by Travis McBee
“Didga see? Didga see?” He called to his older brother who was more interested in the girls walking around than his little brother, ”Didga see my back flip?”
“Will? Will you there big guy?” Mike snapped his fingers in front of Will’s face
“What? Oh sorry did you say something?” Will said snapping back to the conversation he had departed from.
“When are you going back?” Mike repeated.
“Oh, um, in a couple weeks,” Will said already zoning back out of the conversation as he observed the events of the pool.
“A couple of…A couple of weeks?!” Mike shouted in a voice mingled with anger and surprise, “What kind of school are you going to?”
“One that doesn’t believe in summer vacation,” Will replied half laughingly as he watched a boy who was getting forced under the water by another boy while his friends laughed.
“Dude why did you go there?” Mike asked staring into his friend as if he could sense the complete lack of honesty from his friend
“I don’t know, I just don’t know okay?” Will said his voice trembling with frustration and turned to stare at his oldest friend, “Can we talk about something else?”
Mike looked at his friend and saw something in his eyes that closely resembled anger although it might have been something else.
“Yeah sorry man,” Mike said after a second.
“Don’t worry about it,” Will said again staring out at the pool.
“So did you hear about Jessica?” Mike asked changing the subject.
“Who?” Will answered blankly.
“Jessica? Your ex?” Mike replied raising his eyebrows in confusion.
“Oh her,” Will said snapping back to reality and the conversation at hand, “What about her?”
“Well she’s gone a bit nutty lately,” Mike said mysteriously.
Will looked his friend full in his sunburned face for the first time. The lying had passed and he no longer felt the strain of it.
“Nutty? What do you mean?” Will replied with a smirk as he already guessed what may have happened.
“Well a couple of months ago she started screaming her head off in the middle of the night. Woke her dad up and scared the pee out of him. She started babbling about you and a UFO and all sorts of crap.”
“She was babbling about me?” Will asked with an ever growing smirk, “What about me?”
Mike barked a short laugh, “Dude she said she saw you getting abducted by aliens,”
“Abducted by…”
“Aliens. Dude she was absolutely crazy she was acting like a-a,” Mike stumbled for the right word.
“Lunatic?” Will offered
“Yeah lunatic,” Mike agreed with a nod, “Anyways she said she saw you getting pulled into the air by a UFO and kept blabbering about it to everyone. She’s the laughing stock of school now and her wonderful new boyfriend dumped her like last week’s garbage.”
“I guess what goes around comes around,” Will said with a shrug.
“Yeah I guess, too bad the poor girl can’t tell the difference between a nightmare and reality,”
“Dude she can’t tell the difference between her left foot and right hand,” Will laughed.
Mike began to laugh and soon he broke into the raucous of laughter that Will remembered his old friend for and Will joined in. They laughed the rest of the time they spent at the pool and when Mike cannon-balled into the middle of a group of girls the laughter doubled.
* * *
After the pool the two decided to head over to MAW’s to grab a burger and get out of the heat. Mike bought one of the famous Mawster Burgers that consisted of a one pound slab of ground beef and a cornucopia of cheese, bacon, and bread. They were delicious, filling, and the arch nemesis of the colon. Will decided to not tempt the powers of the monster hamburger and instead settled down to one of the MAW sliders, which at any other burger shack would have been called a quarter pounder.
After they got their food and filled their cups up with deliciously cold soda they made their way to an empty booth near the rear of the small restaurant. Will sat down in the seat that faced the front counter and Mike flopped into the seat facing Will.
“They make burgers like this in England?” Mike asked hoisting the massive hamburger to his lips.
“Nope,” Will replied lifting its smaller cousin to his mouth and taking a bite.
He had forgotten just how good the ole MAW burger was and he moaned from the ecstasy radiating from his taste buds. Mike looked up at him and thought Will was half joking and began to chuckle.
“So have you found yourself a new girl or are you still hung up on Jessica?” Mike asked after swallowing his first mouthful.
“Yeah I found a girl,” Will replied with a smile as he thought of Abby, “She’s amazing,”
“Oh yeah? What’s her name?” Mike asked
“Abby,”
“Cute name, she pretty?”
“Most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” Will answered seriously
“Oh I’m sure she is,” Mike chuckled
“She is, and she’s super sweet,” Will said with his smile growing broader as he thought of his distant girlfriend. He took a bite out of his burger to occupy his mouth’s attention.
Will was still chewing his that mouthful of heaven when the small chime that accompanied the opening of the door rang through the building. He glanced up out of curious habit and quickly slid down into the booth when he saw who it was.
Jessica had entered the restaurant with her parents. Will was amazed by how different she appeared to be. She looked particularly disheveled instead of the immaculate image she normally displayed but to top it off was her choice of company. When they had dated she never went anywhere with her parents if she could avoid it. “They’re just so lame,” She would say whenever Will asked why she never went anywhere with them.
