The Extraterrestrial Truth And The Girl From Seat 2B [ONC 2022]

3.1 [EVERYTHING IS FINE]

Everything was fine. 

There were no aliens in Cape Hux. 

The sign on the way out of town-- at the pit toilet between the lake and the McDonalds-- said so. 

Everything was fine. There were no aliens in Cape Hux. 

There never were. 

*****

Vic sat on the front porch with a sweating glass of lemonade in one hand and an untouched bagel on her knee. The concrete steps were warm under her, in a way that cut into her mostly-bare legs-- at least, the parts that weren't covered by her cut-off jean shorts. 

Smoething was off. It had been all day. 

She remembered coming back to herself on the front lawn with no recollection of what had happened or how she had gotten there-- or, as her mother begged to know, where she had been for the past week and a half. There was nothing there. Her memory was a gaping wound and there was no way to stitch it back up. 

Vic took a sip of her drink. There were parts she remembered. Heading out to the cornfield with Leo and Kate (not 2B, Kate. Her name was Kate). Kissing Kate in the corn. Looking up at the sky, searching for something. Then... nothing. Nothing, until she came back to herself on the parched lawn, one foot on a broken sprinkler, surrounded by the felled bodies of so many different people. Two missing persons from a long-dead cold case, the Overson Orchards Incident. Eric Ham, tech wiz, curled up in a ball and shaking. Connor, tongue burned more than it ever had been. A few other people who scampered off before Vic could get a good look at them. And Scotty. Just Scotty. 

Kate, too. She was there. In fact, she was still there, laying on the porch swing, pushing herself back and forth with one foot. Neither of them said anything. 

It was odd. Vic could remember how fervently she believed in the extraterrestrial. The conspiracy wall upstairs was testament enough of that. The issue was, she regarded that with a detachment now-- one that deeply unsettled her. It was as though she had been robbed, but she couldn't remember how or what the mugger looked like. 

Vic supposed it should't have troubled her, even as she raised the lemonade and its clinking ice cubes to her mouth. 

Aliens weren't real. She knew that. The truth about the extraterrestrial was that there was none.