“Jesus, Omar,” I say. “What did you tell her, that my mom is green and scaly?”
“Obviously not,” Omar says. “Though did you happen to check for—? Okay, sorry, sorry. No, I told her the truth.” He lifts his hands. “That I just watched a member of the Nordic alien race land a saucer-type UFO right in front of my eyes.”
“Yeah, that sounds completely logical,” Dad mutters, but the hairs on the back of my neck are prickling.
“What a minute,” I say, standing. I turn to River. “You have a spacecraft.”
“Yes.” His eyes bore into me and I swear, I feel like he can read my brain, which is disturbing. But, no, focus, Sia. You’re onto something, here. “How fast can it go?”
River inhales. “It can cover about a hundred and twenty miles in seven seconds.”
“What?” Noah’s mouth has dropped open. “But you can’t take that back to your home planet?”
“It’s too small,” Mom says. “It’d be like taking a Smart car into the Grand Canyon. Doesn’t have that kind of power.”
“Wait, wait,” I say, holding a hand up. “Remember what Imani said, Noah, when you asked her what it’d take? For her to believe in all this shit?”
Noah grins. “She said to land a spacecraft in front of the newspaper headquarters. Then she’ll talk.”
I bring a hand to my forehead. “How could something like that not make international news?”
We pause for a moment.
“Imani’s there right now,” Omar says, checking his watch. “Wrapping up a meeting with the other bloggers. We gotta catch her soon, though. Tonight’s family game night, and she gets to my house early. She’s competitive.”
We all look at one another.
“Yes,” Mom says, standing. “We need as many witnesses as we can get.”
166
“WAIT,” I SAY, LIGHTLY TOUCHING river’s arm as everyone heads out. “I want to talk to you.”
“Yo no quiero que ella habla con ese pendejo,” Dad retorts.
Mom places her hand on his shoulder. “She can ask him questions. She’s got a right.”
“Solo, Lena?”
I huff. “Dad. Please.”
“Artemisia, you don’t know—”
“Five minutes,” Mom says. “Five, Luis.”
He grumbles, giving River a hard look as they leave the trailer. Before the door shuts, I hear Omar saying something like, “Hey, I have a lot of questions, too. I get five minutes with him next!”
River seems unaffected by my father’s murderous stare. His silver eyes are directed on the candles, his arms crossed.
Jesus, Rose was right. River is beautiful. But his beauty is refined in such a way that my instincts are sharp around him. Like I know he’s not quite human. Or not the sort of human I’m used to.
I decide to blow out all the candles in an attempt to feel less jumpy. “I have a question,” I say between huffs of breath over Saint Andrew and Saint Diego.
“Sure.”
I’m tired of puffing, so I start to pinch the flames instead. “Why did the experiment work on my mom? After killing so many. Why?”
He glances at my face before watching my hands on the candles. His eyes are still sort of glowing. They look like a pair of gray moons.
“Because I love her.”
“Wow,” I say, pausing between candles. I was definitely not expecting the most cliché possible explanation. But then my stomach tightens. “If that’s true, that makes you a total assface. You know that, right? Like, you didn’t have it in you to love anyone else, though? Knowing they were gonna die? Knowing love could save them?”
River’s gaze is so intense, I wonder if he can see the inside of my brain. “Is that something you all can do?” He furrows his brow. “You can make yourself fall in love with someone?”
There is no hint of sarcasm in his voice. Just curiosity. “Uh—I—” But my mind whirls too much to respond coherently.
Did Mom ever love him back? When she thought she was stuck there? When she thought she’d never see Dad or me again? Don’t people fall in love in extraordinary circumstances all the time? It’s ’cause the emotions are high and we naturally seek comfort in each other. Well, we Earth humans, anyway.
I clear my throat and decide to ignore his question. “So, that’s her, right? That’s my mom, Magdalena Martinez. No robot or alien shape-shifter or…”
He tilts his head. “Why are you asking me this?”
