by Ryan Gebhart
I say, “Those are, you know, for your wiener. Not your wiener, because uh, you don’t have a wiener.”
She leans into me, her hand grazing my thigh, and I back away, bumping into her bed and falling on my ass. The condom is in her hand.
My heart rate is soaring, and adrenaline and contradicting emotions are coursing through my extremities, so much that my hands have gone numb. It’s awful of me, but I just want to have sex with her for the simple fact that I’d be having sex. She wants to have sex with me because she’s afraid tonight’s her last night on Earth.
I say, “Show me that, uh, signed copy.”
“Kiss me.”
“You’re trying to distract me because you don’t really have a copy, do you?”
She’s standing in the space between my open legs. “I get it, that you’re not over —”
I grab her by the torso. I spin her onto the bed. She’s lying there with her head next to the pillow, arms up like a chalk outline, her hair disheveled, her chest slightly rising, her lips anticipating. I kiss her lower lip, and an electric charge bolts through me.
There. I did it. I’m cheating on Jenny. I’m feeling someone else’s tongue with my tongue, and what would she be thinking if she saw me here, my hands reaching up under Adriana’s shirt? Would her chest be burning in sadness?
Shut the hell up, brain. I’m not cheating on Jenny. You can’t be cheating on a girl who’s dating somebody else.
I kiss Adriana’s neck. I unhook her bra.
I must have the most confused erection in all of history right now.
Her hands press against my sides and, God, I still hate it when people touch me there. I move her hands away and lean back, sitting on her lap. I pull off my hoodie and beneath it there’s a T-shirt — a smiling geek on a Segway. The caption: WALKING IS FOR LOSERS.
Goddammit. Memories of snow cones and Snow White, soul-exposing intimacy and the smell of pomegranate shampoo are flooding my head, and I know I can’t go through with this. I love Jenny more than . . . hell, I don’t know. She’s, like, the center of my random and confusing and heartbreaking universe.
“Adriana,” I say. “I’m sorry. I really shouldn’t — we can’t be doing this.”
The arousal in her eyes goes dull like that. She huffs and gives an annoyed eye roll. She shifts her weight and hooks her bra back on.
“I’m really sorry,” I say.
Everyone was right: I’m not over Jenny at all.
It’s Thanksgiving morning and I’m in nothing but my shamrock boxers and gathering up my dirty clothes. I take my overflowing hamper to the washer, pour in a capful of detergent, and I don’t separate the colors. My WALKING IS FOR LOSERS shirt goes in last. It’s such a random memory, but I guarantee that even when I’m eighty and in a nursing home, I’ll still remember the time I was high-wiring it on the curbs on River Road, how I said, “Walking is for losers” to Jenny, and how I thought she wasn’t paying attention to me.
Ever since we played beer pong at Dorton’s party, I’ve always been thinking of her to some extent. I’m not over her, and a part of me thinks that I’ll never fully get over her, even if I go through shock therapy or get a lobotomy.
Fuck. It hasn’t even been a month. I can’t realistically think that on the entire planet, there was only one person perfectly created for me and she just happened to sit two rows away from me in Señor Hafemann’s class.
My room smells of smoldering charcoal briquettes. Out my window and in the center of the backyard in the melting snow, smoke is rising from the vents on the round grill.
Dude. Dad’s making his Texas turkey.
I go into the kitchen, and my now-empty stomach is rumbling for something that’s vastly more familiar than raw alien organs. Mom’s cutting up sweet potato and squash.
I take a black trash bag out from underneath the sink.
She says, “Whatcha doin’, Ducky?”
“Cleaning up my room.”
She gives me a look that’s more stunned than when I told her an alien was moving the stars for me. “You’re cleaning?”
“Yeah. It’s dirty.”
“Well, okay.” She rinses her hands clean, then takes her wineglass filled with a red by the stem. “Do you think they’ll show up?” So far, the prospect of having Centaurians in her house hasn’t freaked her out, nor Dad or Avery. There are four regular chairs around the dining table and three of the plastic lawn chairs have been brought inside, and depending on how many of them decide to show up, some of us might have to eat in the living room. There’s a cornucopia in the middle of the table. Mom hasn’t made a cornucopia since I was in the fourth grade.
