ALIENATED: GROUNDED AT GROOM LAKE

Chapter 34: Unmasked

In the darkness, I could hear the crowd cheering and applauding. It was faint at first, but slowly swelled like someone was turning up the volume dial. I opened my eyes, unsure if they were new robotic sensors or factory-issue hazel peepers, and saw Octo, Houston, and Sonya standing over me. And then Juliet came into view.

"You did it, Sherman," she said softly.

They sat me up in the dust beside Carol, just over the finish line. The Aldrin suit was disassembled around me. In a daze, I moved my legs, my arms, and rubbed my chest. Everything hurt, but it all felt organic, one hundred percent...me.

"Am I...normal?"

"That's a loaded question, buckaroo," said Octo.

"We got the suit off just in time," said Houston. "Juliet helped."

I glanced up and spotted my face on the drive-in screen.

My face.

My exposed face.

Of course. The AJABots who'd been filming the race were covering this post-race drama, which meant my secret identity was a secret no more. The crowd chanted, "SHER-MAN, SHER-MAN!"

I hid my head in my hands, but I was much too late. I'd been outed as Aldrin, the victorious rocket racer. I wondered long until NATO arrived to haul me away.

"Sherman?" asked Juliet, crouching down beside me. "You really risked the gulags—just to impress me?"

"Yeah," I muttered, my head still pounding from the brain scan.

"Well I'm definitely impressed," she said. "And I'm definitely your Prom date."

"Really? But what about the Mentor, and rules, and NED?"

"I think I needed to learn from you how to break the rules," she said. "Thank you."

I was still dizzy from the aborted digitization, which meant I didn't guard my next words. I just blurted out the truth.

"I was so worried, Juliet, that you'd leave before Prom, before the NEDs attacked, but you're here and you can bodyguard the Earth tonight—"

"Bodyguard?"

Juliet's eyes widened with rage and disappointment. And then I realized what I'd said, how it must've sounded to her.

"Is that why you asked me to Prom?" she asked. "So I'd bodyguard the planet?"

"No!" I said. "Well, yes, but—"

And then, she exploded.

Literally.

A globe of dazzling blue light burst from her and flashed out across the drive-in, so bright it nearly blinded me. I looked away, shielding my organic eyes. When I finally looked back, she was just as luminescent as the first time I saw her materialize in Ms. Teg's drama class. She was ethereal again, a bright blue light floating in the dusk and looking down at me with disdain and disgust.

"I thought you were different, Sherman Capote," she raged. "I thought—I hoped—that just maybe you liked me for who I am. Not for what I am."

She jumped into the air and hovered over me the way hawks circle over mice.

"Hey, douse the fireworks, bluebird," Octo called, "this guy really digs you."

"No, he doesn't!" Juliet cried. "He's as bad the rest! He's just using me because I'm an Icon. He's as bad as NED; worse even! At least NED doesn't try to hide it. I might as well go along with the Pairing if this is the way—"

"What Pairing?!" I asked.

But before Juliet even bean to explain, the pieces fell together. NED's text from his dad ("YOU'VE EARNED YOURSELF A PAIRING"), the Mentor's comments about the NEDs, Graz's comment in in the cafeteria.

NED and Juliet. Paired.

"Our ceremony is tonight—on their planet," Juliet sobbed. "I was going to refuse, go to Prom with you, run away. But now..."

And then POOF, she disappeared.

Just like that; into thin air. She vanished from my life, and from planet Earth.

And for a few moments, Octo, Houston, and I just stared at each other, not knowing what to say, the AJABots capturing the entire episode on the big screen.

The silence was broken by Sonya, on the phone. Sobbing.

"Oh, hey," I said to her, "I'll be okay. But maybe don't go telling everyone I just got dumped."

"THIS ISN'T ABOUT YOU!" she yelled. "NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT SHERMAN CAPOTE!"

"What's with her?" I asked the guys.

She put away her phone and said, "I've been Called. My whole family has. We've been Called to perform our Balleropera at NEDs Pairing. Tonight."

Not only was NED stealing my would-be girlfriend, he was summoning my best girl friend.

"And we're not ready," she said, solemnly. "I've been spending more time on the rocket than rehearsing. And if we make even one mistake in the recital..."

She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to. We all knew the punishment for imperfection.

And just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, I heard the sirens.

Four Military Police jeeps revved into the finish area and surrounded us, blinding me with their spotlights.

"That's Sherman Capote," snarled an unwelcome, snobbish voice. "The rocket racer."

It was NED.

He'd led the cops straight to me.

The Military Police jumped from their Jeeps and rushed me. As Octo, Sonya, and Houston protested, they forced me onto my knees, pulled my hands behind my back, and tightened plastic handcuffs around my wrists.

Then NED stood over me and boasted, "Tonight I'll be Paired with Juliet, restoring order to the universe, and tomorrow I'll be sipping on the delicious remnants of your puny planet."

"You're a monster," I spat.

"I am a god," he snarled. "And the god always gets the girl."

His cape billowed in the non-existent wind as he strolled off into the darkness, leaving the police to hoist me into a waiting Jeep.

"By Article Five of the Geilenkirchen settlement," the officer monotoned, "you are hereby to be remanded to the Russian Federation."

NED got the girl, and I got the gulag.