“Talk louder.”
“I’m not feeling great!” This time, at maximum decibel levels.
The hunger in Jake’s eyes vanished. “If you’re going to puke, go outside,” he shouted back at her matter-of-factly. “The upstairs toilet’s clogged.”
She stared at him in amazement. This was the guy she’d even told Mom about, who’d listened eagerly, excitedly. And she’d stared at him so many times—fleeting glances in the halls, in third-period Honors English and seventh-period World History—that she was startled to realize she had never truly seen what he looked like before. Maybe sad-puppy Jake from class had only existed inside her head. Now, up close, she noticed not one, but two thick hairs protruding from his nostrils like spider legs, and the noxious beer-and-cheap-cologne fumes wafting from his neck.
What would he say, she wondered, if he knew about Mom’s condition? She didn’t want to think about it.
“Thanks for the tip,” Cate said. When she pushed past Jake, he didn’t try to stop her.
She needed air. The music was giving her a headache, and she was dizzy—she’d only choked down a few crackers for dinner before the party. Her mom had thrown out the Chinese food she’d been planning to eat for dinner because she swore she “saw a camera hidden inside the lo mein.”
She felt a bead of sweat roll down her back. It was too hot, too damn hot. She should never have snuck out in the first place. She should never have let Ivy convince her. Usually, she knew better.
Listen, Babe, Ivy had said, wrapping her arm around her. The world is probably ending. Aliens on the march and all that. So why are you holding yourself back?
It was typical Ivy exaggeration—the bunch of radio static or signal or whatever it was from the newly discovered alien planet Kepler-88a hadn’t even been decoded yet, and for all they knew it was nothing more than an alien butt-dial, or maybe a simple Hello, little Earthlings! Mind if we borrow some sugar? Nothing to panic about.
Cate couldn’t help but feel that this time, though, her best friend was right. Why else would aliens ever bother to contact Earth? And if it really was harmless, why bother encoding it? At this rate, the world probably would end before Cate’s life had even begun.
And if that meant tonight would be one of her last memories, she really had to rethink her life decisions.
As Cate pushed her way toward the stairs, Ivy’s voice reached her from across the room. “Cate! Get over here!”
Ivy glowed against the fog, and the way her smile crinkled the corners of her eyes made her almost painfully gorgeous. A girl in her element. A girl with no regrets.
And why would she have any? The girl knew how to live, how to grab everything she wanted; despite dealing with parents who argued more than they breathed, she was named captain of the debate team, snagged an early acceptance to Stanford, and had 100 percent certainty in her future career as an attorney just like her mom. She made it all look effortless, too. Soon, Ivy would be free. She’d deserved it.
When had their paths diverged so much? Cate was happy for Ivy, and proud as hell. But she couldn’t help but feel left behind. Then again, it wasn’t like Cate had much of a choice. She had to be there for Mom. Mom, whose tired eyes always held a glint of guilt whenever she looked at her, who always insisted that Cate stop holding herself back because of her.
But she had to. It was stupid to imagine, if only for one night, she could have anything resembling a normal life. How could she, knowing Mom would be home alone, fighting demons in her own head?
What happened? Ivy mouthed, flashing an all-knowing grin from across the room.
Cate smiled weakly. Bathroom, she mouthed back.
Ivy fake-pouted. “Fine, but hurry!” she shouted, cupping her hands to her mouth so Cate could hear her above the music.
Cate took the stairs two at a time, grabbed her jacket from the couch, and flung it over her shoulder. She dove through the crowd of classmates clustered in the front hall—some she didn’t know; some she didn’t care to know—reached for the doorknob, and plunged outside.
She wasn’t going to the bathroom. She was going home.
The September chill made Cate grateful for the jacket she’d brought. Light gray vegan leather, on sale. A certified Ivy Huang pick, like most of her best clothes, like her newest haircut, a cute bob. But she still couldn’t shake off the cold that had crept on her skin when Jake touched her. She’d imagined her first kiss would give her a rush of butterflies, that it would feel sweet, like liquid gold.
Stupid.
