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Geri
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When I open my eyes, I’m staring at a flat white ceiling polka-dotted with 1980s-style recessed lighting. A flash of red streaks across my memory too fast and fleeting for me to catch, and I jerk into a sitting position, extending my neck to suck in air. All the while, I brace for the unbearable pain that movement is going to cause me. Surprisingly, it doesn’t come.
The blanket covering me has rumpled into my lap, exposing my bare torso, and I do a visual examination of my side. Everything looks normal.
Slowly, hesitantly, I twist my right side forward and backward, testing it for even a twinge, but the pain is gone—even in my left arm. I hold it straight out in wonder and flex it, not feeling so much as a pang.
My heart starts a slow and laborious beat as it dawns on me that I must’ve been unconscious for a long time, perhaps even in a coma.
I take in my surroundings. I’m in a rectangular room, about the size of my parents’ dining and living rooms put together, partially divided into two living spaces by a white laminate double-length desk extending from the wall. Each side of the room contains a single bed, a nightstand, a bookcase with books neatly lined up on all four shelves, and a recessed cupboard with chrome pull handles. I’m occupying one of the beds, and the other is empty, made up with a military tautness I could bounce a coin off of.
The walls are beige, the floor is beige, and the one door leading out of here is beige, although at least it has a small round window. If it weren’t for the framed outdoor scenes hanging on the walls—a Canadian forest in full autumn plumage, a red canoe on a green lake, and skyscrapers against a blue sky—the room would be completely monochromatic.
And it’s missing something I feel is very important in a room: windows that give me a view of the outside world.
I pull the blanket around me and tuck it under my arms, sarong-style, and go to the one door in and out of here. The small round glass window casts my reflection, and my eyes are immediately drawn to the wound on my forehead—a large dark purple bruise with a jagged cut in the center. The sight paralyzes me for a moment because how the hell do I still have a cut, but my broken arm and right side are healed?
I peer through the window right into a vestibule with another door, although that door is windowless. Both doors are flat without the distinctive characteristic of having a knob. I run my hands along the doorjamb looking for a hidden latch, or a button, or anything that will open it, but there’s nothing.
No windows and a locked door. This isn’t a room; it’s a prison cell.
Am I under arrest? Correction: Am I being detained by the same organization that wants me dead? What did Sean call them? The EUC or something, and they phoned commandant somebody or other. My memory is sketchy on the details, but I distinctly remember having a gun pointed at my face and a man saying he wanted to “take care of business.”
Oh God! Did he kill Sean? Is Sean dead?
Wait. I remember Sean overpowering him and another man. Then they were helping us, helping me with a Sasquatch named Karl, who was really busted up by Reptile Man.
A silvery-blond-haired woman with intense blue eyes flashes into my mind, then everything goes red. The memory has me sucking in air.
That’s twice I’ve associated red with not being able to breathe...
“Hello?” I call out in the quiet room. Not surprisingly, no one answers. “Hey! Hello! I’m awake.” I look out of the room’s only window, anxious for someone to open the door but fearful of who or what that may be.
What if they come for me? I’m standing here in nothing but a blanket, exposed and vulnerable.
My bare feet slap against the tiled floor as I hurry across the room to the recessed closet beside the bed I was occupying. I pull open the door with enough vigor that my hair blows away from my face. But instead of the closet I was expecting, I find a lavatory the size of a large powder room, complete with sink, toilet, and open shower.
A light automatically came on when the door opened, so I step inside the windowless cube. On my left is a narrow floor-to-ceiling shelving unit recessed into the wall. The middle shelves hold neatly folded linens. I rifle through them and find two towels, two pairs of pants that resemble hospital scrubs, and two plain V-neck shirts. Everything is in the same nondescript beige.
I drop the blanket and quickly pull on an oversized outfit, tying the waist string tight enough for the pants to stay up and rolling the legs so I don’t trip over them. The shirt hangs almost to my knees, and the short sleeves fall past my elbows. There isn’t a mirror for me to see how ridiculous I look, but the important thing is that I have the dignity of being dressed when I either escape or am led to my doom.
The bathroom’s vanity is a seamless solid piece constructed out of a conglomerate that looks like Corian. It would be a perfect rectangular cuboid except for the depression in the top that serves as a sink. Even the faucet is molded out of the material with the addition of a lever on top. I pull up on it and test the water that comes out of the spout. When my hand doesn’t disintegrate or anything, I hold it under the stream and marvel at how the water is neither hot nor cold, but the exact temperature as my hand.
