Missing Necklace
Tannia Cuthbert sat on the couch reading a book. The school bus had brought her three youngest children home nearly an hour ago and there was still no sign of Linda. It wasn’t completely unusual, Linda liked to walk, just like Mary used to when she was in high school. Linda was like Mary in that way but that’s where the comparisons stopped.
Mary had been a tough girl with opinions hidden behind a shy girl mask, Linda acted tough and secure but inside she was still trying to find her place. Mary had always tried to fit in and even tried for cheerleading but had never succeeded while Linda was stunningly beautiful despite the scar along her right cheek and if she would only try harder she probably would be pretty popular. Mary had always enjoyed biology and taught biology at a high school in Chicago; Linda couldn’t stand biology and had been nearly completely useless during the planting and harvesting seasons.
Linda had always felt bad about that and even though she offered to help every year they just couldn’t risk it. There was something about Linda that the plants didn’t like something about her touch that made them dry up and die. And that brought Tannia to the main difference between her daughters the thing that was causing Tannia to push Linda away more and more everyday. Linda was an alien from another planet. Tannia and her husband Jeff had adopted her when she was about 2 years old. Things hadn’t been so bad when Linda was younger it had been easy to see Linda as any normal child.
Linda had been just like any normal child except for the simple and easily overlooked fact that as she had gotten older her skin color had moved up into her hair. Linda had been completely red when they had adopted her and her hair had been ghostly white but over the years the colors had switched places so that Linda was now a fair-skinned red-head. Linda had had other minor differences as well like how she never got sick except for once a year on her birthday and then it was a horrible sickness that had her bed-ridden all day. Linda had also never lost a baby-tooth, had a zit and no matter how cold it was outside Linda was almost always warm and it was because of things like that that Tannia had never taken Linda to any type of doctor.
A timer went off in the kitchen and Tannia set down her book and went to turn it off. She pulled a loaf of bread out of the oven and set it on top of the stove and then stuck dinner in the oven and reset the timer.
She heard the front door slam and footsteps heading toward the kitchen. A moment later Linda walked in a threw her bag and jacket on one of the chairs, then sat down in the seat and grabbed an apple out of the basket in the middle of the table and began eating it.
“How was school today?”
Linda swallowed the bite of her apple. “Ok.”
“Just ok?”
“Well Brenda Keegan and her followers were a pain like usual but since when is that new. So whatever.” Tannia came and sat across from Linda at the table and tried to cover the irritation in her voice. Ever since Linda had found out about her past everything that Linda did and said seemed to irritate her and she didn’t know why. She could see her daughter changing and she didn’t like it. The problem was most of the changes were for the better. She had never seen her daughter so happy or confident. She couldn’t believe that only a year ago her daughter had come home all upset because Brenda couldn’t leave her alone and now this? So why the irritation?
Linda grabbed for another apple and was about to bite into it when Tannia stopped her “Linda! We’re going to be eating dinner in 15 minutes.”
Linda put the apple back obediently but then grabbed her bag and jacket and turned to leave. “I thought I told you yesterday that I wasn’t going to be home for dinner tonight. I’m going to be eating dinner with Aunt Peka and Uncle Prak.”
Tannia nodded her head and turned to cut the bread but Linda’s words had cut her deeply. It seemed like ever since Linda had been reunited with her biological family she had seemed more and more distant from her adoptive family. Tannia knew the basics of what had happened to her daughter after her birthday 8 months ago but that’s all she had allowed Linda to tell her. She didn’t like hearing about some of the things that had happened there and how she was learning more and more everyday how to become one of them. The bottom line was Tannia was afraid. Afraid that it was only a matter of time before her daughter decided to leave earth once and for all and Tannia would never see her daughter ever again. And for that very reason Tannia refused to connect with her daughter.
Her mother’s coldness toward her hurt more than Linda was willing to let on. Ever since she had gone to Imaginess her mother had been pulling away from her. Linda had tried to tell her mother about what had happened on Imaginess but she hadn’t been willing to listen. Everyone else in her family had listened when she told the story but Tannia always walked out or would change the subject whenever she began telling it.
Her father had at least pretended to listen all though he was extremely busy with the store and couldn’t listen to all the details he was at least interested in the facts. The twins didn’t seem to care much anymore either so their sister was an alien that was cool but it wasn’t like they could tell anyone about it. The only thing they cared about was getting a handful of flower-nuts whenever she went for a visit. Jenny cared about the flower-nuts too but the bed-time stories were even better. And of course Mary was always there when Linda just had to tell someone. But her mother was the only one who seemed to shut her out.
Linda pulled out her keys, found the key to the basement and slipped it into the lock. The lock clicked and she opened up the door and slipped down the stairs closing the door behind her. She flipped on the light and the basement was filled with a dim light that she had become used to in the last 8 months. The basement had been a Christmas gift from her father. In all the years that they had lived there the basement had never been used for nothing more than storage and so he had given her the key and told her that if she wanted to clean the place up it could be hers to do whatever she needed to do.
She had set up a small lab down there with things that she had brought home from Imaginess and she spent most of her spare time down there.
