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Ariel is like the weirdest aunt you’ve ever had, times ten. She wears these incredibly funky glasses. I used to think they were just a fashion statement, but turns out she wears them to hide her crazy eyes, which look like nebulas made of beetle wings. The first time she told me she was from a place called Coconut Grove, I figured it was the name of a condominium.
I was wrong about a lot of things.
Like being a mutant. Always figured I wasn’t one because I never noticed that I could do anything cool. When I turned 13, I didn’t grow a tail or suddenly start shooting out bolts of lighting.
I’d already run away from home at that point. It’s not like my folks didn’t love me as much as they could. It just started to feel like I was less a family member and more a responsibility. Like— pay off the mortgage, do the taxes, keep Chance alive. I already saw them get sucked into the Glorification Church. I thought maybe if I wasn’t their problem anymore, things would be better.
I guess I’m Ariel’s problem now. But she’s mine too, so it’s sort of okay.
One time, back at Beat Street, Gomi made me watch a bunch of Doctor Who . Peter Davison, the Fifth Doctor. He was kooky and from another planet, and I guess that’s kind of what Ariel is like.
It’s not like she’s perfect. I guess the Doctor isn’t, either. Ariel seriously screwed us all over once. She and I had this plan worked out. We were gonna recruit a bunch of mutants to the Fallen Angels and then make them all come to Coconut Grove with us. Her home planet (because that’s what Coconut Grove is, a planet, not a condo building) wasn’t producing mutants anymore, and Unipar and the other leaders planned to kidnap a bunch of mutants from Earth and study them to see how they could jumpstart mutation in their own species again.
The worst part of Coconut Grove wasn’t the loud music or the flashing lights or the fact that we all got captured and locked up like lab rats. The worst part was when these over-enthusiastic makeup artists snatched me and tried to do my hair up and put makeup on me.
They made me look like a girl.
I’m not a girl.
I think Ariel’s the only one who gets that, though. She managed to rescue me. But she couldn’t rescue any of us from being trapped by Unipar and the rest of Ariel’s superiors on Coconut Grove. Turns out Ariel and I are both mutants. So I guess we played ourselves.
I was mad at Ariel, but I was mad at myself, too. I acted nice (well, nice by my standards) to Bobby and Terry and Jamie and Tabby, but I was lying to them the whole time. Just like Ariel. Maybe finding out we were mutants was some kind of karmic payback. Not that I believe in any of that nonsense, anyway.
Anyway, we got out okay. And once we get everything sorted with the Fallen Angels, Ariel announces she’s going to travel. Doesn’t know where, doesn’t know how long, doesn’t know how far she’ll go. She just has to go.
She doesn’t ask if I’ll go with her, but I can tell she wants to ask. Because as screwed up as everything got, we’re sort of each other’s best friends.
So I tell her I’ll come with her.
We’re on another party planet. I asked Ariel one time why she only took us to party planets. She said, “We can go anywhere in the whole universe. Why go somewhere boring?” I guess I can’t argue with her. At least this one’s not so loud. It’s all beach, and apparently, 90% of the planet is covered in fancy resorts.
I’m just sitting on a lounge chair playing with a puzzle cube I picked up on Zandora when Ariel comes over, leading a boy who looks like my age. “Chance, this is Lance!” Ariel announces. She lowers her sunglasses so I can see her wink, as if her intentions weren’t totally obvious. “Chance, Lance! How fun! Why don’t you two get to know each other, huh? I’ll be over there in the sub-zero tub.”
I size this boy up. He’s cute, I guess. Definitely not human— you can always tell by looking at the ears. His are too narrow for a human, and the lobes go almost all the way down to his chin. Almost human, probably, like maybe his mom’s a human. “My mom’s a human,” he explains, catching my questioning look. “Dad’s Nalgenian. They own a couple o’ colonies out on Virgil Beta. We come here to summer.”
Guess he’s just giving me his whole life story then. Whatever. He’s not getting mine. “You still have summer in space?” I’ve been out here for almost a year, Earth-time, I think, and I’m still learning stuff.
“Well, we have summer vacation,” Lance says, and shrugs. “Anyway. How are you liking Delta Delta?”
Oh, yeah. Beach planet has a name besides Beach Planet. Ariel’s dragged me to so many exotic places I can’t even keep track. “Did she tell you to come talk to me?” I ask him, ignoring his question.
Lance’s eyes cloud over. “Uh… yeah, actually.”
Right. Of course. “Ariel can be very persuasive. Don’t let it bother you. You can go if you want.”
“N-no, I… I probably would’ve come over here on my own anyway,” he says. When he smiles, his eyes light up like a Gabrooglian sunrise. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make my heart do a little somersault. Stupid . “Ariel said you’re her little brother? No offense, but you guys don’t look like you’re related.”
“Yeah, we’re completely different species.”
