Mothership (34 page)

“Cole?” I whisper. “I have to tell you something.”

He turns to me.

“The Goober,” I begin, clearing my throat. “It’s . . . yours.” I put a hand on my stomach. “It’s still yours. Dr. Marsden told me, on the catwalk. It wasn’t swapped.”

The look on Cole’s face as he takes in the news is pure happiness. Despite everything that’s happened to him, everything that could have happened, he is happy in this moment. “Oh, Elvs!” he breathes, and he reaches toward me for a kiss, that look still splayed across his face. It’s an exquisite sort of look.

Which is why I can hardly believe what I’m about to say to him.

“I’m not going to the Poconos.”

“But the baby . . .,” he begins.

I pause. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet, Cole.” He blinks, and I can tell there’s so much he wants to say to me, but he doesn’t. He lets me continue. “I’ll tell you when I decide, but for now . . . I’m not going with you. I don’t care if you have
to lie or fight or argue or what, but I’m not going.” I watch through the view screen as Earth grows closer and closer, welcoming us back from the longest, strangest day of my life. “I am going home.”

Cole thinks about that, and nods slowly. Then, without a word of response, he punches up the comm.

“Home One, this is Archer. Do you read?”

A crackling noise comes over the comm, followed by that unmistakable voice.

“Loud and clear, Archer,” James Dean says. “What frequency are you on?”

“Shit,” Cole says, before switching to a secure frequency. “Home One, this is Archer . . . again. Do you read?”

“Good to hear your voice, kid,” Dean says. “What’s your status?”

Cole looks back at all of us crammed around the console, and smiles.

“Byron, do we have a story for you.”

The first thing I do when we land is literally kiss the soil.

The second thing I do is retch a little bit. Because it’s been a long day, and because, well, dirt tastes gross.

Dad and Ducky are already here, waiting for me. Which is kinda nuts since we had to land way out in the middle of farm country, a good four-hour drive from home. I’m pretty sure Dad didn’t even remember to put up the parking brake. He hugs me so tight, I would remind him not to block my airways if, you know, my airways weren’t blocked.

“Dearheart,” he sighs. “I missed you so much.”

I squeeze him back. “I missed you too, Dad.”

Ducky is next. He walks over shyly at first, as though he almost isn’t sure he recognizes me. I reach out a hand and, ever so gently, tug on his earlobe.

That’s when he loses it.

“Good to have you back,” he says, falling into an enormous bear hug.

“God, you cry like a girl,” I tell him. But I’m crying too.

I say my good-byes to the others quickly. Most are easy, but saying good-bye to Ramona and Natty gives me a little extra phlegm in the chest.

“Make sure those Almiri bastards take good care of you,” I instruct Natty. “Don’t let them give you any shit.”

She nods as she sniffles into my shoulder. “I won’t,” she replies. She looks up and gets this naughty little grin on her face. “You think maybe I could convince them to pose for a series of nudes?”

“That’s one art class I might actually show up for,” Ramona says.

I make to hug Ramona, but she punches me in the shoulder instead. “I . . .,” I begin, but she stops me.

“Here,” she says, and she hands me a brand-new pack of cigarettes. Seriously, I don’t know where she keeps those things. “You might need them,” she tells me. “For the baby. You know, in case you decide to keep it.”

I must inadvertently raise an eyebrow at that, because she just snorts. “They’re medicated,” she replies. “See?” I look at the label. Sure enough, Ramona is right—Immunity-Boosting Mist Sticks: 100 percent tar and nicotine free. It’s right there on the box. “Jeez, you think I’m some kind of chromer or something?”

“I . . .”

She tucks the cigarettes into my pants pocket and punches me in the other shoulder. “I know you have to make up your
own mind,” she says. She’s quiet, so no one else can hear. “But if you ask me, you’d make one hell of a mom. Even if the thing has antennae.”

And with that she strolls off to the van that Cole has procured to take those that want to go to the Poconos. Every girl—besides me, that is—has agreed to go and at least find out more about the Almiri. Even Britta, though I don’t know why. Maybe she’s hoping they’ll “deal” with her little Jin’Kai issue. She’s slouched by the door of the van. I wave to her, a meager olive branch, perhaps, after all we’ve been through, but a heartfelt one. Britta’s look, however, makes the skin on the back of my neck prickle, and then she turns away, her arms wrapped almost protectively over her stomach.

Cole is standing awkwardly beside me, shuffling his feet, so I give him a tight hug. “Are you worried?” I whisper, and I don’t clarify, but I think he understands what I don’t say.
Are you worried that Britta will rat you out about the Code? Are you worried what will happen to you when they discover you let me go? Are you worried what I’ll do with this baby?

“You just worry about you,” he replies. “Whatever happens to me . . .” He stares at the ground. “I think I probably deserve it.”

I give him a quick kiss then, right on his starkiss. “I’ll be in touch,” I say. “I promise.”

He squeezes my hand tightly as I climb into the front seat of my dad’s car. And I think he wants to say something else, but he doesn’t.

As Dad pulls onto the street, I decide to break the silence. You know, bring us all back to what’s truly important. “Can we
make a stop on the way home?” I ask. “I need a new phone. Mine sort of maybe exploded.”

•  •  •

Four days later—my due date looming ever closer—Ducky and I are in my room playing Jetman. Ducky claims he read a study that video games are good for calming the nerves of pregnant women, but I’m pretty sure he made that up. To our everlasting surprise, Ducky’s normally douchy stepdad seemed more than agreeable to the idea of Ducky playing hooky from school to hang out with me nearly full-time. Zeke even convinced Ducky’s mom to write him two weeks’ worth of sick notes. Ducky says it’s the most pleasant case of pneumonia he’s ever experienced.