The swish of the door opening sends me two feet off the floor. I whirl around and take the three short steps to the outer room to confront my visitor, holding my breath because I’m not sure what I’m going to come face-to-face with—a Sasquatch, a giant reptile, little gray aliens, or the people who want me dead. So when I see Sean standing by the door, holding a stack of folded laundry—my clothes, by the look of it—tears of utter relief and happiness sting my eyes.
I race across the room and crash into him, throwing both arms around his neck and dislodging the neat stack of clothes in his hands. I bury my face against his warm skin and inhale his scent, driving out the strangely sterile smell of this place—or more accurately, the absence of any odors.
His arms go around my waist, and he picks up me up off the floor, holding me in a vice grip against him. “You shouldn’t be out of bed,” he says into my hair. His voice sounds tired and haggard.
He walks over to the bed as I cling to him like a parasite, unwilling to let go. For some reason, my throat feels bruised, and the golf-ball-sized lump at the base of it is making it difficult to breathe let alone talk, so I just hug him tighter, my face buried in the crook of his neck. He holds me until my heart stops pounding like a jackhammer and my breathing returns to normal. Then he slowly lowers my bare feet back onto the hard floor.
“Thank God you’re okay,” he whispers, smoothing my hair.
I lift my face out of the crook of his shoulder to look into his beautifully familiar eyes, an oasis in this beige desert. “I’m completely healed except for this.” I gently touch the wound on my forehead. “Which doesn’t make any sense at all. How long have I been here?”
He crinkles his nose. “It’s ah... nine o’clock at night.”
“Yeah, but which night? How long have I been here? I remember I had a broken arm, and I don’t know what was going on with my right side, but it was unbearable. Have I been in a coma? What happened to me?”
His eyes haven’t left mine, and he patiently waits for me to stop asking questions. “You’ve been here twelve hours.”
I’m stunned into silence, dumbly staring at him while I try to make sense of that. “There’s no way...” I shake my head.
“It’s hard to explain.” That’s the understatement of year, and he doesn’t even bat an eyelash when he says it.
“But explainable, right?” I ask. “And where exactly is ‘here’? Hospital? Prison cell? And when do I get out?”
“You’re not in prison,” he reassures me. “You’re only here for the night, under observation.” At my look of alarm, he says, “I’ll stay with you. Promise. But you just had surgery, and the doctor wants to ensure your bones are fusing together properly. Your left arm was fractured. You had three broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a concussion. You need to get back into bed.”
He places his hands on my shoulders and directs me to the edge of the bed.
“What about Karl?” I ask. “Did he make it? Is he alive?”
Now that I’m sitting, I realize that I wasn’t feeling all that great. I have a lot of achy muscles and joints.
“He’s going to be fine,” Sean says. “You want some water? Are you hungry?” He walks away from me toward the desk in the center of the room.
“Water, please.”
At the desk, Sean taps the wall, and a hidden door slides open, revealing a machine.
“What is that?”
“A nutrition bar.” He glances at me then clarifies, “A food and beverage dispenser. It’s got everything a body needs.” He presses some buttons in a sequence, and two cups are dispensed.
“You mean like a high-tech automated kitchen? Like in Star Trek?” I ask, because I’m beginning to think I might be on a spaceship.
“To be fair, the McKenna kitchen was pretty automated too,” he says with a smirk, walking back to me.
Despite my anxieties about being here, a smile springs to my lips. “My mom could run circles around that machine.”
He sits next to me and hands me a cup of water. “Not to mention her cooking is out of this world.”
“Do you mean that literally?” I sweep the room with my eyes. “Do you mean out of this world?” I return my gaze to his, and we sit silently on the edge of the bed, eyes locked, both of us holding our breath before we jump into the truth.
Then he nods, confirming the unimaginable, and reaches across me to set his cup on the nightstand before taking my hand in his. “You’re on a Pleiadian spacelab.” His eyebrows crease in an apologetic expression. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to bring you here, but your injuries were too extensive for me to try to get you to a hospital. You would’ve died.”
“Then I should be thanking you,” I say with a modicum of uncertainty, because the expression on his face is guilt-ridden.
“I never wanted for you to get mixed up in all of this. I wish it had turned out differently.” He leans forward and plants a lingering kiss on my forehead.
“You’re scaring me, Eastman,” I say, because he seems awfully repentant about saving my life. “Am I in danger?”
