I started crying. I was so overwhelmed.
And because I was crying, Kurt had to be a gentleman and hold my hand, and then I had to lean my shoulder against his, and soon my Diet Coke was sitting on the hearth, because it was hard to hug him with only one arm. He hugged me back, and I cried like a freaking idiot, and he nestled his face into my hair.
Eventually I fell asleep with my cheek against his chest. He woke me when the sun was peeking in the windows. I don’t know if he slept at all, but I hadn’t slept that well since the ship had crashed into Earth and changed all of our lives.
TWELVE
It was the next day that Brynne dropped the bomb.
We hadn’t seen her all day. And I admit, I had too much on my mind to notice her absence. It was during dinner that she texted Rachel and me and told us to hurry to the room. When we arrived, Emily Fenton was there. Coya wasn’t.
“You’re going to want to sit down for this,” Brynne said.
Rachel and I exchanged looks, but obeyed quickly. “That’s what they tell people on TV. Does it really matter?”
Brynne ignored me. She could hardly stand still. “Okay, this is crazy. Remember how I took the cheek swab DNA sample from Coya? I know this is batcrap crazy, but I’ve run the test twice from her cheek swab and twice from her hair—I helped brush her hair and pulled a couple strands. Terrible, I know. Anyway, she’s human.”
“What?” Rachel asked. “But she’s an alien.”
“Nope,” Brynne said, shaking her head. “Well, I don’t know how ‘alien’ is defined. But biologically Coya is a human. And I can’t be the only person who’s figured this out. The government must know about it. I bet they’re hiding it so that we don’t freak out. But that’s not the weirdest part.”
“How could she be human?” Rachel asked.
“Hold on,” she said, with a smile. She held up her hand, but it was shaking. “This all fits together. And I know it sounds crazy, but just follow me.”
Rachel, sitting on her bed, pulled a pillow to her chest and hugged it.
Brynne smiled. “I figured out the human thing five days ago—sorry I didn’t tell you—I was testing and retesting—and I’ve been trying to nail down Coya’s genetic ancestry since then. I wanted to know where the Guides came from. So I went to Emily, and she told me where to look. The answer’s crazy.”
She paused and took a breath.
“Well?” I prompted. I turned to Emily. “You’re the language Bruner. Please don’t tell me they’re all speaking pig latin and we missed it.”
Emily smiled. “Once Brynne told me they were human, I had something to work with. I went with a digital recorder and made a list of words, and well, it’s not as easy to figure out as something like DNA. DNA doesn’t change a lot over five hundred years. But language does. There are tools online to just identify a language, but not one that’s degraded.”
“What do you mean by ‘degraded’?” Rachel asked.
Emily brushed some loose strands of hair from her face. “Think about Britain. They have a lot of accents there, but compare them to America—we’re totally different. And Australia: they’re completely different, too. We all started out in the same place, but we’ve all evolved differently.”
“Oh,” Rachel said. “And how Canada says sorry weird.”
“Yeah.”
“Can we get on with it?” I asked, grabbing Emily’s arm and shaking her. “What did you find out?”
“They’re speaking a really bastardized version of Keresan.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
“What’s Keresan?” Rachel asked.
I could barely talk. “Um . . . Keresan is a language spoken by half a dozen tribes in New Mexico. They’re all Pueblo tribes. Acoma, Laguna—those are the ones I’ve been to. There are others to the east.”
“The language has really morphed over the years,” Emily put in.
Brynne spoke. “And the DNA databases I’ve searched say they’re not any one of those tribes, but they have the markers for being an older tribe that those tribes are descended from. I need to do more research.”
“What could it be?” Rachel asked.
I sighed. “The language is like a puebloan nation, but not. And the DNA is like a puebloan nation, but not. Are we talking about the Anasazi here?”
“That’s what I think,” Brynne said.
Rachel asked the big question. “What are the Anasazi?”
Brynne pointed to me and finally sat down. I spoke. “They’re a tribe that was huge in the Four Corners area from about the seventh century to the fourteenth. It’s kind of amazing how we don’t all know about them here in America—they were huge. They built giant buildings, four stories tall, and roads that went perfectly straight for a hundred miles. Have you heard of Mesa Verde? The Cliff Palace?”
Rachel straightened up. “I do remember that!” She pulled out her tablet and flipped through the pictures until she found one on National Geographic’s site and held it up. A mortar-and-stone dwelling was built into the alcove of a cliff.
“So why them?” Brynne asked. “And why did they move out of these awesome cliff houses to the deserty south? I’ve looked up Laguna and Acoma, and there’s not a tree to be seen.”
“Well, first, they moved to the cliffs because they were afraid of something. Admittedly, that’s a theory. There’s no evidence of warfare. But they left their great civilization in the south—Chaco Canyon—and moved up to these highly defensible cliffs. They had watchtowers and hidden entrances and everything you’d need to stop people from getting you. So they came afraid. And then they just left and started up all the little pueblos.”
Emily, who was leaning against the closet, spoke. “I read that Anasazi isn’t the real name for them anymore. We’re supposed to call them Ancestral Puebloans.”
All of us were quiet for a long minute.
