… and going still. Slowly, the color drained from his face, leaving him paler than I’d seen him since the time we’d both contracted food poisoning from one of the local greasy spoons. We’d spent the entire weekend curled up in his bed, miserably racing one another to the bathroom, throwing up what felt like a lifetime’s worth of lunches we should never have eaten in the first place. According to Lucas, who had come over with a sack of Gatorade and Pepto-Bismol, we had both been lucky to avoid being hospitalized for dehydration if nothing else.

“What?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. He just reached out and touched the curve of my jaw, letting his fingers rest against the patch where my skin had dropped away, revealing the green beneath. This time, the stillness was mine, the world narrowing to the touch of his fingers and the sound of my heart thudding in my ears.

“Oh,” I whispered.

The world was watching for aliens. The world was waiting for aliens, and while there were plenty of people who thought the invasion was a hoax, there were plenty more who wanted the chance to take out one of the invaders. There had been a blip on the news about a science fiction convention getting raided by a militia who thought body paint was proof of extraterrestrial origin. No one had died, but several people had been hospitalized.

Mandy and Lucas were staring at me now, the one in sympathy, the other in shock.

“We could buy some foundation—” Mandy began.

“No.” I stepped away from the open van door. It seemed like an impossible barrier all of a sudden, something too big and terrible to ever get past. How could I have thought I could just run away? The invasion was coming, and I was a part of it. Had been a part of it for my entire life, since the day I’d fallen from the sky and taken root among the Washington trees.

I’d always been the kind of person who liked to observe the world unfolding around them, watching people without interacting, letting the circumstances and situation pull me along. It had been better to observe than to act. Well, that was going to change now. I had one great action in me, and it was time for me to take it.

“No,” I said again, and slammed the door. “Go. You’re all human. You’ll all be safe if you’re away from here.”

“We won’t,” said Graham. He leaned across the seat, reaching for me through the open window. “They’re coming. We know too much. We won’t be safe no matter where we go.”