The first time Garcia watches X-Files, her entire world opens up.
She had seen ET: The Extra-Terrestrial when she was five years old. Unlike the other kids at her stepbrother's ninth birthday, who cried in terror at every plot point, Garcia had sat forward in her seat, eagerly waiting to see what was going to happen next. When he was dying, she clapped her hands as if he was a fairy who would come back to life if enough people just believed. When he didn't, she was heartbroken. Later, when he did, Garcia was over the moon with joy. Her brother had nightmares for weeks that ET was living under his bed, so little Garcia stole away under there with Reese's Pieces candies to try to lure him out. She asked her parents for rainbow shades on her window, and watched Sesame Street religiously just in case the cute little alien was lurking around her house, and she could teach him to read. She drew pictures of him obsessively. Her kindergarten teacher called home, concerned when she drew ET's family as her own, even including Harvey the dog.
So, this new show, X-Files, is the same type of thing. While her few friends scoff and lose themselves in Beverly Hills, 90210, Garcia gets comfortable with a big bowl of popcorn and her plush ET doll. She is sixteen and has high hopes for this hour of television.
The government aspect is fascinating, and the guy who works as a profiler has a seriously awesome job. Garcia could never do it, but that doesn't mean she can't admire it. Scully strikes her as too serious and closed-minded, but the combination of the two personalities is fascinating. Seeing the pilot sends her on her own alien-finding adventure that weekend. She spends the night camping in a valley with an eye on the sky, knowing that the truth is out there. She doesn't find anything, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Her brothers, by now, are all out of the house. Though her parents are open-minded, Garcia doubts they are this open-minded. So, she doesn't confide in them just yet. Instead, she loses herself at the local public library, searching for any titles about UFOs or extra-terrestrials, but her search turns up almost nothing.
It is four more years, and a lifetime later, when Garcia gets her hands on something called The UFO Book. Garcia is twenty. By now, her parents have been dead for two years. By now, all four of her stepbrothers hate her for taking away their dad. She doesn't blame them. By now, alien life has ceased to matter all that much, but she finds, she cannot stop watching X-Files. It's like, her one link between her carefree life at sixteen and her life at eighteen when everything changed. She spends her time researching government conspiracies, alien life and figuring out how to hack the crap out of things, when she first gets Internet in 1998.
When the show is cancelled in 2002, Garcia is twenty-five. It is not as good as it once was. She cannot stomach the romance that is happening between the main characters whose relationship she was once so captivated by. It is so cliché. Such a cop-out. Is nothing sacred anymore? But, Garcia finds that having a failing version of her show is better than having none at all. Somehow, it's like she has lost her parents all over again. She goes on a bit of a downward spiral again, and three years later at twenty-eight, she has been caught. She is on a short-list of people with mad skills. Her parents would be proud, if what she had been doing wasn't completely illegal. All she wants is the truth. But what she gets is a hell of a lot scarier than the truth could ever be…
Her options are simple: join the FBI as a technical analyst, or live out the prime of her life in the slammer. She chooses the former and she meets a team of people who genuinely need her skills. People's lives depend on how speedily Garcia can crack passwords, get information and run searches. It is a dream come true, but her heart still aches. She is still lonely. None of her team shares her penchant for alien life forms.
In 2007, Garcia is thirty. She has been shot, and come back from the brink. When Morgan accidentally sits on her ratty, old ET doll and his heart lights up, Morgan draws his weapon.
"No! Morgan, that's a collector's item!" Garcia manages, making her way too slowly to rescue ET from staring down the barrel of a gun.
"Jesus Christ, Garcia… That thing is hideous," Morgan shudders.
"He is not. He's amazing," Garcia says fondly, cradling ET. "He's how I first got interested in aliens.
"Come on. You don't really believe that stuff, do you?" Morgan scoffs.
"I totally believe in that stuff," she insists. "You can't honestly think we're the only life forms here."
"Go to bed. You're tired," Morgan says, taking her shoulders.
"And you're skeptic," she shoots back, trying not to be offended and failing miserably.
In 2010, they lose JJ. In 2011, Emily follows. They are different losses, but they feel somehow the same. The pain is a vortex. ET is abandoned, buried in the bottom of Garcia's bed. Now when she looks out the window, aliens are the farthest thing from her mind. That truth does not seem nearly as pressing as the one she is living with now. The truth that she feels completely alone in the world. For her own comfort, Garcia imagines Emily flinging stars in a particular pattern - a Morse code she cannot decipher - and pictures JJ cracking it. Sergio is wasting away, and so is she. Food has lost all its appeal.
Until she spots the bag of Reese's Pieces. She packs her sleeping bag and Sergio in the car and drives, with her candy, out to the cemetery. She sits by Emily's headstone and imagines a time when her life was simpler. She turns her gaze to the sky and tries to crack the code she feels certain is there.
She sits in the dark night after night, but comes no closer to discerning what her friends and family might be trying to tell her.
When she cannot get out of bed, she plays her X-Files DVDs and prays to anything, anywhere, for strength. Slowly, the fog lifts. Slowly, Garcia starts to live again. She feels surer than she ever was about the aliens that her parents and Emily are out there somewhere. It gives her comfort.
Slowly, things are turned to rights again. First, JJ returns, bringing with her all the joy she took when she got reassigned. There is some new pain, too, Garcia cannot miss that. But at least they have each other.
Then it's 2012. Then, her whole world is tipped on its axis because Hotch says something about seven months ago, and making decisions for the good of this team. And then, just like her wildest hopes, Emily appears.
Garcia cannot breathe.
She embraces Emily, and JJ stands back smiling. Garcia is sure now that she has the most important truth. She knows now that she must have been attracted to aliens because she felt like an alien.
The baby born Penelope Brown, to a mother she loved, and a father who never wanted kids. The toddler who was adopted and got a Spanish surname and harassment about her blonde hair and lack of Latin anything by adults who saw their family out. The awkward preschooler who dressed like He-Man, because he was obviously better than She-Ra, Princess of Power. The fourth grader who never got invited to a single birthday party. The middle-school student, bullied and totally friendless for three long years. The high school student who was more apt to make friends with staff than fellow students, because she had grown up around adults and older siblings. Her entire life, she had been an alien.
The truth, for the first time, is crystal clear.
The truth is, whatever you need, the universe will provide. Whether that is the protective belief in alien life, or a father who loved her when her own disappeared, or a friend back from the dead.
She squeezes Emily tightly, breathing in the familiar scent of cigarette smoke and floral perfume. Time, thank God, seems to be suspended. Garcia holds Emily at arm's length. Really looks into her eyes. There is so much she wants to say, but nothing comes. Garcia can do nothing but stare. Emily is solid and real, but the smile on her face is hiding so much under its surface. She is a study in contradictions: healing pain, strong frailty, a familiar stranger.
She is proof positive that nothing gone ever truly disappears.