The van bumped along gravel for a few more minutes, then the road smoothed out. I couldn't see much, just the horizon out the back window, tree branches turning to telephone poles, stars in the night sky.
"Where are you taking me?" I asked the suited men.
Nobody answered the question.
"When can I see mom again?"
No answer to that either.
I watched street lights cut lines across the upholstered ceiling. They had my sister's Speak N' Spell on a shelf in a plastic bag marked biohazard. ET had taken it apart and used the pieces to contact his alien friends, so it was `hazardous' now.
My mind flashed back to the events of the previous days:
I thought about Jamie, that cute pigtailed girl from my science class. Together, we'd freed a bunch of frogs from dissection. I kissed her full on the mouth. I experienced bodily sensations I never knew I had.
Giddy, light headed, like I'd had too much cold medicine, but the feelings I had for her were real.
She kissed me back. I know she resisted a little, but wasn't exactly opposed to it.
I had another flash of memory, not mine this time: ET, taking a beer out of the fridge at home, drinking it as he watched Casablanca. I got this feeling he somehow `pushed' me to kiss Jamie, sending this thought like `Okay kids, go to town.'
Strangely, that got me thinking about Dad.
I could never figure out how Mom and Dad got together. I could only guess alcohol had been involved. Maybe he was alcoholic still. Mom didn't like to talk about him. The week ET showed up, we'd been so desperate to see Dad again that we dug through his old stuff, smelling his shirts, you know, to remember him.
I got another mental flash, this one of a chemical equation. I didn't know what it meant, nor, in my current situation, could I write it down. Something about plants. The image faded with the lights flickering on the van roof.
I awoke to the sound of an angry buzzing noise and the rattle of a chain link fence being rolled aside.
Beyond the back window, coils of barbed wire and red lights moved around. Someone up front talked about security
clearances.
The back doors opened, and a group of men in army fatigues shined flashlights in my face.
The doors closed again, the gates rattled, and the van rolled to a stop somewhere.
After a long delay, they took my stretcher out, and I got wheeled through a long plastic temporary tunnel, similar to the one they set up around my house the day they came for ET. It looked like the inside of a vacuum cleaner hose, with windows. The material crinkled noisily under the squeaky wheels.
The tube ended in a sterile hospital corridor. They pushed me past a set of double doors, took me off the bed and ordered me to strip and stand on a conveyor belt in a decontamination station resembling something from a movie, maybe Doctor No or that one about the space virus.
I got sprayed with water, chemicals, powders, baked in a heat lamp, you name it, and then, at the end of the whole process, I didn't even get my clothing back, they just made me wear a white jumpsuit. I guess it had something to do with alien germs.
Despite all these precautions, everyone around me still wore space suits, paranoid they'd catch something.
They told me to follow them. I refused, so they forcefully dragged me into a padded cell.
I screamed and tried to run out, but they only injected me with sedative. I awoke alone, imprisoned in the little room.
I curled into a ball and cried.
A mirror coldly reflected my humiliating dress, my lonely isolation. I'd seen enough cop shows to know that it was one way glass. I'd played around with a few at funhouses before. If you pressed your face right up against the glass and cupped your hands around to block the light, you could sometimes see through to the other side.
I could.
On the other side of the wall, they had a setup like IBM, a whole bay of refrigerator sized computers with reel to reel tape, and a movie camera propped up against the mirror to record my every move.
Nobody sat at the desks - They'd all gone to lunch, or breakfast, or gone home for the day. I sat on the floor, absently staring at the white walls.
One time when I was bad, Dad threatened to lock me in a room and give me nothing to read but Mary Worth comics. I wondered where those comics were.
I thought about the lessons I taught ET about my world. They seemed so dumb. I didn't teach him anything important about our history or culture or anything, just showed him my toys. What must his people think of us?
"The human told me they eat a thing called a peanut. It is a large porcelain thing you put metallic coins inside. They must have terrible indigestion. Humans also enjoy torturing fish with tiny plastic idols."
That's if ET understood anything I said at all. If he had to write a scientific report on us, I figured it would be pretty weak.
How old was he anyway? He looked like an old man, but he could have been a kid.
What time was it?
I'd been captured at night. Making an educated guess, I figured I'd awakened right around the time to watch crappy daytime TV, General Hospital, As The World Turns, One Day at a Time, and Bob Vila. Roughly 11 A.M. I guess American Indians weren't the only ones who gauge time based on mythology.
Anyone can tell you that kids have a low tolerance for boredom. We can't just sit in silent introspection for hours at a time. I picked apart the wall padding.
Admittedly, not an easy task, but I'd grown my fingernails long enough, and someone had worked on the pad a little beforehand. I teased the stuffing out, then gasped in surprise as a key fell to the floor.
Not a key to my cell. That door only opened from the outside. I returned to the floor, pretending not to be concealing it inside my jumpsuit.
My stomach ached. It had to be around lunchtime. I peered through the window again.
Only one person sat in the computer room, some buzzcut guy in a green uniform. I knocked to get his attention, but he refused to get off the phone.
"Colonel North, please," I could just barely hear him saying.
He followed this with something indistinct. I pressed closer.
"...I'm not seeing any weapon potential here. It's just a kid. The thing got away from us."
The conversation switched to transfers of guns and ammunition.
Losing interest, I knocked harder.
The blonde glanced in my direction, kept talking on the phone. I slumped back on the floor.
An hour later, two guys in spacesuits carried a caged monkey into my cell. I thought about sneaking past them, but these were grown men I'm talking about.
They shut the door, leaving me alone with the chimp. I guess it served the same purpose as a canary in a coal mine. Maybe they still thought I was contagious.
I would have let the critter out, but the cage had a padlock on the lid, one that didn't match the shape of my key.
The monkey started off screeching and looking antsy, but when I looked him in the eyes, he calmed down.
"Yeah," I muttered. "I'm a prisoner here too."
The chimp grunted, stuck its paw between the bars.
I shook it, and he gave me a monkeyshine.
...And Gertie's hair ribbon.
"Hey! Where did you get that!"
The chimp put a finger to his big lips, indicated the room number with hand signs.
I glanced at the door, groaning in frustration. "It's no use. I can't even get out of this cell!"
The monkey grinned.