“Let’s see what these aliens are here for.” Gale took my hand, and we stepped closer.
I didn’t know what to expect; body parts, blood, alien babies. All sorts of awful things crossed my mind.
As I peered inside, disbelief rattled me to the core. That’s it? White grains of sand filled the container. Gale stuck his hand in.
“Gale, don’t!”
He wiggled out of my grasp and touched his finger to his tongue. “Salt.”
“Salt? Really?”
“Yup.”
“They invaded Earth for salt?” I kicked the container. “Damn. I could have just told them to go to the baking aisle.”
Gale scanned the back of the ship where the other containers sat. “From the looks of it, they needed more than any grocery store can carry. Think of the giant gear harvesting the ocean water. It’s actually a great plan when you think about it. Eliminate all the natural inhabitants then take what you want without a fight.”
Fury burned through me. I wanted to grab a Sparkie and strangle it. “Cowards. That’s what they are. Can’t even face their enemy. We’re not going to let them get away with this.”
Gale put his arm around me as if trying to protect me from the evil in the world. “That’s right. But we have to eat our SpaghettiOs first.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TEST FLIGHT
July 8, 2013, 12:15 p.m.
Day 14
“So, tell me more about Missy.” I sat in the cockpit as Gale maneuvered the ship in the air and over the mansion. We’d decided to try a few practice runs before invading the alien’s main ship. We’d only get one try, and the fate of the world rested in our hands.
No pressure.
“I’m supposed to be concentrating.” He brought back the controls, and we rose quickly, sending butterflies dancing in my stomach. The forest surrounding the electric fence stretched below us in a soft green mass, and, in the distance, the Atlantic Ocean gleamed.
Excitement and exhilaration gave me goose bumps. I had to remind myself we weren’t joyriding for fun. We had a mission to accomplish. “You’re going to have to fly under pressure. You need to see how you handle distractions.”
He gave me a sideways glance. “You’re distraction enough.”
Was that a compliment or an insult? I shifted in my seat. “Over there. See if you can fly around that lighthouse.”
“Okay.” He turned the ship, and we tilted in the air. “I found Missy on the set of Wings of Justice, one of my movies.”
“Oh.” The poster happened to be plastered on my back wall, next to my closet. Gale stood in front of a fight jet wearing a bomber jacket like some 1940s flying ace. I used to imagine myself standing next to him, dressed in a glamorous suit coat and skirt with a ribbon in my curled hair.
“She’d come up to us asking for scraps when we ate our lunch outside. I’d always give her a piece of my sandwich. I thought she belonged to a member of the crew. When filming wrapped, I asked around and no one claimed her, so I took her home.” He smiled. “She had this cute light patch above her black nose. When I threw her a French fry, sometimes it would miss and bounce right off that patch of fur. She was never good at catching. So I called her Missy.”
He breathed heavily and focused on flying. The roar of the wind filled the silence between us.
I reached over and squeezed his arm. “You’ll see her again.”
He glanced over, and hope shone in his eyes. He believed me. He believed in us and our plan. “Tell me about the people you miss.”
“The people I miss?” I leaned back and watched the ocean glimmer below us. Where would I start? “Well, I don’t have any pets unless you count the mold in the fridge.”
He rolled his eyes. “Tell me about your friends. What are they like?”
Why Gale was interested in my boring life, I had no idea. “My best friend is Hailey Scott. She’s going to UCLA next year for college. Or, at least she was.”
“She’ll go.” Gale tapped his fingers on the controls as we approached the lighthouse. “So, why did you two become friends?”
I thought back to elementary school. I could still see Hailey’s pink sweater with roses on the neck. “I sat next to her in sixth grade. I was little and scraggly with unkempt hair and secondhand clothes, and she had the nicest, color-coordinated outfits. Her golden hair glowed in the sun, perfectly braided. I was shy back then, and even though I always wanted to talk to her, I couldn’t bring myself to say hi. One day, during a spelling test, I was having trouble, making mistakes and crossing them out. She passed me her rainbow eraser, risking Mrs. Hildabroom’s wrath. After that, I knew she was a keeper.”
Gale smiled. “That’s a nice story. I always wanted a normal classroom experience like that.”
“You didn’t go to school?”
He shook his head. “I was always on set. I had tutors most of the time. Some of them were nice, but some of them just wanted to use me to get into the industry themselves.
“Really?” I’d never seen this side of Gale before. His self-reflection intrigued me.
“Yeah. I remember this one time my mom caught my favorite tutor, a young guy named Jake, talking to the producers when he was supposed to be teaching me. Turns out, he was selling pictures of me studying my textbooks to TMZ. She fired him, and it broke my heart. I thought he was my friend, that he came to see me. But he used me. It’s common in showbiz. It’s hard to tell who likes you for you, and who likes you for your fame.”
“So that’s why you don’t like your fans?”
“It’s not that I don’t like them. I wouldn’t be successful without them. I just don’t like the way they treat me.”
The puzzle of who Gale was underneath that Captain Jay Dovetail façade came together, and I totally understood him. I would have been the same way in his shoes. I wouldn’t trust a single stranger, thinking they were all out to make money off of me by selling my autographs or pictures taken in the private moments of my life. It must be awful.