“So,” Rachel said. “To sum things up: we know the Guides are human, and we know that they’re speaking Keresan—did I pronounce that right?” Emily nodded. “So we’re assuming that, given the evolutionary changes to their language, they’ve been on that ship a long freaking time. Therefore, they’re Anasazi, or Ancestral Puebloans. Am I getting that right?”
“Right,” Brynne said, and bit her lip.
“Why are they so white? Or is that a racist question?” Rachel asked—she looked beet red.
“I don’t know if it’s racist, and I’m a Navajo.”
Brynne leaned against the wall. “They’ve been on that ship for so long that their skin evolved to be white—they never saw the sun.”
“Yeah,” I said. “My dad told me. Like salamanders who live in caves. They’re complete albinos because they never see UV light.”
“I’ve heard of Mesa Verde,” Rachel said. “What’s Chaco Canyon?”
“No one goes to Chaco Canyon because it’s an awful muddy, rutted road to get out there,” I said. “But it’s like one of the wonders of the world. Huge pueblos and roads and”—I looked at Brynne, who was nodding—“and astronomy stuff, amazing astronomy stuff.
“Maybe they got scared when a spaceship showed up and invited them aboard? I mean, I’m no Ancient Aliens TV show watcher. The guy on that show wouldn’t be believable even if he did have a normal haircut, but are we talking about a mass alien abduction a thousand years ago?”
“Either that,” Brynne said, “or they built a spaceship. Both ideas are crazy, but one is a lot more plausible.”
“We need to talk to Coya and Suski,” I said firmly.
Our first opportunity should have been gym class the next day, but Suski appeared and took Coya by the arm, leading her away from us. It was as if he could tell we were on a mission to uncover secrets, and he didn’t trust Coya not to tell us what we needed to know.
The two of them, wearing gym clothes that included long jogging pants—there was something about them and covering up their legs—ran along the track of the indoor gym. I changed into sho
rts and a tank top and found an exercise bike.
I was nearly a mile into my ride when Kurt climbed up on the bike next to mine. He wore shorts and a soccer jersey and he set a water bottle up in the cup holder.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I said, puffing away. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Do I need a reason?”
“Nope.”
“Well, there is one.” He started pedaling and adjusted the resistance.
“I hope it’s good.”
“Unfinished business,” he said.
“Ah, that.”
“There was this whole episode the other night. I was talking. You were talking. There was a fireplace involved.”
“I remember.”
“And then someone—I’m not going to name any names—fell asleep.”
“I believe that someone was crying her eyes out. So, you know, romantic.”
“Well, it wasn’t romantic,” he said. “I’ll grant you that. It just had the potential to appear romantic. To the outside observer.”
“Don’t tell me people are beginning to talk.”
“They’re not beginning to talk,” he said. “Not a word. That’s what troubles me. It should be a big scandal. You’re the new girl, the rebel, and there’s no scandal. You’re killing me, Goodwin.”
“What do you propose?” I asked.
“Dinner,” he said. “Tonight.”
“Like a date?”
“Well,” he said, a small bead of sweat dripping down his forehead. “Yes. Like a date, but we’re stuck in the school building.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “I’ve got something planned after gym.” I nodded my head toward the track. “I’m going to try to get some information out of stone-faced Suski over there. But after that, I’m all yours.”
“It’s a deal. Also, how are you not even breaking a sweat on that bike?”
“Girls don’t sweat,” I said. “We glow.”
“You’re not even glowing.”
“It’s all the ice cream I eat. Cools down the body. Seriously. You should try it.”
“One day your metabolism is going to catch up with you.”
“Did you suddenly become my seventy-year-old grandma?”
“Not the best way to ask a girl out?”
“You did better the first time,” I said. “This date better be good, because I have some holy-crap-awesome secrets to tell you.”
“Are we talking black tie?”
“Do I look like a black-tie girl?”
“No.”
“What time?”
“I’ll be in the common room wearing my prom dress around seven.”
“Done.”
After gym I showered and changed. Since I didn’t have any more classes that day, I decided to wear something other than my uniform: a skirt and a white button-up top with a scarf tied stylishly around my neck. I knew I’d need a sweater eventually, but I was still overheated from my ride.
I grabbed my laptop and went to the cafeteria. Suski was in the same place he always was. Coya was with him, and she smiled when I sat down. This time he had a textbook in front of him—humanities—and he was flipping through the pages.
I sat down and pointed to one of the pictures. “I’ve been there. To Cairo. The one thing they never show in the pictures and the books is how dirty the city is. Trash everywhere.”
“What do you want?” His tone wasn’t argumentative. But his tone was set by a computer voice, so I didn’t know how he really meant it.
“I want to ask you some questions,” I said. I found the bookmark on Rachel’s tablet and opened the picture of Mesa Verde.
He didn’t give it a second glance, but I guess it was dozens of generations back from him, if his ancestors ever saw it at all. Coya looked at it for several seconds and smiled before handing it back to me.
He closed the book. “You’ve been asking Coya a lot of questions.”
