Chapter 7
DENIAL, SHMENIAL
In the morning light, everything about my night before felt like a dream. A very bad, very embarrassing dream. The kind where you’re walking around naked or all your teeth fall out.
Except worse. It was the kind where I’d acted like a crazy person in front of Sky. Twice. And it wasn’t a dream.
If I hadn’t been missing my car and sporting a gash on my knee, I might’ve been able to convince myself…but no such luck, Chuck.
It’d happened. The floating orb. The car accident. Me, you know…laughing in Sky’s face when he offered me his phone number. I cringed.
At least the pale blue sky came with a surprisingly warm morning sun.
Its rays beat down on my shoulders as I made short work of the mowing.
I inhaled the sharp scent of cut grass and gasoline, held it, then exhaled, forcing away the mortifying memory.
The heavy drone vibrated through my palms while I sheared another straight line through the front yard.
It helped that I’d managed to reason out the entire mysterious-light-in-the-road incident.
After failing to drown myself in the shower last night, I’d gone down a research rabbit hole on ball lightning, and now I felt moderately convinced my sanity was intact.
There were actual documented cases of ball lightning occurring outside of storms, and a late-autumn storm had passed through One Willow yesterday afternoon, bringing the warm front I was enjoying now.
Ball lightning. A perfectly plausible explanation. Atmospheric phenomenon.
Science. Boom. Mic drop.
Any lingering details that didn’t quite fit could easily have been tricks of the imagination. Exhaustion. I’d pulled a double after a two-hour class. In the middle of cramming for midterms.
No UFOs here. Suck it, Kelly. This was just science and maybe a touch of sleep deprivation.
As for Faith, my brother already had her in the shop. He’d even borrowed the tow truck from his boss, Harry.
I’d handled it. All of it. I felt…better.
Mostly. A few things still smarted.
Grimacing, I pushed the temperamental mower back up the hill, the drone of its blades drowning out the pop song blasting from my earbuds. Too bad they couldn’t drown out the last piece of my sucky night.
I’d turned down his number.
I’d literally said, I don’t want your phone number. To Sky Acosta.
My insides curled like a dying spider.
I could’ve done without that particular memory in the clarity of morning. But no, there it was again. His face. The way he’d stared in utter confusion. The sheer bewilderment.
He probably didn’t get turned down often. Not with a face like that. Not with those arms.
And then I’d gone and bolted from his car like he was the crazy one.
I resisted the urge to facepalm, veering into the next neatly spaced row.
Would he talk to me at work tonight? Or would he go back to vague smiles and polite nods?
Wednesday nights were usually slow, more chatting than serving, and he had said he was working the late shift. I was closing, too. So that meant…
Yep. Interaction was inevitable. And so were the nerves that came with it.
Oh hey, Sky. It’s me, Raven. You know, the girl who ranted about aliens in the prep closet, threw herself in front of your SUV, and then ran away in terror when you offered your phone number? Yeah, that girl. Can we hit undo on all that?
I squeezed my eyes shut and shoved the mower faster. Was he the type to tell people what had happened? Would I show up to Oasis and hear Tony reenacting my panicked death scream in the kitchen?
The thought didn’t quite congeal. I didn’t think Sky was that guy.
Honestly, he’d probably just act like nothing had happened. Keep to himself behind the bar, pouring drinks with quiet professionalism. And I’d avoid eye contact like a boss.
That was the plan. Forced smiles. Feigned chill.
I could do that. I had practice.
That was it. We would go back to normal. He’d forget my name again, and I’d pretend I wasn’t one awkward outburst away from a restraining order.
With that plan in place, I felt noticeably lighter as I finished the front yard and moved to the small patch in back. I’d be done before Bob even got back from his diner breakfast.
Humming along to my peppy music, I let myself zone out to the mowing vibes.
If only forgetting it all were that easy.
“Did you hear about the UFO lights last night?” Amelia asked as she plopped down across from me at the picnic table I’d claimed outside Kepler Hall. Her Coach bag clanged on the metal surface, but I barely heard it.
The words sank in. I inhaled a mouthful of rapidly cooling coffee and immediately sputtered, hacking.
When I could breathe again, I gaped at her through watering eyes. “What? What lights?”
All around us, TWU students lounged in scattered clusters across the courtyard, hemmed in by the four main buildings. It was a beautiful fall day, warm enough that I’d tied my emergency cardigan around my waist.
Now, though, goosebumps prickled across my arms. I fought off a shiver.
“The spooky UFO lights.” Amelia wiggled her fingers in mock-suspense, showing off her new red manicure. She snickered and tossed her hair. “Apparently, people saw them all over the country roads last night?”
The last bit came out question-marked, like she wanted to bait me. Her grin said as much.
“Ball lightning,” I muttered, setting my cup down a little too hard.
Her smug grin faltered. “What?”
“I said, it was probably ball lightning.”
“Ri-ight.” She tapped her nails on her cup and studied me with narrowed eyes. “You look tired. Up late thinking about a certain enigmatic bartender, Rachel?”