“I really hope so.”
“Did you hear the news?”
“What?”
“The U.S. flew a bomber over a flying saucer in Reno.”
I stand there. I said I’d destroy a trillion galaxies to have one more moment with Jenny. But it’s not worth anybody in my universe dying just so I can live out what I think would’ve been the greatest love story ever.
I say, “Did anyone get hurt? Did they drop a nuke?”
She shakes her head. “It was a missile without a warhead. They evacuated the area just in case. They wanted to see if it would actually hit the ship. On the news, they said they were so baffled when the missile went right through. ‘Nothing but net,’ one of the reporters said. It was as if nothing was there.”
“Kinda hard to blow up stars,” I say.
“Yeah.” She takes a sip. “Hey, Derek?”
“What’s up?”
“Do you think I’m doing the right thing?”
That’s a pretty loaded question, but after all I’ve been through, I should be able to navigate through it.
“Mom.” It comes out like a whine. “I don’t know, I just . . . I want to see you happy. Besides, it’s your life. It doesn’t matter what I think.”
“It matters to me.”
“Okay. I mean, Dad’s a good guy. Sure. But can you be sure that getting back together is the right thing? He still loves Abby.” I don’t flinch after saying this, because if Dad hasn’t already told her, she deserves to know.
She gives me this half smile, like everything I’m saying isn’t news to her. “Funny, isn’t it?”
I nod. “Hey, Mom?”
“What?”
“Thanks for the tickets.”
Her half-smile turns genuine and full. “Go Browns,” she says proudly.
I take the trash bag into my room and fill it with empty Marco’s pizza boxes, the used Q-tips on my dresser, the pile of napkins covered in chicken wing sauce on my nightstand, and other things I’d rather not mention. I bring my dirty dishes into the kitchen. I vacuum. I light my boysenberry-scented candle. I make my bed. I move my clothes from the washer to the dryer. I can’t believe I’ve been living like this.
It’s fifteen till noon and Dad’s got the turkey on the grill and Mom’s got a sauté pan full of bacon on the stove for the squash and sweet potato. That means we’ll be having dinner at three o’clock, just like when we did Thanksgiving at Grandma Karen and Grandpa Paul’s house. Mom’s parents from Cleveland would fly in three days early because they wanted to beat the holiday rush, and me, Mom, and Dad would drive the night before and stay the weekend. The house would be filled with the barking of Grandma’s three rescued terriers, and Mom, Aunt Sarah, and Aunt Rachel would be laughing and talking over glasses of wine while preparing the meal. Dad, Grandpa, and my uncles would be watching the Detroit Lions play in the theater room while the turkey was being grilled outside. I’d be playing Super Smash Bros. in the living room with Dean and Sadie.
When it became just Mom and me in Maumee, we changed dinner to seven p.m. She’d preorder everything from Boston Market. I’d be so pissed that my cousins were still playing video games in Texas while the adults were cheering at and/or threatening the people on TV and eating Grandma Karen’s amazing bourbon pumpkin pie, going on with life without me. And I was stuck here, wa
tching Mom slowly churn Boston Market turkey in her mouth with the TV off.
I’d always get up from the table early, having eaten barely half my plate, leaving my mess behind, and Mom would never say anything.
Man, I used to be such a little emo dick.
I open the dryer and change in the laundry room. I bring my hamper back to my room and empty it on top of my bed. Alex’s Lacoste shirt appears. I forgot I still had it. I fold it the way Mom once taught me and set it on my dresser.
It’s three p.m. The Lions game is playing in the living room, and the announcers are saying that even though there’s a flying saucer hovering right over Ford Field and another over AT&T Stadium in Dallas for the Cowboys game this afternoon, they won’t let the Centaurians or the threat of invasion get in the way of this Thanksgiving tradition. They’re saying that if they die today, they’ll die doing what they love.
