“The small forest beyond the railroad tracks?” Tamara asked.
I blinked at her. “I don’t know about that. That’s very far . . .” Tamara lived in a different school district but went to our school because of her parents—I didn’t quite understand it.
“My dad can take us,” Tamara insisted. “It’s at least as interesting as the ghost of Sándor Petőfi. There is someone hiding there.”
I nodded. I didn’t much care for the ghost of Sándor Petőfi, rumoured to stalk the corridors of our school, and I thought our classmates were into him because he was the only poet they knew. We had to recite Arise O Hungarian on the anniversary of the 1848 Revolution, and I still resented the fact there was no school celebration on the anniversary of the 1956 Revolution. They just gave us the day off. Auntie Margit—Mrs. Teacher—said the school still needed to decide what would be appropriate.
I grimaced. “Fine then. The small forest beyond the railroad tracks. But then we strike off the ghost. It is for small girls.”
“Aren’t we small girls?” Tamara asked.
“We’re not, we’re already in second grade! We are big girls.” I was very firm about this.
My mom bought me a chalkboard when we went to IKEA. This was the first Western chain store in Hungary, and we had to take the train, and then the subway.
I felt I had to put something very important on this Western chalkboard. Previously, I thought only schools had chalkboards; they belonged to people like Auntie Margit. Having one felt like having power.
I drew Moses, then erased him. I felt that his ghost lingered. Now it was time. THE HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY, I wrote, in block letters. INVESTIGATES—I sneezed. My fingers hurt from the chalk dust.
Then came the bullet points.
- UFOs
- The Bible
- The small forest (the rest didn’t fit, but I wanted to put “behind the railroad tracks where Tamara lives”)
- NOT the ghost of Sándor Petőfi
How to investigate? The only thing I was good at was reading.
A stand stood inside the front hall of Children’s House, just past the list of after-school classes open for enrolment. With Tamara, we’d already read through the whole list and picked our favourites, but now I was interested in something else. The stand was stacked full of books for sale, both for children and adults, and all manner of glossy magazines. When Grandma wasn’t paying attention, I reached into a box and pulled out an issue of UFO Magazine.
“If we can get our families to sign us up for an after-school class, we can come here every week,” I whispered to Tamara. “I’m sure we can find something interesting.”
In the end, we picked Origami for Children. I secretly wanted to sign up for Origami for Adults.
It took a few visits before I managed to sneak two issues of UFO Magazine into a stack of children’s magazines, then convince Grandma about the purchase.
We were lying on Tamara’s bed, me reading an article from UFO Magazine out loud. “Human-Alien Hybrids, and How to Recognize Them,” I read.
“This is good.” Tamara turned toward me. “I want to recognize them. Then we can arrest them in the name of the Hidden Knowledge Society.”
I sighed. “We are not the police.”
“Yes, but human-alien hybrids are dangerous,” Tamara insisted. “If we find one, we can report it to the police and I’m sure they will do something.”
I closed the glossy pages. I wouldn’t want to go to the police with anything. My dad told me the police once chased him all the way across the hill, and he only escaped by running into a church. They didn’t like his long, dark, curly hair. He said I should always be very cautious and avoid the police. I told him I was blonde, but he pointed out my hair was still curly. He also said they once summoned him for a friendly chat. They told him to sit in a chair, and when he tried to pull the chair closer to the table, it was bolted to the floor. That made him very scared, but the police finally let him go. My mom said they were already feeling the winds of change, and I understood this meant the new regime.
“What’s wrong?” Tamara asked. She was sitting crosslegged and staring into my face. When did she sit up? I didn’t notice.
“Let’s read something else,” I said.
“No, no, I want to know about this.” She yanked the magazine out of my hands. It flipped in her hands almost of its own accord. “Let’s see—here it is—‘hu-man, al-ien hyb-rids.’ You read.” She thrust it at me.
I read.
Human-Alien Hybrids and How to Recognize Them
Human-alien hybrids have a few discerning characteristics. Most hybrids allowed to live on Earth are not Grey hybrids, but rather Blonde hybrids, also known as Nordics—we know Grey hybrids exist from the testimonies of contactees, but they generally do not interact with Pure-bred humans.
My stomach sank. Pure-bred? Humans were not like dogs, were they? I was sure Moses would have disagreed.
Blonde hybrids have blonde hair, blue eyes, and are generally precocious as children. They learn to read at a young age, often before entering formal education. They seem permanently out of place . . .
“This is you,” Tamara said, drawing away from me. “You’re a human-alien hybrid!”
“I’m . . . not . . .” But I was hesitant, not sure if I was making a statement or posing a question.
“You’re blonde and I’ve seen both of your parents. They aren’t blonde.” She pulled closer again. Inspecting me? She tilted her head to the side, her hair falling straight down. “You are so much lighter than your parents.”
“I look like both of my parents! I’m sure they are my parents!” I had no idea what to say. I was suddenly scared. What if she was right?
