“No, sir. There’s some sort of digital noise interfering with the frequency modulator. It’s scrambling all communications. Data, audio, video, everything.”
“There must be a jamming device somewhere on the ship,” Captain Bob mutters. “It seems we have a saboteur.” He massages his temple for just a moment before turning to me. “Miss Nara, perhaps you could search for foreign energy signatures? I will help Archer find the right frequency modulation.” And he makes his way to Cole across the bridge, leaving me standing alone in front of the main console.
As I’m bringing up the full layout of the ship, my ears start to tune back in to the conversations around me.
“All I’m saying,” Danielle says, continuing her conversation from the hallway, “is that we can’t take it on faith that the faculty were aliens. We would have noticed if they were aliens. There would have been, like, signs, you know? Like, antennae or green skin or something.”
“My Coley said our teachers were aliens,” Britta shoots back, darting her eyes in the direction of Cole and Captain Bob at the communications panel. “Are you saying my boyfriend lied?”
“I’m not saying he lied,” Danielle says, sidestepping. “Maybe he was just confused.”
Other Cheerleader shakes her head. “They were definitely aliens. Last week, when they put me under for the Gatling, I swear I could see Dr. Marsden’s tentacles.”
“Cole wasn’t confused,” Britta tells Danielle. “My Coley doesn’t get confused. Anyway, why the hell else would they try to drown everyone? Huh?”
“I don’t know,” Danielle replies. “It just seems awfully coincidental that these guys showed up right when everything started to go amuck.”
Up until this point Natty has been running her fingers over the cracks in the wall with her patented dreamy gaze. But at this she looks up.
“It’s because Cole and the captain are aliens too,” she says matter-of-factly.
Britta is immediately right in Natty’s face, teeth bared like some sort of cheerleader vampire. “Bitch, if you ever talk like that about my boyfriend again, I will—”
But Other Cheerleader, of all people, stops the impending girl fight by putting a hand on Britta’s shoulder. Although she’s clearly on Britta’s side. “Gnat,” she spits, with all the contempt a cheerleader can muster. Which is to say, a lot. “Go eat some paste, won’t you?”
At that, Natty just blinks. “I left it all in the art room,” she replies.
I had thought, up until now, that Cole and Captain Bob were blissfully unaware of this idiotic conversation, but apparently they’ve been listening too.
“Girls,” Captain Bob addresses them calmly, “I understand that there is a lot of confusion right now, and I’ll be happy to address all of it as soon as I can be assured we’re completely safe. At the moment—”
That’s when Cole, bouncing at the comm panel like a puppy anxious to get outside and pee, declares, “We’re a special black ops military outfit. Gamma Force. Like, commandos and stuff. We’re on the lookout to protect against alien infestation, reanimated enemy combatants, things like that.” Which seems to impress the dimmer girls, but not me. Because it is the exact premise of one of Ducky’s more gruesome video games, Ugolino: Brain Eater for Hire.
I smell a rat.
Captain Bob pinches the bridge of his nose, in a perfect impression of Mrs. Kwan back in English class, and offers Cole a look that could shrivel peaches. “Why don’t we work on communicating with command at the moment, hmm?” Cole swivels around and buries his face in the comm panel.
“Ladies,” Captain Bob continues, addressing the girls once more, “all you need to know at the moment is that your teachers were the bad guys, and we are the good guys.” He puts up a hand to halt further inquiries. “We will discuss any other questions you may have later.”
I resume my search of the layout of the ship, and at first I’m so busy looking for the interference with our communication that I don’t see it right away. But when I do notice it, it strikes me as particularly odd, even given our current situation.
Several of the ship’s blast doors, which are meant to contain damaged portions of the ship, have been activated on the interior of the ship—sealing off portions of the Echidna that were far, far away from the explosion. Which means they must have been triggered manually.
Now, why the heck would someone do that?
As I squint at the screen, I also notice other anomalies—gaps in the ship’s gravity, temperature, oxygen, and pressurization. Certain sections of the ship are virtually impassable, while the rest seems fine.
Cole comes strolling my way and peeks over my shoulder. “What did you find?” he asks. I guess he can tell there’s something worth examining, from the way I’m squinting. But I’m not giving anything up just yet.
