American Girl On Saturn

by Nikki Godwin

  If everyone in the room wasn’t looking at me, I’d give Noah the best evil-eye possible, but with this audience, it’d possibly raise questions. If nothing else, it’d get comments. So I bite my tongue, crawl over Noah’s and Milo’s outstretched legs, and squeeze into the empty spot next to Milo. I smell his body wash from here. I have to stop sitting so close to this boy.

  Emery shushes everyone and starts the DVD. She spends more time glancing around to make sure we’re all paying attention than she does watching the TV herself. I feel like she’s going to give us a Spaceships Around Saturn pop quiz when it’s over. Maybe I should take note of what the guys are wearing, just in case she asks. Or maybe I should count the number of wardrobe changes.

  We sit through the first two songs in silence. Then, in true-Emery-style, she’s the first one to speak up in the middle of the third song.

  “Why is that girl crying?” she asks. “I would be happy at your show, not a stupid crybaby.”

  Benji answers, probably on impulse, since she’s usually grilling him.

  “They just get emotional because we’re they’re favorite band,” he says.

  Emery studies the TV for a moment. “Why do all those people make posters?”

  “So we’ll notice them,” Benji says. “They want to stand out.”

  Noah cracks up, and dread rushes through my veins. I don’t know what he’s about to say, but I know it’s going to involve me.

  “Chloe would make one,” Noah says. “She likes to draw. It’d probably say, ‘I love Noah’s shorts!’”

  Milo elbows Noah in the ribs.

  “She wouldn’t waste a poster on your shorts,” Milo says. “It’d say, ‘Milo wasn’t dead. He was with me!’”

  “Ooh la la,” Tate pipes up. “Let the rumors begin. Chloe Branson – the girl who destroyed Tito. How dare you!”

  Milo shoots this sly grin my way, and I absolutely crumble to a million pieces. I can somewhat handle his flirtatiousness when we’re alone…in a dark tent…where he can’t see my face. But here, in my dad’s game room, with his four Saturn brothers and my two Earth sisters, I just can’t.

  “You know,” Milo says. “You’d have all kinds of juicy gossip about you. Destroying Tito, hanging out with the dead guy in Saturn…”

  Whatever else he was going to list is immediately cut off by Jules, who leaps up from the sectional and points at Aralie.

  “Dead guys are your thing!” he shouts. “You’re the one who likes that zombie band.”

  He spins around and looks to Benji for help.

  “Dude, you know the one,” Jules says, talking with his hands. “We always laugh at their contacts and weird hair colors, how they’re trying to be all rock star and trendy and sing about blood and all that shit.”

  “Language!” Milo shouts. “Emery’s in the room.”

  Jules sighs all dramatically, and I wonder how he even pulls off this whole bad boy vibe. Sure, he looks the part. Black hair, dark eyes, eyebrow piercing, tattoos, reeks of cigarettes. He’s stereotypical at best. At least One Direction’s “bad boy” Zayn can sing…and draw. Jules isn’t even that talented. He’s just here to fit the quota, I guess.

  Benji’s blonde eyebrows narrow together then his eyes widen.

  “Yes!” he says. “Mutated Arteries or something? That guy has the red and black hair. They’re effed up.”

  “Mutilated Arteries,” Emery, of all people, corrects Benji. “It’s Mutilated. And that is my sister’s favorite band, so you need to be nice.”

  She grabs the remote and pauses her forgotten DVD. The screen freezes on a woman who is far too old to be holding that “I want to date and mate with Tate” poster. She’s old enough to pass for Tate’s mom.

  “Thank you, Emery,” Aralie says. She pushes herself off of the sectional and crosses the room to standoff with Jules. “At least my band actually plays their own instruments. It’s more than I’ve seen any of your band do.”

  Milo clears his throat next to me, but I shake my head. He doesn’t need to jump into this battle. Instead, Benji does. Of course he would. He has to defend Jenji. This is one of those moments that calls for an epic eye roll, but I don’t want to break my attention away from them.

  “I can play piano,” Benji says. “Milo plays guitar. Noah can play the drums. We do actually have other talents, just for the record.”

  Aralie laughs. “Then what talent does Jules have? I didn’t hear his name in your little instrumental list, and he sure as hell doesn’t have the best voice of you guys.”

