by Ryan Gebhart
Are these stars actually moving up and around, down and about, through the cosmos? If they were going at that speed, which would probably be quadrillions of miles per hour or something, then they should look like comets. But they remain perfect points of light.
The stars come in like a billion asteroids raining down on us, and I flinch, shielding my head with my arms. But nothing happens. I look up. They’ve stopped no more than two hundred feet overhead as if by a glass roof. They’re still just as small as when they were set in the night sky, only a little brighter.
Her voice is labored and thick, but after a few false starts, Karo’s grandma says, “I see what my grandson sees in you. I like you. However, you know that if we come to Earth, the humans will kill us.”
I walk down the porch steps, squeezing past Jovas’s girlfriend and their kids. The stars begin grouping together into circles, spinning in silence. If I hadn’t known these were actual stars, I would have assumed they were flying saucers with some kind of invisibility cloak, thousands of them stretching as far as — likely much farther than — the horizon.
Like an unstoppable army of aliens preparing to invade.
Her breathing is slow and labored. “If you love her, it is not my place to say you are wrong. If this will make you happy, I will try to give you one day of peace on Earth. I will take the stars and move them over all your cities.”
My heart is so full of love, it’s like I’ll never have to say anything again.
Except for one last thing. “Would y’all like to come to my house for Thanksgiving?”
The stars overhead slow down, go dim, then fade into nothing. The milky smear has returned to its proper place in the sky, and I can see Maumee again. It’s daytime there. I’m on Blue Grass Island, and Mom, Dad, and Avery are on the opposite shore, shielding their eyes, searching for me. Dad’s testing the ice with the tip of his boot. Mom’s face is streaked with tears. Avery broke his promise that he wouldn’t tell them my plan, but only because he was worried about me. Because he loves me.
They all love me.
Karo’s standing by my side, holding out my winter clothes with a smile. I see his house and family on the porch, and I’m on Pud 5 with the Milky Way in the nighttime sky again. I zip up my jacket and put on my hat. He’s not saying anything, but he doesn’t need to. Dinner is over and I’m going back home.
I make a peace sign for Not-as-Little Dude.
I really hope I’ll see them again.
It’s the day before Thanksgiving, and given the position of the sun, it’s probably past four o’clock on Earth. My insides are so warm even though my exposed face and hands tell me it’s cold as shit out on Blue Grass Island. I wipe my nose, and there’s amber snot on my fingertips. It’s dripping out like my brain has sprung a leak. Everything is abnormally bright, and I smile and wave at my little family on the other side of the river. It’s gonna be okay for all of us.
I run toward them, wanting to jump into their open arms and hug them and share with them everything I just experienced. Two-thirds of the way I slip, landing on my back. The ice cracks. A large air bubble rises to just beneath the surface.
“Derek,” Dad says calmly. He’s close enough for me to throw him a screen pass, but much too far away to grab his hand. “You gotta move slowly, okay?”
I get up on my knees, balancing myself with my hands.
I fall through. My feet hit the river bottom, my knees buckle, and my body flattens out faceup. There’s a sloshing sound of water and a slurry of bubbles around me. I reach out my hand and touch the ice overhead, the sun refracting through. I hear the gurgling, distant voices of my parents, but they’re right here — they’re the shadowy figures above me. I fight my way to the surface, but I’m stopped by a sheet of ice.
Little dots appear in my eyes, growing brighter. Yellows and reds and blues coming and going like buzzing bugs.
“Stop!” is what I think someone says. Avery’s face appears. “Stop!” He says it clearer this time.
I stop, but the current keeps pushing me.
“You’re going the wrong way!” He’s pointing behind me. “The hole is over here!”
I follow him.
“No! This way!”
Apparently I wasn’t following him.
My foot brushes against the ground. Wait. The water isn’t even six feet deep. I can stand and push my way through. I lodge my feet against a large stone. I slam my palms against the ceiling — dull, unproductive thwacks.
“This way!” But I can’t see where he’s pointing.
