Garden of Peace

Prologue 🪷

I told Aine it was October, and that she ought to dress up as something fantastical. We'd unanimously decided that this would be our last Halloween. A kind of closing chapter to our high school lives, if you will. We were seniors, and all the applications were starting to be due in, so the break was sorely needed. Senior year was an absolute bitch.

"Well, what do I go as?" Aine asked. Her voice crackled over the phone like somebody had scrunched up the invisible cord into tiny bits of plastic with a Martian hand. An alien, I assumed, sitting leisurely in their sun-distanced UFO, watching the Earth orbit in their high-tech satellite cameras. They reached a hand through space, and flicked through plastic noise to disturb the conversation of two eighteen-year-old girls. Maybe they wanted to write a book on human behavior.

"Jeez," I said, "what's up with your signal?"

"The wifi's gone down again. I'm using data to call you now, and like, it's so bad. I'm gonna run out soon."

"Sucks to be you." Aine's wifi went down on a regular basis. I wondered if it was the alien's doing—the act of a green-skinned little Martian with knobby knees, and tufts of hair coming out behind skinny ears. This pale light from their CCTVs swaddling their face like a scarf, or a pool of bursting supernovae, as they watched Aine's reality TV show in live footage.

"Shut up. I'm trying to limit my data usage here."

"Alright, alright," I said. "You decide what you wanna be for Halloween. Just make it something big."

"Wow. Thank you so much for the stimulating advice."

"You're very welcome. Uh, I'll hang up now to conserve that precious data of yours."

"Um, no? I love my data and all, but like, my Halloween costume, please."

I glanced at my bedroom door. "I'm going to be honest here," I said. I couldn't help but think the alien was still watching us through a cosmic window-space, eyes pressed to steel-glass, breath fogging up in spirals of blue, like the intense way a kid watched a Christmas show. Big, bugged eyes, almost cartoonish, and a wide, gaping grin.

"Mhm?" The crackle in Aine's voice grew louder.

"Uh, to be honest, I don't really know." I shrugged. "Just go as something, like, different, you know? Something that's, um, supernatural? If that's the right word."

"Supernatural? Ghosts and witches and all that? Really? That's so... bleh. Cringe. Boring."

"Ghosts and witches are cool, thank you very much. But no, I mean like—different different. Something you'd never even dream of being in real life—something so far removed from all this reality stuff, maybe? That doesn't make sense, but—you get what I mean."

"Hm," Aine said. "Yeah, I get what you mean. But what, exactly?"

"I dunno. A Martian? An alien?"

Something shifted on Aine's side of the phone, and there was this screeching sound that tore through the stratosphere. I imagined the alien throwing their hands to their ears, face widened in shock. My ears rang.

"Sorry, sorry. My mom's moving the furniture downstairs. Again. Jesus Christ." A pause. "Uh, I'm not really into the whole alien thing, so I'll pass. And can you imagine, like, the amount of stuff needed in an alien costume? The whole glow-in-the-dark make-up and everything? I could never."

"Uh huh. Come up with your own thing then. There's still—what? Five days till Halloween? You've got time. Also, you should really tell your mom to stop with the whole re-org agenda."