CHAPTER EIGHT
WHEREIN WE GET OUR EXPOSITION ON
“Byron,” Captain Bob says to the image of his superior flickering on the view screen. My brain is fuzzy, trying to take in what I’m seeing. Who I’m seeing. “We’re in a bad way here, sir,” Captain Bob continues. “Heavy casualties among the students. Archer and I are the only . . .”
Captain Bob is recapping all our difficulties so far, and the guy on the view screen is taking it all in with an increasingly grim expression, but to me the entire exchange is just a haze of confusion. Because the guy Captain Bob is deep in conversation with, he’s someone I’ve seen before. In fact, he’s someone a lot of people have seen before.
The man Captain Bob is talking to is James Dean.
Those deep-set eyes, those distinctively fierce eyebrows. He’s sporting a goofy thin mustache, but still it’s undeniable. I’d stake my life on it. The man on the view screen is James Dean, 1950s movie heartthrob. James Byron Dean, born February 8, 1931. Died September 30, 1955. Died. As in, stuck in the ground 120 years ago. Way too decomposed to be looking so fine.
“Uh, Elvs?” Cole says beside me. “Are you okay?”
I know, without even the benefit of a mirror, that my face has drained completely of color.
“Elvs?”
Just then the comm emits a loud screech, and the image of James Dean vanishes.
“Dammit!” Captain Bob screams, scrambling in vain to find another frequency. “I can’t reestablish contact!”
The girls fly into another panic. But I remain icily still. Cole places a hand on my shoulder and nudges me, as if he thinks I might have fallen asleep standing up.
“Elvs?” he repeats over the din of moaning girls and truly inspired expletives from Captain Bob.
Toomuchtoomuchtoomuch. My brain is in overdrive, trying to take in all of the weirdness from the past few hours. Toomuchtoo—I take a breath. Do what my father would tell me to. I process every fact, one at a time.
Superhunky teachers.
Who turn out to be murderous aliens.
With ray guns.
Who fight with our superhot, if slightly less butch, rescuers.
Who also have ray guns.
And talk to James Dean like they’ve just dialed up their Internet provider.
Really, there’s only one conclusion.
I turn to face Cole, pushing out the words despite the trembling all through my body. “Would you mind explaining to me,” I say slowly, calmly, “why Bob was just talking to James Dean?”
Now it’s Cole’s turn to go white. Even Bob stops cursing and snaps around.
“That wasn’t . . . Why would you think . . . Who?” Cole tries lamely.
“Who’s James Dean?” Chewie asks, sucking on her tattered braid again. The incredulous look on her face is shared by every other girl, even Ramona. They’re all staring at me now, looking at me like I’m a total chromer. And I might believe them, if I didn’t know for a fact that I am right.
“East of Eden?” I say. “Giant? Rebel Without a Cause? Come on! James Dean!” Still nothing. And while I’m not surprised that I’m the only one with a working knowledge of twentieth-century cinema, it does momentarily make me lament the sorry state of our educational system that such basic literacy is so lacking.
“He’s a movie star,” I go on. “A dead movie star. Yet somehow this guy”—I jerk my head toward Captain Bob—“was just talking to him, live and in the flesh.”
Natty sticks a finger into her mouth. I think she might be counting her teeth. “So you’re saying . . . that Cole and those guys can talk to ghosts?”
“No! For crying out—” I slap my hand to my forehead. “Natty, you said it yourself. They’re aliens.”
Now they are all looking at me like I skipped my dosage. Bob is walking toward me slowly, in a way that makes me feel none too safe. But Cole surprises me and actually laughs.
“Oh, Elvie.” He chuckles. “A few hours without ice cream, and suddenly you’re hallucinating.” This gets a few laughs from the girls, and eye rolls from Britta and Other Cheerleader. I can almost hear the cartoon steam escaping from my ears. Because I’m right, I know I am, as ridiculous as it might have seemed an hour ago. And that idiot Cole, so smug because he knows the whole thing’s so insane that no one will ever believe me. I’d like to kick him right in his stupid twisted ankle.