I pound the ice again. It creaks. I hit it again. I’m a person drowning, but I won’t die now from a stupid accident. I have a lifetime of Jenny ahead of me.
My hands bust through the surface. I break smaller pieces loose. I give one last push with both my palms together, and a massive chunk comes free.
A pair of hands grabs my wrists and pulls me up. My eyes open. I’m being dragged across the ice to the shore. Someone pinches my nostrils. A mouth pulls away from my mouth, and I cough out water. I keel over and more just pours right out of me.
“Derek, can you hear me?” Dad says, wiping his mouth.
I gasp down a bite of euphoric cold wind.
The specks reappear: matter being created out of nothing.
Mom slaps my cheek with eye-opening force. “Hey, stay with me. You’re not going anywhere, Ducky. Just keep your eyes open. Hey.” She snaps her fingers in front of my eyes.
I look at Avery. He was the one who reached in for me because the sleeves of his jacket are now dripping wet. Mom, Dad, and my little bro saved my life.
I smile. This is my universe and they love me so much. I love them just the same.
Mom grabs me by the legs and Dad lifts me up beneath my armpits, and they carry me up the hill to Mom’s car on the towpath. Avery opens the door, and they slide me into the backseat as if they were putting something into a toaster oven.
“Like a H-Hot P-P-Pocket.” My entire body trembles violently. Mom fights off my jacket, my shirt, boots, and socks, then she reaches for my pants zipper, but I weakly push her away.
“We have to get all your wet clothes off, Ducky. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“I-I’ll get it.” It’s so hard for me to unbutton my pants because I can’t feel what my blue-as-a-corpse hands are doing. It takes me like six tries, but I finally slip the button through the hole. The zipper comes down easier. I sit up against the door and hold on to the tops of the seats. Mom wriggles and fights my pants off me. Without any heads-up, she then yanks off my boxers and, holy shit, the King in the North is super tiny right now.
“Just relax, Double D,” Dad says. He blankets his jacket over my waist.
It’s funny how I have so many nicknames. Dad calls me Double D. Mom calls me Ducky. My friends call me Scrobes. But they’re not just nicknames — they’re terms of endearment. So many names, yet all I am is just a pair of eyes, a pile of intestines sucking in nutrients to live another day, two tiny balls hoping for a chance to make a copy of myself, a fist-shaped muscle that pumps blood to my organs, and a brain trying to make sense of it all.
I’m trembling and I’m naked and I might be crying and I want to tell them how much I care about them, even though most of the time I don’t show it. “I lo-love you g-g-”
“Shhh, it’s gonna be okay,” Mom says, and puts her jacket over my chest. She props my exposed legs riddled with goose bumps on her lap. “We’re gonna get you nice and warm.”
Dad starts the car and turns the heater to full blast. The inside windows quickly fog up with condensation. There’s no wind around me, no winter, and my body’s in agony in this sauna, but sometimes that’s the way love feels.
The car jostles down the towpath.
Dad says to Mom, “You’re going to have to tell me how to get to the hospital.”
“I’m not cray-crazy.” My chest winces. I think I pulled a muscle from trembling so much. A silent and murky fart sneaks out of m
y ass.
“We know you’re not,” Mom says, tenderly rubbing my shins. “Avery showed us the picture of the alien, and he told us your plan —”
“I’m sorry,” Avery says from the passenger seat, while taking off his wet jacket. “I sent it to my phone after we left Jenny’s.”
“— but you need to get checked for hypothermia.” She looks at Dad. “Take a left on Conant, then another left on the Trail.”
“J-just let me t-take a hot sh-sh-”
“No, you have to take a lukewarm shower,” Avery says. Even if he’s never said he loves me, he definitely showed it today. Because that watch he waited for all year to come out, the one he wouldn’t shut up about last Christmas, is still on his wrist, drenched and broken.
He says, “How did you do that thing on the island? The way you appeared like that. It was so weird.” He turns to Dad. “Did you see it?”
Dad nods. “And for a minute your eyes looked huge.”
