Out of This World

“Bullshit,” said the man who used to be so laid-back. “Total and complete bullshit.”

“Look,” Marilee said softly, “the timing of your arrival was bad, and I’m sorry for that, but what’s done is done.” Again she reached for the door. “Now, if I can arrange some fun for you, a hike or maybe bird-watching…”

Kellan slapped his hand back on the door, holding it closed over her head. Or that’s what I think he meant to do, but instead, his hand went right through the door, leaving a perfect handprint in the veneer.

Everyone stared at the hole.

“Wow,” Marilee whispered, and looked at Kellan as if seeing him for the first time.

“Holy shit, dude,” Axel said much more eloquently. “Sweet.”

“Oh, you think so?” Kellan’s voice was silky quiet but vibrating with frustration. “Because I don’t think it’s sweet. I think it’s pretty damn freaky.”

I had a lot of thoughts going through my mind, but I couldn’t help being utterly fascinated by Kellan’s display of temper and strength, not to mention his new forcefulness. Of course, I’d never admit such a ridiculous thing out loud, but I was thinking it plenty.

The silence between us all began to go from stunned to extremely awkward. And then another of those odd and inexplicable thumps sounded, from the other side of the door that Kellan had just put a hole through.

Kellan glanced at Marilee and Axel, then at me. Everyone in the house was supposedly accounted for. Narrowing his eyes, he whipped open the door, and there stood a young couple-the same couple I’d seen yesterday looking out the window at me when we’d first arrived.

The guy was tall and thin, and still resembled a grown-up Harry Potter. Holding his hand was the pretty blonde, with a sweet, relaxed smile. In fact, they were both smiling, as if completely unconcerned with the hole that had just been punched through the kitchen door not two inches from Harry’s nose, not to mention the four of us standing close, the tension in the air so thick you could cut it with a knife.

There was something off about the two new people, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. They were dressed as one would expect out here, in jeans and T-shirts-normal clothes-but all their clothes, right down to their matching athletic shoes, looked shiny, brand new. They were no longer glowing, as I’d clearly imagined yesterday, and they had their arms around each other.

“Hi, there,” the guy said. “We were just wondering…is breakfast going to be served soon? We’re hungry.”

The young woman wrapped herself around him like a pretzel, and giggled. “Starving.”

Marilee moved past Kel, and smiled the smile of someone who’d just been delivered a get-out-of-jail-for-free card. “I just baked a special breakfast casserole. You’re going to love it!” She beamed and expertly nudged the couple down the hall. “I’ll serve it to you in the dining room,” she called after them. “I’ll be right there…”

“You’ve got guests,” I said when she turned back to us. “You told us there weren’t any.”

“No, I didn’t. When you asked, I didn’t say anything either way. You just assumed.”

“Not a good thing, assuming,” Axel said to me. “A-S-S-UM-E makes an ass out of you and me. Get it?”

“I get it,” I said through my teeth. “What I don’t get is why you both tried to hide from us the fact that we have guests.”

“I didn’t want to upset you,” Marilee said primly.

“Why would it have upset me to have paying guests?” I just couldn’t fathom the reasoning.

“Well, you seemed so uptight. I didn’t want to make things worse.”

“I was upset because I was hit by lightning! And, as it turns out, so was Kellan.”

Both Axel and Marilee looked at Kel.

“We don’t have lightning here,” Marilee said after a full minute of silence.

If I could have torn out my own hair, I would have. Kellan put a hand on my arm, probably trying to tell me to keep my cool.

But I didn’t have any cool!

“Look, I need to serve breakfast,” Marilee said. “If you’ll excuse me?”

“I’ll help you,” Axel said quickly.

“But I want some answers,” I said, watching as Marilee bent to the oven, Axel helping her pull out two casserole dishes, which I sincerely hoped he’d helped put together.

“Rach.” Kellan tugged me out of the kitchen and into the hallway. We took a moment to stare at the handprint he’d left in the wood.

“I’m really confused,” I said in a smaller voice than I’d have liked.

“That makes two of us.” Kellan took my hand. “Come on.”

“To the couple?”

“Oh yeah.”

They were sitting in the dining room. Well, the guy was sitting. The woman was straddling his lap, kissing him as if she planned on sucking his lips off and making them hers.

“Ahem,” Kellan said, and they jumped apart. “Hi.”

The young woman stood up and straightened her blouse with a sheepish grin. The blouse was already buttoned crooked. And because I was now Supergirl, I could see that her bra was all askance. Yeah, definitely seeing waaay more of people than I’d like.

“Serena,” she said, and thrust out her hand.

The Harry look-alike stood and pushed up his glasses. “William.”

We shook their hands and introduced ourselves, too. And then Kellan asked where they were from.

“Far,” Serena said. “Took forever to get here.”

William nodded.

“Far like…back East far?” Kellan probed.

“Farther,” William said, and took Serena’s hand. “So what about you two? How long are you staying?”

“Until Monday,” I said. “You?”

“Same,” was the noncommittal answer.

I wanted to ask if they’d seen the lightning yesterday, if they’d suddenly found themselves equipped with odd, inexplicable powers, but something about them sort of said “Don’t ask.”

And I got goose bumps all over again.

“We’re starving,” William said. “I bet you guys are, too, given all that you’ve been through since the swap.”

The swap.

The swap?

Kellan and I looked at each other. We’d been doing that a lot since we’d gotten here.

“The swap?” Kellan repeated.

“You know.” Serena simulated either having an epileptic seizure or being zapped with a bolt of electricity.

Or…lightning.

Kellan tightened his grip on my hand. “The swap of what exactly?”

Serena glanced bemusedly at William, as if she couldn’t believe we didn’t immediately grasp what she was saying. “Um…nothing.”

“No,” I insisted, “you meant something.”

Serena, chewing on her lower lip now, shook her head.

And my goose bumps grew to full-fledged mountains as a deeply rooted certainty grew in my belly: We were truly the only ones who didn’t know what the hell was going on.

“Kellan?” I said as casually as I could, gesturing to the door. “A minute?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

I tugged him out of the dining room and into the hall, where we stared at each other for yet another long beat.

“Okay, I’m now officially freaked out,” I whispered, and started to have trouble drawing air into my lungs.

Kellan pulled me around a corner and pinned me back against the wall, lifting my chin with his hand. “Deep breaths.”

I realized I was panting, nearly hyperventilating. “They know what happened.”