Close Encounters of the Bus Kind
[31]
The social energy of so many girls in one place usually felt to Paul like being a boat on a turbulent sea. But Nadia couldn’t just sit back and ride out the metaphorical currents. She endeavored to pick up the different fragments of conversation and stitch them together into comprehension. The problem was the group already had so many knowing references and comfortable shorthand when dealing with one another. She did her best to pick up the meaning of “spike talk” when the conversation was already on “pear trash”.
It turned out that both of them involved concerns about her. Spike talk was pretty much when they felt that they were getting too esoteric, and insider compared to someone outside of the volleyball team. Basically, hitting a hard strike when someone was just learning how to lob into the conversation. And “pear trash” was a reference to slowing it down for her. It involved how Audrey would keep fruits like pears in her locker and slowly eat them, even when they were starting to rot. A briefly referenced version called “pear crunch“ actually signified the opposite, hurry it up.
Eva joked that they could come up with a translation guide and that made Audrey‘s eyes go wide. The other heavily geeky girl after Gina, she had loads to say about the translation process of anime and her favorite notes. What Nadia noticed first about her though was that she was wearing a pair of green-framed glasses. And what she noticed immediately after was that they didn’t have any lenses.
Audrey immediately plucked them off her face, twirled them, and admitted, “They are prop glasses. I don’t know how I feel about having been poked by… Space science but my vision is now 20/15. However, I have a meganekko look to uphold. That’s the bespectacled, cute glasses-wearing girl in animes.” She spun the glasses a little bit too much and they flew off across the floor. Audrey squeaked and scampered off to retrieve them.
Marisol heaved a weighty sigh, pointed at Audrey crawling the floor, and declared, “My cousin. If Miss Mister Bus Driver didn’t know.”
That was actually a surprise to Nadia. She had the vague impression that a few of the girls were quite close and, in retrospect, Audrey and Marisol looked relatively similar. But, simultaneously, they seemed worlds apart.
Audrey had a massive drape of black hair that followed her like a cape attached to her head. Her face twisted and contorted like rubber, expressing her every quirk and trace of emotion. She had on a yellow top displaying some anime characters that Nadia didn’t recognize, with the stark contrast of green pants. She put her fake glasses back on, used a single finger to push them back in place, and added to her cousin’s introduction, “At your service.” Marisol shut her eyes and took a deep breath.
Nadia got the impression that Marisol and Eva were on the same wavelength. Compared to Audrey, Marisol had her black hair cropped but just long enough to have a swoop behind her ears. It looked shiny and actually a little bit wet, probably with some product that she’d never really encountered. She would definitely say that Marisol toed the line between feminine and androgynous. There was a slight scar above her eyebrow which lent her a certain impression of toughness. She didn’t appear she smiled regularly. Her clothes were a pleasant and fashionable tan and black and she expressed a welcoming aroma neither too flowery nor too pungent.
They were all soon seated at a table with plenty of space. The waitress set down several containers with different varieties of bread along with dipping sauces and hummus. The girls passed everything around on the serving plates already on the table and snacked lightly. Water arrived, as well as non-alcoholic drinks. Gina‘s mom was in one of the other rooms by the Cantina. Nadia noted to herself that Gina‘s mom had gone drinking socially on consecutive days, but she opted not to say anything about it aloud.
During a lull, Marisol pulled in her lips and gave a reserved but adamant apology for her behavior the other day on the bus. She had been the cohort with Gina who practically tried to strip freshly transformed Nadia bare to understand the extent and the authenticity of the change. While Gina only put in her proper apology yesterday before shopping, Marisol already vigorously apologized to her on the trip back from the UFO encounter.
