by Cat Jordan
“Shut up, Em.”
I take Priya by the hand and walk with her to the edge of the water.
Does she know how to swim? She has to know, right? I mean, everyone knows how to swim.
Her eyes meet mine. “I know how to swim,” she says.
“Okay, but you’re not wearing a bathing suit,” I remind her. “You might not want to go too far.”
We wade into the lake together and I feel Priya’s hand grip mine tighter as the water laps at our feet. She jumps with each step.
“It’s cold,” she says.
But it’s not. It’s actually warm. Unusually warm.
Even so, she shivers and clings to me. I stand behind her and wrap my arms around her, keeping her warm, keeping her stable. There is barely any wind, but I worry that the slightest wave will knock her over.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Brian approach the lifeguard tower. I can only imagine what he’s saying to her, trying to get her attention:
Oh hey, Miranda, fancy meeting you here.
“This is beautiful,” Priya says into my neck as she leans back into me. “I will miss this when I leave.”
“No lakes where you’re from?”
I feel her head shake. “Our water long ago stopped being entertainment. We experienced a drought that made us severely restrict water usage.”
“Oh yeah, well, that happens.” What does she mean? Where is she from? California, maybe? They’ve had a drought there for years. I wish she would just tell me the truth. Brian may not care, but Emily’s the pit bull of the family. She won’t let it go and she’ll keep on me until she has an answer.
The sun on my shoulders heats up my T-shirt. I gotta take it off before I sweat to death. “I’m going to put this back on the sand, okay? I’ll be right back.”
I turn from her, stripping my shirt off over my head, and—
“What’s wrong with her?” Emily asks me as soon as I turn toward the shore. She’s standing on her towel, hands on her hips, surveying the lake like a sentry.
I brush past her, shoulder to shoulder, and go to my own towel. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Matty, she’s . . . different.”
I snort. “Yeah, I know. That’s what I like about her.” I kneel on the towel and reach for the tote bag.
Emily stands over me, hovering behind my back, watching my every move, dissecting it.
“Matty.”
“What.”
“I mean, she’s different, like, different. Like, wrong—”
I whip around and look up at Em. “There’s nothing wrong with her. She’s smart and she’s sweet and she’s interested in a lot of the same things I’m interested in.”
Em holds my gaze. “She’s super skinny.”
I feel my eyes roll. “Oh, it’s her weight. You’re jealous.”
“What? No!”
“Please, Em, I know what you’re doing. It’s like, fat-shaming or whatever.” I wave a hand at her.
“I’m not jealous of her weight, for god’s sake. You”—she punctuates the air with a finger—“are an idiot.”
“Whatever. I’m an idiot.” I start to go back to the lake but Emily stops me.
“If you can get past your ego for one second and the fact that I turned you down—”
“I don’t care.”
“And actually listen to what I’m saying—”
“What.”
“Your girlfriend—”
“Not my girlfriend.”
“—is like, really skinny. She doesn’t look natural.”
I shrug. “So, maybe she diets a lot.”
“Or maybe she’s sick. Or anorexic or something.”
“Nope. I’ve seen her eat massive quantities of pizza. She loves pizza.”
“Okay, bulimic then. She’s sticking her finger down her throat when you’re not looking.”
Okay, that’s gross. Girls are gross. “No, she’s not.”
“How do you know?”
“How do you know?”
“Hey, somebody help her!” We hear a kid behind us call out. Emily and I both turn and see Priya far away from shore, head barely above the water, hands waving, eyes bobbing, playing peekaboo with us. Definitely not swimming, not even kicking her legs in a doggy paddle.
“Hey!” I shout. “Priya, stop!”
“Miranda!” Emily yells at the lifeguard tower. “Eric!”
But Eric isn’t there and Miranda is busy—with Brian, who is splashing in the water in front of her, feigning distress. “Brian, what the—”
When I turn, Emily is gone. In the time it takes me to look from the empty tower to Priya, Em is already in the lake, swimming toward the raft, her long arms pulling her through the water in fast, smooth strokes.
