Content warning: blood.
It’s Kaitlyn’s sixteenth birthday party, and somewhere between pizza and cake, everyone starts talking about the aliens. I don’t like calling them that, but I’m keeping my opinions to myself. It’s been three months since the last sighting. Some people think they’re gone for good.
“I wish I’d seen one,” Olivia says. “The videos are awesome.”
I’m hiding at a table farthest from the roller rink, picking cheese off my pizza and giving it to Benji. Neither of us are coordinated enough for Kaitlyn’s 80’s rollerblade fantasy. He might’ve sprained his wrist, and I smacked my head the seventh or eighth time I fell over.
“Are we still actually sure they’re real?” Rebecca asks, and it’s back to the well-tread arguments. I really thought we’d have thought of a new thing to obsess over by now.
Benji pushes the olives off his plate onto mine. “Is your head okay?”
“I think so.” It hurts a little, but I can still count backwards and listen to two conversations at once. “I don’t know why Kaitlyn picked roller skating.”
“She’s tried to take me here before,” he says. “She’s really good.”
“That doesn’t make it a fun party,” I say.
Over in the main cluster, Julian says, “We should figure out what the aliens want. Like the movies.”
I’ve been trying to figure that out for months, so good luck with that.
They trail off to other subjects, and then Kaitlyn’s mom declares cake time. We sing happy birthday. It’s got the nasty sheet cake frosting, orange and pink, and Kaitlyn takes a bunch of photos. She sits with Benji and me, after she gets her piece. Kaitlyn treats Benji like her future boyfriend. He’s told me he’s fine with this, but she can get a bit much about it. He tells her how awesome she is, and she agrees, and I excavate cake from the frosting.
When he goes to the bathroom, she rounds on me. “Why were you talking to him?”
“He’s my friend?” Also, we’re both injured, and by nature more party observers than participants.
“He might get the wrong idea,” she says.
Seriously. They have mutual crushes. They’re both just waiting for the other one to do something. “How about you talk to him?” I suggest.
Kaitlyn twirls the end of her braid. “How about you don’t?”
I’m still staring at her when the creatures crash onto the roller rink, and for once, I almost appreciate their interruption.
They’re big. That’s the first thing. The smallest of the five has to be seven feet high along the back. The largest, the one I’ve named Indigo, is almost twice that, smacking their head on the ceiling lights. I’ve never seen them inside before, and they’re staggering on tentacles and tails, clearly not happy about it. They creak and chitter, but it’s hard to hear under the screaming. My friends have their phones out, shrieking, tripping over tables. Rebecca pushes through the fire exit, and the alarm goes off. I try to duck under the table, but Kaitlyn grabs my arm and drags me with her. She and her parents have kind of taken over, shepherding everyone outside. The last look I get is Indigo glaring at me, four eyes bright under the flashing lights. Not my fault, my guy.
It’s freezing outside, and half the group aren’t even wearing shoes. Benji meets us in the parking lot, along with a few confused rink employees. “What happened?” he asks. Rebecca and Tiff are crying. I let Kaitlyn explain – even at a time like this, she enjoys getting to shock people. Her mom’s calling the police. 911’s gotten used to creature prank calls, and she starts to get demanding. I’m shivering.
“Are they gone?” someone asks. They don’t tend to stick around. That’s about when the thud happens, followed by a huge crash. A bunch of us run down to look around the building, in time to see the last of the creatures emerge from a gaping hole in the side wall. A magenta-green-freckled one – they were at the initial park incident, I think – headbutts a precarious cinder block from the gap, and watches it crash with some satisfaction. Then they proceed across the drainage ditch and the road, into the scraggly cover forest. They move gracefully for how big they are, with eight limbs making for a complicated gait. Indigo, dusty from wall battering, whistles once, and then they’re all off. They rustle the trees as they move, trampling undergrowth and stumbling on the downslope.
After what I consider to be too long, the shift manager gets the fire alarm off, and we all get to go inside to collect our belongings before someone gets frostbite. Everyone’s freaking out. I try to fit in, but they’re being stupid about it. While Kaitlyn’s trying to get her presents moved to the car, I venture as close to the bashed-out wall as I dare. They switched the electricity off (fire risk, I guess, in the broken wall), and the daylight’s stark on shiny floors. Cold air’s pouring in, cutting through my jeans, but at least I have my jacket back. All things considered, they didn’t break very much on their escape mission. I don’t think they build in their world.
