Dark Energy (7 page)

I reached out my hand and he took it in his, letting my hair drop back into place. Then I pointed him to Rachel, who shook his hand eagerly.

“Rachel,” she said, patting herself on the chest. She was a pale redhead and Brynne was a pale blonde; I could see that both of them fit in more with the people we'd seen emerging from the ship. But I was the dark-skinned girl with blue hair, and Coya reached out to touch it the way her brother had.

“Alice,” I said to her as we moved down the line and shook her hand. Her grip was just as strong as Suski's.

“Coya,” she said to me, patting her own chest, just as I had done. The translator said, “Beautiful.”

“Perfect name,” Brynne said.

After a moment of processing, Coya spoke, and her translator—using a female voice—said the words, “It is too much flattery. My brother's name means he is a great warrior.”

“Not too much flattery. Good to know,” said Brynne.

“We're going to be roommates,” Rachel said to Coya. “That means we'll share a room, just the four of us.”

She nodded and reached out to touch my hair again. “I would like blue in my hair.”

I turned to the headmistress, who was listening to all of this. “That would be nice, don't you think?”

When we got back to our room we saw that some very helpful school administrator had taken down most of the Halloween decorations that could be construed as offensive. And admittedly, it made me look at everything in a new light. Was there a reason that we put up pictures of severed heads and rotting zombies and bloody skeletons? What was it about Halloween, and human nature, that made us revel in all things horrifying?

Our succubi banner remained in place, as did the sexy devil, because gory corpses are one thing, but scantily clad girls with tails are something else entirely. If the Guides were going to get used to modern America, they were going to need to get used to scantily clad women. Or maybe that was what they were on their interstellar trek to teach us—that we all needed to be more modest. Either way, if Coya was bothered by the succubus on the door she didn't say anything, and she didn't ask anyone to translate the word—maybe she didn't even recognize the letters as letters.

The resident assistant was with us as we showed Coya her bed, her desk—which had a brand-new laptop with her name on it—and her closet, which was filled with a week's worth of uniforms.

“We're going to have to take you shopping,” Rachel told Coya as the resident assistant finally left us in peace. “We'll get you some new clothes.”

“I have clothes,” Coya said through the translator.

“New clothes,” I said. “More clothes. Did you guys always wear the same clothes, all the time? On the spaceship?”

“Yes,” Coya said, trying to respond to my question quickly to cover up the lag in translation. “Always the same clothes. I am not accustomed to these. May I ask a question?”

We all responded at once with a yes, and she smiled uncomfortably.

“How do you sit down?” she asked. “With this?” She held out the hem of her skirt.

“Oh!” Brynne said, and sat down. We all did, and Coya smiled.

“I'm not accustomed to my legs not being covered.” She gingerly sat down, keeping her legs close together and holding the skirt tight against her.

“Girl,” Brynne said, “you came to the right place.”

We quickly assessed her sizes and dug through our drawers. Coya wasn't self-conscious about changing in front of us and quickly got out of her skirt and into a pair of designer jeans. We also switched out her top for a button-up shirt and a warm white cardigan.

“So we might as well talk about the elephant in the room,”
I said. “Why did you and the ali— your people—land here?”

Coya thought for a long time, and I exchanged glances with Rachel and Brynne.

“Why did you crash?” Rachel said, her words slowed down significantly.

Coya looked up. “I can tell you why we crashed. I just don't understand ‘elephant' and how to talk about it.”

We laughed, a little uncomfortably, and I said, “It's an animal. An ‘elephant in the room' means that there's a big question on everyone's mind. Something everyone is thinking about.”

“Animals are new to me,” Coya said, still fiddling with the last buttons on her cardigan.

Brynne leaned forward. “You don't have animals on your planet?”

“I don't have a planet,” Coya said. “I lived my whole life on that ship. My home.”

“Seriously?”

“None of us ever lived anywhere else. Even my father, Mai.”

Rachel spoke. “So, back to the elephant. Why did you come here? Why did you crash?”

