American Girl On Saturn

by Nikki Godwin

  My new phone vibrates in my hand. One new message. From Noah Winters.

  Why are you standing on the patio like a weirdo?

  I look across the yard, and he waves to me. I don’t think he knows how much I’ll miss him. Of course, I’ll miss Milo more, but Noah owns a little piece of my heart too. I shouldn’t play favorites, but Noah is definitely next-in-line to Milo in the hierarchy for my favorite Saturn boy.

  The last colors of butterfly blood drain from the sky as darkness falls. Tate tosses another match into the fire while Benji updates Twitter again.

  Milo’s return to Twitter was pretty simple. It consisted of, “We’re baaaaaaaaack! #TiToLives!” Then he followed me and Aralie. He stuck his phone on his charger, and that was about it. Benji hasn’t put his phone down since I put it in his hands.

  Three people are missing from around the bonfire – Jules, Milo, and Dad. Uh oh.

  I look to Aralie, and she reads the sister-code on my face before I even have to ask.

  “Dad is giving them the boyfriend lecture,” she says. “I want to die.”

  I sit next to Noah, but Aralie gets up and joins us. That’s a first. She even leaves Tate behind. She pulls up a picture on her phone and holds it up for me to see.

  “That’s the first picture I’m posting on Facebook as soon as I have clearance,” she says, almost talking in Dad’s government-voice.

  It’s the picture of Milo and me, the night of we set off wish lanterns. The night he promised to be my firefly. I think Aralie may actually love that picture more than I do. She’s proud of it.

  “And my caption is going to say to ‘My sister’s new boyfriend is hotter than yours.’ What do you think?” She smiles demonically, sort of like Emery does at times.

  “It’s perfect,” Milo’s voice says from behind us. “Thanks for the compliment, by the way.”

  Jules walks past us and joins Tate in Aralie’s previous spot. She practically dives over the bonfire to get to them. Milo sits next to me and smiles. Dad’s lecture must not have been too harsh or he would be avoiding me like those two days after Emery’s mistaken nudity moment.

  Dad takes over the grill for Godfrey as Mom helps Emery make another s’more. I doubt Emery will eat anything of real substance tonight, but she says she’s still celebrating her birthday since last night’s celebration was ruined by Aralie’s outburst.

  “How’d it go?” I ask Milo.

  “Not bad really,” he says. “I think a lot of it was aimed more at Jules. Your dad likes me.”

  Noah agrees. “He talked to Milo a lot during that fishing trip. I think your mom told him to.”

  Oh, she would. Mom’s known all along that something was up with Milo and me. She probably told Dad to get to know him and see what he thought about him.

  “Dad!” Aralie yells, rushing toward the grill. “Can we tell people now? I mean, they have their phones back, so people can trace the coordinates and all that other crap you said before.”

  Dad hesitates as he swirls the spatula around in his hand.

  “I’m not sure the guys would want you to announce that, Air,” he says. “We’d have screaming girls lined up all around our property. It’d be Emery on steroids.”

  “We can handle it,” Jules says, walking up next to Aralie. “We deal with it all the time. I just don’t know if Aralie can handle it.”

  She rams her elbow into his stomach and smiles at Dad.

  “I can handle it,” she says. “And I know Mom, Chloe, and Em can too. Please let me post these pictures already. I’m about to die here.”

  Dad laughs. “I didn’t expect this from you. Emery, sure. Chloe, maybe. But never you.”

  “God, Dad,” she says through her teeth. “I’m a Saturnite, okay? I’m a freaking Saturnite. Now can you just give me clearance to post these stupid pictures?”

  “You have clearance,” Dad says in his secret agent voice.

  “Hell yes!” Aralie shouts, jumping up and down. “I’m going to use my laptop. It’s quicker than doing this on my phone.”

  Jules grabs her arm. “Are you not going to eat?”

  “Not right now,” she says in a panicked voice. “I have to post these.”

  She pulls her arm free and runs toward the house. Tate says he has to watch this and runs after her. Benji screams not to post any bad pictures of him, and Emery says to post every picture of her. I’m just thankful Mom picked up our new phones today rather than after lockdown officially ends. Things are about to get crazy.

