by Gruder, Liz
Kaila collapsed into the seat. She fumbled in her book bag for her notebook. To her left, she could feel Jordyn strong as the moon’s draw on the tides. Her hands shook as she arranged paper and pen on her desk. She glanced at the clock. 1:00 p.m. The energy beside her proved irresistible. She stole a peep at him. He gazed intently at her with his large hazel eyes.
“Do not have fear,” he said with a clipped foreign accent.
Kaila managed a thin smile. He was unlike anyone she’d ever met. Though she sensed something unnatural about him, he was so cute with his spiky sandy hair, slight stubble on his chin and above his lip. His black t-shirt and form-fitting silver metallic overalls were exotic and alluring.
“We think the school is quite strange. Same as you.”
“Um,” Kaila said. “It is a little bizarre.”
How did he know that she was nervous and freaked by all the newly learned rituals and groups in school? Did he sense her fear of not fitting in? Was it all over her face? She tried to make her expression still and unreadable like his.
“We will learn it … together.” He gazed at her intently, yet she sensed his sincerity. “My friends are new, too, and we would like to make friends.”
Kaila looked behind at the others. Five more of them stared at her. They wore no emotion on their faces, neither friendly nor cruel.
“We saw you this morning,” the girl behind Jordyn said. She had short black straight hair with bangs. Her black eyes were huge, almost without color distinguishing the iris from the pupils. They were like spiders set in pale white skin.
“We are glad you are in this class so we can join together. I am called Echidna.” She stood up and the other five stood too. Echidna’s neck swiveled as she looked at the others. It seemed as if they communed silently. Then, the others sat down. Echidna was tall and lean. The clingy metallic overalls displayed her small rounded breasts, tight abdomen, and long legs.
“I do not have girl friend,” she said. She stuck out her long fingers.
Though afraid, Kaila accepted her hand. Echidna’s touch transmitted a strange current. Kaila’s stomach clamped to a fist. She wanted to withdraw her hand and break Echidna’s hypnotic gaze, but as with Jordyn that morning, once she locked her gaze, she could not look away. Echidna licked her tiny lips; one corner of her lip twitched up and down as if she had no emotion, or had never expressed it. Still, her eyes remained cold and probing.
Echidna towered over Kaila’s desk. “You be my friend.”
“Okay, okay,” Kaila blurted, wishing Echidna would go away. The other five intently observed this exchange.
Echidna leaned over Kaila and put her pretty white face near hers. “Do not have fear. It is wasted thought energy.”
Was that disgust Kaila saw or hatred or what? She could not read her. But the pit in her stomach alerted that something was terribly wrong.
“I sit,” Echidna said. “But we are now friends.” As if there was nothing more to say on the matter.
Kaila felt a tap on her back, then on her wig. She turned.
“This is long hair,” another one of them said. He had bushy brown hair below his ears, a large nose, and wore black sunglasses. She thought they didn’t allow sunglasses in school. Maybe there were different rules in the advanced classes in the modular units?
“Um, yes,” Kaila said. “I have long hair.”
“Do you?” he asked. She could not see his eyes beneath the dark glasses, but sensed he played with her.
“Lucius, stop,” called a boy behind Echidna. “Don’t pay attention to him, Kaila. I am Toby and I say hello.”
The boy had sparkly blue eyes, a bald head, and no eyebrows. He turned the corners of his small mouth in his chubby cheeks up to a waxen smile.
These people were odd. She spied the others observing her: a boy with red hair who emitted a scary energy and a girl with mahogany skin and huge dark eyes who gazed at her impassively. They all emitted a voltage charge like batteries.
The teacher clapped her hands. Kaila turned. She was surprised to see other students in the class; she hadn’t noticed them before she was so focused on the aliens.
There was the dork guy who had gotten dumped in the trash. A girl with stringy hair who looked nervous, licking her lips and wringing her hands. Brandy and Tara, the preps that Melissa and Pia had warned her about. Sure enough, just as Melissa had said, Tara was fiddling with her pearls and wriggling her nose at Kaila as if she smelled rotten catfish.
“Welcome to advanced physics,” Mrs. Bourg said. She went to the windows and closed the blinds, leaving only the artificial gray-white light of the fluorescent bulbs.
