The Fellowship for Alien Detection by Kevin Emerson Page A

Danger? And . . . they were tracking her with the debit card? Someone was coming to assist her? With what? Haley could barely wrap her brain around all this—
    And now she heard another sound. A familiar dinging, a sound like sonar. Her mom’s phone. Coming from the toilet. . . . And she just knew. Keller was calling Mom. Had to be.
    Ohhh, this was it. This was it and it was over! Crap! But not only that, they were in danger, too!
    Haley heard the phone ringing. “Mom!” she shouted desperately at the stall. If she could just explain to Mom before she answered, maybe it would be better.
    The ringing stopped. And now she heard Jill’s muffled voice: “Hello?”
    Oh, no, no. Haley was shaking all over, tears starting to leak from her eyes. This was horrible. What was she going to do? What was going to happen?
    Silence from the stall. What was Keller telling her mom right now? What was Jill thinking? Oh, she was dead, so dead when her mom came out! Any second now.
    But the danger! Haley’s eyes darted around. Were there people coming for her? For all of them? She looked for more men like at the mine, but everyone just looked as normal and weird as a crowd dotted with Elvis impersonators would normally look. . . .
    Then her sweeping eye noticed something strange. A glow. She looked up.
    Her balloon was no longer lavender.
    It had begun to glow, a weird neon orange, as if something inside it were lighting up. What did that mean? She tried to remember, but it was like her thoughts were moving slow. Oh, right, the clown. And it had to do with the show. . . . Her thoughts were so sluggish all of a sudden. . . . Right, the note. If the balloon changed color, she was supposed to look at the moon.
    Haley turned, and it seemed to take forever. . . . It was like her muscles were taut rubber bands that didn’t want to stretch. She looked up into the deepening evening, trying to turn far enough around to see the moon. Above, the balloon was positively radiating now, this brilliant orange, and it reminded her of the light from the mine door. . . .
    There was something different about the sky, too. Wasn’t there? It didn’t look blue anymore, but more like gray . . . or, it was like it was getting gray, yes, that was it . . . right before her eyes—so hard to think, thoughts slowing— but yes, the sky was definitely losing its color. . . . And there was something else. A light. Growing. Above her. Neck straining to look up . . .
    And that was when Haley saw the UFO.
    Or at least something enormous and round—the belly of a helicopter?—hovering in the sky, pulsing with multicolored lights. Beautiful, strange lights, lowering toward her, and from its center, the brightest light of all, a searing white, flickering like a strobe.
    Ppptht!
    Haley felt a wicked sting in the back of her head, just below and behind her left ear. She winced and tried to grab at it but again the slow muscles and ow, it hurt so much, and now Haley was falling. She tumbled backward, landing so hard that it knocked the wind out of her. The back of her head thocked against the pavement.
    The pain made her thoughts drift in the molasses. What was happening?
    And there, floating above her in the air was her balloon. She’d let go of it when she’d fallen, but it hadn’t floated away. It was just hovering there above her, the string dangling down, but it was still.
    Everything still.
    Where had the sound gone? Silence. The whole world was silent.
    Now the balloon’s color finally began to fade, the fiery orange draining, leaving a flat gray, just like the sky, just like everything, except for that brilliant white light overhead.
    Haley couldn’t tell what was happening, she didn’t understand, she—
    Yes . . . you . . . do. . . . she thought with a desperate, hollowing certainty. They’re . . .