I sensed the blinding light streaming through my window and I stirred at the illumination. My eyes fluttered open and I groaned when I had a first encounter with Mother Nature's gift to the morning person. Who else but Sabrina stood over my bed with a tray in her hand?
"What do you want?" Her usual perky voice rang in my ears. "Well, I can see you're not a morning person, but I made you breakfast!" I grunted for her to get the hell out and that her voice was just one big shrill. My hands clutched the hem of my comforter and I sealed myself off from the light. I heard her sigh as I closed my eyes and smiled to myself, welcoming the sleep…then I heard her voice again. "Well, I just wanted to let you know that I'll be staying with my aunts all weekend. There's some big…convention they want me to go to. Family reunion type thing, got to go, bye!" I grunted twice to signal that I understood her. "I'm leaving the food here. I'll be back by Monday." I grunted yet again, and gave a sigh of relief and drifted back to my dreams of Steven Tyler and Brad Pitt when I heard the closing of the door.
It was a few hours later when I walked lazily out of the bathroom, toothbrush in hand and entered the kitchen. I rummaged through the fridge with one hand, looking for a sugary health substitute for the fruit and cucumber monstrosity Sabrina decided to leave in that plate. There was a loud crash that attracted my attention and I trudged up the stairs to the hall before Princess's bedroom, trying not to trip over the length of my extensive ebon pajama pants. I laughed a little expertly keeping the toothpaste in my mouth. Miles was hunched over a large telescope with rudders and mechanical crap on it and Morgan was lying underneath crying out death threats. He fumbled trying to lift the contraption while repeatedly stuttered apologizes. I leaned against the wall and smiled to myself, amused. Morgan finally got herself off the carpeted maroon floor, small Gucci bag and one suitcase in hand and huffed at Miles who again, tried to apologize. She walked past me ignoring my grin and backtracked, facing us. "Oh, and by the way, I'll be spending a glorious week in the Poconos with Brad. His parents have a cabin and he invited me to come along," her voice was haughty as usual and turned on her heels with that… spring in her step, waving behind her, "Adieu. Stay out of my room Galacticboy!" I don't know why it took me so long to get it, but I was along with… Miles for an entire seven days! That was 168 hours of hearing about aliens and creatures from beyond! My eyes bulged out of my head and I ran after Morgan who hit the bottom of the steps when I grabbed her arm. "No, Morgan! Sabrina's going to some family thing, you can't leave me alone with Miles!" She put her hand sympathetically on my face and pouted. "Oh, Roxie, for a week alone with a hunk of muscles I can." She grinned at me and patted my cheek twice. "Choi." She turned again and slammed the door on her way out.
I groaned and trudged to the bathroom washing out the remains of the paste. My elbows rested on the sink for a minute and I seemed to be groaning an awful lot that morning when I did it again. I patted my mouth with a towel from the rack and headed back upstairs.
He was still struggling to haul the large piece of scrap metal from the hallway and being the Good Samaritan that I am; I began lifting with him. "What are you doing with this thing, anyway?" We led the machine into Morgan's room where he set it by the window. "This…thing as you call it, is the most powerful paranormal investigation tool on the market. Tomorrow on the night of the equinox the skies are perfectly clear and I can finally be able to see superior beings from beyond." He held out a hand in front of him and looked up fancifully, inviting me to entire this dream world of his. "You party animal you, I'm sorry I asked. But why Morgan's room?"
"It gives me the perfect view of an orbiting satellite. That's where they come in, you know." I nodded once, mocking him really. "Uh…huh…." He tilted his head to the side and put his arm around me, looking out the window. "So I guess it's just you and me scoping out foreign dimensions, huh?"
"Ha!" I lifted his arm off of my shoulder. "I don't think so."
"What could be better than discovering a preternatural being?"
"Chugging down coffee till the wee hours of the night and slaving over advanced calculus."
"Yeah, that sure beats alien hunting!"
"You better believe it." I turned and only lifted one foot before he grabbed my arm and turned me back around. "I'll do you're calculus for you."
"What's the catch?"
"Simply to torture you."
"But you'll do my calculus for me?"
"Yep." I sighed, "Fine, I'll look for little green men with you, but why prepare so soon for something that's only happening tomorrow night?"
"I won't have time tonight. Karen and I are going out." I raised an interested eyebrow. "Where'd you meet a girl voluntarily going out with Miles Goodman?"
"Ha, ha, ha, but don't you remember? I met her at Crab Nebula." I nodded, fully understanding. "Right, the cult. That explains it."
"Say what you will, but Karen and I are destined. I can feel it." I rolled my eyes at him and nodded with feigned encouragement before leaving the room.
