The girl from Mt. Holyoke arrived in a big black car. Not a limousine. But close, Reenie thought. And when she got out, there was a little intake of breath from Reenie and the two girls standing with her in the high school doorway.
     It was the sound Reenie’s mother and aunts had made when her sister Connie came out of the dressing room in her wedding gown. It meant something was too overwhelming to elicit anything but a hushed response.
     The girl’s name was Angela, but it said in the introduction Mrs. Kopek had handed out yesterday that everyone called her Angel. How, Reenie wondered, could anyone have such a name. But now that Angela was coming up the steps of Conover High, with her beautiful smile, her streaked blonde pony tail, and her soft pink sweater set that had to be cashmere, Angel seemed to fit perfectly.
     Angel shook hands with each of them as Mrs. Kopek made introductions, repeating each name and using it…”I’m so glad to meet you, Charlene. I have a best friend in San Diego named Charlene.” Which made Charlene practically wiggle.
     Angel looked Reenie straight in the eye. “Reenie…I love that. But is your name really Irene?” And then she nodded, as though they had a secret now, when Reenie said yes.
     She had come to talk to more than just the three of them, but they were the three who’d already been accepted to  Mt. Holyoke, so Mrs. Kopek had made them the greeters.

     “So tell me,” Mom said, as soon as Reenie walked through the door. “Did she say it’s even better than we’ve heard?”
     Max ran in from the kitchen and put a paw on Reenie’s knee. She bent down and scratched his head. “I guess so,” she said. “Except for the weather. But she’s from San Diego, so she’s not used to ice and snow. But she still loves it.”
     “And?” Mom said. “Did it help?”
     Reenie shrugged. “A little.”
     Mom’s smile slipped. But then she just nodded and said, “Oh.”
     Reenie knew it was getting harder and harder for Mom to not say anything. She’d given her one lecture and then she’d promised to leave it up to Reenie. But the Mt. Holyoke early acceptance deadline was only a week away.
     Reenie went upstairs, Max at her heels, closed her bedroom door after him, and threw herself down on her bed.
     Was that what everybody was like at Mt. Holyoke? Beautiful and smart and confident. She hadn’t even been able to ask Angela a question. How did you even talk to someone like that? Someone who made standing up in front of a group of strangers seem easy. Someone who made even the stupidest question seem important.
     She could never be like that. She could never even come close.
     Max jumped up and lay down beside her with his head on a pillow. Reenie covered one of his paws with her hand. He was the best dog. And to think that awful Mr. Applegate had actually tried to kill him. Just because Max had dug up his stupid garden. As if a dog knew what it was supposed to do and what it wasn’t. If Mrs. Applegate hadn’t threatened to shoot her own husband, poor Max wouldn’t even be here now. And if it was a crime to try and hang a person, why wasn’t it a crime to try and hang a dog?
     All the police had done was take the dog away and stick it in the pound. Sticking a dog like Max in a pound! She’d cried all through dinner after Dad told Mom what had happened. And she’d only stopped when Dad said they could go and adopt Max.
     Mom had been a little afraid that Max might hold a grudge. That he might be aggressive. Maybe even dangerous. But Max was perfect. Except for the fact that he couldn’t bark anymore.
     Max closed his eyes and gave a big sigh.
     So if Mt. Holyoke was out, did that mean she’d go to Drake? But it wasn’t as if Drake was going to be a snap, either. Des Moines might as well be New York City compared to Conover. And how had she gotten herself into all this in the first place? How had going off to college ever seemed like a good idea?
     Downstairs, she could hear Mom talking on the phone. Not the words, just her voice. Then a silence, then her voice again. Most likely, she was talking to Dad. For a month now, they’d both been watching her as though they weren’t quite sure who she was anymore.
     Well, she wasn’t sure who she was anymore, either. All she knew was that she wasn’t ready for whatever she was supposed to be ready for. And she was pretty sure she never would be.
     
     It was Danny’s slamming up the stairs that woke her. She rolled from her side onto her back and pulled a pillow over her head. Why couldn’t he ever be anything but totally obnoxious? He never did anything like a normal human being. Never did anything quietly or carefully. He couldn’t drink a glass of milk without spilling it, couldn’t walk from the front hall to the kitchen without knocking something over, couldn’t close a door without slamming it. And if he was this bad now, what was he going to be like when he was fourteen or fifteen?
     Max jumped off the bed and ran over to the door just before it flew open.
     “You little creep!” Reenie sat up. “You’re supposed to knock. You know you’re supposed to knock. Don’t you ever come in here again without knocking first!”
     Danny gave Max a fast rub on the top of his head, totally ignoring her. “Mom says you have to come down. They’re going out and she needs to talk to you first.”
     “Is Dad already home?” She looked at her clock. Six forty-five? She’d slept for three hours? And all she wanted to do was go right back to sleep.
     “Reenie…Mom said now.”
     “Okay okay. Just go away, will you? I’m coming.”
     Max followed Danny out into the hall and Danny slammed down the stairs again. “She’s coming,” he yelled. As if the kitchen was a mile away instead of just ten feet.
     Reenie got up. She could smell dinner. Friday. Mac and cheese. And Mom was going to tell her a bunch of things she already knew.
     She ran a comb through her hair and went downstairs mumbling under her breath. “Take the pan out of the oven as soon as the timer goes off. You know how your brother won’t eat it if it’s burned. There’s a bowl of salad in the fridge. Make sure he eats it. And Jello and whipped cream for dessert. Which he doesn’t get unless he’s had salad. And don’t let him stay up all night. You’re in charge.”
     She’d been hearing it at least two Fridays every month since she was fifteen. And who was going to be in charge if she went away to school?

