We have the World’s Oldest VCR.
It’s the only thing I can use to play the video of “our” episode of Real-Life Mystery, a reality show from the early nineties that hardly anyone watched about things that never really happened. In this case, it’s the UFO landing in the space field. The show chose our small town and our small UFO event since it was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the supposed crash landing.
(And not for nothing, but if aliens have the kind of technology to travel light-years across the galaxy, don’t you think they could have avoided crashing into Earth? I mean, it’s right there. They would have seen it. Whatever.)
I clear some space on the living room couch for Priya to sit and turn on all the doodads to get the VCR going. She settles into the cushions eagerly, her eyes alight with anticipation.
I sit next to her and press play on the remote. There’s a loud hum as the machine whirs to life.
The tape has been played so many times, paused and examined frame by frame, that there are actual ridges in it. The audio clicks and pops as the damaged tape passes over the metal heads inside the machine. I have to crank the volume way up to get any decent sound out of it.
“. . . tonight we reveal the truth behind the aliens next door.” The voice-over guy hits the words truth and aliens megahard, in case you don’t get it. This is gonna be some serious shit, people, brace yourselves.
The screen dissolves from its opening title to a shot of a sky filled with stars.
“This is, like, we’re the aliens, you know. We’re floating in space,” I tell Priya. “Oh, and that’s a map of Pennsylvania so you can see where in the whole state our crappy little town is.”
Cut back to space and now we’re moving faster, plummeting through the atmosphere toward Earth. “These are, like, the lamest special effects ever. Like, ever. How much did they spend on this, ten bucks?”
I feel Priya’s gaze on me but she says nothing. I’m sure she’s engrossed in the spectacularity that is Real-Life Mystery.
“It’s not like it’s in a suburb of McMansions. I mean, it’s just some crummy field and no one even died. And it was empty, too. It was the middle of winter and my granddad didn’t even have anything growing.”
The camera swoops down into the field as if it were on a helicopter, trying hard to make us feel like we’re “in” the ship.
And then a smash cut to black as we “hit” the ground, fade up to a shot of fog surrounding a cone-shaped metal object. “That is so clearly a model . . . ,” I mumble. I can’t help myself.
For the next half hour, though, even fast-forwarding through the commercials for Joe Versus the Volcano, I try to stay silent to allow Priya to absorb the whole fiasco. The docudrama is absorbing in a train wreck sort of way. I’ve seen it so many times, I’ve memorized every scene, every hint of conspiracy, every interview—including the one with DJ Jones.
Throughout, I half watch the screen, half watch Priya. She’s impassive, her beautiful face a blank. I can’t tell if she thinks this is silly or stupendous.
“Well?” I ask when the credits finally roll. I hit pause on the remote.
“Remarkable,” she says. “This is not true, of course.”
I exhale, relieved beyond belief. “Thank you. No, not at all.”
She points at the freeze-frame on screen, which is a shot of the crashed ship under the credits. “There are so many questions left unanswered.” She begins ticking off points on her long fingers. “What technology brought that ship here? Did its designers have faster-than-light propulsion? If so, what was the matter used to create it?”
“Um . . .”
“Or did it travel through a wormhole? If so, which one? From where? Why didn’t it disintegrate upon entering Earth’s atmosphere?”
“Well, I—”
“When it was experiencing problems, why didn’t its pilots seek the water, which is, actually, the majority of the surface of this planet and easier to survive?”
“Uh, yeah—”
She mutters, as if to herself. “A wormhole is the more likely of the two options since faster-than-light travel, as it is currently understood, requires a warp bubble that allows the contraction of space ahead of the vehicle and the expansion of it behind. A stable warp bubble is nearly impossible to create, while a stable wormhole is, at least, viable at this time.”
She stops and looks at me, expecting me to . . . chime in? I only know half of the words she just said. They were English, right?
“But it’s not real,” I say. “None of it. There was no crash. There was no ship. There was no government cover-up.”
She falls back into the cushion, her thin frame sinking into the fabric. Her gaze on me does not even acknowledge what I just said. “Not to mention the pilots themselves. Where are they? Why didn’t a second ship rescue them?” Her lip quivers. “Would they have simply been left here to be captured? To be held prisoner?”
“But it’s—”
She turns to me, her gaze intense and withering. “Not real, so you said. But it is real. That field was the site of a crash landing. I can feel it when I’m there. And you can too, even if you insist you can’t.”
“Priya, you just said there were so many unanswered questions,” I try to reason with her. “The landing, the method of travel—”
“I don’t need answers.”
“Well, I do.”
“That is your problem.”
I can feel my temperature rise, and not in a good way at all. “Look, it wasn’t even produced very well. The aliens were just really tall people in metallic sweat suits and they carried plastic weapons.” I force a laugh, but she won’t be swayed.
“They talked to people who were there, Matthew. They—”
“They were idiots!” I shout. “Complete lunatics!”
Her eyes grow wide and she lurches to a standing position, fists on hips even as she nearly topples over. “Do you not understand? Each day I’m here, I am not at my home. You are here! You are home.”
You are here. An image of space pops into my head, an array of planets against a field of stars, and a red arrow aimed squarely at a speck on the Big Blue Marble. Me. Home. This is my home. Why isn’t it Priya’s? Or more important, why doesn’t she think it is?
I take her by the shoulders and force her to look at me. “Priya, you are not an alien. You are a girl, a human. Please, please, tell me who you are and where you’re from so I can help you.”
“Matthew—”
She tries to pull away, but I hold fast. “You’re not home and I want to help you get home, but it’s not going to be in a fucking spaceship! Okay? Listen to me!”
“No! Listen to me! I am what I say I am—what you know I am.”
I keep her gaze, and for the first time, I see her as Emily saw her: white wig askew, dark circles like bruises around her eyes, her breath shallow and fast.
“No, I don’t know what you are.”
Her eyes fly open. “You do!”
“I just want you to be—”
She wrenches free of me and stomps out of the living room, the heels of her boots clicking on the floor, with Ginger as her shadow. At the kitchen door, she fumbles with the lock. As I come up behind her, I see her fingers slip over and over again, like they’re unable to grasp the knob and turn it. She’s so angry with me that she can’t focus. She struggles with the door, grunting as she pushes and pulls the handle, trying to yank it and shove it and slam her hands against it in frustration.
Normal. I just want you to be normal.
I wait until she gives up and leans her shoulder against the wall. Gently, very gently, I wrap my hand around hers and unlock the door with her. I feel her fingers trembling from the effort before they free themselves from my grasp.
As soon as I open the door, she escapes, just like Ginger does, without a glance backward, anxious to be free of the confines of my house.
I watch as she gallops, colt-like, through the willows, the branches trailing down her back like hair, emerging on the other side, tripping up the gentle slope toward the field.
She stands, dead center of the field, alone, arms slack by her sides. Her head falls back and her face lifts. I can imagine her smile from here. Is that where she is happiest? In the magical space field? Where she can somehow feel the energy of a long-ago crash?
I hear Ginger whine at my feet. I’m standing in the doorway, blocking her path.
I step aside and she escapes as Priya did, charging up the hill.
Normal. Why can’t you be a normal girl?
She’s so desperate to be out there, out in that stupid field. Desperate to hitch a ride on a comet or a rocket to the moon.
Fine, let her stay there.
I close the door, lock it.