length of Sam’s arms. He tries to rub them away.
“Have you run this before?” I ask.
Sam nods. “We ran it the second week of class.”
“What was your time?”
“Nine minutes and fifty-four seconds.”
I look at him. “I thought skinny kids are supposed to be fast.”
“Shut up,” he says.
I run side by side with Sam towards the back of the crowd. Four laps. That is how many times I must circle the track to have run a mile. Halfway around I begin to pull away from Sam. I wonder how fast I could run a mile if I really tried. Two minutes, maybe one, maybe less?
The exercise feels great, and without paying much attention, I pass the lead runner. Then I slow and feign exhaustion. When I do I see a brown and white blur come dashing out of the bushes by the entrance of the grandstand and head straight towards me.
I run halfway around the track in a dead sprint before I turn back around. There is nothing behind me. I have outrun it. Twenty seconds have passed. Then I turn back around and the thing is right in front of me. It must have cut across the field. I stop dead in my tracks and my perspective corrects itself. It’s Bernie Kosar! He’s sitting in the middle of the track with his tongue dangling, tail wagging.
“Bernie Kosar!” I yell. “You scared the hell out of me!”
I resume running at a slow pace and Bernie Kosar runs alongside me. I hope nobody noticed how fast I ran. Then I stop and bend over as though I have cramps and can’t catch my breath. I walk for a bit. Then I jog a little. Before I finish the second lap two people have passed me.
“Smith! What happened? You were dusting everyone!” Mr. Wallace yells when I run by him.
I breathe heavily, for show. “I—have—asthma,” I say.
He shakes his head in disapproval. “And here I thought I had this year’s Ohio state track champion in my class.”
I shrug and keep going, stopping every so often to walk. Bernie Kosar stays with me, sometimes walking, sometimes trotting. When I start the last lap Sam catches up to me and we run together. His face is bright red.
“So what were you reading in astronomy today?” I ask. “An entire Montana town abducted by aliens?”
He grins at me. “Yeah, that’s the theory,” he says somewhat shyly, as though embarrassed.
“Why would an entire town be abducted?”
Sam shrugs, doesn’t answer.
“No, really?” I ask.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Of course.”
“Well, the theory is that the government has been allowing alien abductions in exchange for technology.”
“Really? What kind of technology?” I ask.
“Like chips for supercomputers and formulas for more bombs and green technologies. Stuff like that.”
“Green technology for live specimens? Weird. Why do aliens want to abduct humans?”
“So they can study us.”
“But why? I mean, what reason could they possibly have?”
“So that when Armageddon comes they’ll know our weaknesses and be able to easily defeat us by exposing them.”
I’m kind of taken aback by his answer, but only because of the scenes still playing in my head from the night before, remembering the weapons I saw the Mogadorians use, and the massive beasts.
“Wouldn’t it be easy for them if they already have bombs and technologies far superior to our own?”
“Well, some people seem to think that they’re hoping we’ll kill ourselves first.”
I look at Sam. He is smiling at me, trying to decide whether I’m taking the conversation seriously.
“Why would they want us to kill ourselves first? What is their incentive?”
“Because they’re jealous.”
“Jealous of us? Why, because of our rugged good looks?”
Sam laughs. “Something like that.”
I nod. We run in silence for a minute and I can tell Sam is having a tough time, breathing heavily. “How did you get interested in all this?”
He shrugs. “It’s just a hobby,” he says, though I get the distinct feeling that he’s keeping something from me.
We finish the mile at eight minutes fifty-nine seconds, better than the last time Sam ran it. Bernie Kosar follows the class back to the school. The others pet him, and when we walk in he tries to come in with us. I don’t know how he knew where I was. Could he have memorized the way to the school this morning on the ride in? The thought seems ridiculous.
He stays at the door. I walk to the locker room with Sam and the second he catches his breath he rattles off a ton of other conspiracy theories, one right after another, most of which are laughable. I like him, and find him amusing, but sometimes I wish he would stop talking.
When home ec begins Sarah isn’t in class. Mrs. Benshoff gives instruction for the first ten minutes and then we head to the kitchen. I enter the station alone, resigned to the fact that I’ll be cooking alone today, and as soon as that thought occurs to me, Sarah walks in.
“Did I miss anything good?” she asks.
“About ten minutes of quality time with me,” I say with a smile.
She laughs. “I heard about your locker this morning. I’m sorry.”
“You put the manure there?” I ask.
She laughs again. “No, of course not. But I know they’re picking on you because of me.”
“They’re just lucky I didn’t use my superpowers and throw them into the next county.”
She playfully grabs my biceps. “Right, these huge muscles. Your superpowers. Boy, they are lucky.”
Our project for the day is to make blueberry cupcakes. As we start mixing the batter, Sarah begins telling me about her history with Mark. They dated for two years, but the longer they were together, the more she drifted from her parents and her friends. She was Mark’s girlfriend, nothing else. She knew she had started to change, to adopt some of his attitudes towards people: being mean and judgmental, thinking she was better than them. She also started drinking and her grades slipped. At the end of the last school year, her parents sent her to live with her aunt in Colorado for the summer. When she got there, she started taking long hikes in the mountains, taking pictures of the scenery with her aunt’s camera. She fell in love with photography and had the best summer ever, realizing there was far more to life than being a cheerleader and dating the quarterback of the football team. When she got home she broke up with Mark and quit cheerleading, and made a vow that she was going to be good, and kind, to everyone. Mark hasn’t gotten over it. She says he still considers her his girlfriend, and believes she’s going to come back to him. She says the only thing she misses about him are his dogs, which she hung out with whenever she was at his house. I then tell her about Bernie Kosar, and how he showed up at our doorstep unexpectedly after that first morning at the school.
We work as we talk. At one point I reach into the oven without the oven mitts and pull out the cupcake pan. She sees me do it and asks if I’m okay, and I pretend to be hurt, shake my hand as if it’s burned, though I don’t actually feel a thing. We go to the sink and Sarah runs lukewarm water to help with the burn that isn’t there. When she sees my hand, I just shrug. As we’re frosting the cupcakes, she asks about my phone, and tells me she noticed there was only one number in it. I tell her it’s Henri’s number, that I lost my old phone with all of my contacts. She asks if I left a girlfriend behind when we moved. I say no, and she smiles, which just about ruins me. Before class