Lance shrugs. “Well, sometimes your family is just whoever puts up with you the longest,” he points out. “You from Earth? Your accent sounds like Earth.”
“Yeah.”
“Magnificent,” Lance says. “Have you ever climbed a tree? My mom says people on Earth do that. Also, have you ever told somebody, ‘I’m fine, how are you?’ even though you’re not fine and you don’t really care how they feel? She says that’s something people from Earth do also.”
I’ve never done either of those things, but that doesn’t seem to disappoint Lance. If anything, it stirs his curiosity. He has so many questions about Earth and what it’s like. We sit there talking for almost two hours, just talking, trading stories.
Lance is just a random guy on a random planet, but he makes me feel interesting. Which is kind of a big deal. I feel like all I do all the time is meet people who are more interesting than I am. Lance flips the script.
When Ariel says it’s time to go, I get surly. I don’t want to leave my new friend. Lance gives me a long list of numbers and symbols, and Ariel explains that it’s kind of like an intergalactic phone number, and she’ll show me how to use it later.
“I’ll… call you, I guess?” I tell Lance, still not exactly sure what that string of numbers will do.
“I look forward to it.” Then Lance tugs me away from Ariel, off to the side. “You know… my father’s people, the Nalgenians, we say goodbye in kind of a funny way.” And he leans down and kisses me on the cheek.
I’m just glad I can’t see my face, because I know I’m blushing like a grape tomato. “Uh… we do that on Earth, too,” I point out.
Lance laughs, and I’m not totally sure if he’s playing a joke on me or not.
The kiss wasn’t a joke, though.
“Au revoir!” Ariel calls as we walk toward the doorway behind the tiki bar. “✴↩≛≛✿⇜➮♤☁☂☀!” She knows pretty much every language in the known galaxy— at least, she knows the greetings, goodbyes and dirty words. I can’t keep up.
“Bye, Lance!” I call, feeling kind of silly. But his smile doesn’t make me feel silly at all.
It makes me feel interesting.
It makes me feel important.
I’m still looking back at him when we step through the doorway and blink out of sight.
One day I tell Ariel, “I wanna do what you do.”
She fluffs her hair and says, “What, look fabulous?”
“No, I want to learn how to travel through doors like you do. Bending space. I want you to teach me.”
Ariel looks skeptical, but I know this is something I can learn. She’s always reminding me that her ability to open any door and step through it is something everyone from Coconut Grove can do. It’s not a mutation, it’s not something you’re born with. It’s totally something you can learn. So what’s stopping me from learning?
“It’s not as simple as a twist of your wrist,” Ariel explains. “It’s about changing the way you think.”
“Yeah, I’ve read ‘A Wrinkle In Time.’ I think I get the mechanics.” I know I’m probably being annoying, but this is important. If I’m going to be scouring the galaxy, exploring, I should at least know how to get myself out of trouble, right?
Back on Earth, I always knew how to get out of trouble. There was always an alleyway to duck into or a fence to climb over. And if I was tough enough and loud enough, no one would mess with me.
The rules are different in outer space. Every different planet has its own culture with its own values and social structure, and I don’t know how to keep track of it all. And that makes me nervous.
It’d be nice to have an easy escape plan, every once in a while.
“I’ll teach you,” Ariel says finally. “Just don’t get frustrated if you don’t pick it up right away, okay? I know how you get.”
We’re in some rundown former tourist trap that kind of gives me the creeps, and Ariel has become annoyed with me. “It’s just a door. You just have to open it. Don’t think about what’s on the other side, Chance, you know what’s on the other side. It’s whatever you want it to be.”
I open the door to the broom closet in front of me. Behind the door, there’s just a broom closet. Ariel groans and I can’t help but take it personally. “I’m trying!”
“Yes but it’s hard for me to explain this because I’ve been doing it all my life. Why don’t you get it , Chance?”
“You’re putting too much pressure on me.”
“I don’t want to,” Ariel insists, and she actually looks distressed. It takes a lot to really rattle her. “Please, I never ever want to be the one putting pressure on you or making you stressed like this. I just want to be fun and show you all the fun things to do in the universe. I don’t want you to resent me, Chance. I hate how hard this is for you because I don’t like myself like this. I don’t like shouting and telling you you’re doing something wrong!”
Maybe… maybe we both need to take a step back.
“Ariel,” I say, “does this planet have ice cream?”
We don’t really keep track of Earth time while we travel. I don’t know if I have a birthday while we’re in space, or if I have more than one, but I know I get a little taller and my hair grows. I could say I kept time by counting adventures and misadventures, but I lost count of those. Days and nights bleed into each other, and sometimes Ariel and I are happy and sometimes we’re scared and sometimes we’re angry.
We’re always free .
“You did it!” Ariel cheers the first time I actually manage to open my own portal. I take us to Tyto II to celebrate, and we eat weird neon fruit and play video games all night. I’ve never been more sure about the day I decided to go exploring with Ariel.
