The Prom Goer's Interstellar Excursion (27 page)

“I'm so, so sorry.”

“I'm kidding,” she said. “Do you really think I would care about one more little nick at this point? Let's go.”

When we got to the parking lot, we found Cad, Skark, and Driver standing outside the bus, wearing stained white butcher coats, which was unsettling.

“I see you've found terrifying new outfits,” said Sophie.

“They were outside the back door of the deli, waiting for the cleaners to pick them up,” said Driver. “They still smell like meat, but it's better than nothing.”

“I feel that it is important for us to be matching if we are playing a formal,” said Skark.

“What
formal
are you playing?” I said.

Skark, Driver, and Cad grinned at me.

“Oh,
come on
,” I said.

“One song,” said Skark. “ ‘Wonderful Tonight' by Eric Clapton. I promise, that's all I'm going to do. It's a classic. My voice is in splendid form, and we've never gigged at a prom before.”

“Can we stop you?” I said.

“Absolutely not,” said Skark.

“This is gonna be epic,” said Cad.

A banner hung from the exterior of the gym—
Gordo High School Welcomes You to a Winter Wonderland in the Desert
—and a silver carpet stretched from the curb to the front door, flanked by blue and white balloons. The parking lot closest to the school was crowded with waiting limos, so Driver eased the Interstellar Libertine into a spot adjacent to the basketball courts, near a van with windows steaming up from the inside and a bench where a few prom goers were drinking cans of beer.

I opened the door and offered Sophie my arm to help her down to the pavement, where the beer drinkers greeted us with
shouts of
great ride
and
we thought you were dead.
To which we answered
thanks
and
we're not.

As we strolled the silver carpet, we could hear the
boom
of music filtering out from the gym.

“Good, it's still going on,” said Sophie.

Hand in hand, we walked inside the gym and over to the ticket table, where my French teacher, Mrs. Jolivet, was sitting reading a gossip magazine and drinking a Tab.

She looked up at us, bewildered.

“Bennett…Sophie…,” said Mrs. Jolivet.

“We're late, but we made it,” I said.

“Everybody has been looking for you…. Parents…the cops…”

“We know.”

Mrs. Jolivet got a strange look on her face.

“Who are
those
guys?” she said.

Behind us, Skark, Cad, and Driver were holding their instruments, wearing their butcher coats, friendly smiles on their faces.

“Musical chaperones,” said Cad. “To make sure everyone gets home safe.”

From inside the gym, we heard the DJ:
“Snuggle up with your dates or whoever else is left and desperate, because we're getting ready for tonight's LAST SONG.”

“Mrs. Jolivet…I know everybody has questions about where we've been, and I know our friends look a little strange, but right now we need our tickets. We've come a
long
way for this, and I
promise
that everything is going to be fine.”

“Go in, go in,” said Mrs. Jolivet, waving us inside. “Whatever secrets you're hiding, they can wait five minutes. But the rest of you have to stay out there.”

Skark took Mrs. Jolivet's hand in his own and gazed into her eyes.

“Madame,” he said. “If you let us in there, you have my word that nothing will happen. We are professionals, and we would never try to upstage such an important occasion. I would never lie to a beautiful woman, unless I had ulterior motives, of course.”

Skark winked at Mrs. Jolivet, and I saw her swoon. It didn't matter that he was eight feet tall, it didn't matter that he was in a deli coat covered in splotches of liverwurst and ground beef—he had put her under a spell.
That
is true charisma. He was even more charming without Spine Wine in his body than he was when he was buzzed.

“We can always use more chaperones,” said Mrs. Jolivet, spellbound. “Go.”

Sophie pulled me through the doors of the gym straight to the dance floor, allowing me only the briefest glimpse of the wintry décor. The room was bathed in blue light, with snowflake-shaped lanterns hanging above us and fake pine trees scattered around. Silver stars covered the walls, and fake penguins stood atop the bleachers.

Skark, Cad, and Driver made their way to the DJ stand.

“We're here to close out the night,” Skark said. “Made it just in time.”

“Close out the night?” said the DJ.

“Haven't you been to one of the proms in this town before?” said Cad. “They always bring in a band to play the last song. It's like a closer in baseball. It's tradition.”

