Unidentified Suburban Object

by Mike Jung

  “NO. WAY.” Her eyes were almost perfectly round. “How could she — ”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your dad told you all that stuff!”

  “I know.”

  Everything in that assignment came straight from my dad! How could Ms. Lee give me an F for reporting on my family’s actual history??

  Shelley and I got a lot of stuff done during the rest of class even though I was totally messed up by Ms. Lee stabbing me in the back. South Korea and France turned out to have an interesting history together, which almost (but didn’t) stop me from thinking about the F for the entire time. I was so mad that at one point I actually spelled my own name wrong.

  It was hard not to throw dagger-eyes at all the kids who were talking about video games, sports, or clothes instead of doing work. Normally I wouldn’t hesitate —Mom always says the sharpest knife in a person’s drawer is an A, and I’ve always had the sharpest knives in school — but suddenly I was the one packing a lousy butter knife of an F.

  The last bell finally rang, triggering the usual stampede to the cafeteria.

  Shelley mouthed “SO UNFAIR” as she got up from her desk, making sure she was facing away from Ms. Lee. I nodded, grinding my teeth as Shelley walked out and left me alone with Ms. Backstabbing F-Giver. Ms. Lee closed the door and smiled at me, which made no sense at all since she was such a traitor to straight-A students everywhere. She grabbed a book off of her desk and, surprisingly, dragged a chair over to my desk.

  “Chloe — ”

  “HOW COULD YOU GIVE ME AN F??” I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

  Ms. Lee frowned as she sat down.

  “Calm down, Chloe. I know you’re upset, but you need to control yourself.”

  “But … this is …”

  “Hey.” Ms. Lee put one hand flat on top of my stack of library books. “You’ll get to tell your side of the story, Chloe, but first you need to listen to me.”

  I clenched my fist, then crossed my arms, then clenched my shoulders. Ms. Lee waited until I stopped twitching and clenching.

  “Ready?” she said when I could finally sit still.

  “Go ahead.” I threw my head back and tried to make my face as blank as possible.

  “I want to explain this and hear you out because even after such a short time together it’s clear you’re an exceptional student,” Ms. Lee said. “May I?”

  She pointed at my now-raggedy paper. I nodded, and she picked it up.

  “This is a very compelling story, but I know it’s not about your uncle. Every detail in this paper comes from a book called Flight from Camp 22 that was published a few years ago.

  “This is plagiarism, Chloe.”

  Plagiarism? Plagiarism?? I opened my mouth, but all that came out was a strangled hiss.

  “I know how much trouble you’ve been having getting help from your parents, Chloe, but this isn’t the solution.”

  “But I didn’t do it!” Oh, my head was going to explode. “I would NEVER do that!”

  Ms. Lee flipped open my report to the second page, then put the book in her hand in front of me. Flight from Camp 22 was spelled out in red letters on a white background, with a barbed-wire design (also red) surrounding it. Under the title was a picture of a Korean man, younger than my dad, with a shaggy mess of hair and a mysterious expression.

  “I’ve noted some of the details that match what’s in the book.”

  Ms. Lee held out my report, open to the second page, and I looked at it, not wanting to and really wanting to at the same time. There was a red circle around the words “Camp 22,” as well as a bunch of others.

  “You can read the book if you’d like to confirm it for yourself, but this can’t possibly be an accident. I would have preferred a blank report over plagiarism, Chloe. I don’t know what else to say.”

  “My DAD told me that story! I didn’t copy it out of anything, I’ve never even heard of this book before!”

  Ms. Lee leaned back in her chair and sighed.

  “Chloe, you can’t blame …”

  “It’s the truth!”

  Ms. Lee frowned. We sat without talking for a minute, with her obviously thinking about it, and me digging my fingernails into my palms. She’d practically called me a liar, and it was getting hard to keep myself from totally losing it when she finally spoke again.

  “I think we need to arrange a conference with your father.”

  I exhaled, only then realizing that I’d been holding my breath.

  “I think so too.”

  Then it hit me. I wasn’t a cheater. I wasn’t a liar.

