by Ruby Scott
“Really,” Lizette repeated. “I know I seem confident all the time, but that’s because I always had a feeling you looked up to me.” She smiled, and it was startlingly sheepish. “I don’t want to mess up that cooler older sister image you have of me.”
Amanda felt a surge of warmth at her sister’s words. “That’s really thoughtful.” She let the silence stretch between them and looked down at her mug of peppermint tea. “So…how did it finally happen?”
Lizette arched one dark eyebrow and let her eyes roll upward as she thought about it. “Now that I realize it, I didn’t know it was going to happen that night. I wasn’t prepared for it, not even on the off chance. I was just pulled to that particular place. It was at an observatory.”
Amanda laughed, but Lizette’s face showed no trace of amusement. “Wait, are you serious, Liz?”
“Of course I am,” she scoffed. “This is a serious discussion, I’m giving you advice! I wouldn’t make something up, even if it were to comfort my little sister.” She paused. “That sounds bad.”
“Just go on!”
“Okay,” Liz continued. “I was in between semesters and in between boyfriends. None of them had made me comfortable enough to have sex with them yet, so I’d dumped them each after about six months. I thought sex was the end game, and that’s wrong—“
“It is?” Amanda cut in.
“Yes,” Liz said, exasperated. “It is. Life is too short to have sex with someone you don’t like, or to have sex if you don’t like it at all. Anyway, I was feeling less and less like myself, and more and more depressed because I was obsessing about it and all the other problems I was having. I’d seen a therapist—you remember—and after I told him I didn’t want to be on antidepressants anymore, he suggested I try to connect with things that I used to love.” Her hazel eyes glazed over with sentiment. “I remembered when mom used to take us to Griffith’s observatory, to see the big model of the solar system. I loved seeing how small I was compared to everything else, and watching the shows in the planetarium reminds me…” she trailed off, and her oval-shaped face burned bright red with embarrassment. “Well, it reminds me of you, and when we were kids.”
“Aw,” Amanda cooed, and she was half teasing, but it made her happy to know her sister saw their relationship as a bright spot in her life—and cherished the same places she did.
“Shut up,” Liz mumbled, gripping her steaming mug of tea. “So I went to the one near my university to stargaze. I was there for about an hour, just sitting in the planetarium, and then I wandered through the exhibits. By the time I’d gone through the whole thing, it was dusk, and I was going to leave, but something made me go to the roof one last time to look through some of the telescopes they keep at the top.” Her face lit up in a far-away smile. “And there he was. Keith.” Her head tilted as she dipped into a memory.
Amanda waited a full ten seconds to ask. “Who?”
Liz’s head whipped toward her sister’s, her face bearing an annoyed expression. “Keith! The guy I dated for two years! We’d been partners in biology and flirted all year but hadn’t spoken about a lot until then? He took me traveling? It was why I visited so seldom?” Her tone was scandalized.
“It would have been better, structurally, if you’d mentioned this at the beginning of the story,” Amanda said, laughing. She ducked as Liz flung a decorative pillow at her head.
“I’ve told you about that part before, you dweeb! Anyway, at this point we hadn’t talked about much besides school work, but I was very attracted to him. And apparently, he was attracted to me. Because we took turns looking at constellations, talking about our dreams, hopes, just taking off one day…and then he kissed me. And I kissed him back. He took me back to his car and then we made the drive to his apartment. That’s where it happened.” She raised her eyes to Amanda’s, happy and mired in nostalgia. “It was amazing and perfect. If I believed in that kind of thing, I’d say it was fated.” Her voice took on a dreamy quality Amanda had only heard a few times; her face was shining with bliss.
“Wow.” Amanda wasn’t sure how to react to this emotional retelling of her sister’s first time, and it must have shown on her face because Liz’s features grew somber.
“Do you get what I’m saying?” she asked softly. “Dammit. I made you uncomfortable again!”
“No,” Amanda said quickly, scooting to the other end of the couch so she could pat her sister’s hand. “You didn’t! I’m just trying to mine through all the detail you gave me.”
