Nine

 

Marsha stayed in the living room for most of the morning. Sophie was in her bedroom, the door shut, and Marsha didn’t want to bother her. She felt terrible now that she’d seen the reaction her attempted departure had left on Sophie. It was the wrong thing to do; she saw that clearly.

She flipped through the channels, unable to focus enough to watch anything. She didn’t feel like losing herself in imaginary stories, and she certainly wasn’t up for seeing what was on the news. She needed to figure out what to do.

The thing was that Sophie wasn’t just upset because of the riskiness of her departure. She was upset because she’d almost left at all. Sophie clearly wanted her to stay, and Marsha’s determination to go was faltering.

It was obvious that no search party was coming for her. Other than her one possibly fatal idea, she had no way to get back. Maybe it was time to give up—to go with what her heart wanted in the first place.

At noon, Terry went into the kitchen. Marsha followed him in, dipping her head when she received the force of his glare.

“I know I messed up,” she said softly. “You have every right to hate me.”

“Do you have any idea what you did to Sophie?” He gripped the back of a chair, white-knuckling it. “Of course you don’t. You didn’t see her when she found your note. You’re not the one who held her while she cried her eyes out.”

“I didn’t think she’d care that much. I thought it’d be easier.”

“I don’t care what you thought, Marsha.” Letting the chair go, he opened the fridge. His shoulders were high, his back filled with tension.

She slipped into the chair, her heart beating louder than usual. “I’m sorry. To both of you.”

“I’m not the one you need to apologize to.” Giving up on finding food, he swung back around to face her. “Sophie is a sensitive girl, and she doesn’t have a lot of experience, and to see you come in here and play with her heart… It’s not pretty.”

Marsha digested that for a second, the suggestion and the implications of it. “I never intended to do any of that.”

“Well, you did.” He let out a long sigh. “This is partly my fault. I should’ve taken charge. If I really thought you were going to stay, I would’ve insisted that you do something with yourself. Part of me was expecting you to leave all along.”

“Do something? Like get a job?” Marsha thought quickly. “I can still do that.”

“I don’t know. At this point, with Sophie… Maybe it’d be better for you to live somewhere else.”

“No!” Earth without Sophie sounded like the worst form of torture. “I’ll work. I can sleep in the living room if she doesn’t want me in hers. It doesn’t matter. I can pay rent.”

“What kind of job would you get?”

As he spoke, Sophie stumbled into the kitchen. She was still in her PJs, and her bleary eyes suggested she’d been crying. “What did you say?” she asked.

“We were talking about me getting a job.” Marsha gestured at both of them to sit down. “You two were right. There was no guarantee that destroying my body would send me back rather than simply killing me. I should plan on staying here for a while.” Even if she had been able to return, she would’ve chosen to stay to prevent hurting Sophie.

“A job, huh?” Sophie looked cautiously optimistic. “What would you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“She doesn’t have a social security number or any form of ID,” Terry said. “It would have to be under the table.”

“You could waitress, maybe,” Sophie said. “Or bartend.”

She already seemed less furious with Marsha than she had been. “Those sound okay,” Marsha said.

“She wouldn’t last ten minutes without someone figuring out she’s not from around here,” Terry said. “Think again. Something that doesn’t involve interacting with the public.”

“And that pays cash?” Sophie frowned. “I don’t know. Roofing? Construction?”

“That’s not going to go too well.” Terry glanced at Marsha’s nonexistent muscles.

“Let me check my database,” Marsha said.

Nothing jumped out at her. She didn’t know how to do any Earthside jobs, and she didn’t have time to go to school and learn. She needed money now.

“With your language skills, you could be an interpreter,” Sophie said. “I can just see you working at the UN.”

“No documents, remember?” Marsha said.

“You might be onto something,” Terry said. “All those languages… There has to be a way to monetize that. Maybe you could tutor.”

“I could definitely try.” Marsha sat up straight. “If I do that, you two will let me stay with you?”

“That was never a question.” Sophie squeezed both of Marsha’s hands.

Marsha looked past her, at Terry. His face was colder, and he made no move to touch her. “You can stay as long as Sophie is happy.”

 

***

 

Sophie had never thought about how language tutors found clients before. She wasn’t sure how much one would be able to charge, or even where they’d be able to meet with their students. She’d never used a tutor herself, preferring to attend classes.

“Look,” she said, pointing her laptop toward Marsha. They were still in the kitchen; she wasn’t quite ready to bring Marsha into her room again. “This one is charging forty bucks an hour. Considering how many languages you speak, I’m sure you can get away with fifty.”

“Why not aim high?” Marsha asked. “Make it a hundred?”

“I don’t think you have any concept of the value of money,” Sophie laughed. She liked that her words echoed something Terry had said to her shortly after she first moved in.

“I’m joking,” Marsha said. “Mostly. I don’t have any teaching experience. Shouldn’t I be cheaper?”

“You’re worth way more than fifty bucks an hour,” Sophie said. “A hundred, even. You’re worth everything.”

