The sluggers abducted me from the bath. I’d spent two hours under running water, scrubbing with washcloths and loofas until my skin was red and raw. My mom kept trying to invade the bathroom under the guise of offering me different methods of removing the paint—the oddest of which was a stick of butter—and I had to lock the door to get any privacy.
Diego sent me a handful of text messages, at first asking where I was, then begging me to let him know I was all right. I felt terrible about not returning his texts, but I couldn’t bear any more pity. Especially not from him.
I also figured out what the One More Thing was while Mom drove me home from school. A photo of me sprawled on the shower floor—bound and green, wearing only a gray alien mask—had spread virally through SnowFlake, each new person who shared it heaping on derision. I tried to trace it back to the original poster but eventually gave up—Space Boy had become an international phenomenon. I was Raumjunge in Germany, Gar?on Cosmique in France, in Japan, Chico Cósmico in Spain, and Ruimtejongen in the Netherlands. At least Marcus had blurred out my junk before exposing me to the world.
“I’m not pressing the goddamn button!” I shouted. My voice didn’t echo in the exam room. The darkness devoured it in a way that reminded me of the auditorium where I’d watched Jesse rehearse The Snow Queen freshman year. He only had a small part, but he spoke his lines as if he were the lead. His strong tenor reached even the back row where Audrey and I sat, she doing her homework, and I unable to take my eyes off the boy flapping his wings, willing us to believe he was a crow.
The rotating projection of the earth disappeared, but the button remained, as either a taunt or a promise. I didn’t know which, and I didn’t care. Fuck it.
“Why me?” Though the sluggers had left me alone in the room, I knew they were watching. They were always watching. “If you can save Earth, then do it! Why do you need me?”
Even if they had answered, I doubt I would have comprehended them any more than a rat would understand the reasons a scientist dropped him in a maze and forced him to navigate it for the cheese at the end.
I was startled by a slugger who appeared from the darkness and approached me at a crawl. I’d never noticed before, but it had tiny legs that grew from it like a centipede’s. They were absorbed back into its body when it halted.
“What?”
From my supine position on the metal slab, the sluggers had all looked the same, but this one was close enough that I could distinguish fractal patterns on its skin in a million shades of green and brown. The deeper I followed, the farther they led. And they weren’t static, either. The intricate designs changed in subtle ways. I sat up, swung my legs around, and slid off the edge of the slab.
“Is that how you communicate with one another?” I wondered aloud as I observed the body markings swirl and transform in an endless dance. They were beautiful. I shed my anger standing there, sloughed off the dead weight of it.
“Do you want me to press the button?” The slugger didn’t respond. It simply lingered, motionless except for the designs on its skin and its round eyes floating on their stalks. “If you want me to press it, I will, but you’ve got to promise never to send me back.”
Without my anger to support me, I faltered. My legs trembled, and I collapsed to the floor. I searched for the horizon but saw nothing. Without my anger, I was adrift and drowning. Marcus had attacked me and Nana had Alzheimer’s and Jesse had killed himself and Charlie was having a baby. I was helpless to stop any of it; I’d been robbed of hope as surely as Nana was being robbed of her memories.
“Please don’t send me back.”
The alien turned and crawled toward the darkness. I thought it was abandoning me, but it stopped at the edge of the shadows and waited. This behavior was new, and I watched it curiously. After a moment, a floppy appendage grew out of the upper half of its body and waggled in the air, almost like it was waving at me.
“Do you want me to follow you?” My voice was thick with mucus, and I scrubbed away my tears with the back of my hand. The slugger waved until I stood up, and then its arm melted back into its body.