“Nobody told me,” said the DJ. “I've done plenty of proms….”

Skark stared at the DJ, unblinking.

“Cut. The. Music,” said Skark. “Let us do our job.” With the touch of a button, the music was off. Skark took the microphone.

“Good evening, Gordo High School,” he cooed. “My name is Skark Zelirium, and as a unit, we are the Perfectly Reasonable. Thank you for inviting us to sing you out on this romantic evening.”

My classmates were looking back and forth between Skark and Sophie and me, trying to figure out the connection.

“So, gents, grab your ladies. Without further ado…this is Eric Clapton's masterpiece ‘Wonderful Tonight.' ”

As Skark strummed the opening chords to the song, Sophie draped her arms over my shoulders. Five days earlier, being this close to her—her stomach pressed against me, her hair tickling my chin, her fingers running down my arms—would have scrambled my senses and caused me to pass out on the dance floor. It still made me feel light-headed, but I was at least able to stay upright.

“I'm not sure our outfits go with the Winter Wonderland theme,” she said. “At least you've got some
white
in your outfit. There isn't a
speck
of yellow in this room.”

I pressed a button in the sleeve of my jacket, and—
schloop
—the miniature tiles turned yellow.

“Now there is,” I said.

“Slick.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I looked over her shoulder as she looked over mine. The entire school was standing around watching us dance, their eyes panning from Sophie to me. I couldn't tell if it was because we'd been missing and now here we were, or if it was because of the incongruity of seeing a girl as hot as Sophie with
me.

I overheard my classmates' theories as I held Sophie tight.

“He must have drugged her.”

“Maybe it's one of those Stockholm syndrome situations where the girl falls for her kidnapper.”

“He's probably been brainwashing her for the past five days.”

Sophie looked at me.

“Want to mess with them?” she said.

“Desperately.”

I leaned in and kissed her. All around me, I heard female gasps and male grumbles.

“There's no way they actually ran away with each other, is there?”

“Does that look real to you? It kinda looks real.”

“Way to go, Bennett. Can't believe what I'm seeing.”

Skark finished the song, improvising lyrics over Clapton's melody. I saw a few girls gripping their boyfriends, willing them to complete the traditional last dance of the night without getting distracted by the overwhelmingly strange band that had
invaded the ceremony, but everybody else in the room had stopped in place and was just
gawking
at the musical intruders who had taken over the makeshift stage, all of whom were clearly not from New Mexico.

Skark brought the song to an end.

Don't Bennett and Sophie…look stylish…tonight….

“Thank you, Gordo High, and good night,” said Skark. “Be safe out there. The weirdness of life sneaks up on you quick. Just want to put that out there—good thing to learn when you're young.”

I could hear our classmates heading for the exits—Sophie's and my return from the dead might have been interesting, but there was beer to drink outside and hooking up to do, so they left us alone. It wasn't until I felt a tap on my shoulder that I stopped kissing Sophie. Skark, Cad, and Driver were standing in front of me.

“I hate to interrupt,” said Skark. “But I'm afraid this is goodbye.”

“That was the best rendition of ‘Wonderful Tonight' I've ever heard,” I said.

“Of course,” said Skark.

“You guys going to stick around at all?” I said.

“Not long,” said Skark. “We have to visit In-N-Out. Everybody is hungry, and Dondoozle just wired us our fee.”

“Plus, we've got to drop off Walter,” said Driver.

“Why didn't he come in?”

“He's in the soccer field bingeing on grass,” said Cad. “Behaving like an absolute swine, but he's earned it.”

“Am I going to see you again?” I said.

“You'll no doubt hear from us soon, though I'm not sure if our next tour will have an Earth stop.”

“Venues here not big enough?”

“Not for what we're planning,” said Skark, grinning. “You two look fabulous. Assure me you'll get out of this town. You're the only fashionable ones around.”

“We will,” I said.

Then the band was out the door. A few moments after that, I felt the rumble of the Interstellar Libertine passing over the school.

“Are you still taking pictures?” Sophie said to the prom photographer, who was starting to pack up his equipment.

“I'm on the clock for one more minute.”

“We're coming right now,” said Sophie. “Don't put away your camera.”

The photographer waited. We took our positions.

