“No, they’re mine!” Kyra said. “The news people gave them all to me!” She tried to hold all the Barbie dolls, nine or ten, in her arms all at once, and then she started to cry.
She does that a lot now.
“Julie,” Mommy said, real quiet, “she doesn’t have to share.”
“Yes, she does. Just because she’s now some sort of… oh, God, I wish none of this had happened!” Then Aunt Julie was crying, too.
Grown-ups aren’t supposed to cry. I looked at Aunt Julie, and then at stupid Kyra, still bawling, and then at Aunt Julie again. Nothing was right.
Mommy took me by the hand, led me into the kitchen, and sat me on her lap. The kitchen was all warm and there were chocolate-chip cookies baking, so that was good. “Amy,” Mommy said, “I want to talk to you.”
“I’m too big to sit on your lap,” I said.
“No, you’re not,” Mommy said, and held me closer, and I felt better. “But you are big enough to understand what happened to Kyra.”
“Kyra says she doesn’t understand it!”
“Well, in one sense that’s true,” Mommy said. “But you understand some of it, anyway. You know that Kyra and you were in the cow field, and a big spaceship came down.”
“Can I have a cookie?”
“They’re not done yet. Sit still and listen, Amy.”
I said, “I know all this! The ship came down, and the door opened, and Kyra went in and I was far away and I didn’t.” And then I called Mommy on the cell phone and she called 911 and people came running. Not Aunt Julie-Mommy was baby-sitting Kyra at Kyra’s house. But police cars and firemen and ambulances. The cars drove right into the cow field, right through cow poop. If the cows hadn’t been all bunched together way over by the fence, I bet the cars would have driven through the cows, too. That would have been kind of cool.
Kyra was in there a long time. The police shouted at the little spaceship, but it didn’t open up or anything. I was watching from an upstairs window, where Mommy made me go, through Uncle John’s binoculars. A helicopter came but before it could do anything, the spaceship door opened and Kyra walked out and policemen rushed forward and grabbed her. And then the spaceship just rose up and went away, passing the helicopter, and ever since everybody thinks Kyra is the coolest thing in the world. Well, I don’t.
“I hate her, Mommy.”
“No, you don’t. But Kyra is getting all the attention and-” She sighed and held me tighter. It was nice, even though I’m too big to be held tight like that.
“Is Kyra going to go on TV?”
“ No. Aunt Julie and I agreed to keep both of you off TV and magazines and whatever.”
“Kyra’s been on lots of magazines.”
“Not by choice.”
“Mommy,” I said, because it was safe sitting there on her lap and the cookies smelled good, “what did Kyra do in the spaceship?”
Her chest got stiff. “We don’t know. Kyra can’t remember. Unless… unless she told you something, Amy?”
“She says she can’t remember.”
I twisted to look at Mommy’s face. “So how come they still send presents? It was last year!”
I know.” Mommy put me on the floor and opened the oven to poke at the cookies. They smelled wonderful.
“And,” I demanded, “how come Uncle John doesn’t come home anymore?”
Mommy bit her lip. “Would you like a cookie, Amy?”
“Yes. How come?”
“Sometimes people just-”
“Are Aunt Julie and Uncle John getting a divorce? Because of Kyra?”
“ No. Kyra is not responsible here, and you just remember that, young lady! I don’t want you making her feel, more confused than she is!”
I ate my cookie. Kyra wasn’t confused. She was a cry-baby and a Barbie hog and I hated her. I didn’t want her to be my cousin anymore.
What was so great about going into some stupid spaceship, anyway? Nothing. She couldn’t even remember anything about it!
Mommy put her hands over her face.
Whispers broke out all over the cafeteria. “That’s her… her… her!”