"She broke up with me." The unusual sight of Miles sitting looking melancholy on a night of alien hunting actually made me concerned. I placed the tray on Morgan's dresser before sitting down on the bed next to him. I was little surprised to say the least. They were both obsessive alien fetishists. Doesn't get more compatible than that.
"Why?"
"She says that she needs time for a spiritual journey of her own. She found it in Jim-Thom."
"The cult leader?"
"Yeah… the cult leader."
"Ouch." He sighed, "Yeah…not that I'm all that surprised."
"What do you mean?"
"You said it yourself, what girl would voluntarily go out with me?" Great, now he actually listened to something I said. "Miles, I was only kidding. You know I didn't mean it." He sneered. "Oh, yeah? Would you go out with me?" I froze. I was sitting there with my lips parted, trying to push out some words and got no where. "O-of course I would… M-Miles." I didn't sound very convincing, but I was doing my best at trying to boost self esteem here. He smiled bitterly and nodded. "See, and if it weren't bad enough that not one girl on the planet wants me, I'm not broadening my chances by trying to discover aliens."
"Miles, that's not true. I mean, it's a big planet. You haven't been everywhere. I'm sure there are plenty of girls who're looking for a nice, smart…odd… guy like you. You're just not my type, and apparently you're not Karen's… but it's not the end of the world!" Okay, so I was crashing and burning, I was making an effort! He smiled that bitter smile again and walked towards the dresser, grabbed the box of goobers and sat down next to the telescope and myself, where he had been previously. He held his head down for a minute, focusing on the tray of infamous snack foods, his hair concealing the sides of face so that I couldn't see his expression. He lifted it quickly in one swift motion and he had that exhilarating…Miles smile plastered across his face. He turned to me, handing me a box. "Goober?" I shrugged and gave him a small smile. "Sure, why not?" I popped a goober in my mouth and told him all the candy variety flavors that were packed on the tray. . "I've got goobers, chips, with and without ruffles. I've got sodas, popcorn, pretzels-" He chuckled at me and I wrinkled my brows. "What?"
"A little excited for something you don't even believe in."
"Yeah well, with no parties, no Sabrina, and no classes, I got a little bored and I figured looking for something that isn't there might take a while." He ignored my last comment and we turned to the telescope and I watched him peek through the eye of the telescope, adjusting the long tubular object and the large knob on the side. He backed his head away and turned to me. He looked at me intently. "What?"
"Look through it."
"You're not serious."
"Calculus is no picnic."
I let out a sigh and looked through the eye of the telescope. "See the satellite, above Polaris?" I saw the satellite sitting below the star, but I paid no attention to it. Everything around it was astounding and for a second I was at a loss for words. On this black blanket there were an innumerable amount of lights more amazing than the tiny little artificial ones that I had seen so many times on field trips to planetariums in grade school and high. I turned back to the satellite and looked slightly higher to the Northern Star that stood in such eloquence in the night. In the long hush that I hadn't seemed to notice, he whispered in my ear. "Makes you believe doesn't it?" I was silent when I thought of the possibility and drew away from the telescope where I found Miles grinning wildly at me. "Now what is it?" He shook his head, still grinning. "I just never thought I'd see the day when the Ice Queen actually believes in the possibility of superior life." I opened my mouth, nothing came out, so I tried again. "I never said I believed in superior life."
"Yeah but I could tell you were thinking about it."
"Miles, you deluded weirdo, I do not believe in aliens. I just happen to find stars very nice to look at." He gave me a smile that said "sure," in a "I don't believe a word you're saying", kind of way.
"I don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"Right." I picked at the handful of popcorn in my hand and watched him take a large sketchbook sheet from his side and a grease pencil from the binding springs. He drew several circles larger and then smaller inside one another. "What are you doing?"
"I'm making a 2-D version of the earth's orbit."
"Uh huh." I jumped off the bed and grabbed a black cassette tape from the tray and inserted it into the VCR. I plopped myself onto the middle of the bed, Miles by the end of my feet and ate a bit more of the popcorn in my hand. "What are you doing?" I turned my head back to look at him. "Entertaining myself while you draw the route of aliens." I turned back to the television. "I was trying to prep myself for this…alien outing thing." I watched as E.T. made that gurgling noise he made while he brought a Reese's Piece to those things that he called lips. "E.T.?" I sat up. "I also brought, 'My Favorite Martian' and 'Twins'."
"There was an alien in Twins'?"
"And you don't consider a two-hundred pound, over-muscled, Swedish guy who barely speaks English and is still a huge star, an alien?" He nodded, "Ah, how right you are." He turned back to the telescope and me to the TV. "Find anything yet?"
"They're coming." With a mouthful of candy I held up a fist, "Keep hope alive."
