“Trust me, she’s not.” Seppie shudders.
I jerk up. “What? How do you know? Did she do something?”
“She flew.”
“What?”
Seppie swallows. “Seriously. She flew me here. Didn’t you notice there was no car? Not that many footprints in the snow? She just picked me up and landed here. It was insane and cold and scary as all hell, like nothing in those romantic vampire movies. Not that I would ever think of Mrs. Stephenson that way.”
I fall back against the shed wall. The whole building wobbles. “You’re serious.”
She raises her hand. “I swear.”
“Oh my God.”
This is too much. Maybe I’m the same kind of alien they are. Maybe all that leaping around in the locker room was like gearing up for flying. Maybe Lyle runs so quickly because he’s not truly touching the ground? It’s all so big and overwhelming.
Finally, I manage, “So if she flew you here like Superman, then there’s no car to bring us back.”
“Bingo.”
“Crap.”
The heater makes a clicking noise. My heart makes the same damn noise. “So, what are we going to do?”
“You really don’t want to have that guy help?”
“No.” I stomp back and forth. “I just don’t completely trust him. He says he’s helping, but … and … It’s just … these … these voices in my head kept telling me not to trust him.”
“One. Stop pacing. There is not enough room in here to pace. Two. Let’s talk about the voices in your head thing. How do you know you can trust them? Three. Hasn’t he been helping you all along? So, either way, who do you know you can trust?”
“One. Pacing is exercise and exercise is good. Two. I am freaked, too. Three. Yes, he has, but I don’t want him to help because he just wants the chip. I mean, I think he cares about Mom and everything, but his main goal right now is to get this chip.” Seppie leans back, crosses her hands in front of her chest and thankfully doesn’t lecture me on trust issues. I trip on the heater cord and the whole thing clanks over backwards. I kick it back into the right place. The heater stops glowing. It turned off when it fell over. I twist the knob to get it going again. “You. Lyle. Mom. My dad.”
“And our goal here is to find your mom, right?”
“Right.”
“And you have a plan to do that?”
I think about that for a second. “We are going to have a controlled meeting, at our location and on our own terms. Wow. I sound like China. We’re going to Walmart, where we can get weapons like knives and crossbows. We’re going to have a little exchange.” Seppie takes this all in stride as soon as I say it, which she deserves mad props for, honestly. She just trusts me. I don’t even trust me. Seriously, I heard those voices in my head, alien voices. Humans can’t do that. But I might not be human. I swallow hard and stare at Seppie’s beautiful face. “Do you think I could fly?”
“Well, you are the freaking flyer, aren’t you?”
“I’m not talking about cheerleader flying,” I say.
“I know you’re not.” She puts on a fake, cheesy-white-person-in-a-bad-eighties-movie smile. I love that I don’t have to explain that I’m worried, that there’s a possibility that I might be alien, too. I love that this isn’t a thing. I love that she just says, “Buck up, little camper. Let’s go see.”
We walk toward the door, but then she stops and says, out of nowhere, “You don’t have an acid tongue, do you? Or Lyle?”
“Not that I know of.”
She inhales deeply. “Good … good … But Dakota Dunham is really an alien creeper.”
“He is absolutely an alien creeper.”
“Damn, what a waste. He was so hot.”
“I know.”
* * *
We don’t have much time before China and Lyle will come searching for us. Seppie boosts me up onto the roof of the shed. She makes a big oomph noise, like she doesn’t lift me up all the time in cheering, but I let it go because, let’s face it, it’s not every day that your best friend’s alien mom abducts you.
It’s slippery on the roof, all slanted and slick with snow. I try to get a good position.
“You look like you’re surfing.”
“Shut up.”
She smiles. “Okay. You going to try it?”
“I think so.”
I don’t move.
“Mana?”
“Yes.”
“You okay up there? You know, you don’t have to try this. We could hot-wire some car somewhere.”
