I didn’t expect how early Mom would have to leave when she took the late shift. She would depart in the early evening, leaving me alone in the apartment and only returning two hours past midnight.

            “If anybody knocks, don’t open the door,” she lectured to me the first time she had to go. “Don’t even come out. Stay in one of the rooms and wait until you’re sure whoever’s there is gone.” She was wearing a swinging lanyard around her neck with her picture on it. The light placed in front of her in the picture made her look small, all the stray hairs like black worms snaking off of her shoulders.

            On those nights I was left alone, I rarely went to sleep before midnight. I would lie on my mattress and look up at the ceiling, counting the chips in the paint as if they were stars. Sometimes I would talk to myself, repeating conversations that I wished I was having. It was lonely, having to be there all night.

Whenever Mom got home, I would turn myself away from the door and closed my eyes. I could hear her standing over me as the bottom of her shoes hit the wooden floor. She would watch me, make sure I was still there, and then fall to her own slumber.

            It was about a month in when it happened. There was a knocking, deep and heavy. I froze in my blanket. It came again, three knocks that made me think whoever was outside was using their head. The bottoms of my feet felt frostbitten in the cold air, but I didn’t pull them back under the blanket. I thought that if I moved even the slightest, I would be heard. The knocking stopped eventually, disappearing somewhere else into our building. Even still, it took minutes for my heartbeat to calm.

            Mom came home even later than usual that night, but I wasn’t pretending to be asleep when she returned; instead, I jumped out of bed and ran to her, wrapping my arms around her waist.

            “There was someone here,” I whispered. “At the door.” Mom looked surprised at first, then worried, crouching down to me.

            “Are you hurt?” she asked. She spread her hands around my face, pushing back my hair to check if I had any wounds. “You didn’t answer it, right?”

            “No!” I shook my head vigorously. “I stayed still. Completely still! The whole time.” Mom exhaled, satisfied that I seemed fine.

            “That’s my girl.” She made me sleep in the same room as her that night, for fear that the knocking would come back. Neither of us managed to fall asleep.

            It was only a few days afterward that Mom came home with somebody else, bringing the man to me and introducing him. He was there to watch over me on some nights, to make sure I was safe.

            “Call him Mr. Phang,” Mom insisted. The man only laughed in response, the type of laugh that echoed through the room and filled the empty air.

            “You don’t need to do that,” he said. “Just call me Zane.” That wasn’t his real name, I don’t think, but it was what he wanted me to call him.

            Zane was the type of guy I imagined people wanted around at parties, always having something to talk about that he would make you want to talk about as well. When he spoke, I could hear that he had the same accent as Mom, although it wasn’t as pronounced. I didn’t have that accent. Mom had ensured that I learned to speak without it.

            He came twice a week at first. He helped me kill the time before falling asleep; whether it was help with homework, drawing, or friends, he was happy to assist. Sometimes he brought a small device, black and metal and square-shaped. He opened it up, revealing a screen on the inside.

            “Want to watch a movie?” he asked. Laid out on the table was something that resembled a book, except the pages were plastic sleeves filled with CDs. I flipped through, finding one CD that pictured two cartoon characters I had seen on another kid’s lunchbox at school. I didn’t know what they were or what the movie was about, just that they existed enough for somebody else to care about them.

            “That one.” I pointed. “It was on Lacy’s lunchbox. She says its her favourite show.”

            “Your friend from school? This is probably a different version than she’s used to. It’s older.” I inspected it further and realized he was right. The characters had suffered small changes from their appearance on the disc to Lacy’s lunchbox.

            “I know kids that are your age don’t use these anymore,” Zane said, “but this is how I watched movies. I collected them.” He held up the CD I had chosen between two fingers, moving it so I could see how thin the disc was.

            “I know what a CD is,” I huffed. Zane looked a little younger than Mom; around his thirties. He wasn’t that old, but I suppose it was still three times my age.

            On the nights that Zane would stay, I fell asleep. I laid in my bed and could hear him just outside the door. It was always a rustling noise that reminded me of a typewriter, all harsh and clacking and erratic. Despite it all, the sound became oddly comforting. It was a strange sort of lullaby, sending me to sleep every night. Zane was always gone in the mornings; he would leave when Mom returned.

