Starseed (8 page)

The six wore the same clingy silver overalls with different colored t-shirts beneath.

In a split second, they formed a semi-circle around Kaila, Melissa, and Pia. Melissa and Pia’s jaws dropped. As quickly, Echidna stood in front of Kaila. Her hair was the same: black, shiny, straight to her chin with bangs framing her black spider-like eyes.

“You changed,” Echidna noted. She evaluated Kaila’s heeled shoes then put her beautiful face near Kaila’s. “Why would a female choose to wear ladders on her feet? Do they not hurt?”

“Leave her be,” Jordyn said, stepping between them.

“No,” Echidna said pushing him aside. “Kaila, explain. Why do females choose to lift their feet unnaturally and hurt the arches in the feet?”

Kaila looked at Echidna, uncertain if she felt true curiosity or pure animosity.

“I guess to look pretty?” Kaila replied, feeling stupid. She hadn’t planned on this. She wanted to be alone with Jordyn.

“You can play the boy-girl game later,” Echidna said impatiently. “But, how does hurting your feet make you pretty? And why do you wear this fake hair and plastic on your head? Aren’t you hot and sweating under this terrible sun?”

Dimly, through her confusion and racing heart, Kaila was aware that the boy called Toby was talking to Melissa and the girl called Antonia was talking to Pia. Had they heard Echidna’s comment about the wig? Please, no. She didn’t want that all over the whole school. She glanced furtively at Jordyn. Echidna looked at Jordyn and Kaila sensed that the two were talking silently.

As another veil lifted, Echidna and Jordyn came into sharper focus. Jordyn and Echidna were communing silently just like she had with her dog Lucy last night. She realized then that what she did with animals was what they did with each other.

“Echidna.” Lucius stepped up. His bushy brown hair covered his ears; he wore dark sunglasses propped over his large nose. “Let me explain. Females wear heels to make their legs look longer and their buttocks more apparent. It is part of the mating process.” No one could miss his mockery. “As far as the wig and plastic, it is a mother’s ways, same as The Bourg thinks she protects us.”

Everyone quieted. Kaila, sweating with the black plastic binding her scalp and the hot blond wig on top, felt her cheeks grow hot. She was trying to digest and assimilate her newfound knowledge . . . but the comment about the buttocks. She felt acutely embarrassed, warm, nervous, itchy as if she had hives.

She had never thought about heels that way. Plus, she had just made friends and they would think she was an epic failed loser wearing this retarded wig. Sweat stained the armpits of her new pink blouse a darker pink. She felt more foolish now than she had yesterday being a hick. What had she been thinking? What was the right way to be?

Then, strangely, beautiful prep Priscilla Snowden turned the corner to the back of the school. She wore a yellow sundress and her platinum hair in a ponytail.

“Oh hey,” she said. She stared at the hybrids with her lovely blue eyes. They said nothing. “Kaila, look how darling you look today. Love that outfit,” she said. “Hey, Melissa, hey Pia, how you doing?” Her voice sounded melodic.

The bell rang.

The air was charged with something like an approaching storm, although the sky was clear. Kaila looked at Jordyn, Echidna, Lucius, Toby, Antonia, and Viktor. Yes, she knew all their names now.

She had never communicated with Viktor, but something about him frightened her. He had curly hair the color of fire and a short red beard, reminding her of a cross between a Viking warrior and the sky god Zeus. Viktor stared at her with . . . was that loathing? His eyes crackled electric blue, and if she looked closely, his pupils ran a vertical line like a snake’s. He had a charge about him that repelled and made her nauseous and dizzy.

Priscilla Snowden tossed her head and said like sweet tea, “Feels like bad energy here.”

Her words no sooner escaped her lips and Viktor, like a thunderbolt, was before Priscilla. The pupils in his eyes split the blue in half in one line as he said, “Yes. There is very bad energy here.”

Again, Kaila detected some sort of silent exchange going on as the two eyed each other. She was also getting an impression that there was a light around Priscilla. Was she seeing it or feeling it? Was she going insane? She was seeing, feeling, knowing more than she ever had. Kaila scratched her arms.

“Perhaps,” Priscilla said to Viktor, “you should go back from where you came and leave these innocent people alone.”

“And perhaps,” Viktor said quietly, his words seething with the force of lava erupting from a volcano, “you should go back from where you came from and die.”

Two forces had collided, two forces Kaila didn’t understand, but she knew intuitively a submerged potential existed for explosion.

“I have free will to choose,” Priscilla said. “The same as these people.”

“Free will is a lie,” Viktor said, “so be gone little girl.” He scrutinized her breasts beneath her sundress. “Are those real?” he asked.

Pia thrust her pointy nose straight in Viktor’s face. “Leave her alone, you hole! You have no right to talk to her this way.”

“Get away, whore!” Viktor backed away as if Pia were a cobra. “Do not infect me with your stupidity.”

Priscilla draped her arm around Pia. “He can’t hurt you, Pia.”

Viktor bared his teeth. “I could eat her—”

Suddenly, Mrs. Bourg burst into the group, grasping Viktor’s arm, jerking him sideways.

“It’s time for class,” she said sternly, her eyes like marbles, gazing at Priscilla.

“You are so right,” Priscilla said sweetly. “Kaila, do you remember how to find your homeroom?”

“I do,” Kaila said, in a daze. Holy hell, she thought. Jordyn would not look at her. He had something in his face she hadn’t seen before, something like sadness?

Mrs. Bourg held open the door. “Kaila, Melissa, Pia, Priscilla—go!” She glared at the hybrids, the hive.