I feel panic constrict my throat and my stomach and I can’t breathe, let alone shout for help. I hurl myself into the lake, flailing my arms and kicking my feet.
The sounds of the shore—the kids playing, the parents nagging, the lifeguard whistle blowing—become dulled background noise as I focus on Emily and Priya. It’s as if I’m staring down a tunnel, and everything around me goes into dark, soft focus.
Ahead of me, Em’s at Priya’s side. She flips Priya upside down so she floats on her back, then scoots underneath. Hooking her arms underneath Priya’s armpits, she swims backward, her powerful legs kicking and propelling them both to the shore. Emily is so much shorter than Priya, yet in the water, it’s as if her body has elongated to ten feet, her arms like muscular tendrils around Priya’s slender frame.
As they pass me, I hold on to Priya’s legs and help speed Emily to shore. Together we lift her out of the lake and lower her gently to the sand, just out of the water’s reach.
Miranda and Eric, the lifeguards who weren’t guarding anyone’s lives, suddenly appear out of the crowd. They quickly swoop in and edge Emily and me aside. Our eyes meet and I see the exhilaration in Emily’s face, the satisfaction that she helped someone—we helped someone.
“Get back, everyone, back, back!” Eric commands the onlookers. I hold my ground, refusing to give up my spot in the sand. I need to make sure nothing happens, that she doesn’t . . .
Oh my god. Please don’t die.
Miranda does all the stuff she was taught in lifeguard class: she checks Priya’s airways, listens to her breath with her head tilted sideways, feels for a pulse. Priya’s chest very slowly rises and falls, her breath hiccupping a few times before becoming steady, if shallow. Miranda nods curtly but is obviously relieved. No one’s dying on her watch. Not today, at least.
“She’ll be fine,” she says to the group of strangers. They sigh and applaud, belatedly. Eric and Miranda acknowledge the kudos even as they carefully move Priya from the sand to a blanket in the shade.
But everyone should be cheering for Emily’s bravery, not these two clowns in Cheez-It suits. They didn’t do anything remarkable. I search the onlookers for Emily, to thank her myself, but she’s gone, faded into the crowd.
I hurry to Priya’s side and kneel at the blanket. She’s as still as if she were sleeping. I wipe water off her chin and eyes with the edge of a towel, careful not to get sand in them. Her long black lashes sparkle in the sunlight filtering through the leaves above. The chain around her neck threatens to strangle her; I carefully adjust the charm.
I call her name gently.
Her eyes flutter open and she looks panicked at first, then sees me. I feel her hand reach for mine. I squeeze back and don’t let go.
“You said you could swim.”
“I can,” she says.
“No, you can’t.”
Her eyebrows knit. “I should be able to. I have the collected knowledge of thousands of people.” She tries to sit up and coughs a couple of times, spitting up some of the brackish water she swallowed and wiping it away with the back of her hand. “I don’t understand why I was unable to access that data.” She appears truly perplexed. “I have done this before.”
“You’ve gone swimming before?”
“No, but something similar. Back on my planet.”
As she says this, I feel someone hovering behind me. I glance over my shoulder and see Emily. She holds a bottle of water with a straw in it.
She heard. Every word.
“Um, for, uh . . . her. She should take slow sips,” she says. Then addressing Priya directly, she adds, “Don’t gulp it down, okay?”
Priya takes the water and nods. “Thank you. You saved me.”
Emily looks away, embarrassed. “Oh, um, yeah, okay.” Her gaze meets mine. “Matty, can I talk to you? Over there?” She jerks her head toward the water.
I follow Em to the edge of the lake, far enough away that Priya can’t hear us but not so far that I can’t keep an eye on her. I don’t want to let her out of my sight.
“What’s going on?” Emily’s tone is blunt.
“You asked me that already. I told you. She’s visiting from out of town.”