“I am quite proud of you for having placed in this class. Trust me, there are no dummies here. And while we are in this class,” she said as she walked to the door, closed it, and turned the lock, “there will be none of the usual high school crap in here.” She eyed the class with stern glacial eyes.
“Everyone in this class is to be treated exactly the same. There will be no disrespect and there will be no games. I will not tolerate making fun of anyone because they are different. Do I make myself clear?”
No one said anything. The only sound was the hum of the window air conditioning unit.
“By your superior intelligence, you will learn from some of the best minds on this planet. Perhaps some of those best minds are right in this classroom.” Mrs. Bourg smiled cryptically.
Kaila felt queasy. Her intuition nagged her, like a fish line caught on an alligator.
“You, in this class,” Mrs. Bourg said regally, “can be tomorrow’s stellar rulers. If you keep your mind clear and free from high school pettiness you will excel. Now Echidna and Lucius, I’d like you to hand out this pamphlet to everyone and introduce yourself as you go.”
Echidna stood, so tall and thin she looked boyish in her silver overalls. Black bangs framed her dark eyes. “Mrs. Bourg,” she said, her tongue rolling the “r” in Bourg so it sounded like Berrrrg.
“I make friend.” Echidna pointed at Kaila.
The preps, Brandy and Tara, tittered.
Mrs. Bourg slapped her desk. “Do you think that’s funny?”
Brandy and Tara shut up, their lips forming an “O.”
Mrs. Bourg marched to them, her face red. “Do you think you are so cool? You’re not. You’re closed-minded, prissy, full-of-yourself children, and if I hear one hint of you all making fun of anyone here again, you’re out. You understand?”
Brandy and Tara nodded.
“You have no idea how small you really are. Now grow up, shut up, and learn.” Mrs. Bourg turned, her black skirt too tight over her pear-shaped rear. “Echidna, please begin,” she called over her shoulder.
Echidna approached Brandy first. She bent and stared intently at Brandy with her spider black eyes. “Hello,” she said silkily. “I am Echidna.”
As Brandy looked up at Echidna towering over her, they locked eyes. The whites from Echidna’s eyes disappeared as they turned solid black. Then, Brandy’s chin lowered, her long strawberry hair falling onto her desk, as if she’d gone to sleep. Her eyes appeared blank and dead.
Simultaneously, Lucius had removed his dark sunglasses and approached the girl with stringy hair who looked nervous and damp with emotion.
“And who are you?” he asked in a mocking tone. He stared at her with piercing, emerald eyes.
“Phyllis,” she replied. It was but a moment. As she locked eyes with Lucius, her shoulders slumped, her chin lowered, her expression went blank.
It was as if a dark spell permeated the class. Kaila began to panic. Every student was coming under the spell as Echidna and Lucius went to each student and stared. Kaila held her breath as her heart lobbed on her ribs like a pogo stick.
Mrs. Bourg had come to stand in front of Kaila’s desk. “Don’t be afraid, Kaila,” she said softly. Kaila saw the small white buttons on her blouse, the roundness of her belly in the black skirt. Kaila’s heart thudded, flooding blood
to her brain making her dizzy. She didn’t want to look. Somehow she knew that to look into their eyes gave them power over her.
“Kaila,” Jordyn said to her side.
Kaila glanced at his huge, golden eyes.
“Trust us,” he said. He leaned closer, staring. She felt like her bones softened like warm clay as her mind submerged into the darkness of another world.
Chapter 3
We would like to get to know everyone in the class,” Mrs. Bourg said. “Phyllis Joiner, you’re first. Please come to the front of the room.”
Phyllis was the one with stringy, dirty blonde hair, but she was no longer nervous. Like a mannequin, she stood dutifully in front of the class. She wore old jeans ripped at the knees and a yellowed t-shirt with a Pennzoil motor oil logo. Her hair was oily and uncombed, and she emitted an acrid body odor. But most unfortunate was that she had blue eyes that bulged out of her sockets, as if they were being pushed out of her skull. She wore an expression of eternal surprised fear.
“Tell us the truth about yourself,” Mrs. Bourg instructed.