“I thought you were helping with the comm panel,” I say.
“Yeah. Uh . . .” Cole rubs his neck. “The captain might have suggested that I would be more help if I went somewhere and scratched my ass.”
“I see,” I reply, then resume my squinting. I have more important things to deal with at the moment than Cole and the captain’s Gilligan-Skipper relationship.
Staring at the schematic is starting to feel like looking at one of those stupid old hidden picture puzzle thingies, the kind that just look like blobs and squiggles, until suddenly they morph into a picture of an elephant or something. “The blocked portions are mainly hallways,” I mutter. “And some storage, and living quarters. Nothing important.”
I’m not actually talking to Cole, but he must think I am, because he replies, “Maybe that’s where the guy’s holed up.”
I let out an exasperated huff, trying to think of what could be in those interior sections that’s so important. “No,” I say. “There’s no way to tap into any vital systems there. He’d be like a sitting duck, no better off than we are . . .” And that’s when I see the stupid elephant. It’s so obvious, I can’t help feeling like a chromer for not noticing it right away.
“The captain’s quarters,” I whisper.
“Huh?” Cole replies.
I run my finger across the layout, tracing a line through the blockaded sections. The saboteur is clearly trying to prevent us from reaching the far aft section of the ship.
“The captain’s quarters,” I say again. “Back in the day this school used to be a pleasure cruiser, and this section here”—I point to the far lower aft section of the ship, which has been so meticulously blocked off to us—“was where the captain had his living quarters and offices.” None of our faculty actually used these rooms, as far as I know, but there is one thing that might make them enticing to a bastard trying to destroy a shipful of pregnant girls. “There was also,” I tell Cole, finally looking up from the layout, straight into his blue-green-blue eyes, “a captain’s yacht.”
Cole blinks at me, then shouts at Captain Bob, over by the comm panel. “Sir!” he shouts. “I think Elvie found something!” Some of the girls turn to look at us, clearly not knowing exactly what’s going on, but looking momentarily hopeful about any sort of change in our situation. Britta narrows her eyes at me as though just the fact that I’m standing next to her boyfriend makes her want to ninja attack me. Although Cole, as ever, seems oblivious. He scuttles over to relieve the captain in his role as useless-dial spinner. But not before patting me on the back and whispering, “Good job, Elvs.” Like I am some sort of canine.
I roll my eyes.
“Miss Nara?” Captain Bob says as he joins me behind the main console.
Again I point out the blocked section of the ship and explain. “The captain’s quarters had a small personal shuttle,” I tell him. “It might not be there anymore,” I continue, “because when the Echidna was refitted, it’s entirely possible that they took it out. Assuming it is there, though, it’s not connected to the main computer systems, so it couldn’t have been launched from here. You’d have to do it manually.” I poke around on the power grid display
, looking at the systems in the aft section. Sure enough, the aft launch doors, the decompression controls, and everything else you would need to prep in order to launch a ship from back there have been powered up.
“Can you override the controls on those blast doors?” he asks me. I give it a try, but the console just buzzes.
“He’s got the controls locked. We can see everything but I can’t change it. Which makes me think,” I say, looking up at last, “that this guy is planning on shuttling out of here, and he’s trying to keep us away from his ride.”
Captain Bob thinks on that. “Or,” he says, “he’s laying out bread crumbs, making it seem like he’s trying to block off our only means of escape.”
“You mean a trap?” I ask. Bob nods.
Man, this shit just got ominous.
It’s at this moment that Cole, still spinning away at the comm panel, begins to shout. “Sir!” he cries. “I think I got something!”
Captain Bob rushes over, with me right behind him. The majority of the girls press in behind us, hoping for the promise of a miraculous rescue.
On the view screen there is mostly static. I can almost make out the figure of a person, if I squint hard enough. But mostly it’s horizontal lines, dancing across the screen in some kind of technological mambo. The sound is on the fritz too—mostly static, with faint garbled speech straining to push its way through the noise.
But at least it’s something.
