But here I am, listening to the water in the pipes and the silence, expecting there to be some lesson to be learned in all of this quick and instant terrifying nothingness.
And for what?
So that I could be kept alive.
And for the crystal in my pocket.
She wanted to give it to me. She trusted me. She knew what I am supposed to do, what I have been modified to do.
Reaching down with my trembling hand, I close her eyelids to hide the blankness of her eyes and whisper, “Thank you.”
I kick the giant tongue out of the way. I don’t want it near her.
“I’m so sorry,” I tell her, and then I take off out of the windowless bathroom to find Lyle. There’s no way I’ll be strong enough to move that big-ass, ugly alien guy by myself. And I want to move him, get away, get out of here, see the cloudy sky above me, even breathe in the cold air.
But I pause. I go back inside, get my backpack, zip it up again. The history book is a goner, but that’s not the end of the world. Ripping out a piece of paper, I scrawl the words BATHROOM IS CLOSED across it and stick it on the door with some gum. Pretty disgusting, but it’s the best I can do. I don’t want random innocents wandering in here.
* * *
Every one of my footsteps echoes through the empty hallways, like some sort of battle call or other attention-seeking sound. I try to be quiet, try not to run, but it takes everything I have to control myself. Someone could walk into the bathroom and see the aliens. Someone’s entire reality could shatter unless I hurry and get Lyle, and get back and move the bodies before they are discovered. And where will we move them? I wonder as I patter down the stairs to the main floor where the cafeteria is. How do you hide bodies?
I open the doors to the cafeteria and scan the tables for Lyle’s messy hair. Luckily, he’s tall and I spot his floppy-haired head at a table of jocks before my panic becomes all-consuming. I stride over there. They are discussing this graphic novel about Alexander the Great. It has a lot of sex scenes in it.
Lyle is saying with his mouth full, “It’s historically accurate. The sexuality is not a big deal. Plus, there’s gold in the book. It’s amazing.”
I touch his shoulder. “Um … Lyle…”
He’s munching on a piece of cheese pizza that’s absolutely covered with grease and he looks up at me. So do the rest of the guys. “Yeah?”
I clear my throat, totally awkward. “Can you come with me for a second?”
Some of the guys start making heckling noises.
“I’m kind of eating my pizza. Can you give me a sec?” He says this in a nicer way than the words themselves sound.
“Um … yeah … no.” I grab him by the arm and yank him away from the table, which only increases the heckling.
Keegan McKim says, “Oh.… Uh-oh … Lylie’s in troub-ble.”
Keegan McKim may be salutatorian but the boy is not original. Grayson Staggs snatches Lyle’s pizza out of his hand and immediately starts eating it himself.
Lyle, thankfully, doesn’t even get cranky. He just follows me out of the cafeteria, keeping pace with my fast and furious walk.
“What is it?” he asks as I shove open the glass doors. “Wait. Is it your mom? Is your mom okay?” He runs a hand through his hair and hugs me before I can answer. For a second, in his arms, I feel a little safer, a little better, and then he says, “Crap. I’m so sorry, I didn’t think. I was really into that pizza. Crap. I suck. She didn’t d—?”
Against my better judgment, I pull away from his hug and interrupt. “No. That’s not it … She’s the same.”
“Whew.” He studies me. “But it’s important, right? Because … pizza.”
I should have gone and got Seppie even if she is in class. Lyle, I think, was a horrible choice for a helper. No offense to Lyle. But then his face shifts into something more smiling and I realize he was teasing. He yanks me into a hug and I whisper, “Jerk.”
And he says back, “Jerk.”
He pats my back three times in a pretty bro way and we part, smiling at each other, before I remember that this is urgent and important.
“So,” he says, before I begin, “is this something dangerous or something school related?”
“Both.” I grab him by the shoulder and start walking with him down the hallway despite the fact that we have no hall pass. “There is a dead alien in the foreign-languages bathroom in the A wing.”
He stops walking. “What?”
