Flying

by Carrie Jones

  “I’m not just a cheerleader. I mean, that’s not what defines me.”

  He smiles enough to show he has actual dimples; I haven’t seen them before. This must be his real smile. “I know.”

  “And where are you going?” I pocket the laser and cross my arms in front of my chest. “You’re just leaving?”

  “I have work to do.”

  “What about my mom?”

  He runs his hand through his hair, then stuffs the hand away in his back pocket, acting all casual, trying too hard. “She’d want me to continue doing what we need to do.”

  “Which is?”

  “Search for your dad. Catch more aliens.”

  So that’s it.

  “Like me?”

  “Not you. You’re not an alien, Mana. You are human. You’re a special human who can’t have caffeine, but I promise you that you are human.” He reaches out his hand. I shake it and stare at him with my mouth wide open. I thought … I was sure I was an alien. I’d come to terms with it and everything. I thought that Lyle and I were both aliens, that we were the same.

  I don’t even know how to ask him what that means or how he knows, and he just shakes my hand like this is a normal thing to reveal. We stand there for a second and then he lets go. He reaches up and musses my hair. “I swear to you, she’ll be okay.”

  And then he just gets in his illegally parked Jeep and drives away. Seppie, Lyle, and I watch him from the waiting room windows outside the emergency room wing. He really just drives away into the sunset, like he’s some sort of stupid hero, which he is not. He’s just an attractive covert agent in a leather jacket who has dimples and an attitude. That’s all.

  And we stay. Well, Lyle and I stay. Seppie has to go home, eventually, but she comes back over and over again, switching shifts with Lyle to keep me company.

  * * *

  Clutching Mr. Penguinman, I let myself take one last glance at my mom, who is still unconscious in the hospital bed. The doctors say she had internal injuries that happened before she came to the gym. They had tortured her. There is evidence.

  Even with the Coke, I’m not one hundred percent sure how I managed to knock all the Men (and Women) in Black to the ground, yank the bullets out of the air, and keep us safe without even moving. I’ve tried for hours to figure out what happened. Lyle, Seppie, and I all think it has to do with the caffeine and my heart rate. We’re still not sure where the mind reading and leaping came from.

  The doctors have chemically induced a coma so that Mom can heal. Tubes stick out of her arms. Monitors beep by her side. Everything smells like blood covered up by bleach, like chemicals trying to hide the truth. The entire ICU room resembles something out of Lyle’s sci-fi movie collection.

  Only it’s real.

  I tuck Mr. Penguinman in next to my mom’s side. I kiss her cheek. Her skin is cold.

  “I’m going to go do the right thing,” I whisper. “Lyle is going to stay with you, okay? Keep you safe.”

  I straighten and walk away. My sneakers must still be wet, because they’re heavy, hard to move.

  Lyle has already pulled a chair up by the door and settled in. Our eyes meet. His long legs push him into a standing position by the door. His eyes linger on mine. “You sure you don’t want me to come?”

  “Of course I want you to come.”

  “I will.”

  A gulp sticks itself in my throat. The monitor beeps. I whirl around, but it’s just a beep, not an alarm.

  We haven’t kissed again. We haven’t talked about the kiss. We act like everything is the same, when everything has changed. Lyle and Seppie and I are all tied together now, more than we ever were before. It’s not just what happened that ties us together, it’s the knowledge of what could happen. The knowledge that Lyle isn’t human and neither am I, exactly. We got my mom back, but his parents have vanished. Well, his mother has been taken by China somewhere, and we think his dad is on the run.

  “I’ll be okay,” I manage. I play-poke his chest. “Thanks for standing watch.”

  He stands up out of the chair and puts his hands on my shoulders. “Mana…”

  “I’m good. Don’t worry.” I poke him again, trying to be all tough girl. But I’m not. Not really. “You are the best friend ever. You know that? Seriously.”