“So . . .,” Ducky starts, and just from his tone I know he’s going to ask me another in a long line of questions about my experience with the Almiri and Jin’Kai. It’s like he was given a front-row seat to his utmost nerd fantasy. He’s been asking questions nonstop since the car ride home. He hands me the tub of peach yogurt, as if that’s going to soften the interrogation. “These Almiri guys, they live to be, like, hundreds of years old?”

“So it seems,” I say as I pour the yogurt generously over my bowl of black olives.

“And they’re all, like, completely famous.”

“Not all of them. Just some, I think. Like, apparently Mozart was an Almiri. And James Dean, obvi.”

Ducky scratches his chin quickly before returning his hand to the controller.

“That’s so messed up, faking your own death and then getting
to be famous
again
doing something else if you want to. Are the bad ones, the Jin . . .”

“Jin’Kai.”

“Right, are any of the Jin’Kai famous too?”

“I don’t think so. They haven’t been on Earth nearly as long. And they seem to be trying to lay low, you know, while they conquer the world. So they’re probably not auditioning for America’s Next Top Botanist or anything.”

“But they’re all superpretty like Cole?” The moment the words are out of his mouth, he scrunches up his face. “You know what I mean.”

“Mmm,” I say, trying to find the most succinct way to describe it so that hopefully Ducky will stop with the twenty questions. “The Jin’Kai are hot too, but kinda, like, burlier than the Almiri. More Jax Richter, less Hansel Wintergarden.”

“Those dudes I saw on your phone up there were
not
good-looking, Elvie.”

“The Devastators? I never got a good look at them.”

Ducky shivers. “Lucky you.”

“I think the definition of ‘studmuffin’ is different on the planet where they come from.”

Ducky raises an eyebrow. “Wait, so is Hansel Wintergarden . . .”

“Not to my knowledge,” I say as I pull a tornado kick out of nowhere for a double critical bonus hit. “Can you imagine the horror of getting stuck on a spaceship with him while he’s singing ‘Baby, Let’s Go to the Prom with All Our Friends’?” I follow up my tornado kick with a nuke-fist to the face, and Ducky throws down his controller in mock disgust.

“No more pregnancy handicaps,” he tells me. “You are trouncing me, and it’s not fun anymore.”

“Suck it up, Pence,” I reply. “And stop trying to distract me with your stupid questions.”

Ducky thinks about that. “Just one more,” he promises. I groan, focusing on the screen, but Ducky is undeterred. “How do the Almiri pick who to impregnate?” he asks. “Is there some sort of system, or what? Who tells them who they can sleep with? And how come the Almiri and Jin’Kai always have to be dudes? That’s just patently unfair. Why can’t there be a whole army of redheaded bombshells out there who need
me
for a good roll in the hay? And why did they—”

“Ducky!” I shout with a laugh. “Just give it a rest, all right? Isn’t the fact that I survived a big alien throw-down in space enough for you?”

Ducky smiles at that. He picks up one of the yogurt-laden olives before thinking better of it and putting it back in the bowl. “Fine,” he says, “I’m done.”

“Thank you,” I reply. And then I blast his avatar to smithereens.

We’ve just started our rematch when I finally decide to tell him. “Cole called this morning,” I say slowly. I glance sideways to see how Ducky will respond to the news, but I’m having trouble reading his expression.

Today was the first I’d heard from Cole since I got back, so there was quite a bit of catching up to do. Apparently he told Byron—aka James Dean—that I miscarried on the
Echidna
during all the excitement, to explain my absence from the Poconos pregnancy party. “The girls all seem to be doing
well,” I continue. “Cole said that Ramona’s old boyfriend Kyran was there. I guess she gave him quite an ass-whooping.” Ducky smiles. “And Natty’s going to start some sort of weekly art review going up there. Seems she’s fitting in pretty well. No word about Britta, though.”

“Yeah, Cole didn’t mention her to me, either,” Ducky replies with a shrug, and I’m so startled that I drop my controller. Ducky doesn’t miss a beat, giving my avatar a roundhouse kick to the face.

KO!

“You talked to Cole?” I ask, incredulous. “When? How? Why?”

Another shrug from the master shrugger. “He gave me his number when we picked you up. Figured it would be good to have, I dunno, like, an emergency contact or something.”

I am not at all sure if I like the idea of Cole and Ducky talking behind my back. Between the two of them, they know just about every secret I have. If they pooled their info, I could really be done for.

“So . . . you talked with Cole . . ..” The words taste funny in my mouth.

“Only once or twice. It’s not like we’re PIPs or anything. He was just checking in. He was curious.”

“About?”
I prod.

“About whether you’d made a decision yet.”

“He could ask me himself.”

“That’s what I told him.” Ducky looks up from the screen for just a split second. “Anyway,” he says, more serious, “have you?”

I shake my head. “Nope.” The days are ticking away, and I know I need to make up my mind soon, but . . . Have an Almiri or terminate the pregnancy? The pros and cons of each choice have been swirling around in my brain nonstop, and I’m no closer to deciding anything. I reach for the yogurt and take a deep scoop.

“If you could,” Ducky asks, back to plugging away at the game, “would you change it? Would you go back in time and do things differently? You know, with Cole? Would you not . . .”