Earth Girls Aren’t So Easy
Chapter Three: Rockets to Mars!
Somewhere in Middle America, Saturday afternoon
Nicole was happy.
No, ecstatic was the word. As if a single word could ever be enough.
Paul was the perfect boyfriend. He was wonderful. The sex was amazing. He was amazing. She spun around her dorm room, hands in the air. “I’m in loooove!” It felt so good to say.
The half-muffled voice from next door agreed. “Good for you!”
She placed the orange bra into the hamper (she’d left the matching panties with Paul) and looked into the mirror. Paul was here, she thought, running her hands down her body. And here. And here. And… ohgodyeshere. Her fingers began a slow massage of her clit. He said he would be back by sevohhhhmmmmyesen o’clock. She just had to wait ohyesohsoperfectamazing until then. Until…
She looked at the bracelet. Until I have to do that other thing? Which is… something about a person? The thought slipped from her mind like melting ice. The important thing was that she had a boyfriend, and he was amazing.
Nicole reached under her bed and pulled out the little black box with the ‘special occasion underwear’ inside, and smiled.
Later
“Is that it?”
“Is what it?” Paul asked. There were a million ways to answer that question. A million more reasons to ask it. Given how life had been treating him lately, he was more than hesitant to hear the answer.
“Are you giving up? Are you gonna let the aliens win?” Nicole remained glued to her side of the machine, gripping the joystick with her left hand. It was fairly obvious where she stood on the issue. “Think of the poor little humans, being kidnapped and turned into mutants!”
“Probably better than letting them fall thousands of feet to their deaths.” He grinned and flailed his arms. “Noooooo, Nicole, why didn’t you caaaaatch meeeeeeeee…”
She swatted at him and missed. “It’s their fault for getting captured in the first place!” “Splat,” he concluded, enjoying the fake death glare he was receiving as a result. “And yeah, I’ve got, like, eight bucks left on the card.” He tapped it against the cabinet and watched as the game reset itself.
“Do you want to fly, and I’ll shoot?”
“No, I’ll button mash over here, You’re good with the flying, just not the, you know. Saving lives thing.”
“It’s optional,” she protested. “And the only reason we’re dead is because you didn’t shoot that guy coming up behind us.”
He stuck out his tongue, and she responded in kind, causing them both to giggle.
”Okay, two more rounds of Defender, and then we’ll move on to me beating your ass in Joust.”
“I don’t know that game.”
“One more round of Defender,” she said, hitting the start button. “Let’s kick some alien ass!”
“So where are you from, Nicole?” Bits of hamburger bun tumbled from his lips, and he sucked in his cheeks, hoping to somehow draw the crumbs back into his mouth. They landed in his lap instead.
The brunette’s eyes followed them down before returning to his face. She leaned forward across the table, head resting in her hands, her hair dangerously close to the pile of fries and its ketchup topping.”Oh, where am I from? We’ve come a long way from ‘who the hell are you’ and ‘why are we having sex in my bed,’ haven’t we?”
“Well…”
“All right, I see your poker hand and I raise you that I’m from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution and… kind of a dump. Born and raised. I came here because everyone else I knew went to URI and I didn’t want to spend my college years repeating my high school ones.” She took a bite of her sandwich and chewed it slowly, making Paul wait. She seemed to enjoy both. “Mmm, this was a good choice, Paul. I haven’t eaten here since freshman year. I kind of remember it being trashier back then?”
“Yeah, they closed down for a while. New owners came in and fixed up the place. New menu, too.”
“Mmm.” Another bite, another wait. “Sorry, I’m a slow eater.”
“Don’t let me rush you! I learned to eat fast as a kid because I grew up with two older brothers. If you didn’t eat your food immediately, they’d eat it for you.”
“Oh!” She lifted her head and spread her arms. “You must be Italian! Welcome to the family, paisano, it’s-a how we eat-a!”
“Sorelli, yeah.” What was left of his hamburger only merited one final bite, but he deliberately turned it into two. “My dad’s Italian all the way, but my mom is Spanish. I got most of her genes.”
“What brought your cute Italian-Spanish butt out to the farm fields of middle America?”