  Milo squirms around next to me, readjusting his T-shirt and glancing awkwardly around the room. Tate pulls his legs up toward his chest and buries his face into his knees. Emery swaps panicked expressions with Noah. I feel exactly how they all look.

  Benji folds his arms over his chest, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to defend Jules to the death. But he glances in our direction. Emery pouts her lips, and her eyes widen with this sad-faced-doe look, and Benji sits back down. Did Emery seriously just put a dent in Jenji?! Holy hell. Why must we be on lockdown? The Twitter-verse needs to know that my baby sister just burst the Jenji bromance bubble.

  Jules shakes his head and laughs. It’s almost condescending.

  “When you’re an international superstar, then you can bitch about whether someone has talent,” he says, stepping a bit too close to Aralie. “You’re just a pretty rocker girl who wants a badass rocker boy.”

  Aralie shoves Jules with both hands, slamming him back into the sectional and crushing the right half of Benji’s body. Benji pushes Jules off of him and dashes toward the safety zone – with us. He sits next to Emery, and she snuggles up between him and Noah like she’s in boyband heaven.

  “At least when I find me a badass rocker boy, he’ll know how to do more than stand on a stage and try to look good while his band mates out-sing him!” Aralie’s voice rises to an octave that I’m not sure even Milo could hit.

  Jules jumps up again but doesn’t advance toward my sister.

  “This is bullshit!” he shouts. “I should be out there living our DVD, not watching the damn thing on lockdown!”

  “Well,” Aralie says, crossing her arms. “I can’t blame them for shooting at a jerkoff like you!”

  Through the cursing and shouting match, Emery hasn’t winced – until Aralie said ‘jerkoff.’

  “Uhh, Aralie?” Emery speaks up. “Remember what Mom said? You’re supposed to say ‘jerkface’ if I’m in the room.”

  Oh, Emery. Why? Why must you taunt Aralie when she’s two breaths away from slamming her fist into Jules’s face and making his eyebrow ring meet his skull?

  “Shut up!” Aralie shrieks.

  Mom rushes into the room, arms flailing and jaw dropped. She’s really slacking off on her refereeing skills. She never takes this long to enter a shouting match. Aralie and Jules remain as statues, still facing off next to the frozen image of a cougar who wants to mate with Tate.

  “Okay, okay, let’s just all calm down,” Mom says in her soothing-mom-voice. “What’s going on? Why the screaming?”

  Jules talks first. “Aralie said I couldn’t sing. She insulted all of my talents.”

  “After he made fun of Mutilated Arteries,” Aralie clarifies. “And I only said what everyone on Twitter has already stated.”

  Mom sighs and looks over at the rest of us. We stay planted, like a jury who is staring at a judge yet too scared to hand over our final verdict. So we remain silent and emotionless.

  “Aralie, can you please not insult our company?” Mom asks.

  My sister opens her mouth to argue, but Mom holds up a finger to stop her. Then Mom turns to Jules.

  “And can you please not insult my daughter’s favorite band just because you may not like them? You do a great job at provoking her,” she scolds the bad boy.

  She steps back and examines the competitors for a moment.

  “You two are so much alike,” she tells them. “Such explosive personalities. Can we j
ust try to get along – or avoid each other – until the end of this lockdown?”

  Aralie gives Jules a death glare and storms out of the room. Benji clears his throat to draw Mom’s and Jules’s attention.

  “I think I’m gonna go for a swim,” Benji says. “To cool off. Jules should come with me.”

  Mom says it’s a wonderful idea, and the bromance of Jenji exits the room. Emery jumps up to follow, but Mom stops her. She says that the guys need some “boy time.”

  Emery disappears upstairs, leaving me with Tate, Milo, and Noah…and the pixilated cougar on the screen. How has no one mentioned this crazy old woman who wants in Tate’s pants?

  “We should probably go with Benji and Jules,” Tate suggests.

  Noah agrees, something about showing Jules that they’re all here for him. Noah and Tate head outside, leaving me alone with Milo and the screenshot.

  Chapter Nine

  “I should probably go with them,” Milo says. “Jules is having a harder time with this lockdown bit than any of us.”

