“Like what? You mean like another language?”
“Oh no. I could have learned that. I learned to speak Spanish in just a few weeks. What the aliens talked was completely silent. They didn’t have words; they had currents, like wind, that flew back and forth invisibly between them. See, they heard by feel instead of by noise, and that’s why their faces and bodies flapped. They were talking all around me, but I never heard a sound.”
Georgina leaned back. “So what did you do? How did you talk to them?”
“I didn’t,” Angela said. She looked down at her hands. “I would try sometimes, but they never understood.”
Georgina gazed at her. “Angela! How terrible.”
“I know,” she said. “It really was. It’s so nice,” she added softly, “to be telling someone.”
After a pause, the rest of Angela’s story began to stream out. Her words were so clear and her eyes begged so hard to be believed that Georgina knew with great certainty that she had lived through these things. She described a hundred details of the aliens’ spacecraft, which was huge and round and seemed completely made of glass.
She said the sky passing by outside was always dark, as if they were traveling through an endless night. But the spacecraft was kept lit, and she was let out from her capsule sometimes to float around its glistening insides. She had to float because there was no gravity to hold her down. But much as she tried to copy what the aliens did and how they moved, she would lose her balance and start grabbing on to things. Then they would swoop down in a great rush of cloth and pry her loose and stuff her back in her capsule.
Everyone, including her, felt better when she was in there, so that was where she spent most of her time—time that went at a dreadful crawl. For though by Earth time only a night and a day had passed since she had left, inside the aliens’ spacecraft hours expanded until they grew into what seemed like a whole year.
“A year?” Georgina said, looking at her thoughtfully.
Soon Angela started to shiver again, and she told how careless the aliens had been. They did not seem to know how to treat a human child, and took to shrinking her down or blowing her up. Or they stretched her into a long ribbony thing as part of their experiments to see what she was made of.
“Because bodies were not important to them,” Angela explained, her face showing the flush of a hidden anger. The aliens were always disappearing into thin air, then returning whenever and however they pleased. This was maddening for someone used to Earth rules, and to people being real and there and touchable.
“The only thing they really worried about was whether or not I was eating,” Angela said. “But their kind of food wouldn’t go down my throat, so they pumped a lot of strange stuff into my capsule. Whatever I ate, I’d just get sick. In the end, I gave up. It wasn’t worth it.”
“Were you ever afraid you’d never get home?”
“Yes,” Angela whispered. “Yes, I was. I thought the aliens would get tired of me and throw me out one of their spaceship’s windows. Then I’d die this horrible death and float around forever like a doll in space.”
Like a doll! Georgina was shocked. “Oh, Angela! Don’t! You’re all right. I think we should go down and tell your father.”
But Angela wouldn’t. She would not budge. Not that she didn’t love her father. “I still do, a lot. And Martin, too.” She just had to talk to her mother first.
“Do you think she’ll come?” she asked again. “Being kidnapped by aliens is important, I think.”
“Good grief!” Georgina said. “Of course she will. And when she hears what happened and what you’ve been through, your mom will see how lucky she is you came back!”
At this, for the first time, Angela smiled. “You know what, George?” she said. “I think you almost understand.”
chapter fourteen
LATER, ANGELA WOULD TELL her story to others. She would tell it to her mother first, and then to her father. And after that to the police, Martin, and Miss Bone—and somehow, perhaps because the story was so strong and real, the news of her abduction would leak out and make its way through the town.
LOCAL GIRL ENCOUNTERS ALIENS? Headlines with question marks would appear in the papers. A television station would interview Mrs. Toska on the subject of Earth safety. Neighbors would meet and disagree in the supermarket aisles over “what really happened to the Harrall girl.” A rumor would circulate that Mrs. Harrall believed her child and was taking firm steps against the aliens coming back.
Later, Angela’s story would spread into the air beyond the town, beyond the state and even the region, and become one of the strange homeless stories that float around the world. Like the little girl’s doll that flew out the window, or the disappearing dogs, it would take on a life of its own, acquiring meanings far beyond the original ones.
Later … but not now. Now, for a moment more in Miss Bone’s old apartment, Angela’s aliens were a private thing told between two friends in a place that was apart from other people’s thoughts and meanings—even a mother’s.
For all the time Angela had been telling her story, she had been gazing more and more warmly at Georgina. Perhaps she saw how closely Georgina listened to every word, and how she never hurried her and always wanted to know more. Or maybe it was the luxury of being able to sit back and talk in your own language to someone your own age who knows exactly what you mean and believes you are important.
Whatever it was, Angela’s eyes began to lose their pleading expression and her face relaxed. Her long body began to take on the roll of Miss Bone’s old couch. Her voice rose and matched the rhythms of Georgina’s voice, and her hands stopped reaching up to comb through her hair.
By the time her story came to an end, she seemed so much like her former self that Georgina felt the rough braid of their old friendship start to weave together again. This, in turn, gave Georgina confidence, and even emboldened her to go a step further. For much as Angela had said she almost understood, there was one last thing Georgina had to clear up. After Angela had rested for a while, with her head leaned tiredly back against the sofa cushions, Georgina asked in her softest voice, “Angela? About these aliens …”
Angela cocked her head. “I’ve told you everything already.”
