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ChapterOne
THE STRANGER
Iwake up to brutal cold leaking into my room.
Gasping, I sit up in bed—and hit my head on what feels like a lid. With a whimper, I rub a hand over my face and I’m startled to feel a breeze. My eyes are unfocused and I need to get out of bed and find my contacts. But when I go to swing my legs over the side of the bed, I realize I’m…not in bed at all.
It’s some sort of coffin. Or pod. Something with sides. A warm box surrounded by ice cold. I squint at my surroundings, terrified.
Am I dead? Did I just wake up in a morgue?
A breeze caresses my hair and sends a chill down my spine. I ditch the “morgue” theory and head right to “graveyard.” A graveyard in…winter? I squint, trying to make out my surroundings but it’s near impossible without glasses or contacts. My vision has always been horrendous and I’m trying not to be too terrified of the fact that I don’t know where I am or why I’m not wearing warm clothes. The strange box-thing I’m in is dark, but the rest of the world looks pale. Pale white and gray.
I lick my lips, not sure if I should call out. Surely there’s been a mistake somewhere.
“You awake?” a woman calls out.
Oh, thank goodness. Someone else is here.
I raise a hand into the air timidly, trying to make out a person in the endless white. When she comes up on my other side, I have to fight back a shriek of fright at being startled, but she clasps my hand and her skin is warm.
“I’m Flor, and you need to know that you’re safe, okay?”
What can I say to that? I manage a nod. It’s clear she knows what’s going on and I don’t, so I’m content to let her lead.
“Come on,” she says. “Let’s get you out of that pod.” She gives my hand a firm tug and pats the side of the pod. It sounds like metal, and when I climb out of it, it’s so cold that my skin sticks ever so slightly to the side, which is a horrible feeling.
Even worse? When my feet touch the ground, it’s icy. I let out a whimper of distress, then bite my lip to keep silent. My feet are bare, and glancing down, it looks like I’m stepping on some sort of yellow-brown spongy grass that ends near my pod and extends outward.
“You’re on the edge of the group, so you’ve got a bit more to walk,” the woman says with an apologetic note, propping an arm around my side as if to support me. “But we’ll get you over to the fire and get you warm and figure out some clothing, all right? So just hang tight. We won’t let you freeze.”
I manage a nod.
“Great. You’re doing great.” She beams up at me, all sun-browned skin, dark hair and white teeth. My vision’s too blurry to make out who she is, but her eyes seem oddly blue and glowing bright in her tan face. “What’s your name, my friend?”
Opening my mouth to speak, I pause. Something that should be easily in reach just…isn’t. I search through my memories, looking for something that sounds like a name, but I don’t have anything. Anything at all.
It’s a blank.
Panicked, I cling to her arm. “I…I don’t know.”
“It’s okay, honey,” she tells me in a soothing voice, continuing to lead me away from the “pod” and towards the blurry distance. “You’re not the only one that doesn’t know your name. Probably some medication side-effect and nothing to panic over. Let’s give you a name for now, okay? Just so I don’t have to call you ‘Hey you’?”
“Okay,” I manage in a small voice.
“How about Vivian? That’s my sister’s name and I always thought it was pretty.”
Vivian. Vivian. I test it and it doesn’t bring anything in particular to mind except one thing. “Like…fromPretty Woman?”
“Exactly like it. How’d you guess?” She chuckles, and the sound is friendly and kind.
I want to tell her that I hate the name. That it makes me feel awkward, because I’ve never been pretty, not even in the slightest. I’m nothing like my sister. I have a gawky frame and wide-spaced eyes that look strange in photographs. My boobs are nonexistent and my hair is flat and limp and sad. I don’t want to be Vivian. I don’t want anyone to realize where the name comes from and laugh at me.
But Flor seems to know what’s going on and I don’t, and my confused terror mingles with my desire to blend into the background, and so I say nothing at all.
She leads me over to what looks like a fire, and others are huddled close by. A man moves, covered in a strange blue jumpsuit that covers his entire body, and it takes me a moment to realize that it’s not a jumpsuit, but that he really is blue. Another muffled gasp escapes me, and I flinch backward.
Flor is there to pat me on the arm again. “That’s my husband, I’rec. He’s an alien but I promise he means you no harm. Just trust me, okay? I’ll explain it all once everyone is safe by the fire.”