  Obviously. He picks fights with my sister any chance he can. Laundry. Twitter followers. Now her favorite band. It’s like he makes it a priority to piss Aralie off. He knows he’s going to provoke her and get under her skin, and he thrives off of it. How dare he play the victim card in front of Mom like that. That untalented jerkoff.

  “You’re right,” I say. I have to get rid of Milo before I take my anger toward Jules out on him. “Go give him one of those mature Milo Grayson lectures. Offer him some Oreos.”

  “Are you kidding? I only share Oreos with you.” He smiles a perfect smile and heads toward the pool. But he stops and looks back. “I’ll see you later?”

  “Definitely.” I say the word too fast.

  Luckily he disappears around the corner. The patio door squeaks when he pulls it open. I wait to hear it click shut before I grab the remote. I stop Emery’s DVD. That old chick can date and mate with Tate some other time. I rush upstairs to my bedroom – away from arguing sisters, untalented bad boys, and cougars after Saturn.

  And there he is on my door. Tate’s head. Again. I peel it off, stick him back on Aralie’s door, and shut myself away in my bedroom. I don’t know what’s so damn funny about Tate’s head on our bedroom doors, but I don’t even feel like arguing.

  I crawl onto my bed, flip open my laptop, and browse the gossip columns to see what new theories have been posted about Spaceships Around Saturn and where they may be. I’ve read everything from a deserted tropical island near Cuba to an underground cave in the depths of the Rocky Mountains. It’s amazing what people come up with on the internet.

  I head over to Twitter to see what’s being said, but I pull up Milo’s account instead. His last tweet was the night of the shooting.

  It reads:About to play NYC! Get pumpedddd! I have the best life everrrr!

  His extra letters make me smile. Below his tweet is a retweet of Noah.

  NYC is about to get Saturnized! Bring it loud! We wanna hear you scream!

  My heart actually sinks like a mutilated artery. I feel so terribly sad for them. There they were, in their hotel rooms or maybe backstage warming up, tweeting to their millions of fans. All of those Saturnites were in the audience, waiting for this big NYC show, with their posters and their Spaceships Around Saturn T-Shirts.

  Milo thought he had the best life everrrr, and Noah was excited about the loud fans. God, this sucks for them. There’s even a twinge of pity in my faltering heart for Jules. I shouldn’t have said he was untalented, even if I never verbalized it. He’s obviously got something that appeals to 6.9 million followers. This is what he meant, though. He should be living that DVD, not watching it on lockdown with us while arguing with Aralie.

  I don’t know how long I stare at Milo’s Twitter feed before there’s a knock at my door. I slam the laptop shut, so no one will know what I was doing, and announce that the door’s open. Emery peeks her head inside.

  “Hey,” she says. “Can you do me a favor and get on the Twitter and see what’s going on?”

  She slides in between the door and the frame like a little snake slithering into my bedroom. Then she bounces over to my bed and hops up with a big smile.

  “The guys haven’t been on Twitter,” I remind her. “They don’t have access, remember?”

  She nods. “I know. I just wanna see what all those stupid girls are saying about our boys.”

  She says ‘our boys’ in that same insinuating voice that Tate used when he said ‘ooh la la.’ Part of me knows that she only chose my room to come into because I follow them on Twitter. But another part of me wants to believe that she knows I’m secretly becoming a Saturnite.

  I laugh and open up my laptop. I click the ‘home’ button on Twitter before she can see Milo’s feed plastered on my screen. The screen refreshes in record nanoseconds.

  “What I am looking for first?” I ask.

  “Look up that Zoe girl who is always talking about Benji,” she says.

  Sadly, I know exactly who she’s talking about. Zoe is maybe fifteen, a huge Benji fan, and has pink streaks in her blonde hair. Her profile picture is one of her with Benji when she met SAS in January. She also tweets fifty to one hundred times a day, mostly to Benji, and she has two million followers herself. People retweet her religiously. She’s like a Saturnite cult leader.

  I type the Z into the search bar. Zayn Malik from One Direction pops up instantly. Without thinking, I click on him, and Emery sees that blue button that says I’m following Zayn all lit up before I can hit the back button in the browser.

  She gasps. “You follow a One Direction guy?”