“Imagine if those kids knew exactly who was teaching them,” Marsha said.

“They’d sell their story to the newspaper for a million dollars. ‘My Tutor Was an Alien!’”

“Is the pay that good? I don’t even need a job. I should just sell the rights to my story instead.”

Sophie gaped at her, not sure if she was joking. She’d always been so terrified of getting found out, and now she was being glib about the possibility?

“Not really.” Marsha gave her a light punch on the arm.

Marsha was getting so good at being human, it was hard to remember that she wasn’t. She really could make a life of it, here on Earth, if she wanted to. That seemed to be what she was planning—but for Sophie, it was too good to be true. She wouldn’t trust Marsha completely for a long time, if ever. Even this discussion felt somewhat unreal.

“All right, let’s start writing your ad,” Sophie said, pulling the laptop back. “Which languages do you want to advertise for?”

“All of them.”

“You can’t say that. No one would believe it was possible.” She tapped her finger on the table thoughtfully. “French and Spanish. It’s realistic for someone to speak both of those fluently, and they’re probably the most popular languages to study, anyway.”

“J’adore la belle langue française,” Marsha said.

“Show-off.” Sophie put her hands on the keyboard. “¿Quieres escribir, o debería hacerlo?

“You can write it. Go ahead.”

Sophie did her best to sell Marsha’s teaching skills, describing her as a native speaker with years of relevant experience. She tried to skirt the line of actually lying. After all, conducting interplanetary trade deals was kind of relevant, wasn’t it?

“All done,” she said, hitting “post” on the ad. “Now we wait.”

“Now we wait.” Marsha gazed at her.

The affection in Marsha’s eyes made her face feel hot, and she quickly looked away. Her feelings for Marsha were already bad enough. She couldn’t allow them to grow. Maybe in a few months, or a year from now, she’d be able to trust her.

For now, she had to keep her distance. For her own sake.

 

***

 

Sophie’s ad actually worked, and Marsha had booked a language lesson with a fourteen-year-old who’d struggled to pass French class. Over email, the mom had told her that she hoped with some one-on-one lessons, the girl would become fluent over the summer.

Terry had driven Marsha to the library where she was meeting the student, and now she gathered her notebook and stepped out of the car. She’d thought about buying a French dictionary to look like a more serious teacher, but realistically she didn’t need one, and she didn’t want to put herself more into Sophie’s debt. Once she was earning her own money, she could buy whatever she wanted.

She found the girl alone at the far end of the main room. She recognized Leila by the furry panda hat Leila’s mom had told her she’d be wearing.

“I love your hat,” she said as she sat down.

Leila scowled. “Now that you’re here, I can take this stupid thing off. It’s itchy.”

Marsha sat down cautiously. She might know everything about French, but she knew nothing about fourteen-year-olds. “I’m looking forward to helping you today. Is there anything in particular that you want to work on? Ou préférerais-tu simplement bavarder?”

“Huh?” Leila looked like she’d smelled something bad. “I have this homework. I guess we can work on it.” She opened her binder and shoved a pile of papers in front of Marsha.

“Perfect.” Marsha flipped through the papers. “Okay, so this one is about the imparfait—that’s imperfect—and the passé composé—the perfect. And those are…” She stared at the worksheets, drawing a blank.

“Verb tenses. Even I know that.”

“Of course.” Marsha did her best to smile pleasantly. “Just checking if you did. Okay, let’s start with this one. For the verb dire, which would you say? Une fois, je lui… ai dit, suis dit, or disais.”

“I have no idea,” Leila said snarkily. “That’s why I’m here. Teach me.”

Marsha stared at the paper, then flipped it over as if some explanation would be there. “The answer is ai dit.”

“Why?”

That was what she was asking herself. The translator on her microchip worked a little like Google Translate. She thought of what she wanted to say, and it spat the right words out. In reverse, it told her everything she needed to know from another language. It didn’t tell her anything about why.

“Um…” Her mind raced. “Let’s try the second question.”

“No, you tell me how we answered the first one.” Leila folded her arms.

Marsha was getting flustered now. “Let’s look through the rest of these. We should start somewhere easier.” Surely there was something she could simply translate for the girl. Something she wouldn’t have to understand and explain.

“Easier? I thought you were a tutor. This is ninth-grade French, and you can’t understand it?”

“I do understand.” And she did, but that wasn’t going to be good enough. Leila had been reluctant enough to be here in the first place, and now she was quickly losing her respect.

“This is stupid. I’m going to call my mom.”

“No! Just…” Marsha bit down hard on her lower lip. “Let’s try again, okay?”

“I’m not interested.” Leila shoved her papers into her binder and picked it up, putting her cell phone to her ear as she strode away.

Marsha sat back in her chair, her pulse racing. So much for making a living with tutoring. Leila hadn’t paid her a cent—and she was right not to. Marsha hadn’t even made it through ten minutes.

Maybe this was a dumb idea. The tutoring—and the rest of it.

Maybe she didn’t belong on Earth at all.