“Home One,” Captain Bob barks to the flickering image on the screen. “Home One, this is Natal Group Leader.” As the picture and sound get just the tiniest bit clearer, Bob’s sense of urgency seems to grow. “One, this is Natal Group Leader, do you copy?”
All Captain Bob gets in reply is a distorted voice. “Kkkkatal . . . stttstssst . . . please repeat . . . Natal Group . . . kzzzzzzz.” And then, finally: “Natal Group. This is Home One. Report.”
The girls behind me begin to cheer. Bob eases back in his chair just the slightest, as though he might actually be relaxing a smidge. I allow myself the tiniest twinge of hope as well. Contact with someone down on Earth. The possibility of a rescue. Maybe things are starting to take a turn for the better.
“This is Natal reporting,” Captain Bob continues to the still-fuzzy picture before us. “Byron, is that you?”
“This is Byron,” comes the response. “You’re . . . kzzztttt . . . breaking . . .” The mysterious Byron begins to evaporate into the sea of static again. Bob adjusts the frequency, trying to get the image back again. And then all at once the image becomes crystal clear.
“Good to see your face, Captain,” comes the static-y voice.
And now everyone’s cheering. Cole is grinning ear to ear. Even Bob exhales and relaxes a bit in his seat.
Me, though? I’m not cheering. Or grinning. Or relaxed. I’m more in what you might call shock. And not because of the whole plummeting-to-Earth-in-a-giant-coffin state of emergency in which we currently find ourselves.
No, I’m in shock because the face on the monitor is one that I know very, very well.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IN WHICH WE LOOK BACK ON FIRST KISSES AND RANDOM CAT VIOLENCE
The afternoon of the Spring Fling, hours before Ducky arrives for our Ringwald marathon, I am holed up in my room watching Rebel Without a Cause. I realize I’m going to be watching flat pics all evening, but the urge has struck.
Sometimes—not always, but sometimes—I get just a little bit mom-sick. Like I miss the lady, even though I never met her. And for all Dad’s strengths as a kick-ass parent, he hasn’t really told me much about the chick who gave birth to me. I mean, I get that it’s hard for him to talk about her, I do. But every once in a while I wish I could have just a little bit more info to latch on to. More than just wisps of who she might have been. Really, all I know for certain is that my mom wanted to see the world one day (hence the book of maps), and that she absolutely loved 1950s actor James Dean. It’s not a lot to go on.
So, anyway, I guess that sort of explains why I’ve seen this melodramatic cheesefest, like, a thousand times. It’s unfortunate that James Dean had to go and die so young, in a car crash when he was just twenty-four, because if he’d made more than three flat pics, maybe I’d feel more connected to my mom. But in a way it fits, because my mom was only twenty-six when she died. What is it they say about people who die before they grow old? Forever young, forever beautiful? That’s my mom, all right.
On the bed next to me my phone begins to buzz.
I snatch it up and check the screen. UNKNOWN CALLER. That’s the eighth time this week. I tap the screen, hoping I can catch my loser stalker before he has a chance to hang up. “If I were you, I’d stop the prank calls,” I say into the receiver. “After the tenth one the voodoo curse kicks in, and good luck removing that badger from your ass.” This time my stalker does not hang up. This time he says something.
“Hey, Elvs.”
I suck in my breath. Cole Archer. Cole Archer is calling me?
“The mechanic savant,” I say, my voice laced with annoyance. “What do you want?”
Cole doesn’t seem to be bothered at all by my icy tone. He replies just the way he always does—cool and calm and utterly sure of himself. “Well, obviously, I need help with my car.”
“Have you been hanging up on me for six days because you have car trouble?” I ask. “Just go to the auto shop.”
“I didn’t mean to—” For the first time ever I hear a note of hesitation in Cole’s voice. “I’m sorry about the hang-ups,” he says. “I kept getting, uh, distracted. But will you help me anyway? You promised you’d help me install new routers.”
I trace the seams on my bed quilt with my thumb and index finger. “Yeah, there’s no way I said that,” I tell him.
“Oh, come on, Elvs. No one knows as much about cars as you.”