She shot a text to Ivy to let her know she’d left the party, and took a deep inhale. An afternoon rain had brought out the scents of metal and oil and earth from the veins of the city. The night was unexpectedly clear, and the fog had rolled off the bay, leaving the stars intact, glimmering against the dark.
She used to like looking up at stars. She’d even talk to them, too; on nights Mom couldn’t listen, Cate knew that at least they would. But ever since her Environmental Science teacher told her that by the time their light had reached Earth, the stars had already died, the night sky creeped her out. The stars she saw were shining corpses, echoes in a hollow sky. She might as well have been venting to dead people.
She wondered if the aliens on Kepler-88a had seen the same stars, before they had died. Were they even prettier back then, up close and brimming with life?
Immediately, she tried to quash the idea of alien planets and their stars. She had enough to think about, and until the little green guys showed up with neutron guns, she still had to go to school every day and grab groceries for her mom on the way home, still study like hell just to catch up, make sure Mom took her pills, make sure that she ate, make sure that she slept, make sure Mom held on to her receptionist job at Health First Medical, which she’d managed to keep for an entire nineteen months (and four days). As long as Cate helped her mom stick to their routine, things could be normal, stable. Otherwise, her mom would stay glued to the TV, absorbing every bit of information about the weird signal from the new planet, melding news with the false thoughts and memories that seemed to grow in her mind like fungus. Ever since talk of aliens had become the topic on everyone’s lips, Mom’s condition threatened to spiral out of control. While the rest of the world buzzed with excitement, Cate had fished softened peach-colored pills out of a toilet bowl with a pasta spoon strainer and begged her mom to take one, just one pill.
She turned the corner of Folsom, and the Citizens for a Safer World office came into view. Tonight, the lights in the windows were off, but the sidewalk was still littered with anti-alien protest signs from an earlier demonstration.
Earth First, most of the signs screamed.
Love Is Not an Alien Concept, a lone counterprotest sign retorted.
She’d been so caught up preparing for the party that she hadn’t even registered the sounds of the demonstration, hadn’t even known it happened. She’d been so stupidly filled with hope for tonight. For her first—
She stopped walking. She’d had her first kiss. She touched her fingers to her lips. Did she feel different?
A little bit.
Maybe. But she was probably imagining it. Just like she’d imagined sad-puppy Jake.
Her house emerged over the lip of a steep hill, a tiny slice of building smashed between other narrow homes. Cate and her mom rented the bottom floor of a traditional single-family home, remarkable only for its lurid flamingo-pink paint, which always flaunted itself from a distance. Tonight, however, as Cate approached the house, number fourteen lit up different shades of red and blue, red and blue, flashing staccato in the rotating sweep of police lights.
Police.
Guilt squeezed at her lungs with an icy grip, leaving her breathless.
She should never have left her mom alone. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
She ran.
The slamming of car doors resounded in the quiet night air; two police officers in dark uniforms emerged from the police cars. Her mom, still in her pastel blue
pajamas, was hailing the cops from the front porch as if they were arrivals on some cross-oceanic ship.
“Mom!” Cate gasped, finally reaching the front yard. She was always struck by how effortlessly gorgeous her mom was: sand-and-sunbeam-flecked hair, glimmering green eyes—neither of which Cate had inherited—and laugh lines like memories of happier times etched in her skin. But now Mom looked sickly pale, like she was straining beneath some invisible weight. She tilted her head, squinting, as though she didn’t recognize her daughter.
And maybe she didn’t. More and more often, Cate’s strong and beautiful mom felt tucked away somewhere. More and more often, Cate came home to Molly.
No. That wasn’t right. Dr. Michel had told Cate that different sides didn’t split her mom into different people, that everyone had different sides to them, and that didn’t make them any less whole. But Cate, she hated to admit, still caught herself calling this stranger by Mom’s given name whenever she appeared: Molly, a stranger she found unpredictable, even frightening at times, someone who didn’t respond when spoken to, or spoke in rhyming phrases and nonsense words. Someone who dumped pills in the toilet because the voices told her to. Someone who saw cameras hidden in the lo mein.
But no, Mom was Mom, full stop. She would always and only ever be Mom.
Even if, in the dark corners of Cate’s mind, it sometimes didn’t feel like it.