“You are a human-alien hybrid! Nordic hybrid!” She jumped toward me. I raised a hand to fend her off, but I already saw what would happen—she was coming in too fast, I would crack my wrist, then topple backward off the bed, crack my skull—
My hand touched her chest, and I didn’t even have time to think about how to push her back when she was suddenly hurled back by a giant invisible force.
How—
She fell off the other side of the bed but scrambled up, her face pale.
I stared at her, terrified.
“I said you were an alien!” she screamed. “You, you—threw me across the room with your alien powers!”
“I—I didn’t . . .” Or did I? I had no idea what happened. One minute she was charging me, then next—
But I hadn’t done anything. Just touched her sternum.
I rounded the bed to help her up. Maybe I had pushed her away, after all. With my strange alien powers. The words echoed in my head, round and round and round.
I was sure I would have broken a bone if she crashed into me. I just wanted her to stop—I wanted to stop her—
“Just go away!” she screamed at me.
I blinked. “You don’t want to arrest me?”
“Just, just go!” She was crying.
I stumbled from her room, her family home, and not even saying goodbye to her parents.
I ran. Then as my side began to hurt, I slowed to a walk. My sight was blurred, and not even from tears. I walked all the way home from her place, back to the big housing projects, under the giant streetlights shaped like whips.
Mother was sitting in the kitchen listening to a song on the radio. The singer begged the listener not to allow him to become a traitor to himself. I was a bit confused, but I thought it was about politics. Everything was about politics these days. Except, maybe, UFOs.
“Mom?” I didn’t want to nag her, but I also had to ask.
“Mmm hmm?” She turned toward me but didn’t turn down the song. She had circles under her eyes. The collective farm had been dismantled after the regime chang
e and she now had two new jobs, and was studying for some certification. I felt bad for nagging her all the time. But Dad was gone.
“Why am I blonde, if you and Dad are . . . aren’t?”
She furrowed her brow. “There has been a lot of intermarriage in the family.”
“Intermarriage?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. That’s why you turned out so nice. As we used to say in the collective, hybrid vigour is the best!”
She smiled at me. The world swirled.
Mrs. Margit was talking at the front of the class, going on and on about famous Hungarian writers. I tried to pay attention, but I couldn’t. I was so nervous. And when I was nervous, I had to go to the restroom a lot. When I asked to go during class, my classmates snickered. I looked at Tamara, and she looked away. She didn’t want to have the Hidden Knowledge Society anymore. She didn’t want to see me anymore. Was I really a human-alien hybrid? I couldn’t think of anything else.
I grabbed my little bag of paper tissues. The school no longer had money for paper tissues, and I was glad I didn’t forget this time. I went to the restroom. I wiped and papered the seat with my tissues, then sat and contemplated.
What if I really pushed Tamara off the bed with my mind? I did. I really did. Even if I didn’t quite dare admit it to myself. Did that mean I was a human-alien hybrid?
My family had a secret. Was this our secret? Was this why Mom and Grandma were yelling at each other late at night in the kitchen sometimes? Grandma said she didn’t want to be on a list anymore. Was the government tracking human-alien hybrids? Had Tamara gone to the police after all? Why would she trust the police?
Uri Geller could bend spoons. And he was Jewish—or Hungarian? Could he be both at the same time? And Nina Kulagina, or whatever her name was, she was Russian and she could move objects with her mind. I was glad not all Russians could do that because then they would probably still be occupying us. I wondered if Mrs. Kulagina was a human-alien hybrid. She wasn’t blonde, but maybe she coloured her hair. Adults were allowed to do that. I wanted to colour my hair.
I wondered if I could push open the toilet stall door with my mind. Maybe first I could focus on opening the latch. I thought at it, hard. I had no idea how to do this.
Nothing happened.
I tried again.
Still nothing.
I had to get back to class. They would be missing me. Would they? I got up, used more of my tissues—I was running low—and adjusted my clothing, ready to return.
The latch didn’t open.
It was jammed. I yanked at it. Swore. Had I broken this thing too? Could I undo it somehow? I yelled at the latch. Rattled the door. Tried to push it out with my shoulder. Kick at it.
The stall door didn’t budge. It had looked so flimsy just a moment before. I suddenly felt very strongly that I was not a big girl yet. Surely if I was bigger, I wouldn’t get stuck in the toilet.
I looked down. Could I wriggle through the gap? The floor was dirty—the school didn’t have a lot of money for cleaners anymore, either. It looked like someone had peed there. Days ago. In any case, the gap looked too small. I might have been a small girl, but not that small.
Maybe above? I closed the toilet lid, gingerly with a piece of tissue—it didn’t look clean either. I stepped on the lid. It looked like someone else had stepped on it before me. It held my weight, but the top of the stall seemed quite high, still, and how would I get down on the other side?
I suddenly had a very strong, very vivid feeling I would fall and hit my head. I wondered if this was a human-alien hybrid power. Seeing the future, like my grandfather. Hadn’t Moses seen the future? Maybe he was a human-alien hybrid.
And didn’t the Bible say the angels had lain down with humans? I knew what adults did when they lay down, they had sex and that was where kids came from. I had a Swedish comic book for kids that explained it in detail. I’d wanted to show it to Tamara before the whole falling off the bed thing, but now I didn’t think that was such a good idea anymore.