“Way out of town, to hear her talk.” Em crosses her arms over her chest. “Is she, like, slow or something?”
“Slow? What are you—”
“Is she an escaped mental patient?”
“N-noooo?” I answer less quickly. Emily notices my split-second hesitation and seizes upon it.
“Have you checked her ID?”
“Why would I—”
“Have you checked her phone?”
“She doesn’t have one.”
“Everyone has a phone.”
“She doesn’t.”
“Well, that’s not normal, either.”
“Just because she doesn’t have a phone—”
“And she thinks she’s from another planet.”
“—doesn’t mean she has mental issues. She’s sweet and kind and, you know, totally harmless, so what’s the big fucking deal?”
Emily takes me by the shoulders. Her hands are cool, her skin moist. “Matty, she’s wearing a white wig on top of her hair.”
“Duh. I know that.”
“Yeah, okay, but—”
“Girls wear wigs, Em. It’s not a sign of mental instability.”
We both look over at Priya sitting on the blanket. As usual, her legs are stretched out in front of her, two long sticks under a wilted tutu. She doesn’t see us watching her as she struggles to aim her mouth around the straw.
I hear Emily’s voice as I watch Priya. “Look, Matty . . . when I was in the water with her, I noticed the wig slip off. And . . .” Em pauses.
“And . . . go on.”
“She has a scar, like, a really crazy scar here.” Em draws a finger from the side of her head down to the base of her hairline in the shape of a C.
“So?” I shrug her off even though, yeah, of course it’s weird and of course I care. A scar like that could mean a lot of things. However, none of those things are any of Emily’s business.
“She’s covering something up.”
“If you had a scar like that, you’d cover it up too.”
Em shakes her own ponytail; wet like a rag, it smacks against her back and neck. “That’s not what I mean. Maybe you should talk to your mom about her. She’s a nurse. She might know something that—”
“I don’t need to talk to my mother. I don’t need to talk to anyone.”
I see Brian shuffling over to Priya, dropping his butt onto the towel next to her. He holds a joint out to her. I wonder if I should intervene. Do they have pot on her planet?
Did I just . . . ?
“Maybe she’s from another country, all right? Maybe English isn’t her first language.”
“Fine.” She pounces. “What is?”
“I have no idea, Em.” And that is the absolute truth. “But look, she’s not going to be here for very long and I really want to hang out with her.” I keep my gaze steady on Em until she nods that she gets it.
“Yeah, sure. I just think maybe you should allow for the idea that while hanging out with her and pretending everything’s okay is good for you—it might not be good for her.”
There is a long pause after she says this, and I feel like something more is coming, there’s something more she wants to say, but she doesn’t. “We cool?”
Em sighs heavily. “Whatever, dipshit.”
I start to walk away and then stop. “Thanks for . . . you know.” I know she knows what I mean: Thanks for saving Priya’s life.
“Yeah, yeah. Just don’t let her smoke any of that crap Brian’s got.”
“No good?” Em rarely smokes, but she knows quality.
She shakes her head. “It smells like a pizza.”
“Huh. She might like that, actually.”
I get to Priya just as Brian is showing her how to inhale.
“She doesn’t smoke,” I say, pushing the joint away from her. “And that’s not even good shit. Em says it’s, like, oregano or something.”
Brian brings the burning end of the joint right up to his eye. “What?” He holds it up to me. “Try it yourself.”
“No. And by the way, fuck you,” I tell him. I start to gather our stuff and shove it all in the canvas tote.
“What? Fuck me? Why?”
“You were talking to Miranda, distracting her from watching the lake. Priya could have drowned.”
My friend’s mouth opens and closes. “But . . . but . . . Em was there.”
“What if she wasn’t?”
“But she was.”
I help Priya up and tug her along with me. If Toad says anything of substance after that—which is doubtful—I don’t hear it.
4:17 P.M.
