Saturday's meeting of the Sharing had a good turnout. Almost two dozen people.

The Sharing only got started a couple months ago. It was taking the organization a while to find its footing. But as time went on, more people began to hear about it, and it gradually gained influence.

There were three types of people who come to these meetings. First, there were the newcomers. They heard about the Sharing from a friend-of-a-friend, and they showed up out of pure curiosity, just to see what this weird, vaguely-defined club was really about. Or maybe they hoped the Sharing could do something for them. These guys may or may not ever come back. I started out like that.

Then, there were the regulars. They weren't official members; they're just the people who keep coming back to most meetings. They enjoyed our message of making the world a better place, and were the most likely to sign up whenever we need extra hands for volunteer work.

And finally, there were the full members: the five of us, who were secretly five pairs of people.

At a typical public meeting, we asked people to sign up for our next volunteer work project. If there was no current project, we brainstormed ideas of what we could do next to improve the community, or improve the planet. We're very pro-environment, anti-global warming. We all talked together and tried to keep everyone informed of what's going on in the city. Obviously, we full members didn't inform the public of anything alien-related. But once in a while they informed us of strange, inexplicable rumors and sightings. The public meetings were a good way for us to learn about, investigate, and suppress alien sightings before they got out-of-hand.

We made a point of being all-inclusive. Our posters had a little disclaimer at the bottom, promising that everyone will be welcome and treated equally, regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation - And being the late Nineties, that disclaimer ironically drove a lot of people away. But we needed people who weren't prejudiced. After all, we're secretly harboring illegal aliens in the most alien sense. Anyone who had a problem with non-white Eva wasn't going to be useful.

For the most part, Saturday's meeting was normal. But our whole theme of "everyone is welcome, we want to build a community, we can always use more people" got a little awkward, since there were two kids in the audience today who we did not want to join.

It was the part of the meeting where everyone split up and did their own thing. I found Rachel standing alone - Melissa probably went off to see her parents. My cousin was left looking around the room like she was trying to decide what to do.

I sauntered up to her with an easy smile. "Hey, cuz."

She smiled back at me. "Hey, cuz." When Rachel got back from her gymnastics class, she wore casual sweats over her leotard. Everywhere else, she looked like she belonged in a teen fashion magazine, with perfect hair, makeup, and manicured nails. She was a very confident, self-assured young girl.

"So. This is the Sharing," she tried to make conversation.

"Yeah," I nodded and looked around at the mingling crowd. "What do you think?"

"It's nice," she said. She didn't offer anything else.

"Listen," I said, trying to sound more casual than awkward. "It's not actually a rule - we don't want to turn people away - but technically, you're supposed to be at least sixteen before you get involved with Sharing work. I mean, I don't know if you were interested in becoming a member, but . . ."

"I'm not interested, actually," she said quickly.

"Oh, okay." I was careful not to act relieved.

"I mean, no offense," she added even quicker. "I'm not trying to diss your club or anything. It's just not for me."

"No, that's fine." It was more than fine.

Rachel was family and I loved her, but we were never close. In fact, this was probably the longest one-on-one conversation we had in a while. But she and Jake were very close, being the same age and going to the same school. If she and I were both members, I didn't think I could stop Jake from getting involved too. And that would have been a messy situation I didn't want to think about yet.

So I was glad. But then I got curious. Despite being polite about it, Rachel seemed pretty decided about not coming back. "Any reason in particular?"

"Well . . ." She considered saying something, then shook her head. "No, it's nothing."

"Rachel, it's me," I said with a grin. "I'm not gonna get you in trouble for not liking the Sharing."

She shrugged. "I dunno what it is. You're all really friendly, and yet . . ."

Rachel looked over to the corner of the church. Eva and Tidwell were chatting quietly about something. Then they noticed Rachel staring, and turned away a little before resuming their talk.

Rachel watched them. "It's probably just my imagination. But this place feels too . . . I dunno. Too exclusive . . . Too 'inside'."

