The True Meaning of Smekday (18 page)

“The name…is standing?”

I thought for a moment.

“It’s a name that’s made up of other words and…stands for them,” I said. “UFO’s the same way. Or TV or…or J.Lo.”

“What.”

“What, what?”

“You did to say my name,” said J.Lo, “but then afters my name you did not say anything—”

“No,” I said, “that’s not what I meant. I was saying that J.Lo’s like NASA.”

“Do not.”

“Do not what?”

“J.Los do not like the NASA,” he said. “We do not even know the NASA—”

“Okay. No. Time out. I mean that NASA stands for something, just like J.Lo stands for Jennifer Lopez.”

“I do?”

“Yes.”

J.Lo frowned. “I suppose I might do if he asked me.”

“NASA,” I said, “stands for…National American Space…Association. Or National Air and Space…something. I don’t remember.”

“I stand for Jennifer LOH-pez,” J.Lo whispered.

“Or Never Answer Stupid Aliens,” I said. “Maybe it stands for that.”

“Aaah.” J.Lo nodded. “You are meaning the NASA is an acronym.”

I stared at him for a moment, then frowned and kicked the dash.

“Yes.”

“And it is being a kind of…space club?”

“Yeah. It was part of the government. They built satellites and space shuttles and things.”

“And the soft beige space club hided the ship?”

“Maybe. Nobody knows. The government says that none of it’s true. There are people—
were
people—around here who claimed to see UFOs all the time, but the government always said they were just weather balloons. The UFOs, I mean.”

“They are to hiding something!” shouted J.Lo.

“Jeez,” I said. “All right.”

J.Lo was still driving when we hit the highway sign and skidded over the shoulder. I was rooting around in the back for Pig’s food. But as Slushious hurtled forward, I turned to squint into the green reflected light from the road sign, which had impaled itself into something really important-looking on the car hood, and watched as we snapped the barbed wire, terrified the antelope, fishtailed past the all-too-accurate
WRONG WAY
sign, and barreled toward a fiberglass shed.

“Hit the brakes!” I shrieked.

“No working!” said J.Lo, pumping the pedal. “Sign pokery in they! ALARM!” His English got really bad when he was under stress. He swerved around the shed, and used his free hand to pound the dashboard again and again in the same spot, as if something good would come of it.

“Activate!” he shouted at the dash. “Deploy!”

He wasn’t watching the road, or rather the alpaca farm, so I stretched forward to slap his hand away from the tuner and grab it myself. I steered us through the animals and into what appeared to be someone’s homemade motorcross course. We ducked and dove through gullies, and launched over hills and ramps tall enough to keep Pig airborne most of the time and ensure that I bit my tongue at least twice.

“Whah ah thoo twying to do?!” I asked as J.Lo kept punching the dash.

“Yes, please!” J.Lo answered. “Feeds them to me as I drive!”

“No…whath are hyoo twying to do?”

“Ah! Trying to
make! Safety! Devices! Work!
” he said, punching after each word. “Work! Work! Work!”

We were through the obstacle course and drifting toward what I would later learn was an arroyo, but could easily pass for a big ditch. But brakes or no brakes, we were running out of momentum, and I sighed with relief when we finally came to a stop right at the arroyo’s edge.

“Yes,” said J.Lo. “Good. But still I am wondering—”

There was a noise like
boof
, and a limp parachute farted out Slushious’s backside.

“Aha. But that is still not explaining what happened to the—”

Eighteen enormous pink beach balls sprouted out of Slushious in every direction and bounced us end over end into the arroyo.

J.Lo smiled weakly as the cloud of dust and jackrabbits settled, and the beach balls began to squeal and deflate. I squinted at the highway sign that was still lodged in front of our windshield.
NOW ENTERING ROSWELL
.

“Ha. Well,” I said, “the next time someone claims no aliens ever crashed here, I’ll know what to tell him.”

“Is not my fault!” said J.Lo. “There was a boy human onto a bicycle!”

“A boy hu—a kid?”

“Onto a bicycle! Bicyclisting! I swerved to miss, and missed missing the green sign instead.”

