Foreign Objects

01 • Spe

"Just this morning, some man said his wife was abducted by aliens."

"Oh my God," Jenny gasps, her face immediately contorting into horror. She's one to be very open with her emotions, unlike the rest of us who like to front.

Peyton rolls her eyes, still on her government-is-controlling-everything agenda.

I nudge my head at Mike. "That's it? How did it happen?"

"He said they went out jogging and he suddenly felt this really weird energy." He puts air quotes on 'energy'. "And then he became disoriented and when he regained himself, wife was nowhere to be found."

"Or," Peyton pulls herself up from her locker, "he murdered his wife and is using the current alien hoax to cover it up, knowing very well everybody's gonna eat it up."

"Oh?" I scoff. "I thought you were gonna say this was orchestrated by the government too. Why a change of script?"

Peyton glares passively at me. "Obviously not everything's gonna be done by the government, some people will want to take advantage of what's happening."

And she deadass believes this. I don't even know what I believe. What I know is some weird shit happened to me and there is a long window of time from when I moved from the woods to my house and I need to know what happened.

"Hey can you forward some articles on UFO sightings or whatever to me?" I ask Mike.

He regards me confusingly. "Since when are you interested in reading full articles about shit like this?"

"Um excuse me, I am trying to be concerned about what's happening to my world right now."

"Uh huh." He's absolutely not buying that.

"All of this is so fucking scary." Jenny's still fretting.

I sigh, patting her shoulder softly. I want to say encouraging words too, I really do but, I just keep on thinking about being abducted by aliens myself so I am clearly not in the right mind space to be giving advices right now.

"Relax babe," Peyton says, clearly the one in the right government-is-controlling-everything agenda mind space. "This will all blow over."

"No it won't." Mike really doesn't know how to read the room. Sometimes I like that he's this way though.

"Speaking of things that won't blow over." Peyton's voice is suddenly dark, her eyes now set in a glare.

I turn to look at her victim, not surprised to see that it's none other than Jeremiah, but unlike other days where I'd join in on the glare down, I'm more confused as to what to feel.

A part of me is relived to see him. He'd made it back just like me. Nothing seems to be wrong with him too. He's walking down the halls with his two constant friends. The one with the dark hair is Daniel, Jenny's boyfriend and I really don't care about the other one's name. They're talking and making wild gestures, and Jeremiah's just nodding his head at them.

Something turns in me, like my heart is doing a leap, like I've figured something out, I can't quite explain it and I can't quite understand it. I'm dying to ask him questions, to get his side of the story, and as if knowing what I'm thinking, he looks in my direction.

My heartbeat gets even faster when our eyes meet, the feeling of dread subsides for a little bit, and I should look away, I really should but, I can't find it in me to, and it seems it's the same with him.

"Wow, y'all wanna murder him with your eyes or something?"

Mike's voice does the trick and I move my gaze immediately away from his, blinking a few times. My stomach rumbles and there's this unsettling feeling. Why am I feeling so many feelings today? Feelings that I don't even understand.