And if you look closely enough at that prom picture—Sophie and I pressed against each other in front of a metallic blue background covered with stars, underneath a canopy of gray and purple balloons, between a pair of snowflake-covered columns—you can
just barely
make out a cop's hand entering the frame.

When questioned about where we'd been, Sophie and I told everybody the truth—aliens had abducted her, I went after her upon finding some sympathetic musicians at the In-N-Out drive-through, and it took about a week to track her down and bring her back, more or less. Everyone thought we were lying, and the cops ended up chalking up their missing-person case to us being a teenage couple who had run off together for a few days and didn't want to tell anybody where we'd gone.

After the initial interrogations, it took a few weeks for reporters to stop knocking on our doors and for UFO conspiracy theorists who had read about the story on the Internet—“High School Lovers Embark on Martian Romp”—to stop calling our houses, fishing for more details of where we'd been and what we'd seen.

Then things finally quieted down, and Sophie and I finally started enjoying the summer. As girlfriend and boyfriend.

Though not at first.

Her parents weren't exactly
pleased
with our burgeoning relationship, but because we were neighbors, there was little they could do to prevent us from seeing each other aside from grounding her, which they did, a hard-line detention period that ended on the last day of June.

My grounding was equally long, but less severe in its tone. My parents arrived home from Southeast Asia the day
after
I returned from space. They were sunburned, beset with stomach ailments, and exhausted, their suitcases full of knockoff luxury goods purchased in Ho Chi Minh City.

They found me sitting in the living room with a cop, once again repeating my story for his notebook: “That's right. There were two aliens in the band, and one human.”

“And a ram…”

“The ram wasn't a musician. Well, actually, that's a good question. He could have been, but I never saw him play anything. I've told you this before. Are we done? Because as far as I can tell, I didn't do anything wrong except miss school.”

“And lie to the police.”

“I'm telling the
truth.
”

“Bennett, what's going on here?” said my mom, the sight of the cop causing her to drop a tin of ceremonial tea she had carried with her from the highlands of Vietnam. For days afterward, the house smelled like lotus blossoms, which was pleasant.

Because my parents hadn't been around for my absence, they were in a strange position when it came to punishing me—after all, the house was fine, the cops weren't pressing charges, and both Sophie and I had the same story about where we'd been. Since they hadn't had to deal with the
anxiety
of me being gone, it was hard for them to dole out an appropriate punishment for something they hadn't experienced.

“You're grounded until the end of June,” said my dad.

“And every chore we can think of, you're doing,” said my mom.

The penalty seemed fair, and I was pleased my release date corresponded with Sophie's, which meant we'd have July and August together.

After a month and a half of carving hedges into geometrically perfect squares, folding mountains of laundry, washing every window in the house, shampooing carpets, filling bird feeders, cleaning the bathroom tiles with a toothbrush, and raking the dirt around the cacti in our backyard twice a week, I was free to be with Sophie.

I had plenty of time with her, due to the fact that I was unable to find a summer job since everybody in town thought I was a kidnapper. Since Sophie and I had disappeared at the same time, it was just as logical that she had abducted
me
as I had abducted her, but nobody even
considered
that possibility, because she was attractive and going to Princeton, and I was—for all intents and purposes—now a townie.

I applied for a job at the movie theater, a couple of pizza
places, a crafts store, a day spa, and, finally, a septic tank cleaning company.

“You're that crazy boy from the newspaper, aren't you?” said the owner of the septic company during our interview. “The one who says he was abducted.”

“I'm not crazy.”

“I'm afraid your presence might upset some of my clients. But thank you for coming in.”

Not even qualified to siphon human waste from metal vats. I pretty much knew that no matter where I applied, I wouldn't get the job, so I stopped trying and just hung out with Sophie. We walked around and talked. We listened to music in my room. We tried to avoid her dad, who still held me responsible for her disappearance and stood angrily in the doorway watching me whenever I was over at her place, which was unpleasant. We hung out on my porch, talking about things that had nothing to do with our abductions. She had been a riddle to me for eighteen years, and now I wanted to know everything.

It was July 10 when I walked to the mailbox and found a thin envelope stamped in the upper left with the Princeton logo. I opened it in the driveway and discovered that I had finally made it off the wait list and straight into the rejection pile.

