There was a concerned look on Jane’s face. It was something that had been weighing heavily on her ever since the mission started. In all her training for this venture, no one anticipated that the return home would be impossible if problems occurred with the craft. It was the first time she’d thought about it, but the craft was only built for two occupants. There would have been no way they could have transported Kazar back home. She wondered now what the elders had in mind when they found him and reported the news.
Jane did not want to express her concerns to John. After all, he was just the navigator on this little misadventure. She did not know how much she could trust that he would not report to the elders her concerns. It was not wise for someone in her position to question the authority of the ancients.
She turned to John. “First, we have to find out what the earthlings plan to do with us,” she said, hoping this would take John’s mind off what their mission was.
“They treat us well.”
“We are their prisoners.”
John turned to Jane with a look of disbelief. He found it difficult to judge whether she truly believed they were being held captive.
“They are a difficult species to understand. I’ll give you that. But I don’t think we are their captives,” John argued.
John remembered yesterday, and how Bobby and his family treated them. In all his training about being a captive and interrogation techniques used, he never felt any of that mirrored what transpired since their landing. The little bits of nourishments in the dish yesterday were most pleasant in his mouth. He had never tasted morsels such as that. However, the meal they ate made his stomach ache with fullness once he was done. He now questioned whether it was his fault for devouring too much or was the dish served meant to make him feel that way.
Jane reached up and opened the cabinet door. Inside were foil-wrapped packets. She took one out and quickly opened it. She pulled up the dry piece of dehydrated nourishment and handed it to John, who just looked at it in return.
“Take nourishment,” Jane commanded.
After yesterday’s feast with the earthlings, it was hard to go back to eating the dehydrated food packet for their journey. Especially seeing they had such succulent pieces of food in the house of their captors that was shared with them. He did not feel like he was a captive, more like a guest in their home.
John finally took the piece of dehydrated nourishment from Jane. He sniffed it and then looked up at Jane.
“Who do you think prepared this piece of cardboard?” he said with a look of concern.
“I never thought to question it, now shut up and eat.”
John took a bite off the hard piece that Jane held out in front of him. He found it difficult not to look at Jane’s heaving chest as he chewed on the piece in his mouth and found it difficult to swallow.
Jane, sensing John’s ever-present need to question their mission now and her reluctance to share her intelligence about their mission. She just turned and walked out of the craft.
John, in turn, spat out the dehydrated nourishment that he had in his mouth. He would eat when he was hungry, not to sustain himself with food he now questioned the need for. The earthlings were treating them well, and he trusted that they would not poison them with the food they served. How can anything that tasted so good be so bad for you? He only hoped Jane would finally see it his way and stop trying to read more into it than there was meant to be. He liked the earthlings and wondered why his elders feared them as they did.
CHAPTER 11
The afternoon sun was high in the sky, the air dry and void of any moisture. The Calculus classroom faced southwest, making it almost unbearable in the afternoon heat. Bobby sat in the back row of the classroom, as he looked longingly at the picture of Shelby Mall hidden in his notebook. He’d cut the picture out of the yearbook in the library.
Bobby had not been paying attention to Mr. Hill pacing in front of the whiteboard that still had Bobby’s corrected calculation on it. Mr. Hill finally turned to Bobby while shaking his head. But Bobby was still too engrossed in the picture that held his attention.
“I should have seen it,” was all Mr. Hill said.
Bobby finally looked up. “Dude, you talking to me?”
Mr. Hill walked to the back of the room where Bobby was sitting. “You should be doing better in class.”
Bobby was still in a daydream state. He quickly closed the notebook on Shelby’s picture. Bobby sat up and shook his head as if just waking. He slowly looked up at Mr. Hill standing over him.
“What’s your point?” Bobby said finally.
“You graduate next month. Have you given any thought to your future? What are your plans?”
“Dude, one month is a lifetime in teen years,” Bobby said and then slumped back down as if not caring.
Mr. Hill studied Bobby for a moment. For some reason, he knew there was an intelligent being inside that teenage body. He just did not know how to reach it. He had heard of Bobby’s antics in other classes. But he wasn’t buying the fact the kid in front of him was a space cadet. He knew the kid had potential, but just wasn’t using it.
“Most of the teachers here don’t give much hope for your academic skills,” Mr. Hill snapped.
It was then he turned back to the equation on the whiteboard. He couldn’t help studying it for the longest time. It just amazed him how easy it was for Bobby to correct the mistake in the equation.
Mr. Hill pointed to the whiteboard and continued, “You would not have been able to point out the error of my ways if you did not have something upstairs other than dead air.” He hesitated a moment before adding, “Have you taken the SAT yet?” He asked as if he had a right to know.
“Like, who hasn’t,” Bobby said as if not caring.
“What was your score?”
Bobby looks up at Mr. Hill for the longest time before deciding not to divulge his score. Besides, he would only think he cheated like so many of his other teachers assumed when he got a good grade on a test he took.
“It was respectable,” Bobby said softly.
“Not all kids test well?”
That remark puzzled Bobby. It made Mr. Hill sound like he cared what his score was. However, Bobby was not going to fall for his apparent concern. He had been too screwed over by teachers in the past to fall for Mr. Hill’s caring nature right now.
“What makes you think I didn’t test well?” Bobby asked. It troubled him that Mr. Hill assumed he did poorly, as so many of his teachers previously had done.
Charles Hill just shook his head and laughed.
This startled Bobby for a moment, but he did nothing. Just looked up at his teacher and waited. He was afraid if he said more, what came out of his mouth would not be taken well.
“You sound like your Aunt Jenny now,” was all Mr. Hill said.
Bobby felt puzzled by the remark. Up until that moment, he didn’t know that Mr. Hill knew his family, let alone knew his Aunt Jenny well enough to see a part of her in him.
Mr. Hill, realizing Bobby’s concern, quickly added, “We go back a long way.” He stopped and thought back for a moment to a time that was familiar to him.
“Cool,” Bobby said. It troubled him that a teacher knew his dysfunctional family. But Aunt Jenny wasn’t like the rest of them, so he wasn’t as concerned. “We don’t talk shop,” was all Bobby could think of to say as a comeback. He did not want to let Mr. Hill think he got the upper hand.
“Oh,” Mr. Hill mustered up to say. “I thought she might have mentioned me.”
“Why would you come up in our conversation?”
Mr. Hill hesitated before responding. “We used to be an item before she moved away years ago. I knew she came back two years ago.” He stopped suddenly as if the memory was too troublesome to think about.