I understood exactly what she meant. The Sharing is always friendly, and the full members say they want people to join. But the first time I came here I also felt like they were hiding something from me. Now, I was a full member and I knew the thing we were hiding from everyone.

.

After the public meeting, we had something important to do.

Rachel and Melissa were among the last ones out of the church, leaving together. I cleaned up a little. And then I joined the other full members in a back room. It had a desk, some chairs and some boxes. Some kind of office-slash-storage room. There was a clear pitcher of water on the desk.

There was one more person with us. Her name was Maggie. I think she was some kind of social worker. She was one of the regulars, coming to almost every open house.

I closed the door behind me. "Hey, is this Melissa's?" I held up a blue hair scrunchie I found on the floor of the main room. I thought I had seen it on her wrist earlier.

Alison took it and put it in her pocket. "Yeah, that's hers. She's always losing these things. I'll get it back to her."

Maggie shifted in her seat, looking around at the five of us. The Chapmans, Eva, Mr. Tidwell, and me. "So, you wanted to ask me something?"

Eva sat in front of her. "It's more of a proposal, really. You've been such a great help in the past, Maggie. And we're truly grateful. But the Sharing only has the five of us in an official capacity. We need more people to become full members. So . . . We were hoping you might be interested in being one." She was a bit nervous. We all were.

But Maggie didn't see the big deal. "A full member? Well, maybe. What does that involve, exactly?"

"It's a bit of a sensitive issue," Mr. Chapman spoke up. "You see, the full members have another project that the people in the public meetings don't know about."

"Is it like a secret?" she asked.

We gave a quick and awkward glance to each other. "It is a secret, actually," Mr. Tidwell said.

Maggie's smile was fading. She was getting suspicious.

Eva spoke gently. She was making an effort to keep her listener calm. "We don't want the public to know this because it makes us sound crazy. You will think it's crazy, but just hear us out. The full members - the true Sharing - Our real project is investigating paranormal activity."

"Paranormal?" she repeated. "You mean ghosts?"

"No. We mean . . ." Eva stared at her, and after a bit of hesitation, she finally dropped the bomb. "Aliens."

We all held our breath, looking towards Maggie. Watching her reaction.

Disbelief. Nothing extreme, she was just having a bit of trouble taking this seriously. "Aliens? You mean, like, UFO sightings and strange lights in the sky? You look into that stuff?"

"Not quite. We mean real aliens," Eva stressed.

Maggie stared.

"We've met them," Eva added.

She kept staring. Then she laughed. "Is this some kind of big joke?" She looked around the room, waiting for us to laugh with her.

None of us laughed.

Mr. Chapman began speaking. "Several months ago, a refugee ship crashed near the city. It was carrying a species called the Yeerks. The Yeerks are slug-like, deafblind symbionts who live by attaching to the brain of other creatures. They live inside our bodies like a passenger, or a copilot. They get to use our eyes and ears, and we get to hear their thoughts and knowledge. And there are several dozen Yeerks still waiting in the ship. We need humans to volunteer to be their hosts."

Eva resumed. "Yeerks attach to the brain, but I promise they don't take it over. The human hosts keep control of their bodies for the most part. But the Yeerk is always there, communicating directly with their mind. It's symbiosis - A peaceful, mutually-beneficial, co-existence."

Maggie stared at our expressions, waiting for us to yell 'just kidding!'. She gave up on waiting. "Oh my God . . . You actually believe this. You're all completely bonkers! You actually believe in this 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' stuff!"

"Fifth kind," Mr. Tidwell said.

"What?"

"A level three close encounter is seeing an alien outside its ship. Level four is going into its ship. Level five is direct communication," Mr. Tidwell explained.

"At this point, we've seen pretty much every level there is," Alison said flippantly.

Maggie's mouth opened and closed a few times. Since we were apparently insane, that made us difficult to react to.

"We know it sounds crazy, Miss," Mr. Chapman said. "But it's all true, and we can prove it."