After careful consideration, we regret to inform you that Princeton University will not be able to offer you admission to the class of…

I stopped reading, ripped up the letter, and tossed it in the trash can, which was conveniently located next to me on the
curb. After that, I went inside and watched the entire second season of
Cupcake Wars
on the Food Network, which I had never watched before. I don't even have a sweet tooth. I had no idea what else to do.

The next day, while we were watching
Pretty in Pink
on my couch, I told her. It took me until the end credits to get up the will to do so, because I knew that saying it out loud meant when the summer ended, we wouldn't be together anymore. That, and I couldn't do it during the climactic prom scene. It wouldn't be right.

She rubbed my arm and kissed my neck and told me everything was going to be okay, which is how it went for the rest of the summer. With no job, no college prospects, and no idea what I was going to do next, I gave my full attention to making out with Sophie as much as possible.

On the day she left, at the end of August, I had to see her in the morning, because I knew that her parents wouldn't want me around while they finished packing the car for the cross-country drive to her college. We'd already agreed that this was the end—she needed to get on with her future and have the freedom to date whatever geniuses and sons of industry and well-dressed European students she met in the dorms, while I had to start looking around for a damp, dark room in which to spend the next few years wallowing in depression and watching daytime television, because I had no idea what else I was going to do with myself. No college, no job, no girlfriend. Maybe I would take up Internet poker, or start sniffing glue.

Sophie and I were sitting on the edge of my porch near my telescope when we said goodbye.

“I can't believe you're leaving,” I said.

“You can visit whenever you want.”

“I would, but I have no money and my truck is in a junkyard in Roswell.”

“And you might strangle someone in the admission office.”

“That would be the main reason to go, aside from seeing you.”

Sophie checked the time on her phone and put it back in her pocket. She tapped the dirt in front of her with the heel of one of her zip-up riding boots. No matter the moment, she always looked cool.

“I'm glad you saw me through the telescope that day,” she said.

“I wish it was strong enough that I could see you on the other side of the country.”

“What about your rule against stalking?”

“I'm reconsidering it right now.”

Sophie leaned in and kissed me. Every time, it gave me the same feeling that it did on the rock in the desert. My vision still blurred and I always saw stars, morning, afternoon, or night.

She stood up from the porch. She didn't have to tell me—I knew it was time for her to go, and I knew we were breaking up. I walked her back to her driveway. I was glad it was far away.

Her parents were waiting in the car when we got there, all
her suitcases crammed inside. I kissed her until her father's honking became unbearable.

“I wish we still had the bus,” she said. “I'm bringing more stuff than I thought I would. It would make this move easier.”

“And then I could have used it to store the cans and bottles I'll be collecting in my new career as a homeless man.”

“
HA…hehhhhhh.
At least you'd be a cute homeless man.”

She took her arms from around my body and walked to the car. Her father was grinning at me from behind the wheel, delighted that I was no longer going to be in his daughter's life. I might have seen him high-five her mom.

Sophie got in the backseat and rolled down the window to stick her hand out and wave goodbye. The window shot right back up, nearly cutting her arm off in the process. I could read her father's lips saying he was turning on the air-conditioning, and with that, the car pulled out of the driveway. I walked out into the street to watch it go…

…and immediately regretted letting her leave,
especially
knowing that she was now single once again.

“Sophie,
no
!” I yelled, running after her. “I changed my
mind.
I don't
want
you to have new experiences and expand your horizons. Come
back.
”

But by the time I made it to the middle of the road, the Gilkeys' car was already speeding away, Mr. Gilkey's round face grinning at me in the rearview mirror. He might have even flipped me off, but I couldn't be sure, because my eyes were wet.

And there you go. Sophie's gone, and I have fully slid into the I-am-a-complete-piece-of-crap existence that goes along with being simultaneously a local pariah and the only kid around who isn't going to college, or the workforce, or the military, or anywhere at all.

Anyway, at least now I've gotten this story down on paper, in case thirty years from now somebody discovers me in my childhood bedroom, holed up like Howard Hughes, my fingernails overgrown, hair down to my ankles, surrounded by filthy blankets, having forgotten how to speak because nobody has talked to me since Sophie and I said goodbye. This story can explain how I got that way. I've got my guitar—and any guitar worth its wood needs a few tears on it.