A heaviness drops off, suddenly, like dropping a book-laden backpack, and I know they’re gone. I laugh a little, just to myself. “Finally.”
There’s a squeak. I do not like the implications of the squeak. It’s brass on brass, kind of fragile and echoed on itself, and the timing’s too close.
I find it tucked under a bench, droopy and soft. It’s smaller than I’d guess, maybe a large puppy, but very recognizable. It has the same body structure as the adults, which reminds me of a blue dragon nudibranch made amphibious, thick tentacle limbs and split-forked tails. There’s absolutely no chance I’m letting the police find it. It flinches at first, but then it gets a stubby whisker-tendril curled around my wrist and decides I’m alright. The baby isn’t quite conscious, and its main impulse seems to be to make itself ball-shaped. I have to take everything out of my backpack to cram it in, but I have what my friends always call an unnecessarily large backpack. I can barely pick the load up, and the creature shifts against its confines. “Don’t say anything,” I whisper. The backpack straps strain. I gather up my normal books without toppling over, and I then text my sister to pick me up.
The backpack is a good, inert backpack for the next ten minutes. Benji asks why I’m carrying my books; I tell him I stole a bunch of skates and he laughs and lets it slide. The police and fire departments show up – it’s a different precinct than the previous incidents, and they’re so out of their depth. I get away with blabbing something confused, since there’s so many people eager to talk. I don’t give them my last name, and I hope no one else does. Kaitlyn’s starting to get mad about her birthday party, like that’s what matters. Everyone is overwhelmed enough to let me slip away when Phoebe arrives in her battered blue Toyota.
“Who the hell blew that up?” she asks. I sit in the back, next to the bag.
“The aliens again,” I say.
“Damn, lucky you,” she says. “You got to see them twice.”
I’ve seen them all three times. I don’t correct her.
Phoebe stops at home just long enough to let me out, and then she leaves to go hang with her boyfriend. Our parents don’t like this one much, because he’s snarky and does weed and wants to go into forestry instead of going to college and getting a “proper job.” I think he’s alright, and honestly, the constant drama’s been good cover for me to get away with things. No one else is home. I lock the bedroom door and let the baby out on my bed. It flops out, somersaults, and stops on the blankets with this wet-rag weight. After a moment, it shivers and tucks back into a ball. I don’t know if it’s okay, and I don’t know how to tell. It’s breathing, at least, gaps along its neck blinking open and closed to air. I tuck my Clifford stuffed animal next to it. The baby’s soft to touch, gummy but not slick like Indigo, so at least my toy’s not getting slimy.
I lay down curled around it and set a 45 minute timer. I’m worn out – I always am, after they visit. I don’t know how to cross between worlds properly, but Indigo does. My plan for getting the baby returned is to make it their problem.
I don’t usually try to get to the in-between space, because it’s a huge waste of sleep. Sometimes I end up there, and sometimes I think Indigo drags me. It’s not really like dreaming. All my actual dreams are fuzzy, without smell or color or coherency. This has too many senses, and it sticks like being awake. Today, it’s shaped like my favorite restaurant, the Indian place off Jefferson Road, empty and chilly. When I look up, there’s no ceiling: the walls bleed up into a huge, dark cavern. Things skitter under the booths, and I doubt they’re mice. It smells like spices and frying oil and wet stone and something I approximate, poorly, to pickled herring, something else acrid that clings to the creatures’ skins.
“Indigo?” I yell. It echoes. It’s a little pointless. I can tell they’re not here – this is too much of my world for them to be having much influence. It gets weird, with both of us, my suburban locations smashing into their bubbly caves and colorful mud springs and canyons under impossible stars.
I circle a few times, then sit on a table and braid little strands of my hair and try to think logically, but logic left this conversation a long time ago. I want to be a journalist, find the bottom of things. I’m not sure there is a bottom to this. I’m convinced Indigo knows more than I do, but we can’t talk to each other. The creatures seem smart enough for language, but what does that even really mean? All the people trying to decode animal communications use machine learning and huge data sets and actual linguistics. I have my memory, which is earning me a B in Spanish right now. And Spanish is practically English, especially compared to tentacle-creature muttering. Of who/what/when/where/why/how, I’ve got maybe “who” – Indigo, the others, me. I think they need me, not that I know why.
Indigo doesn’t show. When my alarm wakes me up, the baby’s watching me. “Hi,” I say.
