This is an attempt for National Novel Writing Month. It is not perfect. It's probably not even especially good yet. Xen is not going back to revise anything until he is completely done. So, deal with it.
Jasmine waited at the pub in New Paltz, sucking on the lemon that had come with her water and staring through the front window.
"Blech!" Kathleen grimaced and said, "I can't see how you can suck on a lemon without your whole face squeezing to a point."
Jasmine shrugged. "I don't expect lemons to taste any different, so I'm not disappointed or displeased." A second later, upon mentally playing this remark back, she flinched, giving Kathleen unsubtle satisfaction. It was not the tartness of the lemon but the realization that this reply owed more than a little to Dylan's philosophical ambivalence, which she must have absorbed through osmosis over the dozen meals Dylan had consumed in her parents' home in the last few weeks. It wasn't that she necessarily disliked Dylan, but found his philosophizing stale, especially when it came coupled with a continuing interest in UFOs, a subject that would do them no good. Since their supposed "abduction", they'd been left alone in strict defiance of what Dr. Diamond had told them. Jasmine saw no reason to provoke more attention. Dr. Diamond was wrong, as far as Jasmine was concerned. Weeks went by and Jasmine was unmolested by anything stranger than her father's casserole recipes. She let all this fade from her mind as, it seemed, did Dylan and her sister.
Finally, she saw their dates walking up the street before stopping for a cigarette outside. It was a disgusting habit as far as she was concerned, more so for the fact that it evidently ranked higher to them than punctuality or, given their untenable proximity, paying attention to Kathleen and her. Jasmine wasn't sure why Kathleen was so enamored with her dreadlocked lover Sid. Yes, he has nice eyes and plainly either worked out fairly obsessively or simply was blessed by the gods with washboard abs, but his personality seemed to match his hairstyle: a wet mop. But, incontestably, Kathleen saw something in him beyond his body to have been mooning over him since their initial meeting. Jasmine did not, as she had come to feel she couldn't trust people who wore all their "weird" on the outside as it left so little within to discover. Dylan, for example, had some inner facets worth scrutiny. Under a veneer of underachievement was a font of a mild intellect that almost, but not quite, made him worthy enough in Jasmine's eyes not to flinch when her sister touched his knee under the dinner table. By definition, there almost had to be more to Dylan than first impressions would suggest. It would be hard for there to be less.
Jasmine was even less taken with her date, Greg. They'd been out a couple fo times, always in the company of Kathleen and Sid, the latter of whom was evidently his closest friend despite the logic of friendships. Greg wore pink polo shirts and too much gel in his hair, which was any as far as Jasmine was concerned. On their first date two weeks ago, Jasmine was pretty sure that he wore eyeliner. What seemed to unite him to Sid was a passion for illegal substances. Jasmine agreed to that first date because it provided her some excuse to get away from the strangeness of Pine Bush and back into the summer she had wanted. Summer romances always seemed amazing in movies, though that might be because the leading man did not ever call his romantic interest "brah".
It brought to mind a bit too sharply how well Chrys and Dylan got on. Jasmine had never had that. Oh, there were boyfriends, occasionally serious ones. There was a guy Jasmine had flirted with for a month of classes, only to have it dashed when they finally made out at a party. The next day, when she pressed him for why he was conspicuously ignoring her, he'd told her something that cut her with its truth: she isn't the sort of woman guys settle for. She is the one they lust after and strive for, she is the one who ruins other people's relationships simply by existing, but she is always overcome as guys come to realize the virtues of the girl-next-door. She was, in brief, too pretty to be trusted or had.
But she didn't simply wanted to be had. She wanted actual communion, something unlikely to happen in college, so she focused on her course load and friends. But the summer provided respite and time to think. Her choices, as she saw them, were either to focus on alien kidnappers or boys. She found the latter marginally less terrifying and infinitely more diverting, so she committed herself to dates. Whatever the aliens had wanted from Jasmine, they had seemed for forget about it and she was delighted to be forgotten and forget in return. When she passed Sterling once on the way to the post office, he didn't even look twice at her. Perhaps it was all just a dream, then. Or it was a game and they realized they would not win if they were playing against someone so bullheaded when it came to believing. Whatever the reason didn't matter as long as the outcome was so normal.
They'd kissed a few times, because that was how it was done. Perhaps she would like to kiss Greg and she did. It provided her reprieve from hearing him speak through movies and he was gentleman enough (so far) not to press his luck or try for second base. She could do with some kisses and comfort, as long as she knew Kathleen was no farther away than the other seat.
Finally, their dates finished their cigarettes and entered, trailing the scent of nicotine ash behind them. Greg would not be getting kisses for many hours tonight, if he got them at all. She certainly didn't feel she owed him any, he wasn't her boyfriend, just a guy with whom she had gone on a few dull double dates.
The meal passed quickly. Kathleen talked to Sid who talked to Greg who occasionally checked to make sure Jasmine was being included in the conversation. Jasmine needed this social outlet, so she tried to remain involved, but she was aware that her conscience wouldn't allow her to string Greg along for many more dates. Either he would want more than she was prepared to give (which, at that, was almost anything) or he would simply render the opinion that she wasn't worth the effort or money he spent wooing her. And she wasn't, despite her prettiness, so she wouldn't fault him this.
When the meal ended, she asked what they would like to do now, hoping they would suggest pot smoking or getting drunk, activities in which she would be able to bow out gracefully. Greg would drive her home and she could get away with a kiss on the cheek while Kathleen spent another night nestled against Sid.
