by Lauryn April
Sunday, Jo and I went for a short run, and she told me a little more about Nik. She said he was into art and had a good sense of humor, but still nothing about who he was, where he went to school, or how old he was. Nik was still a mystery, but I was glad Jo was telling me about him.
By Monday any thoughts of aliens had evaporated from my mind. I’d gotten to school early that day, and as I made my way to English I saw Jared in the hall. He pushed his light brown hair back and called my name. I rolled my eyes, not wanting to talk to him, but stopped anyway.
“Hey, Hoffman,” a group of his fellow football players called as they walked past. Jared ignored them.
“What do you want?” I asked, sparing no niceties.
Despite my rude tone, Jared laughed. “Don’t be so salty, Payton, I just want to ask you a question.”
I stared at him with a blank expression. “Well, what is it?”
“I was thinking you and I should go to Homecoming together.”
Another blank stare; there was no way he didn’t know about Ian’s already asking me. “I already have a date,” I said.
Jared snorted. “Yeah, but I think we’d make a better couple.”
I practically snorted. I wondered how I’d ever found Jared attractive. Did I mistake his arrogance for confidence? Had I liked his controlling, overbearing, He-Man ways with some sick delusion that the way he acted meant he cared about me? Or maybe it was nothing more than thinking we looked good together: quarterback and head cheerleader. God, how clichéd was that?
“Look, Jared, I know I’ve said this before, but let me make it extra-clear to you. We’re over, there is no us, and we wouldn’t make a better couple because we’ll never be a couple of anything ever again.”
Jared’s face turned red, and he clenched his jaw. I could tell I’d spoken loud enough for other students to hear because some of them stopped to see what was going on. A group of girls behind Jared whispered and giggled. I saw the embarrassment soak deeper into his expression, but I felt zero sympathy for him.
“I’m going to Homecoming with Ian,” I said. “Do yourself a favor and try to remember that so you don’t embarrass yourself again.”
Behind me I heard another laugh in a deeper, more familiar tone. This time the commentary made Jared snap. He reached out for someone. As I stepped back to avoid him, he grabbed Logan by his shirt collar.
“Think this is funny, Reed?”
Logan only laughed louder.
“I could get any girl in the school to go to the dance with me; let’s see you find a date.”
“Any girl except Payton,” Logan said.
Jared’s fists bunched, his face reddened, and his eyes narrowed. He wanted to punch Logan, but somehow he found some semblance of control and only pushed him. I watched him fall to the ground, landing hard on his back. His head smacked into a locker, and his glasses fell from his face.
Jo came down the hallway. Outrage marred her face as she went to Logan, leaned down, and picked up his glasses. Logan took them from her with one hand while rubbing his right eye with the other.
Jo’s eyes narrowed on Jared. She stood and got in his face.
“You’re a fucking bully, Jared; go pick on someone your own intelligence.”
I smiled at her bravado. Jared deserved it.
His nostrils flared, but he just turned and walked away. The rest of the onlookers went about their business as well.
Jo crossed her arms, watching him go. “I’m so glad you broke up with him.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” I agreed.
I turned back to Logan. He was searching for something on the floor. Jo was still staring after Jared so she didn’t see what happened next, but I did. As Logan looked up, his eyes met mine. His left eye was the same dark brown it’d always been. But his right eye was black, completely black as if the pupil had consumed the entire ball. There was no color, no white, and as I stared at him I couldn’t help but think of them. Suddenly one thing was very clear to me: Logan was one of them.
He leapt up and raced down the hall. I told Jo I had to go, but barely glanced at her as I rushed after him. Down the hall, around a corner, I followed him into an older wing of the school. Near the music rooms, he dashed into the men’s room. I stopped as the door swung shut in my face. I wasn’t supposed to follow him in there; that was the rule, right? I mean, we labeled the doors for a reason, but glancing around I saw that there weren’t any classes in session; odds were he would be the only one in the bathroom. Since I was sure the only reason he’d gone in there was to get away from me, I pushed the door open and stepped inside.
“What are you?” I shouted.
Logan looked around, startled, but like I’d expected, the bathroom was empty. His eyes narrowed on me, one brown, one black. His stare made me feel incredibly small. I remembered the large black disk-like eyes of the aliens. I took a step back. For a moment I regretted following him, but I swallowed my nerves and refused to back down.
“Are you…you’re an alien. Your eye….” I took a breath. “You’re one of those things that took me, that experimented on me.” I thought of the night I’d been abducted. Remembering them, I realized I should be scared of Logan, but I was too angry to be afraid. “You were in on the whole thing, weren’t you?”
Logan laughed. “Let me get this straight – you think I’m one of the things that abducted you and implanted something in your brain, and your reaction to that is to chase after me and confront me about it?”
“Yeah, well, I’m pissed off,” I huffed, hoping there wasn’t anything about Logan to be afraid of.
Logan, whatever he was, still looked like harmless Logan. Except for his black eye he didn’t have any of the aliens’ characteristics, their grey skin or long fingers. Even his eye was human-sized, not a wide, oval disk like the eyes of the creatures from my dream. He couldn’t be one of them, but something was different about him.