"Prove it?"

"I already told you. The Yeerks are living inside our bodies, right now."

Mr. Chapman leaned over the desk, so his ear was directly above the pitcher of water. After a few moments, the hole of his ear glistened with something wet. And then something gray began squeezing out.

Maggie watched the creature coming out of Mr. Chapman's ear. All of us were watching her, gauging her reaction. She hadn't gotten out of her chair or said anything, but her expression was of shock and disgust. She watched the Yeerk. We watched her. No one was watching the door.

Iniss dropped into the pitcher with a soft 'plop!' We made sure to warm the water earlier, but it was probably uncomfortably cool by now.

The moment of truth. We had revealed our greatest secret to an outsider. Now we looked to see how she would take it.

Maggie got out of her chair and backed away. "What is that?!"

Not well then.

"That is a Yeerk," Eva explained calmly. "It comes from outer space. Everything we told you is true."

Maggie pointed at Iniss in his pitcher. "What the hell is that?!"

Very not well.

"Miss, please calm down," Mr. Chapman - and only Mr. Chapman - said.

"Calm down?! That's a freaking alien! You're all aliens! You - You have things in your heads! Oh my God, you're trying to put one of those in my head, aren't you?!"

"We know how it sounds," Mr. Tidwell said gently. "But it's really not as scary as you think."

"Get the hell away from me!" she said as she backed against the wall.

Okay, there's no way this was going to get better. Trying to be discreet, I moved to the corner and opened one of the cardboard boxes we brought from the ship. Inside was a glass bottle and a cloth. While the others tried to placate her, I opened the bottle and poured a bit onto the cloth.

"This is what the Sharing is?! It's just a way to put aliens in people's brains?!"

"We're not forcing you to do anything," Eva promised. "The Yeerks are peaceful."

"That's what all aliens say before they start taking over the Earth!"

[Thirty seconds ago she didn't think aliens were real. Suddenly she's an expert,] I thought.

[And I know plenty of aliens who are very upfront about not being peaceful,] Tem thought.

The full members had their palms open towards Maggie, like they were trying to calm a skittish animal. "Maggie, if you don't want to be a host, that's fine. We won't make you," Eva said. "All we ask is that you don't tell anyone about this."

"Don't tell -?! I'm telling everyone! The police! The newspapers! NASA! I have to warn people about this cult!"

Eva winced. "I really wish you hadn't said that."

"What do you -" Maggie finally seemed to realize how close everyone was. She went for the door, but Mr. Tidwell blocked her way. "No, let me out! I don't want an alien in my brain!"

Alison and Mr. Chapman each dove for her and grabbed an arm. She thrashed against them, trying to break away as we all moved closer. "Let me out! HELP! HEL -"

I pressed the cloth against her face. She kept struggling for a bit, but then she grew weaker. I kept the cloth pressed firmly on her nose and mouth. Eventually, her eyes closed and her body fell limp. I kept it on for just another second or two, just in case she was faking, and then I pulled away. The others helped her unconscious body back into the chair.

We five hosts stared at her. The woman we dared to trust with our secret, who had the worst possible reaction.

Alison sighed deeply and said what we were all thinking. "And here we go AGAIN."

I balled up the cloth and threw it angrily into the trash can. "We are never gonna get enough hosts."

Eva checked her watch. "It's been less than fifteen minutes since the meeting ended. Erasing her memories shouldn't be a problem."

Mr. Chapman gently pulled Iniss out of the pitcher and returned him to his ear. Meanwhile Mr. Tidwell opened another box to get the memory-erasing equipment. It wasn't a helmet so much as a metal band and a big mess of loosely-connected wires. We set it up on the unconscious Maggie's head. Pods went in her ears like tiny headphones. Wires pressed against her temples and were held in place by tape. This was the first time Tem and I saw it done, but the others had told us about their previous failed recruitments.

"I get nervous every time we do this," Mr. Tidwell muttered. "I'm always worried the machine won't erase enough, or we'll find someone who's just immune to it."