  “I don’t want you to go.” He yanks me in, hugging me. He smells like the spaghetti sauce he had for lunch, and beneath that is his normal minty smell. He’s the best of me, I think, the good and solid best of me, and it doesn’t matter if he’s human or alien, or if his mom kidnapped Seppie and threatened me. What matters is that he is Lyle—beautiful, strong, sexy, geeky do-gooder Lyle. I am so terribly lucky to have him in my life.

  “I’m worried about you,” he says. “I don’t want anything to happen…”

  He doesn’t finish his sentence. He doesn’t have to.

  I repeat, like doing that will make it true, “I’ll be okay. Don’t worry.”

  “Like I’m not going to worry.”

  I nestle in for one second, just one second, because that’s all I can spare. “Take care of her, okay?”

  He inhales so deeply that my head moves with his chest and his breath and then he says, “I promise.”

  * * *

  Before I can blink, really, I am on my way to the airport.

  In the taxi I pull the card out of the front pocket of my backpack. I found it there right after China left.

  PATRICK KINSELLA

  SPECIAL AFFAIRS

  323 East Capitol Boulevard

  Suite 42

  Washington, DC.

  I flip it over to read the writing again: Come anytime.

  I push the card into the front pocket of my jeans. It gets a little stuck.

  “I hope you know what you’re getting, Mr. Kinsella,” I murmur.

  “American Airlines?” the cabby asks me again.

  “Yep.”

  “That’s terminal B. Just another three minutes.”

  “Great, thanks.”

  I nod. I close my eyes. I wait.

  * * *

  The whole flight, I have this massive urge to tap on the window and wave at the clouds. That’s when it happens. I’m just sitting there next to a guy whose khakis strain against his super-muscular thighs, imagining Twilight Zone scenarios, missing Lyle and Seppie, missing my mom, wondering about my dad, wondering about China, wondering about what it means to be human, a special human in love with an alien boy, when I give in and let myself cry.

  The big, anonymous guy next to me puts down his copy of SkyMall. He puts his hand on top of my hand, which is resting on that ugly plastic foldout tray that comes down from the seat in front of you. I stare at his fingers.

  “You okay?” he asks. He has a good, mellow voice.

  I sniff in. “Is this the part where I cry and then gaze deeply into your eyes and we fall in love forever because we’re soul mates who are destined to be together and you help me fight the evil aliens who spit acid and shift form and then we make mad, passionate love for hours but it turns out you aren’t human?”

  The plane starts to go down.

  His hand twitches but he doesn’t move it. I have to give him that. Instead, he goes, “Did you lose your pills, or did you take too many?”

  I sort of snort, and this makes me guffaw, which then makes me laugh pretty hard.

  He laughs, too, and he holds my hand in his big one for the rest of the trip. And I think about how humans can be so kind to each other, even when we don’t know a thing about each other. We can still reach out and touch someone’s hand, knowing we will never see it again, knowing there is nothing in it for us, because we will be stepping off a plane, going to different lives. Still, we do it. Still, we reach out.

  CHAPTER 21

  The taxi ride into DC takes forever, but eventually it drops me off near the White House. I tip the cabbie way too much and climb out of the cab, saying good-bye to the smell of sweat and myrrh incense and hello to the smell of wi
nter cold and engine exhaust fumes.

  I cough.

  Welcome to DC.

  All the buildings in this section of the city are gray marble, appearing as though they aspire to be the homes of the gods in ancient Greece. It’s grand, I know that. But it’s also pretty impersonal. People hustle around, giving the impression that they’re all identical, with their briefcases and long, dark overcoats. I move with them, stepping in slush, feeling a little bizarre in my dark-purple coat, my bright winter hat.

  I do not fit in.

  Of course, I will probably never fit in again, just because I know, or because of my status as “special human.” Whatever that even means. Maybe this Kinsella guy has some answers. I want answers.

  So I slosh through the slush, searching for the building. The taxi driver let me off two streets down, as close as cars are allowed to go to the White House. But then I find it: 323 East Capitol Boulevard.

  The large square of the building just sort of looms over everything. It fits in with the other squares, grounded on the road, one after the other, like giant molars, ready to grind and chew.