Sasha chirped up and admitted with her dark hands folded underneath her prominent chin, “We were all curious and suspicious, but mostly curious. And that was only the beginning. We all texted each other about the superhero thing, right? Same page, even though everyone isn’t here? Alien gift. I don’t know what the best way to talk vaguely is without freaking out everyone else.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the waiters, waitresses, and other workers around Mr. Baris‘s restaurant. Nadia wanted to rejoin them. She feared that every moment she was with these girls was like throwing their abilities into overdrive. And Erin had decided to sit right next to her. This divided her with ambivalence. She wanted to get even closer to Erin, but she also desperately wanted her to stay away on the chance that something about her might hurt the one she cared for the most.
Gina waved her hand and responded, “I’m sure it’ll be fine. We had weird stuff happen all day yesterday and no one bothered really. At most, people will think we’re just like role-playing, talking about a game, or something on TV. Going first, we discussed with Leslie, who couldn’t make it today but she’s fine, that there seems to be one part of the superpower thing where it happens automatically and one that needs work. Like maybe a talent and a skill. One you just have. One you have to train.” The other girls were all focused on her, even as they ate.
Nadia looked around and noticed something rather peculiar about Sasha. She had a sizable amount of curly, dense dark hair. That wasn’t weird. The weird part was it looked like she was using her hair as a puppet to adjust her silverware. But that just wasn’t possible because both her hands were still under her chin. While Nadia watched, Sasha‘s hair also adjusted the collar of her purple jacket. At one point, the waitress came around to ask them about their orders and Eva took the initiative and ordered a large vegetarian appetizer including grape leaves and falafel.
It was shortly thereafter that Eva adopted a nervous smile and inquired with Nadia, “Is your dad covering this meal for us? I ask because I’m sort of broke from yesterday.” Nadia had no idea, but she still assured the group that she would make sure that everything was fine. Somehow. Eva let out a sigh of relief.
Gina picked up the thread of discussion and continued, “So, we never quite figured out my talent…”
Eva looked like she wanted to bite her tongue to hold it back, but she didn’t move fast enough before the words escaped her own mouth. “Coming up with crazy conspiracy theories about aliens?”
Gina raised a finger and relayed, “That is more of a skill. And there are still people here, Mr. Miss Bus Driver especially… Nadia, who hasn’t heard my plan and dream for figuring out the whole alien thing in one easy swoop.”
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“Please, God, don’t,” Eva groaned while pinching her nose. “We’re trying to be not super weird about everything we say around regular people.”
To that, Gina shrugged and responded, “You all may be. But there are things out there that people really should know about.”
“Talent. Unknown. Probably recharging phones,” Eva intoned.
Elsa, who had been a careful quiet listener, asked urgently, “Oh my gosh. For real? I have an older model and they don’t even sell the right battery packs anymore. Do you just have to hold it?”
Nadia hadn’t even noticed that Elsa was there, aside from her plume of orange-toned hair. Ironically, she had a look more like Anna from the movies than the Ice Queen but with hair just slightly longer than Marisol’s. She had on a blue blouse that complimented her azure eyes. Hesitantly, Elsa tried to pass her phone across the table to Gina, but Gina wiggled her hand and made a few expressions before noting, “I’m not sure what I do. But! I can hold it for you. No promises, except I promise not to peek at your stuff.”
Elsa took that deal, and the girls passed the phone over. Eva sat up and cleared her throat. “Then the… Skill is that she can be twice as big a headache.” Gina narrowed her eyes and pouted. The skill was relatively easy to explain but invited all sorts of questions from the group who wanted to see this twin sister, Louise. Odessa explained that her guest actually decided to play video games the entire day. Eva rolled her eyes.
When the veggie platter came out, Odessa poked around and made sure that nothing she grabbed for herself had onions. Nadia reminded herself that she still needed to get the girl a peanut butter cupcake of appreciation. The question emerged, from Thessaly in particular, who looked downright blissed out by the food, whether another instance of Gina could be created. Did the copy ability follow ninja rules, or did it have a physical limit? Audrey contributed this to the discussion.
