Dark Energy (6 page)

“I'm more American than I am anything else. I just don't have the citizenship.”

“So you're not going to be a politician in the politician mill?”

“Not planning on it.”

“I bet there are a lot of phone calls happening right now,” I said. “I bet Hannah's calling her dad.”

“And Ricky's dad is a congressman,” Kurt said. “And so are Emily Fenton's and Emily Hughes's dads. The Congressional Emilys.”

I pulled a throw pillow up to my chest. “This is stupid, Kurt.”

“I agree. I'm amazed the president even said we'd listen to the Guides. You've got to know that his approval rating will plummet. He'll look weak and conciliatory. Maybe he's going to try to pass the problem off to the UN. That's what he ought to do.”

“I was defending the aliens,” I said. “All day. I was defending them. I was pissed off when Hannah said they weren't people. When others wanted to shoot first and ask questions later.”

“Your dad works for NASA,” Kurt said with a shrug. “Of course you'd defend the aliens.”

“Honestly, this seems worse than if they landed and started a fight. This is them landing and saying that they're smarter than us and we should want to be like them. And we have
to listen because we feel guilty that they just got stranded on our planet with no hope of getting back home.”

“It's worse than that,” he said, standing up and moving to sit next to me on the couch. “What if they
are
smarter than us? What if they have some really great ideas, and we have to change everything?”

I turned to look him in the eye. “Do you believe that?”

“I think they dress funny,” he said, looking back at me.

I smiled.

“They don't look evil,” I finally said, turning away from him and staring at the floor. “They look nice. They look normal.”

He turned away, staring at whatever I was staring at. “They do look normal. Maybe they are? Maybe this was all just a horrible accident, like the worst kind of first impression ever, and now they'll be labeled as bad forever.”

My phone rang at eleven that night, and I snatched it up, assuming it was Dad.

“Hello?”

The voice on the other end had a rich, melodic accent, but was scratchy, like a vinyl record.
“Tsosi.”

“Shimasani!”
I said, and sat up in bed. My grandma didn't have a phone at home—she used the pay phone at the gas station, which meant I couldn't ever get hold of her; she had to call me.

“Ya'at'eeh.”

“
Ya'at'eeh, Shimasani!
I'm so glad you called. Have you seen the news?”

“Yes, yes. Is your father working on it?”

“He is. We moved to Minnesota.”

“You're sixteen now. You need to come back to the reservation.”

“I'm seventeen,” I said. “And I had my
kinaalda
when I was thirteen.”

“But I need to see you. My daughter had only one daughter. I don't like what I'm seeing on television, on the news. I have much to teach you.”

“And I want to learn it,” I said, really meaning it. The peace and calm of the reservation was better than any vacation. “But right now I have to be here for Dad. He's working too hard, and he needs someone to take care of him.”

“Your mother died so young.”

I didn't know what to say to that, so I just went with, “Yeah.”

There was a long pause.

“Are you there,
Shimasani
?”

“I'm here. Come visit me. Bring your friends.”

“I will.”

“Someone else needs the phone.”

“I love you.”

“Ayóó ánííníshní.”

The call disconnected.

I
settled into the school over the next few days, getting used to the dorm and the common rooms and my roomies and Kurt without having to worry about homework getting in the way. We watched the fund-raising concert for the families of the victims. Brynne and Rachel and I just saw it on the couch in the common room, but some of the kids paid for tickets and went: the concert was playing in the Minnesota Vikings stadium. We saw Emily Fenton in the front row, getting high-fived by Taylor Swift, and we thought she'd died, the way she swooned.

The next night was much more somber. The student body president had organized a candlelight vigil, so we all put on our heavy coats and stood outside while someone sang “Amazing Grace.” I thought something from
Frozen
might have been more appropriate, or even “Baby, It's Cold Outside.” But instead of taking requests, we had the world's longest moment of silence, and yes, I'm a baby, and yes, I'm probably going to hell for thinking about hypothermia during the silent moment instead of the many people who died.

I ended that night sipping from a large mug of hot chocolate while sitting by the fireplace in the common room, leaning against Kurt. For warmth, that's all. Seriously, that's how people warm up. Read any survival handbook.

Anyway, all good things must come to an end, and on Monday, classes resumed and I found myself in AP U.S. History. AP U.S. History is the same no matter where you go, I discovered. I'd been there for twenty minutes and already had an essay assigned.

“Hey, guys, come look,” Hannah and her sunglasses announced to the class, and we all moved over to the window to see what she was so interested in. The teacher had turned on a video about the French and Indian War and then left the classroom. Yes, even in expensive private boarding schools the teachers put on videos and leave the room.

There was a rapidly growing cluster of protesters standing at the gate of the school. They were carrying signs that we couldn't make out and gesturing angrily. A pair of school security guards was walking down the steps toward them.

“What did we do?” someone asked.

