Page 23 of Strange Lights

I redeem myself a bit from last night’s debacle. I really am a decent shot when my target isn’t wrestling with my toddler or Calvin. Speaking of Calvin, it seems he is a natural at the shape-shifting business⁠—somewhat surprising, considering he was a skeptic barely a day ago.

“Listen, I’m a scientist. If you give me evidence, I have no problem adjusting my conclusions and admitting I was wrong,” he says on our return from the forest when I call him out on his change of heart.

In the face of Calvin’s new shape-shifting proclivities, Eldi’s unmasking as the bloodsucking creature of legend, and Doug and Dave’s crop-circle-carving prowess, I suppose this is a fair reaction. What else is Calvin supposed to do, after all? Stay in denial in the face of overwhelming evidence?

Doug (I think) has cooked breakfast this morning. He politely holds the door open for us while flipping slightly scorched pancakes with a spatula-shaped appendage and pouring us orange juice with yet another limb, having abandoned any remaining pretense of being a normal vacuum.

I insist we move camp as soon as we finish breakfast, bullying Calvin into driving right away despite the long night. The dark Jeep hasn’t made an appearance since Colorado, but I’ll take no chances. Neither of us has a destination planned, but from the buzz I overhear in the gas station line as I restock driving snacks, we will find something interesting wherever we stop.

So we head south for Utah amid reports of nightly light shows in the sky near Salt Lake. More emails packed with news articles and personal encounters with UFOs and strange phenomena filter into my inbox, my phone buzzing frenetically with notifications. I don’t need to scour the messages to see the evidence of elevated activity. It’s obvious. Videos and pictures are making their way into mainstream social media sites as well.

It’s weird caravanning with Calvin in such a formal fashion. We might end up in the same place often, but this intentional traveling, checking in at every rest stop and gas station, is unfamiliar. Not bad, just different, less lonely.

Calvin even joins us for lunch. “Are you sure it’s safe to have sushi this far from the ocean?”

“Eldi loves sushi.”

“We’re in the desert.”

“Sushi is flash frozen before consumption even if it’s served on the coast.”

“Can toddlers eat sushi?”

“Toddlers eat boogers and dirt. Plus, Eldi isn’t an ordinary toddler. She eats goats. Raw tuna isn’t going to be the thing that makes her puke.”

Calvin wrinkles his nose. “That’s Eldi. I prefer my food less raw.”

“For a werewolf, you’re kind of being a big baby about this. Order a curry or some noodles if you’re that worried, you snob.”

Eldi eats with enthusiasm an expensive entrée of sashimi, earning a grudging look of admiration from Calvin.

“She can really pack it away,” he says as she reaches to take the tobiko off the top of the sushi roll on my plate.

“You just ate enough salmon to feed a grizzly bear,” I tell Eldi. “Can’t you leave my food alone?”

She ignores me and scoops up the remaining ikura from my plate for good measure, moving it to her own with a triumphant wiggle and a gleeful chant of “Mine, mine, mine.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Calvin says. “About what we do next, where we go.”

I grudgingly let Eldi steal yet more food from my plate. I’ve been thinking too.

“Eldi seems connected to all these electronics that aren’t electronics, right?” he says when I don’t answer right away. “And you’ve been watching the skies lately, yeah? Dave and Doug are making crop circles. UFOs everywhere. Maybe it’s all connected.”

“Are you saying Eldi is an alien?”

“I’m saying that seems like a very logical possibility. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it probably is a duck.”

“Quack,” Eldi says.

It’s not like this theory has never occurred to me. Of course, I’ve considered the possibility. I’ve been putting the pieces together long before Calvin even realized Eldi was a puzzle. But I feel . . . something. A twist in my gut when I consider solving the riddle that is Eldi. That little nudging voice in my head.

Yes, think, think.

“Life somewhere else in the universe seems likely to me,” I say without really answering.

“Even before I followed you and your bloodsucking toddler into a pack of werewolves and you locked me in your magical Winnebago, I believed in some legends. I’ve always thought that aliens were out there. Statistically speaking, there’s no way we’re alone in the universe on our little space rock. It’s the sightings, the encounters, and abductions I’m skeptical about. But now . . .” He shrugs.

Out there, not alone.