Where the Forest Meets the Stars Read online

  “We were saying it’s about time you went home,” he said. “Do you need a ride? I can take you in my truck.”

  “You’re going to drive me across the stars to my planet?”

  “You’re too smart to think we’ll believe you’re an alien,” he said, “and you know a girl your age can’t be out on her own. Tell us the truth.”

  “I am!”

  “Then Jo has no choice but to call the police.”

  “Toh-id ina eroo-oy!” the girl said.

  “Toad in a what ?” he said.

  The girl burst into her alien language, speaking as fluently as she had the night before, but this time the speech was spoken as an invective at Egg Man, with much arm and hand gesturing.

  “What was that?” he asked when she’d finished.

  “I was telling you in my language that you should be nice to a graduate student who came all the way across the stars to see you. I’ll never get to be a professor if you don’t let me stay.”

  “You know you can’t stay here.”

  “Are you getting your PhD?” the girl asked.

  He looked at her strangely.

  “If you are, you’d know it’s wrong not to let me get mine,” the girl said.

  He walked to his truck and opened the door.

  “Wait . . . ,” Jo said.

  He closed the door. “You’re on your own with this,” he said out the window.

  “What if she’d shown up on your doorstep?”

  “She didn’t.” He pulled out of the driveway fast, scattering gravel.

  “What the hell? Henhouse on fire?” Jo said.

  “What fire?” the girl said.

  “Never mind.”

  Clearly, something had pissed him off. Maybe he was insecure about Jo’s level of education. He’d changed when the girl asked if he was getting a PhD.

  “I saw pie in the kitchen. Can I have a piece?”

  Jo stared at the empty road as the rumble of Egg Man’s truck faded. Why couldn’t the people of his community take care of their own? Why would it be left to her, the outsider who didn’t know their ways, their unspoken rules?

  “Can I?” the girl said.

  Jo turned to her, trying not to look nervous. “Yes, you can have pie. But first you should eat something substantial.” And before that, Jo somehow had to call the sheriff without the girl knowing.

  “Are scrambled eggs substantial?”

  “They are,” Jo said, “but I want you to clean up before you eat. You have to take a shower.”

  “Can’t I eat first?”

  “I’ve told you the rules. Take them or leave them.”

  The girl followed Jo into the house like a hungry puppy.

  3

  After her own quick shower, Jo sent the girl into the bathroom with a clean towel. She shut the door, listened for the water, and hurried outside with her phone when she was certain the girl was bathing.

  The forest was gray, the same shade of twilight that had delivered the changeling to the cottage the night before. Jo walked down the driveway, swiping her fingers at mosquitoes, and beads of sweat mixed with water dripping out of her hair. Little Bear skulked nearby, following her every move like a spy for the alien child.

  Connecting to the internet and finding the nonemergency sheriff’s number took more than seven minutes. When the sheriff’s operator answered, Jo rushed through the call, afraid the girl would come outside and hear her. She told the woman she needed a deputy to pick up a girl who might be homeless. She gave her address and a few directions to get there. The woman asked questions, but Jo only had time to say that she was very worried about the girl and she wanted someone to come out immediately. She hid the phone in her pocket and rushed back to the house.

  Just in time. The girl was in the living room wrapped in a towel, long hair dripping down her thin shoulders. Her dark eyes studied Jo’s. “Where were you?” she said.

  “I heard something out there,” Jo said, “but it was only the dog.” She walked closer to the child, hoping that what she saw were smears of mud the girl had failed to wash away. The marks weren’t dirt. She had purple contusions on her throat and left upper arm, and her right thigh was scraped and bruised. The high neck of her hoodie had covered the bruise on her throat. Her left arm appeared marked by fingers, as if someone had gripped her hard. “How did you get those bruises?”

  The girl backed away. “Where are my clothes?”

  “Who hurt you?”

  “I don’t know what happened. Those were on the dead girl’s body. Maybe she got hit by a car or something.”

