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  My F.

  We can talk about my F is what she means.

  “Okay,” I say and scurry off. Now that my pen and stuff are back in my bag, I escape down the hallway without making eye contact with anyone and head toward lunch, but I completely do not want to go to lunch. I want to cry, because seriously? Seppie leaving after I’ve failed my world history exam is the final straw in the Mana Entrance to Nervous Breakdown Land. I don’t want to whine, but I’m already dealing with a lot of world-changing crap, which includes trying to keep the entire human race from dying without my actually doing anything. It seems ironic that the class I’d be failing would be world history. Soon, there may be no humans left who will care about world history.

  I start texting China—just one more time.

  “Mana!” Seppie’s voice calls after me and she runs down the now empty hallway. I’m not sure why she’s left class and whatever she was going to say is forgotten once she sees my phone in my hand. “Are you really texting him again?” She takes a step back, exhaling, probably remembering how I stopped bullets midflight, knocked men and women down simply by the crazy anger that happened in my mind after I had some caffeinated Coke. “It is not up to you to save the world, Mana. You have nothing to prove.”

  The bell rings.

  “It’s not about me.”

  She taps my phone with her perfect fingernail. “Stop texting. It makes you seem desperate.”

  She pivots away even as I yell after her, “But I am desperate.”

  The hallways are empty. And I need to go somewhere or else I’ll get a detention for loitering.

  So, I bomb into the bathroom in the foreign-language wing. This is the bathroom nobody ever uses because it smells like dead mice and Clorox bleach wipes all at once. I smash open a stall with my fist, all macho and stuff, ready to hunker down on the toilet and cry in an un-macho way … but there she is, standing on top of the toilet paper holder, ruining my plans.

  “What—?” I start to speak but my words sort of strangle in my throat. I’ve never seen this girl before. She balances on that tiny perch with just one bare foot. Her toes, not her toenails, are yellow. They match her hair.

  She puts her finger to her normal-colored lips. She appears human, but she’s not—even I can tell that. “Shh…”

  “What?” I point at my chest. “Me?”

  Her head bobs this way and that. She cocks it to the side like a dog does, listening. “Shh…”

  “But what? Why am I shh-ing?”

  Reaching out, she yanks me into the stall, hauling me up in the air in a swift, easy movement. I dangle there. She uses her free foot to slowly nudge the stall door shut. Yep. Definitely not human.

  “You might want to lock it … the door, I mean,” I whisper when I remember how to talk again.

  Her eyes widen and she says in a deep croak, “Good idea.”

  With a quick release and grab, she shifts her point of contact with me to the back of my sweater, which panics me slightly because I don’t want it to rip. My mom is in the hospital, my dad is missing, and I’m a bit low on funds so I can’t ruin all my clothes unless I want to suddenly pretend to be Goodwill chic. I’m not quite ready for that commitment yet. Even as she pulls the catch-and-release-and-catch maneuver, the alien girl pushes the latch of the door shut with her big, yellow toe. Peppermint swirls suddenly appear on her yellow toenails, which is absolutely amazing, and I would love to find out who did that because I am in dire need of cool toenails.

  “Your nails,” I whisper, “are adorable.”

  She actually smiles. Her teeth are normal like a human’s. Just then the door to the bathroom creaks opens and her grin disappears into a determined line. She puts her finger to her lips, but she doesn’t have to tell me. I know enough to be quiet.

  The whole feel of the bathroom changes. Tension fills the air. Whatever has just stepped in here with us is most certainly not human.

  All the alien girl’s muscles quiver as if in anticipation of a fight. Her nostrils twitch. The stall door, marred with beautiful graffiti illustrating in black ink a bum having an explosive poop, keeps us from seeing who or what just came into the bathroom with us. I check above the compartment’s walls. There’s no drop ceiling to escape through. We can hardly dive through the toilet and into the pipes. We are stuck in the tiny space, stuck, waiting. Fear pushes my heart into overdrive.

  Something is with us.

