by Ryan Gebhart
“Okay. There’s no way anyone could travel four and a half light-years just for dinner. Even with the most advanced technology, it would take hundreds of thousands of years.”
I get my phone out and message Jenny.
ME: Hey, can you forward me that pic you took at side cut?
The seconds without a reply are lasting forever. Maybe she doesn’t want me to have it. Maybe she doesn’t have her phone on or she’s just taking a nap. But maybe she’s busy with a guy.
I can’t stand this. If I want world peace, if I want Jenny, I need that picture now. I could send it to one of the local TV stations and make up a lie, like the Centaurian told me they’re planning a full-on global attack on Thanksgiving Day.
I say, “Do you want to come with me to visit her?”
Avery shrugs. “Like I have anything else going on.”
This is the only thing that can fulfill Jenny’s wish to bring all of humanity together. We need fear. We need the aliens. We need a common enemy.
I put a stocking cap on Avery. I give him a spare set of boots and my old winter jacket that looks kinda funny on him because it’s a size too small. He keeps insisting he won’t get cold. He doesn’t know Ohio the way I do.
We’re walking through the kitchen to get my keys in the living room when I stop and quietly grab his sleeve. Something’s off. Mom and Dad haven’t put the groceries away. The frozen turkey is sitting on the countertop in a small puddle of water. One of the plastic bags has tipped over, and there’s a bag of stuffing and two cans of green beans on the floor.
From the living room TLC’s “Waterfalls” is playing softly. A log crackles, then pops. Light from the fireplace is dancing on the walls. Mom hasn’t started a fire since the first winter we moved here.
Dad booms with laughter. Mom giggles, then shushes him. “Keep it down.”
We enter the living room. The stab of terror I get, it’s like when you see a spider when you weren’t planning on seeing a spider. Mom’s lying on her stomach on the couch with a tranquil look on her face. Dad’s sitting on her ass massaging the small of her back and, thank God, they’re clothed.
“Hey,” I say.
Dad shoots to his feet and puts his hands on his hips. Looking at Avery, he says, “Hey, boys. Debbie, uh, got a knot in her back when she picked up the turkey. We got a big one. Twenty-five pounds. Hope y’all will be hungry.”
Avery doesn’t say anything. His slack-jawed look of disgust says it all.
Dad says, “I didn’t hear you two come in. How’s the new Nintendo?”
“The TV’s not compatible,” I say, grabbing my keys atop the mantle.
Mom says, “Where you off to, Scrobes?”
“What?” Dad looks at me, confused and short of breath. “Scrobes? What’s that?”
Mom says to him, “It’s some nickname his pals gave him.” She rests her head on the backs of her hands, then gives a relaxed sigh. “Why do they call you that?”
“Me and Avery are going out for a minute.”
“In this weather?” Dad says. “What do you gotta do that you can’t do here?”
“Shugar’s got a bottle of Svedka, and me and Avery are going shot for shot. Little Dude thinks he can outdrink me.”
“What?” Dad would have shouted this if he weren’t so stunned.
Mom shifts her body so she can look up at him. “Oh, would you calm down. He’s only trying to start something.”
“Later, Mom. Bye, Dad.”
Mom says, “What are you planning to do for dinn —?”
I close the front door. It’s six thirty and fully dark out. The snow’s still coming down hard. Me and Avery walk to my truck parked next to Mom’s car and with the windchill it feels below ten degrees. I start the engine and turn the defroster to full blast, then brush the snow off my windows.
When I get back in, Avery’s shuddering. I can’t tell whether it’s from the cold or from just being witness to his dad getting romantic and disgusting with a woman he hardly knows.
“You okay?” I say.
He rubs his arms. “Let’s just go.”
The engine revs as I shift into reverse and carefully inch out of the driveway. Our road hasn’t been plowed, and I’m following Mom’s tire tracks that she made in the snow. The wiper blades swing back and forth at full speed as fat flakes melt on the windshield.
