I’ve been calling the thing that was visiting her a ghost, but that isn’t quite right. I did end up calling the Ghost Sweepers. They came to the house, examined the original video to confirm I hadn’t manipulated it, and ran all their tests in her bedroom—and surprisingly, they determined that there’s nothing supernatural happening in our house, and there never was. Their investigation was so boring, they didn’t even bother to upload that footage on their own YouTube channel.
So if not a ghost, what was it?
Aliens.
I’m serious.
Who says that aliens have to look like E.T. or tall gray creatures? What if they can phase in and out, change their shapes, avoid being recorded on video? They could have psychokinetic powers like your typical poltergeist. What if, for all intents and purposes, these aliens look and act like ghosts? The question is: What do they want?
Insert requisite alien probe joke here.
I’m kidding, but I’m kind of not. My theory is these aliens are performing tests on humans to see how we work. Maybe they like sexual experimentation as much as we do, although they have a lot to learn about consent. Hell, they could be developing a weapon to incapacitate humanity with pleasure or using our sexual energy to power their vessels. It sounds like the plot of a campy B-grade porn video, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
I wish they’d taken me instead of my sister. I wish they’d come for me now. I, for one, welcome our new sex-crazed alien overlords.
It’s not for the sex thing either. If they bring me to wherever they took Allie, maybe I can get her back. At home I’ve been sleeping in her room, recording myself every night. I’ve been reaching out to other people online, in case they’re also being visited. It’s a long shot, but I’m trying to get the aliens’ attention through my YouTube videos. So far, nothing. But if I mysteriously disappear one night, you’ll know what happened to me, and you can tell my story. Even if no one believes you.
In the meantime ask yourselves: Do you feel refreshed when you wake each morning? Or does it seem like you just aren’t getting enough rest no matter how much sleep you get?
“Was that a fucking joke?” Lucinda asked. “Aliens? You think it was aliens who molested your sister and then kidnapped her? And you want them to do it to you?”
“You made that up,” Cody said. “Right?”
David shook his head. He’d started out just telling the rest of his story to Sunday, but the others had fallen around the fire to listen as well, unable to resist despite their obvious disgust at the idea of David filming his little sister getting off and posting it for everyone on YouTube to see.
“That was your sister?” Tino said. “I’ve seen that video. There was no way that was your sister.”
“It’s real?” Georgia asked.
Jackie chuckled. “I’m sure you can Google it when you get home.”
“I’m not—”
Cody put his hand on Georgia’s back. “That’s not what Jackie meant.”
“Uh, yeah it was.”
Jenna sat closest to the fire, as usual, holding a stick in the center of the flames, watching the end blacken and char and the tip burn until it was a bright orange ember. “If that story was fake, you’ve got a sick sense of humor. If it was true, you’re just sick.”
“My vote’s for a little from column A, a little from column B,” Jackie said.
“At least I didn’t try to pass off an episode of Space Howl as my own,” David said defensively.
Jaila cleared her throat, pulling the attention off David. “So we’ve got a problem we need to discuss.”
“How none of the girls should ever be left alone with David?” Lucinda said.
Tino laughed. “You’re not related so you’re probably safe.”
“I think we’re lost,” Jaila said, raising her voice to cut through the noise.
No one spoke for a full minute. Like Jaila had stolen our voices and thrown them into the fire and all we could do was watch them burn.
Tino found his first. “And who knew this was going to happen?” He looked at each of us in turn. “Oh yeah, that’s right. I did.”
“Why don’t you shut the fuck up, Constantino,” Georgia said, which caused Cody and Sunday to both stare at her. I couldn’t remember ever hearing her cuss before, and it sounded harsher coming from her.
“We got turned the wrong way trying to get down the rocks earlier,” Jaila went on. “And I think we’ve hiked too far north.”
“Thanks, Georgia,” Jackie said.
Cody bunched up, his expression tight and defensive. “It wasn’t her fault!”
“Yes it was,” Georgia said. “If I hadn’t run off and gotten hurt, we wouldn’t have had to go around the stupid boulders.”
Tino pointed at Georgia. “At least someone’s taking responsibility for screwing up.”
“I swear to God I’m going to knock your teeth down your throat,” Lucinda said.
David said, “Why don’t you two go screw and get it out of your systems already.”
Jenna rolled her eyes at him. “Because they can keep it in their pants.”
Tension simmered around the campfire, and it was beautiful. All they needed was a little nudge to explode. But Jaila shushed them and said, “Look, we’re hungry and tired, and we’re not going to figure this out tonight. So why don’t we just get some sleep, and we’ll talk about it in the morning?”
No one argued, not even Tino, and we each eventually retreated to our sleeping bags, but I don’t think anyone slept that night.
DAY 3
OUR THIRD MORNING in the wilderness was damp and quiet. Everyone was hungry, and everyone was angry. We were frayed and wondering if we were going to make it back to camp. Without the flare, Dipshit Doug would never know where to find us, and it began to occur to each member of our clusterfuck at different times that we could actually die out here.