Instead Jessica was always seen flanked by either her boyfriend at the time or a small flock of girls that seemed to idolize her. Cindy Mayberry had always been the worst of those girls and Will had harbored a deep loathing of the fake blond girl and her constant jabbering. On that day however there were no adoring admirers or handsome escorts just her lame old parents and what was stranger still was she seemed to be almost used to it.
Mike saw Will’s eyes widen in recognition and watched as Will slid as smoothly as a snake until only his eyes peeked out from over the table. He turned around to see who could have provoked the response although he already knew before his head even began to turn.
Jessica saw the movement in the corner of the restaurant and turned her still beautiful head in that direction. She saw Mike first and sent him a nastily sinister grin before she saw the peeking eyes of a boy she had last seen dangling from the underside of a flying saucer.
“Will!” She shrieked loudly causing her father to jump and her mother to utter a wordless shriek of her own.
She bolted towards the table where Will was moaning in trepidation of the awkward moments to come. Behind her, her father began to amble as quickly as he could manage after her while her mother’s mouth twisted to one side of her face in an almost unreadable expression.
“Will Haynes!” She roared in an interesting mix of triumph and confusion when she stopped at the end of Mike and Will’s table.
“Jessica Hawk,” Will returned in a too casual voice.
“What are you doing here?” She bellowed.
“Eating lunch,” Will replied as if it was the craziest question he had ever heard.
“Oh cut the bull,” She spat in a tone of rising anger, “How did you get away from them?”
“Away from who?”
“The aliens that’s who! I saw them drag you away and then they sent me a text saying I was next!” She was beginning to break down now and tears gathered at the edge of her eyes. She did indeed look a little crazy
“Oh the aliens,” Will said as if finally arriving on the same page as the girl, “Well ya know I
just nicely asked if I could leave and they said go ahead,”
Mike snorted and Will exchanged a quick glance with his friend that was better than an hour’s worth of laughter.
“So you admit it!” Jessica was now hysterical, “You admit you got abducted by aliens!”
Will glanced at her parents who were turning as red as the ketchup that oozed from Mike’s hamburger. They were looking over their shoulders to see if anyone was looking. Lots of people were looking.
“Jessica, stupid worked for you. But crazy? It’s just not working so well so I’d cut it out,” Will said in a seriously soft voice.
Jessica’s mouth worked up and down in a marathon of failed words. She looked as if she was about seven seconds away from popping and her neck had turned into an angry highway of pulsing veins.
“Yall should probably take her home now,” Will said to her parents.
They both nodded and her father grabbed his daughter and picked her up like a sack of flour and tossed her over his shoulder. Jessica hung there lost in her own mind at the sudden reappearance of Will and the now concrete evidence against what she had seen that night. Halfway across the parking lot that mental blockade broke and her incoherent screams managed to worm their way back into MAW’s where the two boys began to laugh halfheartedly.
“Dude she is so flipping crazy!”
“Yeah. She’s a regular lunatic,” Will replied feeling a guilt that he understood but couldn’t confess.
* * *
After lunch they made their way to Mike’s house to play some video games. He lived a couple of blocks from Will and it was a walk they had made thousands of times before, but Will particularly enjoyed the walk that day with the fresh terrestrial breeze cooling him off from the hot sun.
Mike’s mom greeted them with a lethargic hello from the living room. She was sitting on the couch like she always was. She was an addict of the most annoying kind. She was addicted to television. Every day she would come home from work and watch recorded episodes of Dr. Oz, Dr. Phill, Oprah, Biggest loser, The Bachelor, Amazing Race, Survivor, Big Brother, and numerous teen shows that she didn’t understand were meant for teenagers, not middle-aged women. She was so addicted that she would schedule her life around the shows and would instantly begin yelling if someone talked to her during one of her shows. Other than that she was a pleasant woman and Will often wondered how enjoyable she would be if cable television were to disappear.
“We’re going upstairs to play PlayStation mom!” Mike called into the living room at his mother
“Quiet I’m watching Dr. Oz!” She yelled back.
Mike shook his head in frustration and headed up the stairs towards his room.
“Mom still likes her TV huh?” Will laughed
Mike looked sideways at him as they turned into the hall at the top of the stairs. His face was the look of someone who was supremely frustrated.
“Yeah, it’s really sad man. She won’t even talk to me anymore hardly, she just keeps watching more and more stupid shows.”
Will put a consoling hand on his shoulder, “At least she’s always home.”
Mike just grunted and they turned into his room. In the corner sat the massive TV that had once graced the living room below. It had since been replaced by a mammoth flat screen and the old one had been lugged up to Mike’s room so that he could better see the games he so frequently played on it.
“So what do you want to play?” Mike asked as he flopped into the beanbag that sat in front of the television, “I have this new alien game. They’re always fun to blow up.”
Will shrugged his shoulders, “Sure, sounds good to me.”
