No one expects a spaceship. No one ever expects a spaceship. I guess this is why Dad and I only take rides in the middle of the night.

It’s one in the morning. I’m sleeping but he comes up to my room and whispers “Let’s roll!” into my ear, same way as always, and tells me to get ready. Space is cold, so even though it’s still hot out, he tells me to wear warm clothes.

We open the garage door quietly and push the craft into the alley, roll it while Dad gets in and starts it, and then I jump in and we fly over Independence North Elementary School, and up over all the stores on Main Street and past the flagpole and the train car in the park and over the fire station and up the highway to the shopping mall and the fast-food restaurants on the outskirts of town.

There is a twenty-four-hour McDonald’s here, and Dad pulls into the drive-through lane. I order something sweet, with no nutritional value, and we take off into orbit and watch the Earth below us. Only a few people know what Earth looks like from up here. Aaron James would really be disappointed to find out how round Earth is. Marci would probably cry at how beautiful it is. Denis would be nervous but try not to show it. Dad and I eat junk food. In the middle of the night. After he was a jerk to us. As if this is completely normal.

“So what was happening when I came in tonight? You all looked busy,” he says.

“My reading book from school is censored and I don’t know what to do about it,” I say to him.

“Censored how?”

“Someone crossed out two lines of text with a black marker.”

“What do they say?”

“Both refer to breasts or girls’ chests,” I answer.

Dad chuckles through his nose and I think about why I’m even here with him. I was sleeping and got up in a daze. I don’t even want to be here.

“What does Denis think?”

“Denis is too worried about the possible existence of extended-stay botflies,” I say. “But I guess he just wants to find out why whoever censored the books did it.”

Dad crumples up his Big Mac wrapper and tosses it back in the brown bag. “I think we all know who censored the books and why. And there isn’t any such thing as an extended-stay botfly. Good guess, though.”

“He’s got a bug bite from last summer that won’t go away, is all,” I say. “He says he can’t see any movement under his skin, but then, sometimes, he says he swears he feels something is in there.”

“I know. And it’s not a botfly. It’s a species from a few galaxies away. If it’s still in his leg now, for a whole year, it’s probably due to hatch soon. Don’t worry. One day he’ll wake up and it will be gone and it will be a mystery.”

“Oh,” I say. “What happens after it hatches?”

“It’ll grow into a cat.”

I don’t know what to say. I want it to be a joke. But Dad isn’t laughing.

“If you need to know,” he says, “domesticated cats are not from Earth. Wild cats aren’t even from Earth. They aren’t spies as much as they’re anthropologists, like me. They watch and report back—write articles in magazines about humans and stuff.”

“Like National Geographic?”

“Yes. Like that,” he answers.

“Do you write any of those articles?” I ask.

“I contribute,” he says. “Usually I’m more of an on-the-ground research guy. I’m who they call to make sure they have their facts straight.”

“And they is the cats who make magazines like National Geographic but about humans?”

“Yes.”

“Are you really my father?”

“Yes.”

“So is that even allowed? You, um, having babies with humans?”

“No.”

“Did you do it so you could be an on-the-ground research assistant?” I ask.

“I did it because I was interested in learning about love,” Dad says. “Humans have this pull toward each other. They have the opposite, too, of course. Hate is equally interesting. But I wanted to study love, you see. Then I met your mother.”

“And you loved her?”

“She loved me,” he says. “I can’t love like humans love.”

That stings. “Oh.”

“Not romantic love, anyway. But I can love you. I do love you. It’s the most enthralling feeling I have ever felt. Like I won the biggest prize.”

I feel warm anger rising in my chest. I’m a person, not a prize.

He revs the engine and we fly back through town, low over the park, and we scare the ducks who were sleeping under the trees. Some of them fly up in protest, and Dad laughs and quacks at them. Two people walking on Main Street see us and point. I wave because what does it matter that we’re in a spacecraft and I still have a McDonald’s chocolate milkshake. It’s two in the morning and tomorrow is Sunday and Grandad and I will take our Sunday walk and he’ll name all the trees and tell me about what it was like to fight in a war or protest for civil rights.

We get closer to the house, and Dad lands the spacecraft and drives slowly home.

“Did you really smash Mom’s mug on purpose?”

“Yep.”

“That’s really bad,” I say.

“I was angry. I couldn’t control myself.” Now he’s smiling. Like this is a joke.

“I mean—I guess—I mean that you shouldn’t have smashed Mom’s mug.”

“She’ll get over it. Earth women have to cry awhile before they feel better. That’s all.”

He kills the engine before we get to the house and we push it the rest of the way, like always. Then I sneak upstairs and get back into bed. The clock says I’ve only been gone an hour but it felt like five. Not in a good way.

I can’t fall back to sleep right away, so I grab my laptop and reread the letter I sent to Jane Yolen. At least there aren’t any misspelled words. Part of me regrets telling her all that stuff about the mug. But I know I can’t do anything about it and at least it’s the truth.

Fall Play Inappropriate

I am concerned about the choice for our fall play. The play is Girls Like That, and while I understand that the school is private and all-girls and this material is relevant, I don’t think teenagers should be talking about these issues. —Lois K., Spruce Street

Re: Fall Play Inappropriate

No plays mentioning any topic that is deemed “adult content” should be performed in this town. If people want to see that sort of thing, they can go to the next town. —Laura Samuel Sett

It’s a private school. Take it up with them.
—John Cope, Newport Road

Why are we shutting out culture in this town? How does a play equate to a bag of Cheetos? I’ve lived here my whole life and I’m starting to get sick of the restrictions. Not to mention that Girls Like That is about a naked picture of a girl getting passed around a school, which is exactly what happened in the high school last year. Grow up! —Pat Z., Front Street