hospital couldn’t explain it, but the tests were all conclusive.
His cancer was gone.
V.
The next year, on my last day of eleventh grade, I spent the entire day wondering if Mi-Yao was going to return. I stared out the window so many times that I almost got in trouble for it with two teachers.
My eyes found her the second I stepped through the gates. She was sitting on the bonnet of a brick red, vintage Chevrolet.
There were—slight—changes in her appearance. For instance, I noticed that she was wearing her bangs low now, so that they ever-so-slightly kissed her brow. Because of this, I couldn’t see the pearly stone I knew was embedded within her forehead. She was also wearing dark glasses, and a dark shade of red lipstick on her mouth: ‘midnight ruby’ I would learn it was called. The color complemented her yellow sundress. Okay so maybe, the changes in appearance weren’t so slight.
But above all, the change I couldn’t help noticing was the change to her body. Specifically, her…chest area. It’d been flat last summer. I had assumed that her people simply didn’t grow in their…chest area. I had assumed wrong.
“Hi Peter,” she said, with a smile.
That smile.
“Hi,” I barely said, and paused. “You’ve never said ‘hi’ before. Also, you’ve never said my name right.”
She pointed at the circlet around her neck. “New language upgrade.”
“Ah.”
“Do you like my hair?” she said. “I’m hiding my forecusp. Too many people are asking questions about it.”
“The thing that sticks out of your forehead?”
“Yes. Millions of years ago, my ancestors had single curved horns sticking out of their heads. Evolution took the horn away, but the stub remained.”
“Oh. Cool story,” I said, looking around. I noticed that a lot of the other kids around were staring at us. Well, staring at her.
She slid off the car bonnet, and went around to the driver’s door. “Get in.”
I got into the passenger seat. “This car is yours?”
“Not technically. I stole it.”
I froze, and gave her a look.
She grinned. “I jest.”
“At least, you’re still saying that,” I said underneath my breath, just as she sparked the car.
She didn’t hear me over the roar of the engine. We drove about half a mile before I bothered to ask where we were going.
She ignored me. “Why are you dressed like that?”
“Like what?” I asked, though I knew exactly what she was talking about.
Recently, I had begun to display a preference for dark clothing. And metal accessories. And—it embarrasses me to admit it now—dark eyeliner.
Mi-Yao gave me a brief once over, before returning her attention to the road.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.
“Which was?”
“Where are we going?”
“Aw, don’t you want it to be a surprise?” she said.
“Not if the surprise is that you’re sneaking me away to be sold off to space pirates,” I said.
She grinned. “Silly Peter. This isn’t the route to the space pirates.”
“Ha ha.”
“Ha ha,” she mimicked. “I like that. Since I don’t laugh the way your kind does, I should use that every time I want to convey my amusement. Ha ha.” She paused. “Ha ha ha.” She paused. “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha—“
“Stop it,” I snapped.
She stopped, and looked over at me. “Are you okay? You’re moody.”
“Just drive okay?” I muttered.
There was silence for a few moments.
“I will improve your mood,” she said, with more confidence than I thought she had the right to have.
I didn’t say anything to that.
We were on the woodland-flanked road that connected my town to the next. A couple of miles through our journey, Mi-Yao jerked the wheel and sent us skidding into the woodland. I held on as the car bounced and jiggled down an earthy excuse for a road.
“What are you doing?” I cried.
Mi-Yao didn’t answer me, instead jerking the wheel the other way and bringing the car to a shuddering halt. I hopped out of the car and collapsed to the ground, trembling. It felt like the forest floor was still jiggling beneath me.
“If that was some kind of joke, it wasn’t funny!” I yelled.
Mi-Yao was out of the car too. She grinned down at me. “Stand up. I want to show you something.”
After some hesitance, I got back on my feet. We were standing in the middle of woodland. Trees, trees, leaves on the ground, trees; that was all I could see. Then, Mi-Yao pulled a remote out of her pocket and pushed a button.
It was like somebody had yanked off an invisibility cloak; there was suddenly a humongous glossy-black sphere in front of us.
My jaw dropped.