Oh, shit. I bent my head over my milk. Last year the cafeteria used to serve fizzies and Coke and there were vending machines with candy and chips, but the new principal took all that out. He’s a real bastard. Part of the “Clean Up America” campaign our new president is forcing down our throats, Dad said. Only he didn’t say “forcing” because he thinks it’s cool, like all the Carter Falls High parents do. Supervision for kids. School uniforms. Silent prayer. A mandatory class in citizenship. Getting expelled for everything short of breathing. It all sucks.
“It is her,” Jack said. “I saw her picture online.”
Hannah said, “What do you suppose they really did to her in that ship when she was a little kid?”
Angie giggled and licked her lips. She has a really dirty mind. Carter, who’s sort of a goody-goody even though he’s on the football team, said, “It’s none of our business. And she was just a little kid.”
“So?” Angie smirked. “You never heard of pedophiles?”
Hannah said, “Pedophile aliens? Grow up, Angie.”
Jack said, “She’s kind of cute.”
“I thought you wanted a virgin, Jack,” Angie said, still smirking.
Carter said, “Oh, give her a break. She just moved here, after all.”
I watched Kyra walk uncertainly toward the cafeteria tables. The monitors were keeping a close eye on everybody. We have monitors everywhere, just like the street has National Guard everywhere. Clean up America, my ass. Kyra squinted; she’s near-sighted and doesn’t like to wear her contacts because she says they itch. I ducked lower over my milk.
Angie said, “Somebody told me Kyra Lunden is your cousin.”
Everybody’s head jerked to look at me. Damn that bitch Angie! Where had she heard that? Mom had promised me that nobody in school would know and Kyra wouldn’t say anything! She and Aunt Julie had to move, Mom and Dad said, because Aunt Julie was having a rough time since the divorce and she needed to be close to her sister, and I should understand that. Well, I did, I guess, but not if Kyra blasted in and ruined everything for me. This was my school, not hers, I spent a lot of time getting into the good groups, the ones I was never part of in junior high, and no pathetic famous cousin was going to wreck that. She couldn’t even dance.
Jack said, “Kyra Lunden is your cousin, Amy? Really?”
“No,” I said. “Of course not.”
Angie said, “That’s not what I heard.”
Carter said, “So it’s just gossip? You can hurt people that way, Angie.”
“God, Carter, don’t you ever let up? Holier-than-thou!”
Carter mottled red. Hannah, who likes him even though Carter doesn’t know it, said, “It’s nice that some people at least try to be kind to others.”
“Spit it in your soup, Hannah,” Angie said.
Jack and Hannah exchanged a look. They really make the decisions for the group, and for a bunch of other groups, too. Angie’s too stupid to realize that, or to realize that she’s going to be oozed out. I don’t feel sorry for her. She deserves it, even if being oozed is really horrible. You walk through the halls alone, and nobody looks directly at you, and people laugh at you behind your back because you can’t even keep your own friends. Still, Angie deserves it.
Hannah looked at me straight, with that look Jack calls her “police interrogation gaze.” “Amy… is Kyra Lunden your cousin?”
Kyra sat alone at one end of a table. A bunch of kids, the really cobra ones that run the V-R lab, sat at the other end, kind of laughing at her without laughing. I saw Eleanor Murphy, who was elected Queen of V-R Gala even though she’s only a junior, give Kyra a long cool level look and then turn disdainfully away.
“No,” I said, “I already told you. She’s not my cousin. In fact, I never even met her.”
I stared at the villa with disbelief. Not at the guards-everywhere rich is guarded now, we’re a nation of paranoids, perhaps not without reason. There seems no containing the lunatic terrorists, home-grown patriotic militias, White Supremacists and Black Equalizers, not to mention the run-of-the-mill gangs and petty drug lords and black-market smugglers. Plus, of course, the government’s response to these, which sometimes seems to involve putting every single nineteen-year-old in the country out on the streets in camouflage-except, of course, those nineteen-year-olds who are already bespoken as lunatic terrorists, home-grown militia, White Supremacists, et al. The rest of us get on with our normal lives.