“We came as Guides,” Coya said, repeating the party line. “We crashed because of a malfunction with the ship. I don't know what it was. I didn't work in that part.” Her lip began
to quiver, but it seemed to be more out of fear than of sadness. “We didn't mean to hurt anyone. It was an accident. I promise. We didn't mean to.”

Rachel stood up and wrapped Coya in a hug. “It's okay,” Rachel said. “It's okay.”

C
lasses the next day were uncomfortable for everyone, the teachers especially. They didn't know how to deal with aliens in the classroom, and they kept interrupting their lectures to make sure that words weren't going over their heads. AP U.S. History was the worst, because the teacher felt like he had to go back and give the backstory on everything, so while we should have been talking about the Civil War, the professor first thought that we should talk about what the South was seceding from, which meant that he had to talk about the formation of the country, which meant he had to talk about everything all the way back to the pilgrims. We were an hour into class before we got back to the Civil War, with only twenty minutes to cover such weighty topics as slavery and states' rights and economic disparity.

“Do you know economics?” the professor asked.

No.

“Do you know money?”

No.

“Let's take this lecture back a little bit further.”

It mirrored a conversation we'd had earlier that morning when Coya pointed to the picture on our door and asked what a succubus is.

“Do you know the word
seduce
?” Brynne asked.

No.

“Do you know the word
flirt
?”

No.

“Do you know
romance
?”

No.

“Do you know
sex
?”

Oh yeah. That one. She knew that. Everyone knows that.

“We're not really evil monsters that have sex with boys and then kill them,” Brynne had explained matter-of-factly. “But that's what we call ourselves. As a joke.”

The Bruner Scholar for Uncomfortable and Awkward Silences just accepted her award.

Anyway, AP U.S. History eventually ended, and I knew that the professor was going to recommend some kind of crash course in world events for his two Guide students. He couldn't assign them extra reading, given that they couldn't read, so he told them he'd have some videos ready for them
next class, and they could watch them in the library to help them catch up.

“So, tell me about Suski,” Brynne said, sitting backward on her chair, her chin resting on her folded arms.

“What do you want to know?” Coya asked.

“Well,” Brynne said, putting her hands up innocently, “I know he's your brother, but you've got to know he's cute.”

Coya took a deep breath and furrowed her brow.

“It's true,” I said. “Rachel?”

“Not my type,” she said. “But I can see the draw.”

“I don't understand,” Coya said, getting flustered. “Why does it matter?”

“We don't have to talk about it right now,” I said, and picked up a magazine. “We could take a
Cosmo
quiz.”

Rachel threw a pillow at me and then turned to Coya. “Why don't you wear shoes?”

Coya looked puzzled, as though the translation didn't go through.

“Shoes,” I said, and patted my black leather boots with a two-inch heel, because I'm a naughty rebel. “Why don't you wear anything on your feet?”

“Oh,” Coya said, and looked uncomfortable again. It was a face she had mastered.

We all waited.

“Shoes?” I asked again.

“We don't wear those,” she said. “We don't feel it is appropriate.”

Appropriate? Really?

“Now wait a minute,” Rachel said. “Is this a Guide thing? Like, is this one of the things that you're supposed to teach us?”

There was that awkwardness again.

“I'm not your Guide,” Coya said. “That is Mai. He is our leader.”

“He is your father, right?” I asked.

She slowly nodded her head. “He is my father. Suski is my brother. I have many other brothers and sisters.”

“What about your mother?” Brynne asked.

“I do not know ‘mother.' That is not a thing that we have,” Coya said.

“What?” Rachel said. “Everyone has a mother. We all have mothers.”

I spoke up. “My mother is dead. Is that what you mean? Your mother is dead?”

“I don't know. I don't have one of those.”

Rachel jumped in. “Is this some kind of commune thing? The kids are raised by all the women, and mothers don't take care of their own babies?”

“I don't know ‘commune,'” Coya said, looking confused.

“We did see children coming out of the ship,” Rachel
said, her voice almost desperate. “I don't remember if they were with mothers.”

