There was only one good solution for that. “I need to talk to Graham,” I said. Hearing the words aloud made it possible for me to relax, just a little, allowing the truth of them to sink into my skin.

Mandy nodded. “All right,” she said. “I’ll be in the craft room if you need me. All those sequins still aren’t going to glue themselves.” She turned to head for the stairs.

In only a few seconds, I was alone. No: not quite alone. Seymour twined around my ankles, making the weird hiccupping chirp sound he always made when I seemed unhappy. I laughed a little, bending to scoop him into my arms.

“Come on, weird cat,” I said. “Let’s go call your daddy.”

He purred all the way to my room.

3.

Zoom was all fucked up. After the third time my call dropped without connecting, I started to wonder whether it might have something to do with the alien transmission. Not in the sense of “the aliens are screwing with the internet”—the aliens weren’t close enough for that, and I didn’t think they knew enough about Earth communications to be jerks on that kind of micro level—but in the sense of “everyone on the planet is talking about this, and that probably means the network is overloaded.”

I leaned back in my chair and glared at the screen. Glaring has never been known to fix network connectivity issues, but there’s always a first time. We’d never received signals from an extraterrestrial source before, either.

The structure of the thought hit me a split second after the thought itself. I forgot to glare, suddenly sunk in an existential dilemma even more frustrating than my Zoom issues. Were “we” receiving our first extraterrestrial signal? Did I have any right to include myself in that group, given how much of my life had been spent willfully denying inclusion? Or had “they” received their first extraterrestrial signal, while I’d received proof that I was no longer going to be alone in a world filled with complex, confusing mammals?

The screen beeped. The plain white square was replaced by the interior of a high-tech tent, with scientific equipment around the edges of the frame and a man’s sweet, earnest face at the center. His cheeks were covered in reddish stubble, signaling that Graham had once again decided that being in the field was the perfect excuse to stop shaving. There were no visible bandages. That was a nice change.

“Stasia,” he said, sagging in relief. “I was hoping you’d call.”

“Why not call me?” I asked.

“Because I didn’t know whether you’d be at your computer, or whether you’d be in any condition to talk.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “You’re the one in the swamp. I didn’t know whether you’d be at your computer, either.”

“Of course I am,” he said. “I told my team lead I needed to be here in case my girlfriend, the alien, decided to call and tell me to come home.”