I thrived on the chaos, I lived for tossing bombs and watching them explode. But even I didn’t want to die of starvation or thirst or by being mauled by wild animals. Jenna had woken up screaming in the middle of the night, and I’d seen her and Georgia wander off to talk. While they were gone, I’d sworn I’d heard wolves or a bear or whatever animals prowled these mountains, so I’d pulled my sleeping bag over my head, hoping if some hungry beast wandered into our camp, it would eat one of the others and then leave.
Jaila, Jenna, and Sunday had woken up early and huddled near the fire, talking quietly and trying to figure out where we were. Tino and Lucinda joined them eventually, and it was a wonder that the meeting didn’t end with anyone shouting or castrated or dead. They decided as a group that we needed to head east because even if we didn’t hit camp, we’d eventually run into the main road that ran up the mountain. It seemed as good a plan as any, and there were no arguments.
Georgia’s ankle was still swollen and bruised, and she couldn’t put any weight on it, but she was able to hop a little using the crutches Cody had made her. She was determined not to spend the whole day being carried around in the litter, and even though carrying her would have been faster, no one was brave enough to tell her that.
“Maybe you got lucky and it’s not broken after all,” I overheard Cody say to Georgia after we’d started walking.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe. But if I broke it, that wouldn’t be the worst thing.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Well, at least then I’d have an excuse to quit the soccer team.”
“What?” Cody stared at her. “Why would you want to quit?”
Georgia stopped. “Look. I was sent here because a girl on the team accused me of sexually assaulting her.”
Cody’s mouth fell open. “Did you?”
“No!”
“But—”
“We kissed, that’s all. And she kissed me first.” Georgia kept her voice low. “But her parents found texts we’d sent each other, and they freaked out, and she made up this whole story.”
??
?So does that mean you are gay?” Cody asked.
Georgia didn’t answer for a while. Then she said, “I don’t know. Maybe?”
“You know it’s okay if you are.”
“Yeah,” Georgia said. “I just . . . maybe I like both. It’s confusing, you know?”
Cody nodded. “I get it.”
“Everything just got all messed up with that girl. She lied, she flat-out lied, and now my parents think . . .” She stopped, shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Sunday must have been eavesdropping because she fell in beside them and said, “My dads sent me here because of something somebody else did, too.”
“What was it?” Cody asked.
“No one wants to hear it,” she said.
“She’s right about that!” Tino shouted from the front.
“I do,” Georgia said.
Sunday’s chin dipped to her chest. “Sure,” she said. “Okay.”
“SELF-PORTRAIT”
by Brandy Colbert
SUNDAY TAYLOR SAT next to Micah Richmond her first day at the Brinkley School, and he was the first person who was nice to her, so she trusted him right away.
She also knew right away that he was different from her friends in Chicago. At her old school, she’d hung out with the church kids because they always seemed to want her around. They invited her to birthday parties and weekend barbecues and youth group meetings teeming with sexual tension. None of it was particularly fun—she’d always felt a bit like they were all in some unspoken competition for who could be the best Christian. But they were always kind.
She’d moved to L.A. a couple of weeks ago when her father got a new job. Both he and his husband seemed to be fitting in just fine, but Sunday was terrified of Los Angeles. It was just so different from what she was used to. The city was slower, more relaxed than Chicago. Here, people who were forty looked twenty, and it wasn’t all cosmetic surgery.
“Six months of winter ages you,” her dad had said as they dodged moms in yoga pants and college students buying kale in the natural foods market. “Life’s a lot easier when you don’t have to spend half of it shoveling snow and avoiding frostbite.”
They lived in the San Fernando Valley—what everyone called the Valley and what she soon realized was considered very uncool by half of Los Angeles. Sunday didn’t mind it. Her school was over the hill, in West Hollywood, so she got to see plenty of the city during the week. It seemed busier there—more traffic and people. Their street in Sherman Oaks was peaceful, so quiet and manicured it felt like a storybook neighborhood.
“Sherman Oaks is cool,” Micah said after asking where she lived that first day.
They had second period together too, so they ended up walking next to each other across campus. Sunday was grateful for it. The campus wasn’t particularly big, but it was clear that everyone knew everyone else. They kept looking at her, and she wondered if it was because she was new or because she was with Micah. Maybe both.
“Where do you live?” she asked, taking in his profile.
He was cute enough to warrant the stares of the other students. Micah was one of the few other black kids she’d seen since she got there. He had brown skin a couple of shades darker than her own coppery complexion, a lanky build, and a dimple in his cheek. The only looks she’d received so far had been curious at most, but she was still glad to have someone else around who looked like her.
“I stay over in Beverly Hills,” Micah said quickly, then: “What are you studying here?”
Brinkley was an arts-and-sciences school. Sunday had gone to private school back in Chicago, but it had a more basic curriculum. Looking at the roster of classes on the website when they were filling out her application, she’d been almost intimidated by the selection here.
“Visual arts. You live in Beverly Hills? Is it as fancy as it is on TV?”
He shrugged. “Parts of it, yeah. What type of art?”