“I said that there is a dead alien girl in the foreign-languages bathroom in the A wing. Plus, a sort of dead monster-alien-orc thing with this crazy gross tongue.”
“Whoa. You went in that bathroom? Everyone knows it smells in there.”
“Tangent, Lyle. Tangent.” I groan.
Lyle and I both tend to digress. Seppie can’t stand it.
“Okay, okay. Sort of dead? Or sort of monster? Which do you mean?” Lyle asks.
“Dead. Monster. Alien. I don’t know why I said sort of. Sorry. I’m stressed.”
“No worries. I’m trying to add some levity, so you don’t panic. So, there’s a dead alien girl and a dead alien monster.” He has super-long legs and when he starts hurrying, I have to pretty much jog to keep up. “In the bathroom. Why?”
“There was this, um … weird alien fight?”
“And you were just randomly there?”
“Sort of. I mean, I was, but the dead alien girl was waiting for me. She wasn’t dead yet, obviously. Yeah. Maybe not obviously?” My voice is creeping up into high notes, which is what happens when I get slightly hysterical. I lower it as we climb the staircase and give him a brief outline of what happened.
He stops right outside the bathroom. “She gave you what?”
I pull the crystal out of my pocket, unfold my hand, and show him.
“Crap.”
“Why crap?”
“Because it’s got to be important. She sought you out, gave it to you, and now she’s dead. That’s why.”
My lips sort of turn in to my mouth. My hand holding the crystal trembles. Lyle uses his own fingers to curl mine closed around it. “You should probably put that in your pocket or something and keep it safe.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
I do exactly that, stuffing it into the front pocket of my jeans, which are getting too loose because when I am stressed I lose weight. The crystal is a lump there, heavy and solid, bulging out of my jeans, a reminder of what has just happened. Lyle watches me do this and then reaches out toward the door. I grab his arm, preventing him from opening it.
“What?” His voice isn’t annoyed, more worried.
“I don’t know. I’m just stressed. I’m not a big alien expert. What if the bad one comes back to life or something?”
“You choked it with a toilet seat, Mana.” He shakes his head. “Unbelievable.”
“And my world history book helped.” I punch his arm. “I know it’s absurd.”
“It’s amazing.”
“There are dead things in there, Lyle. Some nice alien girl with pretty toenails died for me.”
He holds up his hands. “I know! I know, I’m sorry, but you’re the only person I know who would kill something with a toilet seat.”
“Shut up, Lyle.”
“Okay. Okay. Sorry.”
He reaches out to open the door one more time, and then jumps back.
A horrible little scream leaps out of my throat. “What? Is it hot? Did it burn you? Did you hear something?”
“No … It’s just … It’s the girls’ bathroom. Do you know how much trouble I’ll get into if I get caught going in the girls’ bathroom?” His eyes are big and terrified.
“Seriously, Lyle?”
“Seriously.”
“Lyle. When we first met China, you were in the girls’ locker room. It was the same thing.”
“No. That time Deputy Bagley was with me, so it wasn’t like I was just this random skeevy guy in the girls’ locker room.
”
“Lyle!”
“What?”
“This is ridiculous.”
With a brisk movement of his head, he says, “You’re right. You’re right, sorry! Going in now. Heading right in. Yep. Here we go.” He checks the empty hallway like he expects a teacher or our principal to magically appear. “Yep. Going in.”
“Lyle! Man up.” I shove him a tiny bit and he rushes into the bathroom. I’m right behind him.
He stops dead still in the center of the room. Now he’s annoyed. I can tell by how his shoulders aren’t square.
“Mana? Not funny.” His hands go to his hips. “I know you’re bored. I know you want to do something epic, and you’re tired of waiting for China, but you can’t start making things up.”
“I’m not.”
“Look around you.”
The bathroom is empty. There is no Shrek-like alien guy with a massively long tongue. There is no alien girl with peppermint-swirl toenails.
“Someone took the bodies.” I sigh out the words.
“That quick? How long were you gone?”
