Summer Girl

by Maxwell Coffie

our family. I wish she would just…disappear.”

  “Disappear to where?”

  “I don’t care,” I said, balling my fists tight. “I hate her, Mi-Yao. I hate them both.”

  I felt Mi-Yao’s cool fingers wrapping around my fist. Her touch relaxed me, and I allowed her to part my hand and slip her fingers into mine. She squeezed.

  “Everything will be fine,” she whispered.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  We fell asleep next to each other. Or at least, I fell asleep next to her. I woke up in the middle of the night alone, and it was freezing. I returned to the farmhouse.

  The first three days, Mom only came out for breakfast and dinner. The stench of alcohol hung around her, and more than once I seriously considered calling a hospital. But mom had never done this before, and I wanted to give her a break. There was also the uncomfortable threat of Child Services making an appearance, and I didn’t need that crap.

  I felt a flood of relief when, on the fourth day, Mom stayed out of her room after breakfast. She spent most of the day on the couch watching TV, but that was okay. I watched with her.

  For the remainder of the week, we visited town a few times, cooked, laughed through sitcom marathons till we were tearing up, and most importantly, we talked. Without using that exact word, we agreed that Dad was a dick, and that we were just going to have to learn to live without him. All we had to do was be there for each other.

  “Thanks, Peter,” Mom said to me, the night before we drove back home. “I really needed this.”

  “Of course, Mom,” I said.

  And before I realized it, I was smiling at her with narrowed eyes.

  VIII.

  The next time Mi-Yao saw me, I had discarded my eye shadow, studded accessories, and gothic clothing for a tamer wardrobe. She took a look at my plain t-shirt, jeans and sneakers, and smiled.

  “There’s the Peter I know,” she said.

  Mi-Yao and I finished off the month touring South Africa, Egypt and East Asia. Japan was my favorite stop because, being the fan of anime that I was, I’d always wanted to visit the place. Real ramen, breath-taking landscapes, quirky ads, and really friendly people—I was not disappointed.

  The day before Mi-Yao had to leave, we were hanging out in my bedroom when she invited me to her ‘home’ for lunch.

  “Home?” I repeated.

  “The more accurate term would be ship. But I’ve seen your movies. I know how you people react to that word. Though I must admit I’m disappointed; you have never asked me where I sleep at night. Do you care so little?” she said, her eyes growing wide and wet like a puppy’s.

  “I always assumed you slept in your pod,” I lied. The truth was I had never asked her about where she spent her nights because I was afraid of this very situation. I did not want to go inside her space ship. That was giving up the last tiny bit of control that any wise person would want to keep when dealing with an alien being.

  “You really think I sleep in my pod?” she said. “Would you sleep in your car?”

  “Some people do,” I continued.

  “Yes. Homeless people. I am a princess, I would remind you.”

  “Oh yeah, I forgot about that.”

  She crossed her arms. “It’s settled then. We shall go to my ship for lunch this afternoon.”

  “I can’t wait,” I said, forcing a smile.

  That afternoon, we drove to the woodland where Mi-Yao parked her pod. Minutes later, we were floating over a frosty wasteland, descending upon a titanic mass of ice. I stared at the ice mountain through the transparent walls of the pod, and asked, “Where’s the ship?”

  The words were barely out of my mouth, before a colossal body of steel and glass suddenly faded to visibility atop the mountain. From above, the ship was pentagonal in shape, though its edges converged more curvaceously into vertices than a regular pentagon would. The massive curved surface of the top of the ship was almost blinding—it seemed to be covered in some kind of glossy white tiling, and it reflected the sunlight rather viciously up at us.

  As our pod drew nearer to the ship, it approached from the lower underside. The bottom half of the ship was coal black, and that was a mercy on my eyes. The walls of the pod turned opaque again, just as we were swallowed up by the ship’s outer wall.

  “We’ve arrived,” Mi-Yao squealed, looking excited but nervous.

  A door formed in the wall of the pod, and Mi-Yao led me through it into a brightly lit corridor.

  On the wall to my right, an animated face appeared—no hair, no brows or eyelashes—and followed us down the corridor, saying something in an alien language. Its eyes were narrowed, so I assumed it was a welcome message of sorts.

  The corridor led us into another room. I chuckled when I stepped in.

  “What?” Mi-Yao asked me.