The entire house smells warm and sweet, of grilled turkey and bacon and squash and, fuuuuck, Dad remembered the recipe for bourbon pumpkin pie.
If it weren’t for the seven inches of melting snow outside, I could swear I’m still in Texas.
Dad places the gravy boat filled with a thickened broth of seasoned turkey blood and bodily juices on the table. After my feast yesterday with Karo and his family, it’s gotten harder for me to picture this stuff any other way.
Avery’s already taken his seat, anxiously watching Mom place the stuffing, a bowl of stewed green beans and poblanos, the mashed potatoes, the glazed squash, the —
Mom says, “You think we made too much?”
“If they show up, there won’t be any leftovers.”
Dad’s standing in the living room watching the game, one hand on his hip, the other holding a Coors. They keep cutting to the camera on the blimp outside the stadium, giving an eagle-eye view of the circle of stars that’s hovering over the dome.
Dad says, “You want to wait for them to get here?”
Avery groans. “They have to travel four and a half light-years. The food’s gonna get cold.”
“No, they don’t do that,” I say. “The Centaurians don’t travel across great, impossible lengths — they just discovered what’s been in front of them all along.”
He scrunches his face. “What?”
“I mean, it makes sense, right? Everything’s in a loop or some kinda orbit. The moon orbits Earth, Earth orbits the Sun, the Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way. Maybe this — everything — maybe it’s all a loop, too.”
Dad’s standing there, sipping his beer, and it doesn’t look like any of my words are sinking in. “This better not affect our flight. ’Cause I got a job to get back to on Monday.”
Oh, that’s right. They’re leaving on Sunday after the Browns game. Even though I didn’t expect them to come up here in the first place, it’s a strange thing to realize that after all that’s happened, they’ll suddenly be up and gone again. I mean, aren’t Mom and Dad getting back together? Mom still lives up here. I still live up here. How would that even work?
I say, “I thought you quit.”
“My boss understood. Heck, he’s still hiding in his underground bunker outside of Waco.”
Wait.
I swallow down a nervous lump that appears in my throat, but it won’t go down. It’s lodged in there good.
I turn to Mom. She’s leaning against the kitchen counter. Her face has never looked so content and resolved. She takes a sip of her wine. She’s made up her mind about something. Something big.
Dad goes to her side, rests his beer next to the sink full of dirty dishes, and says, “You like Austin, don’t you, Double D?”
“Beats the weather here.”
Mom says, “So, Ducky, once spring comes, I’m putting the house up for sale. I’m going back to Texas in June.”
Dad says to me, “If you want to stay up here, I can help you out financially to get you a place of your own, and you’ll be welcome to visit whenever you like. But right now, you’ve got a lot of other things to be worrying about. Like finishing your senior year. And your mother says you haven’t looked into many colleges.”
How could this all be happening so fast?
He says, “You know you should’ve been doing that last summer.”
I say, “I haven’t looked into any colleges.”
“Well, I could still get you admission into UT if you decide to move back to Austin. You could stay in the dorms. Or take a year off and stay at my house.”
“Uh. I don’t know,” I mumble.
The prospect of being on my own has never hit me so hard. Actually, it had never even occurred to me before. I guess I got used to the arrangement we had, with Mom letting me do whatever I want to with the garage, and her being in the house ten feet away.
Mom’s face widens with a reassuring smile. “Oh, Ducky, come here.” She wraps her arms around me and leans her cheek into my collarbone. “You don’t have to make up your mind right now. You have the rest of the school year.”
“Can we eat now?” Avery says, his face slumped into his palms. “I’m starving.”
Dad places the platter of carved turkey on the table by the cornucopia, its skin a glistening and golden brown speckled with black pepper. I sit next to Avery and everything smells amazing, except for him.
I say, “You really need to discover deodorant.”
He shoves me. “Shut up.”
Dad says, “If they’re not here for this, it looks like they won’t be coming at all.”