            There was one night where I couldn’t sleep. My thoughts were racing too fast, reinvigorating my mind whenever it started to drift off. I got out of bed and inched the door open. Zane was watching a video on a computer, blurry with a news headline streaming under it. I wandered over to him to look at it further.

            “What are you watching?” I piped up. Zane swiveled, surprised I was behind him.

            “It’s late! Why are you still up?” He had recently cut his hair, a jet-black wave across his head.

            “I couldn’t fall asleep.”

            “Well,” Zane offered, “do you want anything to help?”

            “Can I see what you’re doing?” The computer was still playing the same video. I could see little dots in it that were people, scampering along a road.

            “It’s silly.” For a moment, he reminded me of the kids in school, how they got embarrassed. He reluctantly dragged a stool over for me to sit. The video was so grainy I could barely tell what was happening.

A thin street cut through a field of grass. Two cars were haphazardly parked in the middle of the street. The people that must’ve once been inside the cars were now splayed along the cement, running for their lives. At the top of the screen was a light that shone white and blue, filling in the whole sky. The headline was written in all caps:

ALIEN SIGHTING NEAR RURAL STREET.

“That’s an alien?” I asked. It was so blurry to me that it could’ve been anything.

“Heh!” Zane chuckled. “Probably not. Looks more like the parachute of a popped weather balloon.” He leaned in close to me and paused the video. “Trust me, I’ve seen a lot of these. Eventually you learn to spot the fakes.”

“If you watch a lot of them,” I clarified, “do you think they’re real?” Zane eyed me suspiciously, as if he was trying to find out what game I was playing.

“Do you?” he replied. I thought about a few weeks ago, when Lacy was telling me about how big space was. All that emptiness, and nothing to fill it. I looked back at Zane, meeting his eyes.

“Definitely.”

Zane’s expression dissolved into a smile. The way he smiled would make anyone happy. “Me too.”

He positioned the computer between the two of us and showed me more videos of fake alien sightings. Each time, he would point out what was wrong with them. I got fairly good at it too, beating him to the punch on a couple. The worst one was a man with a camcorder showing an alien body that was obviously made of papier-mâché and paint. It was completely rigid, unmoving and tough to the touch.

“Look at the eyes!” Zane exclaimed, wheezing. They were two black stones, different in shape and size, that the man had stuck into his art piece. Even though it was clearly fake, the man in the video held the alien close to him. It was still his creation, the whole video a work he had dedicated himself to.

At some point, we heard the sound of Mom coming through the hallway. We could tell it was her because she was talking with someone on the phone, her voice cutting through the silence outside. Zane froze, eyes widening.

“Shit!” He covered his mouth. “Sorry.” I giggled. “Get to bed, quick. If she asks, you fell asleep at the normal time.” I scurried back to my room and dove under the blanket.

Mom and Zane chatted outside for a bit before he left. She came in to check on me, the sliver of light from outside the door stabbing into the room. I didn’t move a muscle while she stood there. I was huddled up in the blankets, suspended in one position, stiff as layers of papier-mâché.

━

Zane started coming more after that. There were more times he would come than not. I started disliking the nights I was alone even more, with nothing to fill the hours before I went to sleep. I realized soon that Mom wasn’t paying him anything. He came because he wanted to. I wondered how they knew each other, but never bothered to ask.

He worked at a convenience store down the street. Sometimes he would have to stay late, only getting to the apartment after Mom had already left. On those days, he usually brought me some candy he had stashed from the store.

            Mom didn’t have people other than Zane over often, so I was surprised when she told me there would be a group of people visiting that night. Zane came over early and helped Mom prepare food.

            While everyone was here, I stayed behind the kitchen counter and snacked on the leftovers. They didn’t pay much attention to me, but I watched them carefully. They formed a tightly bound circle; Mom had dragged all the chairs in the apartment around the couch to give everyone a place to sit.

            There was one anomaly. Zane was sitting a little out of position. His attitude, too, was delayed. The expressions he made were a split second behind everyone else’s, made to match theirs. People laughed when he made jokes, but each time he said something it felt calculated, unnatural.

            I left the room and took Zane’s computer with me, shielding myself from the adults with a wooden door. I could still hear them on the other side. The computer was slick and grey, shimmering in the light. I had learned by now that there was no password on it.

            I spent the night watching videos of aliens on Zane’s computer, keeping the sound off so the adults outside wouldn’t hear me. I had to imagine what it sounded like, all the people making a perfect o with their mouths as they screamed.