  “Lovely.”

  A man bumps me and mutters, “Sorry.”

  He keeps moving by. Everyone is progressing across the street, up and down sidewalks. I’m the only one standing still.

  I take the steps two at a time, the stupid chip burning a hole in my pocket.

  * * *

  Awoman at the front desk, who is wearing one of those hands-free cell phone headsets and a lot of bracelets, takes my name and calls up.

  I can hear her voice in my head: She’s not from here. Not with that coat.

  Obviously, since I can hear her in my head, neither is she. I wonder how many aliens there are out there, like Lyle, some knowing, some not. I smile at her.

  “Yes, thank you. I’ll send her right up,” she says to someone on the other end of the phone line. She disconnects, nods at me. “He’ll see you now. Take the elevator to your left, go to the third floor, cross toward the left and then take the first hall to your right.”

  I cock my head. “Um?”

  She flashes a smile that is just politeness. There is no depth. She pushes something on her keyboard. “There’ll be signs.”

  * * *

  There are arrows directing people to suites, just like in hotel hallways. Suites 20 to 40, go left. Suites 41 to 60, go right. That kind of thing. I follow the arrows down a hallway full of mahogany doors and brass nameplates that list numbers and occasionally departments, but never names.

  Suite 42 is one of the first doors. There are no noises coming from behind it. Nobody walks through the halls. Security cameras that flash little red lights are the only signs of life. One of those automated spy drones, the kind they always show on CNN—they’re about six inches wide and resemble dragonflies—well, one of those flies by me. Creepy. It buzzes around me and then moves down the hall.

  Since they know I’m here anyway, I knock on the door.

  “Come in,” says a male voice, rough, lowish. “It’s open.”

  My hand slips on the brass knob. I’m sweating, I guess. I wipe it off on my coat. Try again.

  The man sitting there pulls his legs off of the desk. He stands up and smiles. “Mana.”

  He walks around the desk, leans in, shuts the door, smiles some more.

  “You’re … You’re…” I can’t find the right words. “You’re in a suit.”

  He nods, and his lips turn up in an amused smile. “I am, indeed.”

  He motions for me to sit down.

  I sit down.

  “Where’s Patrick Kinsella?”

  He thuds his chest.

  “You are Patrick Kinsella?” I search around the room for some sort of evidence.

  “I’m Patrick Kinsella.”

  “Huh. Okay, right … I’m glad your real name isn’t a country, I guess. I kind of thought that was a little weird.” I cough nervously and stand back up. There are pictures on his desk. One picture is of him, younger, with two sweet-seeming parent-type people. There’s a big lake behind them and a big fishing pole in the dad’s hand.

  “Moosehead Lake,” China, aka Patrick Kinsella, says. “We had a summer place there. It’s in Maine.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I pick up the other picture. It’s China the way I know him. He wears a leather jacket. No happy smile graces his features. Same goes for the slim woman next to him. Mom.

  He taps the photo. There is a cut on his finger. “We’d just pulled off a monster case. You know that acid-tongued alien?”

  Dakota. I nod. I remember to breathe. Mom seems so proud there, so proud and unhurt and alive. But she’s wearing a leather jacket. Totally not her style.

  “We’d just hauled in twenty of them. They’d been wreaking havoc all over Argentina, slaughtering cows, terrorizing villages. God, I hate those aliens.” He stops himself, unfists his hand, and turns to me. His voice gets softer. “How’s your mom?”

  “I called Lyle after I got off the plane and he said the doctors say they’re ‘cautiously optimistic.’” He probably already knows that. He probably already knows everything.

  I rip my gaze away from the picture, force myself to study China/Patrick. He tilts his head. “Mana…”

  I hold up my hand to stop him. “Tell me what the chip or device or whatever is. What it really is. I know I’ve only been getting half-truths. I want whole truths.”

  He eyes me. I meet his gaze and don’t back down, not for a second.

  “Mana…” He says my name all sternly, but I can tell his resolve is weakening.