“Oh.” The relief was audible in Liz’s voice. “You want a soundbite.”
Amanda grinned, amused at her sister’s terminology. “Yeah, that’s it.”
“How about this: Go looking, but don’t go looking for something. Just open yourself up to the stars, and the truth will come to you.”
Amanda puzzled over this. “Okay. I think I can do that.”
Liz had laughed then as if she’d found her words genuinely ridiculous. “I know you can!”
And so she had—many times. Or, at least, she thought she had; after a few months, Amanda started to wonder if she was trying to open herself up at all. She kept signing up for group hikes with the university’s nature club and cooking classes at the community center, hoping that she’d make eye contact with someone over a babbling brook— or a batch of baking brownies—and fall head-over-heels into the type of lust she’d only read about in her sister’s weather-beaten bodice-rippers. Then she realized that by waiting for a brush with love, she was still looking. After a few aimless picnics with friends and make out sessions that never evolved into relationships, her interest dwindled away.
After another month or two of aimless coasting, she started to have dreams of a figure reaching for her from a thick fog on a mountain top. She was never cold in the dream, even though she could always see frost on the leaves of the bushes lining some of the hills around her. Sometimes the hand would come from the space next to the mountain, and often it would dip toward her from the stars, but it never came from anywhere on the earth surrounding her. Whenever she saw the hand, she always felt the same thing: a thrill of excitement, pure and red-hot, and an overwhelming sense of calm. Never one to shirk signs from her subconscious, she assumed she was getting restless; either that, or some part of her really wanted to get down at the top of a mountain. Then she remembered the feeling her sister had described of reconnecting with the comfort of her childhood, and Amanda finally decided to do the only thing that made sense: act on the same nostalgia that pulled Liz to the observatory, and go star-gazing.
And here she was on a cool evening, trying to find the perfect hill to gaze from. She’d loved the location so much the year before when she was surrounded by acquaintances and even people she didn’t like, so Amanda figured it would be even better alone. She had a small flask of coffee liqueur mixed with chocolate milk, an adult version of her childhood comfort drink, in case she felt like getting tipsy. She was halfway up the second hill when she spied the white tree with its pretty pinkish leaves at the hill’s crest. She sped up, leaning forward as she jogged up the incline and holding her generous bosom as it bounced with the effort. I have to get a good sports bra, what was I thinking?
Finally, her eyes found the top, and her last step boosted her to the apex of the grassy knoll. She planted her feet in the soil and sighed, grateful that she’d brought a blanket to spread out on the chilly earth. The sun was sinking below the horizon, and it seemed to be happening more quickly than usual; the sky had darkened from a deep red to a startling violet and was fading, fast, toward a dark blue. Amanda slung the backpack she was wearing from her shoulder and unzipped it, pulling out the thick plaid throw and tossing it over the softest bit of ground she could find. She pulled out her flask as she sank to the earth and crossed her legs underneath her curvy body. The chill bit through her jersey sweater, but she knew she’d be warmer after hiking back down—or after taking a few sips from her flask.
The city spread out underneath her up on the high hi
ll, but it was so far away it looked like an impressionist painting; some of the lights were even blurred together, and some areas looked like they were made purely of a handful of colorful bright spots. Outside the city were huge patches of darkness, uninterrupted for miles in either direction. Amanda could see lights sprinkled here and there between the chunks of blackness—gas stations, fruit farms and ranch-style homes that made up the unincorporated townships which were stubbornly hanging on to their land, even as freeways slowly gobbled up the remaining livable spaces around them. Up on the hill, she could forget about the noise the vehicles made as they zipped by the grids of avocado trees and woke up old women still unused to the scream of muscle cars on the pavement just outside her backyards. Up on the hill, it was quiet and slow, and nothing moved but the leaves on the bushes around the hill, and the tree right above her head.
