by Kat Mayor
***
After a few minutes of rapid walking, Lilly started to calm down. Charlie was right. It would be stupid to try to walk home just to prove a point. She would have to get back in the Jeep with him, whether she wanted to or not.
She muttered to herself. “So now you want to talk. Well, great. I’m not really in the mood. Just because I have to ride back in the car with you doesn’t mean I have to talk to you. You’re not the only one who knows how to give the silent treatment. I’m not going to say a thing to you. I can do it, too. Watch me. Just who do you think you are? Acting all miserable and not talking to me. But then you say you don’t want to break up. Well, which is it? Maybe it’s not up to you anymore. Maybe I want to break up with you. You’ve got a lot of nerve telling me never mind. You like not talking to me? Fine, then don’t. The next thing that comes out of your mouth better be a big fat apology. Some groveling wouldn’t hurt either,” she said, as she made her way back through the woods to the highway. Oh, who was she kidding? Angry or not, she wanted to try to work things out. If he apologized and suggested they go to the diner, she would say yes in a heartbeat. She started running then, to get to him faster.
***
Charlie kicked a large rock that was in his way. It went flying into the woods. Why did she have to be so stubborn? In another half hour, it would be dark. If she didn’t come back soon, he would have to go after her. He picked up the tree next and threw it as far as he could. It landed deep in the woods. Charlie looked up then. Lilly was standing across the road, staring at him in disbelief. Charlie froze. It was a very conspicuous show of strength. No Earthan could have moved it.
Lilly ran up to him. “Charlie, how did you do that?” He started to walk away but she ran and stood in front of him, blocking his way. “Tell me,” she demanded.
“I don’t think you want to know,” he finally said.
His tone was so serious. Was he trying to frighten her? Well, it wouldn’t work. “Yes, I do want to know what’s going on with you. One minute you’re happy; the next you won’t speak to me. You tell me you don’t want to break up, but when I ask you what you do want, you get angry. You say things that are odd. You know things you shouldn’t know. You are able to do the impossible. Like throwing that tree…Shall I go on?”
He was silent for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “If I tell you, it might change things. How you feel about me. In fact, it probably will.”
“That’s not possible, Charlie,” Lilly said. She cupped his cheek with the palm of her hand.
He grabbed her hand and put it down at her side. Then he stepped a few feet away from her. “OK,” he said, taking in a breath. “Liliana, this is going to sound crazy, I know. But I’m not from here. I mean, I’m not from New Mexico. I’m from somewhere very far away.”
“How far?” Lilly asked.
“Light-years,” Charlie said.
“Be serious,” Lilly said, shaking her head. If this was another attempt at evading the question or joking around, then she wasn’t amused. She looked at his face. He wasn’t kidding. “You’re serious?” she asked. He nodded. That would mean…No, it couldn’t be. Lilly thought back: his rapid heartbeat, incredible strength, never sweating. There was definitely something different about Charlie.
“Where, exactly?” she asked. She tried to sound calm, but she knew her voice was shaking.
“My planet is called Sentria. It’s two galaxies away from the Milky Way. We come here periodically to make sure Earthans don’t learn of our existence.”
“So you’re here to spy on us?” Lilly asked.
“Essentially,” Charlie said. “The last time my family was here, some of your people actually found out about us. We had to make it seem like they were crazy conspiracy theorists.”
“New Mexico,” Lilly said. Of course. “You came from Roswell, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Charlie said, “the last time I was here was back in 1958.”
“You came from the fifties?” Lilly asked. Charlie nodded. “So you’re, like, really old. You’re my mom’s age.” Lilly started backing away from him.
“No,” Charlie said calmly. “I’m your age. We can time travel.”
Lilly stopped. “Like Back to the Future?”
“When it suits our purposes,” he said.
Lilly’s eyes grew wide. “Those Roswell pictures. That’s what you really look like.” Lilly shivered and crossed her arms. Just thinking about how many times Charlie had held her in those alien arms gave her the creeps. And she didn’t even want to think about those alien lips pressed against hers. It was like kissing ET—so gross. She moved even farther away from him then.
“Liliana,” Charlie was laughing at her. “Those were photos my government disseminated. They aren’t real. They are just doctored images of some of our old fetal exams. We used them to perpetrate the whole conspiracy theory.”
“So this is your real skin?” she said pointing to his body. She stayed at a distance.
“Yes. I’m flesh and blood,” Charlie said.
“Just not our kind of flesh and blood,” Lilly said. “That’s why you can move that tree.”
“Yes,” Charlie said.
Lilly felt weak. She leaned against the bumper of the Jeep.
Charlie observed her pallor. “Are you OK?” He wanted to go over to her, but he knew that was probably not a good idea.
“I’m great,” Lilly said. “My boyfriend’s not even human. But other than that, everything’s cool.”
“No, I am human. I’m just not Earthan. I was made in God’s image, just like you.”
Lilly grew quiet then. She had asked for the truth, and he had given it to her, and now she had made the leap from disbelief to acceptance. But it came at a price. He moved toward her, but she looked as if she might run, so he stopped. Her fingers found her necklace, and she began playing with it. Then she realized it was the necklace he had given her. She dropped it and began twirling her hair with her fingers. He looked in her eyes. He saw fear there.