Under the hypnotic spell, Phyllis complied. “Well, um, I usually don’t talk much. Um, everyone makes fun of me.” She looked at the floor. “But the reason my eyes bulge out,” she said quietly, “is because I have a thyroid problem. I have Grave’s disease. It’s an auto-immune disorder. There’s really no cure, and my mother doesn’t have health insurance or much money. I have to tape my eyes shut at night because my lids won’t reach closed anymore. That’s why my eyes are dry. I hate being called bug-eyed and all those names because I can’t help it.”
Kaila, in a suspended dream state, noted that Phyllis’s bulging blue eyes were bloodshot. She felt like she floated under water and her conscious thought or will was above the water but she hadn’t the strength to swim up and find it. This was not real. It had to be a dream.
“Of course you hate being called names. No one likes being called names,” Mrs. Bourg said. “Some of us do not understand why others in high school are cruel to their classmates.”
“Tell us about your family,” Lucius shouted behind Kaila.
Phyllis hesitated, but then answered obediently, speaking from her altered state. “My dad left when I was four, and my mom is miserable and um, drinks all the time and um, calls me all these names till she passes out. I hate to go home.”
“Can you picture the worst of these times?” Lucius prodded.
“Lucius,” Mrs. Bourg frowned. “Please let me lead the class.”
Still under Lucius’s hypnotic suggestion, Phyllis lowered her head, her lips pressed together. Her shoulders quivered.
Lucius and Echidna walked up to Phyllis. They leaned over her, as if inspecting a lab rat. A tear fell from Phyllis’s bulging eye.
“One time she beat me,” Phyllis said, “and told me she was sorry I was ever born. That I was ugly and a curse.”
She sobbed, reliving the scene. Lucius and Echidna inhaled, as if breathing in the perfume of her anguished emotion. “I hate my life,” Phyllis wept. “I even stole my mother’s gun. I’ve thought about killing myself so many times. I’m just too scared to pull the trigger.”
Lucius leaned closer to Phyllis. “Such despair,” he sighed.
Echidna inhaled and rolled her eyes ecstatically. “It is delicious,” she said. She leaned closer to Phyllis and breathed again as the girl wept.
“Lucius. Echidna. Please sit,” Mrs. Bourg said. “You should have mingled at lunch to feed off the high school emotions. That you didn’t is your problem. When you’re hungry you will feed, but not on class time. Now, we have work to do.”
Echidna, who had been staring at Phyllis with her arachnid eyes, thoroughly entranced and absorbing her, ignored Mrs. Bourg. She placed her long fingers on Phyllis’s forehead.
“I am seeing more. So. Tell us,” Echidna said. “About this boy you like?”
“I really like Derek Mendoza,” Phyllis erupted, her deep secret expelled. “He’s just so hot, and I know he’d never like me, but I can’t help it.”
Kaila recalled that Brandy Powell had dated Derek Mendoza—the jock who had thrown the paper football at her in English. Yet, Brandy sat still, her head lowered, staring blankly up at Phyllis. Dimly, Kaila realized that she, too, was slumped, staring vacantly. She tried to wake, to swim up to consciousness, but could not.
Echidna said to Lucius, “Is Derek Mendoza the human who threw that one,” she nodded to Douglas Lafarge, “into the trash box at lunch time?”
“Yes,” Lucius confirmed.
“Why would she be attracted to such a simplistic, cruel one?” Echidna wondered.
“He kind of reminds me of my father,” Phyllis stated.
Lucius shook his head. “These humans are ridiculous.”
Mrs. Bourg said, “You have much to learn about humans. Now I insist. Sit down!” She peered around, surveying each student in the classroom. “Phyllis, thank you. Please take your seat. Now, the one we need to explore next is Kaila Guidry. Kaila, please step to the front of the class.”
Kaila stepped dutifully to the front of the class, vaguely aware that something was terribly wrong, but she didn’t have the energy to fight. This was a strange dream from which she would soon awaken. She couldn’t be standing in front of the classroom like this for real.
“First,” Mrs. Bourg said. “Take off that artificial hair.”
Under control, there was no possible way to resist suggestion. She should have cared and been embarrassed but she wasn’t. Kaila pulled off her wig.