“Ten minutes tops.” I think about it some more and start opening up the stalls like the bodies could possibly be hidden in there. One after the other, they are empty. “It was really more like five. And my sign’s gone. I put a sign on the bathroom door.”
“Mana…” Lyle has crossed his arms over his chest.
“Lyle, I swear to you that I am not making this up!”
He eyes me. “Mana … I know you’re under a lot of pressure right now. I know that maybe you’re trying to take the focus off your world history test and your mom and my mom and … and maybe, you know…”
“I. Am. Not. Lying. Lyle.” I whirl on him and give him a full glare. “And that is the worst thing you could ever say to me.”
He backs up a step, bumping his butt on the sink. “I’m not saying lying on purpose, necessarily, but even the strongest people crack under this sort of pressure.”
“Lyle … I would not make up an alien that would resemble Shrek.”
“You’ve always liked Shrek.”
“Exactly! So I would not make him a bad guy.” I sniff around. “And smell. Doesn’t it smell different in here?”
“It smells like dead mice.”
“And what else?”
“Bleach.”
“What else?”
“Um.…” He sniffs. He makes a big production of inhaling. He sniffs again. “Copper?”
“Copper! Like blood!”
“Was there blood?”
“No. But it smells like it.”
“No, it smells like copper.”
“Copper smells like blood!” I insist.
“It does?”
“Yes.”
We stand there for a moment. Neither of us says anything. Lyle runs a hand through his moppy hair. This is the second time he’s done that in the last few minutes, which means he’s stressed and trying to hide it. For a second, I feel sort of bad. He didn’t choose this any more than I did. It’s not easy finding out you aren’t human (him), or that you’re an enhanced human (me).
“How about the toilet seat,” he finally asks. “Didn’t you say you suffocated him or something with a toilet seat?”
“Brilliant!” I leap forward, grab his face with my hands, and kiss his nose. He instantly blushes, but I’m too psyched to bask in the reddening of his face. Instead, I pivot and rush into the stall. “Crap.”
He stifles a laugh. “Appropriate word there, Mana.” He’s right behind me, staring at the toilet seat, which is in its proper place atop the toilet.
“I can’t believe this,” I say, bending over and checking it out. “It’s like they have conjured up the—”
A voice, loud and adult, comes from behind Lyle. “Excuse me. Stop whatever you are doing.”
Lyle makes a tiny shriek noise and whirls around. I grab at the toilet seat and whirl around, too. The toilet seat pops up into my hands. It wasn’t bolted down.
Our principal, Mrs. Sweet, stands in the doorway, hands on her hips, lips pursed, looking down her short nose at us.
“Lyle Stephenson. What exactly are you doing in the girls’ bathroom? Don’t answer that. I see Ms. Trent is here with you. This is not the place for a romantic rendezvous.”
Lyle freezes in a good-boy panic. Lyle never, ever gets in trouble. I am not going to let that start now.
“He was taking care of me,” I babble. One of my hands holds the toilet seat. The other wipes at my mouth. Then I realize that hand had also been clutching the toilet seat a second ago. This germy reality panics me more than Mrs. Sweet does.
Mrs. Sweet raises an eyebrow. “And how was he doing that?”
“I threw up,” I say, making my voice a little more trembly and a lot more embarrassed. “I don’t know if I’m sick sick or if it’s because I bombed my world history test, but I knew I was going to throw up and I’m afraid of throwing up. I mean, I’m totally phobic about it, and Lyle knows that, and I was panicking and he was just being … He was just being nice.”
She takes a step away from me, which means she is now holding the door open with her hip. The hallway is empty beyond her. “Do you still feel like you are going to vomit?”
I nod. “A little.”
Lyle makes a tiny moan noise.
“You are aware that you broke the toilet seat?” she asks.
I nod again. “I … I … I’m sorry.”
Extending my arm, I offer the toilet seat to her. She makes an incredibly distasteful face, which involves the squinching up of her nose and flattening of her lips. For a second, I almost think that she is an alien.