            Most of the sightings looked like something I could’ve done with a bad camera, a few flashlights, and any dark winter night. It was only natural that the ones I couldn’t explain so easily piqued my interest, grasping my attention and keeping it. When it was getting late and the adults outside had still not stopped talking, I grabbed a dusty notebook from a drawer and began recording the more interesting videos. The best ones were the briefest – just a fleeting glimpse of light, sound, or shadow that suggested something might be out there, calling to me.

            My journaling and the talking outside continued long into the night, until I was rubbing my eyes to ward off the sleep. I rubbed them so hard that when I opened them there were colourful patterns on the ceiling, flowing and changing like a kaleidoscope. They were dripping down, taking me away, closing my eyes and keeping them shut.

By the next morning, they were all gone. Zane had taken his computer, leaving me wrapped up in the dark.

            I only showed the notebook to Zane a couple nights later, taking it out from a drawer and presenting it to him. He began to flip through the pages; I occupied myself with a puzzle. I liked jigsaw puzzles, learning how each piece connected to the other. People told me to start at the edges, filling out the sides first, but I preferred to start in the middle and branch out from there.

            Occasionally, Zane would react to some of the pages, chuckling or nodding his head like he agreed with what I wrote. Although I tried to focus on the puzzle, it was hard. Every time Zane made a noise I would listen intently, trying to discern his perception of my writing. I wanted him to like it as much as I did.

            “This is nice!” he said. “Real nice. You’ve got it in you to find a real alien someday.”

            “Really?”

            “I’d bet on it.” Zane closed the book, the papers slapping into each other. “And I have something to give to you too. Bridging our interests, you know?” He stuck his hand into his bag and tugged out a dark blue box. I heard rattling inside. “I’ve had this for a while,” he explained, “but I thought I would give it to you.” I wondered what it could be, trying to imagine what would fit inside the box.

            Zane opened it, revealing the countless little puzzle pieces inside. There was a picture in it as well. Four aliens and a spaceship. Of course, I thought, what else would he give to me? I grabbed the gift eagerly and rooted through it.

            “It’s amazing!” I cheered. “Are you really sure I can have this?” For a moment, his grip tightened, not fully ready to give the puzzle away. I could understand that – I knew Zane’s love of all things extraterrestrial. To gift something so close to you was hard.

            “Yeah,” he answered, steadying himself. “Definitely. I’ve barely used it, anyway. Give it a try.”

            I turned the box upside down, allowing the small jigsaw pieces inside to fall out. Starting at the centre, the first two pieces I connected formed the edge of a spaceship. It was one of those circular ones you see in movies with all the lights dilating around the ends. I examined the picture on the box, finding what pieces I needed to expand the puzzle. Zane continued to page through my journal. He took a pencil and started to add his own comments, scribbling in little notes here and there. He reminded me of Lacy. I could almost see him sitting with her and I, all of us kids, losing ourselves in whatever we were discussing.

            I had gotten good at puzzles. It only took me a little while to get a good chunk going, the entirety of the spaceship filled out. I went for the aliens next. They were long and lanky, grey and green. At the end of their thin arms were long fingers, like dangling ribbons. Huge bug eyes dotted their heads. Looking at the eyes, I noticed something off.

            “Hey.” I poked Zane, taking his eyes away from the journal. “Why is this one different?” One of the aliens in the picture was off. It had two eyes instead of three, and they were smaller, lighter.

            “Huh. I don’t know.” Zane brought his eyes close to the picture on the box. “Doesn’t look like a printing mistake.”

            “Then why would they make one different?”

            “Who knows? Maybe it’s a different type of alien. Or maybe it wasn’t always an alien.”

            “What?”

            “Maybe it was something else. I think if you stayed with aliens long enough, you would become one.”

            I looked at him quizzically. “I don’t know about that.”

            “Well, not completely turn into one,” Zane conceded. “But change, just a little bit. That’s why he has two eyes.” He put his finger on the alien’s head, blocking it from my sight. “He used to be a human.”

            “I wouldn’t like to become an alien,” I said. A laugh burst out of Zane’s mouth after that, the type of laughter that was unexpected but was meant to cover up something else. Mom had laughed that laugh many times.

