Posted by QueenofStrange, 8:10 a.m.: I was working at the diner last night and a woman who came in told me a story that may sound familiar to some of you here (SkepticGirl1, at least). She had pulled off the road driving at night and saw what she swore was a young man flying through the air. She only got a glimpse of him, a silhouette against the full moon. She was rattled and said she was only telling me about it because I was someone she’d never meet again. And as a waitress out here I must hear all kinds of stories. I told her not to be so sure her eyes were playing tricks . . .
This one might be real, and not just because she’d also seen a flying person.
There was a sense you developed, hanging out on the boards, for which reports were legitimate—or at least, which were made in good faith—and which were the product of someone who wanted to poke fun at the crazies who believed in conspiracies and aliens and fringe science. But the ones that felt like the truth, they gave me that shivery sense that I’d had in front of the rock tower that night with my dad, the knowledge that there was far more going on in the world than most people knew. And now I’d happened on what I was increasingly sure was an example, right here in real life, at my school.
Would the others at the Scoop think I was crazy if I told them that the bullying was only one part of the story?
Probably.
Probably they’d look at me differently, distantly.
I jumped at the beep of a chat and tabbed over to see SmallvilleGuy’s name beside the cursor.
SmallvilleGuy: I’m glad you wrote.
SkepticGirl1: Do you know something about that company?
No immediate response, but then . . .
SmallvilleGuy: Not that. I thought maybe you were too mad to want to talk.
SkepticGirl1: Oh.
Part of me wanted to type “Well, I wasn’t, sap,” and play it off. But I made myself give a more honest response. My pulse raced like I was in the game being pursued by a missile-carrying dragon.
SkepticGirl1: I wasn’t mad at you. I was mad at them.
SmallvilleGuy: Oh.
SmallvilleGuy: I thought maybe it was because I didn’t keep you from getting shot. I know that must have hurt.
I laid my hands against my face, then lowered them to type.
SkepticGirl1: Don’t worry about that. You helped make sure Anavi got out okay. We’re the same.
SkepticGirl1: You and me, I mean. We’re the same.
SmallvilleGuy: How?
It was what I’d realized in the middle of the night, when I woke up from that nightmare. I searched for the right words, and they came, as easily as the words to tell Anavi’s story. Because they were the truth.
SkepticGirl1: We protect people, see what other people miss. We don’t need anyone to look after us.
He didn’t respond right away. I was blushing, like I had when I’d thought of the night before as a date.
Had this been our first fight?
We’re just friends, I reminded myself.
But then he posted a new message. I put my hands over my heart.
It was another photo of baby cow Nellie Bly, who was even more adorable this time. Because this time, Nellie wasn’t alone in making big eyes at the camera. There was a golden retriever snuggled up against her, the dog’s grinning face right beside her moony calf one.
That message was the sweetest thing I’d ever seen.
SmallvilleGuy: My way of saying sorry, anyway. Meet Shelby, wonder dog. He’s taken a liking to Nellie Bly. And Bess likes Shelby better than anyone else in the world, so she lets him.
I didn’t know what to type. Nothing seemed right. He’d never mentioned that the farm had a dog before.
SkepticGirl1: Shelby made my day.
It was as close as I could get to telling him that he’d made it. By taking that picture. By being worried that we’d had a fight, just like I had been.
By caring at all.
SmallvilleGuy: I’ll do some digging on ARLabs, see if anyone’s posted about them before on Skies or elsewhere. And I can also ask TheInventor, my techie friend from the boards, the one who made our software. He’s unearthed dirt on lots of high tech companies behaving badly—and this one doesn’t sound like the kind that can be up to anything good.
I couldn’t help being a little disappointed he hadn’t responded to what I said. But I’d give him a break this time. Not ask him to tell me who he was, a way of saying thanks for being here.
SmallvilleGuy: Lois . . .
I waited, not typing anything. Not sure what to say.
SmallvilleGuy: You’re right. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to protect you anyway.
I smiled and sent a one-word response.
SkepticGirl1: Barbarian.
SmallvilleGuy: No, I was an alien, remember?
I rolled my eyes.
SkepticGirl1: Funny. And if you call me an elf, I’ll . . . do something.
SmallvilleGuy: Talk to you tonight, Princess.
His name disappeared and I said, to the empty Morgue, “I hate it when he gets the last word.”
“Who?” Devin asked. He and Maddy stood in the doorway, watching me like I was crazy.
I knew I was blushing, because my cheeks felt as hot as the scene of a five-alarm fire.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, closing the chat window.
“You have got to know saying that kind of thing only makes me want to know more,” Maddy said. She shot a glance at Devin then back to me, as if maybe he was the reason I wasn’t spilling the details. “We’ll discuss later.”
“Thank you for sparing me the gossip session,” Devin said. “I guess this is where you rushed off to after lunch?”
I deflected. “How’s Anavi?”