"Actually, I was reading up on where you chicks live," Greg said. "Did you know that it is, like, a UFO hot spot?"
Kathleen laughed, high and birdlike. Jasmine, after a fraction of a second, tried to mimic the airiness.
"Seriously?" Kathleen asked. "That's completely insane, where did you hear that?"
From his small bag, what would have been a very fashionable purse if wielded by a woman, he produced a book with the familiar drawing of an alien head, Quiet Infiltration. "I found it in the library. The author totally still hangs out there, too. It's completely stupid."
"Yeah, completely stupid," Sid echoed, rejoining the conversation.
"So, I thought you ladies could bring us there to hunt some space aliens!" Greg said, smiling contentedly at his master plan.
"No," Jasmine said immediately. All three turned and looked at her, as this was easily the most active she had been for the whole meal. "I just don't think this is a good idea. Kat and I have to live there, we shouldn't cause problem. Plus, sky watching is illegal there." She immediately regretted her final objection, both because it made her look like a goody-goody and because it gave them all the confirmation they needed.
"Oh, I don't think we're too worried about getting arrested for looking at the sky," Sid said, mocking her.
"Dude, lay off," Greg said, hitting Sid in the chest with the back of his hand. He then turned to Jasmine and said, "Seriously, though, we are going. It'll be fun, right?"
Jasmine felt the panic welling up in her chest. She couldn't help but think of the contents of her disk, the one she had snapped into pieces after listening to it once, as though to banish what it contained. If she allowed this, if she was part of hunting for things she didn't want to exist, they would bother her again. They might come after Kathleen or Chrys or her family.
"Guys, please, we can do something else tonight, okay?" Jasmine asked, but she could tell that she wasn't going to get her way. "Fine, then, you can drop me off and go sky watching?"
Kathleen sniffed. "Jasmine and I need to use the bathroom."
Jasmine followed Kathleen around a corner, where all one hundred and one pounds of her turned hard. "Do you need a tampon?!"
"No..."
"Then why the hell are you acting like you are on your period tonight?"
Jasmine flinched. "I just don't like the idea of harassing people where we live over crazy theories. I always get annoyed when I see the sky watchers."
Kathleen sniffed again, more softly. "You've seen them before."
"Oh," Jasmine said, silently chastising herself. "A couple of times. Nothing major, just some trespassers in the lot behind my house." In fact, Jasmine still saw occasional member of the United Friends Observer Society wandering about, drinking the infinite coffee refills at the Cup and Saucer and, once, she had to chase them out of the field behind her backyard because they were setting campfires while watching the skies for crafts from above. She didn't get anymore involved with them than she needed to be and, thankfully, they did not seem to recall her attendance of one of their meetings.
"Well, the cops aren't going to bother us if we just hang out in your backyard, now are they?" Kathleen said.
"I guess not..." Jasmine ventured.
"Then it is settled."
Jasmine slouched in the back seat. This wasn't so bad, she figured. They could just look up at the stars and they would be easily dissuaded from searching the town further. Jasmine had gone for most of her life without seeing anything in the sky that shouldn't be there. Statistically, it was almost impossible that a ship would appear tonight, no matter the reputation Pine Bush suffered thanks to Dr. Diamond's book.
Once there, she purloined a couple of quilts from the linen closet and set to making hot cocoa for the others. True to her expectations, their talk of aliens and UFOs transitioned into general scary stories, then idle philosophy, and finally into contentedly and silently cuddling as the night found its chill.
Jasmine looked up at the stars, charting for Greg what constellations she could recall from her astronomy class freshman year. She heard more amorous sounds coming from Kathleen and Sid, twenty feet away, but put this out of her mind. Greg snuggled against her, resting his head on her chest, and she found herself stroking his hair as he fell asleep on her. As she listened to his light snores and the gasps coming from further afield, she actually began to see the stars for the first time in a decade.
The stars were so simple when she was a kid, a smattering of celestial dust circling the Earth. She didn't then know that each was a sun, most considerably more massive that the sun she was used to. She used to just stare up at the stars, feeling infinite before she had words for it. More than once when she was a child, her parents had found her asleep on her back porch with no more covering than the sky gave her.
It changed when she hit her teens, as her body developed into that of a woman before her mind, it impelled her eyes to stay at an even keel, to deal with the ground before flickering to the heavens. Night became not dotted with fairy clouds of celestial splendor, but simply when the sun was gone for a while.
Until very recently, she never felt any real fear from the night, though she did go through aggravating insomnia for much of her adolescence. In retrospect, she blamed it on any number of issues: rampant and undiagnosed pet allergies, a bad diet (including too much sugary soda), a vitamin deficiency.
She was desperate and envious for sleep then and even a little green that Greg was snoozing so blissfully on the pillows of her breasts now. As a teen, she had made an art of creeping silently around her parents' house as though sleep were contagious (or in hopes that, in supine states, her family would be more susceptible to the magnetism of her dark rimmed eyes and she wouldn't have to be alone it the night). But no one ever woke and she eventually managed to get a few hours of sleep before waking for school each morning.
Jasmine, for fear of waking Greg, stayed still, staring at the stars until she, too, fell asleep outside, watched over by the stars.
Pine Bush is a serialized novel being written by Xen. It didn't happen to you, your best friend, or his cousin. Why? Because it didn't happen. All persons, living, dead, undead, or unliving are purely coincidental. Any real persons are used fictiously. What you are about to read is not a news broadcast. No portion of this book may be distributed without the expressed written consent of Xen. Feel free to rope your friends into reading it, though. Do it or I start shooting PuppyOrphans.
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