Where the Forest Meets the Star - Glendy Vanderah Page 0,1
if she were formulating hypotheses about where she was and who all the people in the delivery room were.
The alien in a human body watched Jo flip the chicken breast.
“You’d better get home for dinner,” Jo said. “Your parents will be worried.”
“I told you, I don’t have—”
“Do you need to call someone?” Jo pulled her phone from her pants pocket.
“Who would I call?”
“How about I call? Tell me your number.”
“How can I have a number when I came out of the stars?”
“What about the girl whose body you took? What’s her number?”
“I don’t know anything about her, not even her name.”
Whatever she was up to, Jo was too tired for it. She’d been awake since four in the morning, slogging through field and forest in high heat and humidity for more than thirteen hours. That had been her routine almost every day for weeks, and the few hours she spent at the cottage each night were important wind-down time. “If you don’t go, I’ll call the police,” she said, trying to sound stern.
“What will police do?” She said it as if she’d never heard the word.
“They’ll haul your butt home.”
The girl crossed her arms over her skinny body. “What will they do when I tell them I have no home?”
“They’ll take you to the police station and find your parents or whoever you live with.”
“What will they do when they call those people and find out their daughter is dead?”
Jo didn’t have to feign anger this time. “You know, it’s no joke to be alone in the world. You should go home to whoever cares about you.”
The girl tightened her arms across her chest but said nothing.
The kid needed a jolt of reality. “If you really have no family, the police will put you in a foster home.”
“What’s that?”
“You live with complete strangers, and sometimes they’re mean, so you’d better go home before I call the cops.”
The girl didn’t move.
“I’m serious.”
The half-grown dog that had begged for food at Jo’s fire for the past few nights skulked into the outer circle of firelight. The girl sat on her haunches and held her hand out, cajoling him in a high voice to let her pet him.
“He won’t come closer,” Jo said. “He’s wild. He was probably born in the woods.”
“Where’s his mother?”
“Who knows?” Jo set down her phone and turned the skewers. “Is there some reason you’re afraid to go home?”
“Why won’t you believe I’m from the stars?”
The stubborn-ass kid didn’t know when to quit. “You know no one will believe you’re an alien.”
The girl walked to the edge of the prairie, held her face and arms up to the starry sky, and chanted some kind of gibberish that was supposed to sound like an alien language. Her words flowed like a foreign tongue she knew well, and when she finished, she smugly turned to Jo, hands on hips.
“I hope you were asking your alien people to take you back,” Jo said.
“It was a salutation.”
“Salutation—good word.”
The girl returned to the firelight. “I can’t go back yet. I have to stay on Earth until I’ve seen five miracles. It’s part of our training when we get to a certain age—kind of like school.”
“You’ll be here awhile. Water hasn’t been turned into wine for a couple of millennia.”
“I don’t mean Bible kind of miracles.”
“What kind of miracles?”
“Anything,” the girl said. “You’re a miracle, and that dog is. This is a whole new world for me.”
“Good, you have two already.”
“No, I’ll save them for really good stuff.”
“Gee, thanks.”
The girl sat in a lawn chair near Jo. The grilling chicken breast oozed greasy marinade into the fire, smoking the night air with a delectable scent. The kid stared at it, her hunger real, nothing imaginary about it. Maybe her family couldn’t afford food. Jo was surprised she hadn’t thought of that right away.
“How about I give you something to eat before you go home?” she said. “Do you like turkey burgers?”
“How could I know what a turkey burger tastes like?”
“Do you want one or not?”
“I want one. I’m supposed to try new things while I’m here.”
Jo put the chicken breast on the cooler side of the fire before going inside to gather a frozen burger, condiments, and a bun. She remembered the last cheese slice in the refrigerator and added it to the girl’s dinner. The kid probably needed it more than she did.
Jo returned to the yard, laid the patty over the fire, and put the rest on the empty chair beside her. “I