            “Trust me, you don’t need to worry about that,” Zane assured me. “But…I don’t think it’d be too bad. Racing through space, the whole universe at your fingertips. And sometimes, you could contact other planets and see if they responded.”

            I couldn’t agree with that, but I didn’t say anything to it, returning to the puzzle and skirting around the section with the strange alien. When every other spot was filled and it came time to fill in that part, I found the puzzle was missing a few pieces. Some bits of the corners, a chunk of a distant planet, and the alien’s face. All gone.

            “Sorry,” Zane said. “I thought I had all the pieces.” I wasn’t disappointed. If anything, I was glad that I couldn’t finish the last alien. I didn’t want to fill in the face. I thought that if I did so, I would seal its fate: stuck on a distant planet, warped by some unfamiliar force.

━

Mom was starting to seem more and more tired with each night she went to work. Sometimes she wouldn’t even make it to bed before passing out, and I would find her asleep on the couch in the mornings. One evening, before she went to work, I tried to help out.

“I made you coffee, Mom.” I offered her the silver cup she always brought with her, filled with instant coffee. Nobody had taught me how to make it. I had learned from watching Mom every night, imitating the actions her hands took. She accepted the cup with a grateful but confused expression. It was the face you make when someone speaks to you in a foreign language. Before I could think about it too much, Zane burst through the door. Mom had given him a key by now.

“Here, thanks,” Zane said. He returned a plastic container that he had taken a while ago to my mother. She accepted it wordlessly, walking out the apartment door and leaving only a breath of air in her wake.

Zane always brought a black bag, but this time he had two of them. The pockets of his cargo shorts were stuffed, the laces of his shoes tightly knotted. Once Mom left, he set out his belongings on the kitchen counter and organized them, checking each bag.

“What’s happening? Are you going somewhere?” I hurried to Zane and fiddled with some of the things on the counter. There was a map, marked with pencil crayons.

He looked around like he was suspicious Mom was hiding somewhere, watching him. “Actually,” he murmured, “maybe. I caught wind of some aliens being seen around the city.”

I might as well have had stars in my eyes. “Really? How do they predict when it happens? Close to here?” In all the videos I had seen, I realized I never bothered to consider how it might feel to be there, really there. There were so many things that could be lost in the transition to pixels on a screen.

“You bet,” Zane said, smiling. “They’re following a pattern of sightings. And I’m not missing my chance for anything. Even if it turns out to be a sham.”

“There might be nothing like it again,” I interjected. Zane smiled.

“You know, if I told your mother about this, she’d be mad. She always tells me to let go of things like these. But you understand, I know you do.” Some snacks from the convenience store were pulled out and placed on the counter for me. “You’re fine if I leave you here tonight?”

My grin faltered. I did not want to be left here like I was every night by my mother. “No! No, you can’t leave me here.” I wasn’t sure what to say, my lips blurting out the first thing that came to me. “Take me with you! I want to see the aliens too.”

Zane paused to think on the idea. “Huh. You know, that’s not too bad an idea. It’s not like there’ll be anything dangerous. Hopefully. The spot’s right next to the city outskirts.” He passed me one of his bags, a small and square thing that I could sling around my shoulder. “Take that and get ready. If we hurry, we can get back before it gets too cold.”

I had to contain my laughter as the two of us departed, locking the apartment and scurrying out of the apartment building. The joy, mixed with anticipation, felt almost contagious. I searched the bag while we waited for the bus, finding everything he had stashed inside there. A Swiss Army Knife, bug spray, some pocket change.

“Are there binoculars in there?” Zane asked. “You’ll need binoculars.” Digging through the bag, I couldn’t find anything.

“Nope.” Zane pushed his eyebrows together, taking the bag from me and looking through it himself.

“Okay,” he said, “we’ll need to make a stop. It’s no good if we find something and it’s too far away for us to see it.” I nodded. That made sense to me.

I had gone on the bus with Mom a few times before, but it had never been this packed. Zane and I squeezed in close to the entrance and I gripped a bright yellow pole. He consulted his map the whole ride, scribbling notes into the paper. I tried to be like him and focus on the aliens, but I kept returning to the idea of Mom joining us. It would be nice, I thought, to have both her and Zane together, me in the middle.

            Zane pressed the red button and held my hand to guide me off the bus. We entered another apartment building, riding the elevator up.