Avery says, “It was like . . . like I was seeing your reflection in a window or —”
“What’s that smell?” Mom says, her nose curled.
“Oh, Jesus!” Dad says.
“What are y’all —?” It reaches Avery. “Dude!” He pinches his nose and looks at me with disgust. Not going to lie, this fart is even more heinous than when Shugar drinks chocolate milk. It’s got layers to it.
All four windows go down.
“P-please keep them up.”
Mom stops rubbing my legs. She pulls the collar of her shirt up and pinches it against her nose. “What on Earth did you eat?”
“Be one with it,” I get out in between breaths.
The windows go back up, because that’s what loving families do.
We’re all quiet and the radio is off and everyone’s trying not to breathe. My body is shivering less and my extremities are tingling back to life, like there’s a million bugs crawling beneath my skin.
Dad drives up the service road that connects with Conant Street.
“The heck is that?” he says in awe, slowing the car to a stop.
Avery leans forward. “Whoa.”
Dozens of cars have pulled over or stopped in the middle of the street. Everyone is getting out of their cars and looking up. At the intersection of Conant and East Broadway, where Jenny once held my hand, the red hand is turning into the walking man. Two hundred or so feet above, a circle of stars is rotating.
“It’s a flying saucer,” Mom says softly, barely believing her own words.
Dad turns on the radio.
“— minutes ago, the AP confirmed that the ships have appeared over London, Rome, Brussels, and Barcelona, bringing the list of sightings across the globe to eleven, all of which have been reported in the last half hour.”
“Twelve,” another announcer says, his voice weak and choked with disbelief. “Look out the window. There is a UFO outside our studio in downtown Toledo. It . . . it appears to be hovering right over Fifth Third Field.”
Dad rests his hands on the steering wheel. I catch his stubbly chin in the rearview mirror. “Did you do this?”
I pull Mom’s jacket closer to my neck. My skin is turning back to its normal color, and I’ve lost my chattering stutter. “It’s not what you think it is. There’s a woman on Pud Five who brought a galaxy full of stars to the surface of Earth, and she’s moving them in circles to make them look like flying saucers.”
“Those are stars?” Mom says, sticking her head between the front seats. “But they look so close! They’re beneath the clouds.”
“They are.”
“Impossible,” Dad says. “If they were that close, they’d be a helluva lot bigger. The whole planet would be burnt to a crisp.”
“Humans once thought Earth was created six thousand years ago. We now think it’s four and a half billion years old. There’s still so much more we have to discover.”
Mom says, “When did you become such a philosopher?”
“I don’t know. Like around ten thirty.”
Dad says, “So what happens next?”
“The stars will stick around for a day, and th-then they’ll leave.”
“What about the Centaurians?”
“I invited them over for Thanksgiving, if that’s cool.”
Mom says, “You’re doing all this for that Jennifer girl?”
“Yup.”
“Even though she, you know, is seeing your friend Mark?”
“God, Avery. What didn’t you tell them?”
“You were gone for so long. I got worried. Sorry I cared.”
An army of cop cars flashing their blue-and-red lights appears, followed by that high-pitched bwoop-bwoop noise that they use to tell people to move, and for a second I wonder if it’s me they’re coming for. They park outside the ring. Officers get out and congregate. One points at the stars, his jaw slack in his face. After a minute of discussion, they separate, approaching the cars stopped in the middle of the road, gesturing for them to move along.
On the radio, the announcers are saying that more sightings are coming in by the minute and no one knows what this means. Is this the invasion that so many have feared? There hasn’t been any communication from the flying saucers or from Pud 5 yet. And there won’t be.
“All I can say is, please be with your loved ones tonight. And God willing, if there is a Thanksgiving tomorrow, make it the greatest you’ve ever had.”
I wonder if Jenny has messaged me. What does she think of all this? She probably ditched sledding to hide in her basement. She’s afraid the Centaurians are going to abduct her and slaughter her like cattle. Shugar’s holding her and she feels safe in his arms.
I don’t know. Hell if I know.