“Are you sure? Maybe you were just…what’s the word…hallucinating.”

“I am assured.”

“Look, J.Lo, once back in Florida I thought I saw a bunch of goats in little cars. I was just tired—”

Then, in the distance, I heard a shout—maybe the word “Hurry,” but definitely a kid’s voice. J.Lo’s and my eyes met.

“Ohmygosh,” I said. “We have to go.”

“But…Slushiouscar cannot move until the Safetypillows unflate! And we have no brakes—”

There were more voices, a group of people, a many-legged multiheaded thing coming to get us.

“Go!” I whispered. “Hide in those trees!”

J.Lo squealed something in Boovish and looked every which way, grabbed a bedsheet from the backseat of the car and forced a door open, then pushed his way through the hissing beach balls and ran, half shrouded like a billowing ghost, with Pig chasing after.

I hesitated. Should I stay or go? The voices were close, right on top of us. Suddenly I was beating back the beach balls and pushing a door open, too. I ran halfway to J.Lo’s hiding place when I remembered his toolbox. If the weird car didn’t give him away, the weird tools certainly would. So I raced back, grabbed the box, and stumbled through the low shrubs and stones to the little copse of trees where I’d seen Pig and J.Lo disappear.

I rustled through the leaves and stinging branches to find J.Lo small and huddled, clutching the bedsheet around his face like a shivering old woman. Pig squatted between a few of his legs.

“I didn’t know what to do,” I whispered. “Like, should I talk to them? Try to explain about the—”

“Sh!” said J.Lo.

A group of people were shuffling down into the arroyo. They circled Slushious but kept their distance, like it was a strange dog. The Safetypillows were flat and waggling now like pink tongues, until they slipped with a
Thwip!
into the car’s cracks and gaps, and were gone.

Everyone jumped—the kids, the women, the men—and took a step back. Slushious was quiet now, looking as innocent as a car can when it’s floating six inches off the ground.

“Hello?” one of the men called out.

“Shhh!” said another.

“What?”

“What if the driver isn’t human? What if this is an alien car?”

“Kat, this is a Chevy Sprint.”

“So what if it is?”

“It
is
hovering….”

“Shut up, you guys!”

I counted two men, two women, two little boys, and a baby girl. The boys were peering into Slushious and calling dibs on our food.

“It tried to hit me,” said one of the boys. “But I did…I did a jump on my bike and I jumped over the car, and the car missed me and it crashed.
BKOOOSH!
”

“You weren’t supposed to be riding your bike this far out in the
first place
,” said the woman named Kat, and the boy scowled.

“Dibs on the bug spray!” said the other boy.

“Nuh-uh!”

“Yes-huh!”

“I called it first!”

“Did not!”

J.Lo leaned toward me. “But
I
called it first,” he whispered. “You heard me do, back in Mississippies.”

“Shh,” I said.

The adults were fanning out, trying to understand what they were dealing with. It was only a matter of time before they found us. I looked at J.Lo’s sheet, and remembered that I was holding his toolbox.

“Is there anything in here that’d be good for cutting cloth?” I asked.

J.Lo quietly rummaged through the toolbox and produced something that looked like a fat ballpoint pen.

“Squeeze the handle and draw the cut,” he said.

“Good. Put your helmet up.”

“Whatnow?”

“Put your helmet up. I have an idea.”

“I do not want my helmet up. It gets hot.”

“Please.”

J.Lo said a word in Boovish I couldn’t make out. Something like “Claap,” but with a popping sound in the middle. The clear bowl snapped up from all sides and met in the middle, above his head. There was a little circular vent in the front. I pulled the sheet all the way over him.

“Ah, aha,” whispered J.Lo. “Good. With the sheets as this, we will not be able to see the mens. Here is my question: can not they still see us?”

As he spoke I trimmed the excess sheet where it lay in the dirt. Then I cut a little circle where I thought J.Lo’s eye might be.

“Oh, hello,” he said.

I lined the hole up with his eye, then cut another.

“Aha,” said J.Lo, then he made another Boovish noise. The glass of his helmet turned a dark blue. “Better?”