Mike slid the disk into the narrow slot on the front of the unit and it grabbed in and spun it inside. A moment later the TV began flashing the sounds and images of a space battlefield at them.
“It’d be so cool to go into space huh?” Mike said as the images flashed to the main screen.
Will looked at his friend and smiled halfheartedly, hating to keep the secrets from his friend..
“Yeah, it would be pretty cool,”
They played the video game, which turned out to be extraordinarily exciting even if a bit gruesome, for several hours without pause. Will’s hands had begun to cramp up from over exertion when Mike looked at him seriously between two of the levels.
“Do you think there is life out there Will?” He asked
Will was taken aback by the random comment and glanced at his friend expecting to see a joking grin but instead found Mike staring seriously and contemplatively at him.
“Yeah I do,” He replied with a grimace inside as he knew the truth but couldn’t say it, “Not like these things though.” He added with a laugh motioning towards the game.
“Huh. So do you believe Jessica?”
“No way!” Will laughed, “I’m right here aren’t I? Besides why would an alien want her? She just wants some attention.”
“Oh she got that alright,” Mike said with a smile finally breaking on his face, “She got more than she wanted I have a feeling.”
Chapter Fifteen
And She Came from Outer Space
Phap ting plat, Phap ting plat.
Will awoke with a start and stared around his dark room.
Phap ting plat, Phap ting plat.
His mind was still idling around somewhere in his subconscious but one thought managed to wiggled its way to the surface. Meteors! He yelped in fear and dove under his bed.
Phap ting plat, Phap ting plat.
The sound ricocheted around the room and Will clenched his hands behind his neck like he had been taught in elementary school to do against tornadoes.
Phap ting plat, Phap ting plat. The sound seemed to pour down around him like a….
Waterfall
It’s rain. Will realized and indeed it was. A tempest had grown around the small town during the night and now truckloads of water poured themselves over the sleepy town dousing any dreams of outside activities. The sound that had awoken and terrified Will was the hard pelting droplets beating a percussion against the metal roof of his house. It was a sound that had once had the power to lull Will into a deep sleep, but now it seemed alien to him and had actually managed to frighten him from his slumber. Not for the first time Will appreciated how deeply his life had changed, not for the first time he felt like he wasn’t at home.
Will glanced at his clock and learned that it was a quarter past four. He sighed and climbed back into bed amid the clatter of the rain. He laid under his sheets listening to the valiant struggle of the rain against the roof that kept it out. He was incredibly comfortable being so dry and warm when outside the world was descending into a chilly wet misery but that comfort did not translate into sleep and three hours later he still stared wide eyed at the ceiling above his head not really thinking about anything but deep in thought none the less.
When his clock blinked seven thirty at him he heard the loud creek of a door being opened in the house and slid out of bed and tossed on some clothes. He ambled across to his door and opened it a hair to see the retreating back of his mother walking sleepily down the hall.
He squeezed himself through the door without causing the door to so much as creek and tip-toed down the hall after his mom who was oblivious to him. She was taking small tired steps and it only took a few of his long strides to overtake her. Even when he was a foot behind, her sleepy senses failed to register him so he reached out a hand and grabbed her shoulder.
The scream that erupted out of Barbara Haynes mouth sounded as if it came straight out of a horror movie. It reverberated around the house and Will wouldn’t have been surprised if the neighbors were tossed into consciousness by it. A loud slam echoed from his parents room and a half second later Steven Haynes burst through the door in a pair of white boxer shorts breathing as heavily as if he had just run a race.
His mom turned around and Will noted that she wore a complexion slightly paler than that of a ghost. After her scream h
er body seemed to demand enormous amounts of oxygen and she was sucking air forcefully.
“William Michael Haynes!” She breathed out deeply after regaining some of her composer and a slight amount of pigment.
“Gee ma did I scare ya?” Will said in his best Beaver Cleaver impression and broke down laughing. His father started laughing shortly after.
* * *
After a light breakfast Will’s mom disappeared to work and he and his father crashed down into their favorite seats in the living room and cascaded through the channels on the television trying to find something to watch. Will’s father had never worked on Wednesdays but his mother did and Will suddenly figured out why.
“You never work on Wednesday because it’s mid week break in the rest of the universe right pops?”
“Ha-ha yup,” His father laughed, “I hated working on Wednesdays when we first moved here. I just couldn’t get used to it, so when I opened my own practice I made it my off day,”
“It is nice having a break mid week isn’t it?” Will laughed.
“You better believe it, you notice only on Earth do people have three day weekends. If they’d just take Wednesday off they wouldn’t need em,” his father replied finally settling the T.V on an old western they had both seen dozens of times.
“Birds gotta eat, same as the worms,” The grizzly voice of Clint Eastwood growled out at them.
“Any plans today buddy?” His dad asked when the scene faded to a commercial with a bouncing rabbit trying to sell an energy drink.