Sometimes he’d say to her, “I know you’ll leave me one day.” He’d be crying a little bit. I could hear them through the door, and Mom would swear on her heart that she never would.
“I love you,” she’d say.
He promised her that he would never leave her. Never, ever. He swore.
And then they’d coo and coo and get quiet except for the grunting.
I never remember him saying that he loved her back.
24.
I hop on my bike. I think maybe I’m just getting out of the house to get some air. Or a Thai iced tea. Or to get away from the flickering television and the take-out boxes that I don’t feel like cleaning up. Away from the smell of sour wine. Away from the homework that I don’t want to finish. If I had gas money I might go to the desert. But instead, I’m on my bike. My legs pumping. The wind making the dry heat cool.
I go down one street. Pass another. Make a left at the gas station. Make a right at the bottom of the hill.
And there I am.
Josh’s party.
Someone is throwing up on the lawn.
There is underwear and toilet paper in the tree.
I lock my bike. I don’t want any of these cool kids to steal it. Even if it’s beat-up, it’s still my bike.
I don’t rush inside. I go slowly. I figure I’ll just inch in there. Check it out. I’m already regretting finding myself here when someone throws an empty beer can at me. I duck inside the house.
As soon as I get in the door, someone puts a drink in my hand. He’s wearing a peacock headdress. I’m not sure why. Maybe he’s on drugs.
I sometimes wonder why they took me when there are so many other stellar specimens of how fucked up humanity can be. Then again, in group, the one thing that strikes me is that everyone seems so incredibly normal. Well, almost everyone. I know that they didn’t take me for what I knew. Because at twelve, what could I possibly have known about anything? Except that people leave with no explanation.
Then again, so do aliens.
On the couch, there are a bunch of people making out. They keep switching who’s kissing who. I turn away and head to the kitchen. Josh is in there slicing up limes for tequila shots and asking who’s up for one. I catch eyes with Darwyn, who’s sitting at the butcher-block table. He’s like, “Yeah!” But he doesn’t say it as strongly as the others.
Someone hands me a shot. I lick the salt. Take the shot. Bite the lime. It’s pretty good. But I pass on doing another.
I go to the back porch. There are a bunch of girls dressed like weekend hipsters and they are giggling like crazy. There’s a cat hissing at them.
“Mal.” Posey says my name when the cat screeches by me in an attempt to escape.
“Hey,” I say.
Natalie comes up to me and dances all slow. Like some dance she saw in a movie or a TV show on how to be sexy. Only it’s really not sexy.
“Well, I just thought I’d stop by,” I say. “Since you invited me.”
“Cool,” Posey says.
I wonder why she’s nice to me. Is it because her mom works at the pound and is the one who checks in all the lost animals I bring in? Maybe she’s supposed to be nice to me. It doesn’t really matter. Nice is nice.
Suki slips her arm around Posey’s waist the way girls do and whispers something in her ear. They both turn to each other and away from me.
I wander back through the party, saying hello to the few people that I talk to on occasion and having interesting conversations with some kids from another school. By the time midnight rolls around, the party has gotten too big and too loud for me, so I bail.
But I’m actually glad I went. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Every now and then, it’s good for me to get a sense of how everyone else lives. In case they come back and ask.
25.
The papers arrived when I was fourteen. I was the one who picked up the mail. The return address was from a lawyer. The envelope was thick.
My mother screamed when she saw it.
And then, when she was done screaming, she called everyone she could. Begging them to make it not true. Begging them to tell him to change his mind.
He didn’t care what had happened to her.
What he’d left behind.
This mess of a woman.
This woman who was my mother.
Me with all the pieces, broken and un-glueable.
He was happy where he was. He was happy.
He just wanted to get rid of us so he could move on.
He had moved on.
But we had stayed.
He was never coming back.
He was never looking back.
I found my mother on the floor. A bottle of pills next to her. I called 911. And stroked her hair and sang songs to her until they came and took her away and pumped her stomach.
26.
I want to be taken away from here.
27.
On Monday, as I pass by some of the kids who I talked to at the party, they jut their chins out at me in a sort of weird, passive hello. The thing that’s weird is that I know they don’t really want to talk to me or anything, but now I’m full of things that I want to talk about.
My secret is blowing up inside of me, but now it doesn’t hurt.
I almost feel high. Or what I imagine being high is like. Despite what you probably think, I’ve never been high. But right now, I feel euphoric. I’m happy. Almost crazy happy, but it’s because I feel like I want to burst. I have to keep putting my hand over my mouth to stop myself from blurting things out. Or maybe it’s to hide the fact that I’m smiling so much.
Hanging by the lockers before first period, Sameer and Mark look at me like they want an explanation. But I don’t say anything. I just take my textbook down off the shelf in my locker and put it in my bag.
We start to move together down the hallway to our classes, and I want to put my arms around their shoulders in happiness. I want to squeeze them and tell them that everything is going to be okay. Not because I know that it is, but because I feel so relieved about everything. Because I am not alone. We are not alone.
