Starseed

by Gruder, Liz

  Kaila’s family didn’t say a word about her fuzzy yellow duck slippers or orange shorts. Surely, the shorts alone would get her sent home. If a girl couldn’t feel her skirt at her fingertips, it was too short. These shorts ended right at the bottom of her ass.

  She couldn’t wait to be sent home so she could lock herself in her room. Now, home schooling seemed a sanctuary, away from all those hypocritical, back-stabbing holes.

  On the bus, as she sauntered down the aisle, people actually said, “Oh, cool!”

  “It’s not cool, you idiots,” Kaila snapped.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to offend.”

  Kaila hurried to the back of the bus.

  “Mouse ears!” Pia exclaimed. “How adorable.”

  Ugh. The real Pia would have ripped the ears from her head and sent them sailing out the window like a frisbee.

  People turned and called how wonderful she looked. Maddened, Kaila shouted, “Shut up! You all suck!”

  Everyone on the bus nodded. “Yes, you’re right. We do suck.”

  Melissa turned to Pia. “She’s right. We suck. Yeah.”

  When Kaila stepped off the bus, everyone in the whole school surrounded her. Hundreds of people!

  “That is the coolest outfit ever.”

  “You are so beautiful.”

  “Where’d ya get the diarrhea shirt? So swag!”

  “And where’d ya get the yellow ducky slippers?”

  “Explosive diarrhea? CRAY!”

  She felt like a movie star who starred in a bomb, but everyone loved her anyway.

  “Kaila.” Tara pushed her way through the throng. “You like my hair?”

  Tara wore a long blonde wig like hers. It looked awful. Even more pitiful: she wore contact lenses that made her eyes look large and alien, like Lady Gaga in that old Bad Romance video.

  Kaila noticed that many girls wore blonde wigs. And many wore blue contact lenses to make their eyes look big. They had copied outfits she’d worn.

  Kaila felt explosive, and way more than diarrhea.

  She pushed through the crowd, flopping in her duck slippers to the back of the school. The mob ran behind.

  The hive was waiting.

  “Make them go away!” Kaila shouted.

  Echidna took one look at Kaila in her mouse ears and duck slippers and laughed. They all laughed. Kaila had never seen the hive laugh before, at least when sober.

  “You spit in their face and mock them,” Echidna said, her voice rising. “You wear the ears of an animal to show what animals they are.”

  “Well done,” Lucius agreed.

  “You look absurd,” Viktor said.

  “I like the mouse ears,” Toby said. He cocked his head, listening. Then, “I want to go to Disneyland!”

  “What is diarrhea?” asked Echidna.

  “Stop,” Jordyn said, noting Kaila’s distress.

  The whole school had stampeded from the field to the back of the school and gathered around Kaila and the hive.

  “Make them go away,” Kaila pleaded, feeling crowded and faint amidst so many bodies.

  “We can’t.”

  “What do you mean you can’t?” Kaila shouted.

  Jordyn sent a telepathic message to the hive. Their eyes then turned solid black. Several students started to scream, but as the hive beamed their gaze on the students, the screams stopped. All the students froze in whatever movement they were making, like statues. They went quiet. A crow cawed up in a tree.

  “I’m begging you, take this away,” Kaila said in the sudden stillness.

  “We can’t,” the hive replied in unison.

  “Then can you at least take it off Melissa and Pia and my family? I can’t stand them fawning all over me! It’s so false.”

  “We’ll try,” Jordyn said.

  “And what about helping my grandfather? I thought you were going to heal him.”

  “We decided—”

  Viktor interrupted, “We will heal your grandfather once you’ve sworn your allegiance to us.”

  “What?” Kaila said, thinking that was a deal with the devil. Why should a healing have a condition attached? “Listen here, hive. I will decide on my own. No one is going to bribe me. Got it?”

  But what about Paw Paw? She would talk to Jordyn after she escaped this asylum. Everything kept whirling faster and faster. The hive stared at her, their eyes half black and half normal. The hundreds of students still clustered around like frightened statues.

  You are one of us. Stop rebelling.

  You see how ridiculous it is to align with humans.

  To seek individual gains is selfish.

  You have more power with us, the hive.

  Kaila put her hands to her ears. She was hearing them now, even with the wig.