She was beginning to relax when a high pitched whining noise struck her ears; she peered upward, but all she could see were the bright pinpoints of light. She couldn’t see anything else, but her eyes remained fixed on the blanket of stars that were slowly growing brighter in the sky. Amanda got to her feet again, swaying slightly now that she had a few hearty gulps of the alcohol from her flask in her body. Both of her legs were tingling pleasantly, she noticed, and it was nice just to stand and put her weight on them. She turned slowly under the stars, keeping her heart-shaped face tilted upward as she moved.
Liz was right; this is wonderful, she thought. Who knew indulging in my selfish impulses really could make me happy? Take that, altruism. Coming up here totally alone was the best idea she’d had all year. She felt like all the tension and anxiety about school and her personal life had been completely paralyzed with the awe she felt from being on top of the hill. Amanda wished she could build a little shack here to stay in when she needed to get away. Maybe a cabin, she mused; I’d be here a lot.
The sound of helicopter blades slicing through the air pulled her attention away from the constellations to a point lower in the sky, just in time to see a news chopper buzzing away over a section of freeway in the distance. It was tilted sideways at an angle as it moved, and Amanda wondered what spectacle the camera operator was trying to capture; she could see a line of black and white police cars crawling behind something zipping down the highway, so good money could be put on a high-speed pursuit. She sank to her knees and then slowly lay on her back on her soft plaid blanket, resuming her perusal of the twinkling stars above. Time for that later, she thought dreamily. I’m sure they’ll recap it after traffic on the ones, fives, and nines.
Amanda’s eyes were so fixated on the twinkling stars that she almost didn’t notice a section of the sky above her being slowly eradicated by a dark cloud. The weather didn’t forecast any rain, she thought in a panic; I didn’t even bring anything waterproof! Her lack of foresight triggered a disappointment so enormous that she decided to just lie on the grass in defeat as the first drops of rain started to fall from the cloud. Why hadn’t she checked more than one forecast when she came up here? Flash storms weren’t that uncommon this time of year. In any case, stargazing in the rain alone didn’t sound as fun as it might have with someone to help distract her from being the wrong kind of wet. It looks like it’ll be a good one, she mused; that cloud is getting pretty huge…
It’s getting huge really fast, she thought a moment later, watching the blotch in the sky fatten and swallow more stars in the process. It’s also kind of round for a cloud…do clouds normally form this way? Her brow knit together in concern as she watched the dark spot grow larger by the second. It was distinctly oblong now, she realized, and not a cloud at all; the thing looked solid, besides being somewhat football shaped. In fact, if it weren’t completely silent and smooth, Amanda might have assumed there was a slightly flattened blimp descending on her hilltop by mistake. But the shape grew larger and wider still, and Amanda thought, panicked, that it had to be a drone—or some other war vehicle, perhaps. It was massive, as long as two or three city buses and nearly as wide. Her heart was suddenly hammering in her chest, but it wasn’t an altogether unpleasant sensation.
It has to be some kind of weird chopper, she thought, as a brilliant light flipped on and concentrated its beam on her point on the hill. It was brighter than anything she’d ever seen.
Or I’m going crazy, she thought desperately. A curious tingling sensation shot through her entire body, and she could swear she was being lifted from the ground. Something slid from her jacket pocket, and when she didn’t hear it crash to the earth, she knew she was right. My flask! Her legs were rigid, and her arms were locked in place, but her hair was streaming behind her as she was carried away—which was odd because she could feel no wind on her scalp. It was the only proof she had that she was moving at all; all she could see in any direction was pure, searing white light; until heartbeat became audible to her own ears, Amanda thought she had gone deaf as well. Is this what death is like?
The next moment her feet were crashing against something thick and pliant; Amanda fell on her bottom, hard, and at that moment she was thankful her butt was as well cushioned as the floor. Her throbbing eyes were still adjusting to the room, but as she turned, she could just make out a wall a few feet behind her, and the shape of a door just to the right of that. She scrambled backwards until her shoulders pressed against the cool surface and stopped, her breath coming heavy and fast in what she could tell from the echo was a huge, empty room. Her legs were trembling, and she was thankful she had been doing so much meditation lately, because getting her breath under control was far easier than trying to resist the adrenaline coursing through her veins. She was aware that her eyes were open as wide as they would go because they were starting to dry out, and her neck was aching from rotating like an oscillating fan, but finally her vision returned to normal and she could see where she was.