  “Is this why you’re afraid to go home? Someone hurts you?”

  The girl glowered. “I thought you were nice, but I guess you aren’t.”

  “Why am I not nice?”

  “Because you won’t believe me.”

  Jo was relieved. She’d been afraid the girl knew she’d called the sheriff. And good thing she had. The situation definitely required police. Jo hoped they would take the call seriously and come quickly, but in the meantime she had to keep the girl occupied.

  “Let’s get you dressed and make those eggs,” she said.

  Jo couldn’t let her wear the same filthy clothes. The girl didn’t mind putting on one of Jo’s T-shirts and leggings rolled to the calves. She helped Jo in the kitchen, even washed some of the dishes before they ate. Jo tried to get her to talk about where she was from while they cooked and ate, but she kept to her outlandish story. Despite the “green stuff,” a few baby spinach leaves, the girl scarfed down three scrambled eggs. She followed the eggs with a big slice of apple pie, after which she said her stomach hurt.

  Once they finished cleaning, the girl pleaded for Little Bear to be fed, and Jo let her give the dog leftover beans, rice, and chicken that had been in the refrigerator too long. They put the food on a plate on the concrete slab behind the house, and the dog ate it even faster than its alien guardian had eaten. “I’ll wash the dish,” the girl said.

  “Leave it out there. Let’s talk in the living room.” She didn’t want the girl anywhere near a door when the sheriff arrived.

  “Talk about what?” the girl said.

  “Sit down with me.” She led the girl to the shabby blue couch. She hoped the girl would confess what had driven her into the forest before the deputy arrived, while she still had some trust in someone. “I’d like to know your name,” she said.

  “I told you,” the girl said.

  “Please tell me your real name.”

  The girl put her head on a pillow and curled up like a poked caterpillar.

  “There are people who can help you with whatever’s going on.”

  “I’m not talking about this anymore. I’m tired of you not believing me.”

  “You have to talk about it.”

  The girl pulled a lock of her damp hair across her nose. “I like the smell of your shampoo.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “There is no subject.”

  “You can’t hide from it forever.”

  “I never said anything was forever. After five miracles, I’ll be gone.”

  “Damn it, you’re stubborn.” More like terrified. What had happened to the poor kid?

  “Can I sleep here?”

  The little alien didn’t look well. Her hollow cheeks were pallid, and plum half moons beneath her lower lashes enlarged the size of her fawnlike eyes. Jo’s mother’s eyes had looked like that before she died, but without eyelashes and with a sheen of morphine. “Yes, you can sleep here,” she said. She unfolded a blanket over the girl and tucked it around her thin body.

  “Are you going to sleep?”

  “I’ll read a little, but I’m too tired to get far in my book.”

  The girl rolled onto her back. “What do you do all day that makes you tired?”

  “I look for bird nests.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “Not for a
bird biologist.”

  “That’s what’s weird. I heard most Earth ladies are waitresses and teachers and jobs like that.”

  “I guess I don’t fall in the category of ‘most Earth ladies.’”

  “Can I look for nests with you? It sounds fun.”

  “It is, but right now you have to sleep.” Jo rose and walked to the nearest bedroom of two.

  The girl sat up. “Where are you going?”

  “To get my book. I’ll sit with you while I read.” She entered the dark bedroom, grabbed her old copy of Slaughterhouse-Five , and brought it into the living room. She sat at the end of the couch next to the girl’s feet.

  “What is that book?” the girl asked.

  “It’s called Slaughterhouse-Five . It has aliens in it.”

  The girl made a skeptical face.

  “Really. They’re called the Tralfamadorians. Do the Hetrayens know them?”

  “Are you joking me?”

  “I’m—”

  A pounding fist banged the outer screen door. The deputy had arrived. He or she had probably knocked once and Jo hadn’t heard. She’d had the noisy window air conditioner turned on high to hide the sound of the approaching squad car.

