For the first two days we enjoyed the luxurious beds and powerful, hot showers. Auntie Lynn snuck us into the hotel’s cavernous and gleaming stainless steel tabled back kitchens late at night to eat, and we snacked from vending machines during the day.
It was in the kitchens where Auntie Lynn, seated at a table with a mostly melted ice sculpture of a dolphin in a large crystal bowl of red punch, looked at me sideways. “I know we all angry, Kadie. But you should know, it wasn’t your fault. Sometimes, you parents tell you things the way they truly want them to be for you, and not the way they are.”
“I know,” I said glumly.
“And sometimes, is best to get away to fight some other day. Or think of it as retreating in a different direction.”
And that was all she would say about Just Rahim and me. From then on she kept calling what was going on ‘Our Situation.’
On the third day we had to move to a different room because a tourist was scheduled for our room. We shuffled ourselves off to a different empty suite. That’s when it really sunk in that I wouldn’t be sleeping in the same bed for very long. That, as comfortable as the room was, we had basically become homeless inside a luxury hotel by the beach.
My parents argued while holed up in the room together. Not loudly enough to get us in trouble from people in the other rooms, but in a sort of stressed out constant hissing at each other.
They couldn’t go to work. Rahim’s father might still track us down. And we were using up what little savings our family had on soda and chips during the day.
“How long can we keep this up?” my mother would ask. “How long?”
“Just let me think, Tiffi,” my dad would say, holding onto the rails of the balcony and looking out over the beach for an answer.
We couldn’t do this forever, I knew. It wasn’t a life. And St. Thomas was only fourteen or so miles long and a few miles wide. A hundred thousand people lived here.
Eventually we would get found. They were right to worry.
So what was going to happen?
Would Just Rahim’s father eventually cool off? Would they let it go?
What would he really do when he found us, anyway?
I’d never been sure exactly how dangerous he was. Was he really a dangerous drug dealer? It was almost worse, not really knowing for sure.
I wasn’t supposed to, but to keep myself occupied I would pull on a ball cap and a pair of sunglasses and wander the beach, kicking up sand and watching people.
The tourists always provided some entertainment. Families on vacation arguing over something ridiculous. Drunk men shouting or staggering. Sometimes they seemed to be working too hard at having fun.
I made friends with some of the hotel staff. David, the assistant manager who owed Auntie Lynn a big enough favor to look the other way, would buy me a soda and chat when he came out of his office. I avoided the hotel manager, though.
At the end of our first week at the hotel, when the atmosphere in our now third different room grew so tense I thought my mother was going to snap, I bugged out to the beach in my simple disguise.
For a long time I walked along the edge of the water, dancing my way back from it as the ocean surged and licked at my feet.
It took me a long time to notice that no one was swimming. It was the constant rings and dings of cellphones and texts that started out slow, but then exploded into a background noise all their own that made me realize something weird was happening.
I looked around and saw that all the tourists had their over-red faces turned down to stare at their devices. Several people clustered around a family with a tablet.
I walked over to an older man with silvered hair on a beach chair. He’d let his drink tip over into the sand, completely ignored.
“Why’s everyone on their phone?” I asked. “What’s happening?”
The man looked shocked, but also had a strange grin on his face as he held up his phone to show me what looked like a faint blur against a dark background.
“What is it?” I asked.
He leaned back and looked up at the cloudless, blue sky. “You remember where you are, right now, and what you were doing right before this very moment. Because you can never forget it.”
I was starting to get a bit freaked.
“They’re saying it’s a starship. An alien starship,” he said. “An honest-to-God starship.”
“How do they know?” I asked, not believing him. Not really. But still looking up into the sky with him, my day’s problems suddenly forgotten.
“Because it sent a message,” he said. “It’s coming to Earth, and it has passengers on board.”
“Like… tourists?” I asked incredulously.
He laughed. “Yeah, I guess so, kid.”
“My name’s Kadie,” I corrected him. Then regretted it. I didn’t need anyone knowing who I was.
“That’s not all it’s saying, though,” the man said. “In exchange for the chance to drop some of its passengers off, it’s offering a chance for people on Earth to get on board and join it.”
“Be a lucky millionaire who gets that,” I said.
“It’s free. An exchange.”
“Who?” I asked, now super curious. Those lucky people, I thought. To leave everything behind. To see whole new worlds. Whole new peoples. I’d always hoped to see more of the world. To get off the island. How lucky was someone who would get to get off the whole world. And leave all of a world’s problems behind.
“Anyone! That’s why everyone’s on their phones, sending messages. Anyone can apply. The information’s online…”
He didn’t finish his sentence, because I was off. Running across the hot sand as fast as I could.
I needed to find a computer.