  Don’t check in here. Don’t check in here. The words flop around inside my head like a prayer. Don’t check in here. Don’t check …

  No sound fills the bathroom. This is obviously weird all by itself. People don’t come in the bathroom and just stand there doing nothing. They wash their hands or use the toilet or open their purse and get stuff out to brush their hair or smoke something illegal or pop pills or gossip, but they never, ever just come in the bathroom and make no sound.

  The alien girl tenses.

  I tense, too.

  I’m afraid to breathe.

  I can’t believe I’m even trusting my life and safety to an alien girl I haven’t met before. However, she does have nice toenails. Lyle says I am too trusting. Lyle is my other best friend besides Seppie, and we kissed once and it was beautiful, but now we’re both dealing with identity issues since he’s turned out to be an alien and we’re also dealing with absent mothers. Mine is hospitalized. His is jailed. Still, he’s probably eating in the cafeteria right now, safe and full. My brain is babbling.

  Something is with us, something bad.

  The girl gives me Be quiet! eyes, even though I didn’t say anything. A spider crawls across the top of the bathroom stall door. Two seconds later a giant tongue curls up around it and then disappears, trapping the spider and sucking it away. The world smells of moldy bread and death. Fear gags me.

  Maybe, I think, it won’t notice we’re here.

  Maybe, I think, we should run.

  In the next second, everything goes straight to hell.

  The stall door slams open. The lock turns out to be a flimsy, useless thing against the force of the creature on the door’s other side.

  Standing there, it appraises us for half a second.

  It’s monstrous, large, and green, like you imagine orcs or trolls from fairy tale books. Only there are four eyes on its head instead of two, and its head is long and pointy and strangely undersize on top of its enormously muscled shoulders.

  I study it, looking for a weakness, a something, a way to escape. Instead I freeze.

  It is naked.

  So grossly naked.

  But I can’t tell if it’s male or female. Or both?

  “How did it even get in here?” I yell. I scream a swear word. Luckily, the walls in this part of the building are five thousand years old (not really) and thick. I don’t think anyone can hear anything coming from a bathroom or another classroom, ever. I hope not, at least. I don’t want anyone else coming in here and getting hurt. I swear again.

  The alien girl matches my curse and jumps straight up into the air, hauling me with her and then moving sideways a couple feet. “Tuck your legs!”

  I do and we vault to the next stall, where she lands perfectly on another toilet paper holder. There’s no time to say anything or even breathe, because the monster thing moves to that stall, too. Its tongue flicks out toward us.

  “Again!” she yells and jumps back to our original stall, even as she yells the word.

  It may be big, but it isn’t stupid, and it’s right there behind us.

  I smash-kick the door at the thing’s face. The door hits its nose, but bounces right back open. Alien girl lets out some impossible groan and the monster’s tongue lashes out again. We move up and over. This time she lands in the toilet. Her naked foot falls into the bowl, which is disgusting and horrible. A hard cracking noise fills the stall. She drops me and cries out. I try to yank her up.

  She shakes her head. “It’s broken.”

  Broken. Her foot? The toilet? It doesn’t mat
ter. What matters is surviving.

  “How do we fight it?” I ask. “How?”

  Before she can answer, there it is again at the door. It towers over us, a hulking, naked form.

  I have no weapons, just my Hello Kitty backpack, but there are books in it. I rip it open and yank out my world history book. I throw it as hard as I can at the creature’s face. It makes impact. The thing grunts and lashes its tongue out toward me. The alien girl lunges sideways, her foot still stuck in the toilet. The tongue wraps around her waist. The force is enough to free her from the toilet, but it also makes a sickening noise like all her internal organs have been crushed and flattened.

  “Run!” Her eyes bulge as the creature yanks her closer to its mouth. “You idiot! Run, Mana!”

  She knows my name. She also knows I am a bit of an idiot.

  “Mana! Go!”

  She tried to protect me from this … this thing … And of course, everyone has been ignoring me and yet, here I am, fighting aliens in the grossest bathroom at school, and none of my friends are backing me up. Just the poor alien girl.