  “Nothing,” I lied.

  I was smiling because I was standing in a cliché. Like every sci-fi movie I had ever seen, the aesthetics of this alien room were minimalist and seemingly avant-garde.

  The walls were silvery and white, hanging with frames that held paintings and video clips on a loop. One of the videos was of Mi-Yao when she was younger; she was making strange faces at the camera.

  “That was when I was learning to smile,” Mi-Yao said.

  A few of the other frames were windows into hollowed out spaces, where three-dimensional abstract art slowly revolved and morphed. The objects I assumed were chairs were either bowl shaped, or so oddly curved that you wondered how they were supposed to support a pair of buttocks.

  I stopped at one table that had what initially looked like a lava lamp. That was until I realized the lamp had no walls, and the liquid was hovering in empty space. As I watched, the luminous liquid shape shifted into a number of curious creatures—winged creatures, clawed creatures, creatures limbless like the snake. It eventually shifted into an upright two-armed two-legged creature, but I couldn’t be sure if it was mimicking human beings or Mi-Yao’s specie.

  There was a yell behind us, and I whirled around to see two tall men in black and gold uniforms strutting towards us. Both of them were bald, with no eyebrows or lashes like the animation in the corridor. They seemed angry.

  “Ah yes,” Mi-Yao said. “Peter let me introduce you to my travel chaperones: Mu and Bhark.”

  I laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

  The men didn’t wait for Mi-Yao to answer me. They started yelling something, and Mi-Yao started yelling back. After about a minute of overlapping yelling, Mi-Yao threw her hands up in the air and dragged me off to another room.

  The walls here were tinged gold, and there was a contoured bed at the heart of the floor. Vibrant plant life and ceramic artifacts lined the edges of the room, and I noticed a furry creature just like Obi hanging from the ceiling in a cage. Also, I noticed on the wall that there was a framed picture of me reading a comic book on my bed.

  “My chaperones have sticks up their crevices about contamination rules,” she said. “I’m sorry, you have to take a chemical bath.”

  “When did you take that?” I asked her, approaching the portrait of myself. I jumped when the image in the portrait flipped the page and kept reading.

  “Last Earth year,” she said.

  I turned to see about six more framed images of me: in front of the TV, pouring cereal in the kitchen, window-shopping at the mall, stepping out of the bathroom… Half of them were static; the other half had subtle movements on a short loop.

  My heart slightly—ever so slightly—increased its pace. “What the f—“ I began.

  “Do you like them?” she interrupted, her eyes wide.

  “Um,” was all I could murmur.

  “You really have to take that bath, Peter, or Mu and Bhark are going to make me kick you out. And you’ve seen what it’s like outside,” she nagged. “Take off your clothes. Right now, Peter!”

  I stripped to my underwear and stopped. She stared at me.

  “I’m not taking anything else of
f with you in the room, Mi-Yao,” I said.

  She shook her head, “You Terrans and your shame in sexuality.” She pointed at a glassy, tube shaped compartment in the corner of the room. “That’s the pressure washer. The bath won’t last a minute.” And she left the room.

  I slid the door to the washer open, and stepped in. The door slid shut automatically. A soft female voice from the ceiling said something alien to me.

  “Uh, I’m supposed to have a chemical bath,” I responded to it.

  To my pleasant surprise, it responded in English, with a male voice this time: ‘Chemical Bath commencing. Please shut your eyes and mouth.”

  As soon as I obeyed, I was hit with multiple blasts of something foul—like a blend of mouthwash, urine and bleach.

  I gagged, right before I was knocked around with surge after surge of first icy gas and afterwards, scalding steam. Afterwards, I was blow dried and surrounded in a mist of something sweet smelling. Mi-Yao was probably right; I was done in under a minute. But those were the longest sixty seconds of my life.

  I grabbed at the walls for balance, right as a panel in the wall slid aside and a tray popped out.

  ‘Please take a blue pill,’ the pleasant voice said.

  I looked into the tray, and blinked at the row of plastic containers, each brimming with a different color of pills. Pink pills, yellow pills, green, light red and dark red pills, blue, orange, purple, and a plain white variety with dark spots.

  “What are these?” I asked.

  “Mood stabilizers, antidepressants, antipsychotics…” the voice declared, cheerily.

  Mi-Yao’s voice was sudden, cutting into the