Starseed by Liz Gruder Page A

explosion, scattering across the universe. She averted her gaze to the dormant volcanoes jutting from Venus’s rugged surface.
    “We are going to tell you some things,” Jordyn said. “You will not remember them all, but you will soon. Do you trust us?”
    She nodded. Inside, fireworks of bliss erupted, more joyous than anything she’d experienced in her entire life.
    “I’ve flown in my dreams before,” Kaila said. “Now I fly with you. This has to be a dream.” She rested her head on his shoulder, compelled toward him, as a moth flies toward the light. “A beautiful dream.”
    Jordyn drew her closer. His arms felt warm and strong.
    Every cell in her body vibrated. The vibration felt warm and fiercely alive. As Jordyn held her, they merged to one blissful energy field. No words existed to describe this incredible joy.
    Kaila realized then that her heart had opened. In this break in time and space, without judgment or constriction, she loved with every beat of her radiating heart.
    Simultaneously, she felt a blacking out and everything receding. The edges of Jordyn’s spiky hair softened, the outlines of his shoulders and thighs blurred. He was evaporating to nothing.
    “Wait!” she called. “Don’t leave.”
    “Less emotion,” Jordyn counseled. “Emotions confuse and make you less powerful. We have to maintain control.” He closed his eyes as if trying to suppress something foreign and alien rising within himself.
    “Is that really true?” Kaila wondered as blackness engulfed her.
    “If you remember anything,” Jordyn said, his voice trailing away. “Remember this: you are much more powerful than you know.”

    The iPhone chimed an alarm. Kaila sleepily gazed at the wooden slats draped with white eyelet on the canopy. What had she dreamed? Something about an owl. Or was it Jordyn? She sighed, feeling soft and languorous with the thought of him.
    The phone chimed again. Kaila sat up in bed. She hadn’t time to think of owls. She had to hurry or she’d miss the bus.
    She dressed and applied her new makeup. Wow, now this looked good. She was transformed, like a magazine model with her cute black skirt, hot pink blouse, and violet eyeliner. Stupid wig, though. She sighed, loathing the binding black plastic and artificial blonde hair. She put on a black headband to match her skirt.
    She cocked her head. Something scratched at the balcony door. She ran to open the door. Lucy and Woofy raced inside. How on earth had they gotten locked on the balcony?
    The dogs wagged their tails as she petted them. Lucy barked at Kaila.
    “Quit,” Kaila said, breezing past Lucy. “I don’t have time.”
    Kaila ignored Lucy’s persistent barks as she leaned over the wrought-iron railing in the morning humidity, peering out to the fields. Her mother, Mike and Nan were out there inspecting the grasses. From up here on the second-story gallery, Kaila saw an odd shape had been molded or cut in the grass. It was a circle near large as the old house with a cross attached.

    As Kaila approached her family examining the grasses in the field, her mother shouted, “Kaila, go on in to breakfast.”
    No , Kaila thought. She would not be protected like a kid anymore. She joined her mother, step-father and grandmother who stood with folded arms as they peered at the flattened grasses.
    “It is not a crop circle, Lee,” Mike said. “All that stuff is bogus.”
    “Grasses don’t flatten into shapes on their own,” her mother countered.
    Kaila bent, touched the grass. Each blade bent perfectly straight. A gigantic circle and attached cross.
    “Jeez,” Mike said. “All this talk of aliens and crop circles is ridiculous.” He turned to Kaila. “I bet you a thousand to one there’s some boy who likes you and is trying to impress you.”
    Dew glistened on the bent grasses in the rising sun.
    “And look at you, all dolled up,” Mike added. “Yep,” he said, guiding Lee and Nan. “Let’s get back to the house and get this