The two police officers turned at the same time. “This your mother?”
“What does it look like?” Cate snapped. She had to stay calm, she knew that—but sweat trickled down her back. She dodged the cops and leaped the porch steps, grabbing her mom by the elbow.
“Are you okay?” Cate asked in a low voice. “Are you hurt?”
Her mom shook her head, even as she began to sway. “Not yet. Not yet. But soon,” she said dreamily. “The police know.”
“You called the police?” She could only imagine what Mom had said to them on the phone.
“Your mother called to report some kind of home invasion,” one of the police officers said. “Dispatch had trouble getting the story.”
Cate pushed down another surge of nausea. Her mom had been worried for weeks about an invasion—but not the kind they meant.
“It’s okay, we’ll put your alarm on, all right, Mom?” she replied, keeping her voice as steady as possible. They had no alarm system, but whenever her mom was upset, the idea of an alarm had seemed to pull her back. “It’s my fault. I didn’t set the alarm. No one’s going to get in.” Cate clenched her mom’s hand, pulsing it steadily one, two, three times. Again, one, two, three, just like Dr. Michel had told her. Thankfully, her mom started to squeeze back. That was a good sign. Cate turned back to the cops, flashing them a big smile. “We moved from a bad area. Lots of home invasions. My mom gets nervous.”
The police officers exchanged a look. One of them cleared his throat. “So there was no burglary?”
Invasions and burglaries: Mom thought Kepler-88a had infiltrated Earth long ago. Sometimes she thought the aliens were snatching babies, stealing secrets, lifting thoughts, even from inside people’s heads.
“I—I’m so sorry,” Cate said quickly, pivoting toward a new lie, a new explanation. “There’s been a misunderstanding. See, what she told dispatch was probably that we moved from our last home because of a burglary. But she was calling this time because I snuck out without telling her and she was worried.” She spoke in a fluid rush, hoping the police officers would miss the gaps in her story. “But I’m here! I’m fine. Everything’s fine, see?” It was only a matter of time before one of the neighbors noticed the commotion. Cate had lost count of all the times she’d had to explain why Mom was wandering outside at odd hours: she was just forgetful, she’d had one too many mimosas, she’d chased off a raccoon. Her mom’s behavior had made Cate a deft liar; she’d had more than enough practice for the inevitable day that cops would show up.
Finally, the second officer, a kind-faced woman whose badge read Rodriguez, sighed. “Just do me a favor and don’t give your mom a heart attack, all right? That’s what cell phones are for. You gonna be out late, you call her.”
“I will,” Cate said. “I promise.”
She stayed there, holding her breath, until the cops had returned to their car. Only after their taillights had disappeared over the hill did she realize how badly she was shaking.
She let go of her mom, wiping her wet palms on her jeans, sick with relief and with terror at how close they had come.
“Come inside, Mom,” she said.
“Why did you let the officers go?” Her mom’s voice was sharp, escalating. Across the way, Cate thought she saw the neighbor’s curtains twitch.
“They’ll come back later. They’re going to patrol for . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say “aliens.” “They’re doing a neighborhood patrol. They said to get inside. Let’s stay inside and turn on the alarm, okay?”
She whipped her keys out of her jacket pocket with trembling, still sweaty hands and approached the front door. The tiny blackbird key chain her mom had given her, before the schizophrenia took an aggressive hold five years ago, thwacked against the door as she turned the handle. She had once truly liked her blackbird. Her dad had carved it by hand and given it to Mom when they’d first met. It reminded her of Mom’s first story about Dad: that he was a shape-shifter who transformed into a bird and flew somewhere far away. But one day, he’d fly back home, she had promised. Now the key chain was a reminder. A reminder that her dad, whoever he was, would not come back. A reminder that the stories she’d loved as a kid were just signs of Mom’s early delusions.
A reminder never to rely on anyone but herself.
She sat her mom on her reading chair in the family room before racing into the kitchen to find the pills she’d been drying out on a paper towel. After checking her phone again—Ivy still hadn’t texted her back—she made the mistake of glancing up and catching her reflection in the mirror above the sink, bleary-eyed, her concealer faded to reveal the stress zits she’d painstakingly hidden. But at least she was home, and that meant Mom was safe now. That meant Cate could breathe. She could deal with smudged eyeliner later.
