wouldn’t impact the universe. It wouldn’t even impact Earth.
But still.
It was mine.
J. Quincy Oswald could have his alien elixir. The people shouting in the streets could have their lights in the sky. The hoax still belonged to me.
“We need to make people take notice,” I said, my feelings of inferiority beginning to drift away.
“What about, like, an abduction?”
“That’s called kidnapping. It’s illegal.”
Ishmael rolled his eyes. “No kidding. But can we abduct someone without really abducting them?”
I suddenly sat up straighter. “Radio interference.”
“What?”
I opened a desk drawer and rifled through, looking for the bag of electronics I’d purchased in Pittsburgh the day of the myTality™ seminar. “We can’t abduct anyone. But we can make them think they narrowly missed being abducted. A close encounter of the second kind.”
“Yeah, dude, that sounds awesome,” Ishmael said, perking up. “But…what does that have to do with the radio?”
“Lots of abductions begin with car malfunctions. There’s often radio interference. We can scramble radio signals on some quiet road, and with the current climate in Lansburg, people will assume they experienced extraterrestrial activity.”
Ishmael bounced up and down in his seat. “That’s perfect!”
“I thought it might come to this,” I said, holding up the bag of electronics. “I already have the parts.”
I just needed to figure out how to make them work.
Event: Lights, Again
Date: Oct. 2 (Mon.)
I got back my most recent English quiz, which had a C written on it. I stared at the paper for a long time.
“What’s wrong?” Cass—dressed like she’d stepped out of the 1980s—asked from her seat next to me.
I held up the paper. Her eyes widened in mock horror. “Oh, my stars, are aliens hurting your grades?”
They were. I was spending too much time reading about hoaxes and close encounters and mass hysteria. Granted, the quiz was only a small portion of our grades and we were studying poetry, a subject I’d never excel at. But I suspected I’d fallen behind in other classes too. What was wrong with me? Why was I letting a hoax become more important than school?
Because the hoax belongs to you, whispered a voice in the back of my head. Of course it means more than randomly assigned homework.
That didn’t matter, though. Whether or not I cared about my English assignments, I had to do them. Otherwise Sara Kang would win and I’d graduate from high school with nothing to show for the hard work I’d put in.
At lunch, I arrived at the table first and began calculating the scores I’d need on subsequent English tests to offset the C. I was interrupted by Arden running up with wide eyes.
“Did you get my texts?” she asked.
“I haven’t checked my phone all day.”
My phone had become a hassle. Thanks to the hoax, I was getting regular alien-related texts from classmates who previously only contacted me for homework “help.” (See: cheating.) Ishmael had it even worse. The difference was, Ishmael adored the attention.
It was a paradox: I wanted to be successful and recognized for my work. But at the same time, I wanted to be left alone. Sort of like how I both thought highly of my own abilities and recognized how unimpressive those abilities actually were. When you got down to it, nearly everything about me was a contradiction. Maybe it was that way for everyone.
“What’s going on?” I asked Arden.
She slid into her chair. I noticed she didn’t have a lunch tray. She must have rushed over as soon as she stepped into the cafeteria.
“I saw them,” she breathed.
“Saw what?”
Her face was flushed. Her eyes shone. Arden looked more animated than I’d ever seen her. “Lights, Gideon. I saw lights in the sky.”
Oh no. Not Arden.
I looked at her for a long moment. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Could it have been something else? A plane, maybe? Or Venus?”
A pained expression came over Arden’s face. Her glow dimmed, her skin turning ashen as I watched.
“You don’t believe me.”
“It’s just…” I didn’t know how to finish, though.
“When you saw lights, you didn’t doubt your own eyes.”
“Yes, but—”
“And when Cass saw lights, you believed her too, didn’t you?”
I didn’t reply, because there was no need. Arden knew I hadn’t challenged Cass’s experience.
“So it’s just me,” Arden said. “You think I’m a liar. Or maybe you don’t think I’m important enough to be visited by aliens.”
What the hell? “Arden, no. That has nothing to do with—”
She turned away from me, shoulders slumped. “Just forget it.”
This was what I deserved for lying to her. I should have included her in