“Something Katia said. That she wasn’t my mom. Wasn’t real or something.”
“Ah.”
I’m down to the last three candles. “Well? You gonna answer my question or…”
He looks out the window. I’m on the last candle, Saint Kateri. And I’m not snuffing it till he speaks.
“Yes,” he finally says. “It’s her.”
Dad bangs on the door. I pinch the flame, and we are all dark, all except for River’s pale moon eyes.
167
I’M NOT SURE WHAT I’M expecting when I follow Dad and River into the tiburón. From the outside, it’s a smoother and rounder version of what Mom crashed in the desert… fuck, was that only a few days ago? Why has it seemed like a whole life has happened since then?
Inside, I give a low gasp. I can’t help it. Streams of what looks like sunlight come through the ceiling in thick chunks. “Concentrated moonlight,” River explains when I run my hands over it. It’s just after sunset outside, but in here, it feels like late afternoon. It jars me.
The walls are made of metal, but the metal contains textures, like wood grain, and they’re constantly changing. Symbols appear here and there, just like the ones on Mom’s ship.
There are no buttons, no soundboard-looking system. There are seats, but they look like bean bags made of molten metal and they’re just tossed about randomly. Noah’s already in one, taking notes. The metal shifts under him as he adjusts and leans back. Like it knows where he’s going to go.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Rose whispers to me when I touch a spiral on the wall.
When I lift my hand, there’s an indentation of my fingerprint. “I’d even go so far as to say fucking incredible,” I whisper back.
Rose laughs. “I agree.”
Omar’s walking around, talking into his phone like it’s a walkie-talkie. “You’re not going to believe this,” he says into it. “We got localized clay tech, we got sentient tech, we got a written alien language. I’m about to take photos. Over.” He lifts his phone when I raise an eyebrow at him. “Keeping my associates updated,” he explains.
“Are we ready?” River asks.
“Don’t we need seat belts or something?” Rose asks.
River laughs. “Not quite. The ship will provide them if we need them.”
“Exactly, Rose,” Omar says. “The ship will provide them if we need them.”
River bites at his lips as though trying not to laugh. “Right now, just enjoy the ride, okay?”
“Hear that, everyone?!” Omar says. “Enjoy the ride!”
“You can have a seat,” River tells him and Omar nods so hard, he looks like a bobblehead or something. “I’m about to mark the craft.”
I hear Dad scoff under his breath behind me. I wonder if he’ll punch River before this shit is over. Or worse.
River puts his hands on the wall, pressing in to make deep marks. Then he has a seat near Noah.
Suddenly, the metal evaporates. It just fades away like it was a phantom all along. The only indications that it was ever there are the lines of moonlight streaming in all around us. I can still make out the shape of the tiburón thanks to the light lines, but my stomach flip-flops as we lift up into the air without the visual of even a floor beneath us. I catch Noah’s wide eyes and he grins at me, pulling his phone out.
Mom’s next to me, slipping my hand into hers. “I love these things,” she says wistfully. “I hope the tech leaks and our cars and planes can be like this.”
The ride is smooth and I’m wit
hout words as we glide toward the last orange hint of the sunset. Below us, the shadows of the desert take on their blue-black ink. Some of them move. I recognize a pair of hares before they become tiny, gray blurs on the landscape.
“We’re going pretty slow,” Dad says with a scowl.
“Just wanted you to see how pretty it is.” River’s voice is smooth and soft. “We can speed it up.”
He closes his eyes and leans back on the seat. The ship gives a little growl and Rose grabs my free hand. I glance at Omar, who’s mouth has been wide open for the last five minutes. Noah grins, recording on his cell.
There’s a lurch, then the feeling like I’m compressing into a tiny ball. It’s like the world out there is also, somehow, inside me.
Is this what the universe was like when it all began? When all of matter sought itself out, so tight and so close that it exploded and made whole new worlds, one after the other like empanadas pulled from the oil, crisp and ready to eat?