When she came back into the living room, Mom was pacing in front of the TV, gripping a folded piece of paper. Cate recognized the paper right away: a ripped sheet from one of the many marble composition notebooks Mom kept tucked in the back of the broom closet, filled with strange drawings and coordinates that made no sense to Cate. Cate had discovered them years ago, but when she’d asked her mom what they meant, her mom had only smiled and said, “It’s a secret.” Cate never looked at them again. Looking inside them felt too much like a window into Mom’s mind.
The news was on now, but muted. The screen revealed a panel of experts in suits with furrowed brows and pursed lips. Below them, a ticker at the bottom of the screen displayed the headline: KEPLER-88A: ALLY OR ENEMY?
The screen cut to the president of the United States at a podium, and the ticker changed: POTUS AND HIS JOINT SECURITY COUNCIL BOAST PROGRESS MADE ON DECODING MISSIVE FROM OUTER SPACE. . . .
Before she could read any more, her mom stepped in front of the television, blocking it. Cate swallowed her irritation. Selfishly, she just wanted a second to wipe off the rest of her makeup, to get out of this stupid dress, to pretend that tonight never happened.
“I’ve got your medicine,” Cate said. “You can take it and go to bed.”
“I’m not tired,” her mom replied flatly. She took a step forward and seized Cate’s wrist, knocking the pills from her hand. Fingernails dug into Cate’s skin. “Listen, Cate. I want you to promise me that if anything happens to me, you’ll get this letter to your dad.” She pressed the folded square of paper into Cate’s hand. “He’s one of them, you know.”
Cate didn’t have to look at it to know that what was written there would be more nonsense. She didn’t have to ask what Mom meant, either. First it had been the guy behind the register at the grocery stor
e. Then the little girl selling Girl Scout cookies to fund a trip to the space station museum in Novato. Then a random old woman feeding birds in the park. “Aliens,” her mom had said. “All aliens.” The invasion wasn’t coming. It was already here.
“Dad was an alien, too, huh?” Cate bent to retrieve the pills. She hated having to talk to her mom like she was a child, hated having to pretend to take her seriously in moments like these, hated all of it—this disease that had invaded their lives, more terrifying and insidious than any aliens could be.
Worst of all, she hated that, despite everything, Mom still clung to her memories of Dad like a comforting blanket, still clung to her desperate hope that he would come back after all these years. Mom and Molly seemed to be in agreement about one thing: Cate wasn’t enough to protect them. Maybe they were right.
No. Stop that.
But her mom didn’t seem to notice her discomfort. “Tall, with thick brown hair and dark eyes,” she went on. “He looked like us. Blended in. But I could tell he seemed different. Special. Always had his eyes on the sky. I had no idea, of course, where he was from. Everyone in Reno is from out of town, you know. I was.”
“Why don’t you take your medicine,” Cate said, handing her a single pill.
Her mom inspected the pill between her two fingers, gripping it like a diamond. Cate tried not to cry with relief when her mom brought it to her lips and swallowed, leaving the water untouched.
“My feet are cold,” her mom added. “What time is it?”
“Almost midnight, Mom.” Cate’s voice cracked. “It’s time for bed.”
“You shouldn’t be up this late,” her mom said, as if suddenly realizing it.
“It’s okay.” Cate drew her mom into a hug. This is my mom, Cate repeated inside her head. No matter what, this is still my mom. “I will never let anything happen to us, okay? I promise. Nothing’s going to happen.”
Over her mother’s shoulder, the news was showing another press conference, another parade of military higher-ups, another cycle in the endless rotation of frowning experts. She read the ticker: DEMONSTRATIONS ROCK THE COUNTRY, DEMANDING THE GOVERNMENT RELEASE ITS TRANSLATION OF THE KEPLER-88A SIGNAL . . . NORTH KOREA THREATENS BALLISTIC MISSILES IN RESPONSE TO “WORLDWIDE HOAX” . . . CHRISTIAN EVANGELISTS TAKE TO THE PULPITS TO DECLARE END OF TIMES . . .
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