“You two … You both…” She actually sputters. “I will be keeping an eye on you. I expected more from you, Mr. Stephenson. However, I have often observed how a fine, upstanding young gentleman’s behavior can be maligned by the subpar company he keeps.”
We stand there. She stares at us. I stare at her. Mrs. Sweet just insulted me.
“Are you saying…?” Lyle cocks his head. “Mana isn’t subpar.”
My heart soars a bit.
The bell rings. “If you aren’t feeling well, Mana, you should go home. You don’t want to spread contagion in the school.” She wrinkles her nose like I’m the contagion.
“Okay. Yeah.” I will go home.
“Lyle, you should go to class.” She leaves us, pivoting without another word. The bathroom door slams shut behind her. Lyle and I stand in the death-smelling bathroom and for a moment we are actually silent. His breath leaves his mouth in one big relieved whoosh.
“She said ‘keeping an eye on you.’ That’s disgusting. It’s like you pluck your eye out and put it on someone’s shoulder or something,” I say, replacing the toilet seat and hustling over to the sinks to wash my hands. “Thank you for defending me.”
“Mana. We almost got in trouble.” Lyle’s voice is monotone. Which is so unlike him. Poor Lyle.
“It’s okay. We didn’t.”
“I know … I know, but … I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”
I start pacing back and forth in front of the sinks. Subpar. I’ll show her subpar. “Do what?”
“This.” He gestures wildly around. “Whatever ‘this’ is.”
“Us? Do you mean us? Or do you mean the dealing-with-aliens thing?”
In the silence that follows, my heart sort of cleaves. I get what he’s saying. I just don’t want to get what he’s saying.
Finally, he whispers, “I don’t know? Both?”
Both?
“But you—you’ve always wanted adventure. You’ve always wanted aliens. You have a TARDIS mug from Doctor Who. There is a life-size Spock cutout in your bedroom. You … you are the most curious person I know, Lyle. You can’t mean this. What do you mean? You aren’t making sense.”
“I…” He looks around. His eyes redden a bit, matching his skin, which is still flushed from blushing before. “I … I don’t know. I just don’t know if
I can handle this.”
“Handle what? Aliens? Or me?” Hurt sizzles inside my chest.
He swallows so hard that I can actually hear it. “I love you, Mana. You know I love you, but I’m not … My mom always said that—”
“Your mother? Your mother! You are dumping me because of your mother?”
“I didn’t say I was dumping you.” He pauses. “Are we even going out? Officially?”
“Whatever. You said you didn’t know if you could quote-unquote handle us. That sounds a lot like dumping to me.”
His mouth moves but no sound comes out.
“I can’t believe you,” I whisper. “I can’t believe you could do this. We’ve been friends forever. You’re better than this, Lyle. You are stronger than this.”
“But I’m not. That’s the thing. I’m not.” He bites his lip. I have seen him bite his lip multiple times in my life but every single time was when he was lying to his mother.
I can’t handle this. Not now. I turn coward and rush out of the bathroom of death and into the hall. The bell rings and doors fly open, but the bathroom door slams closed, shutting Lyle out of my life. I join the people heading to classes and lunch and important destinations and pretend like I’m one of them—a person who knows where she is going—but I’m not. I’m really, really not.
Lyle has dumped me. Lyle has fizzled out. The guy who has been one of my best friends forever. The guy who had a Doctor Who fixation before it was almost sort of cool. The guy who has believed in aliens since he was, like, four years old. And back then he didn’t know he was one. The guy who wanted to be a Jedi knight and save the universe. This guy … this guy has dumped me in a friendship way.
He said he wasn’t dumping you, I tell myself, but that’s just semantics. He said that he couldn’t handle this—the alien thing. This same guy jumped into a truck and helped me kill a Wendigo and now he can’t handle it. He’s an alien. What does he even mean? That he can’t handle himself?
I stop in the middle of the hallway.
“This makes no sense,” I say out loud. “He has to be lying. He bit his lip. Something is off.”