I sit on the rooftop with my knees brought all the way up to my chest. I sit like a turtle, but it doesn’t really bother me. The only thing in my company is the stars. But, they’re painfully far away. They just seem to be up close. It’s a cool night in May, and my mom hasn’t come home. She left four days ago, on the tenth. I’ve been counting the days on my hand while I wait for her return. I’ve been staying with Dia and Chains while I wait. They celebrated today with me, and we all drank a sip of their Dad’s wine and laughed over a game of cards against humanity. Chains was really into the game, which only encouraged Dia to get into it too. The siblings went back and forth for nearly an hour, scream-laughing over their answers. You wouldn’t be able to tell that we were celebrating a holiday at all. Dia’s asleep now, and I presume she thinks I’m still in the sleeping bag next to her bed. But I’m not, of course, because I haven’t mastered human etiquette quite yet. The stars were calling out to me, and on a night like this, how can I not be outside? 

I take in a breath of the cool air and savor it as if it were a gourmet food and not something produced naturally on this planet. Everything about Earth is truly wonderful. I think that we are all the luckiest people in the entire universe to be able to be here. To see the stars, the moon, the flowers sleeping in their beds buried in the ground. They look like people bent over. I stare at the sleeping flower. The way it hangs its head makes it look gloomy. I start to see myself in the flower, because we slouch the same way and hold our hands (its leaves) in front of ourselves. I wonder what the flower’s name is. Mystery, maybe. I’ve never been good with names. Point being, Earth is teeming with different life forms in every nook and cranny. The planet itself is alive. Each day is a new breath for her. 

???: “Contact?”

Dia’s voice catches me off guard, and I almost slip off of the roof and into the garden. I flinch and straighten up quickly and spin around to look at her.

DIA: “What are you doing up? It’s like.. 2am, dude..” 

She has one foot out on the roof and the other inside her room, one hand propping the window up on her shoulder. She’s not wearing her glasses, which gives me the rare chance to catch a detailed glimpse of her amber eyes. Her glasses are never clean. They always have a fine layer of gunk on them that mystifies her face. Her eyes remind me of honey and gold rings, they make me think of the warmth during summer. They make me feel warm as well. 

ME: “I couldn’t sleep.”

DIA: “Do you want some melatonin?”

ME: “No. No thank you.”

DIA: “Alright.”

Dia pulls herself free from the room and scooches over to sit next to me. I feel the heat radiating off of her body, and I can see the freckles that dot up her arms. She’s wearing one of Chains’s old shirts and a pair of sky blue gym shorts. I’m wearing a nightgown with stripes. She leans back on her hands and spreads her entire body out, staring at the sky, utterly captivated. 

DIA: “Nice night.”
ME: “Yeah.”

We sit and watch the stars. I try to look for an asteroid shooting across the sky, but I see nothing. The stillness is calming either way. Routinely, my heart starts to pump faster, the way it does whenever Dia is around. Bump. Bump. Bump. I think that my heart knows me better than I do. 

Dia speaks suddenly. Her voice is quiet and far away. 

DIA: “Do you like space?”

ME: “Yes.”

I answer immediately. I love the stars and planets. That’s not a surprise to anyone though. People see me and can immediately peg that I like the galaxy. Why else would I wear sweaters that I embroidered with planets and stars? 

DIA: “Me too. Do you like aliens?”

I pause and hold my breath uncertainly. 

ME: “They’re kinda scary.”

DIA: “That’s why I love them. I want to study them.”

ME: “How would you do that?”

DIA: “I’d dissect them.”

She smiles like a maniac. Bumpbumpbump. From her composure, I doubt she can hear the sound of my racing heart. My entire body goes red hot and I feel myself start to fall apart. Dia has always had a dark side that I like to forget about. When it does shine through now and again, it makes me feel like I’m the one who's maniacal. 

ME: “Oh, that’s cool.”

Sometimes my safety comes into question around Dia. She’s adventurous. She likes to do dangerous things on a whim, and I do whatever Dia does. She makes me feel like a sheltered puppy she's taking care of and feeding until a shelter can pick me up and send me away. The thought makes me sad. Dia is like my sun, my entire life revolves around her. She is my center. 

ME: “I like earth.”

I don’t see the point in wanting to study space and stars, when there is so much here nobody knows about. There is too much mystery to be uncovered just in our own gardens, and until we’ve discovered that, it’s pointless to try to leave. 

ME: “Did you know that humans know more about space than they do at the bottom of the ocean?”

Dia’s silence indicates that she does not. I take a breath of the cool air and continue.