OMG. WTF was that out back?
Melissa passed a note to Kaila in English.

Lunch.
Kaila wrote back.
Let’s talk
.

Brandy Powell, prep number one with silky strawberry hair, stopped at Kaila’s desk.

“Hey,” Brandy said.

“Hey,” echoed Kaila.

Kaila was perplexed. Did she say “hey” because she had changed her outfit from hick to prep?

Tara Melancon, prep number two with long brown hair and trademark pearls said, “Hey,” as she passed. Tara didn’t look at her like she was catfish rotting in the sun anymore.

A paper football hit the back of Kaila’s head.

Derek Mendoza and Wade Stoops puckered their lips at her from the back of the room. Below his buzz cut, Wade wore this look on his flushed face as he stared at her. Kaila didn’t like it. A word came to mind: lust. She turned away.

The guy with long hair next to her buried his head in his arms on his desk. She wondered if he was on drugs or depressed or sleepy. And further: what would she see if she went into his mind?

At lunchtime, Kaila met Melissa and Pia in the cafeteria, got a smoothie, and went outside. The three girls scanned the field and saw the aliens assembled under the far oak tree. They stood in one line, staring back at the rest of the school.

“That was weird this morning,” Melissa said. “I was talking to the one named Toby—”

“Shut up, Melissa,” Pia said. “Let’s just go over there. We all know there’s something going on. Let’s hit it head on.”

Kaila admired Pia’s frankness. As they walked across the grass, Pia added, “There’s a lot going on here and I’m going to figure it out.”

Kaila doubly admired Pia, her muscular body, her home-made beaded jewelry, her little pointed nose, plodding steadfastly across the grass in her skinny jeans and Converse sneakers.

Pia marched in front of Kaila and Melissa. “Earth to space,” she said holding up her hand. The hive stared blankly. “We come in peace.”

Nervously, Melissa started giggling.

“Shut up, Melissa,” Pia said.

The hive stared at the girls.

“I mean,” Pia continued. “We all know there’s something going on, and I want to know what it is. Now.” She put her hands on her hips.

No one said a word.

Then, Antonia, the girl with the dark skin and eyes broke the silence. “I admire your approach. You, as your friends, are intuitive. That is good. You are evolving.”

“I don’t want to hear any bullshit,” Pia said. “I mean, I want to know what’s going on. Like, why do you all wear the same silver bodysuits and act so weird and flipped out by us. Are you aliens?”

Viktor’s cheeks reddened, like his hair. He said, “And if we were, what would you do?”

“She would put on her high heels to mate with you, fool,” Lucius said.

“I’ll have nothing to do with that,” Viktor said. “Especially with a female.” He retreated a few feet.

Pia said to Lucius, “Hey mofo, I never wore high heels in my life. As far as who I mate with, that’s my choice. Got it?

“And as for you,” she called to Viktor, “you have no right to talk to Priscilla Snowden the way you did.”

“She’s a busybody who should mind her own business,” Viktor shouted. “We don’t like interference.” He glowered at Pia.

Echidna stepped in front of Pia. “My,” she said, her sleek dark bangs unmoving above her black eyes. “You seem to have a lot of anger emotion.”

“Yes,” Pia said. “I do have a lot of anger emotion. Do you know why?”

Echidna stepped closer to Pia and said, softly, “That’s
your
problem, not ours.”

Kaila, watching this exchange, felt afraid and confused. There was so much more being said than she understood.

“We are here to learn,” Jordyn said, pointedly to Echidna. “Let go of the mission, leave these people in peace.”

Echidna tossed her head, her black shiny hair with each strand in perfect alignment. “The mission is all. I have nothing to learn.
You
learn.”

Then Echidna put her face close to Kaila’s, her large black eyes accusing.

“Wake up,” she said. She tapped her long fingers on Kaila’s wig. “And be rid of this. You are one of us and you know it.”

The one named Toby, with the bright blue eyes, pudgy face, missing eyebrows, and sturdy body said, “We are mixing. We are having emotion. I like it.” He said to Melissa, “You told me this morning you are an artist. I would like to see your artwork. We never had art—”

“No!” Lucius shouted.

Antonia said, “Stop, Lucius. We are becoming infected. Look at you. You have the emotion of anger. Toby has the emotion of gladness. Let him look at her art. The artwork is not important!” Then a moment passed where the hive looked at each other in silent communion.

There was a scream near the school as Douglas was dumped into the trash can again. Then voices in the background chanting, “Loser, loser.”

Kaila was sickened by the cruelty in school. Then, suddenly, she remembered the dream of floating with Jordyn. She recalled holding his hand and feeling his heart and mind energy. She yearned to yank the plastic from her head and let her real hair loose.

Viktor stared at her with disgust. Kaila grew confused. Her right temple throbbed.

The world was spinning too fast; the ground appeared to loom closer. She lost her footing.

Jordyn was instantly by her side, his hand on her lower back. “Look at me,” he said.

“No,” Kaila said. She knew they had secret power in their eyes.

“We are experiencing emotion too,” Jordyn said. He put his arm across her waist with his left four-fingered hand taking hers. He put his tiny lips to her ear. “Understand, Kaila. This is hard on us too. We are trying to understand like you.”

His lips brushed her earlobe; his fingers entwined hers. She turned to face him, saw his eyes glimmering.

Deep down, Kaila knew what was happening. She hadn’t allowed it to surface to consciousness. She was like the mullets in the pond that swam in murky waters but only jumped out of the water into the light when they were being chased by predators. Still, the charge from Jordyn’s touch exhilarated her.