  Stop fighting it. We are your blood. We are your mind.

  No pain, ever.

  Be a ruler, not a slave.

  “Stop!” Kaila shouted. “I’ve had it. I’m blown out. Done. Keep these jerks frozen while I make a dash.”

  “Where are you going?” Jordyn asked.

  “Home. I need a sick day. And please, consult with your leader or master or whatever the hell you call him or it, and get this popularity mind-screen off the town. I’m not coming back to this school till it’s off. Got it?”

  The hive stared with button eyes.

  “I wasn’t consulted in this popularity decision, so I reject it. I will not be controlled.” Kaila narrowed her eyes and balled her fist. “Though we are a hive, we are all half human and we all have our differences. So, know me. And respect me.”

  Finally. Sister. You do have what it takes. Echidna’s eyes widened below her black bangs.

  Kaila stepped in front of Echidna and pushed her face two inches from hers. She stared into Echidna’s chalky face, then said softly with a rivet of steel embedded in her tone, “You. Are. Blocked.”

  As Kaila noted Echidna’s eyelashes rapidly fluttering, Kaila envisioned a golden box around her entire body. She didn’t know how this telepathy thing worked but determined she would learn.

  “Hope to see you all at my party Saturday. One p.m. Don’t be late! Muah!” Kaila threw a kiss and ran.

  Kaila’s mother besieged her with offers of chicken noodle soup, massages, blankets, Vicks Vaporub till she ran upstairs and locked the door.

  The next day, Pia texted, “Hey, you suck, where are you, ho?” Kaila sighed with relief. The mind-screen was at least off Pia.

  Then: knocking on the door. “Kaila,” Mike called. “You might have a cold, but you’re not too sick to get your ass up and help with the horses.”

  Oh, thank God. This was more like it.

  SOS, Melissa texted the next morning. Exhausted. Woke up in bed this morning wearing someone else’s pajamas. Saw a ghost last night. Scared. PLEASE HELP! Something FREAKY going down.

  Kaila dialed Melissa’s number. This required more than texts. No answer.

  Her mother stood at the kitchen table cutting fresh strips of Velostat plastic to wear inside their caps. The black plastic material lay on the table, reflecting the globe light of the ceiling fan.

  “Mom,” Kaila said, fingering the plastic, making a note to slip some to Melissa and Pia. “Can we talk about this?”

  Her mother instantly stopped cutting, jerked her capped head at Kaila.

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “This stuff. The Velostat. Like, why do we wear it?”

  “We’ve been through this a thousand times.”

  “And you never answer,” Kaila said. “I want you tell me in words, out loud, why we have to wear this stuff.”

  Nan stood in the doorway, her chubby arms folded over a gingham smock apron. “Kaila. Leave your mother alone.”

  Her mother looked pale as a mummy, her dark eyes shadowed beneath the baseball cap visor’s shadow.

  Still, Kaila persisted. “I want to talk about this. No one else in school wears a stupid wig and this creepy plast
ic.”

  “You must trust and believe in us,” Nan said. “We love you.”

  “I know that, Nan!” Kaila cried, exasperated.

  “We may approach this when you are of age,” Nan stammered. “Not before.”

  Good god, why was her family so old fashioned? It was the stupid Southern thing, where people always had to smile and act polite even if contorted with constipation, or if someone in the family had just been shipped to the mental hospital. They never said what was real. Just like polite zombies.

  “I’m going to be seventeen tomorrow,” Kaila said. “What do you consider of age? How long are you going to treat me like a nose-picking toddler?”

  “We shouldn’t talk about this,” her mother said.

  Kaila knelt down before her mother. “Why shouldn’t we talk about it?”

  Her mother refused to look at Kaila. She pursed her lips.

  Kaila grew frightened. “Mom, look at me.”

  Lee stared at the black sheets of plastic. “We shouldn’t talk about this,” her mother intoned.

  “Mom,” Kaila gripped her mother’s elbow. “Are you programmed? Is that why you can’t talk?”

  Kaila was jerked upright by her grandmother. “You stop this foolishness!” Nan shouted. “Stop it now.”

  When Kaila looked at Nan, she expected to see anger, but what she saw was fear.