Eva set herself and took a breath. “We only know that additional instances of her are normal people, like any of us. The other versions of her do have a connection to talents but it’s also unknown whether the copies can do stuff on their own. Yeah.” Nadia could hear and feel the measured weight of the girl’s words. The horrible things they faced yesterday in the abandoned Sears weren’t things that any of them would get through in a day, but the mountain of things that had fallen on her since made it feel darkly quaint.
Following up on that statement, Eva presented what they had gleaned about her. “My talent may be one of the most versatile but also dangerous. I can share the basic talents of pretty much everyone I’ve come in contact with who has one. There is a proximity limit once it’s activated and when I leave a group it stops. It appears to be random which one my talent shares.”
That brought on some interested murmuring amongst the girls. Eva swiftly clarified that skills did not appear to be shareable and then swallowed before continuing, “My skill seems to be strongest in… Moments of great emotion. I appear to be able to use my voice to command things to happen. The exact details and limitations are not clear because it’s only come up once. I sent a monster somewhere hopefully very far away by telling it to go.”
A stillness settled around the girls but also electric energy. Nadia feared for a moment that this admission might drive this friend group apart but, they all leaned toward Eva and did their best to cheer her up. She cracked a reserved smile.
Going next was Odessa, even though Nadia thought that they hadn’t really figured out what her ability was. The girl steadied herself and set her hands on the table before explaining nervously, “ I can move… I can re.. I can I can…react very fast to something as my talent. I’m sorry. I kind of knew about it yesterday and I was able to get away from the monster safely. But I was worried about talking about it because I know it would totally be something that would be unfair in competition, and I’m scared because it’s a talent and it just happens and it gives me an unfair advantage and I feel like maybe I shouldn’t be on the team. I’m sorry…”
Silence clung to the air for several seconds before the entire group jumped in with sympathy, kind words, encouragement, and whatever they could offer to Odessa. Erin hugged her tight and told her it would be OK. For demonstration, Odessa held her phone, dropped it, and immediately caught it while swiftly jumping out of her seat. No serving staff were nearby, they made sure, but Odessa had already concocted an explanation whereby she would say it was some sort of sports training. The group was split on advice about whether she should use this talent or try to limit it. One side of the argument pressed that it was given to them by aliens. Nadia still held her tongue about what the Beyond woman had told her.
The skill part of Odessa‘s admission resolved another oddity from yesterday as she revealed that she was responsible for the chair illusion that distracted the monster. Like Eva had described her skill as being tied to extreme emotions, they further deduced that Odessa must’ve conjured up the illusion in a similar moment of stress.
Their side of the table finished up with Erin providing a thorough delineation of her experiences with seeing all sorts of monsters. She did her best not to dwell but ominously suggested that they may just be a part of the world that none of them usually saw. Things that eat things that are left behind, like vultures or other carrion eaters. Eva tensed up and so did Odessa. Erin noticed and gave them each a sympathetic look. The other girls had kind words for “Coach” as she revealed that her skill appeared to be some variety of telekinesis which allowed her to stop a flying projectile. Nadia leaned away from Erin but did her best not to make it appear obvious. The group focus soon fell on her because she was the next in the row who hadn’t yet talked about her power.
“Talent of understanding every language. And I have no idea about skill. It doesn’t appear to have activated yet.” She shrugged and that talent alone was enough to get everyone’s attention as Marisol tried a few languages she knew and a few of them even tried to write foreign languages, which didn’t stump her either as she read them aloud. The overpowered possibilities for a job as a translator along with acing every foreign language class were energetically speculated on by the group.
Sasha, who had started this line of questioning picked it up from Nadia and wiggled her dark eyebrows while showing off what Nadia had already casually noticed along with several others. The girl explained, “I have prehensile hair. It’s like having a hair muppet. It’s really good with providing something to hold my cell phone, but I gotta be careful. Mom and dad thought I was pulling like a magician’s trick and they’re still trying to bribe me to tell them how I did it. But that’s just my talent. My skill makes me swoon and cheer...”
Leading into the reveal, the girl did a quick little mouth drum roll sound before revealing, with a gleeful whisper, “I can turn the boys into girls!”