Okay, I know sucking up when I hear it, but for some reason it works anyway. I sigh. I should be heading to the store soon to pick up the snacks for my marathon with Ducky, but . . . I look at the clock. I still have three hours, and it should take only about forty minutes to fix the Metric. If I can get Cole to drive me to the grocery store for snacks afterward, I’ll still have plenty of time before the marathon. “My name’s not Elvs,” I tell him. “It’s Elvie. If you want to get formal, it’s Elvan. But under no circumstances, ever, is it Elvs.”
Cole laughs. “I apologize profusely. Can I make it up to you by bringing you a beautiful car to work on?”
I huff in disgust. “Fine. But keep it up, and I’ll start charging you.”
“Fair enough. See you in five.”
As soon as I hang up the phone, I’m in whirlwind girl motion. I shovel my dirty clothes into my dresser, straighten out my pillows, and kick the towering pile of books and shoes and whattheheckisthat into the closet. Then I turn my attention to the mirror. Hair a mess, sweaty after-school T-shirt with the pit stains, and the cargo shorts I don’t ever wear in public. Nice. I’ve completely changed clothes, and am just beginning to run the comb through my hair, when I realize—
What on earth am I doing? Why am I trying to look cute for Cole Archer? Why am I trying to look cute to fix Britta’s boyfriend’s car?
I slap the comb onto the sink and race downstairs before I can preen any further. Don’t be an idiot, I tell myself. He’s not interested in you that way. He likes girls like Britta.
And more important, I remember, I’m not interested in him.
When the doorbell rings, I catch sight of my reflection in the window and quickly whip my hair into a ponytail before I open the door.
After I open up the garage so Cole can pull his car inside, I get right to work on the problem. Naturally the Metric is one of the models where you still need to get underneath to connect the routers to the mag sphere network. Cole is not even pretending to be interested in learning a thing. He’s just standing at my dad’s workbench, sucking down a glass of GuzzPop while I crawl around under his car.
“You kn
ow, you wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place if you’d bothered to learn, like, the first thing about cars,” I tell him, snapping one of the router lines into the right front axle.
He just shrugs and takes another slug of soda. “I wouldn’t exactly call watching you work a mess.”
I roll my eyes, even though he obviously can’t see it. “That line ever work where you come from?” I ask.
“You know, Elvs,” he says, then pauses to suck down some more soda, “you’re pretty cute when you’re pissy.”
I squeeze myself out from under the car and stand up to work on the mag sphere. “So that’s a no, then.”
Cole doesn’t answer, and I think maybe I’ve finally won this round of Stump the Doofus, when I feel it. Cole’s breath on my neck. It is warm and sweet and makes me goose pimple all over. His hands are on my shoulders, a light touch but purposeful. I suck in my breath. But I don’t turn around. I don’t dare.
He kisses me.
Right behind the ear, at the base of my hairline. I know I’ll be able to feel that spot, that kiss, forever.
“Shit,” I say before he can kiss me again.
Cole pulls his hands off my shoulders. “Elvs?” he says softly.
“There’s grease on my jeans,” I say. “My best pair. I . . . I shouldn’t have worn these ones out here. I . . . I gotta go change.” And I race out of the garage, through the door to the house, not even daring to look at Cole’s face as I go, because I know that his expression will just confirm what I am thinking.
I am the world’s biggest chromer.
As soon as I get upstairs to my room, I shut the door and throw myself backward onto my bed, burying my face in the crooks of my elbows. God, what the hell is wrong with me? The hottest guy in school tries to make a move and I talk about grease on my pants. I might as well move into a nunnery now. I might as well give up on being a member of the human race altogether.
Running through my head are a billion and one thoughts, and they’re all banging into one another like bumper cars. Why did he kiss me? Does he LIKE me? Do I like him? Do I hate him? What about Britta? Did he break up with Britta? Am I hotter than Britta? Is this all because I’m wearing my shirt that shows a little bit of cleave? God, guys are so predictable. Cole is such a pig. Cole is such a dreamboat. I can still feel that kiss on my skin. I’ve got to wash my neck off. I will never wash my neck. Do I want to kiss Cole back? God, I want to kiss Cole all over. I never want to SEE him again. I hope he takes the hint and drives home already. I should get back down there so he doesn’t drive home.
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