“No.” He shakes his head firmly. “You’re not in danger. I promise.”
This only makes me feel marginally better, because something’s going on. I can feel it. “I’m still not exactly sure what I’ve gotten myself mixed up in.”
Sean nods. “You deserve an explanation. What do you want to know?”
An unladylike snort escapes me. “Ah, everything. For starters, it would help me if I knew who all the players were, like who are the EUC?”
He gives my hand a squeeze then reaches behind me and fluffs the one thin pillow on the bed. “Why don’t you lie back and relax, and I’ll tell you.”
I don’t put up an argument because I’m feeling achy, kind of like I have the flu. I prop the pillow against the wall and make myself comfortable.
“The EUC stands for Earth’s Unitary Council, a shadow government with an international delegation, originally set up as a liaison between Earth and the Pleiadians.” He hands me my water cup, and I sip as he talks. “It’s headed by an ambassadress, who is being groomed to take Earth’s place on the Milky Way Assembly, the galactic governing body responsible for ensuring the Milky Way Accord is enforced and peace is kept in the galaxy. The EUC is a relatively new council, formed in the early 1970s when the Pleiadian spacelabs arrived on Earth.”
“The Shag Harbour encounter,” I say, making the time connection.
“That’s right. And it was really ingenious of you to make that connect.” He throws me an appreciative glance, which makes me feel ridiculously proud. He stands up and crosses the room toward my clothes on the floor. “Several hundred spaceships arrived on Earth between 1945 and 1975 in response to the Cold War. Although interfering in a native population is prohibited under the terms of the Milky Way Accord, fifty-four of the sixty-two planetary members of the assembly voted to allow the Pleiadians, the current sponsors of Earth, to come here as watchdogs and disarm the nukes if required. They were also tasked with determining the state of the environment.” He bends down to scoop my clothes off the floor and heads toward the bathroom. “In 1967, one of the spacelabs crashed into the Atlantic, ripping a hole in the side of the ship, and three Pleiadians were knocked unconscious and sucked into the sea.” He steps just inside the lavatory, folding my clothes and putting them on a shelf. “Luckily, the three were discovered by a fisherman and his girlfriend out for a romantic midnight cruise, instead of the Canadian and US naval fleets that rushed to the crash scene on high alert.” He turns to look at me, a playful smile on his lips.
My head is buzzing, filling me with an anxious excitement that sends goose bumps running up my arms. “I’m guessing the fisherman and his girlfriend were Joe and Mary Ross.”
Sean nods. “You got it.”
“Huh!” My mind is already racing ahead to how I’m going to write this story. It’s going to make every headline in the world.
Sean steps out of the washroom, bringing the blanket I left in there with him. He covers me, spreading it out before he lies across the foot of the bed, facing me, his head propped on one hand. “Joe said they found three strange beings bobbing on the surface, barely breathing, and in the course of trying to rescue them, Mary figured out they could breathe easier under water. Or at least she thought they could and talked Joe into helping her hold them under.” Sean laughs affectionately. “Joe said he didn’t know if he was killing them or helping them, so he was pretty relieved when one woke up. Long story short, they made friends, and the Pleiadians asked for their help with the hybrid program. They gave the Rosses the means to purchase the land and build Lake Lodge, which is where hybrids are sent when they come of age to learn human customs and characteristics. This ship”—Sean indicates the one we’re in—“is hidden at the bottom of Shag Lake.”
“Hybrid program.” I pull the conversation back around to that because he glossed over it.
He turns his eyes down, hooding them, and his fingers pluck at the blanket. “A genetic program that combines human DNA with Pleiadian to create a new race of super humans.”
It all makes sense now. All those times he observed us when we were growing up, watching how we behaved at the dinner table before he joined in, always lurking as Emma called it.
I set my cup down, sit up, and stretch forward to take his hand in both of mine, finally understanding what he meant when he said he couldn’t offer any woman a future. “You’re a hybrid, aren’t you, Sean?”
He nods, his eyes still on the blanket. “Yeah, I’m not an alien,” he says with a breathy laugh then shrugs self-consciously. “I’m not a human, either. I’m a science experiment, and this”—he looks around the room—“is where I grew up. It’s my room with my, ah, brother, Jason.” He finally makes eye contact with me. “Pretty freaky, eh?”
Freaky isn’t the word I would use as I take in the lackluster austerity of the place. It’s devoid of any signs that two boys grew up here. There are no old toys or toy boxes, no overhead light shades with hockey players or Ninja Turtles on them, and no action figures or comic books adorning the bookcases. In fact, the books so neatly lining the shelves look to be all textbooks.