My stomach sickened as we circled the lighthouse and started back for the mansion. I was one of those fans. Even though I wouldn’t sell a picture of him to TMZ, I would have posted it all over Twitter bragging about how I got to meet him. I hadn’t liked him for who he truly was, I’d liked him for his persona, his status, his fame.
Even though I was way beyond all that now, I could never tell Gale the truth.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
EVIDENCE
July 14, 2013, 11:14 p.m.
Day 20
“Haven’t you seen enough?” I played solitaire with the deck of cards on the roof as Gale watched the Sparkies’ flight patterns. It had been nine days since we stole the ship. Did Gale actually want to go through with this, or was he getting cold feet?
“We’re only going to get one shot. I want to make it count. I’m not going to risk our plan because my flying skills aren’t up to par.”
I placed the last card down and finished the game. “We spent all day practicing in that thing. I’d say you’re ready. We’re ready.”
Gale stared at the horizon for a long time. When he turned back to me, determination set in his eyes. “Then, we should celebrate.”
“Celebrate?”
“Our last night on an empty Earth.” Melancholy tinged his voice. Did he really mean our last night together? Was that why he didn’t want to leave? Because of our developing relationship?
In a way, he was right. Even if we saved everyone, we’d go back to our previous lives. I’d go back to Save ’n Shop, and he’d go back to being a movie star. It’s not like we had a chance in the world of even staying friends.
I collected the cards and stuffed them in my backpack. “What should we do?”
“Something special. Something normal—so we can pretend for a moment we’re just hanging out.”
Could he get any sweeter? Boy did I wish we could have a chance together. A real chance. Not this twisted nightmare our world had become. “I’d like t
hat.”
“Good.” He smiled with relief. “Let’s watch a movie on your laptop. Pete has a bunch of DVDs downstairs, and I hate to waste power on the big electronics.”
“Sure.” I dug my laptop out of my backpack and turned it on. “It’s gonna take a while to boot.”
“Bring it downstairs, and we’ll choose a movie together.”
“Sounds good.” It almost sounded like a date. A tiny tug of memory bothered me about my laptop, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Maybe I was just embarrassed I’d found it in a garbage dump and a large crack went down the screen.
We climbed down to this private movie room complete with rows of leather seats and a large screen with red curtains on either side.
Gale unlocked a cabinet with every movie ever made from the black and whites to Transformers. “Too bad the power isn’t working, or I’d show you how cool this room is.”
“That’s all right.” I scanned the movies and my eyes shot to Pirate Crusader. Bet Gale didn’t want to watch that one.
Gale turned to me. “So what are you thinking? What kind of movies do you like to watch?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” All the movies I watched had him in them. I picked up a James Bond flick. “How’s this?”
He turned the movie over and looked at the back. “James Bond, really? I thought you weren’t the gun type.”
“I’m not.” Busted. My eyes scanned the movies desperately. “Or how about this?”
“Jackie Chan?”
“Yeah.”
Gale gave me a confused look like he thought he’d had me all figured out and then, bam, I liked kung fu and guns. “Have you ever seen this movie?”
“No. That’s why I picked it. I thought we could see it together.” There. That made sense, didn’t it?
“Okay.” Gale raised both eyebrows, but closed the door to the cabinet. “Jackie Chan, it is.”
My computer beeped. Under my arm, Jay Dovetail shouted, “all hands on deck! Prepare the ship. We have a rum smuggler to catch!”
Oh no. My chest tightened. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The last time I had my computer on, I was watching Pirate Crusader.
Gale glanced at me in confusion. “Why is your computer talking?”
I started backing up toward the door. I wasn’t sure what I’d do. Throw the thing off the roof before he could see it? There really wasn’t anywhere for me to go outside the electric fence. “It’s nothing. It’s just…I….”
Gale held out his hand as if disappointed. “Let me see it.”
Anxiety built up inside me. I had to get the truth over with. I couldn’t keep covering up the lie. I sighed and handed him the computer. I had to tell him sometime, but this was not the right way and definitely not the right time.
He opened the computer as Jay Dovetail shouted commands to his crew. “You’ve been watching my movie. I thought you said you hadn’t seen it.”
“I said I’d seen it a few times.” Guilt dripped off me. This was my friend I was lying to. Okay, he’d become more than a friend, at least in my eyes. I couldn’t keep up the charade any longer. “To tell you the truth, I’ve seen it so many times I can recite the lines along with you. I love that movie. It brings me peace when I’ve had a hard day at the grocery store, and when I feel like I’ll never amount to anything in my life. If Jay Dovetail can rise up from the dungeon to a captain, then there’s hope for me.”
“It’s just a movie.” Gale shut it off. I didn’t need to look to know pictures of him were plastered all over my screen in a grand collage. His face fell, and he glanced at me again as if I’d betrayed him. “This computer is yours?”
I slapped my hand on my face. “I wanted to tell you. But, you went on and on about how you hate crazy fans, and you were the last person in the world. I needed your help.”