Logan exhaled. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone…but I guess it’s too late for that. To be clear, I’m not one of them.” He spoke with such conviction, I wondered if he held as much animosity toward them as I did.
“Why are your eyes like that? Did they do that to you?”
Logan sighed. “I have to go home; I need a new contact. These things aren’t fitted for my eyes that great.”
He walked toward the door, but I stepped into his path. “What, no, you can’t leave without giving me any answers.”
“I just told you, I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”
I rolled my eyes. “I obviously already know something’s up.”
“That doesn’t mean I should tell you anything else.”
“You will if you don’t want me to tell the whole school about this.”
Logan’s brow creased. “God, you really play the role of manipulative bitch well, you know that? Besides, I don’t believe you’d actually out me because you have your own secrets right now that you want me to keep.”
I snorted. “Right, like anyone would believe that I think I was abducted. It’d take all of two seconds of denying to squash that rumor.”
“Not that secret…that you’ve been secretly hanging out with me, coming over to my house, cornering me in the men’s room…people might start to think–”
I felt the flush rise in my cheeks. “Alright fine, I won’t tell anyone about you…but you should still tell me why your eye looks like that.”
Logan’s eyes rocked back and forth as he thought things over.
I realized I’d been mean; I guess bitchy was my default setting, but I did need to know more, so I decided to take a breath and try to reach out to him. “Look, Logan, I know we’re not really friends, but as much as I try to just forget about all this alien stuff, it keeps coming up. Would it really hurt to have someone to talk to who understands?”
Logan’s expression softened. “Fine…I’ll tell you, but we’re ditching class. I can’t walk around without one contact for obvious reasons.”
I smil
ed. “Deal.”
“So, this is like your thing?” I asked, looking over the telescope pointed out his window. “Looking at space and stuff?”
Logan had put a new lens in and was putting his box of contacts away in his desk drawer while I poked around his bedroom. We’d left school, taking my car, and I was still waiting for Logan to fill me in on the rest of this alien stuff.
“Makes sense I guess, since you’re an alien and all.” I turned to him, crossing my arms and raising my eyebrows. When my eyes met his, I was glad he looked human again. In all honesty, I wasn’t convinced he was an alien. He said he wasn’t one of them. He didn’t look like the things that had taken me, but something had to have made his eyes that way. And I was willing to bet it wasn’t human.
Logan let out a short laugh but didn’t say anything else.
“I’m still waiting for you to give me the explain-y on that. Remember, it was the whole reason I left school with you.”
Logan sighed. “I know, so come on. I’ll explain.” He started to walk out.
“What? No, we just got here.” I followed after him. “Why can’t you just tell me here?”
Logan whirled around, stopping me in my tracks. His quick movement caused me to take a step back. For just a second, as I looked at him, I didn’t see the geeky, quiet, loner Logan Reed. Instead I saw through his thick-framed glasses an assertive look in his eyes. It made him appear confident, powerful, and maybe even a little dangerous.
“It’s better if I show you,” Logan said, and all I could do was nod and follow him.
Our subdivision was at the edge of town. Beyond the last circle was what everyone called Moody’s Woods. New Liberty was located in the dryer part of Texas, but not so far west that we didn’t see trees. The place where things were the greenest was Moody’s Woods. That wasn’t its official name, but the whole town started calling it that after sixteen-year-old Emma Moody went missing about ten years back. I still remember the day they found her body in the woods.
Everyone tells the story about what happened to Emma differently, most exaggerating it. Some claimed there were monsters in the woods, but I remember when it happened. The news said Emma had been camping with friends. At some point she wandered off and tripped. They found her at the bottom of a hill with a broken neck.
“Where are we going?” I asked, nearly tripping over a branch.
“You’ll see,” was all Logan said as he led us deeper into the woods.
I kept quiet, watching Logan weave between trees. He followed a path only he could see. Then I spotted a sign. It was brown and yellow with a picture of a rather menacing looking snake. Unable to ignore it, my eyes widened and I read, “Warning: Rattlesnakes may be found in this area.”
“Ignore the sign,” Logan called before I even had a chance to bring it to his attention.
“But–”
“Trust me; there aren’t any snakes around here.”
“So there’s a sign there because…?”
Logan stopped walking and turned to me. “Because they’re trying to keep people from wandering out this far.”
“Yeah, because there’re snakes.”
“No, because there’re other things out here.”
“What, aliens? If taking me out here is some kind of trap–”
Logan sighed. “Payton, just come on. I’ll explain when we get there.”
I kept quiet, but was suspicious of every leaf the wind lifted off the ground, unconvinced I wouldn’t see a snake slithering beneath it. A few more minutes passed. Logan’s pace slowed. I looked up to find him standing in front of a gated, metal chain-link fence. A large sign reading “No Public Access” was on one side of the fence’s gate. On the other was a sign that read “No Entry.” Three rows of barbed wire ran along the top, and on closer inspection I noticed it was sealed with a hefty looking lock.
“Where are we?”
“This is where I wanted to take you.”
“What’s in there?”
“That’s what I’m going to show you.”