  The child had frozen like a cornered deer, her wild eyes fixed on the front door. “Who is that?”

  Jo put her hand on the girl’s arm. “Don’t be afraid. I want you to know I really care about what hap—”

  “You called the police?”

  “I did, but—”

  The girl sprang to her feet, throwing the blanket over Jo’s arms to ensnare her. She speared Jo with a glare of wounded condemnation, and in the next seconds, a blur of girl streaked into the kitchen. The rear door was unbolted and the screen door thudded shut behind her.

  Jo pulled off the blanket and laid it over the warm niche where the child had been. She wouldn’t have used force on the girl. No one had any right to expect that of her.

  The fist pounded again. Jo went onto the porch and faced a uniformed man through the screen door. “Thanks for coming,” she said. “I’m Joanna Teale.”

  “Did you call about a girl . . . a ‘homeless’ girl, you said?” the man said with a local drawl.

  “I did. Come in.” She led the deputy onto the porch. He looked toward the open wooden door, his face sallow in the glow of the bug bulb. “Is she in the house?”

  “Come inside,” Jo said.

  The deputy followed her into the living room, closing the door behind him to keep in the air-conditioning. Jo faced the man. His nameplate said he was K. DEAN . He was in his midthirties, balding, a little pudgy, and his plain, round moon of a face was eclipsed by a deep scar that ran from his left jaw up his cheek. With the casualness of habit, the man dropped his gaze to Jo’s chest. Certain he’d find nothing as riveting as his scar there, Jo waited for his eyes to return to hers. Two seconds, maybe less. “The girl ran away when you knocked,” she said.

  He nodded, peering around the house.

  “Do you know of any missing kids or AMBER Alerts around here?” she asked.

  “I don’t,” he said.

  “There aren’t any missing children?”

  “There are always missing children.”

  “From around here?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  She expected him to ask questions, but he was still looking around as if evaluating a crime scene. “She showed up yesterday. She’s around nine years old.”

  He turned his attention to her. “What made you think she’s homeless?”

  “She had on pajama bottoms . . .”

  “I think those pants are what kids call a ‘fashion statement,’” he said.

  “And she was hungry and dirty. She wasn’t wearing shoes.”

  His slight smile didn’t move his scar. “Sounds like me at age nine.”

  “She has bruises.”

  Finally, he looked concerned. “On her face?”

  “On her neck, leg, and arm.”

  Suspicion tinged his green eyes. “How did you see them if she had on pajamas?”

  “I let her shower here.”

  His eyes narrowed even more.

  “Like I said, she was dirty. And I had to keep her busy while I waited for you to arrive. I gave her dinner, too.”

  The way he was looking at her, as if she’d done something wrong, was infuriating.

  “I still don’t see how you came up with her being homeless,” he said.

  “By homeless, I meant she’s afraid to go home.”

  “So . . . she isn’t homeless.”

  “I don’t know what she is!” Jo said. “She has bruises. Someone is hurting her. Isn’t that all that matters?”

  “Did she say someone hurts her?”

  The girl’s alien story would muddle the already exasperating situation. “She wouldn’t tell me how she got the bruises. She wouldn’t tell me anything, not even her name.”

  “You asked?”

  “Yes, I asked.”

  He nodded.

  “Do you want a description of her?”

  “All right.” He didn’t take out a notebook, only nodded more as Jo described the girl.

  “Will you look for her—in the morning when it gets light?”

  “If she ran, she doesn’t want to be found.”

  “So what? She needs help.”

  His contemplation of her seemed judgmental. “What kind of help do you think she needs?”

  “Obviously she needs to be removed from whoever hurts her.”

  “Send her to a foster home?” he said.

  “If necessary.”