It makes a little noise back, and I know this one, a chirp about E-flat dropping into a hum. Indigo uses it in greeting. Maybe it’s a hello, or maybe it means “human” or “stranger.” I’m a sucker for cute things, and it’s all curves and four round black eyes. It’s blackish, same as the big ones, with orangey flecks around its face and up its tentacle-limbs, like it splashed around in a sunrise. It’s quite vertebrate in its face, its movement – and the adults are so big, they must have some internal structure.
The baby’s curled its tails around Clifford. I boop its nose – quite warm – and it starts back. After a still moment, it reaches out with a front leg and taps my arm. It catches a tiny bit on the sleeve fabric, hooks instead of suckers.
“I need to get you home,” I tell it. Them. I don’t know how the creatures do gender. I can’t even figure out how I do gender. “Scientists here would do terrible, terrible things to you.”
The baby is nonplussed; but as established, they do not speak English. I don’t think they’re aliens, really. They’re not different enough. They breathe air and need water. I just don’t know what else they would be.
I get the baby some water. They yell when I leave the room, and spill half the dish on my bed attempting to tip the whole thing on themself. The yelling is weird up close, because they definitely speak through the nostril-things along their neck, and the noise has this resonant edge from eight or ten little mouths. I name them Annatto, for the orange splashes. Annatto and I are playing a great game where I give them things to poke at when my phone buzzes, startling us both. Kaitlyn’s calling. I pick up – she’s relentless.
“Hey, Maia, where’d you disappear to?” She’s on speakerphone, and I can hear Rebecca and Hannah chattering.
“Home?”
“Boring,” she says. “You’re missing my birthday.” She says it lightly, but she’ll hold it against me. It’s her actual birthday on Wednesday. I’ll make her cupcakes.
“Sorry, my sister had stuff to do this afternoon.”
“Lame!” Rebecca yells, and Kaitlyn sighs.
“It’s just getting good,” she says. “We’re gonna play the actual good games.”
“Have fun,” I say. Annatto picks up Phoebe’s little glass dolphin statuette between a tentacle and tail. I have to stop them from trying to bite it. The actual good games are probably code for Truth or Dare, which Katilyn likes as much as I hate it. Maybe if someone dares her and Benji to kiss, they’ll finally figure out that whole situation and I’ll get to stop hearing about it.
“Have fun at your loser solo party,” Olivia says, and Benji tells her she’s drunk. Why does she have alcohol? There’s a little crunch.
“Happy birthday,” I say, and hang up. Annatto shows me the broken pieces of the dolphin. “It’s okay,” I say. Hopefully Phoebe won’t notice it’s gone. “We are having a better party. I can’t let you keep broken glass, though.”
I try again to meet Indigo, but Annatto wakes me up, unsuccessful well before my alarm. I’m starting to get a headache from staying in the in-between space. We go on a quest together to the kitchen, me carrying their heavy butt, and we discover about ten foods Annatto will not eat. They like the leftover shrimp alfredo, but I can’t imagine it’s good for them. Even without having met the adults, I think I’d guess they’re a toddler. They want to open everything, climb everything, wreck it all. They discover buttons when I stupidly demonstrate the microwave and waddle around poking everything. They’re limping a little, back left side, but it does not contain the chaos. At some point, they knock the sugar bowl off the counter, shattering it.
“Hey!” I snap, and Annatto freezes. “Not okay.”
They contrive to look scolded. I pick them up – heavy baby – and move them out of the sugar spray zone. It’s all sticky on my socks. They watch me sweep up for a bit, then climb back on the counter to play with the microwave.
I’ve been thinking about this with Indigo for a while, actually: we communicate emotionally. I worry I’m anthropomorphizing, reading into cues with other meanings entirely. When we’re interacting, though, it feels like it connects. Indigo responds, in our in-between, to me being scared or curious or upset with calm or reciprocity (generally a lot more maturity than Annatto demonstrates). I’ve been reading, and only animals coevolved with humans, like dogs and goats, are supposed to be able to do this.
I should probably not think “supposed to.” It’s not doing much good at this point.
Most of my family gets home around five, and things get complicated. I hear them all arrive, voices and upset barking. I forgot we’re dogsitting Dallas for my aunt this week. He’s usually chill. I’m sitting on my bed, drawing Annatto, who just fell asleep after an exciting time trashing the room. Phoebe’s going to be so mad. I haven’t thought of a halfway decent lie about her jumbled things. It never looks like her stuff’s neat, but she knows where it is.