“I know. I just have to find out. Who were they really? You can tell me. I won’t say anything, ever, to anyone. Because I see how, actually, it really did happen.”
Angela blinked. “You do?”
“I mean, in a way, you were kidnapped to a hot, alien world all by yourself. And nobody noticed how sad you were, and your parents didn’t hear when you tried to tell them because they were so busy with their own problems, and they kept floating off and disappearing and trying to make you eat—exactly like those …”
Angela had risen to her feet as Georgina was speaking. At first, she looked startled and seemed to want to interrupt. But then her head turned and her attention went toward the windows, where a noise of car tires could be heard from below. Angela leaped forward and went to look.
“It’s my mother!” she whispered. Then she screamed, “It’s my mom!” She turned around and stared with wide eyes at Georgina.
“Well, go,” Georgina said. “Don’t just stand there.”
“I can’t believe it!” Angela said. “I can’t believe she came. All the way from California, and she wasn’t even late.”
Georgina stood up. “I told you she would.”
Angela clasped her hands together. “Oh, Georgina, thank you! For staying and listening and seeing everything!”
“Except you didn’t finish saying—” Georgina began, but Angela was suddenly flying across the room and running full steam through Miss Bone’s abandoned kitchen.
“I’ll call you tomorrow morning,” she shouted back. “Oh, yes, and tell Poco I saw Juliette. She was at the reservoir, hanging out near the dam.”
“Juliette? Are you sure?” Georgina asked. It seemed too far for a creature that old. But Angela was already out the door and pound
ing down Miss Bone’s apartment stairs.
Not only was Mrs. Harrall not late; she was a whole two hours early getting home—a miracle that Angela never forgot, but that was also lucky for Georgina. Otherwise, she never would have been back in time for dinner at her own house. Then her mother would have yelled, unless she’d made something up—which Georgina probably would have done if it had come to that, since her mother would have thought less than nothing of the truth. (“Angela asked you to stay? That’s your excuse?”)
As it was, Georgina still had a little time before she had to start home, enough to spy out through Miss Bone’s window and watch as Angela hurled herself into her mother’s arms. Mrs. Harrall began crying and wiping her eyes while she held on to Angela with all her might.
Then Mr. Harrall ran out with his tie flapping, and flung his arms around them both. Shortly after, Miss Bone appeared in a long black shawl, which she swept from her shoulders and wrapped like a great winged bat around them all. Only Martin stood discreetly aside—though not very far off—which was to be expected of someone going to college.
Finally, with much sniffling and talking, the whole family went indoors, and Georgina sneaked down and walked home fast.
chapter fifteen
ANGELA DID CALL GEORGINA EARLY the next morning, just as she had promised she would. She called to say, in a low whispery voice, that she wasn’t going to school that day and would call again that night, when the police were gone.
“Does your mother believe you?” Georgina asked straight out.
“I think she does, because she’s crying all the time,” Angela whispered, but then someone must have come into the room, because suddenly she said, “Good-bye!” and hung up.
“Sounds like the same old rude Angela to me,” Poco said when she heard about it at school. By then, she knew all about Angela’s alien story because Georgina had told her on the phone the night before. For some reason, it didn’t impress her very much. “At least she called you back,” she went on now. “Maybe soon Angela will even talk to me and Walter.”
“Yes, she will,” Georgina said. “She’s changing, I think. She’s just got to fix up some things with her mother. That was the main problem before she got abducted.”
“Abducted!” Poco sniffed. “I’m not so sure. Everyone I’ve talked to thinks she’s lying.”
“Well, she isn’t,” Georgina said, rising up to defend her. “Angela’s telling the absolute truth. If you’d been there, you’d know it, too.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t,” Poco declared. “You certainly are back to your bossy ways.”
“Walter believes me. Don’t you, Walter?”
He was standing off a bit to one side, shifting his weight and sending Poco worried looks. He had his own opinion but was afraid to say it. At last, he dared to speak up, anyway.
“Well, you have to admit, Angela’s alien spaceship sounds exactly like one of those marbles you saw. Round and glassy and all lit up. How could she have known—unless someone told her?”
Poco looked at him admiringly. “Walter, that is so right! I certainly didn’t tell her. Did you, George?”
Georgina glanced away. “I don’t remember.”
“You’re trying to protect her, aren’t you?” Poco said.
“I am not. Why should I?”
“Because you can’t help it. You’re determined to believe in her no matter what. And you used to say you were so scientific.”
“This has nothing to do with that!”
Walter, meanwhile, had turned a wretched pink after seeing how Poco had appreciated him. And who knows what he might have started doing next, jumping or humming or standing on his head, but luckily the discussion was just then cut short by the nerve-racking clang of the end-of-recess bell.
Before anything more could be determined about Angela’s story, another mystery arose. Juliette, the old Siamese, was missing. There had been no sign of her since the night Angela was supposedly beamed out her window. Fearing the worst, Mrs. Lambert had said nothing to Poco, who was too distracted by everything else to notice her absence. But today, when Poco came trudging home from school, Mrs. Lambert felt it her duty as a mother to speak.