“Liliana? Are you OK? Speak!” Charlie commanded.
“This. Can’t. Be.” Lilly was mumbling very softly. Charlie would be the only one on this planet able to hear her.
“Liliana, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m sorry about all of this. I didn’t mean for this to happen.” Charlie approached her very slowly with his hands raised, showing her he meant her no harm.
Lilly backed away and looked at him. “What? You didn’t mean for me to find out about you?”
“No,” Charlie said. “I didn’t mean to fall in love with you.” Lilly said nothing. After what seemed an eternity of silence, Charlie asked, “Would you like me to take you home now?”
Lilly nodded.
***
This time Charlie drove. They rode along in silence. Lilly sat as close to the passenger-side door as she possibly could. Charlie was afraid she might try to jump out the window. When he pulled into her driveway, she turned to him and finally spoke. “Charlie, I need some time alone, time to think about things.”
“I understand if you don’t want to see me again.” He understood, but he hated the idea.
“No,” she said. “I didn’t say that. I’m just really confused.” Charlie handed her the keys. She got out of the Jeep and ran into the house. Lilly locked the door behind her. She didn’t know if it would do any good, but it made her feel better. Charlie sighed. He got into his Mustang and drove off. Lilly peeked out the window to make sure he was really gone.
She threw her purse down on her desk and lay down on her bed. She sat up suddenly. Charlie, her Charlie, was not from this world. In an instant, her reality had gone from normal and sane to bizarre and out of control. Why couldn’t she a have a nice normal boyfriend? She didn’t need a Mr. Rochester or Superman. She didn’t want or need the drama that was the hallmark of Claire’s love life. But now she was the one living the soap opera. This was not what she had signed up for.
All night she tossed and t
urned. She sat up suddenly in the bed and looked out her window at the night sky. Somewhere out there was Charlie’s home. She shivered. Her feelings for Charlie were so conflicted. Lilly got out of bed and turned on her light. She sat at her desk, opened her notebook, and began a list. It was very short.
Cons
Charlie is an alien.
Pros
I’m in love with Charlie.
She chewed on her pen as she looked at the Pros column. Would that be enough to overcome his one big negative? It was going to be a long, nerve-wracking weekend, and she wasn’t even sure what she would say to him come Monday morning.
***
Charlie went home to his empty house. He lay down on his bed and thought about the events of the day. He wished he could get a do-over. What if Liliana never spoke to him again? He spent a sleepless night. Finally, at about six in the morning, he nodded off. When he awoke, his parents had already left for work. It was a quarter of nine, so he decided to get up and take a shower. Then he went to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. He couldn’t stand it anymore; he had to know, one way or the other. He picked up the phone and called her.
The phone rang once before Lilly picked up. “Hello?”
“It’s me. I just wanted to check on you. Are you OK?” he asked.
“I am now. I was kind of hoping you would call.”
“Really? I was afraid I had scared you off,” Charlie said.
“I don’t scare that easy,” she said. “Listen, I want to see you today. I have a lot of questions.”
“I can be over in twenty minutes. Is that OK?”
“Perfect,” Lilly said.
***
They stopped at McDonald’s for coffee and hit the road again. Charlie thought it might be easier to talk if they were driving somewhere. No sooner had they pulled out of the drive-through than Lilly started grilling him. “Yesterday, you said you were made in God’s image. You mean my God is your God?” Lilly asked.
“Liliana, there is only one Creator. We are your descendants.”
“Our descendants?” she asked.
Charlie asked her, “What do you know about the Tower of Babel?”
Lilly thought back to Sunday school when she was a kid. “The people tried to build a tower that reached to heaven. God was upset with them, so He confused their language and scattered the people over the Earth.”
“Yes, but there were a few, the masterminds, that God thought were too dangerous to stay on Earth. He relocated them to another planet. My planet—Sentria. This is why my parents can’t find out about us. They would never comprehend our relationship. They believe my One is on Sentria, and I just haven’t met her yet.”
“Your One?” Lilly asked.
“The one I’m supposed to marry. Soul mate is a close approximation of the word. My people believe that God has selected one person for each of us, our One. We are created for our One. Our One is the only person to whom we can belong.”
“So you bond for life?” Lilly asked.
“More like for eternity,” Charlie said.
“One person for eternity? So your people can’t fall in love more than once?”
“Not usually. It goes back to the beginning. After the Fall, free will was taken away from the angels who remained in heaven. When God created man, we all had free will, but after my people were sent to Sentria, God limited our free will. For example, Earthans have the ability to reject God, but Sentrians cannot disbelieve. After the exile, God also made my people only able to fall in love with one person—of His choosing—and we can never separate, not that we’d ever want to.”
Charlie pulled up to the sea wall at Galveston. They took off their shoes and began walking up the shore. Charlie found the sound of the waves crashing onto the shore soothing. He didn’t want to talk about such serious matters. If only he could step back in time, go back to a few weeks ago, before any of this was an issue. He imagined himself carrying Lilly into the sea and…
“But wait.” Lilly broke his train of thought. “When I asked you if Sentrians can fall in love with more than one person, you said ‘not usually.’ What did you mean?”