“I was born in New York, but when I was little, my dad got a job in Appleton. So we moved out here, and I’ve been here ever since.” He paused for a moment to appreciate the attention Nicole was lavishing upon him. Her eyes weren’t circling the room or, thank God, sneaking peeks at the neon-rimmed clock on the wall behind him. She seemed genuinely fascinated by his boring life story.
“I guess I came here because… well, there was a, um…” Paul let his sentence fade without a conclusion, uncertain of how to finish it.
Her eyes narrowed. She smiled. “A girl?”
“Yes! How’d you…”
“I have magic powers, Paul, remember?”
“But, it’s not ‘a girl’ as in ‘I followed a girl here,’” he explained. That was enough to silence the part of his lizard brain that had begun screaming don’t let her think there’s another girl that you’re interested in you moron! “My girlfriend at the time got into a school I couldn’t possibly get into myself, and after that I just stopped caring where I went. Every other school felt like the same thing, a place that didn’t have her.”
“Let me guess. She broke up with you right after school started?”
The hamburger disappeared at last. “Yep. I mean, I knew. We both knew it would happen.”
“Well fuck her with a two-by-four, Paul Sorelli! I’m not gonna lie, I’m having a blast tonight and that’s all thanks to you. Your mom taught you how to treat a girl right, and she gave you the prettiest brown eyes.”
“Thanks! You look great tonight, by the way.”
She puckered her lips in a way that let Paul know exactly what was coming next. “I’ll look even better when we get back to my dorm room.”
“Okay, but first?”
“Back to the arcade? You owe me a rematch on Pole Position.”
“No, this is… this part of the date’s a little different. Do you trust me?”
She laughed. “Not when you say it like that, no!”
“C’mon, you’ll enjoy it. I promise.”
He smiled and reached for her hand, and she let him take it.
Millions of miles from Earth, Saturday evening
”We are now millions of miles from Earth. That precious blue marble is now just an indistinguishable speck in the vast tapestry of outer space. But even though we are moving at incredible speeds, our journey ahead is very long indeed. It will be another six months before we will see our friends at Mars Outpost One.”
“Well, that’s… hmmmph… depressing.” Nicole squiggled in her seat until she was nearly laying across it, allowing her to rest her head on Paul’s shoulder.
It didn’t look comfortable at all, and he thought about telling her so, but having her rest her head on his shoulder felt nice. He didn’t want it to end. Another six months. He’d settle for another six days of this. Six hours, even.
“Isn’t it?” She jabbed his ribs with her index finger. “A little?”
“Depressing? How so?”
“Look at them, all alone in their little space capsule! Imagine how boring that would be. Like a flight to Hong Kong times a million.”
“They’ll stay busy. There’s always something to adjust or monitor or whatever.”
“Can people fuck in space?”
“I don’t think they’re going to cover that question in this planetarium.”
A disembodied voice nearby chose that moment to shush them, and Paul sank further into his seat, Nicole adjusting her own position accordingly. They shared a conspiratorial glance.
“I hope someone seals her in a rocket,” she whispered.
“Space Karen,” he added.
A fresh round of giggles followed, along with another shush.
“But there is still much to be done. And, no doubt, there is also much danger ahead.”
“See?” He poked her back. “Space is a rich tapestry.”
“You’re a rich tapestry.”
”We will need to be watchful for even the smallest of dangers. Small asteroids, no larger than a boulder, rocket through space at high speed, away from the main Asteroid Belt. And, smaller still, the imperceptible bands of deadly cosmic radiation. If we are to successfully complete our journey, we must prepare for the worst. Perhaps, even an encounter with aliens from another world.”
Nicole tensed.
No, that was putting it kindly. Her body decided at that moment to go from totally relaxed to ramrod stuff, in a way she knew would probably alarm Paul as much as it alarmed her.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice as full of concern as she knew it would be.
“I’m okay,” she said, even though she wasn’t.
“Yes, even aliens! For in our vast universe, we are almost certainly not alone. And much like our ancestors discovered new worlds across the oceans, so will we discover new civilizations as we cross the vast oceans of outer space.”