“Maia?” Mom yells up the stairs. “Get down here!”
It’ll be a bigger deal if I don’t go. Annatto doesn’t move when I get up. I shut the door on my way out.
The kitchen’s a bustle, parents setting down groceries and directing siblings and tripping around Dallas. Helen and Cleo had swim meets, so they’re exhausted and cranky. Dallas resumes barking when I come in. I stop, and he snuffles all over me and growls and it takes all the backbone I have to stand still. Annatto smells strange, sure, but I don’t know why that would be so threatening.
Dad hands me a full bag, and Mom says, “Maybe pasta for dinner?” Dallas backs off but still watches me.
“Dallas seems riled up,” I say. It would be weirder not to comment on it.
“Cleo put cheese in his ear,” Helen says, leaving her swim bag on the table.
“I didn’t!”
“I watched!”
“Girls,” Mom snaps. “Get your stuff in the laundry and then come help.” Dallas is licking the floor where Annatto spilled the sugar, so I start putting the groceries away.
Helen and Cleo prove unhelpful, and after frustrating attempts, Mom sends them off to go watch TV. They’re twelve and ten, which makes a big difference on the expectations. I keep getting assigned tasks until I’m just making dinner. “But I have stuff,” I say, chopping onions. I don’t know how long Annatto will sleep.
“You had a chill day, Maia,” Mom says. “And Phoebe isn’t here.”
Should I remind them about Kaitlyn’s party? They stopped paying much attention once Phoebe started driving me places, but I did write it on the calendar. The creatures will definitely be talk of the town, and Phoebe or Rebecca’s parents or someone will make it clear that I saw them again. It would be normal to mention it, but I don’t want to bring it up.
It was a lot less complicated when I thought I invented Indigo, when they existed sporadically and only in my head.
Dad convinces Mom to take Dallas on a walk before it gets dark, and he cleans while I make dinner. Our house is always a mess, and when Mom’s stressed she gets mad about it. I cook peas. Phoebe texts the family group chat that she’ll be home late, which simplifies things for me and is what Mom’s annoyed about when she returns. Dad asks Helen and Cleo to set the table, then ends up doing it. They do come when called for dinner, though. Family dinners aren’t really negotiable.
“This is too spicy,” Helen complains of the pasta sauce. She means onions, I think. I ask her about swimming instead and she starts a full recap. Our parents, who definitely heard all Helen’s editorializing already, exchange quiet sighs. Cleo jumps in with her own stories, and then they’re squabbling – they both placed pretty badly, but they’re like this even when they do alright.
I’m rolling a few stray peas around my plate when Dallas huffs from his place in the doorway. Dad’s lecturing Cleo about how it helps to pay attention in practice. This time I hear Annatto’s confused, muffled cry. Dallas starts barking, and I stand up fast. “May I be excused?” I ask, and leave without permission.
“Maia!” Mom calls, but I’m gone, fast as I can without making a racket myself. Dallas runs after me and stands at the bottom of the stairs, barking. I think the noise spooked Annatto; they’ve squirmed under my pillow (with Clifford in tow). They’re too big to hide effectively, but it’s a good effort. They peek out as I shut the door, cute and innocent and definitely not about to get the both of us in so much trouble.
“You need to hush,” I tell them. “I mean it.”
Annatto just watches, but at least this is the quiet version.
Dad yells for me up the stairs. I tap Annatto’s snout, between the stubby whiskers. “One minute, please.” I go to the top of the stairs, and look down at Dad and Dallas looking up. “Yeah?”
“Are you abandoning the cleanup?”
“I cooked. The littles can do it.” They’re terrible at cleaning, but they can learn.
Dad considers, drumming his fingers on the banister. I glance over into my room – I left the door open, and Annatto’s wriggled half off my bed to watch me. I shake my head at them, and Dad misreads it. “You feeling okay?”
“I have a headache,” I say, which isn’t a lie. The back of my head is still sore to touch. “And I’m really tired, and I don’t want to be sick tomorrow.” Unlike Helen, I don’t play the sick card much.
“It’s not even seven,” he says.
“I’ll try to read for a bit,” I say, which sounds more believable than going right to sleep. “I need to finish my homework. And I did cook.”
“You did,” he says, and scratches Dallas’s shoulder. “Alright, you’re free this time.”