  But maybe Dad was.

  I hit Aquariums Unlimited like a computer-guided missile, blasting through the doors and scanning the front room with one target in mind.

  “Whoa, Chloe, what’s going — ”

  I cut off Darren with a violent wave of my arm.

  “Where’s my dad?”

  Darren was paused in mid-motion, one hand holding a box of filter cartridges and the other holding a bag with a big, scaly catfish in it. The customer at the counter, who I didn’t recognize, stared at me over his shoulder.

  “In the back with a customer.” Darren waved the box of filter cartridges in that direction. “Chloe, you gotta watch it with that door, it’ll — ”

  “Thanks.”

  I clomped up the stairs two at a time. Dad was pointing at a tank as he explained something to Lindsay Crisp’s sister Danielle, who was a senior in high school. She looked at me like I was a mosquito and immediately looked away, but it was enough to make Dad switch his attention from her to me.

  “Hi, honey, can you wait for me downstairs? I’m right in — ”

  “I got an F on my paper, Dad. The one about my uncle, who I guess isn’t real.”

  Dad shut his mouth with a click — I actually heard his teeth snap together.

  “Your story about my great-uncle came from a BOOK. You LIED to me! Why did you LIE? I GOT AN F!!”

  “I’m sorry, Danielle, this is — Darren will have to take over for me,” Dad said without looking at her.

  “Oh, I can wait,” Danielle said, suddenly looking at me like I was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen. Of course. Asian honor student gets kicked out of the straight-A club! Fascinating!

  “Darren will help you,” Dad said. “Darren? Can you come up here and help Danielle?”

  “Sure thing,” said Darren’s voice from somewhere downstairs. His feet came thumping up the stairs. Danielle stared at us like we were giving a live performance just for her. Dad weaved between me and her, around the big tank of plants, and down the stairs, with me right behind him. Darren gave Dad a curious look and me a quick smile as we passed each other.

  The downstairs office was the size of a toaster oven, but at least it had a door. I closed it behind me as Dad sank into his chair, which was squeezed in front of his desk. There were as many boxes in the office as there were in the storage room, including a giant pile on top of the only other chair in the room, so I stood with my back to the door. I didn’t feel like sitting down anyway.

  Dad took a deep breath.

  “Honey, I … I’m …”

  “I can’t believe you pretended something you read from a book was about our family! That’s what you did, right?”

  Dad’s mouth was still open, but instead of saying anything he made it into an “O” shape and blew out a long breath. He dragged a hand all the way down his face, forehead to chin.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a liar, Dad. A LIAR!”

  “I’m … I’m sorry, sweetie. How did you find out?”

  “I told you, I got an F on my paper. Ms. Lee knows that book.”

  “I’m … I’m honestly surprised anyone in Primrose Heights would be interested in a book on North Korea.”

  “Ms. Lee is. She’s KOREAN and everything, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. I just didn’t … I know.”

  “Do I even have a great-uncle named H
o-Joon?” I said. “Or any kind of uncles at all? What else about my life is made up? All of it?”

  Dad put both hands on top of his head.

  “I guess it’s time to tell you the truth.”

  “Oh, do you think?”

  Dad looked pained by my sarcastic tone.

  “Yes.”

  “About EVERYTHING,” I said. Except I didn’t know if I wanted to know about everything, because what if it actually was everything, and not just this one thing? What if it was my whole life??

  I put my hands over my face and rubbed it hard, squishing my nose and mashing lips against my teeth.

  “Yes, yes, about everything, I promise, but not without your mother. We need to tell you together.”

  “Why can’t you tell me right now??”

  “You need to hear it from both of us, honey.” Dad dropped his hands and looked me in the eye — not in a mad way, in more like an I’m-saying-please kind of way. “Your mom doesn’t have class so she’s probably home right now. Let me tell Darren what’s happening and we’ll go together.”

  I gulped in a lungful of air and blew it out. “Fine.”