I glare at her. “You do not know how to hot-wire a car.”
“And you don’t know how to fly.”
The monkeys are making a big ruckus to my right, squealing and screaming. I can see the tip of the roof of their house, just past the hill. Lyle and China are right around there somewhere. I need to hurry.
“Did Mrs. Stephenson do anything special?” I ask.
Seppie thinks for a second. “She just sort of squatted and lifted up.”
She demonstrates.
“Like I’m going to make a really big jump?”
“Exactly.”
“Okay.”
I squat. I lift my arms up over my head in a T reach.
“Like this?”
“Perfect.” Seppie jumps back and forth on her feet. “Mana, are you really sure that you want to do this? We could—”
I jump.
“Mana!” she shrieks, running closer to the building to catch me. Her long dreads flutter out behind her, snow filling them. She swears.
I reach up and reach up.
I am off the shed.
I am off the world.
I am flying.
Sort of. I mean, I’m leaping up and up.
And it is so-o-o cold.
And so-o-o cool.
But mostly cold.
And then I land on my feet, easy, and bounce up again. It’s not exactly like Superman. More like giant leaping with significant air time.
Seppie is running around in a desperate circle below me, chanting, “Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap.”
I land again.
Her arms fling open wide, like at the end of the “Defense” cheer. “You are smiling so big,” she screeches.
“It’s freaking amazing!” I screech back. “It’s so cool. Like being a kangaroo mixed with a bird, but um … not quite. But it is so freaking cool!”
I turn around and motion for her to climb on.
“Piggyback?” she mutters. “You want to give me a piggyback?”
“I’m not strong enough to fireman carry you,” I say. “And we have to get supplies, weapons…”
“But…”
I growl at her. “I know you’re used to being the base and lifting me up and making sure I don’t fall, but it’s my turn. Got it?”
“Okay. Fine.”
I bend over a little bit, loosen up my knees. She leaps on. I stagger forward. And we are up.
“I can’t believe you can do this,” Seppie yells into my ear, as we jump up so that we’re at the level of the middle of pine trees, heading straight for Walmart. The wind smashes against us as she clutches my shoulders.
“Me either.”
I adjust my arms under her legs. Seppie leans forward a little and we buzz past a gaggle of crows that had been roosting on a middle branch of a big maple tree. They caw and cackle, taking to the air.
“We pissed them off,” Seppie says. The crows flutter away. I cannot believe I’m doing this. Flying! Me … My heart soars and falls.
“I can’t believe I’m an alien,” I say.
“What?”
“I can’t believe I’m an alien!”
For a second, Seppie doesn’t answer. Then she goes, “Well, believe it. At least you don’t have tentacles or an acid tongue or anything. That’s good.”
“Damn good.” Although to be fair, while gross, an acid tongue is a pretty amazing weapon.
Walmart waits up ahead. We’ve been
following Route 101—not directly, obviously, but over to the right of it, just out of sight of cars (hopefully). I don’t want people to see bounding cheerleaders and think they’ve gone insane. I know that would have freaked me out, last week. I would have set up an appointment with a mental health expert immediately.
Walmart is huge from the air. It’s a big box of gray surrounded by acres of impervious surface full of shoppers’ cars and blowing plastic bags.
“Disgusting,” I say.
“Can we land for real soon?”
I nod and find a good place in the back parking lot, by the loading dock. We thud down. Seppie hops off the moment my feet touch the trampled snow. She’s shivering from the wind and cold. A plastic bag blows into her leg and she kicks it away as she tries to rearrange her hair. “That was amazing,” she says. “But let’s go get my truck at the Y next, okay?”
“You don’t like my kangaroo-style flying awesomeness?”
“Sweetie, I’m sure I’d like your flying just fine if it wasn’t so damn cold, or if you were, like, a hot vampire,” she says, and starts fast-walking around the building, toward the front doors. I have to trot to catch up. My body feels achy, like I’ve had the flu. I wonder if that’s a flying side effect.
