Page 28 of Alien in the Attic

“You’re going to get drunk in space?” Carmen asked. She could feel her flabbergasted eyebrows raising so far up her forehead that they nearly merged with her hairline.

“You expect me to travel through a literal void sober?” Sofia asked. “I’m going to need the booze to keep me from panicking.”

Carmen sighed. “You don’t have to go. Especially if you’re that nervous.” The last thing she wanted was for her sister to regret her decision. It’s not like they were planning a road trip to Atlantic City. There was a very real chance that they wouldn’tsurvive the journey. She would have been fine with Sofia deciding to back out.

“No,” Sofia said, sounding surprised by the suggestion. “I’m pumped, seriously. I just have a thing about heights.”

Elena began untangling the wires, frowning as she did so. “Well, I have good news for you then,” she said. “Heights don’t really exist in space. Without gravity, there is no real way to tell how high up you are. So, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Carmen smiled. Elena always had a way of using her vast intellect to smooth over concerns. Horror movies never scared her because she learned about special effects makeup when she was three. Her logical approach to most situations had a comforting way of simplifying anything.

Then again, her powers could be used the opposite way as well. Instead of blessing someone after a sneeze, she was known to list off all the possible illnesses associated with sneezing with such cold clarity that by the time she was done, you were convinced you were on death’s door.

“Bring whatever you want,” Carmen told Sofia. “Whatever you need in order to feel safe and comfortable is fine with me. Okay?”

“Three bottles of wine it is,” Sofia replied with a wink.

Later that afternoon, the sisters had packed several changes of clothes, enough snacks and water to survive a nuclear fallout,cards, books, and, yes, three bottles of wine. Elena sat in the de facto pilot’s seat, poking every icon in sight and occasionally murmuring to herself.

“Interesting,” she said when lights came on in the armrest.

“I see,” was her remark when a holographic map shot up from the controls.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she repeated when an alarm started shrieking in everyone’s ears. After a second of panicked searching, she found the correct sequence of digital button mashing to silence the horrifically loud wailing. “At least we’ll know if anything is about to smash into us.”

Carmen strapped herself in next to her brilliant sister. The weight of the belts crossing over one another against her shoulders, chest, and abdomen was a reminder of how real this all was.

Before now, it had been a hypothetical, an abstract notion in her mind. The size and scale of the journey they were about to embark on was too impossible to comprehend. As she felt the steady hum of the idling engines, however, the truth hit her square in the gut, and she almost screamed.

Remember this, the ghost of Arccoo’s voice echoed through her mind.Remember us.

Recalling their final moment together chased away the fear burning through her nervous system. The unconditionalvulnerability they shared was a new and energizing experience for her. It was like breathing clean air for the first time. If she had to travel more lightyears than she could count to feel that again, it was worth it.

Almost as if she had been reading her mind, Sofia, fiddling with the belts in the seat across from her, brought up time and distance. “How long is this going to take?”

“It’s hard to tell,” Elena answered, controlling the shimmering map with her fingers. It twirled, expanded, and shrank in response to her hand motions. “Their unit of measurement is different from ours. If I tried to estimate, I’d only be making a bad guess. Not to mention the time variance objects experience when traveling through space. Oh, and then there’s the possibility of encountering a wormhole.”

“Excuse me for asking,” Sofia said. Carmen was about to lean forward to explain how the buckles worked when they finally clicked. Sofia gave her older sister a smug smirk. “All it takes is a little trial and error.”

Carmen laughed. Not because Sofia had said anything particularly funny. Watching her siblings work so hard to make this journey happen overwhelmed her with joy. Not only were they there for her after that last nightmare of a relationship, they supported her and Arccoo without reservation. Now they were joining her on an interstellar voyage across an unimaginable distance. She felt very lucky to be able to call these two powerhouse women sisters.

I won the lottery, she told herself.

The humming increased. Carmen held on to the belts keeping her in place and darted her eyes over to Elena. “Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Uh, yes,” Elena said, not sounding all that confident.

“Are we about to explode?” Sofia asked. Carmen couldn’t tell if she was scared or excited.

“No,” Elena told her. “We’re just leaving now.”

Carmen’s eyes widened. “What? You couldn’t have given us a little warning?”

“We haven’t left yet,” Elena said. “So thatwasyour warning.”

Carmen was about to debate it with her when she felt her stomach almost drop down to her toes. Before she knew it, the blue Hollowbrook sky had been replaced by unending blackness.

When the pressure lifted, all three sisters took a huge breath, as if they had simultaneously breached the surface after spending too long underwater.

---