  There’s no way in hell I’m going to leave her here and run away. Anger makes my head vibrate. Yanking the toilet seat off the toilet, I try not to think about germs and bacteria from poop and vomit and stuff, and instead rush forward right at the creature. Its mouth seems toothless but full of sucker-like things. I smash the toilet seat into it, just above the tongue, pushing as hard as I can. The creature’s arm smacks me backward and I’m airborne before my side slams into the wall by the sinks. It takes me a second, but only a second, before adrenaline and pure rage have me rushing forward again.

  “Don’t hurt her!” I yell.

  The ugly alien starts sputtering and coughing, and the alien girl is not in its mouth, which is good. I grab the world history book and jump up to smoosh it into the thing’s mouth, too, just above the toilet seat, which thankfully is still lodged in there.

  “Eat history, butt head.” I mutter this like I’m some kind of badass myself, but I’m shaking, not a badass; not just angry, but terrified.

  His tongue tries to get back into his mouth.

  I have given it a gender affiliation.

  I rip open the garbage bin and shove the rounded, metal top into his mouth, too.

  “Girl! Are you okay?” I shout.

  There’s a grunt from somewhere, but I can’t focus on that now, can’t take my attention off the alien.

  The eyes turn to examine me and then they pulsate and bulge, pupils widening and twitching before all four of them roll into his head. He falls, grabbing on to me. We tumble down to the tiled floor, hitting hard. Pain billows through my arm, my knee, but it’s not a forever-pain, more like I’ve landed in a bad back twist and wrenched a muscle.

  Two seconds later, I have scrambled out from beneath the wretched thing’s arm and I’m trying to find the alien girl. She’s on the other side of his gasping, twitching body. I have to clamber over him to reach her. She’s an odd bluish-yellow color, even for an alien. I unwrap the tongue from the center of her torso, ignoring its sliminess, and lift up her shirt a bit to inspect the damage.

  Everywhere the tongue touched, her skin has turned blackish purple. I must gasp or something, because she shakes her head. The alien beast from Shrek Gone Wrong Land has stopped moving.

  “You have taken its life journey,” she whispers, “and it has taken my life journey from me.”

  I start to protest but she grimaces and reaches into the pocket of her pants. “I was bringing this to you. That is why … I’m here. And to warn you. They are trying to kill you and all like you. The Samyaza. They know you are here now. He is proof…”

  Her voice pauses and stops. It is a hoarse whisper, a last vocalization. My heart breaks for her and when she reaches her hand out to me, it trembles.

  “Take it,” she insists. “Please.”

  I grab a black crystal from her hand. It looks like it’s made up of chunks of tiny rectangles all latched together somehow, and it shines and reflects light like police officers’ sunglasses in old movies. The stone pushes against my skin like it wants to hide in my palm, to just run away from the death, the bathroom, the world. It feels … happy, safe, good. I wrap my fingers around it. It just fits.

  “Don’t let anyone see it. Don’t let anyone have it. Don’t tell anyone. It will help you locate the others. You must keep it safe. She trusts you—” She loses her ability to talk for a second and her eyes close. “She wants you to—”

  “No … hey … Stay here … I need to thank you. I need you to be okay … And … open your eyes,” I beg her, forgetting about the crystal the moment I place it on the floor next to her.

  There is still movement beneath the lids. That has to be a good sign.

  “We have to get you help,” I say. I grab her hands in mine. They are blackening even as I hold them. The color spreads like spilled watercolor paint, taking over her skin. “I can call China, maybe? They must have a way to help you.”

  “No. You can’t tell anyone. Not even him.”

  “You aren’t with them? Isn’t that why you’re here? To activate me? Make me an agent?”

  “You aren’t some weapon to be activated, Mana. Remember that. You are a living being. A soul. With choices.” Bluish liquid drips out of her mouth and she convulses. Once. Twice. Her eyes open and lack lucidity, but then they refocus, right on me. “Your destiny is not to be used by others. That is a big lie. It is a lie you can choose, but not a lie that you might want…” A gurgle obscures her words. She keeps talking through it and I’ve lost what the lie is. “… and Pierce says you can be trusted. She says you are kind.”