We round the corner and see the front doors of Walmart. The dull gleam of the giant yellow smiley face greets us. People push their way through the doors, into the massive room of merchandise covered by a layer of dust and grime. Our shoes squeak on the dingy, off-white linoleum floor.
“How can you not want to be an alien when you see this?” Seppie whispers.
“Maybe box stores are alien inventions,” I whisper back, glancing over my shoulder, half expecting Acid Dakota Dunham to show up, or maybe more of those Men in Black. The only people behind us are an angry man in a big, flannel shirt and duck boots from L.L.Bean or Carhartt or whatever, plus someone that he probably calls ‘his woman,’ who is slumped forward, from the weight of her life, I guess.
It is so sad. This entire place is sad, all merchandise and materialism, but you know … you know … It would be worse if it didn’t exist. It would be worse if that lady slouching behind us never had a chance to straighten up her shoulders because of some stupid alien–government conspiracy, because the chip I have stuffed into my pocket somehow got into the wrong hands.
We step farther inside, into the false warmth blowing out from the heaters.
A lady in a blue bib waits by the Sale rack. She’s got a roll of yellow stickers in her hand. She smiles at us. “Welcome to Walmart.”
Seppie takes a sticker as we walk by and plops it on my nose.
“Nice,” I say, ripping it off.
“I don’t want you to get too cocky, now that you have superpowers.”
“Shut up.”
“No, you.”
We do our annoying-kids-in-the-car routine. It’s comforting somehow.
We walk past the extra-large women’s bras and toward the back of the store, where the electronics section is. Seppie holds my hand and squeezes it, just a little bit.
“I know you’re worried about your mom,” she says, “but we’ll get her. It’ll be okay.”
“Of course we will, without a doubt, and everything will be perfectly fine,” I say back, but the truth is, it’s not that easy to believe.
* * *
Once we have everything we came for, we kangaroo fly to go get Seppie’s car and drive to my house so I can leave a note.
Chip for my mother. Meet us at the high school gym. No tricks. Even exchange. 3 P.M.
I leap out of the car. Leaving the door open, I run as quickly as I can to the front door of my house and tack up the note. The wind blows the yellow plastic tape against the porch. It’s this one spot of color in a world that’s otherwise just snowy white and shadow. I rush back to the car again. I’m sure the house is watched and I’m sure the people or aliens monitoring it are the ones who have Mom, plus a few extras, I bet.
I yank the door shut behind me and Seppie squeals out of the driveway.
“Think anyone saw?”
“No clue.”
She speeds down my road while I’m still trying to get my seat belt on. I can’t seem to get it to buckle. “I can’t latch it.”
She glances over. “That’s because your hands are shaking.”
She swishes on the windshield wiper. The truck fishtails around the corner, the whole back section zigzagging on the slick road.
“We should probably slow down,” I suggest, in what I think is a perfectly normal voice for someone who is terrified.
Seppie doesn’t answer.
“Or maybe play music. I am kind of freaking out here.”
“Did you get your seat belt buckled?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“You liar. Just try to calm down, okay, Mana? And buckle your damn seat belt.”
“Yep. Mm-hmm. Okay.”
I try again. It clicks in. I stare at Seppie’s face. Her jaw is rigid. “You’re freaking out, too. You’re just pretending to be calm.”
“Of course I’m freaking out,” Seppie says. “How can I not be freaking out?”
She turns right onto the road. There are hardly any cars out. Slush covers the normally well-defined lanes of the street. Snow piles up on the edges, from when the plow last came through.
“This is going to work,” I say.
The wipers whisk the snow to the right and left, back and forth.
“Of course it will.”
We’re just sitting there when “Jingle Bells” starts blasting out of nowhere.
Seppie jumps. The truck swerves toward a snowbank. She gets it back into the lane. “What the hell is that?”
