The Oddities Of Grand Marquis - Book 1: Galactic Seed 🪼✔

Twelfth

"And she just admitted that she was into this mpreg thing?"

"Yeah, just came on out and said it."

"You're an idiot, Max."

"What?! I panicked! It's not every day the hottest girl in school comes to your house and confesses she's totally into fetishes that you didn't even knew existed. I mean, come on, Dad..."

"Alright, alright, benefit of the doubt, I guess. Still though, you got the hottest girl in school..." he said while elbowing me in the ribs. I laughed a little and felt my face flush.

Dad laughed. "This is great. Ah, young weird love..."

"Dad!"

"Oh, here, found this." He handed me a cellphone. "It's your old phone. I figured maybe you could sift through it and delete some people or whatever... maybe text Marsden?"

I look at the phone and suddenly become really panicky. I start shaking and swallow hard.

"Y-yeah... yeah..."

"Max." I looked up at him. "It's okay. No one said you had to. It was just a suggestion. But, now when Ms. Hottie, comes back, you can give her your number to keep in touch. And I only mentioned Mars because he is worried. Please talk to him; somehow. Maybe whatever that odd feeling is will get resolved if you talk."

I sighed. I guess I was being unfair to him and Dad's right, he's the only one willing to be nice. I sighed again.

"Okay, I'll see about it."

"Good. Your mom should be home any minute so I've got to get ready for work. Mama Ganeshka's tomorrow, right?"

"Yeah."

He smiled and left as I stared at the phone. I turned it on and waited. My old background came up and I smiled a little at how childish it seemed. It was only three months ago that I had been abducted and used like a guinea pig but it seems so long ago... I looked through my contacts and saw Mars' number. I breathed in and hit the message button.

Hey... what's up?

I waited for the little dots to come up to show he was typing but they never came up so I typed again.

This is Max.

Immediately, the dots for typing came up.

Hey! Sorry! I didn't recognize the number. How's it going?

Okay, I guess. You know... got abducted by aliens and stuff.

Yeah, weird. Are you okay?

As I can be, I guess... Can I ask you something?

Sure.

Why are you trying to be so nice to me? I mean, since everyone is avoiding me like the plague?

There are dots and then none and then they come up again and then they disappear and then finally come back up. They hop for a few seconds and then the text comes through.

Isn't that a reason TO be nice? You just had a weird, traumatic experience that definitely didn't leave you unscathed. Everyone is acting like you made a deal with the Devil or something when all you did was go out for some chips. If it were me, I'd be GLAD to have someone who is trying to be nice.

I sniffled and realized I was being a jerk. Mars was trying to be my friend and all I was doing was being horrible to him. I just told Mom how lonely I was and yet...