“Who said we did anything?” someone replied.

“They did,” Hannah said. “They're protesting something.”

I pulled out my phone—which we weren't allowed to bring to class, but I was pretending I was too new to the school to remember that rule—to check the news just as a voice came over the PA. “All students and faculty please come to the auditorium.”

“They're bringing them here,” I said to Rachel after a quick Google search of the news.

“Who?”

“The aliens.”

“You mean there are going to be aliens living here? Because they need a place for them to live? I heard they were taking over a bunch of hotels in addition to the tent city down by the ship.”

“Well, they have to live somewhere. They're people.”

“They're aliens,” Hannah said.

“You know what I meant.”

“No, I don't. They're not people. They're aliens.”

I ignored her and followed the rest of the students to the auditorium.

The auditorium wasn't just the auditorium: it was the Jeffrey S. Savage Auditorium, and the stage wasn't just a stage, but the Annette Lyon Commemorative Stage. The lectern even had a name on it—somebody Eden—but it was too small for me to make out most of the words.

This was the first time I was able to get a real sense of what was left of the student body. The school was small. Like, tiny. There were maybe three hundred seats, but the seats were less than half full. Everyone was dressed neatly in their uniforms, and they must have been drilled on auditorium etiquette, because the boys sat on one side and the girls sat on the other. I kept my eye out for other girls of color. There were two black girls and four Asians. And that seemed to be it. Minnetonka School was obviously not well known for its diversity policies.

Brynne found us and sat down beside me. “Maybe the school is handing out condoms and Planned Parenthood brochures, or maybe they're going the other direction and announcing that we'll all be taking mandatory gun safety classes.”

I handed my phone to Brynne. Her jaw dropped. “What the hell?”

We sat in the auditorium for more than thirty minutes. We ran out of things to talk about, except for speculating on why they would possibly be sending aliens to our school. I started to make notes of the questions I wanted to ask my dad when we had dinner on Wednesday night, assuming he hadn't forgotten that we'd made plans.

At long last, the lights dimmed, and two men in dark suits approached the stage, staying close to the wall. I glanced behind me and saw four more men dressed in similar suits
with similar short haircuts—two standing by each door.

“Tell me if I'm crazy,” I whispered, “but don't they look like the Secret Service?”

“It can't be the real Secret Service,” Rachel said, craning her neck back to look. “They didn't check to make sure none of us are carrying weapons. If this was the real Secret Service, they'd do that, wouldn't they?”

A moment later the headmistress of the school walked out onto the stage, and all the students clapped for her. This seemed weird to me, but I wasn't fully trained in Minnetonka culture yet.

“Thank you,” she said. “And thank you so much for your patience today. I know you've been left waiting for quite some time. Before we get to our main business of the day, a few announcements. First, we've had a few new students arrive in the last few days, due to the circumstances at Lakeville.”

The circumstances at Lakeville? You mean the crash of an enormous UFO?

“These new students are the children of our country's best and brightest who have moved to the area to conduct research. Alice Goodwin, Heather Moore, Michele Holmes. Please stand.”

I reluctantly got to my feet, looking around for the other two new girls. They looked as uncomfortable as I was. Everyone clapped, and we sat back down.

“I'm sure that you have already given a great Minnetonka
School welcome to these stellar students. Top-notch kids.”

If anyone looked
really
uncomfortable, it was the headmistress.

“I'd now like to present to you Lu Ann Staheli, our fine senator from the state of Minnesota.” She held out her hand, gesturing off stage. There was a pause, like no one knew what they were supposed to be doing, and then the senator appeared, her shoes clacking across the hardwood stage.

She stood at the podium, perfectly calm and collected, as if she did this every day. She probably did, I guess. The applause for her was more of what you'd call a “smattering.”

“The Minnetonka School for the Gifted and Talented is known for two things—academics and citizenship. Your school produces some of the brightest scholars in our country, as well as many great leaders, in both the private and public spheres. It is this second topic I want to address with you.

“We have seen a great change in the past several days. You all heard the president address the country and the world about the growing relationship we will have with this alien race. Over the past few days we've had many diplomatic talks about how to integrate these men and women—and yes, I'm calling them men and women. They are people. They may come from another world, but we believe that they are deserving of the same inalienable rights that are granted to everyone.”

Brynne shot a look at me.

I looked back, worry on my face.

“We believe that it would be a sign of goodwill—a sign of the best of mankind's intentions—to try to integrate a few of the Guides into our society.”

The murmuring in the crowd was getting loud now, but Senator Staheli's smile never wavered. “It is my privilege to bring you two additional students to join the Minnetonka student body. Let me present to you, Suski and Coya.”

The murmurs dropped to utter silence as two people stepped slowly out of the wings and onto the stage. They were the aliens I'd seen on TV—the first two out of the ship after Mai and the woman.

