Page 106 of Earth Girls are Easy… To Dominate
“He’s far away,” I say with a sigh. She gives me a look over her shoulder that could melt glass. “I don’t have a way to contact him.”
“You didn’t exchange numbers, yet you went away for a weekend together. Which weekend was it? Jenny, I don’t want to argue about this because you’ve got the physical evidence stretching your belly, but I don’t remember having the apartment to myself for a weekend.”
My jaw drops. I’m caught. During my jaunt around the Kuiper belt, we traveled at warp speed. Days progressed for us, but on Earth, I was only missing a few hours. In the time Lisa had a date, I had a multiple-day affair.Think Jenny!I need toblind her with science while allowing the truth to leak out a little…but how?
“Hey! Hey, Lisa! Where did you hide the bottle opener? I can’t open this Coke with my teeth!” Johnny’s pounding on the door couldn’t have come at a better time. While I don’t particularly like the meathead, I could kiss him for interrupting Lisa’s line of thinking. It was headed straight for a truth I’m not ready to reveal.
Lisa rolls her eyes and leads her helpless boyfriend to the kitchen. Better sneak out of here before she returns with more calendar math and damning questions. The click of my bedroom door’s lock is as loud as a judge’s gavel. I’ll be condemned to my room in shame if I don’t figure something out soon. While I wouldn’t mind carrying a human baby out of wedlock, despite the looks I would get in this town, I can’t carry the constant worry of my babies being taken by a secret laboratory. My gut feeling is that humans won’t sedate them during testing and return them within a few hours…like Var’n did to his human subjects.
I rub my translator one last time before leaving the house to face the bike ride to the mall. Before I can enlist my parents’ help, I must sell those dogs. My list of expenses grows by the month with more mouths to feed, diapers to buy, and babies to raise. This material girl can’t afford to wallow away in loneliness for the one who got away, not when he’s left his babies in her care.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“What can I get you?” I ask for the thousandth time this afternoon. My second didn’t show up for work, and my line has been three-deep all day. Why is everyone at the mall? Why aren’t they home, napping on a Sunday afternoon? I know I’d be napping if I could be. Who knew creating alien lifeforms in your body would zap all your energy?
“How about a minute to talk?” Jimmy asks from under his baseball cap. He’s pulled it over his eyes and flipped his collar up to shield his face.
“Jimmy?”
“Shhh, you can’t let anyone know I’m in the mall. What if my mother sees me?”
“Then she would be in the mall too, and we know that won’t happen anytime this century,” I grouse. Bile surges up my throat, and I don’t know if it’s from the stench of the fryer grease or the thought of Jimmy reporting my belly bump back to the church. He’s such a snitch that I know he would tattle to his mother, who would love nothing more than to spread my downfall around the parish. “Cut the crap, don’t you see I have a line of paying customers behind you? If you aren’t craving a hot dog on a stick, I suggest you step aside.”
“Fine, I’ll take a corndog and a soda,” he says, pulling a fistful of crumpled bills from his jeans’ pocket. “I went to your classes, but they said you had withdrawn.”
“Yeah, well, I took extra shifts here to build up some capital and didn’t have the time for classes?—”
“But what about your dream?”
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. What about my dream? I’ll be a working mom, but not in the way I envisioned it. Frankly, I wanted an office job, not a job cooking beef franks. Choosing my career was my dream, but without a partner on this planet, I don’t have that luxury. The babies swimming around in my belly are all the luxury I can afford.
“Your change is twenty-five cents,” I say, holding a quarter in my outstretched hand.
“You know, I did like you,” he says, taking my fingers instead of the quarter. “I know we were matched, but I did—do—want to marry you. I’m sorry that marrying me was so distasteful that you left the church.”
“I didn’t leave the church because of you,” I snap and turn to the fryer to drop a battered dog into the grease. I’m not as fast as I was a few months ago, and it splatters onto my protruding belly. “I left for the mall. That sounds dumb. I left for the future the mall promised—our dream.”
“The dream you can’t afford to pursue?”
He’s got me there.
“My timeline shifted, that’s all. I didn’t sell my dream to your mother like you.”
“Ouch, Jenny,” he says, rubbing his chest.
I rub mine in sympathy because I don’t like how he’s collateral damage in my flight from the church. He’s not a bad guy—just not the guy for me. I learned I need a strong man—not a bodybuilder—anemotionallystrong man who can lead me as an attentive partner. Jimmy divides his loyalties between hismother and his future partner. I’ve decided that’s not enough for me, not after experiencing what I could have with Var’n.
“Look, I’m at work. These people are hungry?—”
“Jenny, please give me another chance. We could date like a regular couple, and maybe in time, you will reconcile with the church. The dream doesn’t have to end here.”
Luckily, the women in line behind him sigh with little hearts in their eyes instead of angrily glaring as they wait. As I turn to pull his corndog from the fryer, I’m tempted by his offer. But I left the church because his mother insisted on crushing my dreams. Can I trust him to stand up to her? And what about my alien babies? He certainly wouldn’t want to raise them. They wouldn’t be accepted in the church.
“Reconciliation between us is not the answer,” I say, handing him his steaming food in a paper boat. “You are better off asking the prophet to listen for another match. You can blame me and say I’m a lost lamb. We didn’t get along as kids, hang out together as teens, or go on dates before we were matched. You can’t possibly believe I’m the girl for you. Let me go.”
“Why won’t you give him a chance?” Asks the lady behind him. She rearranges the shopping bag loops on her arm in order to slap the counter. “Isn’t the power of love enough?”
“No, it’s not. I mean, it is, but not in my case. Look, Jimmy, there’s someone else.”