I thank him. My dad likes being reasonable, and likes me. He loves all of us, but I’m the least frustrating, only a little bit on purpose.
Annatto’s happy to have me back. We snuggle for a bit, and I skim the readings for English tomorrow. I don’t like leaving things to Sunday night, but so few people do the actual readings that even the teacher’s treating it as optional. After that, I try to tidy up, and Annatto follows behind me investigating all of these interesting spaces I so kindly indicated. They can’t open the containers under the beds, though they attempt. They can reach high enough, if they stand on their rear two sets of tentacles, to knock everything off the tops of the dressers. I distract from that activity mostly in time and set them back on my bed. Then they go tearing my posters off the wall. They’re not making a good case for children right now.
I can tolerate most of the things getting mangled – pictures I thought were cool, or anime posters bought at Target that I mostly just put up because Phoebe called them so cringy that I had to prove her opinions don’t dictate my decisions. Then Annatto starts nibbling the edge of my 8th grade final project, this big collage of reporting on that year’s California wildfires and subsequent investigations. I spent so long on it – mostly the research paper, not the art, but still. I toss the laundry I gathered up onto Phoebe’s bed and block the poster’s fraying edge with my arm. “No.” I don’t care if mod podge is tasty.
Annatto considers this obstacle – snuffles isn’t quite right, since they don’t breathe through their face, but their whiskers skirt and tickle across the sleeve, the hair on the bare skin. Then they bite me, hard, sharp like a shock. I yelp and yank away, smacking their face. “No!” I manage, and they hunker down. It stupid hurts. I breathe and actually look. Their bite’s not that big, a diamond of indented and broken skin. I wasn’t sure before, but they’ve definitely got a beak. The top and bottom points are deeper, already filling with blood, and I think I tore the edges pulling free. Annatto leans in to investigate, and I push them off. “I hate you a lot right now.”
There’s a first aid kit in the upstairs bathroom cabinet that no one ever uses. I shut Annatto in my room and try to clean up the blood with toilet paper, but it’s nowhere near clotting. They did get the side of my forearm, at least, not the veiny underbelly. It doesn’t look dangerous, but it’s been a while since I’ve had a cut this bad. I don’t think Annatto really meant to hurt me. How would they know the ways humans are fragile? I have no idea what it would take to cut their skin, or what color their blood is.
I hear one of the neighboring doors move, and I’m scrambling on what to say to a sibling when Annatto pokes their head around the doorway. They make the greeting sound. I shoo them back inside my room, but as soon as I turn away from closing the door, Annatto opens it again. Apparently tentacles can handle door knobs. So Annatto gets to come into the bathroom with me. We have a little bathtub-shower that only gets used as a shower, but I find the plug in the cabinet and turn on the tap lukewarm. Annatto climbs in and sits in the growing puddle, fixated on the running water. They pay no mind to the soap on a ledge definitely within their reach, or the world map shower curtain dangling in the back corner. I stop the water halfway to the overflow drain, and then Annatto splashes around a bit, rolls over, still quite sedate. Water does that to me, too.
Eventually, I give up on the bite scabbing, and rinse and bandage it tight. It hurts. I’m getting resigned to it. The cut’s close to my wrist, but I can hide under long sleeves until I come up with a story.
That feels like everything now: hide until you figure out the lie.
I wash the stains on my shirt, pee, and then pull the plug. Annatto and I watch it drain together. They’re enraptured. I have to drag them out of the empty tub, and now they’re slimy, covered with clear skim that smells more like Indigo than anything in this world. I ruin my towel with it and we return to my room.
“I’m trying this again,” I say. “For real, this time.” I switch off the lights, so the room’s only got the side-angle street lights through the shades, and spread the knitted blanket from the end of my bed over me. Annatto stays on the floor, but it doesn’t really matter what they do so long as they stay in here. After that thought, I get up and lock the door. Phoebe won’t like that, if she gets home soon.
It’s weird, falling asleep in the dark in my day clothes, but I’m tired. Indigo’s still not in our in-between space. It’s a Wendy’s now, a significant downgrade, still cavernous, dark beyond the windows. I try to wait, but it’s hard to keep focus to stay there, this far from myself. I drift into proper sleep at some point. Annatto jostles me awake, coming to cuddle, but I get them under the blankets with me and drift back, their body warm to mine.
