• • • • •
I’m dreading what I’m about to do.
I stare at my phone.
My stomach turns.
I grab my Montana UFO Sightings book off the shelf. I open to the back cover and take out the sticky note with the phone number. I deleted my dad’s message but wrote the number down just in case I ever had the courage to . . .
Today I woke up with that courage.
I think some things needed to happen before I could try to call. I had to become friends with Seth, and learn that he has my back. I had to witness Geoffrey coming to terms with his own mortality, and have Tickles be my silent adviser through it all. My dad needed to fall and then get back up, and my grandma had to go on her last great journey. I needed to search and find and uncover all the possible aliens around me before I could ever reach out to the ones farther away.
But mostly I needed to find myself. I’ll never tell Seth he was right, but I was too busy looking up and missing out on everything in front of me.
She might have left me, but there are people who have chosen to stay, and they are my family.
With a deep breath I begin to dial her number.
It rings. And rings. I can’t stand the anticipation. . . . My head is being crushed under the strain. . . .
“Hello?” she answers, and her voice is as soft as a cloud and as sweet as honey, just like I remembered.
But no memories come flooding back.
“Hello?” she says again.
I have nothing. I’m blank.
“Who is this?” she asks.
I don’t know who I am with her.
She’s an alien to me.
I hang up and stare out my window. I take a deep breath, and a shooting star sears the crisp Montana night sky. I follow it as it dissipates into nothing, the universe not even remembering that it existed.
The universe is so massive and unforgiving, and it begins to overtake my thoughts, making me feel alone and insignificant, and just when my thoughts begin to overwhelm me, my phone buzzes. . . .
It’s Seth. He wants to know if I saw the shooting star. I pick up my phone, thankful that I’m not out there in the Great Beyond, all alone, burning out without a trace. Instead I’m here on earth with people who love me.
I’m home.