“Who raised you?” I asked. “Who took care of you when you were little?”

“I'm not sure I understand,” Coya said, and her discomfort turned to defensiveness. “What do you mean ‘take care of'?”

“Who taught you?” Brynne asked. She stood up and began changing out of her uniform. “Who made sure the kids had food to eat?”

“We all did,” Coya said. “We all taught children.”

Brynne pulled on a Kansas State sweatshirt. “But when a woman had a baby, wasn't she in charge of that baby? Didn't she teach the baby?”

Coya shook her head. “I don't want to talk about this.”

“You have a brother—Suski. Does he have the same mother as you?”

“I want to talk to Suski,” she said. “Where is he?”

“We'll take you to him,” Brynne said, standing up slowly. “But answer the question. When a woman had a baby, what happened to the baby?”

“Everyone taught the baby,” Coya said, standing up and folding her arms. “Everyone loved the baby. This is good.”

“Fine,” Rachel said. “We'll take you to see Suski.” She stood up and rummaged in her closet before pulling out a pair of very simple leather sandals. “But you have to wear these.”

“And,” Brynne said, holding out a long Q-Tip, “this is a tradition. Open your mouth.”

“What is this?” Coya said.

“Aaaaah,” Brynne said, and soon Coya was mimicking the expression. Quickly Brynne swabbed the inside of the alien's cheek and dropped the Q-tip into a test tube.

We sat in the common room, me with a bowl of ice cream, Brynne with a bowl of blueberries, and Rachel with an enormous wedge of chocolate cream pie. Of the three of us, she seemed the most outraged by the mother issue, although none of us were happy about it.

Suski and Coya were in the cafeteria at a table by the window, a plate of food in front of each of them that they weren't touching. Coya had the sandals on her feet. I hadn't seen if Suski had reacted to them, but in all the time I sat staring at the two Guides, he never looked.

His roommates hadn't taken the time to dress him like we'd done with Coya, so he sat there looking sullen in his blazer and khakis and bare feet. He was talking quietly to his sister, both of their translator earpieces removed and lying on the table.

“Who would think,” Brynne began, “that a vastly advanced race of supposedly superior beings would be so conservative? They don't think it's appropriate to wear shoes? Is that why they all wore the same clothes, too? Is it some
kind of Amish antifashion thing?”

“Maybe it's the opposite,” Rachel said. “Maybe it's not conservative, but liberal. Maybe the lack of differentiation is because they're all equal and no one should dress any better than anyone else.”

“That doesn't explain the shoe thing.”

“No.”

Suski's eyes met mine, and I immediately looked away, embarrassed that I was staring at him. He turned back to Coya and said something. She nodded. He didn't look happy. Maybe he was pissed that we'd given his sister new clothes. Brynne stood and stretched. “Let me know if something interesting happens. I'm going back to study. I want to get that cheek swab going soon.”

“I should really be studying,” Rachel said. “The Princeton Math Competition is coming up, and I'm trying to get on the team.” She took another bite of pie.

“You all work too hard.”

“It helps me relax, though.”

“Then all of this work has driven you crazy.”

“It's something we have in common with them,” she said, gesturing to Suski and Coya with her fork. “Math. It's the one language that everyone has in common, because math is math. Pi is always pi. One plus one always equals two.”

“Maybe if they ever get past telling us not to wear shoes, they'll pass along some of that knowledge.”

“I hope so,” she said, and took another bite.

“Not that you need help,” I said. “You're freaking brilliant.”

“That's all relative,” Rachel said absently. “You can be brilliant in the first grade because you know all your multiplication tables. But that doesn't compare to being brilliant in junior high or being brilliant in college. These guys probably just raised the bar. They'll have new math. New, amazing stuff that will make our Nobel Prize winners look like those first graders. They must. You can't have a ship that advanced and not have figured out some amazing things.”

“That doesn't make you any less brilliant,” I said. “You'll just have more material to learn from. I bet Coya doesn't know all the math that made the ship fly, or how to put it together. It's not something that every alien would just know. It's still a specialized skill. It's probably the engineers who are working with my dad—they're the really smart ones.”