  There was a long silence. Kaila knew something was seriously amiss. But to probe her mother and Nan would do no good. She realized how deeply frightened they were, and that like Melissa and Pia, they probably didn’t understand.

  Kaila hugged Nan. “I’m sorry, Nan. I love you.”

  Nan’s eyes watered as she pressed Kaila to her bosom. Nan pulled Lee up and drew her close. Nan petted Lee’s curly dark hair escaping from her baseball cap.

  “You’re both my good girls,” Nan said. “Everything will be all right.” Her face artificially brightened. “Now Kaila, how ‘bout you help me make that barbecue sauce for tomorrow? We have a lot to do for your party. Go fetch the ketchup out of the fridge.”

  “I found something,” Kaila whispered on the phone in her room. She was on a three-way call with Melissa and Pia. “Listen.” She squinted at the computer screen. “This Velostat stuff is used to make thought screen helmets.”

  “What stuff?” Melissa asked.

  “Velostat,” Kaila said. “Get online now. Google it.”

  Kaila read from the computer screen, “The thought screen helmet scrambles telepathic communication between aliens and humans. Aliens cannot immobilize people wearing thought screens nor can they control their mind or communicate with them using their telepathy. When aliens can’t communicate or control humans, they do not take them.”

  Silence. Kaila knew Melissa and Pia contemplated their computer screens too.

  “I bet this dude just put this up to make money,” Pia finally said.

  “Yeah,” Melissa said. “It’s probably a scam. I don’t believe it.”

  “You asked me for help and here it is,” Kaila retorted. “You even asked me to get some for you.”

  She paused. What if they were programmed to scoff? She believed that a mind-screen had been put over the entire planet to ridicule and make fun of anything having to do with extraterrestrials. It had to be true. People loved vampires, werewolves, ghosts, zombies. But aliens. No.

  Still, Melissa and Pia went on how scared they were. Melissa related that she woke wearing a long flowered gown, something she would never wear, and two sizes too big. Kaila let them voice their fears.

  “Look,” Kaila finally said. “You have my word I’m going to do everything I can to get to the bottom of this.”

  “I hope so,” Pia said. “I can feel this monster moving in me already. I don’t want it!”

  “I’m so tired,” Melissa said. “Please help us.”

  “But hey,” Pia interjected, “tomorrow’s Kaila’s birthday. So just for tomorrow let’s flush all this down the toilet. Tomorrow we’ll have fun.”

  “Pia, thanks,” Kaila said. She could barely imagine the horror of being pregnant and knowing you hadn’t caused it. And worse, what might be growing inside her belly.

  “Tomorrow we’ll have fun,” Melissa agreed. “Time out.”

  “Okay,” Kaila said. “But day after my party I’m going to go down into the basement and face the monster.”

  In southern Louisiana, there were no basements. They understood that in horror movies, someone always went down into the basement when they shouldn’t. But the time had come for Kaila to stop pretending everything was all right. Everyone she knew and loved was affected. Deep down, she was terrified, for this was something far-reaching and huge, something so far down the rabbit hole that even in the most vivid of imaginations, one knew instinctively that to step down into that basement meant your mind would be irrevocably blown.

  The Saturday of Kaila’s party the sky was blue and clear, the sun shining, the temperature idyllic. Kaila observed a bee pollenating a rose in her mother’s garden, so colorful with blooming roses, marigolds, and petunias. All the talk of Velostat and secrets and monsters seemed like a dream. Last night held fear; today held hope. Why was life so riddled with contradiction? Kaila looked up when she heard car tires crunching on the clam shells over the long driveway to her house.

  Her extended family traveled to her birthday party from all over Louisiana: Houma, Raceland, New Orleans, Cocodrie, and Covington. Uncle John hugged her in his overalls; her Aunt Jackie, in a sky-blue polyester pantsuit and kerchief, pecked her cheek and slipped fifty dollars into her hand. Her cousins’ children ran squealing in delight through the grasses, popping balloons. Nan rolled out the plastic runner and turned on the hose so they could run and slide.