The surface of the sphere lit up with a network of electric blue lights, before releasing a surge of icy cold vapor. Mi-Yao stepped towards the black sphere, and touched its surface; it rippled like a pond, and she stepped through the wall.
I was stunned.
Her head stuck out of the rippling wall. “Are you coming?”
“I am not getting into that thing,” I gasped.
“Come on,” she said, reaching out her hand with a smile as soft as water. “Take a chance with me.”
I swallowed, before stepping forward and placing my hand in hers. She tightened her grasp, and pulled me in.
Darkness. And then, light again.
She called it a ‘pod’.
The interior was a singular round room, with continuous plush seating along the wall and a glassy round table at the centre. Every surface was pristine white, engraved with silver and grey flower patterns. The seat upholstery had mauve trimming, and the ceiling lights were intermittently white and dull purple.
The whole room was at least five times more spacious than the exterior led you to believe—which made absolutely no damn sense.
It was exactly what I would’ve expected an alien room to look like, and at the same time, it was not. The room had…humanness.
I sat down with more care than I had ever summoned for any action. When Mi-Yao sat next to me, she spoke something that sounded both musical and raspy: an alien tongue.
The centre table lit up, and a myriad of colorful holograms flickered to life above the table.
Mi-Yao said something else, and a bright green symbol pushed through the other holograms. Immediately, the ceiling lights dimmed, and two ribbon-thin straps grew out of the seat and tightened around my waist and chest.
I waited for a deep rumbling, or a shudder at least.
Nothing. I felt nothing.
“Are we moving?” I asked Mi-Yao.
“We are,” she said. She noticed my surprise, and explained, “My pod is fitted with tremor cancellation. It’s okay. Even on my planet not all travel craft have that technology, so there’s no need to feel inadequate on behalf of your entire race.” She stuck her striped tongue at me.
“Shut up,” I grumbled. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
“My first favorite place on your planet,” she said, just before our straps released. “We’ve arrived.”
I was too bewildered to say anything. Particularly, when the walls of the pod faded from visibility, leaving behind the illusion that we were sitting on air in the sky.
She grinned and pointed down. “Look at that.”
I did look down, and I recognized the thousand-foot lattice of steel and lights immediately. I was looking at the Eiffel Tower of Paris.
We were in France.
VI.
Our first month that summer was spent in Europe, flashing from city to city, country to country. I say ‘flashing’ because that was how long it took us to get anywhere. The pod moved at speeds respectably close to light. We explored a different city every day.
The first thing you learn
about touring at light-speed is that you grow unimpressed with the locations—fast. London, Paris, Munich, Rome, Prague, Vienna, they all started to seem the same. You saw one national museum, you’d seen them all. Soon, exploring any given city felt like a bother, and I started to grumble.
The sad thing is that Mi-Yao really was trying. With her translator, no language was a barrier, and she tried to find us the most interesting places to visit. But by way of positive reaction, I barely gave Mi-Yao anything to go on. Even when I enjoyed a new experience, I masked it underneath a shrug and an “It’s alright, I guess.” I could see Mi-Yao growing frustrated. Not with me. Just with herself. She was trying to make my summer, and I was giving her nothing.
At the end of the month, she took me to Africa for a change of scenery. Ghana, West Africa to be precise. We visited one Oxford Street in the capital city—a street bustling with activity even at 11 pm. A lot of lights and flashing billboards, a lot of tourists and tall buildings.
There, she bought me a small carton of chopped up, peppered and fried plantain slices. Plantains are like oversized bananas, except they’re inedible raw. When they are fried however, they are the most amazing things a person could ever shove into their face.
I absolutely loved them.
“They’re alright,” I mumbled to Mi-Yao, after emptying my carton in under a minute.
Mi-Yao looked visibly upset. “Why are you being like this?”
“Why am I being like what?”
“You’re not being nice,” she said.
“I’m not being—are you kidding me? I said they were alright! What do you want from me?” I said back.
We walked down the street as we argued. I wasn’t really watching where I was going, so when I bumped into somebody, I sputtered my apologies before even giving them a good look.
She was a woman, maybe pushing sixty. Her
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