“What?” squawked Jeff.

“Sadly, I understood that,” I said. “She means no one believes her when she says the aliens are coming.”

“Bingo,” said Toni. “And see, if this were a classic creature feature, I’d have a beautiful cheerleader girlfriend to protect and I’d figure out how to defeat you and then you’d go away forever while we made out chastely in front of the chagrined adults. Alas, that is not to be. No one is ever going to believe me, not until you’re here, and if you’re half the invaders I hope you are, you’re not going to be easy to stop once that happens.”

“You just said you hated us.”

“I do,” said Toni blithely. “Thing is, I hate everyone else even more than I hate you. You’re not my own kind. You’re under no obligation whatsoever to be kind to me or take care of me, and they were, or should have been, until they decided I was too damaged to be useful. This isn’t the Victorian era. An asylum wasn’t an option, on account of how at some point we figured out that locking people up and throwing away the key doesn’t work. So they got me an observatory in the middle of nowhere instead, and as long as I keep taking my meds, the checks keep coming, and that should probably be enough, except that it’s not. I hate them for throwing me away. All your people will do is kill me. Somehow, that seems like the better deal.”

“You still released the signal,” I said.

Toni shrugged. “Can’t be the hero of the horror movie if you don’t at least try to alert the authorities. And then run like fuck when they come to make you disappear for the crime of being inconvenient. Where are we going, anyway?”

“Back to the mothership, where we can take you apart to figure out what makes you tick,” deadpanned Jeff.

Toni laughed. “Yeah, okay. I’ll believe it when I see it.” She withdrew, presumably going back to her seat. To be honest, I didn’t care, as long as she wasn’t cramming herself between us and muttering about monsters.

Were we monsters? I didn’t know. I didn’t think of myself as a monster. But Mom, who had never forgotten the day I came out of the woods and told her the aliens had taken her real baby away, might have had something different to say about the issue. A lot of people might have had something different to say.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the pictures on Toni’s wall, all those children and teenagers with pieces of string connecting them to the word “deceased.” We’d been killing people since we got here. I rubbed the inside of my elbow with the heel of my hand, trying to soothe away the last lingering echoes of the itch.