Well. That high doesn’t last.
I wake up one morning and it’s still dark, which is weird because the planet we’re on has two suns. I can hear muffled noises from the other side of the hotel room, but all I can really make out are a few dark shadows shuffling in the darkness.
But then I hear Ariel cry out and it makes my stomach boil.
“Let her go,” I say, leaping out of bed, suddenly full of adrenaline. “Let her go .”
“Easy, kid,” one of the intruders says. “We aren’t going to hurt her, are we? Not yet anyway.”
I pounce across the room without thinking, but one of them grabs me, his arm like an iron bar around my shoulders. I stomp down on his foot as hard as I can and bite the arm wrapped around me, but even as I get away the first stranger clocks me and knocks me down. My head feels like a bruised apple.
“Just…” Ariel mumbles, reaching out and putting a hand on my wrist. “Chance, don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry?” I hiss back, drawing my knees up toward my chest. She and I sit side-by-side beneath the window while the two strangers loom over us. “What the hell is happening?”
“Here’s what the hell is happening,” one of the guys says. “You’re coming back with us. You’re not gonna put up a fight. And if you bite me again, I’m gonna rip out your eyelashes one by one.”
His partner drops a device on the floor. When it flares to life, a pink force field surrounds us with no gaps. It reminds me of the “cloven pine” Unipar used to trap Ariel. The two strangers go into the other room in the suite to talk without us listening in.
I turn to Ariel, frightened. What’s even scarier is that she looks scared, too. She’s usually so sure of herself. “Who are these creeps?”
“They’re from Coconut Grove,” Ariel mumbles, keeping her voice low while our captors talk in the other room. “Mutants. Those who had lived undiscovered, didn’t care to go be guinea pigs for Unipar and the others. But we… I … mucked everything up. Now the might of the Coconut Grove is after them and they blame me.”
“So just tell them to go away!” Every minute we spend trapped here ramps up my anxiety. “I’ll boost your power. Convince them to let us go.”
“I can’t. They injected me with something when they broke in. Whatever they dosed me with, it’s blocking my mutant powers. I…” She wilts against the wall, weak. “Chance, you should run. Get out of here, take care of yourself.”
“I’m not leaving you.” As if I could get out of this force field. Even if I could, I know I wouldn’t go anywhere.
So we sit, terrified, in silence.
When the men come back in the room, one of them deactivates the force field and lifts Ariel up, jerking her forward by the arm. “Let her go,” I demand. I know it won’t do a damn thing, but at least I’m being stubborn. It makes me feel a tiny bit better.
“Chance,” Ariel says, turning around, her wide eyes flashing. But then the guy opens the bathroom door, only it doesn’t go to the bathroom. The swirling vortex inside is bright, pulsing, just like every time Ariel opens a portal. The man steps through with Ariel firmly in his grasp, and the two of them vanish. The door closes behind.
“No!” I shout, lunging for the door, but the remaining stranger grabs me. This is a different guy than the one who had me before. I can tell because he’s not holding me as tight but it’s still impossible to get free.
His skin is sticky, like a gecko’s. Or like he’s a refrigerator and I’m a magnet. I can’t struggle free, no matter how hard I try. He’s going to take me to wherever his partner took Ariel, and we’re once again going to be at the mercy of Coconut Grovians.
But then I remember what Ariel said— they’re mutants. That must be where this guy gets his sticky skin.
Well. I’m a mutant too.
“What—?” the guy yelps when his skin stops working and I slip away. “Hey, get back here!” I jump up on Ariel’s bed and then jump across the gap to my own bed, bouncing out of the stranger’s reach. It would be kind of fun if I wasn’t so scared.
“That’s right!” I crow. “I turned your powers down. And I can turn them back up, too.” As he’s lumbering after me, he bumps into the wall and I ramp up his powers, letting him stick there like a fly on flypaper.
“Twerp,” he growls as I walk toward him. “What do you think you’re—” But I figure out how to shut him up. He’s pinned to the wall by his own amped up power. I grab his arm and force his hand over his own mouth. His skin sticks to itself.
“Let’s see where you were heading,” I mumble, flipping open his various pockets and pouches until I find something that vaguely looks like a pager or a Palm Pilot. There are coordinates in there, a navigational system, messages from his buddy.
I can do this.
I know, because I have to do it.
When I was training to travel interdimensionally, I always imagined I’d be using it to get myself out of scrapes. I didn’t think I’d need to get Ariel out of a scrape of her own. But now it looks like I’m her only hope. In the galaxy.
Maybe that’s because I’m the only one who puts up with her.
If Lance is right, that means she’s my family.
Like it or not, I’m her only hope.
With my pulse pounding in my ears, I reach out and twist the doorknob of the bathroom door. I open the door. The stranger stuck to the wall says something, but it’s muffled into his hand. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what he has to say. I’m saving Ariel, no matter what.
My name is Chance, and right now I’m taking one.