Emily’s questions haunt me on the ride home. With every twist on the road, every dip and turn we take, I feel Priya’s fingers grip my shirt and press into my skin and I think:
What is wrong with you?
Where are you from?
Who are you, really?
Why won’t you tell me the truth?
I’m silent as I pull the bike into the garage, quiet as I put away towels and shake the sand out of my sneakers. Priya looks tired, even as she stoops to greet Ginger, who only has eyes for the girl, whose tail swishes happily on the grass. My dog isn’t particularly discerning when it comes to humans. If they have food or a hand to pet her, she’s over the moon. But can she detect good character?
Can I?
What, I wonder, will make Priya crack? What will be the thing that makes her break down and tell me the truth?
And then it hits me. I have it.
4:30 P.M.
We have the World’s Oldest VCR.
It’s the only thing I can use to play the video of “our” episode of Real-Life Mystery, a reality show from the early nineties that hardly anyone watched about things that never really happened. In this case, it’s the UFO landing in the space field. The show chose our small town and our small UFO event since it was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the supposed crash landing.
(And not for nothing, but if aliens have the kind of technology to travel light-years across the galaxy, don’t you think they could have avoided crashing into Earth? I mean, it’s right there. They would have seen it. Whatever.)
I clear some space on the living room couch for Priya to sit and turn on all the doodads to get the VCR going. She settles into the cushions eagerly, her eyes alight with anticipation.
I sit next to her and press play on the remote. There’s a loud hum as the machine whirs to life.
The tape has been played so many times, paused and examined frame by frame, that there are actual ridges in it. The audio clicks and pops as the damaged tape passes over the metal heads inside the machine. I have to crank the volume way up to get any decent sound out of it.
“. . . tonight we reveal the truth behind the aliens next door.” The voice-over guy hits the words truth and aliens megahard, in case you don’t get it. This is gonna be some serious shit, people, brace yourselves.
The screen dissolves from its opening title to a shot of a sky filled with stars.
“This is, like, we’re the aliens, you know. We’re floating in space,” I tell Priya. “Oh, and that’s a map of Pennsylvania so you can see where in the whole state our crappy little town is.”
Cut back to space and now we’re moving faster, plummeting through the atmosphere toward Earth. “These are, like, the lamest special effects ever. Like, ever. How much did they spend on this, ten bucks?”
I feel Priya’s gaze on me but she says nothing. I’m sure she’s engrossed in the spectacularity that is Real-Life Mystery.
“It’s not like it’s in a suburb of McMansions. I mean, it’s just some crummy field and no one even died. And it was empty, too. It was the middle of winter and my granddad didn’t even have anything growing.”
The camera swoops down into the field as if it were on a helicopter, trying hard to make us feel like we’re “in” the ship.
And then a smash cut to black as we “hit” the ground, fade up to a shot of fog surrounding a cone-shaped metal object. “That is so clearly a model . . . ,” I mumble. I can’t help myself.
For the next half hour, though, even fast-forwarding through the commercials for Joe Versus the Volcano, I try to stay silent to allow Priya to absorb the whole fiasco. The docudrama is absorbing in a train wreck sort of way. I’ve seen it so many times, I’ve memorized every scene, every hint of conspiracy, every interview—including the one with DJ Jones.
Throughout, I half watch the screen, half watch Priya. She’s impassive, her beautiful face a blank. I can’t tell if she thinks this is silly or stupendous.
“Well?” I ask when the credits finally roll. I hit pause on the remote.
“Remarkable,” she says. “This is not true, of course.”
I exhale, relieved beyond belief. “Thank you. No, not at all.”
She points at the freeze-frame on screen, which is a shot of the crashed ship under the credits. “There are so many questions left unanswered.” She begins ticking off points on her long fingers. “What technology brought that ship here? Did its designers have faster-than-light propulsion? If so, what was the matter used to create it?”
“Um . . .”
“Or did it travel through a wormhole? If so, which one? From where? Why didn’t it disintegrate upon entering Earth’s atmosphere?”