His ankle!
“Fine,” I say, wresting my arm away from the hand Cole has placed there—to try to shut me up, no doubt. “If you’re such a normal alien-fighting space commando, how do you explain your ankle?”
“What are you talking about?” Cole says, as if he has legitimately already forgotten about the whole thing.
“When you fell off the bleachers,” I say, looking to the other girls for confirmation, “you busted your ankle.”
“That makes me an alien? People bust their ankles, Elvs.”
“Yeah,” I reply. “But they don’t stop limping completely in the course of an hour and a half.”
For the first time Cole pauses. “I didn’t twist it that bad,” he says, clearing his throat. Bob’s face is turning a dark shade of red, but I’m not sure anyone notices except for me.
Natty, of all people, is the first person to log on. “You did hurt it pretty bad,” she says. “You fell very hard, and then you said a very loud curse word.”
“That’s true, actually,” Ramona adds thoughtfully. “I remember thinking what an idiot you were.”
And for just one shining second, even Britta seems to be on my side. “You were limping a lot earlier, baby,” she says.
“Well, yeah, uh . . . I mean, it hurts and all,” Cole stammers, losing his grip on the conversation. “But it’s getting better. See?”
He walks a few steps, favoring his right ankle as he goes. “It’s a little tender, but I don’t see how that has anything to do with—”
“You twisted your left ankle,” I tell him.
He immediately stops walking. His shoulders slump. “Right, yeah—right, left,” he stammers. “I know. I was just, you know, leaning on it to show you that it’s fine. I know I twisted my left ankle.”
“Cole,” I stop him. “It was your right ankle.”
“Shit!” He stomps his perfectly healed right foot on the ground. “Goddammit, Elvie!”
Bob turns his attention from me to Cole and grabs him by the collar. “You have got to be the stupidest . . .” he starts, but he seems to get choked up on his own frustration. “If we ever get back in touch with Byron, I’m going to need a really good explanation why he insisted you be added to my squad.”
But I’m not listening. I’m not sticking around to hear any more of Cole’s bullshit. My former grunt buddy is an alien. Which means, by extension, that my soon-to-be-baby is an alien. And call me weak-stomached, but darn if that news doesn’t suddenly give me the urge to throw up everything I’ve ever eaten.
“Elvs!” Cole calls after me as I race from the bridge. All around us, girls are screaming, gasping, shouting unanswerable questions. “Elvs, wait. I can explain!”
I do not wait. I’m gone.
• • •
It’s not like there are a lot of places to go to be alone with your thoughts when you’re on a disintegrating spaceship about to be sucked into Earth’s atmosphere. But I manage to find a spot. I decide to go to a place where generations of overwhelmed girls have gone before me. The toilet.
I’m sitting on the back of the toilet, feet up on the lid, with the stall door closed, trying to settle my churning stomach, when I hear footsteps on the tile.
“Elvs,” Cole says.
I do not respond. If that freak wants to get me, he’s going to have to do something crazy, like crawl under the door.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you. I wanted to tell you, but I . . .” He trails off.
I thumb a tear out of my eye and try to do my sniffling as quietly as possible, but Cole obviously hears it. “God, Elvs, I hate to see yo
u cry,” he says. I can see his shoes just outside the stall. He’s probably got his hand on the stall door, pining-style.
I jerk out my foot and kick the door with a whump! and I see Cole take a startled step back. “Good thing you’re not looking at me, then, huh?” I say.
He sighs.
I rub the sides of my face, elbows resting on my knees, and stare at those shoes on the other side of the stall door. I thought I knew him. I mean, I know we were only together once, but still, I somehow fooled myself into thinking I knew who he was. What food he liked, what music, what made him laugh, how sad it made him to think about his mother. But all this time . . .
“So I was right?” I say at last. “That guy on the view screen, he really is James Dean? And you really are a freaking alien? You told me you were from Milwaukee.”
“Ummmm.” He holds the word out superlong, like maybe if he never gets to the end of it, he won’t have to explain this whole sorry situation. “Sort of.”