  The drive home is stupidly short — three minutes, tops — but I was so mad, worried, and confused, it felt like it took a day and a half. When Dad pulled into the driveway and killed the engine I scrambled out, slammed the car door hard, and ran inside before he’d even opened his door all the way.

  “Mom!” I called. I shoved the front door open hard, but caught it before it hit the wall out of habit. I threw my backpack against the wall with a thump. “MOM!”

  “Hi, hello, I’m here, what is it, Chloe?” Mom emerged from the kitchen with a coffee cup and a magazine. “Why are you shouting?”

  “I’m not shouting,” I said, lowering my voice.

  The report was still in my hand — I’d held it all the way to the store, then all the way home, so the sweat stains on the edges were out of control — and I stuck it out in Mom’s direction, F side up.

  “Oh dear,” she said in a low voice, taking it from me. “Oh, Chloe, this is …”

  She trailed off as she started reading the actual paper, and when Dad opened the door she looked up at him with such an angry expression that I forgot about the F for a second and wondered why she was mad at HIM. Were we living in Bizarro World?

  “What is going on?” Mom said, not using a low voice anymore.

  Dad, shockingly, looked mad too. He doesn’t raise his voice when he’s mad, but he started talking more slowly, with a little bit of a growl, as he shut the front door and stood next to me.

  “What’s going on is we’re telling Chloe the truth.”

  “What do you mean the truth, about …”

  Mom and Dad locked eyes, and not in a gross, lovey-dovey way — they looked like a couple of kickboxers getting ready to beat each other up. It was a little scary.

  “What did you do?” It was Mom’s turn to crush the edges of my paper in her hands.

  “We should have told her a long time ago, and you know it.” Dad crossed his arms, and Mom started talking in a really fast voice I’d never heard her use before.

  “I can’t believe you thought it would be okay to make this decision on your — ”

  Why were Mom and Dad fighting? Especially now? Why did they only care about themselves??

  “STOP!” I shrieked, clamping my hands on top of my head. I could actually smell the sweat on them —the entire world smelled like sweat and fish water and bad feelings. “STOP FIGHTING, STOP STOP STOP!”

  They actually did stop. It was a miracle. I felt weird standing next to Dad, like I was taking his side against Mom or something, so I stepped right in between them. My heart was like a giant rabbit thumping the ground with its foot as I ripped the paper out of Mom’s hands — most of it, anyway; she was left holding a torn-off page. I spun around, almost crashing into Dad, went to the living room, and sat down on the overstuffed armchair facing the couch.

  My heart slowed down a little, but I still felt like my insides were being run through a food processor as Mom and Dad followed me into the living room and sat on the couch. They sat next to each other, which was a relief after the intense staring, but we were all tense. Which was so confusing, because I was the one being lied to!

  Mom was still giving Dad a very harsh look, though, and he could have been a robot, his face was so empty-looking. Since she was too busy looking at Dad to look at me, I looked at him too.

  “Well? You’re both here, like you said it had to be. So tell me.”

  “Now listen, Chloe — ” Mom started, but nuh-uh, it wasn’t gonna happen that way.

  “Don’t give me NOW LISTEN CHLOE, just tell me why Dad stole something out of a book and told me it was about our family!”

  Mom hissed, like a serious snakelike hiss, and Dad frowned at her.

  “We knew this was going to happen,” he said to her. “It was only a matter of time.”

  Mom started rubbing her temples. “Yes, I know, but of all the stupid — ”

  “We’ve both been stupid.”

  “It’s just so maddening that you would engage in such blatant plagiarism when your wife is a college professor,” Mom said, putting all of her fingertips on her temples.

  “HEY.” Not this again. “MOM. DAD. What is going on? I got an F!”

  “That’s my fault, and I apologize,” Dad said.

  Awesome! Your apology will bring my grade all the way up from an F to an F!

  “Yeah, well, Ms. Lee wants to talk to you about it.”

  “Forget about that right now.” Dad looked at Mom one more time. “Are you with me right now? Our daughter needs us, right now.”

  Mom pressed her lips together, but she also nodded slowly.

  “This isn’t how it should happen,” she said.

  “This is how it IS happening.”

