Evidence

Breathe in. Slowly. Slowly. Breathe. I kept my eyes closed but I sat up. When I opened them Bree handed me a flask. I pulled, not because I wanted to but because that seemed like the thing you did when someone put a flask in your hands. And I coughed, because it was straight whiskey. And I handed it back.

I smoothed the bodice of my dress down. I ran my fingers through my hair and messed it up.

Well that was every calming mechanism I had that I knew of, I turned to Autumn, “Can I have a cigarette?”

“Your mom said she would break my legs.”

“Bitch, I have a tail.”

Autumn pulled out a pack and handed me a little white cylinder, “Just come visit me in the hospital.”

“We should go outside,” Regular Dave stood, “I’ll get a fire going.”

There was a small flurry of activity as we went out the back door into fading sunlight. The backyard was small, had a patio and a shed, and hadn’t been mown in years. There were patio chairs around a big fire pit, covered in a wrought wire cage.

In five minutes we had a fire going, and 7 people were distributed in 4 chairs. I sat alone, and contemplated the cigarette in my hand. “Which end do I light?” I asked Autumn.

“The one you don’t breathe in through.”

“I’m just kidding. It’s this one, right?”

“No!”

I held the filter end with my lips and she put a lighter to the other end. After a few puffs I said, “This is disgusting.”

“I tell myself that every day, love. Are you ready?”

Everyone was looking at me. I looked at the fire. Held the cigarette in my fingers. I didn’t want it anymore, but whatever. “I think so. Here goes.”

“It was a little more than two months ago. I was living with my father in Albuquerque. If I owned Albuquerque and hell, I would rent out Albuquerque and live in hell. I was on my way home from school and ran into some aliens.” Rachel rolled her eyes and there were other expressions of disbelief. I focused on Big Davey who was watching me with sympathy. “I was taking a shortcut through an alley and they were there and I didn’t know what they were until later. They might not even be aliens. They could live on this planet the whole time and you wouldn’t know.

“They’re not from this dimension. But not in a stupid way like in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or something. Like another spatial dimension. They can inhabit space that we can’t see or touch or anything.

“Anyway there was an accident, I don’t really know what happened, but it hurt a lot and I woke up in the hospital.” I paused and dragged on the cigarette. “There’s some stuff I don’t want to talk about, and I almost died, except no one could tell. Because what they hurt on me isn’t in real space. They broke a part of my body that doesn’t exist.” I got some reinforcing eye contact from Big Davey and focused on Rachel, “No, I don’t have any proof. I didn’t take pictures or anything. And I can’t prove that I have body parts that exist outside reality.”

I stood and let my tail unfurl. It had been out and around for awhile, and I turned and waited to hear gasps.

I didn’t hear gasps. The best I got was “Hmmm” and “Aha.”

My tail swished a bit, and that got gasps. “Did it disappear?” I asked.

“And then reappeared, love,” Autumn put her hand on my shoulder.

“That’s it moving out of real space. The alien says that everyone has them, they just exist in the fourth dimension, so no one knows. I shouldn’t even be able to move mine like that. My brain shouldn’t be able to make it move in and out of hyperspace. But it can, because of the accident.”

I felt Autumn’s fingertips on my butt, “Can I … can I touch it?”

“Sure but it—” she ran her fingers down it, and I felt myself tremble involuntarily, “—makes me shiver sometimes.”

“Sorry, love. It’s soft, not like a cat’s.”

“I think with some practice I can probably grip things with it.” I gave me cigarette to her, “You can finish this. Don’t ever give me another one.”

Autumn moved away and then Rachel stood and asked if she could touch it. When I nodded she pinched the tip, and I lashed it back and forth in her grasp a few times. That unleashed a flood, and individually everyone came over and formed a little line.

I felt claustrophobic and tried to feel some empathy. Everyone wanted to touch me, and it was probably important that I let them. Let them feel like I was okay with my body. Pretty soon I had to sit down to deal, and Wee David and Sarah got to touch my tail while it was curled around my waist and on my lap.

Regular Dave stood up after everyone had sat down, “Okay. Aisling has a tail. We all know this. Aisling, is there anything you need from us?”

I shook my head at him, “Just having some people who know what happened is a big help.”

“I shouldn’t have to say,” Regular Dave said, “That this stays between us. If anyone asks the tail is animatronic. No one would believe you anyway, but if it gets back to me or Aisling that someone has been calling her a freak around school, it’ll mean consequences.” He looked at Rachel, de-facto vice president of the group, “Do we need blood?”

Rachel was sitting in a chair with Sarah and she rubbed her face with her hands for a moment, “I don’t think so. Aisling, what do you think?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you want to swear us to secrecy with blood?”

“That seems… a little carnal?”

“We’re a carnal people.”

I shook my head just as my phone buzzed. “Shit!” I answered it, “Hi mom.”

I sat in the passenger seat while mom drove us home and didn’t pout. She felt that coming home to find me absent was worrisome. I agreed that this was just cause to worry. She felt that a text to notify her that I was going to hang out with friends would have been appropriate. I had meant to text her.

I had had plenty of opportunities to text her. I had meant to text her.

But I hadn’t texted her.

When she called we had had a very tense conversation. My curfew on a school night was an hour away. My mother had used the no-text situation to cancel my night out. This was not fair, I told her, and myself, and my friends.

I was wrong and I knew it. It was totally fair.

I hated that.

My arms were crossed and I was silent as we listened to Phillip Glass on CPR on the drive home.

And mom was angry. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel and every once in a while she would twitch her lips. Occasionally she would twist her wrist just so, while it gripped the wheel. I knew what she was doing, because I did it all the time.

I took a deep breath and said, “I appreciate you only yelling at me inside your head. But do you want to talk about something?”

Mom let out a very tired sigh, almost a chuckle, “Was it that obvious?”

“You don’t talk out loud, but you still gesture with your hands. Or start to.”

She loosened her grip on the steering wheel and glanced at me for the first time since I got in the car, “You know why I’m upset?”

“Because you came home and I wasn’t there. I never texted to tell you where I was.”

“Do you feel bad that I’m upset?”

She didn’t ask me if I felt guilt over my behavior, just over hers. “I don’t know. That makes it sound like I should accept responsibility for the way you’re behaving. That doesn’t seem healthy.” Her brows went up and I rushed on, “I feel bad for not texting you, and I’m sorry that I scared you. But I’m not at fault if you do something negative.”

“I wish I wasn’t a psychologist. It would be much easier on me if I could just smack the shi—nope. That’s not healthy Eileen. Aisling, I…”

“I understand mom. I don’t know why I didn’t text. I should have. I meant to.”

Mom pulled into our driveway and killed the engine. She put her hands at the top of the wheel and rested her forehead on them. That made me feel really bad. With her head still down she said, “I haven’t eaten yet, can you order dinner?”

I pulled out my phone, “Sure mom. What do you want?”

“Lets get some pizza.”

“I already had pizza today, but sure.”

She looked up, “Are you still hungry?”

“Well yeah, I only had, like, three pieces.”

“I see. Well I need some comfort food. Pepperoni, sausage, mushroom and olive. We can split a large.”

I raised my eyebrows at her this time.

“We can go seventy-thirty on a large,” she corrected.