She sat down in a chair and lazily picked up a small contraption she had been working on and began tinkering with it her heart only half in it. An arm shot out of her side and flipped on the laptop on her desk and she rolled her chair over to it. The login screen popped up and she began signing in while still tinkering with the contraption at the same time a fifth arm popped out of her right side and grabbed a screwdriver off the table next to her and another arm popped out of her left side to grab a notebook the hand with the screwdriver placed the screwdriver down again and grabbed a pencil. She glanced at the contraption and made a couple notes on the chart and then she set everything down and turned back to the computer.
A box popped up at the lower right side of the screen and she saw that it was Rowel. “Hey!” he wrote in Imaginese. It had only been 8 months but already she was becoming fluent in the language and she loved practicing her skills on Rowel or Sira.
“Hey,” She wrote back in Imaginese. “We still on for tonight?”
“Actually I was hopping to catch you before you left.”
“Why’s that?”
“There was a huge hilum over at the lab and Sira and I are going to see if we can help.”
Linda stared at the screen a minute and thought over the words she had learned in Imaginese but she couldn’t remember ever seeing the word hilum anywhere.
“What’s a Hilum?” She asked
It took a moment or two for a reply to pop up and Linda could picture Rowel sitting on his bed head back against the pillows thinking of the best way to describe the word to her. Finally a response popped onto the screen.
“Like a really big disaster.” He was writing in English now. “Everything in department 1 malfunctioned this morning and the Tuli are going frantic trying to figure out who sabotaged all of it.”
“I wish I could come and help.” She had slipped into Imaginese again and he followed her lead.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll have it all figured out by the time your out of school tomorrow.” She didn’t doubt it besides four days went by in the time that it took Earth to do one. “Will you be able to come and visit for the weekend?”
“I don’t see why not. My mom doesn’t seem to care much where I go or how long I’m gone anymore. I think she expects that one day I’ll never come back.”
“Hey I better go. Sira’s about ready to go and I need to eat something before I leave.”
“Alright”
She logged off and picked back up the small contraption she had been messing with earlier. She opened up the small ball and spit into it. Then flipped the switch. It sputtered to life and a wavy image filled the space in front of her. Then just as quickly the machine died. She sighed and turned it off and tossed it back on the table snatching up the notebook again and making a couple more notes. Then she began flipping through the other pages and reading through her past notes.
DNA HOLOGRAGH
If I do this correctly I should be able to make an exact replica of myself which could be useful in the future should I ever need to miss work or school on Imaginese business. Hopefully if I get this up and running soon enough I might even be able to use it against mom and dad so they won’t know I’m gone so much.
Beneath this description was a list of things she had tried and had failed. She read through them and then threw the notebook onto the table and sat back in her chair hands behind her head. She closed her eyes and worked through the things she hadn’t tried yet. But before she could come up with a solution she felt herself drifting off to sleep.
Linda was just coming out of science class the next morning and headed over to her locker to get her stuff. She opened her purse to get her necklace but it wasn’t there. She rummaged through her locker but still she couldn’t find it.
“What’s the matter missing something,” it was Brenda.
“Give it back Brenda I know it was you,” said Linda, “give it back before I…”
“Before you what? Tell on me? Like that’s going to do you any good I’ll just deny anything you say and they’ll believe me. I’ve got witnesses who do you have dream people.”
“They might believe me.”
“Right,” Smirked Brenda and she walked away. “Oh and by the way I always get what I want” she said over her shoulder. Linda watched her go and had to fight down the urge to pin her to the ground and demand to know where she was keeping it. Ali had been teaching her some fighting maneuvers and with nine arms to two Linda was fairly sure she’d have the advantage. But what good would that do her. She’d get her necklace back sure but she would also succeed in telling everyone in school that she was an alien from outer space and it wouldn’t take long for that to get out and she’d end up in some science lab being told to run through a series of hoops and hurdles so they could satisfy their curiosity. No, there were other ways. Maybe Rowel would help her out. It couldn’t hurt to ask.
When Linda got home she barely had time to throw her stuff in her room before she was running out the door and into the nearby woods. She walked through the woods deeper and deeper until she got to a tree she opened up a secret door and went in this is where her secret hide away was where she spent most of her time. Rowel and Sira had come there a couple times during the summer to help her set it up and she couldn’t be happier with how it had turned out.
Linda climbed down the ladder into a small hanger where she kept her spacepod the “Leena” it used to be called the ”Layka” after her mother but she and one of her friends had remodeled it after her sister gave it to her. It used to be her parents’ but after they died it naturally went to her once her sister found it after 15 years of weathering it had definitely needed some work. She hopped into the pod and started the engine. She sat there for a moment enjoying the familiar thrum of the engine and laughing to herself if only Brenda knew the truth I didn’t lie to her I did have a dream about my parents. But that wasn’t what made it so great not even close. If only Brenda knew how close she was when she said aliens had abducted me they thought it was so funny maybe I should abduct them I am after all an alien. She chuckled at the thought and then snapped out of her thoughts and pressed a button on the control panel the ceiling above her opened and she lifted off the thrumming of the engine eased down to a silent whisper like the wind. She put up the cloaking device and lifted up above the trees she could see her house out in the distance with the twins running around like maniacs in the yard playing one of their silly games. She turned her eyes back on what was in front of her and took off to Imaginess.
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