            “My roommate is sleeping, so we need to be quiet,” Zane told me. He slowly unlocked the door to the apartment, the darkness on the other side peeking through. His apartment was smaller than ours, but what made it different was how bare it was. I don’t know what exactly caused it to feel so empty, but there was something. Like I had entered some distant dimension, far away from anything else.

            Zane crept into a room close to the entrance, where a man much younger than Zane was passed out on the bed. While he was in there, I looked into another room that must have been Zane’s. It, too, felt cold, lonely. That must’ve been why he was so eager to spend nights at our place, to find the closeness that was absent here.

            “Got them,” Zane whispered, stuffing a pair of binoculars into the black bag. We returned to the bus, but the air from the apartment followed us. It was that freezing winter air, the type that bit at our fingertips. This time, the bus ride was much longer. The sprawl of the city faded away until we got off at a stop that faced a long, empty street.

            “Along here?” I mumbled.

            “Just a little walk. Close to that mountain.” Zane pointed to a jagged stone in the distance. “Sorry, is it cold? You can wear my jacket.”

            “No,” I said, firm. “No, it’s fine. Let’s go. They might be there right now!”

            We followed the street, the occasional car flying past us and putting us in the headlights, until the sidewalk opened into a field. The mountain, once so far away, felt closer than ever. When I looked up at it, I could swear it was slowly lurching toward me. Zane dropped his bag and looked around.

            “Nobody else here, I guess. Human or alien.” He chuckled, though there was nobody to hear his joke.

            “What do we do now?” I hadn’t expected to find an alien sitting here, waiting for us, but I wasn’t exactly sure what we had to do to find one.

            “Grab the binoculars and start looking near the mountain. I’ll scan around us.” He pulled out an old digital camera. “I have this, too, for when we see something. And I brought your journal.” He handed it to me, the binding a little wet. I accepted it gladly, wondering if I would be able to fill some new pages tonight.

            My eyelashes pushed against the lenses of the binoculars, making the edges black when I looked through them. What I could see was clear; each ray of light refracting off the tip of the mountain was visible. I tried to find things I had seen in the videos – strange lights in the sky, a flash of a spaceship hidden behind the clouds. I didn’t see anything. Maybe the aliens were watching us, just as we were them. Or maybe they were already on the planet, standing in the grasses from a distance away.

            When some time had passed and I had still not found anything, I began to notice the cold creeping into my skin. My hair had been braided, but the wind was pushing it against the back of my neck, the atmosphere sucking the strength required to hold the binoculars out of my arms.

            “Zane,” I called, “did you find anything?”

            “No, not yet” he responded. He had taken out everything from his bag by now, all trying to find what the aliens were supposed to be.

            “It’s really cold,” I said. “And late.”

            “Let’s stay a little bit longer. Just in case.” The camera was still clutched in his hands, huddled close to his chest to protect it from the wind.

            The wind picked up, but the field remained empty. I had given up on the binoculars, dropping them next to the backpack. My journal remained unopened. Zane still stood, defiant.

            “I don’t get it,” he said, frustrated. “They were supposed to be here tonight. Not tomorrow or yesterday, just tonight.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets and looked up. There were no stars in the sky. Even the night was mocking our search for a light.

            “Can we go home?” I pleaded, tugging on Zane’s jacket. “I’m tired.”

            “There has to be something,” he said, as if I was invisible. “Something else out there.”

            “Please, Zane, can we go back?” He pushed my hand away, sending me stumbling backward.

            “There can’t be nothing, right? There can’t be no one.” He finally turned around, the shine of the moon lighting up his eyes. They were teary. I wasn’t sure what to do. I couldn’t imagine crying about aliens. As much as I loved Zane, I couldn’t understand what he was feeling in that moment.

            I gently took the camera from his hands and stashed it in the bag, along with the rest of the things we had brought. Our hands connected, though I wasn’t sure if he took mine or if it was the other way around.

            We took the same bus back, the clock stumbling us into the morning of the next day. There were fewer people on the way back, and enough space for both Zane and I to sit. The whole ride, he didn’t stop looking at the map of the city plastered to the bus wall.

━

Zane had gotten quiet ever since that night. His words didn’t have the same tone they once did, all light and teasing. They were weighed down now, their wings gone. He would come earlier than he did before, spending time with Mom and I before she left. I liked it when the three of us were together, but it was off. Zane carried with him the cold air from the apartment, from the night.