A stop sign nears. I don’t give it enough time, and I hit the brakes too hard. I’m fishtailing because I haven’t put any sandbags in the bed of my truck yet, and we bounce hard as my back tire hits a curb.
I shift into first, ease off the clutch, and slowly correct my path.
Avery’s holding on to the oh shit bar above the passenger window, and he fakes a laugh. “I always wanted to know something.”
“What’s that?”
“How come you never moved back home? I thought you loved Austin. And Dad’s house is awesome.”
“I had been thinking of moving back, but I didn’t want to leave my mom here all by herself. Then, a couple of weeks ago, my friend Kyle threw a party, and honestly? I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.” I’m getting that feeling of nostalgia that I only used to get when thinking about Texas.
“Why? What happened there?”
“Jenny Novak happened.”
“She hot?”
“She’s gorgeous.”
“How are her tits?”
“Dude.” I look at him. Even though he’s had a growth spurt, he doesn’t look any older in the face, and last Christmas he thought girls were disgusting.
He says, “I thought you said she was just a girl you know.”
“I don’t really know how to define our relationship.”
I turn onto a street that’s gotten a little more traffic, and the road is a mix of gray slush where tires have been and pure white where they haven’t. All the trees and houses are covered with a thick layer of snow, like something out of a Christmas movie.
He says, “Do you want to marry her?”
“What? No,” I insist, even though the thought has crossed my mind more times than I’d care to admit.
Her Toyota Corolla isn’t in the driveway or on the street. I park behind their old minivan anyway, because maybe she’s here and her car’s in the garage or out back in the alley.
From the side of the house, there’s steam rising from a vent that smells like Morning Mist fabric softener. Like Jenny’s bedroom. Like our first time together. I open the front door and peek my head in, Avery flanking my side.
“Jenny?” I say. “It’s Derek. Popping in.”
The TV’s off. One of those classic kitty clocks with the moving tail and eyes shows 6:41. It smells unsurprisingly amazing in here, like they had some kind of seafood for dinner.
Avery says, “Should we be going in like this?”
“It’s cool. I know her parents.”
He stomps his shoes clean on the welcome mat and whispers, “Why do they leave their house unlocked? Aren’t they afraid they’re gonna get robbed?”
“You don’t have to whisper.” I look down through the open basement door. I call out, “Jenny?”
A moment passes. Then a confused “Hello?” It’s Katherine.
“Hey. It’s Derek. This is my brother, Avery.”
She appears at the foot of the steps by the stair lift, a stack of folded towels in her arms. As if she were expecting me, she says happily, “Hey. I was just doing some laundry. You boys want something to eat? We’ve got some leftover salmon and garlic potatoes on the stove that I can heat up.”
“Sure,” I say, even though I’m not hungry. Because where’s Jenny? What guy is she snowed in with right now?
I don’t want to like being in here, but this place wraps me up all warm and comfortable like a home should and I can’t help it. Everything about this place — the smell of good food and clean laundry, the pictures of Jenny as a kid on the fridge, the hospitality, the hookups in the basement — I don’t want her to share it with any other
guy.
Katherine loads up two plates with way more than I was planning on eating. She puts the first plate in the microwave, and it beeps as she presses in numbers, then it starts to hum.
She says, “Jennifer went with Joel to pick up some rock salt for the driveway and some stuff for Thanksgiving. They should be back shortly.”
“Oh. Cool.” My appetite’s suddenly opened up.
“You want anything to drink?”
“Water’s fine, thanks.”
“Take a seat, you two. I’ll get everything ready. You want any vegetables?”
“Sure.”
“We got asparagus.”
“Sounds good.”
The microwave beeps short twice, then long once. She heats up the second plate.
Katherine sets down two plastic Santa glasses and our steaming plates of food, then turns on the radio. Another one of Karo’s songs is playing.