I looked him in the face. He reminded me of a white marble sculpture, like the pictures in the humanities textbook. Like Edward in the Twilight books (but not in the movies—ew). What? Can’t a girl read a book about men sculpted out of marble?
“I have been asking a lot of questions,” I said. “I bet a lot of people have been asking a lot of questions.”
“You shouldn’t have made her hair blue. She shouldn’t be with you. She should be with her own kind. With me. Someone who can protect her.”
“She is protected,” I said. “She has me, and Rachel, and Brynne.”
“We were told we would be protected, but only if we stayed inside the fence. I don’t believe it.”
“Here,” I said, and stood up. “Come on.”
He stood up, and I once again realized how massive this guy was. I don’t know what his job on the ship had been, but it must have involved a lot of lifting.
“Try to attack me,” I said.
He looked confused.
“Take off your microphone. I don’t want to break it.” I moved toward him and unclipped the speaker and then reached out a hand for the headset. Very slowly and reluctantly he removed it.
“Come on,” I said, waving him toward me. I was trying very hard to stand still, not in a ready stance.
He still didn’t come, so I shoved him in the chest and then gestured, “Come on!”
Very slowly, like this was the dumbest thing he’d ever done, he stepped forward, arms stretched out before him. As soon as his hands touched my shirt, I swung my arms up through and around his, pinning his arms together. I reached my leg in for a sweep and pulled him forward, tripping him so he fell on his face.
From across the cafeteria, I heard cheers.
Suski looked stunned, and I reached out a hand to help him up. He took it and stood.
“Come on,” I said again, and motioned him forward. My scarf was falling off, so I untied it and tossed it on the table.
He looked more determined now. He charged forward, wrapping me in a bear-hug tackle. I turned in his grip, putting my back to him, and used his forward momentum to toss him over my shoulder.
Sheesh, he was heavy. Must’ve been the chiseled marble.
We were attracting a crowd.
I reached down to help him up again, but he didn’t take my hand this time. He crouched into a more combative stance and swung one arm out to grab me. I caught his arm, wrapped it against my body, then flung my leg out against his waist, pinning him in a pain lock. He shouted something in his language. “Eh-ya!”
As much as I was enjoying getting to use my jujitsu again—and it helped that Suski didn’t seem to know how to fight—he was a big guy, and even though I was winning, I was getting beat up. Short girls can only parry marble for so long, jujitsu or not. I pointed to his headset and speaker.
His stark white face was reddened with embarrassment as he clipped the device back on. I waved at all the people around us to go back to what they were doing.
“I was taking care of your sister,” I said. “I wouldn’t let anything happen to her.”
He didn’t respond, but picked up my scarf and handed it to me. I tied it loosely around my neck and then sat down.
“I like you guys,” I said. “I want to take care of Coya. I just want you to talk to me.”
“How did you do that?” he asked, rubbing his shoulder.
“It’s called jujitsu. It’s a way of fighting. I was trained to protect myself.”
“I would like to learn,” he said.
“I’ll teach you,” I said. “Tomorrow. And the next day. I can teach you a lot.”
“What do you want to know?” He sat down across from me.
“I was in your spaceship,” I said. “My dad works for the government.”
He nodded.
“What was your job on the ship?”
“Why do you ask me these questions?” he asked sharply.
“I want to understand you,” I said. “I need to understand all of your people.”
/>
“Many people don’t want to understand,” he said. “Many people just want to fight us. To kill us. That’s why you have your guards in front of the school. I know this. Humans want to kill Coya and me.”
“Not in this school,” I said.
“No,” he answered angrily. “Did you not hear the laughter when you hurt me? They want to see me hurt.”
“That was because you’re so big and I’m so small,” I said, hoping I was right. “They were laughing at that. Not because you’re a Guide.”
“I do not know if I believe you.”
I closed the laptop and sighed. “On the spaceship we found places where it looked like people were killed—places with a lot of blood. Do you know what happened?”
Coya answered, “We crashed. Many people were injured.”
I nodded. “Yes, but we found other places where it looked like people were murdered. We found weapons.”
His lips were drawn into a thin, tight line. “If you found weapons, there must have been an accident during the crash.”
“Where are the dead bodies?”
“These questions are painful,” he said.
I didn’t want to let him go, not when I was so close. “Where are the dead bodies?” I turned to Coya. “Do you know?”
Suski jumped in so Coya couldn’t answer. “Whenever anyone dies on the ship, they get recycled. Their bodies are processed and used to feed the gardens.”
I was repulsed, instantly and completely. I’d heard of human waste being used as fertilizer in Third World countries, but not processed corpses.
He must have seen the horror on my face, because he held out his hands. “Not the gardens for food. We have gardens that produce the air we breathe. When a man dies, his body is returned to the gardens to give the rest of us breath.”
I relaxed slightly. “Processed.”
“Yes,” he said, as though it were the most normal thing in the world. Well, I guess it was for him. And I could see that it made some sense not to waste organic tissue—not to shoot a dead body into space. Still, the thought that Grandpa was getting mulched to feed a pool of algae was absolutely disgusting.
“One more question,” I said, and he almost rolled his eyes. It seemed like he did the alien equivalent—some gesture with two fingers and a sigh.