Before falling asleep, I thought about how repercussions from a single incident had shaped Avalyn Friesen’s entire life. And the more I considered Avalyn, the more I considered my own life. The idea of abduction made perfect sense. It had first happened on a night more than one decade past: I had opened my eyes to find myself curled in a dark corner of the crawl space, five hours erased from my mind. And if the theory of aliens “tracking” humans was true, I reasoned I was a victim of that as well. My nose had been bleeding that night because of the tracking device the extraterrestrials had jammed deep into my brain. Two years later they had returned to find me again, on that Halloween night when I’d blacked out in the woods beside the haunted house. I was almost nineteen now. Was the tracking device still embedded in my brain like a tiny silver tumor? What other times, I wondered, had I been abducted? Were there other encounters so deeply buried in my mind I hadn’t the slightest memory? And would the aliens reappear to find me again?
I waited until the following Sunday to tell my mother my theory. We were returning from Hutchinson, after the grocery shopping and ice cream. The Fourth of July was approaching, and merchants had fashioned fireworks stands on the roadsides, multicolored banners and signs flapping in the breeze.
I began by discussing stories I’d read about other UFO abductees, and I gave my voice as matter-of-fact a tone as I could muster. Then I spoke of myself. “The fact is,” I said, “that we still don’t know, we’ve never known, what happened to me when I was little. But that was so close in time to the night we saw the UFO. I’m wondering now, no, I’m certain, that those two nights are connected somehow. Connected also, maybe, to my blackout on the Halloween night a couple years after that.” I paused. “And watching that show about Avalyn made me realize how similar my story is to hers.”
My mother nodded hesitantly. I wiped ice cream from my mouth and continued. “Don’t you think it might be true? I mean the whole alien bit?”
We passed another fireworks stand. Two separate families gathered around it, leaning over the colored boxes. “Maybe,” my mother said. She spoke slowly, as if maybe were a foreign word she wasn’t certain how to pronounce. “Maybe.” She gripped the steering wheel, veins visible on her wrist.
I started to speak again, but she cut me off. “Some memories,” she said, “take time to clarify.”
I knew then that my mother had at least opened her mind to the possibility that my theory was true. I knew she would support whatever move I made next. She would stay beside me until I solved it. Even if to solve meant to lose another block of time, to slip into the unknown world where I was certain they’d taken me before.
In a cabinet drawer at home, I found a package of stationery and envelopes my father had given my mother years ago. Lilacs and daisies garlanded each page. The stationery seemed like something Avalyn would cherish. I made sure the pen’s ink wouldn’t smudge; that my handwriting remained steady. Then I carefully wrote “Avalyn Friesen, Rural Route #2, Inman KS ” on an envelope. I found her zip code in the telephone book.
I selected a piece of the paper. I wouldn’t leave anything out-I wanted Avalyn to know about the crawl space, our UFO sighting that same summer, the strange blackout on that later Halloween. I wanted to confess everything to her.
“Dear Avalyn,” I wrote. “You don’t know me, but…” In my mind, a spacey voice finished the sentence. You will, it said.
eight
Neil McCormick was turning me into a criminal, and I loved it. Our new hobby: thrift store theft. In the month since graduation, we’d generated a wealth of secondhand books, housewares, and enough clothes for an army. School was over forever; crime seemed the only thing left to do.
Our favorite target was the United Methodist Thrift on First Street. On that particular Friday in June, I eyed a barely worn pair of combat boots, but I wasn’t about to pay the twenty-dollar price. Neil distracted the clerk by complimenting her bleached flip, which even a two-year-old could have guessed was a wig. He also bullshitted about central Kansas ’s recent rain and hailstorms. “I’ve begun to worry about flooding,” I heard the woman say. He had her in his spell. I shuffled toward the back of the store, removed the boots from the rack, and kicked off my ragged high-tops.
One important shoplifting rule I’d learned from Neil was to simultaneously buy something else to erase all suspicion. I watched him drop a rubber snake on the clerk’s counter. “Ninety-nine cents,” she said. While he dug through his pockets for change, I saw my chance. I concentrated on the clerk’s face and telepathically transmitted Center all your attention on the cash register. It worked, and I moseyed out the door. “Stop back in, boys,” the clerk yelled.
Neil and I got into his gas-guzzling Impala and tore from the parking lot to begin our daily cruise around the city. I’d only lived in Hutchinson four months, but I already knew enough to hate the place. How else could I feel about a city bordered by the following attractions: to the west, a meat-packing plant; the north, a boring space museum; the east, a maximum security prison; and the south, “The World’s Longest Grain Elevator”? In Modesto, I’d had a scattering of friends who shared the same interests in music and were queer like me. Here, I only had Neil.
I spat on a finger to shine the boots. I untucked my shirt, revealing the wadded-up gloves and the belt I also stole. “I could get arrested,” I said.
“Stealing’s the least of my evils.” His voice was thick with pride. I’d become a thief with him, but I knew I could never hustle. The idea of taking money from men for sex unnerved me; in addition, I didn’t have the looks, the irresistibility I knew Neil used to every advantage.
“If you’re free tonight,” Neil said, “you can come to the ballpark with me.” Neil worked Friday nights and weekends as announcer and scorekeeper for tournaments at another of Hutchinson ’s lamebrained attractions, Sun Center. KANSAS ’S LARGEST HAVEN FOR SOFTBALL FUN, its glitzy signs screamed. I hated that place. On the previous weekend, I’d joined him in his press box. We got high, and I pierced his earlobe with a safety pin and a fistful of ice cubes. We practically ruptured our stomachs laughing at all the morons.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, which meant yes.
Neil’s elbow jutted from his open window, the full weight of the sun’s rays slamming into his skin. It was only June, but he had begun to turn as dark as milk chocolate. A fitting simile, since that was a staple of his diet. While he drove, Neil tore the foil from another half-melted Hershey’s. He bit a corner off. He held the bar toward my face: its shape was the spitting image of my new home state.
I pointed to the center of the chocolate Kansas. “Here we are, stuck in the middle of hell.”
“But not for long,” he said. “In my case, anyway.” Soon, in August, Neil would be moving, leaving the Midwest for New York. Now, he was biding his time, coasting until his life would begin again. He would abandon me in Hutchinson ’s dust.
Neil turned onto a shady avenue, his car winding its way toward my grandparents’ trailer park. When we got there, I spied Grandma and Grandpa in the yard, pruning a bush with flowers like red-skinned fists. “The grannies are home,” I said. “Let’s go to your house.”
Neil made a U. He smiled at me and took a last bite from the chocolate bar. The look on his face suggested he’d never tasted anything so perfect.