She sits at the end of the table next to me. Her arms are stretched out, hands delicately around her beer bottle. She looks so much like the girl I love, just with some deeper lines on her face, stylish glasses, a few more pounds, and a shorter haircut.
She says, “You want to know something? I think the Centaurians would come in peace.”
“Really?” She’s the first person I’ve ever heard say that.
Eyes closed, listening to the music, she says, “There was this one time when I was really little, my father and I were driving back from the Upper Peninsula visiting my Nasa and Papa.”
“Nasa?”
“I couldn’t pronounce ‘Nana’ at the time.” She smiles. “Somewhere out in the country, we pulled over and lay down in the bed of the truck. The sky was crystal clear. He pointed out this band of light, which I thought was some out-of-place cloud, but it wasn’t moving and it was glowing. He told me that was the Milky Way. Our galaxy. I think about that now, and somewhere out there, that’s where the Centaurians come from.” She sips her beer. “They’re gentle creatures and that’s why they’ll never come.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember what happened when Christopher Columbus came to the New World?”
I turn to Avery, and he wants to say something the way his eyes are getting bigger, but his mouth is currently stuffed.
I say, “Um, we slaughtered and enslaved the Native Americans.”
She shakes her head. “Not all. Only a fraction. Most of them died because of smallpox and pneumonia, which were native to Europe, but foreign to the Americas. The people here had no resistance to them. Those were diseases from a different continent. Just think what would happen if we caught a cold from another planet. That’s why I think the Centaurians stay hidden. They know they harbor diseases that could wipe out all life on Earth.”
But I’m not sick.
I don’t say anything and maybe she thinks it’s an awkward silence, but what if I caught something that day at Side Cut and I just don’t know it? What if there’s something horrific incubating deep inside my body? Any day now it could burst forth from my stomach.
She says, “Unseasonable weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
I nod. My hand is on my stomach, feeling around for any weird bumps. “Some are predicting seven inches.”
“A white Thanksgiving. And it’s the perfect snow for sledding. You like to sled, Avery?”
“I’m from Texas,” he says.
“You two should go with Jennifer. It’s really fun.”
“Maybe,” I say.
“I think she was planning on going to Fort Meigs with her boyfriend tomorrow. I’m sure she’d love to have you two there.”
My throat chokes up and my stomach shrinks and there’s suddenly way too much food inside of it. What the fuck does she mean by that?
I somehow manage to get out, “We made other plans.” It’s like this whole beautiful house has closed in on me and I’ve become an intruder — just some asshole guy who isn’t wanted.
I can’t stop this spinning feeling, this cold feeling, this feeling like everything in her dining room is so distant and hollow. With all the time I’ve spent here, how could Jenny’s parents not think that I’m her boyfriend?
It’s because Jenny never told them that. She probably told them that I’m just another friend or a study partner from Spanish or who the hell knows. I’d always thought that she never talked to her parents about her relationships, but she does.
She has a boyfriend even though she told me she didn’t want one. She has a boyfriend and I’m not him.
When did she have time for this?
Through the curtains, a pair of headlights are slowing down, then stop in the street out front. Jenny’s closing the passenger door and Joel is getting a massive bag of salt out of the trunk, and I’m an interloper — uninvited, unwanted — who just pops in.
“Is something wrong?” Katherine asks, her lips locked in a worried, stunned expression.
I open the door and block Jenny before she reaches the porch steps. She’s wearing a gray-and-pink-striped stocking cap and an oversize scarf with tassels that dangle down to her knees that are both collecting snow. I’ve never seen either of these items before.
They must be gifts from her boyfriend.
She cocks her head back, brows furrowed. “What are you doing here?”
A hundred scenarios are playing out in my head, and in half of them I’m frothing at the mouth in rabid anger. The other half I’m crying my eyes out.
“Give me your phone,” I say. I’m breathing through my nose and speaking calmly, though my heart rate has skyrocketed.