  Pierce! Pierce was the alien who worked with my mom and China. We thought she died. Nobody has talked to her since we left her defending a compound against some aliens.

  “Is Pierce alive? Is she okay? Is she with China?”

  The alien starts to answer but instead of words, another gurgling noise comes out of her mouth. “No more talking!” I wipe at her face with some paper towels that are on the floor. “We have to get you help. Now. No arguing.”

  “My organs are crushed,” she says. “It is not your fault. I should have been better—faster. That toilet … So sorry…”

  “You were great. You jumped over the stalls and you had the best balance, and your toenails—” The words burble out even as my stomach twists with worry and sorrow. There’s no way that I can save her.

  “You are a sweet girl, Mana. Please, take the crystal. Don’t let anyone know. They will want it. Use it to find the rest. The link. They are there.”

  “The rest of what?”

  Her eyes open. “It will help you find other enh—”

  And then she is gone. Her words stop. Her breath stops. Her eyes don’t move. Her hands in mine are heavy weights.

  “Don’t go,” I whisper. “Please, I like you. And you know things. Please … Don’t go.”

  But there is no point in begging, because she is already gone.

  CHAPTER 2

  The shock begins with hints of silence first, with little nuggets of fear and repulsion. Two dead aliens rest on the floor in front of me—the floor of the foreign-language-wing bathroom, the floor of the room that already smells of dead mice and stagnation and bleach. At last, I manage to breathe again, to move. I am no heroine; this is obvious as I stare down at the bodies. A heroine would have saved the alien girl who was trying to save her. A heroine would not have just barely managed to kill the bad guy with a toilet seat. There would be no good-guy deaths if I were a heroine. I would be perfect and beautiful and not gasping for breath in this horrible place.

  Why were they both here? Why do I have a crystal? Why did she die for me? And who is trying to kill me? And what did she mean about me not just being a weapon, that my destiny is my own choice? Were those just some dying thoughts, a lesson on the age-old debate between determinism versus free will? And then there’s the whole thing about using the crystal to find so
mething. What kind of something? Other pieces of the machine that’s supposed to destroy humanity? Or all of alien life? Or something?

  And if I can use the crystal to find bits of the machine, couldn’t she, too? Isn’t that what we were originally going to try to use the chip that my mother had for? If that’s even what she was trying to say …

  The crystal suddenly revolts me.

  I don’t want to do this all over again, I suddenly realize. I don’t want to kill people. I don’t want to be confused and protecting some random object that I don’t understand.

  A noise like gas being expelled fills the room. Even in death, the orc thing is obnoxious. Its tongue swells.

  The girl’s toenails are so sad now. The peppermint swirls don’t remind me of candy canes any longer. Instead, they are the eddying abyss of loss.

  She brought this crystal to me for a reason. She died for that reason.

  “Don’t trust her,” I mutter out loud. “You can’t trust anyone.”

  But if someone dies for you, doesn’t that mean you can trust them? She said not to call China for help. So she wasn’t aligned with China. But she did mention Pierce who was aligned with China. Who was she aligned with, then? It’s so confusing.

  I call China.

  There is no answer.

  We like to think of things in terms of sides, like teams you cheer for. There is the light and there is the dark. There are the good guys and there are the bad guys. It’s why sports are so popular. The game you watch is a story that has a beginning, a middle (halftime), and an end. You have a side you want to win. You have a side that you want to lose. You have the final score, which is nice closure. But real life, unfortunately, isn’t like that. There is no nice set beginning, middle, and end, not just two teams to be on, and sometimes there is no winner or loser. It sucks that it isn’t so simple and easy, because I want simple and easy right now. I want to know where to align myself, or even to just know who the freaking teams are.

  My thoughts jumble and circle around each other, like a snake eating its own tail, tangled up in itself. I don’t know what to do with the dead aliens. It seems disrespectful to just go. I can’t report this to the principal. I can’t just leave them here. I am traumatized into inaction, which is not what it is to be a heroine. Heroines act.