“A little bit of everything. I mean, I want to study art history in college, so I’m taking those classes. But I’m signed up for studio art and sculpture this semester, too. Why are you being weird about living in Beverly Hills?”
“I’m not,” he said. “It’s just . . . people kind of judge you by where you live here, and I hate that shit.”
“People do that in Chicago too.” Sunday paused and then decided to change the subject. She didn’t want to piss off her first and only friend or acquaintance or whatever he was. “What are you studying?”
“Guess.” He led the way down the path to the building where their honors history class was located.
Sunday looked at him closely, tilting her head to the side and squinting her eyes like she saw people do when they wanted to look smart in art galleries. “Math?”
He shook his head. “Nah, I fucking hate that shit.”
“Hmm . . . English?” Maybe he was an undercover literary genius.
Micah laughed. “You probably won’t guess. It’s dance.”
“Dance? Like ballet?”
“I take classes in everything, but I want to choreograph. Contemporary. My piece last year won first place in the choreography showcase,” he said with a small smile.
“That’s really cool. I’ve never known any guys who dance.” It was all sports all the time at her old school. And in the Midwest in general. If you didn’t watch sports, people looked at you like you were absolutely un-American.
“Well, you’re in L.A. now. Everybody here does everything.”
They walked through the bustling hallways, and every few feet, people would wave or grin or fist-bump Micah to say hello. She wouldn’t have guessed him to be popular; maybe because he was so low-key. The people in the popular crowd at her old school were all virtually interchangeable. They wore the same expensive clothes and made appointments at the same expensive hair salons, and their families went on the same extravagant vacations, sometimes together. You could spot them by the glow of superiority that practically radiated around them.
A guy in a hoodie with surfer-blond hair shuffled over just before they walked into their classroom.
“What’s up, man?” Micah said easily, slapping hands with him.
“Not much, just uh . . .” He glanced over at Sunday and nodded, but didn’t finish his sentence.
Ah. The universal signal that her presence wasn’t wanted.
“I’m gonna go in,” she said to Micah, feeling the self-consciousness that had engulfed her when she walked up the front steps that morning flooding back in full force. It had started to dissipate once Micah introduced himself in first period.
“Save me a seat?”
And just like that, the warmth in his voice convinced her that she was going to be okay.
* * *
Sunday settled easily into their new friendship. She didn’t feel particularly desperate for friends; she would have happily blended into the background for a while. But Micah was nice, they had three classes together, and she’d been eating lunch at his table since he’d invited her on the first day.
She wondered if the other students thought they were dating. At her old school, people seen talking too long, too closely, or too often would be immediately questioned. But here, nobody seemed to think anything about her hanging around. And she didn’t feel anything for him—not really. It was almost like they’d known each other their whole lives, but there wasn’t a spark. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever had a spark with anyone, but she hoped she would know when it happened.
On the first Friday at her new school, Sunday showered and got ready a bit earlier than normal. She had to make sure she caught her dad and Ben before they left for work. Well, only her father would be leaving. Ben did his graphic design projects out of the spare bedroom they’d turned into an office. But they both got up early and had coffee and breakfast together each morning, even on the weekends.
“Morning,” Ben said from the stove where he was poaching an egg. “Want one?”
“No, thanks.” Sunday made herself a
bowl of instant oatmeal and sprinkled blueberries on top. Fruit was one of the things Los Angeles did better than Chicago. Her father had seemed positively delighted the first time he’d seen the produce all lined up in the market, practically sparkling in the bins. “Where’s Dad?”
“He had to go in early.” Ben’s back was turned toward her, and she noticed that his ash-blond hair was starting to get a bit long. He was older than her father, but he acted younger; less serious, anyway. “What’s up?”
“I’m going out with some friends after school, so I don’t need a ride,” she said. “I mean, if that’s okay.”
It was always okay in Chicago, but they knew all her friends back there. And no one was worried because she was always hanging with church kids.
She could see the skepticism in Ben’s posture before he even turned around. “New friends? Why haven’t you mentioned them?”
Sunday shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t really have a reason to until now, I guess. It’s only been a few days.”
“Are these friends actual friends or a boy?”
She swallowed a spoonful of oatmeal. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive, you know.”
“And you know what I mean.” He carefully transferred the poached egg to a plate and moved the pot from the hot burner. Then he wiped his hands on a dish towel and turned around, leaning against the sink.
“My friend Micah invited me to hang out with him and his friends. We eat lunch and have a bunch of classes together. That’s it.”
“What will you guys be doing?”
Sunday shrugged. “Maybe a movie. Getting a bite to eat.”
Ben nodded. “All right. Home by ten.”
“I’m sixteen!”
“Eleven. And call us if you need a ride.”
“Fine.”
Ben’s discipline and rule-setting had never been strange to her because Ben had almost always been around. Sunday’s parents were teenagers when they had her, before her father began dating men and her mother realized she didn’t want to be a mother. She wasn’t in Sunday’s life anymore, but Ben had been there since she was eight years old. Half her life.