They seemed puzzled by the bright lights in their eyes, and only walked to the senator after much coaxing from the headmistress.

They both wore the school uniform, although neither wore shoes, which seemed totally out of place. Each had on a small headset, and they wore big round buttons on their sweaters, which I assumed were the speakers for their translators.

“The dude's hot,” Brynne whispered, breaking the silence, and a few of the girls around us giggled. “Seriously, I think he could bench-press me.”

I groaned. “Please don't say—”

“If you know what I mean,” Brynne said.

“That.”

“Succubus,” she reminded me.

The senator stepped back to the microphone. “We will have security on-site. FBI agents inside the building and the National Guard outside. We trust that you will treat these students as you would any other student—any other foreign dignitary,” she corrected.

“Freaks!”

The voice came from the male side of the room—one of those insults half-disguised as a sneeze. The senator looked into the crowd, shielding her eyes from the stage lights.

Murmurs ran through the auditorium, but if anyone knew who had said it, no one was letting on. The senator took her place at the microphone again, her voice stern and challenging. “Minnetonka was chosen because its student body can be trusted to be respectful. I know many of you are well connected and may think you're beyond reproach. But I'll have you know that none of you is as well connected as these Guides are now. They're here under the diplomatic wishes of the president. Please keep that in mind.”

I tried to read the faces of the two Guide students, but they seemed like they weren't entirely sure what was going on—like they hadn't caught the insult or known what to make of it. “These are not simply two of the Guide children,” the senator went on. “These are the son and daughter of Mai. We don't have a full grasp on Guide societal structure, but for
now you should consider them royalty.”

A girl behind me whispered a few words under her breath. “The hell we will.”

“What about all the people who died?” Rachel asked me, her voice not angry, but uncertain. “What about them? Are we just supposed to forget?”

The room was getting loud, and the senator spoke again. “You will have a hundred questions, but I urge you to save them for your school leadership and not to let speculation run rampant. For now, we thank you in advance for your help in this matter. And know that we will be watching. Thank you.”

The senator shook the hands of the two Guides and then left the stage, only to be replaced by the headmistress of the school.

We will be watching.
Was that a threat? An admonition? It didn't sound warm and cuddly.

The headmistress started addressing the room again, but none of us were paying attention to anything she said. We had too many questions, and I don't think any of us expected the questions to be answered—at least not to our satisfaction. We still didn't even know what the Guides were. We didn't know what had happened on that ship. We didn't know what plans the president had for “integrating” the Guides into our society, or what plans the Guides had for us. Maybe that was the biggest question—we knew they wanted to teach us:
were we supposed to learn from these two? From Suski and Coya?

And why weren't they wearing shoes? They were wearing everything else. Why not shoes? Of everything going on, that pissed me off the most. I don't know why.

I was shaken from my thinking when both Rachel and Brynne looked at me, one from each side. I knew I'd missed something.

“What?” I whispered.

“Weren't you listening?” Rachel asked. “They're putting the girl in our suite—in Nikki's bed.”

“You're kidding.”

“There are other empty rooms,” Brynne said. “Maybe they think that because your dad's in NASA, you'll be a good fit?”

“It's probably because you're both supersmart,” I said. “They want to make a good impression.”

“We have a new succubus,” Rachel murmured, turning back to look at the girl.

She wasn't as pale as the boy, and her hair wasn't that odd shade of bleached yellow. If she'd been wearing shoes and didn't have the translator, I might have mistaken her for a human. Very probably.

I wouldn't have mistaken Suski.

Let's get one thing out of the way right up front. Yes, he looked albino, but he was a good-looking boy. Man. He
was a man. I don't know how old he was, but once you get muscles like that, you're a man. His neck looked like it could do its own weight lifting.

Coya looked tough herself—broad-shouldered and built like a gymnast—but Suski was built like a god. Maybe not a Zeus or an Apollo, but certainly a demigod: a Hercules or Achilles.

Eventually, the headmistress stopped yammering on and everyone was dismissed—everyone except the people who were going to be rooming with the aliens. Brynne, Rachel, and I worked our way up to the front, and three boys I only sort of knew—Malcolm, Joshua, and Eric—came from the other side of the room. Rachel pushed me to the front, and I pushed Brynne ahead of me. She crossed the stage to where the headmistress stood with the two Guides and reached out to take Suski's hand.

“My name is Brynne,” she said. “You are?”

There was a pause—I assumed the translator was working.

“Hu Suski lessina,”
he said. His voice was really deep. A computer voice said, with some mild inflection: “I am Suski.”

Suski looked at me, then reached toward my blue hair.

“K'uirska.”

“Blue,” the translator said.

“Kurska,” I repeated poorly, and held out my hair for him to feel.

He smiled a little at my attempt at his language as he felt
my hair between his snow-white fingers. I could see that his hands were rough and I wondered what kind of job he had on the spaceship to toughen him up so much.