  An hour later, I pull up my Facebook account. I burst out laughing as soon as I see the notification. Aralie Branson has tagged you in 238 pictures.

  Milo turns away from his guitar and looks at me across the treehouse.

  “Care to share?” he asks.

  I hold up my phone so he can see the notification. He shakes his head and reminds me to remind him later that he needs to send Aralie a friend request. Apparently the guys all have theirs blocked so no one can request them. This is what super-Saturnite status feels like. I love it. It’s like I’m truly with the band.

  Milo settles in on the futon, but I walk over to the window. The bonfire fizzles a bit and everyone else has gone inside, but Jules and Aralie are still cuddled up next to the last bit of flames. His arm drapes over her shoulder, and she shows him something on her phone. They actually look like they belong together.

  I look back to my cell phone and click on her name on Facebook. Her new profile picture is one of her and Jules in her bedroom. She’s in her Mutilated Arteries T-shirt with his arm around her. I still feel like an idiot for assuming it would be Tate. She looks so much better with Jules.

  Milo strums a few chords, and I glance back. He motions me over to the futon, so I join him. Then he grabs my phone.

  “What’d Aralie have to say about everything?” he asks as he scrolls down the screen.

  Before I can give him a summary, he finds it and laughs. I read it probably fifty times in a row after she posted it.

  “Hey guys, you know how I’ve basically been blatantly lying to everyone and cancelling plans and making you think I suck at life? Guess what. My life is better than yours because Spaceships Around Saturn has been crashing at my house for their lockdown!”

  There’s an update shortly after her status that states that Aralie Branson is in a relationship with Julian Rossi. I wish I could ‘like’ it a thousand times over.

  I grab my phone from Milo and click on Aralie’s “Lockdown with Spaceships Around Saturn!” album. I select the picture of Milo and me and make it my profile picture. I need to take lessons from Aralie more often. She’s proud of lockdown, and I plan on being proud too.

  “Chloe,” Milo says, dragging me out of lockdown daydreams and back to Earth. “You’ll have plenty of time to see what people are saying after I leave tomorrow. Can I please have you tonight?”

  I power off my phone and ease closer to him on the futon. He leans in and kisses my cheek then pulls himself back into the corner away from me.

  “This is a rough version,” he warns me. “I’m gonna record it when we get back to Montréal, and Benji can do harmonies for me. Noah can add some drums. Then it’ll feel like a real song.”

  I do what I can to steady my breathing and the ever-constant butterflies swishing around in my stomach. It’s as much their song as it is mine.

  He plays a few chords, and my butterflies become statues.

  “There’s a sunrise in her eyes, the scent of peaches in her hair,

  And I know how much she hates it, so I try not to stare,

  But what I haven’t told her is that I can hardly speak

  in those perfect moments when she’s looking back at me.”

  My butterflies melt into a puddle of orange butterfly blood. His lyrics talk about everything from slow dancing in the dark to watching fireflies, and I literally feel like the crickets and toads are in tune with his guitar. The entire night is singing this song.

  This song. My song. A s
ong that may end up on a future Spaceships Around Saturn album. A song that might be sung in front of thousands of girls at future shows.

  Milo was right. He does have to bleed for the world. He was born for this. The world needs all the blue butterfly blood it can have. He needs to bleed this song for them.

  But he’ll always bleed the most for me.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I wake up on the sectional with my cheek pressed to Milo’s shirt. I push myself off of him and glance around. No one else is awake. Emery, Noah, and Tate are stretched out on a pallet in the floor. Benji must’ve moved onto the sectional after baby sister fell asleep. Jules and Aralie are cuddled up in the corner on the far end. I don’t know how I’m even awake. We literally stayed up until after sunrise. It can’t be much later now.

  Milo stirs and shifts his body as I try to get up without waking him. I fail.

  “Where are you going?” he asks through somewhat of a yawn.

  “Did you hear that?” I ask.