            I was alone one afternoon, playing with a bracelet Lacy had given me, when I heard three knocks at the door, deep and heavy. At least it wasn’t the night. The bright beams of the sun filled me with boldness.

            “Hello?” a voice on the other side called out. “It’s me. I forgot my key.” The voice seemed familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. I stretched to reach the peephole.

            “Zane!” I could see him standing on the other end of the hallway. Through the peephole lens, his head and eyes were magnified, making him look inhuman. The bright light above him emphasized the shadows in his face. I giggled as I let him in.

            “What are you doing here?” In the almost year he had been coming, I couldn’t remember a time he had shown up so early. He stepped into the room.

            Zane’s hair was wildly out of place, his shirt crumpled and untucked. “Is your mom here?” he asked.

            “No.” She had left an hour prior. “But she said she would come back before work.”

            “Oh.” He was carrying a black backpack, stuffed to the brim, some of the zippers still undone. “Well, I just wanted to tell her something.”

            “I can tell her. When she gets back.”

            Zane was standing in front of the door. There was a droplet of hesitation visible on his face. “I just wanted to make sure where I was dropping you off.”

            “What?”

            “She told me to take you to get a parcel. She got caught up in traffic and can’t get back before work, so she asked me.”

            “Oh. What’s in the parcel?”

            Zane’s lips curved ever-so-slightly upward in an attempt at a smile. “It’s a surprise, of course.”

            I was getting excited now, the thoughts of what there could be racing through my mind. I had asked Mom for many things over the past few months. Maybe she had gotten one of them.

            “Let’s go!” I said excitedly. I slipped on my shoes and jacket, but Zane put his hand on my shoulder.

            “We might be there a while. Bring something with you.” He walked over to the kitchen counter. “How about this?” he said, grabbing the puzzle of the aliens that he had given me. I hadn’t touched it since that first time I solved it.

            “Sure,” I said. I didn’t really care.

            “Take this too.” He gave me a bottle of water before shoving the puzzle into the already stuffed bag.

            Zane trailed behind me as we descended the stairs, walked onto the sidewalk, and waited at the bus stop. The bus wasn’t too full this time, enough for both of us to sit down. Across from us, I could see our reflections in the bus window. The light was warped in a way that Zane’s eyes were reflected, giving him another pair, but mine weren’t. Zane was staring at the window too, but I knew he wasn’t looking at the reflection. His vision was somewhere else. The bus ride was long, so I tried to pass the time.

            “I thought you were working right now,” I said. “It’s early.”

            “I don’t need to worry about that anymore.” Zane’s response was cold and sharp, bringing an end to the conversation. Despite it, his face looked like he wanted me to tell me more.

            At some point, Zane grabbed my hand and led me off the bus. We were stopped someplace like we had been on the night we went looking for aliens, where the city buildings were fewer.

            “Is the post station out here?” I questioned. It seemed strange to me, even then.

            “It’s not the usual one. Your mom had to get it shipped from a pretty far place.”

            “Oh. Okay.” He was making me uneasy, how he refused to look at me. He put his hands on my back, ushering me to move forward.

            “Come on, we need to hurry.” I started along the sidewalk, Zane still behind me. A few minutes in it began to drizzle, pelting my hair with small droplets of rain.

            I don’t know exactly how long we walked for, but it was long. My feet got tired, but Zane’s audible breath behind me pushed me forward. Every so often he would hurry me more with a let’s go or walk faster, his voice cracking more each time he spoke.

            A bus stop appeared in the distance, the only thing we had seen in at least an hour. We could see a bus there, and Zane began to sprint to get it, but we were too far away. It left a trail of smoke behind it as it drove off.

            “No!” Zane shouted. He turned back to me. “We need to wait longer now, but we’re done walking. Just wait by this bus stop.” I reluctantly shuffled over to the stop. The sky had darkened, only a few traces of leftover light peaking out from the horizon.

            When the sound of a motor became audible, Zane ran over to me and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Come here,” he whispered, veering me behind the bus station and out of sight from the street. He waited until the sounds were gone to come back out. With each new car that happened to pass us, he did the same thing. The roiling in my stomach intensified each time. The night had completely taken over, cloaking us in shadow.