Run, he body screamed. But even as it did so, it betrayed her, locking up all of her muscles so that she remained exactly where she was, half-curled up next to Paul, unable to draw his attention. Run while you still can.
She tried to make sense of it. Run to where? Out of the building? Why the fuck was she so afraid? And afraid of what? Space Karen wasn’t going to rat them out to the staff, and even if she did, so what? She took a deep breath in the hope that it would allow herself to calm down. Above her head, the planetarium show continued.
”Even though there are many things to do on our way to Mars, and even more things to do once we arrive, we must also be forever prepared that we, first among our species, will be called upon to be the ambassadors for our people, and to greet our new friends from another galaxy.”
What alliances do your fellow humanoids have with other planets? How many of you are humanoid females? Tell us, ambassador!”
“N-no,” she mouthed, afraid to let Paul hear. “No. Don’t. P-please…”
Seven billion humans. Seven billion minus one, I don’t see the problem!
Her view of the stars vanished, replaced by an eerie green glow that ebbed and flowed in slow, hypnotic intervals. Pink swirls danced around the edges of the room. She opened her mouth to complain, only to find that she couldn’t. Something had stolen it from her, the same thing that had robbed her of her movement and which continued to fill her head with nonsense.
You serve and obey, humanoid female. Serve and obey. Serve and obey.
“Serve and obey,” the shush woman mumbled. “Serve and obey.” Other voices soon joined her, all distinctly female, their voices echoing across the otherwise dead-silent room.
“No!” Nicole tried to push the air through her lungs. To curl her hands into claws, to scratch at Paul, get his attention. To kick the seat of the person in front of her. Anything to make it stop. “You’re all being hypnotized! Don’t look at it! Paul, don’t… goddammit why can’t I say anything?”
The glow intensified.
Nik bal glip glip! NIK BAL GLIP GLIP!
“P…” oh God please Paul hear me help me I can’t breathe! “P…”
Her head dropped closer to the seat, a sure sign that Paul had moved slightly. Perhaps that meant that he hadn’t been hypnotized by the green glow, or at least, not completely captivated by it. If she could wake him up, snap him out of it, he could save her in turn. Save all of them.
“P…”
Paul’s body fell still again.
Succumb. Surrender. You are an instrument. Serve and obey.
“PAUL!”
“What?”
The green light vanished, replaced by the rich tapestry of outer space and the tiny little Mars rocket coasting through it. She sucked in her breath and held it, afraid that at any moment the green would return and she’d be left gasping for air again. “Paul, I just… I just…”
“Are you feeling okay? You look pale. Do you want me to get you some water?”
“No! D-don’t…” She was well aware that she probably sounded like a raving lunatic, clutching at Paul’s arm and huffing and puffing like she’d just finished a run across campus. “Don’t… it, um, it’s nice having you as a pillow. You’re very comfy.” She forced a smile, hoping that in the dark it would look convincing.
“I’m comfy because I ate that giant hamburger,” he said, letting her fall into his soft brown eyes. “You sure you don’t need anything?”
Before she could even consider the question, she knew exactly what the answer was. It darted past her lips and hung in the space between them, making them both smile.
“Just you, Paul. Just you here with me.”
He leaned in until their noses touched. They shared a kiss, slow and tentative, a far cry from their passionate love-making the night before. One kiss became several, and she followed him when he began to pull away, unwilling to let the moment end.
Above them, the little rocket ship entered Mars orbit.
It was surprisingly warm for an October evening. The warm breeze that swept their hair and scattered the sidewalk leaves felt extremely out of place amidst half-naked trees and Halloween decorations. They carried their jackets and held hands the whole way back, taking the long way, enjoying the unexpected solitude they found on a deserted campus.
“I hate that everyone here goes home on the weekends,” said Nicole. Her boot caught a pebble and sent it tumbling across the concrete into the grass. “This is exactly why I didn’t go to URI.”
“Well, if you want to party, it’s either go up to Madison or, I dunno, go to Yancy’s?”
“Oh God.” Nicole rolled her eyes. “Please tell me you don’t go to Yancy’s.”
