Cipher

Chapter 7: Something New

Joslyn wasn't quite sure why she sought them out, but when lunch rolled around she found herself looking for Cipher and Isaac in the crowd. Students flowed around her quickly finding their friends with a wave or a nod. As she scanned the crowd no one called her to sit with them; not that she expected them to. All her friends had already graduated. It was just as well; her friends were her brother's friends and she didn't think she could face any of them right now.

Maybe that's why she found herself heading outside searching for Cipher in the crowd. He was something different. Alien, literally. Who knew nothing about her. That was the worst part of coming back, the pitying looks from every student and teacher who knew about her or her brother. She didn't want that. She was hoping that by coming back she could escape it. Distract herself. Move on. She had struggled to get out from under it all summer, but it clung to her like a wet blanket dragging everything down. Until he spoke to her. The alien boy with swirling tattoo-like marks and a strange lilting accent had introduced himself like it was the most natural thing to do.

She finally spotted Isaac sitting in the grass under the shade of the trees; she didn't see Cipher until she nearly tripped over him. Cipher was laid out on the grass like he was asleep.

"Hey," Isaac greeted her.

"Hi," she glanced around before looking back at Cipher who hadn't budged. "Is he...?"

"Yeah. It's an Aeolian thing."

Joslyn nodded slowly. "Do you mind if I sit with you guys?"

"Our sweltering patch of grass is your sweltering patch of grass." Isaac said with a breathy laugh.

She lowered herself to the ground setting her bag aside before leaning against the tree; its thick leaves providing a nearly solid canopy of shade. "It's not so bad," she shrugged off her hoodie.

Isaac looked at her like he might be concerned for her sanity. "You know it's over a hundred degrees, right?"

Joslyn shrugged, "better than being cold."

Isaac rolled his eyes, "Maybe you are an alien after all."

Her lips quirked into a half smile. She rummaged in her bag retrieving her lunch and her book.

"What are you reading?" Isaac asked between bites of his own lunch.

"Shakespeare," she answered absently, eyes already scanning the lines across the page.

"Plays or poetry?"

"Plays," she bit into a carrot without looking up.

"Which one?"

"Right now I'm on Romeo and Juliet." There was nothing to be embarrassed about; a blush stained her cheeks nonetheless.

"Really?" Isaac's face scrunched in distaste. "Why would you want to read that one again? Everyone has to read it freshman year."

She sighed giving up on reading for the moment. "This is why I don't like telling people what I read," she said more to herself than Isaac. Then, "It's a collection of all his plays and I plan on reading them all. Even if I've read them before."

"I would rather read a novel adaptation or watch the movie, maybe. Plays aren't any fun to read." He laid back in the grass watching the sparse clouds cross the desert sky.

"And I prefer to watch The Lion King over Hamlet, but that doesn't change my plan."

Isaac shrugged, which was interesting considering his place in the grass.

They fell into a comfortable silence. Joslyn tried to get back to reading, but her attention kept wandering to the sleeping boy a few feet away. The dark shapes that twisted across his skin were unique; she wondered what purpose they served, if any. His skin had now settled to a warm tan as his breaths came deep and even. It had been interesting to watch it shift from shade to shade since the moment he came to talk to her. She wasn't sure if it was due to emotion or temperature, perhaps both. Though the heat didn't seem to bother him.

In all honesty, at that moment Cipher didn't look all that different from any other person in the school; though his marks and slightly pointed ears did stand out they could be written off as a little strange rather than inhuman. It was only when he spoke or his skin color shifted that it was truly obvious that he was not human.

Joss couldn't understand the anti-Aeolian sentiment she had seen and heard. As far as she knew they hadn't done anything to earn it; even their arrival had been relatively uneventful. Only notable because they came from a different planet. Yet, that didn't stop the hate and fear from spreading. It was worse than a virus.

Some concerns were probably legitimate, but those weren't the arguments on the tip of people's tongues; it was the senseless hearsay that they were itching to gossip and fight about. Social media didn't help things; it was near impossible to tell what was real, what was fake, and what was somewhere between the two.

Even the slang terms people had come up with were stupid. One of the most prominent had started as "invaders" or "space invaders." Someone quickly drew the connection to the old 8-bit game Space Invaders and coined the name "8-bit" to refer to the Aeolians. And somehow, it stuck. As if the first and only confirmed case of intelligent life outside of Earth were both an indiscriminately dangerous force to be stopped and nothing more than two-dimensional cutouts to be destroyed.

She sighed; most of it all seemed just as irrational and dumb as the feud between Capulets and Montagues. She stared at the pages of her book for a while without really reading a word.

"Who is Jason?" Cipher's voice startled her.

"What?" How would he know that name?

"On your wrist," he said quietly, his eyes barely open. "It says Jason. It looks very nice, but I do not know anyone called Jason."

Joslyn cleared her throat, which was suddenly tight. "Jason... is my brother."

"That is nice. You must be close to have a mark in his honor."

"Yeah," she did her best to keep her tone even. Cipher's head tilted like he was trying to see something clearer, but he didn't seem to be looking at her wrist, or anything in particular.

"But you are not happy. You are sad." He didn't say it like a question, but rather a statement of fact.

"Well," she started, not really wanting to get into it.

The bell rang.

Cipher sat up as she stuffed her things into her bag. "Not everyone is happy all the time." she paused. "But we try to be." She turned and left before Cipher or Isaac could say anything, hurrying to her next class. Wondering how long she could really avoid the issue before Cipher brought it up again.