“Sentrians have a life-span of about forty years. We don’t get sick, but occasionally a person may die in an accident. There is a provision for the surviving spouse to take another person as a placekeeper to keep the family intact and be a role model for the children. But it’s not the same. You can’t truly love the placekeeper the way you love your One, and as soon as you die, you join your One. But as I said, that doesn’t happen very often.”
She stopped walking, and he turned to face her. “So after you die, you’ll meet up with your One in heaven?” Lilly asked.
“Yes. We call it Sonora, but it is the same thing. We are with our One in the afterlife,” Charlie said.
“So where does this leave us?” Lilly asked. “If your soul mate is on another planet, I guess I’m just some sort of diversion; someone to hang out with until you return.”
“No, Liliana, you are so much more than that.” He looked into her eyes. “Maybe there’s something wrong with me. I don’t know. I can’t explain how this happened. It was never supposed to happen. But I know I couldn’t love someone else. For me, you are my One.”
“Oh,” Lilly said. That was kind of cool and kind of scary at the same time. Scary in an intense way. She wanted to ask him more about it, but she was kind of afraid of the answers.
She changed the subject. “So why do you only live forty years?” At her age, forty seemed a long way off, but then again, Michelle was thirty-nine. She couldn’t imagine her mom dying next year.
“God limited our life span after the Tower of Babel. That’s another reason we marry so young. Twenty is middle-aged for us.”
“So I guess if all your people believe in God, you all go to Sonora when you die,” Lilly said.
“You’d think so, but unfortunately there are some Sentrians who believe there is a God, but don’t believe in Him, if you know what I mean. Just because we all believe God exists doesn’t mean that we all believe we need his love and forgiveness. Our arrogance and our belief in our own abilities is what landed us on Sentria to begin with. Some of my kind have a tendency to make gods of themselves.”
Lilly thought of something then. “So I guess Charlie isn’t your real name.”
“No. It’s a name my parents chose when we were in Roswell. They wanted me to have an American-sounding name, kind of like your mom’s parents did for her. Back then, there was a commercial for hair oil with a guy named Charlie. ‘Use Wildroot Cream-Oil, Charlie.’ We all liked the sound of it, and the name stuck.”
“You were named after a hairstyling product?” Lilly asked.
“Yes. What about you? How did your mom pick your name?”
“I was named for my grandmother, who died in the car accident. Liliana Elsa.”
“Elsa’s your middle name? I never knew that.”
“Charlie, stay with me,” Lilly scolded. “So what is your real name?”
“Silas,” Charlie said.
“Silas,” Lilly repeated. “It suits you, but so does Charlie. I think I prefer Charlie.” Lilly put her arm through his as they walked. This was the first time she had initiated any physical contact since she found out who he was. He took it as a positive sign.
“So tell me how you knew about the bleachers. Can you predict the future or something?”
“No. I am what’s called a supersonos. Some of my kind have superhearing. I heard the sound of the metal bolts breaking.”
“Whoa, that’s cool,” Lilly said.
Charlie shrugged. “Sometimes. Any more questions?”
“Tons. How old were you when you were here before?”
“I was ten when we arrived and fourteen when we left. We stayed for a long time back then.”
“So what were you doing on Sentria between then and now?”
“Earning an advanced degree in physics and biotechnology and another in information tech
nology. With our shortened life-spans, we have to get into the work force earlier. Be good little worker bees for the government.”
“Then what? It was time to come back to check in on the little Earthlings, so you got into your time machine. How exactly does that work?”
“It’s kind of complicated, but look.” Charlie picked a stick off the beach and drew a straight line. “This is how Earthans think of time, in a very linear fashion.” Then he drew a circle over the line intersecting it in the middle. “We have a more circular view of time. This circle represents a forty-year life-span, our life-span. We can enter your linear timeline at any time within our circle.” Charlie drew lines from the circle to the straight line.
“Like spokes on a wheel.”
“Kind of,” he said. “But we don’t have to originate at the center.”
“Can you go back in time?”
“Yes, but there’s really no point. Our mission is to dispel any theories on extraterrestrial life. We’ve already accomplished that in the past. My father’s been coming to Earth since the forties.”
“So what brings you back now?” Lilly asked.
“Your NASA scientists. Your telescopes and satellites are becoming more sophisticated. We want to be sure you aren’t getting too much information.”
“So you’ve been spying on us all this time. Would it really be so bad if we found out about you?”
“Our leaders seem to think so. They think you might try to attack us out of fear or ignorance. Then my people would have to decimate you. We don’t ever want things to escalate to that point.”
“Well, what’s going to happen now that I know?”
“Nothing, I hope,” Charlie said. “You’re not going to run to the National Enquirer, are you?”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Lilly said.
“Good,” Charlie said. “I know I can trust you, and I’m relieved that you know. It was getting harder and harder to come up with explanations for my strange behavior.” He turned to face her then. Now he had a question for her. “Liliana, I know you noticed. Why didn’t you say something?”