It's a Love Thing (36 page)

About the Author of
Seeds of Love

I was raised in central Idaho, never
knowing what a privilege it was to have grown up there until after
I moved away to attend college. Since the age of fifteen I wanted
to be a Physical Therapist. Nursing school was an unexpected detour
on the way to P.T. school but the experience from both degrees over
the past twenty years has served me well.

Now that I’m grown with a family of my
own, I know the value of the rural life I lived as a child. My
dreams have changed with growing up and my love of nature has
inspired me to write. My new dream is to pass along stories that
will bring the mysteries of nature to life. If I can teach my own
children to respect the wonders of our planet I will have served
them well.

Find out more about J.C.
Willibat at:

www.JCWillibat.com

http://facebook.com/jcwillibat

http://www.jcwillibat.blogspot.com/

https://twitter.com/#!/Batacans

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Contents

Xeno

10 minutes

That’s all this will take. Ten minutes
and it’s all over.

I am sitting in a hard wooden chair
that was moved from the corner of the room. Shifting uncomfortably,
I try to relax in my seat while I watch him. His body is motionless
on the hospital bed, not even his chest rises for breathing. Of
course, he doesn’t need to do that now. Blonde hair falls over his
closed eyes and I have a fleeting urge to brush it to the side. I
can’t touch him. I don’t want to be near him. But I know I can’t
leave him now.

In ten minutes he will be gone. My
father and his squad will come to take him God knows where to do
God knows what to him. Maybe torture, maybe dissection, but I don’t
care. He isn’t mine anymore so I don’t have to care. All I have to
do is wait ten minutes.

My heart beat increases
with every passing second, pounding out a rhythm in my head.
Xeno. Xeno. Xeno.
I can’t
help but want to say his name out loud, just because nobody has for
a while. Ever since we arrived at the hospital it’s been nothing
but “it” and “the thing”. The worst part is I stopped thinking of
him as Xeno for a while, at least once he told me the
truth.

Then again, I have no idea what is
true anymore. It’s not like any normal person could believe what he
told me. However, the fact that there’s a squad of soldiers on
their way to Hope Memorial Hospital right now to apprehend my
currently unconscious boyfriend gives me no choice but to accept my
new reality.

I reprimand myself silently. Xeno
isn’t my boyfriend, not anymore. Sure we’d spent the entire summer
together, but that was then. This is now, and now he’s no longer
the boy I fell in love with. He isn’t the boy I spent the greatest
summer of my life with. He’s an outsider, a foreigner, and possibly
a threat.

9 minutes

My military style, perfectly
calibrated watch counts down the exact seconds. I knew that when my
dad said ten minutes, he meant ten minutes on the dot. This means I
have approximately eight minutes and fifty three seconds left with
Xeno before . . . well, I don’t want to think about it.

My dad works for the government, but
you wouldn’t know that unless you have incredibly high security
clearance. As far as the world knows, he works as an accountant for
some branch of the army. Only I and a few top secret officials know
that what he really does happens in Area 51. Sound unbelievable?
That’s the idea. People were bound to find out, so why not turn the
whole thing into an urban legend?

Anyway, he’s in charge of the whole
operation; although his job is mostly pretty boring. I’ve been to
the lab before and it’s just rooms upon rooms of computer monitors
and other pieces of technology. Aside from the occasional piece of
garbled static, the computers don’t find much while scanning the
universe. However, one day back at the beginning of the summer a
piece of jumbled space static turned out to be different than the
others. Nobody believed him, but my dad swore up and down that he
heard somebody talking in the feed. It wasn’t much to go on,
especially since all he heard was “make them trust you.” You would
expect it to be something more like “take us to your leader” or
“we’re coming to enslave you all!”

Personally, I didn’t believe any of
it. When he came to me and told me about his “discovery”, I played
the role of perfect supporting daughter and told him I believed
him. I didn’t have enough interest to ask more about it that day
though because there was a new guy moving in across the street, and
his name was Xeno.

I remember the first day I saw him. It
was the first week of summer vacation and the weather was already
lifting my spirits. Nothing made me happier than sitting in the sun
by the pool and letting the vitamin D soak into my skin. That
morning I’d gone out to get the mail when I saw a boy standing in
the yard across from ours. It was strange, seeing as the house had
been abandoned for almost a year, but the strangest thing was that
the boy was staring right at me.

Now, I’m not the ugliest person in the
world, but I’m certainly not worth the look he was giving me. My
dirty blonde hair and cloudy blue eyes aren’t exactly what you
would consider attractive, but this boy was by far the most
attractive guy I had ever seen. He had blonde hair that fell above
his piercing green eyes that were still staring at me across the
road. Through his t-shirt, I could see that he had muscles, and I
mean like body builder muscles.

When he caught me staring I quickly
blushed and looked away. Grabbing the mail, I spun on my heel and
began making my way back toward the house when I heard him
speak.