I hadn’t wanted to hurt Tamara. But she jumped me in the first place, and I was just—
“Zsuzsi? Are you in there?” Mrs. Margit sounded furious. “You have to hurry up. I had to leave the class to fetch you.” She strode into the restroom.
“Mrs. Teacher, please? I’m stuck in the stall.” I stood on tiptoe on the toilet lid, but I still couldn’t see past the door. I wobbled and almost fell off. I carefully got back down.
She yanked at the door, but the latch held. “Can’t you open it from the inside?”
“It’s not coming open.”
“It must have rusted shut.” It sounded like she bit off a curse. “I’ll go get the custodian. He has to have some rust remover, if he hasn’t drunk it already.”
She strode off. I wasn’t sure how the rust remover would help him if he was outside and I was inside. And didn’t things take a long time to rust? I’d just gone into the stall and it was open.
The custodian came. He was angry and had a sour smell. He didn’t bring rust remover, but he brought a screwdriver, which didn’t help either, and a hammer, which eventually did.
The whole class laughed at me when I returned.
The first snow of the season. The first snowballs hitting my back. I lost my balance and fell.
“Alien, alien,” someone yelled. I didn’t recognize the voice. One of Tamara’s new friends?
I turned around and as soon as they all saw my face, they bolted away. I must have had a terrible expression. I felt terrible. “Come back and fight fair, face to face!” I shouted into the snow.
“No fighting fair with alien infiltrators.” The kid who’d taunted me turned a corner, racing with the others out of sight.
I stared at the concrete wall where they had gone, at the graffiti that said KRAFTWERK in thin black capitals. I thought it was a band, but I never heard their songs on the radio.
Infiltrators didn’t sound like a UFO word. It sounded like a politics word. It sounded like the time in kindergarten when a boy told me, “They would have made soap out of you, the Nazis, you know?” Nazis was a politics word, about the War, I knew that now. That had been right before the winter celebration, with Father Frost and Little Snowflake. I didn’t tell Mom back then, but now I was beginning to feel maybe I should.
There was no Little Snowflake any more, and Father Frost was called St. Nicholas, even in school. Teachers said Father Frost had been a Soviet import, and that we should get an Advent calendar instead.
I knew I wasn’t a small girl anymore, so I didn’t say I still missed Little Snowflake. Maybe she would know what to do. I didn’t talk to Tamara anymore, but now she was telling everyone else about me. Me, and my strange alien powers.
I stared out of the bedroom window. The streetlight outside flickered, almost in time with the emotions fluttering in me. I read an article in UFO Magazine about how people could not only move things with their minds, but also affect electricity and machines. But it was so hard to tell, when everything was so broken-down and unrepaired, what was me and what was just stuff breaking on its own.
I took a deep breath and thought of Moses marching down the hill.
“Mom.” I strode into the kitchen, determined. With steel in my steps, as they used to sing in the Communist songs. “I want to talk to you about something very important.”
She’d been scrubbing the kitchen sink, but now she turned to me, and she looked like she’d been crying. “I’ve also been meaning to talk to you about something very important.” She nodded. “But you go first. I’m listening.”
“Mom, I . . . The kids always want to yell at me, and sometimes even fight. I’m not sure what to do. They say all kinds of things.”
“For example?”
“That I’m an alien. Like a . . . UFO alien. Fro
m space.” I shook my head. “I know it’s nonsense, but they won’t stop. No one wants to play with me anymore. And today someone told me I was a . . . an infiltrator.” I hoped I got the word right.
She sighed. “Well, this certainly simplifies matters. We might need to move to a different town in the spring. But I thought you might like to stay here because you have your friends in school.” She looked away and began to fuss with her scrubber sponge—not because she wasn’t listening, but because she was nervous, I thought. I hated to touch those scrubbers, but Mom didn’t mind.
“Mom, why do we need to move?”
She set the scrubber down on the kitchen table. “I got a good job offer, but it’s far away. I wouldn’t have to work two jobs anymore, and I could spend more time with you. Learn more about you.” She sighed again. “I feel like you’re growing up and I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
Again she treated me like an adult. And that felt good. Even the people who said I was “precocious” generally didn’t. But my stomach turned into one big knot. What if she found out about me? About human-alien hybrids and moving things with my mind? About throwing Tamara across the room?
I bit down on my lower lip. “I think that might be nice, actually.”
She nodded. “We can discuss it more later. You can think about it in the meanwhile. I’ll show you pictures of the town, and we might even be able to visit before we make a decision.”
“Will Grandma and Great-Grandma also come? Grandma has a job here.”
“Grandma will retire next year, so it’s going to be a change either way.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I nodded. “Mom? Can I ask you something else?” She nodded encouragingly, so I went on. “What do you think about . . . people moving objects with their mind? Do you think it’s possible? I read an article about it.”
She laughed. My stomach sank like a rock, a knotty rock, but then she hugged me. “It’s not a bad question. I’m just laughing because I didn’t see that coming.”
Seasons Between Us Page 33