I say, “Guys? Can we skip the hospital? I’m really feeling better.”
“You fell through ice,” Mom says bluntly. “You were underwater for over a minute.”
“Eh, they do that for the Polar Bear Plunge all the time. I don’t have hypothermia, I promise. I’m actually feeling invigorated. I just want to put on a fresh set of clothes.”
“He wants to see Jenny,” Avery says.
“You don’t have any fresh clothes. For pity’s sake, you can be a diplomat to an alien species, but you can’t even do a load of wash.”
“I have one clean shirt.”
After a most amazing twenty-minute shower, I find a white T-shirt with an image of a smiling geek on a Segway hanging in my closet. I also have one clean pair of boxers — the size-small shamrock ones Mom bought me in the seventh grade — but they fit way too tight so I opt to go commando. With a towel around my waist, I take my jeans and hoodie out from the dryer and borrow one of Dad’s jackets.
My insides are rumbling something funny, so I get the Pepto-Bismol from the medicine cabinet and take two swigs. I shove the bottle in the jacket pocket because I might have won this battle, but there’s a greater war still raging inside me.
Mom, Dad, and Avery are watching the five o’clock news in the living room. Diane Larson is speaking frantically into her mike on a residential street with a crowd looking at the circle of stars in the distance. She’s saying police have cordoned off Conant Street from the Maumee-Perrysburg bridge to the Anthony Wayne Trail. The city of Toledo has requested assistance from the federal government, but pleas are coming in from across the nation, and they’re speculating that the majority of the military stationed in the states will be dispatched to New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and the other major cities.
Diane’s face is bitten by cold and fear. “It appears that if anything does happen in Toledo and its suburbs, it’s up to us, the citizens, to stop whatever comes out of these ships. Diane Larson, reporting live from uptown Maumee, Thirteen ABC.”
I say, “Can, uh, one of you guys take me to get my truck?”
Mom points at the TV, looking at me like I’m a dog who just peed on the carpet and she’s about to rub my nose in it. “You think this is the path to world peace?”
“It made sense
in my head.”
“But how . . . how do you even gauge that? Are you gonna take a global census to ensure that no acts of violence take place for twenty-four hours?”
“Uh . . .”
“Didn’t you think there might be riots? People are going to lose their minds and go on shooting sprees!”
As if on cue, the next news segment shows a guy in downtown Seattle pointing a handgun at a ring of stars above the Space Needle. He fires off four shots, and the crowd around him ducks and shields their heads. The stars keep spinning, unaffected.
My guts sink down to my balls. I once told Avery that I’d be fine with people dying so Jenny would be my girlfriend. People were committing suicide when we found out we’re not alone in the universe; now the entire world thinks flying saucers are in our skies. If anything goes wrong this time, it’s all on me.
She says, “This has got to be a joke. No one, not even a” — she pauses, struggling to come up with a proper comparison —“the worst . . . comic book supervillain would put the entire planet in jeopardy just for a girl. You probably won’t even remember her name a year from now!”
A hand falls on my shoulder. “I’ll take him,” Dad says.
He bundles up and we go out to the car. The traffic is relatively light on the Trail until we near the intersection with Key Street.
An announcer on the radio says, “The president is probably cowering in the basement of the West Wing. Well, we don’t have a nuclear bomb–proof bunker, Mr. President. Come out and fight with the rest of us.”
The other says, “He has to be down there. He’s going to need to communicate intelligence with other nations once the invasion begins.”
“It doesn’t matter how deep underground he goes. They’re going to rout him out like the rest of us. But they’re not eating me, not until my shotgun takes down a few of those motherfucking monsters.”
I take another swig of Pepto. I can only imagine the horrors that await when I exorcise these demons into the toilet.
Hopefully I’ll be near a toilet.
Dad creeps forward, inches from bumping the car in front of us. “I know what it’s like, Double D, to be thinking with your dick instead of your brain. Hell, I probably would have done the exact same thing if I were your age and in a position to speak with aliens.”