As I’m about to peel off from them to go up the stairs to the second floor, they kind of stand there and look at me. That’s when I notice it. They have a look in their eyes. It’s a look I haven’t seen them give me before, and I don’t have to be able to read minds to know what they are thinking.
Sometimes, silence is very loud.
Their feelings are hurt. And I am the reason.
“I guess I should have asked you guys to come to Josh Nelson’s party,” I say.
They kind of shrug. But from the way they shrug, I know they agree with me.
I feel like a bonehead. I wouldn’t survive these halls every day if it weren’t for them. We are the reason why none of us ever has to be alone in a sea of people who don’t understand us. But just like I could never tell them about the sky and what happened to me, I can’t tell them that I need them to get through each day.
“You didn’t miss much,” I finally say.
“Yeah,” Sameer says.
“That’s not the point,” Mark says.
A part of me is surprised that they even care about something like Josh Nelson’s party. But that’s something else we never talk about — parties, or school, or feelings. And since we talk about nothing, I know nothing.
I have to make it up to them because even though they don’t say anything, they’re mad at me. But I don’t know how to fix it.
So instead, we just stand there, our eyes darting around, not really falling on each other.
“I gotta go to class,” Sameer finally says. He adjusts his backpack, and he and Mark go on their way.
I watch them walk down the hall, admiring how they stick out as being so different from everyone else.
It hits me that I have never even told them that, and I doubt I ever will. All the happiness that I felt just hisses out of me. I’m like a deflated balloon and it�
�s not even nine.
I’m back to everything being like it always is. Back to feeling as though nothing will ever change unless I say something.
I have to say something to someone.
28.
I decide it’s time to share.
“I’d like to share,” I say.
“Go ahead, Mal,” Earl says. And then all eyes are on me. I feel a bit parched. I take a sip from my water.
Hooper is across from me again. He’s looking at me and his eyes never seem to blink. It makes it hard to read his expression. But he seems interested for the first time I’ve ever noticed. Then again, he also seems interested in his fingers.
This guy Greg smiles at me, encouraging me on. Like it’s going to be all right if I tell my story.
So I look up at the ceiling and I start to talk.
“I was twelve. It happened right out there in the desert on the Fourth of July,” I say. “They said that it was only fireworks in the sky that night. But it wasn’t. I know that.”
The others start nodding. I don’t have to feel silly about what I’m saying. They’ve been there. Or somewhere close to it. They believe me.
29.
It was loud and bright, with webs of fire falling all around me. And then the light embraced me, like a kiss. It kissed me and it felt so warm. The light was singing to me. It lifted me off the ground where I’d lain down to get a good look at the stars. My back arched and it felt like all my bones were snapping. But they weren’t. I went into the light. It lifted me up. There were hands all over me. Small, moist hands. They pinched me, and the sting of it felt like fire ants biting me up and down my body. They were taking something essential from me. Something from my insides. The light was so bright and the instruments they used to hold me down were cold.
They were gray. Little gray men. I swear they were gray. With big eyes. All pupils and no color. That was how I knew that it was like I said and not like what everyone else thought. Those eyes had no color.
I never saw their mouths move, but I could hear them. The words were meaningless but I knew that they were talking about me. It was a swarm of sounds inside my head. I remember thinking that listening to a song in their language would be painful.
But after a while, even painful things become familiar, and so I let their incomprehensible words push through me. I spent most of the time with my eyes closed, my lids too heavy to open. I think I was drugged but still conscious. Every part of me was being tugged on. When I could open my eyes, the light was too bright. That light pierced me, and my eyes refused to make sense of what I was seeing. But I knew I was a slab of meat floating on a bed of metal, with that buzzing inside my head and those hands and instruments all over me.
That didn’t mean much, until later, when I started getting flashes. Of hallways and cages. Of one of them taking my hand and patting it, like it was trying to comfort me. Of another one explaining unexplainable things to me with words I could not understand. Of being given a hot liquid meal that tasted like yerba maté. But I can’t ever call up a fully formed memory. Not much comes to mind except the brightness and the certainty that something happened to me. It’s more like a feeling. With eyes.
The police found me in the dirt three days later. Nowhere near the fireworks. Miles away from the town. How do you explain that?
You can’t.
Some people think I ran away. But I didn’t. I didn’t even know that it was three days later. I thought I’d been gone for an hour.
I didn’t walk to the desert. I didn’t like walking that much, not when I was twelve, so I definitely wouldn’t have walked from Indio all the way to the 62 highway. I just wouldn’t have. They put me there. They put me back close to where they thought they found me. Hell, from space it probably is like exactly where they found me. ‘Cause when you’ve come a million light-years, what’s a mile or two?
But no one believed me.