“Hey there, Derek,” Joel calls out, both hands cradling the bag. I give something that hopefully resembles a smile as he heads toward the garage.
I say to Jenny, “Did you get the message I sent you?”
She shakes her head. “Who’s this?”
“I’m Derek’s brother,” he says. “Avery Stratton.”
I say to her, “I need you to send me that picture you took at Side Cut. You were right. We need to warn the authorities as soon as possible.” In a lower, more serious, and hopefully convincing tone, I add, “I got amnesia when the alien hit me over the head. It all came back to me today, everything he said.”
She stays at the bottom of the steps, plastic grocery bags in her hands, and, God, I need her to believe me now. She’s slipping from me fast.
I say, “We’re about to be invaded. Blue Grass Island is a terminal for a wormhole that connects with Pud Five. There are hundreds of them across the world. It will be a two-staged attack: on Thanksgiving Day they’ll use the wormholes to drop a knockout gas on the population, and when we’re all wiped out, they’ll arrive in their ships to cultivate us.”
“Are you drunk?” Jenny asks, like she’s trying to feel me out.
“Jenny,” I plead, and it’s pathetic. I’m pathetic. She’s been hiding this guy that she’s been in love with this entire time we’ve been together and I had no idea.
No, that’s a lie. I knew. Maybe in a way I knew all along. It’s just, maybe I’ve been too frightened to see things I didn’t want to see.
“My phone’s charging downstairs,” she finally says.
I trail behind her, wiping my face clean with my sleeve, and Avery goes back to eating with Jenny’s mom. I walk through the living room and down the stairs into the basement, and her phone’s charging on her desk, next to her Monkey Business script and a bottle of Yoo-hoo, and I swear to God that if there’s more to her and Mark Shugar than a onetime fuck, then . . .
Well, I don’t know what I’d do.
She takes her phone off the charging pad and puts her thumb to the screen, then I snatch it away from her. She gives little resistance.
There’s one new message from “Derek.” Another from “Shugar Tits.”
Jenny says, “I’ll forward you the pic.” She’s standing on the spot where we were once tangled together and she told me I had stinky baby feet, and now she’s waiting to see what I’ll do next.
<
br /> I tap on the unread message I sent her.
DEREK: Hey, can you forward me that pic you took at side
cut?
“Please,” she says. “Give it back.”
“Is it true? Are you in love with somebody else?”
Her face hardens. “If you tap on the conversation I’m having with Mark, then I’m never speaking to you again.”
“Why? Because you don’t want to lose your backup plan? Is that all I am to you?”
She has no response to this because it’s the truth.
I say, “You know, you could have told me that you see me as just a friend, maybe someone you felt pity for. Or a meaningless drunken hookup that you strung along for a few weeks because you were bored and I entertained you.”
In a barely audible voice, I say, “You could have been honest with me. I was always honest with you.”
She says nothing.
I tap on their conversation.
Jenny had sent Shugar a pic marked two hours ago. She’s standing in front of her full-length bathroom mirror where she first told me about Alex, and she’s naked. The mirror is splotchy with steam and maybe toothpaste.
SHUGAR TITS: Do you want nudes too?
In any other circumstance, I’d laugh. I’d message back something stupid. Now I can’t because I’m on the losing corner of a love triangle and my eyes are filled with tears.
I say, “It’s one thing for you to be fucking around with other guys. But you can’t —” I want to say that she can’t give him her heart, but I stop myself because it sounds really cheesy in my head.
I’m crying uncontrollably.
I never thought I’d end up like this. Wanting someone so bad I can hardly stand it.
I say, “I thought you said you didn’t want a boyfriend. That you’re just having fun.”
“I’m sorry, but if you want me to level with you, then I’m gonna be totally honest. I’ve liked him since we were all in the swim league, but he was always dating someone else. We started hanging out this past summer as friends when he was with Nikki, and I never thought he liked me like that. God, everything got all messed up at Kyle’s party. Mark was supposed to be there.”