“Yeah. Really good. Now follow my lead.”

Then I walked out from the trees, bold as anything.

The boys were still looking at the car. Some of the adults had formed a little huddle to decide their next move. Others searched the bushes. None of them were looking our way. I cleared my throat.

“Hi!” I said.

“Gaa!” said the closest man, and fell backward on the seat of his big khaki shorts.

“Where did
you
come from?” he asked.

“Pennsylvania,” I answered.

Everyone gaped. A stout woman wearing a T-shirt that read, “Don’t blame me, I voted for Spock” stepped forward.

“Well, hi there. I’m Vicki. Vicki Lightbody,” she said, offering her hand. “You don’t have to call me Mrs. Lightbody, you can call me Vicki.”

“I’m Gr…Grace,” I said. I didn’t feel like having that conversation. “This is my little brother…JayJay.”

J.Lo had been sort of half hiding behind me, but now he poked out his sheet-covered head and made like he was going to shake Vicki Lightbody’s hand, too. I pushed him back.

“Hey, Halloween’s not for a few months, kid,” said Kat.

“Yeah…” I said, “but when the aliens invaded he got real scared and he put his ghost costume on, and now he refuses to take it off. Mom says he has a condition.”

“Yes,” said J.Lo. “I am conditioned.”

I could have slapped the both of us. “Plus, he talks with a funny voice,” I added. “It’s part of the condition.”

“Is not funny,” J.Lo whispered, but I kicked at him with my heel.

Vicki looked at us with a sad, oh-you-poor-things sort of look. It stinks to have people look at you like that, but it was the effect I was going for. Kat wasn’t so sympathetic.

“I’ll take it off him,” she said, and strode forward.

“No!” said J.Lo.

“No!” I said. “Don’t do it. If anyone tries, he starts screaming and…wets himself and stuff.”

That stopped Kat cold. She stepped back again.

“Well, he sounds like a Boov.”

Vicki clucked her tongue. “That’s a terrible thing to—That’s not true, JayJay. You don’t sound anything like a Boov.”

“Sounds
exactly
like a Boov.”

“Shut up, Kat.”

Vicki Lightbody gave her a look, a look that said the subject was closed, and Kat backed down; but not without stealing little glances at J.Lo from time to time. I casually stepped between them.

“Where are your parents?” asked one of the men.

“It’s just me—just us and our mom,” I said. “And hopefully she’s in Arizona. That’s where we’re going.”

“But why—”

“We got separated because of the aliens,” I continued. “I thought I could make it to Arizona on my own.”

“That’s a lot to handle for two children all alone,” said Vicki Lightbody.

I’m not a big fan of the word “child.” I don’t know any kid who likes it. But somehow we all grow up to be adults who say it all the time. It’s an insult when they use it to describe another adult, but they still turn around and use it to describe us. Like we’re not going to notice. Mostly adults only talk about “children” when they’re trying to make us seem precious and defenseless anyway.

“It’s a lot for
anybody
to handle alone,” I said. “But…luckily, we met this Boov in Pennsylvania who…wasn’t all mean and stupid like the rest of them. He fixed up our car so the trip would be easier. It might have taken a little longer without him.”

Nobody said anything for a few breaths. The rustling leaves sounded like faint applause.

“Well,” said Vicki, “one of the guys will drive your car back, and we’ll all see about some dinner.”

“Why…why don’t we just leave the car here,” I said. I couldn’t mention the brakes—we were going to have to fix that problem on our own, and do it without letting these people know how handy my so-called little brother was with Boovish machines.

“It has a sign sticking out of it,” said a man. He tried to pull it out but snapped his hand back with a yelp and a spray of blue sparks.

“Yeah, it always has that,” I said. “Should we go?”

Vicki Lightbody had a baby daughter named Andromeda They mostly lived alone. I say “mostly,” because everyone else apparently came and went through Vicki’s apartment as they pleased, as though it were the only place in Roswell with a shower.

Vicki busied herself in her kitchenette while Andromeda sat in her high chair and banged a spoon against the tray. J.Lo and I shifted our feet, not knowing where to stand.