“Logan, that’s locked up tight, so unless you have a key….”
Logan lifted his hand toward the fence, and my words fell away as it started to shake. I backed up a step, stumbling over a rock. The trembling metal clinked and clattered. My eyes widened. My lips parted. The fence rattled, and even though the sight of it was unnerving, I couldn’t look away. I watched as the lock lifted and sprung free in midair. The metal gate flew open, and the shaking stopped. My eyes shot to Logan. A satisfied smirk crossed his face, and he tilted his head toward the now-open fence.
“You did that?” I asked in a soft, shaken voice.
“This way,” he said.
After a moment’s hesitation, I followed him.
CHAPTER
9
Vines covered the black metal sides like spindly green fingers, tugging the spaceship downward to be swallowed by the earth. A large hill towered before us. The spaceship had crashed into the side of it. Most of the ship was buried in the side of the hill, or underground where it’d carved a trench into the dirt. The parts that were visible were of nothing I’d ever seen before. It was triangular in shape, and though it was dirty and partly obscured by plant life, I could see it was made of this strange, shiny black metal.
It has to be some kind of crashed military aircraft, I thought. Then we neared and I saw it was covered in strange, curling symbols. Could it really be a UFO? I stared as Logan walked toward the spaceship.
He glanced back. “You coming?” he asked, before disappearing into an opening in the metal monster.
Taking a deep breath, I reminded myself I asked for answers and followed after him. Cautiously, I stepped into the darkness. I jumped when lights flickered to life above our heads.
“How did you do that? Open the fence like that?” The ship had a slight forward tilt, making me feel off balance as we walked.
Logan continued walking as he spoke. “I don’t know exactly. But I think it has to do with magnetic energy. I think I have more of it than most people. I can…bend and move things. Only if they’re metal though.”
“With your mind?”
He glanced back, smiling.
“What else can you do?”
“That’s about it. I can see in the dark pretty well, but as far as super powers go that one’s kind of lame.”
“How?”
Logan looked me up and down. “I’m not sure I’m ready to tell that story yet.” He strode deeper into the darkness.
I had to stop walking for my mind catch up. Breathing deep, my eyes roamed the interior of the ship. We were wandering down a thin hallway made of the same black metal as the exterior. The walls were smooth and blank.
Logan had gotten a fair distance ahead of me. I ran to catch up to him.
“Where did this come from?” I asked.
We turned a corner, winding our way deeper into the maze of hallways. I held on to the walls to keep my balance, feeling the tilt shift as I changed directions.
He glanced at me but said nothing. I was getting annoyed with how much he was dragging this out, but I was also curious about where we were going. The hall came to a dead end. I looked back, wondering if we’d gotten lost. Then I looked back to Logan. He held his hand toward the wall like he had with the fence. The wall didn’t shake, but with a flick of his wrist it opened, revealing a passageway.
“This way,” he said, tilting his head in the direction of the hidden room.
He waited for me, but I didn’t move. Instead I stared into the darkness and started to rethink this entire trip.
“Hey.” Logan tore my attention from my worried thoughts. “It’s okay; you can trust me.”
A crooked smile graced his face. I took a breath. Then I stepped into the dark.
The ceiling was higher, and again lights blinked to life as we entered the space. Scattered throughout the room were large clear canisters filled with this eerie, glowing green liquid. Most were empty, but in the distance
I could see some with figures floating within them. A chill ran through me, and I took a low, deep breath. When Logan spoke next, his words startled me so badly I jumped.
“Can I trust you?” he asked.
“What?” I turned to him.
“I’m not supposed to be showing you any of this. You understand that, right?”
I nodded, then gulped as my eyes focused on the green tubes in the distance.
Logan sighed. “This is a ship my people returned to earth with; it crashed here about fifteen years ago.”
“Your people? You really are one of them, but you said–”
“I’m not one of them, but I’m not exactly human either.”
I didn’t understand. “What are you then?”
Logan walked deeper into the room. “Tagging humans isn’t the only reason the Greys abduct people.” He stood before one of the empty canisters. The green liquid reflected off the lenses of his glasses. “They’ve been taking humans and studying them for thousands of years – experimenting on them.”
Experimenting? I wondered if they’d experimented on Logan. Was that why his eyes were black, and he could move things with his mind?
“Why?” I asked in a breathy voice. My mind fought to process everything he was telling me.
Logan’s eyes traced my face as if he were assessing whether I could handle what he was about to say next.
“To make crossbreeds,” he said. “They wanted people that were weak enough for them to control but that had the right genetic makeup to survive their planet. They abducted people and changed their DNA just enough so they could survive the harsh climate of their planet.”
“Is that what they did to you? Experiment on you?”
Logan shook his head. “Not me. I was born there. I came here when I was three…well, about three. I don’t know how well our years match up with theirs. It’s what they did to my mom though.”
“Your mom?” I thought about Mrs. Reed. She wasn’t as outgoing as the other soccer moms. She worked a lot, but she was a nice person. Every time I’d see her she was smiling. I thought about her being taken the way I had been. Then I thought about what else they would have done to her.