“Ha. Funny.” If only she knew. “Hardly. I’ve got midterms and work all week.”
“You’ve got Saturday off, though. Our plans aren’t until later that night. Just spend the day being a lazy bum.”
“Yeah, but I’m going to see Mom…and Dustin and Lisa.”
I checked my phone instinctively, scanning for a text back from my brother. Nothing yet. I’d sent a groveling thank-you along with a promise of cheesecake this weekend. He and Harry had dropped Faith off at Bob’s just in time for me to make it to class.
Turned out the culprit was a faulty battery.
Which didn’t make sense; it was less than a year old.
It wasn’t like I’d left it running for long in that ditch.
But Dustin had looked everything over and had only found the electrical relay issues, the slipping transmission, and the slow oil leak.
Which meant there was nothing new wrong with my car.
The point was it’d been a fluke, and Faith was still kicking. We both were. It was over.
Ish.
I leaned back, twirling my pencil while pretending to read my notes.
“Earth to Rae!” Amelia snapped her fingers in front of my face.
“What? Sorry.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah! Just tired. What were you saying?”
She sipped her latte and leaned her elbow on the table again.
“Just that even the One Willow PD got called. They mentioned it at the nail salon this morning. The lights, I mean. A dozen people called them in. And a bunch more only admitted to seeing them after hearing other people did. They were worried they’d sound crazy or something.
” She waved a hand as if that was the ridiculous part of everything she’d just said.
“But now it’s like the whole town saw them.
People are saying it has to do with the base. ”
“That doesn’t make any sense. The base is mostly shut down. Has been since Dad worked there.” I waited a beat and summoned my most casual tone. “But what were these lights supposed to look like?”
Amelia paused, eyeing me like she was deciding how far to push. “Most people said yellow and pink, some said blue and green. Big glowing ball. But get this…” She suddenly dropped her elbow and leaned in.
I abandoned all pretense and bent forward, too.
“There’s a farmer out on 100E who said he saw something. Not just the lights. Said it was silver and shaped like a saucer.”
I stared at her before a snicker escaped. Then another. I laughed until I snorted and had to stop to breathe. “You’re telling me people are claiming they saw flying saucers now?”
Amelia arched a microbladed brow. “I’m just telling you what I heard.”
“Come on, A.” I sighed and clasped my hands together. “Weird light phenomenon? Sure. I’ll buy that. But flying saucers? Seriously?”
“I’m just relaying what I heard while getting my nails done!
” She shoved her phone across the table, pointing at it.
I glanced at it long enough to register the grainy video of a blurry ball of light against a dark background before looking away.
She jabbed a finger in the screen’s direction.
“You have to admit—it looks legitimate. And it’s a little creepy how things have been glitching.
TVs. Phones. Radios. And then these lights? ”
“There’s a solar storm happening—”
“Yeah, yeah. Magnetosphere, blah blah, electromagnetic interference. But what if it’s not that?”
I groaned. “Please don’t tell me you’ve gone full Kelly.”
“Is it really so hard to believe there could be something else out there?”
“No.” I shook my head vehemently. “Not at all. It makes total sense that something else is out there. Space is huge. The universe is infinite. It’d be dumb to think we’re the only ones floating around out here.”
“Okay,” Amelia said slowly, sipping her latte while she studied me over the rim. She swallowed then cradled the foam cup. “So your problem is just…what? That they’re here?”
“Yes. Exactly. Why would they waste their time on Earth? We can’t even get to Mars.
We’re still debating if aliens could exist. What’s so interesting about humanity that someone would travel lightyears—like, thousands and thousands of lightyears—just to…
mess with our internet and light up some cornfields? ”
The more I spelled it out, the better I felt.
It made no sense. Aliens being here made no logical sense.
Sure, I’d freaked out last night, but that had been in the moment. After a double shift. In the dark. In a ditch. Now, in the daylight, with coffee in my veins and Google in my pocket, it was obvious. So obvious.
I’d fallen under Kelly’s conspiracy spell. Temporarily. Embarrassingly. I made a silent pact to never, ever admit it to her.
Amelia considered it for a moment before shrugging. “Who knows? I mean, if we’re being real, any alien race advanced enough to get here would be, like, majorly ahead of us in a lot of ways, right? Trying to guess why they’d come is like asking an ant why a human stepped on their hill.”
I blinked. Morbid. But also…disturbingly fair.
I thought back to all the anthropological studies I’d read. Ones where scientists embedded themselves into different societies to observe them. It always came with a power imbalance. A more “advanced” culture studying one deemed “lesser.”
Maybe, if someone had crossed the stars to get here, they were an explorer. A scientist.
Or maybe the paranoid ones were right, and Independence Day had it nailed. Maybe they were just here to wreck the anthill.
Hypothetically.
I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair, the strands still wavy from air-drying after my shower. No matter what I wanted to believe, the facts remained: I’d witnessed something. A whole bunch of people had.
What that meant, though, was still up for debate.
Right along with my sanity.