I heard Miles groan and felt the bed shake slightly as he fell back on it. I turned away from Danny Divito and looked at the paranormal investigator as he lay on his back. "I think they know we're watching." I looked down at him and he looked up at me with a look of revelation. "Right…being as smart as they are." He wagged a finger at me. "There you go with that mocking again." He sat up and I plunked down beside him. "Who said I was mocking, you're the one who said they were superior beings." He pouted, "I bet Keats wouldn't have mocked me."
"What does a great poet like Keats have to do with an extraterrestrial?"
"He believed in all creatures and things of the earth and I'm pretty sure that he believes that aliens could've been the source of a few of these now earthly things."
"Right, and Dorothy Parker had a zest for life." He looked at me oddly for a second. Miles of all people, was giving odd looks to 'me'. Again I had to ask, "What?"
"You read Dorothy Parker?"
"I've been reading Dorothy Parker since I was thirteen." He raised a quick eyebrow at me. "There's little in taking and giving-" Oh boy…here we go.
"There's little in water and wine."
"This living, this living, this living-"
"Was never a project of mine."
"Oh hard is the struggle, and sparse is the gain-"
"Of the one of the top-"
"For art is the form of catharsis-"
"And love is a permanent flop-"
"And work is the province of cattle,"
"And rest's for a clam in a shell,"
"So I'm thinking of throwing the battle-" Miles and I were reciting a poem and we said the last line in unison.
"Would you kindly direct me to hell?" I genuinely smiled at him. "Coda."
"Go figure, there's more to you than obsessions of aliens, science, and roommates' aunts."
"And there's more to you than doom, gloom, and cynicism."
"Hey, Galacticboy, the art of accurate observation is called cynicism by those who have not go it."
"George Bernard Shaw."
"I'm impressed." He clicked his tongue and smiled, exhaling, "Yeah well, that's me…impressive."
"Let's not get ahead ourselves. You're still looking for little green men."
"Don't mock the system."
"Well haven't you ever noticed that aliens only travel to small towns and land in fields of moronic hillbillies and farmers, a.k.a. people with vision problems that marry their cousins? There're not the smartest people in the world."
"It's all part of their ingenious plan."
"If you say so." I finished the last two pieces of popcorn in my hand and turned back to the television. I heard his voice from behind me. "Haven't you ever, at least once, thought about the possibility that there might be some higher being. Not aliens necessarily, just…something bigger that hasn't got a bible quite yet."
"Like the giant at the top of the beanstalk?" He came closer to me and sat beside me on the bed. "No, seriously. Like we're not even real, just formations of someone's imagination."
"Well, I use to contemplate about things like that when I was younger. Sometimes dreams felt more real than reality. That maybe we were just formations of someone's imagination or pieces of a game someone had devised. Or we're just figures in a snow globe…."
"Yeah like that." We were looking at each intently now and I sucked in a breath, holding it for a second as he stared at me with chestnut eyes. We drew closer to each other and I could feel shallow breath merge with mine, his aromatic scent surrounding me. We jumped apart when the sound of a loud zapping noise reached us from the television. We looked at the object as if it was new and foreign and I realized that it had been programmed to shut itself off. This was probably about the time when Morgan had a guy in her room. I turned back to him and he looked at me, sharing my blank look that I'd created. I glanced away from him and drew my attention to the clock on Morgan's nightstand. I eyed the digital numbers and was genuinely surprised for a moment. Ten fifteen on a Saturday night and I hadn't run screaming from the room… until now. I turned back to the still silent Miles and cleared my throat. "It was fun, I'll see you in the morning." I said it kind of quickly and I jumped up from the bed ready to bolt out the door, but backtracking and taking another handful of popcorn before scrambling out the door.
I'm lying in my bed now feeling like a complete idiot. I wasn't about to admit to myself that I had fallen for Miles. He must be contagious, it's only been two days and the first was barely spent with him. We talk for four hours and suddenly I'm struck with feelings for Galacticboy. This was ridiculous. This was crazy. This was humiliating!
I heard the door creak and slowly propped myself on my elbow. He stood in my doorway, clearing his throat. "Don't just stand there like Ruth Gordon with tannins root." He picked up the snow globe from my dresser and walked over to Sabrina's bed. "Is this what you meant?" I looked at him questioningly and he noted that. He shook the glass orb. "When you said that we could just be figures in a snow globe." I paused for a minute. "Yeah, sort of."
"Is that why you have it?" I looked away from him as he turned his head to focus on me and looked down at my lap. Great time for Miles to sudden develop an attention span for something not alien-related. Right now he was the most serious as I've ever seen him even during his somber moments about Karen.
"Roxie?" The bed shifted slightly as he sat down next to me, his brows furled. I sighed almost inaudibly, looked up at him and smiled. "My dad gave it to me."
"I've never heard you talk about your dad before."