The ball that is my body jumps and slowly unravels. When I open my eyes, we’re hovering over a street in downtown Phoenix. I can tell because the main Sentinel building is a quarter mile ahead, its name glowing in white. Silhouettes of people line some of the windows.
“You want to make headlines, right?” River asks Mom, who nods, the corners of her lips curling into a smile. River grins back. “Let’s make an entrance, then, shall we?”
The last thing I hear before we really speed up is Dad grumbling something like, “Fool thinks he’s Captain Fucking America.”
168
I IMAGINE SOME UPBEAT ANTHEM song playing when we descend from the tiburón, us looking cool and desert-weathered and mysterious, especially because we’re walking out of a fucking spaceship. People gather all around us, many running up from a distance, and they’ve all got their cell phones out. I glance up at the windows of the Sentinel. Now they’re packed with silhouettes.
“Oh, Imani,” Omar says into his phone in a singsong tone. “Did you look out your office windows yet? Onto the main street? What? Just, just look okay? Now, please. I’ll wait.… No, it’s not a projection. I didn’t just project a UFO on the streets! How out of it do you think I am?” He scoffs. “It’s real! You said you’d believe if we landed a—you know what, just meet us downstairs. Then you’ll see.” He hangs up. “She just called me the boy who cried sabertooth, you believe that? Don’t know what I ever did to her that she’d treat me this way.”
“One of God’s great mysteries,” Rose mutters in my ear and I snort.
But in the lobby, Imani’s arms are crossed and she has an eyebrow raised. “So. Not a projection, huh?”
“I told you! It’s real!” Omar says, jumping with glee. He looks about four years old.
“Okay,” she says slowly. “Fine. So it’s real. What’s the plan? Who are the players? I see Noah and, Sia, was it?” We nod.
“This is Sia’s dad,” Noah says, stepping up. “Biologist and capoeira master.”
“Luis,” my dad mutters, his voice all gruff.
Omar jumps in front of Noah, practically tripping Imani, who scowls. “And this,” Omar says, pointing, “is her mom, smokin’ hot Mexican lady, abducted over two years ago in the desert. That makes her an honest-to-God abductee. Also classified as a close encounter of the third kind. The third kind, Imani!”
“Actually,” Noah says, “we’re all having a close encounter of the third kind right now.” He gestures to River, whose arms are crossed, his moon eyes glinting in amusement. “ ’Cause that’s the kind when there’s one of them actually present…”
“Shit, you’re right, man! Imani, stop rolling your eyes and listen! That fellow’s code name is River, which could be a little better, you know, it’s not quite on the Sabertooth level, but he’s actually”—Omar lowers his voice—“alien.”
Although we’ve landed a UFO right in front of her, practically, this seems to stretch Imani’s limitations. Arms still crossed, she gives River a long once-over. “I’m at a loss, Omar. There are no green scales, no big eyes.”
“I know! It’s confusing, isn’t it, especially because I’ve almost eliminated the possibility of the Nordic—”
“You know what, Omar?” I say. “This is great and all, but, Imani? The government has been experimenting on my mother without her consent. We get proof out there, and quick. Because they’re on their way to get her. Right now.”
Something about the tone of my voice, or maybe the hardness of our eyes, who knows, but something makes Imani uncross her arms and straighten her back. “Why don’t we go upstairs. This way.” She points us to the elevators. “They’re with me,” she calls to the security guards who surround us as we approach.
“Christopher’s gonna give you that position when you graduate, after today,” Omar says. “You wait.”
She gives Omar a small smile. “Sure he will.” She shrugs. “I mean, I’m just assisting folks who claim to know—and be—aliens into the newsroom. What could go wrong?”
169
“JESUS CHRIST, IMANI.” A TALL, gray-haired fellow runs to us as soon as we hit the newsroom. “What the fuck have you done?”
She barely looks at him. “Hello, Christopher.”
“I just got a call that I need to evacuate the building immediately, or else there will be casualties, thanks to some group of young criminals. Is this them? You just brought them right into the office?”