“
Hey, wait!” His deep voice
called out to me and I stopped in my tracks, not sure how to
respond.

“
Um, yeah?” My face was
flushed, but luckily he didn’t seem to notice. The boy was already
walking across the road toward me.

“
Sorry, I’m new to the
neighborhood. My name’s Xeno.” It was an odd name, but I liked it
nonetheless. His name made him seem mysterious in a cute sort of
way.

“
E-Emily,” I managed to
stutter, taking his outstretched hand. After a few moments of
silence I regained my composure and cleared my throat. “So, um,
where are you moving from?” He tensed for a moment before
responding.

“
My family just came from
Arkansas,” he explained. “My dad got a new job here.”

“
Oh? What does he
do?”

“
He’s . . . um, an
engineer.” Nodding my head, I tried to think of something else to
say, but my brain totally blanked. It was very hard to think with a
really attractive boy staring at you.

“
Well, that’s a pretty long
ways from California. I bet you’re looking forward to seeing the
beaches.” Crossing my fingers, I hoped that he would be just
slightly interested. To my surprise his face lit up, his green eyes
flickering with excitement.

“
In fact, I was planning on
heading out tomorrow. But I don’t exactly know which one I should
go to. Maybe you’d like to show me a few of your favorites? We
could make a day of it.” The words came out effortlessly, as if he
asked girls to go to the beach with him all the time. My response,
however, wasn’t nearly as eloquent.

“
Oh . . . well, sure, I
guess.” With that he flashed me a quick smile and I caught my
breath. It was the most amazing smile I had ever seen. We said
goodbye and I went inside to go call Sophie, my best friend, and
inform her of my strange encounter with the boy next door. Once in
my room, I fell down into my bed, unable to stop smiling. It was
the beginning of what promised to be a wonderful summer.

8 minutes.

I start to wonder if he will ever wake
up. For some reason I feel like if he was hooked up to the heart
monitor then I would be calmed by the steady beating. It would be
reassuring to know that he isn’t dead. But I know that if he’s
dead, I wouldn’t be so worried about him waking up with me still
here.

It’s hard to imagine that he doesn’t
have a heart, that he isn’t perfectly normal on the inside. He
seemed just like every other guy I had met, at least
appearance-wise. Well . . . not even that. I suppose normal is a
relative term. Compared to normal, Xeno is, like, supermodel
gorgeous, a fact proven by my first view of him in nothing but swim
shorts.

He had stuck true to his promise and
the day after we met we headed out to the beach together. I drove
my old Civic and he fiddled with the radio from the passenger’s
seat. The drive there wasn’t really weird, just quiet. Neither of
us were people who felt the need to fill up every moment with
conversation. Finally, we pulled up along the sandy shores of
Ridgeway beach, our first stop of the day.

“
I hope you can swim,” I
said, getting out of the car. I’ve never gotten into surfing, but
nothing makes me happier than swimming out in the ocean where the
waves just begin to break. Xeno smiled at me and I tried not to
notice the fact that the hints of muscles I saw under his shirt the
previous day were one hundred percent real. The sun glinted off the
edges of his blonde hair and I blushed when he caught me
staring.

“
Let’s go!” I called
quickly, turning away from him. We deposited our towels on the
beach by the shore and I took off my swim cover, revealing my blue
bikini underneath. For a split second I thought I saw Xeno staring
at me, but assumed it was my imagination.

Once in the water, I found out that he
was a stronger swimmer than me. His powerful strokes sent him
gliding through the water ahead of me, making me feel like he was
the one who had lived in California his whole life.

“
Pretty good for somebody
who hasn’t lived near a beach until now,” I shouted above the roar
of the waves. He turned back to me and shrugged, but then fell back
until we were side by side. He slowed his pace and I tried to think
of it as just a nice gesture, but my competitive nature got the
best of me. With all my strength I began swimming faster and faster
out toward the open water. I could hear him laughing behind me as
he sped up once again until we were neck-and-neck.

A huge swell caught my eye on the
horizon and I watched it grow and grow until it was about to break
right on top of us. Right as the water began to crash, I dove
beneath the surface and swam under the wave, listening to the sound
of it thundering above me. When I resurfaced, I didn’t see Xeno
anywhere. Panic swept through me until finally he sprang up,
coughing up water, but alive.

“
Xeno!” I yelled, swimming
over.

“
I . . . take it you’re
supposed to . . . go under the wave,” he said between coughing up
water. Despite how worried I was, I laughed at his inability to
maneuver the ocean. The next wave that came was smaller and he
mimicked my movements, not quite as gracefully but he managed. By
the afternoon he was a pro at it and we swam out where the larger
waves were breaking. I did fine until one wave totally caught me
off guard. Xeno dove right under it, his movements as smooth as a
dolphin, and I was knocked head over heels by the sweeping
water.