COSMIC

18 - Oh! You Pretty Things

It felt like the world I had built around myself was finally crashing down. Everything that had occurred in the past week came flooding back: the suspicious glances from our parents, the bits of conversations heard from their phone calls, and the prying at Susan's party. Why weren't we more careful?

"Ah man, I'm a dead man walking," Kyle began to whine.

But I barely heard him as I wanted to beat myself up for being so blind. There was no time, however; action was needed if we were to control our dilemma as much as possible. I snatched my bag up from the ground and darted over to the candles, my friends following my lead when they realized what I was doing. Frantically, we began to blow out the flames and dump out the melted wax, before throwing them in my bag. But we had only finished through half of them by the time our parents arrived.

"What is going on?" Cynthia said at the top of her voice.

We jumped up to face the shocked expressions of our parents. I gaped at my mom, my mouth slightly open in attempt to calm my rapid breathing. But I probably just looked stupid instead. She frowned more than I think I had ever seen, but unlike other times I had been in trouble, she didn't yell. She just stared at me in disappointment, the unspoken words clearly reeling through her mind hurting more than anything.

Nancy's father stepped forward. "Nancy, what is all this?"

"It's nothing," she said, tears already welling up in her eyes.

"It doesn't look like nothing," he replied more sternly, gesturing at the candles still smoldering beside us.

"I knew it all along," Cynthia said, her voice causing Kyle to flinch. "It's exactly what I told you all. It never was a joke. This is what they've been doing every night."

"It started with all those letters," Susan spoke up. "I knew I should have put an end to this when I found out about those."

"Actually, it was Jamie and Nancy who started this," Cynthia said, putting her hands on her hips. "As I recall, it was Jamie's idea for this so-called 'joke,' right? Are you responsible for all this?"

I hesitated, but I felt the answer on the tip of my tongue. "Yes," I said, so quietly I wasn't sure they could hear me. But I was wrong.

"Jamie," my mom said sharply. "You're the one in charge of all this? Here I've been worried about you and you're out here carrying on trying to contact aliens?"

I cringed as Cynthia nodded with a disapproving look. The other parents, clearly angry as they looked at me, began to pull their children away from my side. Suddenly, I was the only one left facing the group, my friends glancing worriedly back at me.

Despite how I felt inside, maintaining our secrecy about David was the one thing I couldn't give up. Desperately, I struggled for one last attempt.

"Mom, it's not what it looks like," I said. "That's not what we're doing."

"Save it for when we get home."

"But we're not doing anything wrong! Why do you have to do this?"

"Because I'm not about to have my son contacting aliens like some lunatic," Cynthia said. "I knew there was something fishy about this from the very beginning--from those letters to the story about the radio DJ. I didn't know what I'd see when we got here, but I definitely didn't expect to see candles like it's some ritual."

"But this isn't a ritual," I said angrily.

"Then what is it?"

Her words were left hanging in the air. What could I say to convince them otherwise? The candles did look like a ritual, but telling them the truth--that they were used as a signal--would only add to their convictions that we were contacting aliens. What else could I say that didn't make us look crazy? I sighed, realizing my stupidity for not thinking an excuse out ahead of time.