CONTACT: “I mean, who has time for aliens when.. I don’t know, whatever’s down there could be an alien? They might as well be, have you seen those freaky fish with the dangly light things? That’s crazy! They’re crazy…” 

I laugh raspy and nervously. Dia says nothing and the spark I have to talk fizzles out until it’s nothing more than a faint red coal. I feel humiliated. I want to wilt. 

CONTACT: “I don’t know.”

DIA: “What?”

CONTACT: “Er—“

I don’t know if she was even paying attention. Her gaze is fixated on the sky above, which drenches her face in strange blue light. A nervousness grows in the pit of my stomach, and my heart starts to beat so fast and loud I fear it will pop out of my chest, like in one of those horror movies Chains and Dia like to watch. The entire situation suddenly becomes so tense and stressful all I want to do is start crying. My moment is finally here, for me to say everything I want to say, but my words are in a traffic jam near the back of my throat. I feel like puking into the sleeping flowers.

How can I be such an idiot? I question angrily. I spent so much time writing scripts. I cringe thinking about them.

“Dia, I know this may come as a shock to you,”

“Dia, I’m sorry I haven’t mentioned this sooner—“

“Dia, I want to tell you something,”

Dia, Dia, Dia.

I have no idea what to do. I can feel the spark and connection between the two of us fizzle further and further away, and I desperately want to grab onto something to keep myself afloat; keep myself from drowning in my anxiety and the overwhelming weight piled onto my shoulders. I don’t know why I’m here. Questions start to fill my head, and angry thoughts swim around like hungry sharks. They bite off my tongue, my knees, my head. 

DIA: “You okay? You’re shaking.”

CONTACT: “I’m positively peachy.”

What a stupid lie. I look like I’m using a massage chair at the mall. 

DIA: “Alright.”

I start to seethe with anger. Why does Dia get to be calm and collected, all of the time? She practically looks like a marble statue, carved out with intricate beauty and care that people in ancient Rome would accuse her of being some kind of demigod. Her smooth woody skin is glowing in the moonlight, and her stupid honey eyes are sparkling with a thousand stars. Why does she get to be nice, and kind, and beautiful, and intelligent? Doesn’t she know how many times I’ve cried about her?

DIA: “Hey, Contact?”

CONTACT: “Yeah?”

DIA: “There’s something I need to tell you.”

My heart climbs from my throat and starts to scream. Have mercy! Have mercy! May lightning strike me now! Let me slip from the shingles and fall into the earth!  I push it back down with a mighty gulp. 

CONTACT: “Oh, word?”

Why did I say that. I cringe hard and pinch my thighs. I realize now that the only chance I have to save myself from having my heart explode, to stop myself from being eaten alive by sharks, is to talk to her and tell her every secret I’ve been keeping inside. 

CONTACT: “Sorry. Erm- There’s something I need to tell you, too, actually-“ 

Dia raises her eyebrows.

DIA: “Let’s say it at the same time.”

She gives me a fierce, confident grin. I can tell she thinks we’re going to say the same thing, I don’t have the courage to shoot down her suspicion. She leans forward closer to me, so close I can see every blemish dotting her forehead and count every freckle sprayed across her nose. 

CONTACT: “Okay.”

Dia counts down. 3, 2, 1..

DIA: “I think I have a crush on you.”

CONTACT: “I’m an alien.”

And the world went silent. 

I knew she was going to say that, and I knew that the shock on her face would melt into place almost immediately after I blurted out my own confession. I avert my gaze from her confused (hurt?) eyes and look up at the stars. They’re still in the same place as before. I look at the garden, the flowers are in the same position as they were 15 minutes ago. I feel like a butterfly that just emerged from its cocoon, so it puzzles me that everything around me is still the same as it had always been. I half expected something to explode. Maybe the grill would catch fire, or gunshots would ring out into the silent night after we let our secrets go. I’ve sat on the roof every night for nearly two years, and the yard below me has looked like a still photo everyday. 

The stillness isn’t a bad feeling. It’s new, yes, but not… terrible. I feel like air. I feel a little closer to the flowers and the earth, even though I recognize that I’m from somewhere millions of miles away. 

I don’t think I regret telling Dia my secret. I know that she doesn’t regret telling me hers. If I could change anything, I think I would’ve been honest sooner. I feel Dia grab my cold hand with her warm one, and I look back at her. She doesn’t look hurt anymore. She’s just smiling, smiling softly. Everything is so quiet. Instinctively, I smile back at her. 

DIA: “Do you feel the same way I do?” 

ME: “I think so. I feel…”

DIA: “Light?”
ME: “I feel like a shooting star.”