“Either way, my point is that we have at least one thing in common—math.” She stood up. “I'm going back to the room. Text me if anything interesting happens. If Suski caresses your hair again or something.”

She grinned and headed toward the dorm. My eyes met Suski's again, but I held the stare this time, and he was the one to look away.

“You're shedding friends,” a voice said behind me, and I looked up to see Kurt. He hopped over the couch and
plopped down next to me. “People are beginning to talk.”

“You know,” I said, “I've been in this school for less than a week. People should still be coming up to introduce themselves to me, not leaving me to wander the room getting to know people.”

“That's not what they teach in the networking seminar,” he said.

“There's seriously a networking seminar? Of course there is. I'd forgotten where I was.”

“You have to work the room, like a cocktail party.”

“I don't go to a lot of cocktail parties.”

“Then work it like a high school dance,” he said. “Move around the room. Talk to people. Exchange business cards. Swap golf stories.”

“So, what do you think,” I said, gesturing to the Guides with my now-empty ice cream bowl. “Coya in Brynne's clothes. You think she could pass for a human?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Nicely done, by the way. Dressing her, I mean.”

“You think we could do the same thing with Suski? Or is he just too, well, alien?”

“He looks albino. I bet any humans who are real albinos right now are getting a lot of crap.” He cocked his head to one side and looked at her. “But Coya—platinum blond hair. Fair skin. Brynne's got more of a tan, but not much. I personally think Brynne's hotter—”

“Shut up.”

“You asked.”

“Yeah, whatever.” I stood up.

“Where are you going? What if I say that you're prettier than Brynne?”

“I'd say you're lying through your teeth.”

“I'm not.”

“Whatever.”

“Where are you going?”

“I'm going to dye a blue streak in Coya's hair.”

I sat down at the table with Suski and Coya. They put their earpieces back in and stared at me.

“Hello, Alice,” Coya said. I liked her language: “
Guw'aadzi
, Alice.”

“Gooadsee,” I said back to her, and they both smiled warily.

I looked at Suski and took Coya's hand. “I need to borrow your sister.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I'm not sure I understand.”

“I need Coya to come with me. We're going to go hang out with the girls. Is that okay, Coya?”

She pulled her hand away suspiciously. “What do you mean by ‘hang out'?”

I touched my blue hair. “You said you wanted blue in your hair?”

Her face slowly changed from suspicion to worry to tentative pleasure. She looked at Suski, like she needed his approval. He said something in their language, clearly displeased, and the translator automatically interpreted it for me.

“You said they were angry with you.”

“They were angry with life on the ship. They don't understand.”

Suski realized I was listening and turned off both his and Coya's translators. He talked sternly for a good two minutes.

“Does your translator know the word
patriarchal
yet?” I asked, knowing they couldn't understand me.

They looked at each other and then back at me, and then Suski returned to his speech.

“Well, good. You seem to have a very patriarchal society.” I smiled as I said it so that maybe they'd think it was a compliment, and after a moment, Suski forced a smile back.

I took Coya's hand and stood up. She followed me and turned her translator back on.

We hurried back to the girls' dorm, and I burst into our room, already kicking off my shoes and unbuttoning my shirt.

“What's going on?” Rachel asked, sitting at her desk. She really was studying math, two pencils holding her hair up. I couldn't understand her.

“Help me,” I said. “We're giving Coya a blue streak.”

I heard Brynne's voice from the other bedroom. “What?” A moment later she appeared. “I am so getting involved. You have dye?”

I pulled on a T-shirt that I didn't mind ruining, and then fumbled through my luggage until I found the slightly beat-up box of Blistering Blue. “I brought it along to clean up my roots, but it sounds like that won't be happening.”

“Sweet,” Brynne said, opening the box to see how much was there. “Coya's hair's long, but this should work fine. Rachel, can you run down to the kitchen and ask for some tinfoil?”