  I should lie. I should say it was an accident. I don’t know how I clicked to follow him. It must be a mistake. But she’ll see right through me.

  “He can sing, like, amazingly well,” I say in my own defense. “And he draws. He tweets pictures of his drawings, and I like to look at them. He’s their best singer. Give me a break.”

  She studies my face for a second, glances at Zayn’s rarely-updated Twitter feed, and squints her eyes at me.

  “Who is the best singer in Spaceships Around Saturn?” she asks, all serious and businesslike.

  I fake hesitation to make her think that I’m having to debate my answer.

  “Milo,” I finally say, holding back all of my eagerness.

  She stares at me even harder now. “Who is a better singer – Milo or Zayn from One Direction?”

  This time, I don’t hesitate.

  “Milo,” I say. “Definitely Milo.”

  She smiles a pageant-winning smile, slowly and happily.

  “Good!” she says. “You can follow Zayn.”

  Nice to know I have the permission of a five-year-old to follow a boyband guy outside of Spaceships Around Saturn. I didn’t think she’d be so kind to an Earthling like that.

  We browse Zoe’s Twitter feed, which is nothing but wishes of return for ‘our boys.’ I dig through a few other feeds that Emery suggests, but there’s nothing out there that we don’t already know. Actually, we know more – we know exactly where they are. They’re in our swimming pool at the moment.

  “I can’t believe someone shot at them,” Emery says quietly. “That’s sad. What if they got shot or hurt or something? Then I would cry like a crybaby.”

  Her face goes all sad, like a hound dog puppy with big eyes and droopy ears. She stares at my screen, and her eyes glaze over. I’m not sure if she’s going to cry, so I unleash the last bit of hope for gossip that I have.

  “Have you ever watched Darby’s Daily Dose of Drama?” I ask her. “She’s a YouTube girl.”

  Emery shakes her head while I type in the URL for Darby’s channel. I just discovered Darby days ago, when the Saturn guys first showed up at our house, but I’ve watched most of her videos and fallen in love with her wit and silly gossip.

  Her photo pops up on the screen. She’s a fellow brunette with blonde highlights, maybe sixteen years old. She sort of looks li
ke a dolphin with wide eyes and a silly mouth-shut grin. At least she doesn’t pose with that stupid duck face.

  Emery and I stretch out on my bed, and I position the laptop on my pillow. Darby’s segments are only about a minute or two long, but she posts daily. Most days, it’s about Spaceships Around Saturn. She’s a self-proclaimed Saturnite, and she’s Team Tate, so I figure Emery will like her. I admit, it helps me like her knowing she doesn’t want Milo.

  I click on today’s post, which I haven’t watched yet. The headline pops up, and I burst into laughter. I face-plant into my blankets.

  Emery pauses the video and says, “What!? What!?” nonstop in a total fangirl panic.

  I pull away from the blankets, inhale, and glance up at the screen. The words are frozen in aqua blue. Was SAS’s Shooting Faked For Jules to Have Cosmetic Surgery?

  As soon as I see the words, I fall back into my blankets. Emery pulls the computer screen down so I can’t see it and waits for me to regain some composure. Finally, I push myself up into a sitting position.

  “She wants to know if the shooting was faked for Jules to have plastic surgery,” I say.

  Emery stares at me like it’s the dumbest thing she’s ever heard. Maybe she doesn’t understand. Okay, maybe it’s not that funny. I push the screen back and hit play. A picture of Jules making a pained face while scratching his eyebrow piercing pops up next.

  “So guys,” Darby says through my speakers. “We all know Jules has had that eyebrow piercing for quite some time now. Some of you love it and find it super sexy. And some of you, like me, think it’s an atrocious piece of metal sprouting from his face.”

  She curls her nose up, and the screen flashes to a picture of Jules. I admit, it’s a better picture of him. He’s wearing a tight black shirt and doing that badass smirk that he usually can’t pull off. The piercing doesn’t look so bad. It really fits his look.

  The photo fizzles out, and a new one takes its place. He looks like he was mid-sneeze when some paparazzi stalker snapped this one. Half of his face is crinkled up, with his mouth in a creepy snarl and his eye half shut. The picture slowly enlarges, zooming in on his eye and piercing.