  Paw Paw, bless him, even though ill, had the barbecue pit smoking with the fragrant odor of sausage, chicken, and ribs. Kaila decided she’d corner Jordyn to heal Paw Paw—today. Her birthday would be perfect. She smiled, noting the folding tables covered with white linen cloths, set with red paper plates, streamers, balloons, and water bowls with floating camellias. Condensation beads formed on pitchers of iced tea under the shade of the magnolia trees.

  Melissa and Pia pedaled their bikes over the clam shells. Dropping the bikes on the lawn, they ran to Kaila and hugged her tightly.

  “The old woman’s seventeen!” Pia exclaimed. Melissa and Pia were still sixteen.

  “Yeah, get a driver’s license and a car so we don’t have to ride these stupid bikes anymore,” Melissa said, brushing her long bangs out of her face.

  “Come on, girls,” Paw Paw called. “Have a plate.” He poked at some pork ribs on a platter.

  “Can’t!” Kaila said, too excited to eat.

  “I’m awful proud of you, Goosy,” Paw Paw said. “You know you’re the apple of my eye. And the prettiest girl in town.”

  “Paw Paw.” Kaila squirmed. Yet she could feel his love pouring from him. She knew he’d made a concerted effort to be up and out for her birthday even with the after effects of chemotherapy.

  “So when’re the boys coming?” Paw Paw asked.

  Kaila shrugged. She peered around, expecting the hive any minute.

  Pia sat on the front porch and bowed her fiddle. Several of Kaila’s relatives gathered round. Inspired, Uncle John took out his fiddle and began to play Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez. Uncle Pierre sang and the clan stomped their feet and clapped their hands. The children linked arms and twirled while the adults did a do si do.

  All should have been perfect and was, except—where were they?

  Later, everyone sat at the tables, eating barbecue, homemade potato salad, and coleslaw. Then her mother brought out a pink and white sheet birthday cake.

  “Don’t worry,” Melissa said. “They’re gonna come.”

  Kaila nodded, as the candles on the cake were lit.

  As everyone circled around the table and began singing Happy Birthday, Kaila jerked her chin. She heard a buzzing. She tur
ned. The wind shifted and the barbecue smoke blew over the table. Kaila’s eyes teared. There they stood, a few yards away, in a line.

  “Wait!” Kaila cried. She pushed through her family and ran to the hive. “I’m glad you came,” she said, looking at Jordyn.

  “We would never miss celebrating your birth,” he said.

  They stared at each other. Kaila felt like she’d slipped in time. She basked in the moment, his warmth and radiating energy.

  She wanted to hug him, but instead she pulled Jordyn to the table. “Hey, everyone, this is Jordyn. And this is Echidna and Viktor and Antonia and Toby and Lucius.”

  The family suspiciously regarded the hive, decked in their silver jumpsuits.

  “They’re from that cult in New Mexico you heard about,” Kaila explained, seeing their incredulous looks.

  “High school kids sure wear some weird get ups,” Uncle John whispered.

  Her mother, Lee, clutched her baseball cap to her head.

  Paw Paw, noting the looks the family gave the hive, intervened. “Glad you’re here. Kaila’s been waiting for you. Now let’s sing.” He started singing Happy Birthday.

  The hive observed the birthday ritual song with fascination.

  “Make a wish,” Paw Paw said.

  Kaila glanced at Jordyn and blushed.

  “Whoo-wee!” Uncle John whistled. “Kaila’s got a suitor. From the looks of things she likes him too.”

  Everyone burst out laughing. Kaila blushed more furiously. She wished: May Jordyn and I be forever in love. She blew out the candles.

  “Don’t be embarrassed, Goosy.” Paw Paw smiled and hugged her.

  As her mother cut the cake and handed out slices, Mike called to the hive, “Come on y’all. Eat some barbecue.” He pointed to the platters on the table. Antonia slid next to Pia and Toby sat next to Melissa.

  “I will try it,” Antonia said. She picked up a rib, bit and tasted. She sat straighter. “This is amazing.”

  “It is delicious,” Toby cried. “More!” He munched on chicken and pork ribs, barbecue sauce on his small mouth. “I like it!”

  “Take it easy,” Uncle John laughed. “Plenty ’nuff to go around.”

  “Did they starve them in New Mexico?” Aunt Jackie wondered. “These poor kids. Here, have some cake.” She slid some cake slices before Toby and Antonia.