They said that maybe I didn’t run away, that maybe I had a seizure. That I had some kind of brain attack that made me walk for miles in the desert on a hot summer night and stay there for three days. They said they knew that something was up because of my brain waves. Because of the levels of stuff in my muscles. Because of the bruising consistent with a seizure of some kind. They said that it fit that I smelled burnt toast the whole time. They said that my life had been full of trauma and that it was just a psychotic episode.
But that didn’t explain the weird scoop in my leg. I tried to tell them that I’d never had a hole like that in my skin before. They didn’t count it as new because it looked all healed up.
They put me on drugs to keep me calm.
But I don’t take them anymore. ‘Cause there is nothing wrong with me.
And I know what I know because I know.
30.
I wipe my hands on the sides of my pants and look around. Everyone starts to clap.
“Thank you for sharing,” Earl says. He gives me the thumbs-up. Then he moves on to the next piece of business. He reads from an alien abduction handbook.
I have just shared and it’s like nothing has happened.
Greg is picking at his Styrofoam cup. Nadine is blowing her nose. Hooper is looking at the clock.
“It’s almost time for the meeting to end,” Hooper says.
I can barely hear him because I start shaking. I’m not cold or anything, but my whole body is trembling. I wonder if maybe I’m having a fit. I wonder if I should be worried.
I want to cry.
I’ve shared a million times about my dad and mom in my Alateen meetings or group therapy and I’ve felt nothing. But here, telling this story, it’s like showing my most secret parts. It’s like being naked. It’s like being at your ugliest and that being no big deal.
I wonder if it’s that what I said is just so normal to everyone here that there’s no need for a reaction. Or if it’s just that no one here really cares about anyone else’s story. It’s hard to know what’s true.
I take the back of my sleeve and wipe my now-wet eyes and running nose.
I am surprised when Hooper puts his hand on my shoulder. He’s close to me and he smells. It’s not a good smell or a bad smell — it’s a weird animal smell.
“Steady, Mal,” he says. “Steady.”
And then Earl says his final words and it’s time to go.
Outside of the community center, other people from the group mingle and linger on the steps. They are talking easily, laughing and making plans. Greg is debating Earl about the finer points of SETI. Nadine is making movie plans with Devon. None of them come up to me and ask me any more details about what I said. Secretly, I’d be glad if one of them came over to me and compared their abduction with mine. But all of our stories are not the same.
I look up at the sky.
How many ships are up there?
Or are there none at all?
I climb on my bike and pedal hard, getting the rhythm of the wheels to move faster than the speed of my thoughts.
When I get home, my mom is passed out on the floor. The TV is on. And for the first time in forever, I don’t help her up off the floor and steer her toward her bed. I leave her where she is with the TV still on.
I just want to go to bed.
Sharing has made me lighter.
Sharing has made me tired.
31.
To make it up to Mark and Sameer, I agree to go to the movies with them on Saturday. We are at the mall waiting for our movie to start. We have an hour to kill, so we’re sitting silently in the food court. Mark is playing a game on his iPhone. Sameer is reading a thick-ass urban fantasy book. And I am staring at remnants of the molten belly bomb of a pizza I just devoured as though there is a worm living in my stomach.
For all I know, there is a worm living in there. An alien parasite. Perhaps I’m a host.
We’re going to see a disaster movie. There’s going to be a tsunami, an earthquake, a volcano, and a flood. The special effects are going to be awesome. The sound is going t
o be extra loud. Which is funny, because here we are, a bunch of guys who love loud movies, and yet we are the quietest teenagers in the mall.
Even when we occasionally gather at Sameer’s to play video games, we’re quiet. When one of us wins, we don’t yell or whoop or give each other noogies. We just nod triumphantly. Like we don’t want to show off. Or we’re sorry that one of us is the alpha male for a minute.
I look over at the other table, where there are a bunch of teenagers I don’t know who are horsing around. They behave exactly the way you think normal kids horse around. They kind of wrassle with each other. They laugh, as though they are so together. A unit. A group. My eyes shift, and I see them as a monster, one body with a bunch of different heads. When they move, they do it together, as one being. None of them individual in any way.
Maybe that’s what’s wrong with Mark, Sameer, and me.
We’re in our own bodies. We’re uniquely ourselves, with no clue how to be in a group.
On the other side of the food court, I see Josh, Colm, Suki, and Posey. They behave the same way, like a group monster. Although, as I study them carefully, I notice that Posey looks like she’s trying to separate. It’s as though she has one foot that’s her own that keeps trying to step out in a different direction. But she’s not succeeding, and they keep pulling her back in.
After the movie is done, we walk back to my car, sipping the rest of our sodas and making small comments about the film. We debate about whether or not the director has lost his touch or if he’s kicked it up to a new level. Sameer votes kicked it up. Mark votes lost his touch. I remain neutral.
I bet that Josh and his group all think the same thing. No dissenting voice.
We go back to Sameer’s and order more pizza and play more video games.
Sameer’s parents come in to tell us to turn down the volume, and we do.
First Day On Earth Page 4