“Hardly ever. Not since last semester. I’m not much of a party guy,” said Paul. He worried about saying it, fearful that Nicole would count it against him. How lame was it to be a junior in college and spend most of your weekend nights at the movies, or in a dorm room playing video games? Even Paul would admit it as such.
But the brunette took it in stride. “I’m glad,” she said. “That place is, like, date rape central. Jenny likes to go there because they don’t card, and because she gets free drinks whenever Bar Tony is working, but then it’s three hours of bad music and turning down frat bros who think they can teach us how to play pool.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen that.” It was the real reason he’d stopped going there in the first place. Crowds, bad music, and fights breaking out in the parking lot every other night. Plenty of girls out of his league boozing it up with guys who, if he preferred them, would have also been way out of his league. Yancy’s was good for only two things. Cheap, illegally-served beer, and getting depressed about one’s position in life.
But that was in the past, at least tonight. “Are you a pool shark, too? I wanna find out before you wipe the floor with me. Again.”
“No, I suck at it! But that just makes it worse, because every time you miss a shot it practically guarantees that some guy named Zack or Trevor is going to hover over you, offering ‘advice’ on what you should hit next. ‘I shoot pool professionally, so, like, you should give me your number so I can give you free lessons.’ Yeah, no.”
I should go to Yancy’s.
Her eyes narrowed. it was that same weird inner voice from the planetarium. And it was still being just as stupid as before. There was no way she was going to voluntarily-
There are lots of good-looking women at Yancy’s. They are as attractive as me, or even more so.
“Yes,” she said. “I should go to Yancy’s.”
“Ah ha! So you are good at pool!”
He squeezed her hand, which seemed to break the spell. She blinked, trying to remember what she’d been thinking about when she got sidetracked by… something else? It didn’t matter. “What? No, I… don’t listen to me, I’m just babbling incoherently over here. Unless you want to teach me some pool?”
“I suck at pool, too. But… but! I’m an astronomy major! So, like, you should give me your number so that I can teach you about stars and stuff.”
She laughed. “Smooth. I like it! And thank you for tonight’s space-themed extravaganza. It was unexpectedly awesome.”
“I had an amazing time. I’m glad you did, too.”
“I did! I never really thought much about astronomy before. I went out to watch the… um… I, uh… I wanted to go out to watch the meteor shower the other night, but I forgot about it. I really wish I’d known you then. I bet I would have learned a lot.”
“It was a good one,” he admitted. “It was supposed to be cloudy and then the weather cleared up at the last minute. There were a couple of really bright ones. Richards was convinced that at least one of them made it to the ground, and we spent yesterday afternoon looking for it. No luck. He was pretty pissed off.”
“Womp womp! What do you like about it, Paul? Astronomy, I mean.”
“I dunno.” He did know, sort of. “When we moved to Wisconsin, my dad bought me a telescope. We spent a lot of nights in the backyard trying to find stuff. Stars, comets, meteors… I like the idea that astronomy is a field in which there’s still a zillion things just waiting to be discovered.”
She smiled. “Space is a rich tapestry.”
“You’re a rich tapestry.”
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, not wanting to halt their forward progress for an impromptu make out session but, at the same time, very much wishing that it would end up as such. Instead, they continued on a bit in silence, smiles on their faces, as they cut through the parking lot behind Marin Hall and up the well-worn footpath that led to Nicole’s dorm. She lost her footing halfway up; her boots barely qualified as such, chosen for style and not function, and she toppled backwards with a yelp. Almost without thinking, Paul’s arm shot out to his right and caught the falling brunette like a sweeper collecting dust, pushing her forward until she was off-balance the opposite way and tumbling into him. They found themselves balanced precariously on the steepest part of the hill, their bodies quivering with laughter, threatening to shake them loose and send them rolling all the way to the bottom.
“It’s always this spot. Always this spot!” Nicole, cackling and grabbing at Paul’s shoulder, slowly regained her balance. She continued to lean heavily against him. “I’ve slipped so many times at this exact spot, especially when it’s dry like this… I’m gonna need an ass transplant by the time I graduate.”
“Be a shame to lose the one you have,” said Paul. His arm found its way to her waist, and together they gained the crest of the hill.
