Stars we don't want to reach~
I stared in despair at the calendar I held. Three pages were filled with thirty to thirty-one red x’s. I flipped the now full page up and stuck the tack back in it, pinning it to its proper place on the kitchen wall. Three whole months, and they’d gone by in the blink of an eye. It didn’t help that here on earth everything was so much shorter than back home. Shorter days, shorter weeks, shorter months, shorter years. So much time had passed, but it barley seemed like yesterday that I’d been in Pixie’s fix-it room covered in grease.
I demurely wondered what had happened to the place. Was it still there, or had The Order destroyed it? What did it matter, at this rate we were never going to get back. I still hoped that somehow we could do the impossible, but hope was all I had. The odds were stacked against us, the likelihood of us finding a way home was less than one in a zillion.
Lion had been gone for the last month, with only a few intermittent phone calls to let us know he was no closer to finding an out, then before.
I hated this, never seeing Lion, Pixie fussing over Who, Who obsessed with books, and my mixed feelings for Chess ever present in the back of my mind. This wasn’t living, it was barely managing to survive.
Fed up, and tired of it all I went to my makeshift room, and flung myself on the bed, where I buried my face in a pillow, not wanting to have to look at the disfigured room.
Pixie, in the last month or so, had taken up an infatuation of a certain movie star. Of course now when it was a thorn in my side, she’d decided to start acting more like a girl.
She’d watched, and re-watched all of the movie’s the lady starred in, and unfortunately for me had covered the walls of our shared room with posters and pictures from magazines of the star.
To me they all kind of looked the same. Movie stars that is. Tall, skinny, fake smiles, unrealistic hair, skin, and teeth. Summed up, a larger then life Barbie doll.
Yep, that’s right. After three months on this stinkin’ planet, we’d learned a lot of lingo, and strange words humans had created. Like what a Barbie was. Not very relevant information, but still something I’d picked up along the way.
Another thing that was interesting to me was all of the different languages humans spoke in. I understood most of them, but still how had one species, come up with so many languages? It seemed to defy the point of ‘same species’, they couldn’t even understand each other.
I glanced at my watch, a bad habit I’d picked up, and sighed. Pixie and Who should be back soon.
This was like the tenth time Pixie had gone to try and meet ‘her star’. Who had opted to go with her, the whole safety in numbers spiel as an excuse. Lately Pixie and Who seemed to do everything together. It made me feel a little left out, but I was used to being by myself, and it was cute to watch. Chess on the other hand, seemed to seek seclusion. He spent most of his time not too far away, at a coffee shop with the lap top he’d bought, ‘surfing’ for any way to either contact our world, or get off of this one. He’d thought he was onto something with NASA, but it hadn’t worked out. Above all, he and Lion had to be careful not to get caught. If this world discovered us, we were doomed.
I broke out of my reverie, as I heard the front door open and voices. It sounded as if Chess had run into Pixie and Who on the way back, as I could hear all of them talking.
Pushing myself off of the bed, I headed out the door towards the main hall, coming face to face with a murderous looking Pixie.
“How did it . . .”
“Don’t ask.” she hissed, shoving past me, and slamming the door behind her.
“go.” I finished. “Obviously not well.” Curious, I headed for the kitchen, where I could hear the boys clattering around in the fridge.
“Ok, Who. What happened?” I rounded the corner, and two guilty faces looked up at me from raiding the fridge. I almost laughed at the expressions they managed to come up with.
Who cleared his throat, and indicated the way I’d just come. “Isn’t that a simple enough answer for you?”
“I get that she’s upset, but why? What happened?”
“Let’s just say that ‘her star’ wasn’t anything like what Pixie thought. The lady basically took one look at Pixie, and tore her down. From her clothes, and style to her hair and eyes. But believe me when I tell you, if that lady hadn’t had body guards she would never act again. Pixie put up a good fight, and probably would’ve won too, but I reminded her we needed to stay off of the radar. I sort of wish she hadn’t listened.” Who smirked.
I was glad to see that his spirits seemed to be staying up.
“I should go talk to her. . .” I speculated, “but I really don’t want to have my head ripped off right now, so I think I’ll let her cool her jets.”
“Don’t worry about it, she’ll perk right up once Lion gets here.” Chess informed me.
“He’s coming back?”
“Yeah, he called this afternoon and said he’d be back tonight.” Chess said, around a mouthful of potato chips.
“Chess! You could’ve warned me, now I have to go shopping and come up with something nice for dinner.” I huffed in dismay.
“Don’t worry, I’ll help you go shopping. We can get it done in half the time.” Chess offered.
I rolled my eyes. “Thanks, but no thanks. With you shopping it would take twice as long, and we’d spend three times as much money, what with all of the junk food you buy.”
Chess feigned a shocked expression. “That hurts Key, that you think so low of me.”
“Can it, cracker boy. You can stay here and keep out of trouble.” I admonished.
“As you wish,” Chess gave a mock bow.
I ignored him and, grabbing my purse off of its hook, headed for the door.
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