Indigo and I fall in at the same time – we’re both shaking our heads when it resolves. The Wendy’s is flooded with a few inches of firm black mud, fungus fleshy on the walls, the whole space flickery orange-lit by struggling lights. It’s empty, of course, except for us, and cold. Indigo turns between the counter and booths, hemmed in tight, and huffs at me. I sit on a table. The mud’s holding my weight, sinking Indigo a little, but it’s making my socks wet. The menu signs over the counter are wrong, dull colors and jumbled letters. As soon as I notice it, they’re fine, always have been: milkshakes and chicken tenders and whatever else I think Wendy’s has.
Indigo says something quite complicated, and lashes their tails against the wall, cracking plaster. We can wreck this space, and there’s internal continuity until we leave. I’m not sure it exists without someone in it.
“Cool,” I say. “I have your baby.”
Indigo snorts. I think they have more breathing-gaps than Annatto does, as well as them being larger. I wonder if I could fit my hand in one, at their most open. They’re kind of freaky.
“Maybe it’s not your baby, personally. But you need to come get it.”
Indigo scratches at the mud and mutters. We do this a lot, just back and forth on our entirely separate conversations. They seem broody today. The last two times they crossed over, they stayed excited for days.
I wave to catch their attention. “Baby!” I say, and gesture out the general size of Annatto. “Quite a bad baby. Very adorable.”
We pantomime for a bit, and slowly Indigo gets invested in this mystery. Little, grab, you, me, movement – they’re trying to think, trying to contribute. We don’t have the same body shapes, and we’re still working that out. I think they have the best motor control with their fourth, instead of first, pair of legs, but they use their tendril whiskers (impressive on Indigo, like a stringy beard) to investigate. They’ve picked up that I shake my head for no and nod for yes, too, which was fantastic and genius.
At some point, I decide to try drawing. I scrape out Annatto in the mud, just a general outline about life-size. The mud’s gritty and stiff, holds a rough line well, and I crouch beside the terrible drawing and point. “Baby. Annatto, whatever. With me.” I touch my belly, get mud on my shirt. It’s the same shirt I’ve been wearing all day, and in the dream it’s suitably slimed and bloodstained. Indigo considers the drawing, looks between us for a moment, and then taps a tail to their chest.
“Not you.” I shoo them back a bit and start to draw, but I run out of space after the head and first set of legs. “That’s you.” I gesture at the obvious size disparity. “Annatto is small. And with me.”
Indigo shakes their head to whatever they think I’m saying.
“I don’t know how to get them back, and they can’t stay. I have school tomorrow! If anyone sees them, it’ll be bad. Like, really bad. For all of us.” I’m fidgeting with the bandage on my arm, which transferred to the dream – the me in-between is always just how I was when I fell asleep. That gives me an idea. I pull off the tape and unwrap the whole thing. The bandage is saturated anyway, and the bite, under the smears, is hot and tight and nasty, the inside already bruising. Now that I’ve remembered it should hurt, it hurts. I hold out my arm, and let Indigo trail tendrils over the wound. It won’t get infected from a dream, it just stabs. They’re ginger, tracing out its shape, and then they stop and stare at me. They click their mouth, under the whiskers, mimicking a snap. I nod. They growl, almost a whistle, all along their neck. They tap my sketch of Annatto with a tail. I nod again, point between the drawing and me, and mime biting my own arm. Indigo growls again, a train gathering steam, and they disappear, leaving the torn-up mud.
I think that worked. I squeeze my eyes shut. I’m not in an interdimensional Wendy’s. I’m in my bed, and it’s winter, and I need to get somewhere else before Indigo appears in my house. We don’t have any thirteen foot ceilings, for one thing. Wake up wake up wake up.
Somehow, that also works, although that pocket space loses some stickiness without both of us. My stirring wakes Annatto. They’re bleary. I don’t have the time. It’s 10:17, late enough that Helen and Cleo, and hopefully our parents, will be in bed. Phoebe hasn’t banged on the door yet, so I doubt she’s home. No mud on my clothes, bandage still intact. I grab a hat, a parka, and a raggedy blanket. Annatto’s not very excited to return to the backpack, but I’m stern about it and they wriggle in. I zip it so they can still poke their head out.
We sneak down the stairs, but the house appears to be quiet. My parents stopped waiting up for Phoebe a long time ago. The kitchen’s not that clean – no one wiped down counters or scrubbed the saucepan. I lean against the wall by the door and tug on Phoebe’s good boots, since mine have tons of laces. Dallas huffs in the adjoining room, and Annatto hisses behind my head, and then the dog bursts in, barking and barking. Annatto hides, but Dallas doesn’t get close enough for me to kick him. He’s more of a guardian than aggressive, and Annatto alarms him. My dad yells from his bedroom for Dallas to shut up, and the noise lets me grab a house key from the pocket under the mirror and slip outside.