“Ooh, are you making a pass? Because I’m liking it. You have a nice ass yourself. It’s my second-favorite thing about you, I think.”
“Right behind my witty humor?”
“Okay, my thiiiird most-favorite thing about you.” She slowed her pace and waited for him to notice before gazing deep into his pretty eyes. What followed came out even more throaty and needy than she expected. “Do you want to come up?”
“I would.”
That was all Paul said, or did. He didn’t follow up with a lame attempt at making a suave quip, or lean in for a kiss, or—unlike Charlie—immediately reach in for an ass-grab. Just a quiet ‘I would,’ like she’d offered him a glass of water. As if coming up to her room was the most natural thing in the world. Not expected, not unexpected, not deserved. It just was.
“I would.” It was the hottest thing anyone had ever said to her.
She thought about tackling him right there and then, shoving him to the ground and straddling him before he could get up, her hands working to unbutton… no, fuck that, just ripping his shirt open, yanking down his pants, helping him to help her out of her jeans, the two of them rutting like deer in full view of anyone lucky enough to live on the back side of Whitman Hall. Enjoy the show, jealous bitches!
Instead, summoning a force of willpower she didn’t know she’d ever had, she replaced her wild urges with a meek “good, I’d like that.” He smiled, giving her the courage to be at least a little more bold. “But,” she added, “only if you can make it to the front door before me!”
With that, she bolted, her laughter mixing with the slap of her boots against pavement, an equally joyous Paul in close pursuit.
“It was a tie,” she told him in the elevator.
Later
They cuddled together, warm and content beneath the sheets. Nicole leaned her head on Paul’s chest. “Mmmmm,” she sighed. “How does this even happen?”
Paul ran his fingers through her soft hair. “Well, when two people love each other very, very much…”
She grabbed his nipple and tweaked it, prompting a yelp. “No, silly, I mean this. I mean us. A week ago I was dating Charlie. Then he breaks up with me by phone from Ari-freakin-zona, and before I can even get in a good drunken bender to take away the pain, you come along and do all of that for me. It’s just so sweet that we found each other at this exact moment.”
“Charlie sounds like a dick.”
“He’s a total dick. Also, he has a nice dick. But it’s not as nice as yours. I hope it turns black and falls off.”
“His?”
“Well obviously. You’re a lot more fun with yours still attached.” She pulled his face to hers and gave him a passionate, lingering kiss.
He returned the kiss, made sure to linger even longer, taking in her perfume, feeling the warmth of her body. “I’m glad that we met, too. It was definitely not something I was expecting, either.” She smells real, she feels real, she sounds real. I’m in her bedroom lying next to her. How did this ever happen?
He had an odd thought, and before he could stifle it, it slipped out as a question. “Nicole, have you ever been hypnotized?”
“Me? Like, you’re getting sleeeeepy hypnotized? Not that I remember. But then again I wouldn’t remember, right?” She paused. “No, I’ve never been hypnotized. I’ve never been rock-climbing, or skydiving, or that thing where you fall backwards and you have to trust someone to catch you. I’m a very boring person.”
He blushed. “I’m sorry. It was just a weird question.”
She smiled. “No, no! Come on, keep going! ‘Nicole, have you ever robbed a guy at gunpoint?’ No. ‘Nicole, have you ever gotten so drunk that you woke up in a stranger’s backyard clutching a traffic cone?’ Maybe, but there’s no proof, and you should never ever mention it again if you value your loved ones.”
She looked into his eyes. “I have only one question for you, Paul. Are you a morning person?”
He shrugged. “Not really.”
“We’re gonna have a long life together, then.”
Somewhere in Middle America, Sunday morning
“I want to show you something,” said Paul, getting up from Nicole’s bed. They were both still naked. Clothes covered the floor like a second carpet. He smiled to himself. As weird as it all was, Nicole was gorgeous and sweet and caring, and a hurricane in the sheets. He could watch her smile at him all day, and paused for that reason to look at her.
“Are you… going to do a magic trick? Pull out a human head and tell me to worship Satan? Give me a hint here, lover.”