  He rubs his eyes and shakes his head. Maybe I dreamed it, but I swear, I heard a panther or some kind of wild cat screaming. I have just a bit of my dad in me. I have to investigate.

  I stumble through the barely-lit room, making sure I don’t step on one of Milo’s Saturn brothers. He follows behind me, yawning most of the way.

  Mom sits at the dining room table drinking coffee and playing on her new phone. She looks up at us and smiles.

  “Look at this picture I posted this morning,” she says, holding her phone up.

  It’s a picture of all of us asleep in the game room. Her caption reads: This is the first time in three weeks they’ve all been asleep at once! My house is so quiet!

  Milo laughs, but I hear the panther again. I look around the room quickly. Then Mom points at the window. I peek through the blinds. Although they’re just specks from here, I see a line of people against our gate out by the street.

  “Who are those people?” I ask.

  “Screaming Saturnites,” Mom says. “They’ve been here since I got up to get the paper. One girl asked if Tate Kingsley was really in our house. She started crying when I said that he was. Your dad said this morning that the craziness comes with the territory.”

  “How much do you think she’d pay me for Tate’s grocery list?” I ask.

  Milo wraps an arm around my shoulder. “Welcome to Saturn,” he says.

  He makes his way toward the kitchen and digs the Oreos out of the cabinet. There’s no way I’d ever sell those grocery lists. Milk and Oreos will be mine forever. He pours two glasses of milk and brings one to me.

  “Wanna half Oreos with me again?” he asks.

  I couldn’t ask for a better last lockdown breakfast.

  I sit on Milo’s bed as he packs everything he owns into two duffel bags. Dad said that their cars would be here to pick them up in an hour. I play on my phone while he packs. Benji tweeted a picture of himself and his “new BFF Emery” this morning. I wish I could retweet it a million times. I think it made Emery’s life.

  My Twitter feed is going to be much more insane now that Spaceships Around Saturn sort of belongs to the Branson family. Benji’s constant tweets aren’t even annoying me today, not even the one about needing new shoelaces.

  Aralie runs past Milo’s door like a feral dog, drawing my attention toward the hallway.

  “What?” she screams outside of Jules’s door.

  I can’t hear his reply.

  “That was your big news? You texted me over that? No one cares!” she yells.

  “Seven million people care!” he shouts back.

  She crosses her arms and sighs dramatically. Then she walks into Milo’s room.

  “Jules hit seven million Twitter followers,” she says. “And apparently, as his girlfriend, this is supposed to make my day. For the record, it doesn’t.”

  She storms back down the hallway. Her bedroom door slams. She’s definitely back to herself. I think she may take lockdown’s finale worse than the rest of us. Maybe she’ll be the first to cry. I don’t want to be the first to cry. I’m always the first. Even before Emery. I’m going to be strong today. I won’t break until one of them does first.

  Benji strolls in next, with Emery shadowing him. Is Milo’s room the central meeting place for today? Did I miss the memo? I just want to spend these last few minutes alone with the boy.

  “I think you have something for me,” Benji says to me.

  He tosses his phone from one hand to the other. I don’t know what he’s talking about.

  “Chloe, the mock up of my new ink,” he says. “C’mon, you know that. I wanted to take a picture of it and show it off on Twitter.”

  I send Emery to my bedroom to get the sketchbook off of my bed. Benji’s rocket is drawn in there. So are multiple designs for Noah to add to his back piece. There’s a couple of aliens sitting under a palm tree on an island watching the stars. And there’s an octopus reaching a tentacle up into space to pull a spaceship down for the aliens to travel back home. He may not use any of them, but at least he has some ideas now.

  Once Emery returns, I tear out the rocket ship and hand it to Benji. He flattens it out on the desk in Milo’s room and takes a picture. He says he’ll mention me in his tweet. He leaves with Emery in tow.

  Milo snatches the sketchbook from my hand and flips through the pages.

  “Can I have this?” he asks.

  He holds up the book. It’s on the drawing of a heart with rings around it. The same heart I drew on Emery’s ‘welcome back’ poster.

  “I want to show that to our design team,” he says. “It’s epic. They’ll hate themselves for not coming up with it.”