Imani stares for a moment. “Really? You really got a call like that?” She shakes her head. “Omar, I can’t believe you might be right about this.”
“I told you, I freaking told you!”
“Imani,” the man says, warning in his voice.
She just gestures to him. “Everyone, this is Christopher. The assistant editor.”
He doesn’t look at us. “What’s your grand plan, Imani? Trying to get us all killed?”
Imani raises an eyebrow. “I’m trying to get the truth out there, Chris. Which is my job, if you’ll recall.”
“Okay, okay.” The guy throws up his hands. “You do whatever you want with them. But I’m washing my hands of this bullshit.” He turns and stomps away, calling, “We’ll see how high your horse is when they arrive, Clarke.”
170
IMANI’S INTERVIEWING MOM AND RIVER first, with Noah by their side, taking notes, showing their previous interviews from his phone. And, of course, Omar is front and center, interjecting with his super-grounded-sounding commentary. I sit with Rose on a bench we find in the newsroom.
“Oh my God.” A golden-haired, dark-skinned woman walks up and stares at Imani, Mom, and River through the window. “That’s that lady who was deported down south a couple years back, isn’t it?”
“Really?” A redheaded woman walks up, holding a paintbrush for some reason. “You remember that?”
“Yeah, I mean. She had a daughter.”
The redhead makes a face like this doesn’t explain anything.
“That part of the state, you know, Caraway, Pastila. It’s rough for people of color. God, last time I was there, at a gas station on the 99, I got called the N-word. And once, I got a flat right next to Rangestown, and not one, but two trucks went out of their way to splash mud on me before someone stopped to help.”
Redhead’s got a sour look now, like someone’s forced her to drink piss. “Well,” she says with a huff. “I lived in Pastila for many, many years and I’ve never met a racist there.” She gives a half shrug, crossing her arms. “Roberta, when you focus on the negative things in life, you miss out on all the kindness people have to offer.” She lifts her head and walks away.
Rose and I glance at each other. Both our jaws have dropped.
Roberta sees and shakes her head. “It’s nothing new,” she tells us, walking away.
171
“THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE,” I say to rose.
“You’re my best friend,” she says simply.
172
“HEY,” NOAH WHISPERS. I TURN as he gestures for me t
o follow. I glance at the room with Mom and Imani. Looks like Omar has taken over the interviewing process. Typical.
“Be right back,” I tell Rose.
“What is it?” I say as he ushers me into what looks like a supply closet.
When he turns to me, his cheeks are pink. “I just.” He places a hand on my waist. “I just haven’t gotten to kiss you in too long.”
I can’t bite back my grin. “We kissed last night.”
He gives me a half smile. “Like I said, too long.”
173
KISSING NOAH IS LIKE MY whole body getting too close to some exquisite lightning storm. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s the only thing I can think of that’s even close. Goosebumps glide along my back, and I shiver as he sucks in my bottom lip. And when I do the same to him, he gasps and presses his hips into me. And I feel him, hard on my belly, and I really think that one day, I’ll be okay with it. With every part of his firm and freckled body. ’Cause I push my hips back and it feels good, right now, just like this. It only feels good.
174
THERE’S A MUFFLED SOUND PENETRATING the windows, like a bullhorn. Someone opens a window.
“I repeat, each occupant of this illegal aircraft must exit the building with both hands up, or we will force entry.”
I run and see what looks like dozens of SWAT cars and unmarked black vans and SUVs piling up down the street. They’ve drawn yellow caution tape on each side of our building, where folks have gathered, phones extended.
“We have a basement that connects to our neighboring buildings,” Imani says, putting a hand on my arm. “Used to deliver mail that way, back in the day.”
I hardly hear her. My grandmother is in front of me, obscuring Imani’s face. “Ella está en el edificio,” she whispers. Then she’s gone.
Mom’s face pales. “Katia.” She turns to Imani, my father, Noah, and Rose. “I just need five minutes alone with Sia. You all, go through the basement.”
Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything Page 20