“I can’t believe it.” He put the computer down. Hurt shone in his eyes. “I thought I’d finally met someone who liked me for me, someone normal.”
“Gale, I’m sorry.”
He turned away and started walking to the door. “Come on.”
I grabbed my backpack and laptop and struggled to keep up. “Where are we going?”
He turned back and faced me. The chill in his gaze froze me to the core. “You wanted to rescue the world, right? So, what are we waiting for?”
I stared at him in defiance. “We were going to celebrate.” We were going to spend time just the two of us before who knew what happened to tear us apart. Looks like I’d done enough of that already.
Gale threw his hands up in the air. “Celebrate what? The end of the world? Why don’t we just get it over with? It’s time.”
“Gale, wait.” I followed him through the house, grabbing what I could. Good thing my backpack was always packed with the rock, among other necessary things, like granola bars.
He barreled through the front door and I followed him across the front lawn to where the ship sat. “You’re not thinking right. Our guns aren’t even loaded.”
“Load them on the way.”
I’d wanted to leave every minute of every day since we’d found the ship, and now my knees weakened, and I could barely walk. I wasn’t ready. I collapsed to the ground, dropping everything in the grass. “No.”
“Julie, you’ve been bugging me these past two days to go, and now you say no?”
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I broke apart. “Not like this. Not with you mad at me.”
Gale’s face softened a bit, but he still held something back. “I’m not mad at you, I’m just…disappointed.”
I centered myself, trying to make sense of my rambling thoughts. I only had one chance to explain that what we had was so beyond a Hollywood crush. “Maybe I did like you like a crazy fan at first. But then we spent all this time together, and I got to know you—the real you. How you like science and SpaghettiOs, and how you take a long time to wake up before anything makes sense.” I smiled to myself. “How you suck at cards.”
He even smiled with that one.
Encouraged, I went on. “I realized you’re just a normal guy who leaves his socks on the floor. A guy who has his own problems stuck in a situation that you didn’t choose. So what if it’s acting in a movie or being stuck at a cash register? I know what it’s like to feel trapped. I get you, Gale. I understand so much about you, and I see so much of that in myself. What I’m trying to say is, this whole thing between you and me is not some superficial fan obsession. It’s way beyond that now, at least for me.”
Gale breathed deeply, and I let my words sink in, hoping I got through to him. It was the first time in my life I spoke with such raw vulnerability. I spoke from the depths of my soul.
Behind us, something snapped and sizzled. I spun around, and my pulse jolted into overdrive. “What’s going on?”
“It’s the electric fence.” Gale pulled me back. “It’s failing.”
“No.” I wasn’t ready. All that time back in the mansion I thought I was, but, faced with the inevitable, all I could do was stand frozen in place. “That’s impossible.” It’s not like we used a ton of power, and generators last years, right?
“It has plenty of fuel.” He yanked me back toward the house. “The Sparkies must have found a way to turn it off. Come on, Julie. We have to get out of here. Pack everything you can.”
This isn’t happening. This was our oasis, our escape. How could they break it down and take the last thing we had away from us?
Gale pulled me back to the house. He shoved the guns into our backpacks along with some extra food. “Julie, you have to help me.”
Gale finding out about my crush, his disappointment in me, the Sparkies invasion of our space…. It all had overloaded my emotions. My body started shutting down. I couldn’t process what was going on.
Gale threw my backpack to me. “You have the rock in there, right?”
I caught the pack in slow motion and fumbled to get my arms through the straps. When they wouldn’t cooperate, I collapsed on the couch a
nd buried my face in my hands. It was over.
“Julie.” Gale must have dropped everything he was doing, because he plopped down beside me. “I’m sorry about before.” He pulled my hands away from my face. “Listen to me.”
I turned to him in despair. Everything seemed too late.
“We can do this. We’re still a team. You said before that how you felt about me was way beyond a crush.”
I nodded.
“It’s beyond that for me, too.”
Before I could react, he pulled me up and pressed his lips against mine. His hand closed on my back, and he pulled me against him like he’d never let go. I kissed him back, threading my hands through his hair, desperate to keep what we had in such a fractured world. At the end of it all, I found the one thing I was looking for all my life. I felt special.
He pulled back and held me close, pressing his forehead against mine. “I don’t want to lose you, Julie.”
“I don’t want to lose you, either.” My lower lip trembled.
“Then, we have to go now.” He stood and offered his hand. “Come on.”
We snuck out the side door and crawled along the hedges surrounding the house. Static filled the air as the Sparkies surrounded the building. I didn’t want to think of them going through our stuff, invading all the special places we’d shared. They’d violated the one last thing I’d found sacred.
“They must have found a way to cut the electricity,” Gale whispered. He pointed to the corner of the house. “We’ll get a clear path to the ship from over there.”
I followed him to the edge of the foundation. We peered around the side of the house to the main grounds. Sparkies climbed the statues, splashed in the fountain, and swept through the bushes. Three of them stood by the salt containers, testing the white grains with their elongated fingers.
“They don’t seem interested in their own ship,” Gale whispered. “I think we can make a run for it.”
Earth: Population 2 (Paradise Lost Book 1) Page 12