"Yeah well, people start to fade after a while."
"Did he die?" My smiled turned acrid. "That's one way of putting it." He remained silent. "He split when I a little before I was thirteen. That's when my angst slash Dorothy Parker fetish started. Misery loves company and her writings were not exactly merry sunshine."
"Were you close?"
"Yeah. Yeah we were…at least I thought so." I scoffed. "Funny. I never pictured you as the first person I'd talk to about my father."
"This weekend's just chock full of surprises." I just nodded and let the silence fill the air. After a while he spoke up again. "I've never lost anyone close to me before."
"Aren't you the lucky one?" I cringed slightly at the bitterness of the simple sentence and turned my head away from him. "Don't get like that, Roxie." I turned back to him. "Get like what, Miles?"
"Like that. Defensive." Here comes that bitter smile of mine again. That should be my trademark. "Pretty presumptuous huh? We've only been living together for nine months and during a few hours of what I can actually call, 'bonding', you think you know me? Maybe that's just the way I am, Miles. Defensive."
"Maybe it is, but what I figured out tonight is that you're not as bitchy as you come off and if you were as defensive all the time as you are right now, then you wouldn't still have this snow globe." That shut me up.
He turned his body away from me, not leaving the room and shook the globe slightly, allowing the microscopic pieces of artificial snow and confetti to swirl around the small girl propped inside with her arms outstretched. He felt underneath the globe and twisted the knob. Soft cryptic music flowed from it and I smiled for a minute because I knew it reminded him of something from 'Sleepy Hollow'. She was twirling now and he shook again as she enjoyed the snow.
I was staring down at the globe, knowing that he was allowing me to see the circular object by the way his body was shifted away from me, but the orb was not.
I felt it now and swallowed at the images that constantly reoccurred to me when I looked at the sphere. I breathed deeply and locked eyes with her as she twirled. I let my lids fall and felt my hair sweep around the sides of my face. The music went on and I let out a small noise that surprised me and brought me to the comprehension that I had started crying.
"Are you all right?" My head shot up and I swiped the tears away with my sleeve. In a matter of seconds I'd forgotten he was there, and I just sat there unsure of what to say as he looked on at me. I wasn't smiling that bitter smile he had seen numerous times this night, but my face had grown expressionless, like it had in the room. There was that same silence again. Not the kind that had taken over the air every so often in Morgan's room, but the uncomfortable kind that made us squirm, so I broke it. I got…un-defensive.
"I haven't cried since he left." He was mute and I wasn't surprised. I knew he couldn't think of anything to say. I barely could myself. "They were always fighting, but I never develop that theory of it being my fault, simply because I'd never heard them fighting about me. He left one night while I was sleeping and I woke with the globe beside my bed." I stopped to breathe a long breath. I was holding the globe in my hands now and ran my thumb across the top. "I went to sleep with it every night when I realized that it was the only thing of his I had. All other things had smashed on the sidewalk by my mother. I cried every night that year, waiting for him to comeback so that I could hold him like I did the snow globe and have someone to talk to again." I stopped speaking and tried to stifle myself when I felt the urge to sob and the tears fall again. Up went the corner of my lips curl up into the smile of angst…I mean, my trademark and I ran my hands through the dark strands of my hair and looked away from the eyes that continued to stare at me with that… look. That sympathetic yet speechless look had been his forthcoming expression all night. I tried repeatedly to tell him to stop but I could feel the words coming out as a squeak, and the sentence that finally released itself between my lips made me want to squirm as I said it. "Please," sniffle, "don't look at me like that." It made me sound weak and vulnerable. Maybe I was, but I refused to sound like it. My tone sickened me and I shifted my shoulders uncomfortably when I felt his hands touch them. The moments just didn't stop tonight did they? When I froze for that second, his hand fell and he spoke for the first time in…a while. "You can talk to me." He said it in a way that made me want to cry harder. It was warm and welcoming and said in a way I'd never heard it said…at least not to me. It overwhelmed me and I turned to him looking almost…shocked and when I regained breath, I nodded. "I know."
Somewhere along the line, the topic had conveniently changed and for the rest of the night we talked some more…about both of us and the moments sort of…grew on me as the late hours passed. We even watched E.T. again, only this time I had to endure all of Miles's criticism on the film about how aliens wouldn't do this and wouldn't do that, but some of the things he said were so ridiculous, I split my sides laughing.
I guess that was the start of it all, but in that one moment I had spilled my guts and Miles had been there to gather them…. So I'm bad at euphemisms- Miles had been there to listen. Who knew it would take eighteen years to make friends that I knew that I actually could count on. Unfortunately for her, Morgan…wasn't one of them. But with only one day left of this weekend, I wasn't too unhappy with the results.
Extremely cheesy, but bare with me.