Amanda could tell that there was a depression in the middle of the room, a deep dip in the dark gray floor that was covered by a round pane of thick glass about twenty feet in diameter. The room below looked like one of those fancy private steering cabins on a luxury yacht; she could see a plush red chair, a pronged wheel, and a slim black panel of illegible controls, but the rest was angled from view. The door to her right was a brilliant white, she noticed, and on the other side of it was an empty glass cube that filled the rest of the room. On the opposite end of the room stood another cube, filled with a twinkling, mint-green mist that was constantly stretching, swirling and shrinking in the structure as though it were alive. The walls surrounding her were as dark gray as the floor, and they stretched about thirty feet upward before curving into a perfectly transparent ceiling that finally showed her what her gut suspected she would see: the inky blackness of space, uninterrupted for uncomfortably long stretches of time, until a twirling gas giant or rocky planet zipped by in the distance— or briefly loomed in the foreground to eclipse the view.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “I’m on a fucking spaceship.”
A soft whoosh told her the door to her right had just opened, and she stood and turned so quickly that she almost fell on her ass again. Her breathing hitched and quickened as her eyes tried to make sense of what she was seeing: a man, six feet tall at least, with wavy black hair falling to his broad shoulders, sinewy muscles, and a slim waist. He was smiling warmly at her, regarding her in a manner that she could only call friendly. His body, though distractingly beautiful, was human enough, and even the subtle glow of his golden brown skin could be written off as a gift of genetics—but his eyes were far too alien to fool anyone on earth. She was unable to look away from him, and after a moment, she realized she was moving steadily toward him with one hand outstretched. It didn’t mark her as strange, because the pull of his gaze was undeniable, and she felt the need to touch him burning in every cell in her body. This must be what lust should really feel like, she thought, and tried to remember the last time she felt such fervor.
Amanda loved going to the observatory for the cheerful
atmosphere and informational exhibits as much as her sister did, but the main draw was always the incredible planetarium, with its ability to show every star you could imagine in one concentrated stretch of velvety black screen. Earlier that evening on the hill, seeing hundreds of stars twinkle to life above the city had been the closest she’d gotten in her adult life to matching the awe she used to feel while gazing at the projections on the screen; now, mesmerized by the pinpricks of light filling the alien’s eyes, she had the strange thought that if she could gaze into them forever, she could unlock every secret the stars could possibly hold.
What?
Amanda was a foot away from him now, and he was staring down at her with mingled confusion and a growing desire; she was trying to count the bright dots in his eyes, but she realized too late that each glowing point of light was rotating slowly in his sockets, so that the two onyx spheres looked like they were constantly crawling with real stars.
“Are you okay?” the alien asked, and the concern in his voice was palpable. He looked at the hand Amanda was stretching toward him as it hovered next to his cheek. After a moment, he turned and hesitantly pressed his jaw against her palm.
He was warm, which surprised her; she pressed her thumb into the flesh of his face, and it felt just like human skin. His beautiful eyes were almost completely unreadable now, but the hitch in his breath wasn’t—her touch had startled him. She drew back, surprised at the shame she felt at making him uncomfortable, and even more surprised at the relief she felt when he caught her hand in his and brought it to his lips, kissing the tips of her fingers and gazing back at her with unmistakable heat,
She shivered violently, then remembered he had asked her a question the moment before. “I’m fine,” she said softly. I’m more than fine, she wanted to say as her eyes briefly traveled down his chiseled torso, but she wasn’t sure if the implication would translate. Did aliens understand suggestive language? This one spoke English, after all, and he was looking at her with more than a little interest, but that didn’t mean he had the full grasp of irony.