  He flips to the next drawing. A blue butterfly…bleeding blue music notes down the page. He runs his fingers over it, and I wish I knew what was going through his mind. The next page simply says, “Never change who you are.” Fireflies dance around the words.

  Milo closes the book and hugs it to his chest.

  “Please?” he asks. “Please let me have this.”

  I nod. “It’s all yours, Mr. Grayson.”

  The silence downstairs is tense and sad. Duffel bags surround us. Milo’s guitar case rests against the stairs. All Twitter follows are in place. All Facebook friend requests have been sent and accepted. Cell phone numbers have been exchanged. Final photographs have been taken.

  We all sit in the living room near the foyer, just like we did that first night. Benji hugs Emery for the millionth time, reassuring her over and over that he’ll see her very soon. Mom and Godfrey are quiet, exchanging sad expressions now and then. They’ve probably already discussed how hard life will be for “the girls” after SAS is gone.

  Dad paces the floor while the rest of us sit around listening to the crazy fans outside. It’s a long way to the gate, but I feel like they’re just outside the window. Aralie swears the crowd has grown throughout the day. We’re closing in on noon.

  I’m sure Aralie’s Facebook announcement has gone global by now. Her pictures popped up on Google searches this morning. Maybe Darby will talk about us on Darby’s Daily Dose of Drama. I’d feel legitimately famous then.

  A roar of screams bursts through the atmosphere. The creatures on Saturn probably even hear it all those light years away. Dad hurries to the front door but motions for us to stay where we are.

  Engines shut off outside, and Godfrey exits through the kitchen to move Dad’s car. He’s staying here to guard the house while we take the guys to the airport. That old man is a brave soul. A few agents come inside and grab the guys’ belongings. Dad tells them to be careful with Milo’s guitar. Then he changes his mind and says he’ll take it out himself. Dad definitely likes Milo.

  Emery squeezes Benji and begs him not leave.

  “Just five minutes,” she pleads. “I can’t let you leave yet. I’ll miss you too much.”

  My heart longs to break for her, but I’m determined to be strong, which is why I’m avoiding the caramel eyes that I k
now are looking at me right now. His hand moves along my arm, and his fingers play with the friendship bracelet on my wrist.

  “Trade me?” he asks.

  I place my hand over his. He wears his Emery-made bracelet too. Dark gray and blue.

  “Are you sure pink and black are good colors for you?” I ask.

  My question remains unanswered. He leans his head against mine and unties my bracelet. He wraps his around my wrist and ties a gray-blue knot.

  “Care to help me with this?” he asks, forcing me to look at him.

  My butterflies are all aflutter right now. I wish they’d lend their wings to helping me tie this knot rather than freaking out and twisting my guts into knots.

  Engines growl outside as Milo helps me pull the knot together. This doesn’t feel real.

  “Okay guys, let’s go,” Dad hollers from the front door.

  Anything we could’ve said is instantly drowned out by the high-pitched shrieks outside. Two black SUVs sit behind Dad’s car.

  “Emery,” Dad says. “I know you’re going to be mad, but you have to ride to the airport with me. There’s too much chaos, and you’re too little to get caught up in it. I’m sorry, but these rules come with the territory.”

  Tears flow down her cheeks as she begs and pleads and swears on Santa that she won’t get hurt in the craziness, but Dad forces her into his backseat.

  Godfrey descends the front steps.

  “Mr. Kingsley,” he says to Tate. “Your request.”

  Tate stares at the unmarked box for a moment. He raises his eyebrows, asking questions with his face, but Godfrey doesn’t reply.

  “Thanks G-man,” he says. “I’m gonna call you. I promise.”

  He throws his arms around Godfrey, and I feel the tears welling up. Tate has sort of become the grandson that Godfrey never had. Apparently I’ve missed all of it because I was hanging out with the wrong half of Saturn. I hope Aralie can give me all the details later.

  Tate climbs into the first SUV with Aralie and Jules. Benji motions for Mom to ride with them, and he heads over to the second SUV. The screams echo around us. They probably saw his blonde hair. Noah climbs in behind Benji.