It’s freezing. I throw the blanket over both of us like a cape. Annatto wiggles their head out and rests a whiskery chin on my shoulder, looking around. I cut around the house to the backyard. Dallas is still barking inside.
Our yard leads into a strip of scrappy young forest, briars and a little ravine that’s full of snakes in the summer. The shallow stream’s frozen this time of year, the ice rough with leaf litter. Under my phone flashlight, I pick around thorns and slide on the slopes. It’s not a beautiful forest, but there’s space between the rickety pines. I follow the stream for a bit, farther from any street lights. My fingers are aching. Annatto tucks in closer. Their skin’s holding warmth longer than mine. Indigo’s taking a while.
I stop under a big tree and switch off the flashlight. I drop the backpack – Annatto squeaks – and hunker beside, tucking the blanket around us. Still is a bad idea in the cold, but I’m going to stumble otherwise, and I want to try something.
In the winter and the dark, I curl up, hide my face, pull my thoughts tight, and try to find down. We’re connected, right? We have to be. I focus across the thread and drop the intention like stones down a well: Indigo, come here. And maybe I imagine it, but I’d swear I feel it ripple at the bottom.
Annatto sticks a whisker in my nose, which ruins my focus. They’re getting good at that. I cuddle them instead. My eyes are starting to adjust, but it’s a dark night, low clouds. There isn’t supposed to be anything dangerous here, but even an angry raccoon would be bad. Annatto’s starting to shiver. I don’t know how cold they can safely get. “I really thought Indigo understood,” I say. Talking feels wrong, a disturbance. “They woke up about it.”
Annatto hums, and we sit. My breath catches, suddenly, and there’s a complicated thud off to the left. The heaviness hits dull in all my bones, and a tree cracks under Indigo’s actual weight. They grumble maybe twenty feet off. Annatto perks up.
“We’re over here!”
Indigo whistles and squeezes over, crunching through the deadfall, not concerned with the dark. Annatto whistles back. Indigo brings their head in close, and Annatto squirms out of the backpack. They can both see better than I can, or they’ve got some spatial sense I don’t. They bring their heads close, Indigo’s tendrils rustling over Annatto, and then me. Indigo’s never been this close in real life. I reach up, and they tap their face to my cold fingers. Their skin’s the same as all the dreams, and they smell strongly of themself, tart and kind of musky, stale water and struck matches and ozone. They start talking, low but quite emphatic, and cutting off Annatto’s responses. So Annatto is old enough to communicate.
Indigo huffs and ushers Annatto under them, ignoring their protest. They brush their tendrils over me one last time – I squeeze my eyes tight as the ends flick over my face. Then they step back with a shuffle of limbs and raise their head, smack it on a branch, duck again. Indigo breathes, and in the rush of air I can just hear how massive they are. The weight falls away and they’re both gone.
It starts snowing on the walk back, the kind of light flurry that caused pandemonium in elementary school. The streetlights turn it to magic. I cut through the woods and someone’s garden-bed yard to walk up the empty streets, the houses mostly dark. I catch the fine, powdered-sugar flakes on my hand – my fingers still smell like both of them.
I have no idea what I’m going to do about any of this.
And then I’m home, and the door’s unlocked so I leave it that way, and Dallas barks but I ignore him. I replace Phoebe’s boots and return the key and take the blanket out of my backpack and go get ready for bed, run my fingers under hot water till the skin’s bright red. I change the bandage, hide the ruined one in the trash can, take down the most torn of the posters, gather up school stuff, plug in my phone. I feel drifty, like I’m watching from far away, and nothing’s tethering. There are a bunch of unread messages in the group chat with my friends, a few from Benji. I’ll deal with it tomorrow.
Phoebe returns right as I’m getting into bed. She’s in a mood, face flushed, slamming things. She asks me how my afternoon was, and I hide my arm farther under the covers. “Uneventful,” I try.
She snorts. “I wish.”
Normally, I’d ask her about it. Tomorrow. I’m too tired for this right now. Annatto did end up getting Clifford sticky after all, but I cuddle him anyway. Everyone’s going to be freaking out about aliens again.