I can’t help but compare it with my old bedroom—my double bed with the patchwork quilt my grandmother made, the hand-me-down bureau with a thick skin of about ten different paint colors, the floral curtains that Mom bought at Zellers now faded. It’s been five years since I’ve flown the coop, but my room remains the same. Those curtains still hang on either side of a window that overlooks the backyard and lake. And my closet is chock full of things I couldn’t bring myself to part with, including my secret stash of Brats dolls, which I would never live down if word got out.
I’m aware that my mouth is hanging open and that Sean may construe my shock as rude, but holy shit! “There are no windows in this room, Sean. And no knob on the door to get out.”
He laughs softly. “I don’t need a knob.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m... genetically part of this place. It recognizes me. I can come and go as I please.”
“But it’s so—” I stop myself midsentence because even though I’m shocked by the spartan existence he must’ve had growing up, it’s still his home, and I have no right to judge it.
He’s looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to finish my sentence.
“It’s so beige,” I say. “Who was your decorator?”
That elicits a half smile from him. “As telepaths, the Pleiadians exist in the cerebral dimension, and the less visual noise to contend with, the better for clarity of thought.”
I take a moment to try to wrap my head around that, trying to picture an entire race of people who read each other’s thoughts, and I wonder how that could possibly work.
“Think of it as their way of life,” Sean explains without me ever voicing the question. “Language barriers don’t exist, which allows ideas to be conveyed clearly and without misunderstanding, which leads to innovation. And there’s nowhere for lies or deceit to hide among them, so there’s almost zero crime.”
I just stare at him, blinking, thinking, I never asked you that question. I only thought it. Are you telepathic too?
His eyes open wide. “Oh. I thought you asked it out loud.”
Oh. My. God.
I jump out from under the blanket and pin him back against the bed. “Are you telling me you can read my mind, Eastman?”
He puts his palms up as if surrendering. “Take it easy, Geri. I can explain.”
“Explain?” I burst out, thinking of all the fantasies I’ve had about him ever since I met him eight years ago. And he saw every one of them? “You’re a... a...” I stammer, looking for the right word, but I’m too outraged to even think. I give him a hard shove and move to get off the bed, but he grabs my wrist and holds me there.
His head is lifted off the bed, his abs clenched, and his gaze is level. “I am not some weirdo voyeur.”
My mouth drops open, and I gasp. “You’re reading my mind right now. That’s exactly the word I was looking for.”
“Oh, c’mon, Geri, it didn’t take a telepath to figure out where you were going with that. I swear I didn’t read your mind back in high school.” He looks me in the eye with a determined hard stare. Then his gaze softens, and he tilts his head left then right in a comme ci comme ça motion. “Except for once, if I’m going to be entirely honest.”
I snatch my wrist out of his grasp, slide my legs off the edge of the bed, and stand over him. “I knew it.”
He curls forward and stands to his full height. Now he’s the taller one. “It was the only time I ever overheard your thoughts, I swear. And in my own defense, you were super pissed at the time, literally screaming inside your head, and there was no way I could’ve avoided overhearing.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “So spill it, Eastman. What did you ‘overhear’?”
He nods, a fast, nervous kind of movement. “Okay, fair enough, I’ll tell you. It was when I came to your place after hockey practice with Mark, and you were wearing stilettos, learning how to walk in them before you wore them to the school dance. That was the time—the only time—I promise.”
Oh. My. God. He knows about Operation Cinderella.
I cover my face with my hands, my mind travelling back to that day, in particular back to the Cinderella fantasy I had on repeat in my head. It was my first high school dance, my first opportunity to be at the same social function with Sean that wasn’t sports related, and I wanted to exchange my hockey jersey for something sexy, something that would make him stop dead in his tracks and fall hopelessly in love with me. But first, I had to become that femme fatale, a transition that needed to appear seamless and effortless on my part, and it was going to require a lot of work. I mean, who knew skates were easier to walk on than stilettos?
Anyhow, Mark showed up after hockey practice with Sean in tow—after I had distinctly told my brother not to bring home any company—and Sean got an eyeful of me in my natural state. I was still dressed in my signature Montreal Canadiens jersey, black stilettos strapped on my feet, arms out on either side for balance. My thick, curly hair was still wet from my shower and not yet coifed into the planned Jennifer-Aniston-style beachy waves, and I hadn’t yet applied the makeup I had bought from the corner drug store. In other words, I was a mess and there was no coming back from that.
