I Don't Want To Believe

Believers and Skeptics

"Do you think they'll want an interview?" Greg asked hopefully. John shrugged, opening a bag of potato chips and watching as the reporters and journalists all crashed through the stalks.
"Maybe later." He shrugged, shoving as many chips into his mouth as he could because he didn't feel like dropping any back into the bag.
"I heard someone say that this is probably the work of something out of Star Trek." Harry pointed out. "I fear for society."
"You are society, and you're as caught up in this as they are!" John debated.
"I know the difference between real aliens and Starfleet." Harry debated, curling up in a little ball on the picnic table, her alien action figures peeking out of her sweatshirt pocket.
"You don't even know what Starfleet is." John insisted.
"I do too!" she whined, hitting him lightly before pouting a little bit.
"Maybe they'll all get lost out there, or abducted." Greg suggested.
"That will be a liability I think." John guessed.
"They were here on their choice. In fact, I didn't hear anyone even ask permission." Greg admitted.
"Who even told them in the first place?" John asked, craning his neck as if someone were on the phone at the moment, calling the Crazy Club.
"The neighbors of course, they call in everything from a shadow on their property to a crop circle." Harry pointed out.
"Ya, I guess so." John agreed solemnly, looking over to see both of his crazy neighbors standing on their own picnic table with a very high powered camera, as if to document this whole thing.
"John, Greg!" said an excited voice from behind them. John groaned, knowing without even turning around that Mike had officially arrived.
"Hey mate; we were wondering how long it would take you to show up!" Greg said happily. John couldn't decide if he was pretending to be excited or he was just playing the role of supportive friend, but John could say quite honestly that he was far from thrilled about Mike's presence.
"So this is it then, another crop circles, in John Watson's own backyard! How ironic." Mike laughed.
"It's happened before." John grumbled.
"Ya, but the night after you made fun of aliens? They're listening, they're always listening." Mike insisted, tapping his ears to get his point across. John rolled his eyes, setting the bag of chips aside and crossing his arms.
"Are you here to taunt me or go get some pictures?" John asked.
"Well, both I suppose. I'll go in once the reporters are done, but they're sloppy and have no respect for any of the corn, they'll knock down stalks left and right, that's what always makes it hard to tell if a crop circle was made neatly or not." Mike shrugged.
"It was neat; John and I saw it from his window." Harry said happily. Mike looked down on her in surprise, as if not noticing her presence until now.
"Who are you?" he asked, looking intrigued by another alien believer.
"Harry Watson, I'm John's sister." She said proudly.
"Hello Harry Watson, I'm Mike. Now what was this about an aerial view?" he asked.
"No way, absolutely not, you are not going in my house." John insisted, shaking his head to get his point across.
"You can stand on the picnic table." Greg offered. Mike smiled, and John knew that Greg had officially done it. So, the rest of a whole hour was dedicated to skirting around Mike's sneakers, trying to pretend that it wasn't terribly uncomfortable to have the wooden planks move up and down on his spine as Mike stepped around with his camera, trying to get shots from above.
"It looks pretty circular, I must admit, it looks authentic." Mike decided. John just rolled his eyes, not really in the mood for hearing his constant rambling.
"It would be authentic if aliens existed." John muttered.
"Hey, I heard that." Mike insisted, kicking John lightly in the back of the head with his converse. John groaned, but shut his mouth, watching as yet another news channel went rushing into the corn, followed by a group of tourists, all decked out in their alien merchandise, looking very guilty as they tried to discreetly sneak into the field.
"Does this destroy the farmer's crops?" Greg wondered.
"I'd imagine, especially if the kids get creative and try to go bigger." John decided.
"It's not kids doing it!" Mike insisted again, still balancing on the table for a better angle.
"Ya, ya, whatever you say." John sighed. When it started to get later, eventually all the news crews packed up and drove off, leaving without even a goodbye, or, to Greg's disappointment, an interview. Mike had to go home before he could go poke around in the corn, claiming that his mom had dinner ready and he would be yelled at if he stayed out too long. Greg said his goodbyes as well, tagging along with Mike as he walked off towards town. So soon it was just John, Harry, and their neighbors, who now had taken advantage of the free space to wander around in the fields themselves.
"So do you think it's a hoax?" Mr. Watson asked over dinner. They were having vegetable beef soup, not really a meal for a warm day, but it was still very tasty.
"Of course it's a hoax." John laughed, and Mr. Watson cracked a guilty smile.
"Well, I don't know, this one seems different than the other thousand that were spotted in this area." He insisted.
"How?" Mrs. Watson asked.
"I'm sure you can ask the researchers, they'll make up some sort of excuse tomorrow morning." he decided. The two Watson parents burst into judgmental laughter, and John sort of forced a smile. He had been thinking exactly what his father had been joking about, how this one circle seemed a lot different than the other ones. This one had an air of secrecy to it, an air of forbidding that kept John from investigating himself. Harry of course was all moody at her parent's mockery, the only person in the family that actually took this whole alien rubbish seriously.
"Don't laugh, it might be real." She insisted, letting her spoon sink the floating bits of carrot and potato before letting them reemerge a moment later. This seemed to entertain her more than the idea of actually eating the soup did.
"Harry, honey, aliens may exist in your Barbie's world, but they don't exist here. There may be microscopic lifeforms on other planets, but it took millions and millions of years for us to evolve from the single celled organisms we originated from. If there was any sign of intelligent life on another planet, we would've known about it by now." Mrs. Watson insisted.
"But we do know about it, people are just too naive to realize what they're looking at!" Harry exclaimed, throwing her spoon into her soup and crossing her arms in a bit of a bit.
"Harry honey, we're not making fun of you, we're just trying to make sure you're not getting lured into this crazy lifestyle." Mrs. Watson insisted.
"They're not crazy mom, they're real." She insisted, and with that she scrambled out of her chair and ran up to her room, as if she didn't have time to deal with her mother and her facts.
"Well, overdramatic much." John decided as he helped himself to second helpings of soup. When the dishes were done and the soup put away, John walked up to his room, making sure this time to lock the door tight, maybe even push a chair up against the door to make sure his sister couldn't come and wake him. Then again, that was the alarm clock's job, the most miserable sound in the world. So he simply sat on his bed and watched sports again, this time checking every once and while to see if there were any signs of activity going on, in the cornfield or on his roof. When no movement came and no sound was heard, John decided that it was once again the stupid work of some crazy kids or some equally if not more crazy adults, trying to get their forgery on national television.