And yeah, Karo and his family don’t show up. It’s probably because they’re still too afraid of us, or they’re sleeping one off from yesterday’s feast. They’re missing out.
We have our Thanksgiving dinner, just the four of us with Princess at my feet. Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe they didn’t want to get in the way of me living my normal, human, and kind of fucked-up life. We’re not ready for them. We’ve got a long ways to go just figuring ourselves out.
We each bring a slice of bourbon pumpkin pie into the living room. The turnout for the Cowboys versus Giants game is really low, as there’s a circle of stars hovering over the field. The wide receiver for the Cowboys catches a fifteen-yard pass, and he’s about to get shoved out of bounds when the defensive end for the Giants stops and looks up.
“Whoa!” one of the announcers remarks, and the camera doesn’t follow the wide receiver running freely into the end zone. It jerks up. The stars spiraling over the stadium are leaving, one by one, returning to the places they came from in the Milky Way.
It’s been one day since Karo’s grandma said she would move the stars for me.
The game pauses. The players are standing in the middle of the field, hands on their hips, looking up. The crowd is mumbling, confused. For ten minutes, officials are talking it over on the sidelines.
One of the announcers says, “Maybe they weren’t flying saucers after all.”
“You know what they always looked like to me?” the other one says with a slightly relieved tone. “They reminded me of stars.”
The game resumes, but a “Special Report” cuts in during the third quarter.
Reports are confirming that all of the flying saucers across the world have disappeared. A reporter in Europe, where it’s already nighttime, said she has video of one of the lights in a flying saucer over Bristol flying back to the black spot where the North Star was absent for a full twenty-four hours. No one had been paying much attention to the mysterious absence of constellations or the lack of a milky smear streaking across the sky.
On Friday that’s what everyone’s talking about, and on CNN the newscaster is in a heated but good-spirited debate with their contributing astronomer in a split-screen interview.
I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor in my bedroom with the TV on, putting on the last leaf pieces to my LEGO set of the Council of Elrond and having a bowl of Twix ice cream.
The newscaster says, “All I’m saying is, where did all those stars go on Thanksgiving?”
“Look, I get where you’re going,” the astronomer says defensively, like he had something to do with this. “But there is no scientifically plausible way that any civilization, no matter how advanced, can just yank the Milky Way out of the sky and move its stars around like a light show. Perhaps the Centaurians put a cloaking device across the planet during their attempted invasion.”
“But they didn’t invade. They didn’t do anything. Why on Earth would they put on such an elaborate show for nothing?”
The astronomer laughs, then anxiously rubs his beard. “It’s a good question. One which we’re all trying to figure out.”
“I know I’m not an astronomer, but my uninformed theory is: maybe we don’t know as much about the universe as we thought. Maybe we’re just beginning to scratch the surface.”
On Saturday the disappearance of the flying saucers and philosophical debates about the science of the universe are still the main topics of conversation on all the channels, but one of the stories scrolling along the bottom of the screen reads: “Invasion of Raya Resumes.”
The world will never know that, at least for one day, world peace happened because some kind of love story took place in Maumee, Ohio.
On Sunday Mom wakes me up at seven a.m. so we can get to Cleveland with plenty of time for an early lunch before the one o’clock game. I put on pretty much every piece of Browns gear that I own and meet them out in the living room. Mom is painting Dad’s face brown on one half and orange on the other. She’s got a Dawg Pound mask for herself sitting on the couch.
Mom says to Avery, “You sure you don’t want to come? It’s always a blast in the Dawg Pound.”
Avery’s been FaceTiming with Kayla Brisson for so long, he’s now cross-legged on the floor in the corner of the living room so he could plug his phone into the wall.
He says, “I’m a Saints fan, so I’m good. Thanks.”
I say, “You’re only a Saints fan because Kayla is.”
He covers the camera on his phone and gives me the sternest, most overdramatic thirteen-year-old glare ever. He mouths, “Shut. Up.”
Mom says, “Okay, well, if you need anything, you can call my friend Brianna. I texted you her number. I also left it on the fridge.”