“You saw that juvenile fantasy?” I ask in a muffled voice, because I’m still covering my face with my hands. “Oh my God.”
I feel his hands on mine, gently pulling them away from my face. I don’t really want to look at him right now, but considering I’m on a Pleiadian spaceship or lab or whatever, locked in this room, I’m motivated to work past my discomfort because I don’t want to be here alone.
Taking a deep breath, I open my eyes and look into his blue ones.
“You want to know what I saw?”
I wince. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“I saw the image you had of yourself inside your head. Poised, confident, and absolutely stunning.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, duh, I was imagining myself as Cinderella.”
A shy smile sneaks onto his face. “You did have a Cinderella moment. Not then. It was another time.”
This is news. “When?”
“Remember my last day in Pembroke? Mark had us all over for his annual end-of-school party.”
“Yeah, I remember.” Worst day of my life, I think to myself and then turn red when I remember he can read my mind.
He snorts a laugh, but continues with his story. “I was showing off, dove into the cold lake and swam half the length of it underwater, and when I surfaced you guys were yelling at me, terrified I had drown. But all I could think about was the hot chick standing on the dock, her clothes clinging to her like a second skin. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.”
I’m following him, remembering that day, wondering who else was there besides my brother and his girlfriend, Lacey Holmes.
“It was you, Geri,” Sean says with a grin. “It was the first time that year I saw you out of a hockey jersey. I didn’t even recognize you.”
A light bulb suddenly goes on. “I remember now. You got out of the water and introduced yourself to me. I thought maybe you were delusional from hypothermia.”
His grin broadens. “Is that why you punched me?”
“Oh yeah. I forgot about that.” I try unsuccessfully not to smile at the memory. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. That punch was a wake-up call before I did something really stupid.”
I roll my eyes again, inwardly cringing. “You mean stupid like kiss your crush behind the shed while pretending to be some swooning southern belle?”
He shakes his head, eyes never leaving me, that half smile still on his lips. “No, I mean stupid like getting a kiss from said southern belle and losing control of my body.” He lets out a soft laugh, his cheeks coloring red. “Now that was embarrassing.”
If he means what I think he means... “When you say lost control, do you mean—”
“Whoa, whoa! Not like that. I meant I started trembling, you know, like how your hands shake when someone you like walks into the room, except it was a full-on body experience. I think it was the pubescent Pleiadian in me or some weird DNA mix-up.”
It’s all making sense now, and I can’t help but laugh, a deep belly laugh that has me bending over, holding my stomach, and falling down on the bed.
“It’s really not that funny,” Sean says.
“You don’t understand,” I say when I can catch my breath. “I searched the Internet for weeks to see if there had been an earthquake at the exact moment we kissed.”
He starts laughing. “You’re joking, right?”
“I wish I were.” My laughter subsides into giggles. “Emma was threatening to tell all at Mark’s wedding, and I was terrified you’d find out.”
Sean lies on the bed next to me, propped up on his elbow, all trace of humor gone from his face. “I need you to know, when your family took me into the McKenna clan like one of their own, how much that impacted my life. And after all you’ve given me, it tore me apart not to be honest about what I am. I’m sorry.”
I roll onto my side to face him. “First of all, you’re not a what, Sean,” I say with a determined edge to my voice. “Second, is this why you told me you couldn’t offer any woman a future?”
His cheeks color, and there’s humiliation radiating from his eyes. “I’m not exactly normal, Geri. I’m a science experiment. I’m not Pleiadian, and I’m not human. How can I offer a future to someone when I don’t belong anywhere?”
What he’s saying is maddening, and tears prick my eyes. “For eight long years, I’ve carried you here.” I tap my head. “And here.” I tap my heart. “So I can tell you that you do have a place in this world, but whether or not you want to belong there... ” I trail off, my eyes shifting from his to stare at the mattress, thinking here I go again, pulling a southern belle move. Behind the Shed, Part Deux.
“Geri?”
“Yeah?” I turn my face away from the mattress to look at him.
He leans toward me and presses his soft lips on mine in a gentle, hesitant kiss. I vaguely register that this is the first time he’s kissed me, so as his arms circle my waist, my tension eases, relieved that I don’t have to worry about him pushing me away. I shut everything else out—my contentious job at Global, my current predicament on a spacelab, the future of my career—and revel in my Cinderella moment.