  “The chip is gone. It can’t hurt to tell me the truth now. It wasn’t some master alien list, was it? We believed you about that at first, but then we thought it would kill all the aliens. Then we learned that it would kill all the humans.”

  The air in the room is stale and stagnant.

  “It would have killed you, your mom, me,” he says. “It would have killed all us humans.”

  “Okay.” I step backwards and end up against the wall, next to a picture of an American flag. I am not shocked, but to hear him say it just makes it more real.

  “The chip is part of some kind of a machine, a key part to a machine that’s been developed by aliens. It does not discriminate between good or bad. It just kills all.”

  “And the Men in Black?”

  “Wanted to use it against the aliens somehow. I think they know more about it than your mom and I do, honestly. We were still trying to figure out exactly what it was when we plucked it out of Dakota Dunham’s locker. Anyway, the Men in Black … They’re tired of merely picking away at aliens. The mutilations and abductions are increasing. More and more humans are starting to understand that something bad is going on. Many segments of formerly peaceful alien species feel threatened. It may be our home, but they want to evict us.”

  I can understand that. I can. But … “How do you feel about aliens?”

  He swallows hard. “I’ve always thought aliens were parasites. But Pierce isn’t. Lyle isn’t. Christ, how many more kids like him are out there? Not even knowing. How many adults?”

  “But me?”

  “What about you?”

  “You said I was a human, a special human. But what does that even mean? How can I not be an alien when all of a sudden I’m hearing aliens and leaping? What about what happened at the gym? Why can I do this all of a sudden? How? I am an alien, right? You were lying before…”

  “Human. You are human.”

  I lift an eyebrow. “Seriously.”

  “Seriously. You’re human with enhancements. You’re a weapon, Mana. That’s what you were meant to be, at least. It happened without your mother’s knowledge, believe me. It happened when you were young.”

  “What happened?”

  “Experiments.”

  “What kind of experiments?”

  “I think you know.”

  My nightmares. Is this about my nightmares? Were they real?

&n
bsp; Sickening dread makes a home in my stomach, but I push through the panic of it and say, “I obviously do not know, which is why I am asking you. Why? Why was I experimented on? Who did it?”

  “The aliens wanted to fight fire with fire, infiltrate the humans from within. So they came up with a plan. You were a baby. Your mom found the lab and rescued you; she kept you and raised you as her own.”

  “What?”

  He repeats it all over again, calmly, but I’m anything but calm. Inside me is one sentence, one question, repeating over and over again.

  I am not my mom’s.

  I am not my mom’s?

  “But—I—I—I look like my dad. Sort of…”

  “Your dad is just a cover.”

  “What?”

  The world spins in a very bad way. I grab the edge of the desk as China continues, “Your dad was advised of the situation. He agreed to be your father, pretend to have once been married to your mother. She was the best person available to keep you safe, hide you, raise you like a normal kid until—”

  It takes me a second to realize he’s broken off his sentence. “Until what?”

  “Until it was time to use you.”

  “Use me?”

  “Against the same people who made you. Not against humans. But against them. The aliens. The twisted, sick aliens who stole a baby and warped her DNA for their own purposes.”

  I stagger backwards. “I have to sit down.”

  “Your parents love you. You know that, right?” He tucks a seat underneath my butt, grabs a water bottle, and forces it on me. I gulp it down because I don’t have any idea what else I should do.

  I am a weapon.

  My parents love me.

  My parents are not my parents.

  My whole life is a lie, a story.

  I am a weapon.

  “Why is it all acting up now?” I finally ask. “I was normal before. I mean, I was good at tumbling and everything, but I was normal.”

  “It has to do with your heart rate and adrenaline,” he says, confirming the theories Lyle and Seppie and I had. “If you’re upset, your extra abilities are activated more easily. We honestly weren’t sure if you would ever manifest anything. For a while we thought it was a failed experiment.”

  “It was a failed experiment? You mean I was a failed experiment. Nice. You know how to talk to a girl, China, also known as Patrick Kinsella. You really do.”