“And what is this?” Mrs. Bourg said, touching the black plastic wrapped around Kaila’s skull.
“I wear it to protect me,” Kaila said.
“Take it off.”
Obediently, Kaila unwound the plastic from her head. Her damp blond hair spilled down her back. Any other time she would have died of humiliation standing in front of the class like this. But now, she didn’t care. The students, except for the aliens, wore a zombie-like expression on their faces.
“Feels better, yes?” Mrs. Bourg said. “More natural.”
“Yes,” Kaila stated.
“Now tell us about your father, Kaila.”
“I never knew my father.”
“Then tell us what you need protection from.”
“I don’t know. My mother says we need protection.”
“Echidna,” said Mrs. Bourg, snapping her fingers. “Scan her.”
Echidna went to Kaila, thrusting her beautiful moon face a few inches from hers. “Look at me,” she commanded. Kaila dropped into Echidna’s tarantula eyes.
“I’m receiving something,” Echidna said, tilting her head. “Her mother wears the wrap over her head to block telepathy—not from her—from us. Her mother is terrified of the mind-scans and mind-screens. But let me go deeper. Yes. Here. Her mother was abducted by the workers. Let me probe more … typical abduction … at night, taken from her bed. Very afraid, seeing the workers, the ‘aliens’ they call them. Her mother was teleported from her bedroom to a craft. Put on the table. Took her egg, DNA co-mingled with ours, re-implanted egg into her uterus. But no successive abductions.”
Echidna shook her head. “I do not comprehend. Let me go deeper … understand I am looking at Kaila’s second-hand mind memory, not her mother’s. Kaila must have scanned her mother to receive these images.” She stared at Kaila, absorbing her. Then, “Yes. Later, her mother, impregnated with Kaila, driving in a car late at night, very dark. Headlights of another car coming down street. Hard impact. Car crash. I understand now,” Echidna said, holding her head as if she, herself, had experienced the crash. “Kaila’s mother was taken to a hospital where she had surgery to repair her face. That’s where our implant was removed.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Bourg. “The implant was taken while her mother was pregnant with Kaila and we could not then track her mother to take the fetus before she gave birth.”
“Incredible,” marveled Lucius. “She is one of us but b
orn and raised on Earth.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bourg. “Kaila is a starseed just like you. Half-extraterrestrial, half-human.” Mrs. Bourg contemplated Kaila. “Poor thing. Hmph. She looks just like a doll, staring with those empty blue eyes. We will have to educate her. This is a wonderful situation. You will all have to become good friends with Kaila. I am sure she can teach you many things about being human. And we have many things to teach her too.”
“The moment I see her, I know,” Jordyn said. “I never feel that about any human before.” He gazed at her, his face softening. “She holds lots of interesting things inside. How much she feels emotion for her family. How she feels emotion for animals. I looked, and I had to stop because there was so much emotion.”
“That’s the way it is with all humans,” Lucius said disdainfully.
“They haven’t learned how emotions get in the way,” Echidna said.
Jordyn said nothing, staring at Kaila.
“Stop, Jordyn,” Echidna said. “This girl has nothing to teach you. We have everything to teach her.”
“I like it,” called Toby from his desk, his blue eyes sparkling, his wide moon face trying to smile. “Go inside her mind, watch her riding horses. I want to ride horses. I want to pet her dogs. I want to eat soup her grandmother cooks. I want to see her big white house with the rods.”
“Rods?” Mrs. Bourg asked.
“Columns,” Jordyn corrected. “They call them columns. Like when our fathers were in Greece and those temples in their time past.”
“I see. But that’s fine, Toby,” Mrs. Bourg said in a motherly tone. “I’m sure if you make friends with Kaila you can ride horses. It will be a nice break for you all from your studies. I want you to feel some good things about being on Earth.”
She went to her desk and clapped her hands. “Now listen to me, hive. Though the rest of this class carries ancient DNA from the extraterrestrials, Kaila is a full starseed just like you: half-extraterrestrial and half-human. We must awaken her, but because she’s been bred human, her awakening must be gradual. She is unaware of her starseed gifts. She will become frightened with instant, complete disclosure.”
