Page 25 of Stardusted
I sat at the specimen table in the anthropology lab, sorting through pottery sherds from a nearby Paleolithic site. The overhead lights buzzed slightly, just enough to be annoying.
Not nearly as annoying as the subject at hand, though.
Across from me, Landon Martz filed his nails.
“And Louisa May—you know, the clerk at the gas station? She said there are, like, twenty different YouTube videos of it up now. They’re calling it theOne Willow Visitation.” He made air quotes. “Pretty badass name, if you ask me.”
I hadn’t. But that didn’t stop him.
“How cool would it be to see a real-life UFO? Ugh. I wish I hadn’t been elbows-deep in the new season ofPut a Ring on It.”
No. It was not cool. I could confirm firsthand: it was very uncool. Terrifying. Unsettling.
Not “badass.”
I bit my lip and bent over the next pottery piece. “Yeah, I don’t know, Landon. It all just sounds so…”
“Awesome?”
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. I wassodone hearing about this. Worse, I was starting to wonder why I was the only onenotconvinced.
Maybe I was in denial.
But I’d done the research. I’d read the studies. I’d found an explanation. Ball lightning and atmospheric interference. Stress-induced hallucination, if I wanted to get psychological about it.
I wasn’t going to let Kelly and the rest of the internet loonies drag me down into the void with them. Whatever mass delusion was sweeping through One Willow—the world—I refused to be part of it.
I adjusted my grip on the tweezers and focused on the sherds. “You know what this sounds like, Landon? A hoax. An internet-fueled case of mass hysteria. Ever heard the story about the original broadcast ofWar of the Worlds?”
Landon’s brows rose. “The what? No. I have no idea what that is.”
“In the 1930s, they aired a fake alien invasion as a radio drama. But people didn’t realize it was fiction. They tuned in partway through and thought it wasreal. People thought we were being invaded by monsters from outer space.”
The scraping sounds of his nail file stopped. “No shit?”
“Real shit. It caused panic. Tons of chaos. Pissed people off, too. But my point is a lot of these alien stories work the same way. One person’s nightmare gets blown out of proportion. They talk, it gets passed on, and someone else’s brain latches on and builds it bigger. Alien abduction dreams? That’s textbook phobia manifestation. Shared hallucinations. And now, with all the crap online, it spreads even faster.”
When Landon didn’t reply, I looked up.
He crossed his skinny arms over his black My Chemical Romance tee. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a nerd, Raven?”
“Yes, actually.” I sniffed. “But that’s rich coming from you. Don’t you have aWorld of Warcraftraid to get to?”
“Not on Wednesdays,” he shot back, resuming his manicure with a scoff.
Technically, he was supposed to be helping. We both got credit for this extra lab study. But we also both knew I was better at it, and I worked best when I ran the show. So instead, Landon hung out and provided commentary while I cataloged the collection, and everyone stayed happy.
Except for today, that is.
He finished shaping his nails and pulled out a bottle of black polish. “Hey, speaking of nerdy, did you hear about the prof’s new project?”
That piqued my interest. I looked up from my sorting. “No. What is it?”
“That’s the thing.” He swiped a stripe of paint on his middle finger and squinted at it, then met my eyes with a dramatic head tilt. “Nobody knows. It’s some hush-hush thing. Rumor is it’s connected to the base.”
“The base? The military base?” I rolled my eyes. “Why is everyone suddenly obsessed with that place? It’s been on life support since before I was born.”
“Apparently not enough for them to stop running secret experiments.”