     It was eleven o’clock before Danny finally went to bed. She’d had to bribe him with a movie next Saturday, plus popcorn and all the candy he could eat. Forbidden Planet. She wanted to see it, too. But not with her little brother.
     Reenie thought about going to bed, but she wasn’t tired anymore, so she cleaned up the kitchen and gave Max a fresh bowl of water. Then she decided to take him for a walk.
     It was cold. Bright under the full moon. The thin layer of snow still on the ground crunched with every step. But there were no other noises. It was Dad who wanted to live outside town. He said he loved the peace and quiet, the broad fields, the endless horizon, the big sky.
     She walked along the silent road, along the edge of the field, her moon shadow off to her side, Max sniffing, running ahead and then running back. She kept glancing back over her shoulder, and when she could see the house lights but not the house, she gave Max a low whistle and turned around.
     In the yard, she stopped and looked up at the stars. She felt like a speck. Smaller than a speck. She was less than insignificant. And everything around her…Angela, the sky, the stars, her own dreams…made her realize it even more.
     Inside, she locked the door, and left the hall and one outside light on. It was a little after midnight, and Mom and Dad were always home by one-thirty.

     After she’d put on her pajamas and brushed her teeth and her hair, she pulled the book she’d been reading from under the bed and climbed under the covers. Max curled up near her feet. She read five pages, but then she had to reread the last two because she hadn’t been concentrating. She’d been thinking about Angela, Angel. Wondering why some people were so capable and other people were so just plain hopeless. It didn’t have anything to do with being smart. She knew she was smart. That’s why Mt. Holyoke and Drake had accepted her. And it wasn’t something you acquired as you got older, either. Like breasts or not being afraid anymore at night. She had breasts now. She was no longer afraid of the dark.
     What she was afraid of was the light. Of what was out there beyond the edges of the field and the horizon. She was terrified of things she’d never seen. But she was terrified of the terror, too. Because she knew it was going to keep her from whatever life she wanted to try for.
     She let the book fall onto the floor and reached out and shut off the light. The room was bright with moonlight.
     She was staring at the ceiling, trying not to think, when Max lifted his head off the bed. He started to pant.
     It must be Mom and Dad coming home a little early. She listened, but she couldn’t hear anything.
     Then Max stood up, jumped off the bed, and ran over to one of the windows. He was panting hard now, running back and forth, back and forth, between one window and the other. It’s what he did when he was excited, pant instead of bark.
     “C’mon, Max,” she said. “It’s okay.” But he didn’t stop. And finally, she got up and went over to the window, too. “What?” she said, “Why are you all worked up?”
     Then she saw it.
     It was hovering over the field beside the road, where she’d just walked, but further away.
     What it was went through her mind in a flash…a plane, a light, a reflection, a mushroom, a space ship.
     A beam of deep red light appeared between the bottom of the ship and the ground. It swept back and forth like a grandfather clock pendulum, swinging higher and higher which each arc until it swung high enough to touch the rusty old swing set at the edge of the field, then the fence around the barn yard, then the barn, then…
     Reenie pulled back from the window and froze as the light hit the house. It filled the windows, the room, turned the walls purple. Max squeaked and crawled under the bed.
     What if Mom and Dad came home now? What would happen to them? What was going to happen to her and Danny? What was that thing out there and what was it going to do.
     Suddenly, the red beam disappeared and her room was lit only by the moon again. She waited. She listened. Her heart was banging in her ears. Slowly, she leaned back toward the window. But there was nothing out there now. No light, no shape, nothing.
     She stood there looking out across the moonlit field, waiting, afraid to see it again, but more afraid to not see it if it came back, until she saw two white lights approaching. She watched them as they grew larger and closer, became their car pulling into the driveway. She stood there until she heard Mom’s and Dad’s quiet voices, heard the kitchen door open and close.
     By the time Mom came upstairs, softly opened Reenie’s door and closed it again, Reenie was under the covers and had already imagined telling them.
     They would listen. They always listened. And then they would look at each other.
     “It could have been a dream,” Mom would say. “Remember that time you thought there were wolves jumping at the windows? You were so convinced it was real. But of course it was a dream.”
     “I was six years old, Mom,” Reenie would tell her. “I think I know the difference now between a dream and something I saw with my own eyes.”
     “Reflections.” Dad would say. “The full moon can produce some pretty strange effects. Especially on a clear, cold night.”
     “Do you want Dad to call the state police?” Mom would say. “Ask if anyone else has reported strange lights in the sky tonight?”
     “Sure,” Dad would say, “why don’t I call them right now.”
     And Reenie would hear it in their voices. A kind of terror of their own. Because to them right now, even without the space ship, she was alien. Acting in an unexpected way. Not the Reenie they wanted her to be at all.
     Besides, it was already beginning to seem possible that what she’d watched out there hovering above the field hadn’t been there at all.
     And even if it had been…
     She thought about the woman in Kansas. The one who was on TV because she’d seen a UFO. She even insisted she was abducted. Taken away for what felt like an hour, but turned out to be a week. They’d done things to her. Examinations and tests. And when she was brought back, she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. Her dog was suddenly afraid of her. None of the radios or TVs in her house worked after she touched them. She was famous.
     But where was she now?
     What had happened to her once people got tired of hearing her story. Half the people didn’t believe her, anyway. And to everybody else, she was just strange. Or completely crazy.
     After a while, Max crawled out from under the bed and crept up beside her.
     “You saw it, didn’t you,” Reenie whispered.
     Were there beings inside? Beings who traveled the solar system collecting information. Were they stranger than Cortez to the Aztecs or the colonists to the Indians?
     She closed her eyes.
     “An alien from another world,” she whispered to Max. “Like I’ll be at Mt. Holyoke. Like Angela was here. Like Mr. Applegate. And like Danny, every second of his life.”