“How the hell are you ‘sort of’ an alien?”
“Well.” He takes a deep breath, and his feet move back, away from my line of sight under the stall door. I hear him hoist himself up onto the sink counter. He is obviously preparing himself for show-and-tell time. “I am from Milwaukee.”
“Oh, really?” I snort. “So, what, all that cheese you consumed gave you invincibility or something?”
“I am from Milwaukee,” he insists. “Born and raised. It’s just that, well, I’m not technically . . . human.”
And suddenly the urge to yack has returned in full force. Before I know what’s happening, I find myself kneeling on the bathroom floor with my hands on the bowl of the toilet, puking. Which I realize is totally gross, but toilet seat germs are low on my list of priorities at the moment.
“Oh, God,” Cole says. I can hear his footsteps coming closer, but thank goodness he doesn’t try to penetrate my fortress of toilet-tude. “Elvs . . .” My name hangs on his lips so long I can practically see the ellipsis. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, yeah,” I reply. I swoop back a lock of loose hair and pause for one last yack. “Just refunding my breakfast.”
“Elvs.”
I reach up to flush the toilet, then shift so that my back is resting against the side wall of the stall. I don’t have the strength to move any more than that at the moment. From under the door I can make out Cole’s legs as he situates himself cross-legged on the floor directly outside the stall. I bunch my knees up in front of me and wrap my arms around them, trying to steady my breaths.
“You all right?” he asks again.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Tell me,” I say. “I’m ready now. Tell me everything.”
And just like that, Cole begins.
“I’m an Almiri,” he tells me. “It’s a species that came to Earth a long time ago. Like, thousands of years. They were originally from a planet on the other side of the galaxy. I’d tell you the name, but, uh, to be honest, I can’t really pronounce it. They never bothered to translate it into any human language.”
I nod, taking it all in. My eyes are still squeezed closed, sparks of light pricking the darkness. “So the Almiri,” I say softly, “they look just like humans? Even though they’re from a completely different planet?”
“Well . . .” Cole lets out a breath. “No. Not really.” I can hear the soft scratching as Cole rubs his fingernails across his chin, a sure sign that he’s thinking hard. “The Almiri are a . . . different sort of species. See, we can’t breed on our own.”
I open my eyes. There are Cole’s knees, on the other side of the door, his hand resting just on top. He is so close, I could reach out and touch him. But I don’t. “What does that mean?” I ask.
“It’s like . . .” He scratches, thinking some more. “You know those things, what are they called? Tapeworms? They’re their own species, but they can only live and grow inside another animal?”
“Are you telling me you’re a freaking tapeworm?”
“No! Shit, that was a bad comparison. I’m bad at this. Seriously, Elvs. I got, like, a D in bio. Maybe the captain should be the one to explain this to you.”
“You got me here, Cole,” I tell him. “You explain it.”
“But I don’t . . .” He trails off, as though an idea has suddenly occurred to him. “Wait. Okay, no. I got it now.” I see him shift on the floor a bit, and once he’s repositioned himself, he begins his explanation again. “Okay, here it is. Yeah. The genetic makeup of the Almiri species is unparalleled, particularly within the realms of physical fitness, intellectual capacity, and aesthetic attractiveness. However, the Almiri are incapable of sexually reproducing with members of their own species. In order to propagate, a host with a sufficiently analogous genetic makeup must be procured. Once the Almiri has—”
I cut him off. “Are you, like, reading from a textbook or something?” I ask. There’s no way Cole knows what half those words mean.
“Uh . . .” Suddenly his voice has turned sheepish again. I peek through the slat between the door and the stall, and see that he is holding his phone to his face. When he notices me staring at him, he flips the phone in my direction so that I can read what’s on the screen.
A Brief Introduction to Almiri History.
“Are you shitting me, Cole?” I screech, scooting back against the wall to avoid further eye contact.
“What?” he mutters. “There’s a lot to remember.”
I slap my hand against my forehead. “I would have to get knocked up by the dumbest alien in the cosmos.”