            The fifth time we heard a motor, Zane poked his head out to see if it was the bus before pivoting and rushing the both of us behind the station. This time, instead of waiting, he pushed me forward.

            “Run.” He said it quickly, looking behind him. I stood in place. “We need to go!”

            “I…I don’t want to go.” The headlights of the coming car were visible now, a beam of light that shone right onto me, the way the lights from alien ships were always drawn. Zane was right out of it, still in the shadow.

            “Don’t you trust me? We need to run, can’t you see?” He held onto one of my sleeves and tried to drag me along with him.

            “No!” I screamed. It was unclear, even to me, which question I was responding to. There were multiple cars coming, I could tell now.

            “Just go!” Zane yelled. His voice shattered, broken pieces of glass. With one desperate, sudden movement, he picked me up, his arms lifting me off the ground and carrying me through the air. I saw the cars coming over the street. It wasn’t a bus. They were cop cars, the sirens now turned on.

            I flailed my arms and legs against Zane as he ran. “Let me down!” Before we could get far, I kneed him near the chin and he tossed me down. My skull hit the cement as I fell, my leg scratched through my skirt by the sidewalk. I scrambled away from Zane as soon as I got my bearings.

            The police cars had caught up to us by now. The throbbing of my head was only worsened by the sirens, blaring their piercing alarms into the night air. The strobing red and blue lights compounded my already blurring vision. My hands scraped against the sidewalk as I backed away.

            Zane was standing there on the sidewalk. He had stopped moving, given up on escaping himself, much less with me. The gleaming of the police cars seemed to warp around him, his figure crossing in and out of itself. His hair was whipped by the wind into a radial around his head. I looked at his face and I swear I could see, clear as day, a third eye, right in the centre of his forehead.

            Several people were shouting. They were running too, barging into frame, restraining Zane as he buckled over. Among the police was Mom, sprinting over to me, cradling me in her arms, bringing me close and telling me how sorry she was. I heard everything at the same time, and because of that I couldn’t pick out anything in particular. All the sounds and sights narrowed into a wormhole around me, Zane on one side and me on the other. I was moving away from him faster and faster, shooting away until I couldn’t see him anymore.

━

 A couple months after we moved out of our old apartment, Mom insisted I get in the car with her to get groceries. On the list was a single item: baby spinach. We needed it that night. She hated to let me out of her sight nowadays, her fear only intensifying in the time since the abduction.

            “Couldn’t you have left me home?” I asked. “It’s not like I’d be alone.” We had needed to move back in with Mom’s parents since she had got a new job. She said it was worth it, to be sure she spent the nights with me.

            “No,” Mom said curtly. I knew there was no use arguing with her. I had started to doubt she would ever let me be alone again.

            Mom didn’t like to talk about Zane, so I had tried to figure out what happened to him himself, which jail he had gone to. I knew I would never see him again. The only thing Mom told me was that Zane had been evicted, right before he had tried to take me. She refused to think about why he did what he did, but I was certain I knew. Whenever he talked about aliens, he always imagined them in groups, accompanying them together through space. He was trying to do the same with me, I suppose. In another world, I might’ve gone with him.

            When you say the word abductor, it has a weight to it. A weight that I couldn’t associate with Zane. Mom said that it meant you couldn’t really know anyone, and that was why she had to keep me so close to her. I didn’t see it like that. I knew that Zane was an abductor, but if you had asked me in the days before it happened, I would’ve said, wholeheartedly, that I loved him the way I loved Mom. It was strange to know that, and even stranger to not know whether I still loved him now.

            I looked in the car window, seeing my reflection next to Mom’s. I didn’t look like her, I knew that. We had different hair, noses, voices. She didn’t want to admit it, but someone I did look like was Zane. Sometimes, I would look in my journal of aliens to read the notes Zane had made, see the picture of him I had glued inside. That was how I knew that I resembled him.

            Mom was staring straight ahead, her eyes affixed to the road. Her side of the street was almost pitch black, but mine was filled with things. There were other people, cars, buildings, all living outside the car window.

At home, I had the puzzle Zane had given me, the one with the aliens and the spaceship. Looking back at it, I thought Zane might have been right, about how a human could change to be like aliens if they spent enough time with them. The streetlights outside flew past the car window in sparkling blurs. They were fleeting, the way memories were. Like spaceships. Shooting stars.