  “It’s how what’s happening??” I threw my hands up in the air. “What, what, WHAT?”

  “Honey, we’re not Korean,” Mom said.

  I let my hands fall onto the armrests of my chair with a double THUMP. I could have sworn Mom said “We’re not Korean,” but why would she say that??

  “Okay … that’s a pretty weird thing to say.”

  Dad ran a hand through his hair.

  “It’s true, sweetie,” he said.

  “What are we, then, Chinese? German? Werewolves?”

  “Not werewolves,” Mom said, and geez, she just kept right on saying the last thing I expected her to say.

  “We’re not Korean,” Dad repeated. “We’re not even from Earth. Your mother and I were born and raised on an Earth-like planet in the Tau Ceti solar system, and we came here after … I guess you could call it a natural disaster.”

  Dad paused.

  “We’re aliens,” he said.

  “And so are you,” Mom added.

  Okay, I was wrong about the werewolf comment being the most unexpected thing they could say. Dad had just taken it to another level.

  Oh my god, they’re insane. My parents are mentally ill.

  Everyone I know says their parents are insane sometimes, and yeah, it’s mean to both parents and real insane people to say it, but nobody really means it. But then your parents tell you you’re actually an alien from another planet, and you realize you’ve stumbled into a moment when your parents might actually be totally legit, locked-up-in-the-attic crazy.

  Not a good moment.

  “Wait, what? You’re what, I’m what??”

  Mom took a deep breath.

  “You were born here on Earth, but you’re an alien too.”

  Dad, wearing his supercalm face, adjusted his alien butt on the couch and leaned forward.

  “We know this is hard to believe, honey.” He held his hands out in front of his belly, palms down and fingers spread.

  “OH, YOU THINK?”

  “That’s one reason why we waited so long to tell you, sweetheart,” Mom said. I could tell she was worried about me, but I was
really distracted by fear about her mental health.

  “Mom …” I sagged all over, all at once. “This is … you’re talking like a crazy person. There’s no such thing as real aliens.”

  “I know it’s hard to believe. I know. But it’s the truth.”

  I looked back and forth between Mom and Dad, wondering if my head was going to explode.

  “Why are you saying this? Are you trying to teach me some kind of weird lesson?”

  “No, honey,” Dad said. “We’re being honest with — ”

  “No you’re not. I’m not a stupid little baby that just believes anything you say, you know. I’m an ALIEN? How is that being honest??”

  Mom and Dad looked at each other, both of them with an oh-that’s-just-great kind of look on their faces, and I felt scared again, but in a different way. They actually believed what they were saying — I can always tell when they’re lying. Were they losing their minds for real?

  What was I supposed to do if my parents were mentally ill?

  I scrubbed my scalp with all ten fingers and gulped.

  “We’ll show you,” Mom said. “We can prove it. Or I should say, your dad can prove it to you.”

  She glared at Dad, and he looked back with his eyebrows raised.

  “You know it always affects me more than it affects you, and I need to be functional tomorrow,” Mom said.

  Dad nodded.

  “Okay, sure. You’re right, I always did recover more quickly than you. Come on, Chloe.”

  “How are you going to prove something that’s not real, Dad?” Or that’s a sign of you being crazy? “Are you introducing me to Uncle Ho-Joon from North Korean Labor Camp Twenty-Two?”

  “No. It’s in the greenhouse — in the aquaponic tank.”

  “I’ll get the vinegar,” Mom said, heading for the kitchen.

  “The what? Why do we need — ”

  “We’ll show you.” Dad didn’t wait for Mom — he went straight through the house, opened the sliding glass door at the back, and went out into the yard.

  I didn’t even know Mom knew where the vinegar was. I didn’t even know she knew what vinegar was.

  I was getting really, really scared.

  It was normally my favorite time of day during my favorite time of year — it was still warm and the sun wasn’t setting yet, but it was low enough in the sky to make those long, really pretty shadows through the trees. Being out there settled me down a little bit, and I breathed in the smell of leaves and grass as I followed Dad across the yard.