“Can I continue, Elvs?”
“Only if you stop calling me Elvs.”
Cole sighs but carries on. “Okay, where was I? Sexual reproduction, blah, blah, blah. A host must be procured . . . All right, yeah. Here’s the part that concerns you. Once the Almiri has found a viable host, he can then implant his seed in the female, so that she may carry the Almiri infant to term. The Almiri infant will have all the superficial characteristics of the host species, and in most cases the unwitting host will be unaware that the child she is carrying is not her own.”
Suddenly I feel very cold all over. “Cole, put the stupid book down and just tell me straight, all right?”
“It’s not a book. It’s an interactive—”
“Cole!”
“Sorry.”
“So I’m your ‘unwitting host,’ then? Is that it?”
“Well, yeah. But you’re witting now.”
“When I have this thing, when I finally give birth to your precious little bundle of joy, it’s not even going to be mine, is it?”
The floor squeaks as Cole rubs his shoes against it, shifting his feet. “No,” he says, and I’m thankful that at last he seems to be skipping the sentiment and sticking to the facts. “He’ll be all Almiri. The host mother, like, has the baby, but it’s not her child. It doesn’t have any of her DNA. She’s just sort of, like, the envelope. But it’s not her letter.”
As I think about what it means to be, as Cole so delicately put it, the container for a foreign package, I have to force the bile down. I need to listen. Even though I don’t want to, I need to hear what Cole has to say.
“Anyway,” he continues, “when the baby is born, it looks just like the host species. That’s why I look human, because I was born to a human mom.”
“In Milwaukee,” I confirm.
“In Milwaukee. But I have all Almiri DNA.”
“So,” I say, thinking it over, “if your dad had done it with a chicken, you would’ve come out feathered?”
“I’m not sure if . . . No, it says here that the Almiri came to Earth because the humans were the only viable host candidate in this section of the galaxy, so I don’t think the chicken thing would ever be an iss—”
“Cole, I was joking.”
“Oh.”
I clear my throat, stalling for time while I think things over. “So all that stuff you told me about your mom,” I say slowly, “how she died, just like mine—it was, wha
t, a lie? Just so you could get into my pants?”
“No. Elvs, I would never—”
“’Cause there are easier ways to get a girl to put out, you know.”
“Jeez, Elvie. Who do you think I am?” I do not answer that. “My mom, she . . . Everything I told you about her was true. I grew up thinking she was my real mother, thinking I was human, thinking I was a normal kid. She had no idea about me. She . . . she loved me. And she did die when I was fifteen. And then suddenly there were all these Almiri guys, and they took me away and I had to learn to live by the Code.” Even through my swirl of anger-fear-worry-resentment, I notice that Cole’s voice has changed. He’s not apologetic anymore. He’s sort of, what’s the word? Wistful? Melancholy? I settle myself against the stall and listen.
“Talk about feeling like an alien,” Cole goes on. “Most of the Almiri are allowed to grow into men before they discover who they are. I was . . . I didn’t get that chance. And the Almiri, they’re good at lots of stuff—they’re a good people, Elvie, no matter what you think—but they have no idea how to raise kids.”
I bite down on the insides of my cheeks. God, I think, sob story much? I might feel sorry for Cole if it weren’t for the fact that he’s an alien who took my virginity and left me with a parasitic love child. I thump the toilet lid closed and climb up to sit on top of it.
“Look, Elvs, I know none of this is what you thought it would be. But I think if you try, you can learn to love the poor little guy. Even if he’s not human, he’ll be amazing, I swear. My mom loved me. She didn’t even know I wasn’t . . .” He trails off, and I let my thoughts trail with him.
There is a lot to take in right now, obviously. But before my brain careens off down the path of holyshitholycrapholyhell, I ask the question that has pushed itself to the forefront of my mind.
“You keep saying ‘he,’” I say. “How do you know the baby’s going to be a boy?”
“Almiri are always boys,” Cole replies.
“Always?”
“Always. Otherwise they couldn’t, you know . . .”
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