I couldn't blame him for being nervous. The memory erasing technology was originally something the Yeerks stole from the Andalites. We knew enough to use it, but that didn't mean we understood everything about it.

"You're just being paranoid," Alison said. "We'll just erase the last twenty minutes from her memory. And when she wakes up we'll tell her she fainted and she won't know any better. It's worked before."

"It works once or twice," I said. "Too many people, and they'll notice how strange it is that everyone who stays late at the Sharing faints. Hell, there's probably too many people now. We're screwed if she compares notes with anyone."

Everyone froze, letting that sink in.

"Well there's a happy thought," Mr. Chapman said bitterly. "Thanks for that, Tom."

I pointed to my temple. "It wasn't me. It was Tem."

[You big liar!] Tem thought.

I grinned. "And he says he's not sorry - Tom's lying!" Obviously, that last part was Tem taking control of my mouth.

"What we need are people who don't need their memory wiped," Mr. Tidwell said. "Maybe we could have broken it to her more gently?"

"I don't think there is a gentle way to say 'hey, wanna have an alien living in your brain?'," Alison quipped.

"Well, we were all fine with it," Mr. Tidwell replied. "We can't be the only five humans on Earth willing to be hosts."

There was no easy solution for getting more hosts. At least, none any of us could think of. The five-slash-ten of us were frustrated.

Meanwhile, Maggie slept peacefully in her chair as the technology wiped the last twenty minutes from her mind. Soon she would wake up, and it would be like the conversation never happened.

"Listen, we don't all need to be here for this, right?" I asked while pointing at Maggie. "'Cause, I'll stay if you need me, but my parents are expecting me. And I've got chores and stuff."

"No, we're fine," Eva nodded. "You can go."

"Thanks." I waved goodbye to the group. "I'll talk to you later."

The door was open by a crack. I pushed through it and left the back room, closing the door behind me. I took several steps before I froze.

[We did close that door earlier, didn't we?] I asked Tem.

[Maybe the latch didn't catch and it just slid open?] Tem suggested. Neither of us were sure.

Before the recruitment started, I made sure everyone else already left the church. Looking around the main room again, there was still no sign of anyone. We and Maggie were the only ones in the building. So it probably didn't matter if the door was open or not. We were fine.

Right . . . ?

.

I wasn't there for this part. I only found out about it long after the fact.

That night Melissa was having a sleepover at Rachel's house. They didn't plan for one; Melissa just casually asked if she could spend the night. She had a very brief phone call with her parents to get permission. It had been a long while since the two girls had a sleepover, but there was nothing unusual about it. Melissa was acting completely normal that evening. Nobody suspected that she only asked because she didn't want to go home.

I didn't find out until much later, but after Melissa and Rachel left the Sharing, Melissa had gone back to look for her hair scrunchie.

Right now, Melissa was lying in the dark in Rachel's sleeping bag, wondering if she just imagined what she heard. Wondering if it was safe to talk to anyone about it.

She must have fallen asleep at some point, or at least half-asleep, but she was awoken by the sound of the window opening, followed by a strange rustling sound. "Rachel . . . ?" No response. "Rachel, are you there?" she asked loudly enough to wake her, but still no response. Melissa sat up and fumbled for the lamp.

The room lit up. The window was indeed wide open, and coming through it was a long, dark green vine. It reached towards Rachel's bed and wrapped all around the girl's body. But Rachel was still sleeping peacefully, like she couldn't feel the plant's tight grip.

A white and gray burst of light appeared in the room - like three-dimensional static from a broken TV. A second vine went through the window towards the static, and it became a figure. An adult-sized porcelain doll. The plant bonded with its torso, but he remained awake. "Hello, Melissa Chapman."

Melissa backed away in terror. "What are you?" She made a point of asking what instead of who.

"We are the Quantum Kindred." It gave her a reassuring smile. "And we need your help to find something very important."