“I found a weird phone the other day.” He pulled the little mystery rectangle from his backpack. “It was lying in the middle of a field. I can’t get it to work.”
Nicole frowned. “You do remember that I’m in English Lit, not Mechanical Engineering, right? You could write a poem about the phone and then I could tell you all about what the poem means. Otherwise, you might want the phone kiosk at the mall.”
“No, it’s weird, I just noticed something. It matches your bracelet. See?” He held the phone up to her arm. It began blinking rapidly, as if it were receiving an incoming call, and without thinking Paul held it up to his head. “Hello? Is this the… aw, crap.” He held the phone out, looking for validation. “This stupid thing.”
“This bracelet?” Nicole’s face went blank. “I’ve owned it for years. I just found it the other day in a box.” She looked up at him and blinked. “I mean, it’s a girly color. So that cuts your search in half. Now all you have to do is weed out the other 999 remaining false leads and you’re good to go.”
“It’s just weird, that’s all.” He handed the phone to her, watching as she turned it over several times in her soft, gentle hands. “I wondered if you’d ever seen anything like it.”
“Wish I was the expert on girlie phones, Paul, but no.” She traced the edges of it with her finger. “There’s not even any buttons on this thing?”
“Nope. And all it does is turn on and blink.”
“Are you sure it’s even a phone?”
Paul had never considered that, and he felt stupid for not doing so. “I guess it could be a prototype or a model or something. Anyway, I’ll probably drop it off at campus lost and found later today.”
“NO!” Nicole looked around, confused. Her cheeks turned red. “Um, sorry. Just, you know. Lost and found is more like ‘drop off and we take for ourselves’ at this college. Maybe you’ll see a lost phone flier or something. I’ll keep a look out for one, too.”
“Okay.” He dropped the phone into his backpack. “I gotta go to a study session. See you soon?”
Nicole beamed. “Of course! I have some stuff this afternoon and then… wait, shit. I think I have something tonight, too? I’m so sorry. I’ll rock your world on Monday to make up for it.”
“I’ve got class on Monday morning.”
“I thought we discussed this? Mornings are bad.”
“You tell Richards that.”
“Tell you what.” She crawled to the edge of the bed and looked up at him with puppy dog eyes. “I predict… that you’re going to email your professor tonight to let him know you just can’t possibly make it to class on Monday. Because you just came down with a severe case of gettinglaiditis.”
“I don’t know how you manage to make disease sound so hot,” he said, shaking his head.
“Magic powers.”
Later
Jenny scanned the quad for the tenth time. Still no Nicole. Where the hell? One second Nicole was the most dependable girl on campus, and the next second she was nowhere to be seen and not answering her phone.
“Fucking hell,” she muttered. “Just because Charlie was an asshole to her… I’m not being an asshole to her! C’mon Nicole, I’ve been waiting forever.”
“Jen! Jenny!” A wave. A whirl of bright red, an avalanche of brown hair, and suddenly a lunatic was shaking her back and forth. “Jenny! God where have you been?”
“Where have I been? Fucking here waiting for you!” Jenny let the anger pass, then smiled. “What the hell, Nicole? You missed the last two study groups. Did you hear about Ms. Brown? Someone told me she got fed up with the department chair and quit. So, we’re fucked. I asked Doug about getting a new advisor this late in the semester and he… Jesus, you’re a sunbeam today. What’s up?”
Nicole smiled. “Okay, so I met a guy and…” She paused. She looked at Jenny. Tall, athletic, beautiful. Today she was wearing tight jeans and a sweater that showed off some generous cleavage. Beautiful, pretty Jenny.
So pretty… spinning… faster… pretty… hear and obey… obey…
“Earth to Nicole? Hello?” Jenny waved her hand in front of Nicole’s face. “Hellooooo… don’t even think you can just stop there! You met a guy and la la la la the end? Come on, spill it!”
“I have a better idea.” Nicole lowered her voice. Her eyes focused on Jenny’s own, but all she saw in front of her was the beautiful pink spiral. “Do you want to meet him tonight?”
“The new guy?” Jenny leaned forward, interested to know more.
“Yes. We have a special place…”