“Mrs. Stephenson’s cell?” I say, after a second of thought. I dig it out of the backpack and stare as the stupid, incessant ringtone keeps going on and on.
“Who is it?”
“It says it’s my mom’s cell.”
“I thought you had your mom’s cell.”
“I gave it to Lyle.”
She makes a face. “You should probably answer it.”
“I know.”
It stops ringing.
Seppie groans. “Mana…”
“If I talk to him, I’ll end up telling him what we’re doing. I don’t want him hurt.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Honey, I know a lot of things you think I don’t know, actually.”
“Oh, really? Like what?”
“Like Lyle likes you.”
The phone rings again. Same ringtone. Same number.
I admit, smiling, “He does not … but we kissed.”
She screams and slaps my thigh. “Shut up! Was it good?”
All I can do is nod super emphatically.
“Holy … wow. Answer the phone.”
Lyle’s voice cracks when he speaks. “Mana?”
“Hey, Lyle…” I pick at my jeans. There is a hole in one of the knees. I must have done it when I fell earlier. I didn’t even notice until now.
“Are you okay? We found my mom in here. She’s pretty messed up. She won’t tell us anything. Somebody duct taped her to a chair.”
“That was me.”
“What?”
“She kidnapped Seppie. I’m … well.… I’m not sure how to tell you this gently, but … Lyle, basically she’s an alien.”
There is a pause. This pause is long, and I instantly regret how abrupt I was, explaining this.
Finally, he says, “My mom?”
“Yes. And I’m really sorry, Lyle, and I’m sure this is a lot to process and is beyond hard to hear, but probably your dad, too, because your mom is antihuman in a big way. She’s really bigoted. I don’t think she’d marry a human.”
Again, the pause is long. I add, “I wish I could have done this face-to-face, but I didn’t want to risk her hurting you.”
“So that means that I—”
“Pretty much,” I interrupt before he can say
it. “I don’t know how China feels about aliens, Pierce being the exception, so maybe you could not tell him that you probably are one, too. Maybe you could pretend like you’re adopted.”
There is a big silence on the phone as I try to think of what to do.
“Maybe you should put China on the phone, actually,” I suggest.
After a second, his voice comes through in an exasperated rush. “No. No. I’m just processing. How is Seppie?”
“She’s okay. I’m with her now.”
“And you’re okay?”
“Perfect,” I say, as Seppie pulls into the high school parking lot. I motion for her to go around toward the left side, where there’s an auxiliary parking lot. “We should go in the back.”
“Go in the back where?” Lyle demands.
“Um. We’re okay, Lyle. I’m sorry that we didn’t come out and get you, but … I … um … Well, I don’t know if I can trust China, and—”
“Holy crap. You found the chip, didn’t you?”
Seppie parks. I stare at the solid brick side of the building. Right behind it is the gym. There’s an emergency entrance here.
“Yeah, Lyle, nice announcing it. I have to go, okay? I’ll give you a call back in a little bit.”
“Mana. Do. Not. Hang. Up,” he says. “What are you doing? You found the chip? Are you trading it for your mom?”
“What do you think, Lyle?”
Seppie motions for me to hang up.
“Mana. You can’t do that without us. It’s dangerous.”
“I know. That’s why I’m not telling you where we are. Duh. No offense. Sorry, that sounded mean…” I peek over at Seppie, who gives me a do not be an idiot face.
Lyle keeps talking, but not to me. “Holy crap. China. She found it. She’s doing it. Mana, where are you?”
I hang up and silence the phone.
Seppie turns the key in the ignition and pulls it out. “So?”
“Does he really like me? Lyle?”
She pockets the key. “You just said his name unnecessarily, which he does all the time to you. That’s a pretty big sign.” She smiles and opens up her door. It starts dinging because the lights are still on. She peers back in at me and flicks the headlights off. “Think you can manage the whole seat belt thing, Little Miss Love Bug?”