“What do you mean?” Poco demanded, standing flat-footed in the kitchen entry. “Juliette never spends the night out anymore. She’s too old for that. She always comes back.”
“Well, last night, she didn’t. And she hasn’t all day. You know she hasn’t been very well lately. Animals do have a way of going off at the end, and Juliette has always been so independent. I’m afraid this time we must prepare—”
“No, we mustn’t!” Poco said shrilly. She fled back outside before she heard any more. Her robin was in his tree, she saw with relief, though he looked a bit down in the wing and beak. And he wouldn’t meet her eye when she went by to chat. This was not a good sign, and Poco’s heart sank further.
It was only that night on the phone that Georgina, hearing about Juliette, remembered to tell Poco the message Angela had given her in Miss Bone’s apartment.
“At the reservoir!” Poco said, in the same tone one might use if one’s blood had frozen.
“That’s what Angela said. I’m sorry I forgot to tell you. It didn’t seem that important after everything else. Anyway, Angela just called me up again. She wants us to meet her at the reservoir tomorrow. I think she wants to show us where the aliens beamed her down. You can ask her more about Juliette then.”
“But I want to ask her now!” Poco shrieked. “Hang up so I can call her right this minute.”
“Well, you can’t. She’s not home. She went out with her mom,” Georgina said in such a smug voice—as if she owned Angela, or had more right to her than other people—that Poco herself hung up with a crash.
Only late, late that night, sitting sleepless on the edge of her bed and straining her eyes through the window for the telltale slink and slide of a cat, Poco was sorry she’d lost her temper. She could have used the happy thought of a friend right then. Outside, the night seemed so cold and careless, and the sky whirled over head so darkly and unknowably, that a sudden understanding rose in her of what pure loss and loneliness were made of. For a moment, she had a vision of Angela spinning through space, cut off from everyone she loved on Earth. Whether that story was true or not, there was something about it that made her shiver. “Oh, Juliette,” Poco whispered, “where are you?”
chapter sixteen
ANGELA HAD SAID SHE WOULD be waiting on the top of Wickham Dam at ten o’clock the next morning, which was a Saturday. And there she was, her slim shape standing high up in the distance. Walter saw her first and pointed her out to the others.
The three had met at Poco’s house and walked through the wintry woods, this time with Mrs. Lambert’s permission.
“Do I trust you?” she’d asked, putting an eye on each child in turn. “You won’t fall in the water or go too far and get lost?”
“Of course not!” Poco said. “We’re not stupid.”
“Well, with four of you there, I suppose you’ll be all right. I’m so happy to hear you’re meeting Angela.”
They had all been eager to meet her, even Poco a little. But now the sight of Angela’s tall figure looming above them—they were just approaching the dam’s stone steps—sent an uneasy feeling through everyone, recalling the eerie night that Poco had seen her there. They climbed the steps more breathlessly than usual.
Angela heard them coming and was waiting at the top when they arrived.
“Hello!” She looked flushed with excitement.
“Hi! Hello!”
For a moment, they all felt shy and embarrassed—to be together so abruptly after all the time gone by. But soon, the strangeness began to wear off. For one thing, Walter Kew had to be introduced.
“I remember you!” Angela exclaimed. “You once brought a Ouija board to our second-grade room.”
“Oh yes,” Walter said. “You thought I was a creep.”
“No I didn’t! I was s
cared. The whole class was. We thought you were a witch or a sorcerer or something.”
“Well, now he’s one of us,” Poco said, tight-lipped.
“Listen,” Angela went on, “before anything else, I want you all to know you’re invited for lunch. It’s my dad’s idea. He’s going to make tacos.”
“Your father! Is he still here?” Poco looked most suspicious.
“He’s staying over in Miss Bone’s apartment. Until he has to leave, that is, sometime next week. But he’s coming back to live near us. He says he likes our weather here better than Mexico’s.”
“What about your mother?” Georgina asked. “My mom said she’s moving back and quitting California. And she’ll go to law school here even though it’s not as good.”
“That’s right,” Angela said, glancing down. “She’s decided she likes our weather better, too.”
Poco said with a sudden rudeness, “What you mean is that you’ve scared them both to death by running away. And now they’ll never dare leave you alone for an instant.”
“Poco!” Georgina cried. “Will you shut up?”
But Angela asked quietly, “What’s wrong with that?” She meant scaring parents, not Poco’s rudeness.
“Nothing, I guess.” Poco looked at her. “Except it’s a mean and selfish way to get attention.”
But Angela looked back with complete serenity. “It wasn’t me,” she insisted. “It was the aliens who did it.”
There was a pause after this while they all caught their breath. Then Angela said, “Come on, I’ll show you where I landed.”
They set off across the dam, Angela in the lead, and went down the stone steps on the other side. The old parking lot was there behind the bushes, but before they came to it, Angela veered off to the right. She went into a grove of fir trees, up a little hill, and down again.
“I hope we don’t get lost,” Walter said, noticing how the tree branches closed in back of them.
“We won’t,” Angela sang out. “I know this place. We’ll come back soon to the reservoir.”
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