  He mused for a moment, stroking his fingertips on his scar as if it itched. “I’m gonna tell you something,” he said, “and you might take it wrong, but I’ll say it anyway. One of my friends in middle school was taken from his mother because she drank and pretty much let him run as wild as he wanted. He was put with people who took foster kids for the state money—which happens more than you’d think—and he ended up a lot worse off than if he’d been with his mama. The foster father hit him, and the mother verbally abused him. My friend died from an overdose when he was fifteen.”

  “What are you saying . . . you think she should be left in an abusive home?”

  “Now, I didn’t say that, did I?”

  “You implied it.”

  “What I implied was, don’t pull that girl outta the pan and drop her into the fire. Those bruises might be from climbing a fence or falling out of a tree, and if you turn her in, she’ll probably say that even if it isn’t true. Kids are smarter than we think. They know how to survive the shit that’s dealt them better than some welfare worker who never spent a day in one of those kids’ shoes.”

  Were those the unspoken rules Jo had sought? Or were they only the opinions of one bitter man who’d lost a boyhood friend?

  “I guess this means you won’t look for her?” Jo said.

  “What would you have us do, get the dogs out after her?”

  She showed the deputy to the door.

  4

  Jo took a flashlight out the back door and looked for the girl. A front that was expected to bring rain the next day had moved in, its clouds conquering the moon and stars. Jo already smelled a hint of rain in the warm humid air. But she found no trace of the girl.

  The rain arrived a few hours later, a hard patter on the cottage that woke Jo out of a deep sleep. She thought of the girl, possibly alone in the dark woods in the rain, and she wished she hadn’t called the sheriff. She looked at her phone. 2:17 a.m. Just a few hours into her mother’s birthday. She would have been fifty-one.

  She went to the bathroom, more for distraction than for need. As she washed, she leaned toward the sink mirror, assessing the healthy glow of her skin and sun-lightened streaks in her hair. Her face was thinner and her hair still wasn’t long enough to pull back, but she almost looked like herself again.

  Almost. The hazel eyes in the mirror mocked her. But who was reflected there, the
old Jo or the new almost Jo? She gripped the sink and bowed her head, staring into the dark tunnel of the drain. Maybe this was how it would be from now on, two versions of herself living inside one body. Jo looked up at the woman in the mirror as she flicked the switch, purging her with darkness.

  The storm continued all morning, and she couldn’t work in the rain. She slept past her usual waking time, until about an hour past dawn. After she dressed, drank her coffee, and ate cereal, she gathered the laundry, a rain-day ritual. The alien child’s clothes were draped over the laundry basket. Jo stuffed them into the duffel bag along with her dirty clothing, towels, and a bottle of detergent.

  She packed a courier bag with her laptop and enough raw data for an hour’s worth of data entry. As she locked the front door behind her, something moved in her peripheral vision. The old afghan she kept on the wicker porch couch was stretched over a long lump the exact dimensions of the alien. She was pulling the blanket over her head, trying to hide.

  Jo tried to transform the intensity of her relief into anger. But she couldn’t. “I guess you haven’t figured out how to hide your human body yet,” she said to the lump.

  The edge of the afghan came down from the girl’s pale face. “I haven’t,” she said.

  “What are Hetrayen bodies like?”

  The girl considered for a few seconds. “We look like starlight. It’s not exactly a body .”

  Creative answer. Jo pondered what to do. If she called the sheriff, the girl would run again. The only possibility would be to lock her in a room until the deputy arrived. Jo wasn’t up for that, and even if she were, the house didn’t have any rooms that couldn’t be opened from the inside.

  The girl intuited Jo’s thoughts. “I’m leaving now. I only came back because I couldn’t see to go nowhere last night.”

  Though the girl tried to hide it, Jo saw a shadow of the distress she had experienced when she ran from the house. With clouds covering the moon and stars, she wouldn’t have been able to see her hand if she held it in front of her face. She had stayed near the cottage lights.

  The girl sat up and pushed the blanket aside. “Usually I sleep in that old shed back there, but rain was dripping on me.”