need to focus, I told myself. Concentrate on replicating the scenario from this morning. I squeezed my eyes closed, willing something to happen.

  My fingers tingled, warmth spreading up my arm. It burned—not painfully, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant either. Then my muscles started to ripple, like I was rolling my joints involuntarily. Shailene gasped, and I opened my eyes just in time to see my face in the mirror change into someone else’s.

  Two Shailenes looked back at me in my reflection.

  My breath came out sharply, and almost immediately my face started to morph back into itself. “No, no!” I cried, squeezing my eyes shut and focusing again. I felt my face shift again and then still. When I felt convinced that I was firmly in this form, I opened my eyes again.

  “I can do it,” I said, startled when the voice that came out was not my own. I even sounded like Shailene now. “I just have to make sure I don’t get distracted. If I concentrate, I can hold it.”

  Shailene looked at me with a mixture of admiration and a tinge of fear in her eyes. “That’s amazing,” she said.

  “Funny, I was going to say it was freaking weird,” I replied.

  “Well, yeah, that too.”

  I turned and looked at my reflection in the mirror from the side. Shailene was so much thinner than me, and a couple of inches taller. The difference in the way my body felt was disorienting. “Okay,” I said. “We know I can do this now. So I think that’s enough.” I thought of my own body, and my flesh began to tingle once more, reforming back into my regular self. It was a relief to see my own face in the mirror again. Shailene may be hot, but I was happy being myself, thanks.

  “So how do we use this to get to Janice?” Shailene asked.

  “Yeah, about that.” I gave myself one last look in the mirror, then turned to her, catching her dark eyes with my own. “I have an idea. It’s risky, but I think we can pull it off.”

  She kept her gaze locked steadily on mine. “Whatever it is, I’m in.”

  I arched a brow. “Trust me that much?”

  She smiled almost mischievously at me, and warmth spread through me, radiating out from my stomach.

  “I do,” she said.

  * * *

  “Excuse me? Hi.”

  The man looked up from his newspaper and quirked an eyebrow at me. He seemed so human sitting there on one of the station benches, reading a paper and waiting for his train. The part of me that had been just Ordinary Laura Clark three days ago was screaming at me that I was completely insane for thinking this guy was anything but a regular human.

  But the New Laura Clark knew he wasn’t. I focused on the squirming feeling in the pit of my stomach—my perception reminding me that something was different about this guy—and squared my shoulders.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said, flashing him my most disarming smile.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You heard me.” I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt. “I think you know who I am. And I definitely know who you are.”

  He looked from side to side, and for a panicked instant, I thought, This is it. I was wrong. This isn’t an Anesidoran. It’s an ordinary human, and he’s going to call a PeRT cop over, and I’m going to get arrested.

  Then he folded his newspaper closed and narrowed his eyes at me. “All right, Ms. Clark. What do you need to tell me?”

  Holy shit. He really did know who I was. What was up with that?

  Trying not to stammer, I said, “I, uh, I have some information about the last Striker. The one you guys are looking for.”

  He quirked his eyebrow again, and a slow smile spread across his lips. There was the slightest glimmer, and for an instant I could almost see the quiver of a mandible behind the façade, wiping away all of my remaining doubt. I tried not to gag.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “Good,” I replied. “But we can’t talk here. Someone might overhear. The I.G.A. is watching me.” I took a few steps and beckoned to him. “Come on.”

  The sentry followed me back toward the bathrooms. “This seems unnecessary,” he said.

  “Just humor me,” I replied, looking around to make sure no one wa
s watching. I still didn’t understand the seeing/not seeing thing, and I didn’t want to take any chances.

  We stopped in front of a filthy set of trash cans, one for garbage and one for recycling, though it looked like people were throwing garbage in both cans without a care. People in PeRT stations are animals, I tell you.

  “Okay. I came with you,” the sentry said, tearing my attention away from the cans. “Now tell me. Where is the Striker?”

  “Oh, the Striker?” I repeated, folding my arms. “She’s right behind you.”

  Before he could react, Shailene clubbed him over the head with her electrified nightstick. The sentry screamed, his voice reverberating off the concrete floor and ceiling. I cringed and waited for a reaction, but no one came running. After several seconds’ taut silence, I exhaled.

  “All right,” Shailene said, shooting me a grin that could only be described as rakish. “Let’s get him tied up. Where are we going to hide him?”

  “Back stall of the women’s room,” I said. “Hardly anyone uses this set of bathrooms. And even if someone comes in here, no one should be able to see him except one of us, right?”

  Shailene nodded, and together, the two of us got the sentry tied up. He groaned a little as we started to drag him, but stayed unconscious.

  “Okay,” I said once we’d deposited him in front of the incredibly disgusting toilet. “Let’s do this.” I braced myself and, hesitantly, reached out to touch him. My skin burned with the now-familiar tingling sensation. I watched as my hand rippled into a claw, my arm into an armored shell. This felt weirder than when I’d turned into Shailene; it was more than just growing taller and fairer but otherwise staying human. This was changing my anatomy. I could feel my internal organs shifting, morphing into things they definitely shouldn’t be.

  Shailene watched me fretfully. “You okay?” she asked when the transformation was complete.