Free The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette Page A

happened.
    She also didn’t want to be too far from her mom for too long at a time.
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    V iolet found a spot at the top corner of the plaza; right in front a fiberglass model of the ship. It was an impressive replica, built to scale, with enough detail to pass as the real thing when one was squinting. It sat in the middle of an extra-large sidewalk in front of the movie theater, which was appropriate: it was one of the models used in the movie version of the Sorrow Falls story, donated to the town by the filmmakers as thanks for their hospitality. Naturally, the town thought the replica was tacky and immediately donated it to Oakdale.
    The two things Annie thought particularly funny about the replica: first, everyone assumed it was not to scale because they thought the actual ship was much bigger; second, there was a glass case around the ship and a velvet rope around the case, to prevent anybody from touching it, meaning even when fake versions of the ship were put together, nobody could put a hand on it.
    This was the most ostentatious of the dozen-or-so things in the mall that were meant to connect the Experience with the slow invasion happening up-road. That list didn’t even include the gigantic souvenir shop.
    “Hello, Shippie,” Annie said to the model as they got out of the car.
    “Don’t talk to it, people will stare,” Vi said.
    “Ignore the olds, skatergirl, let’s go smoke some cigs.”
    “…what?”
    “Never mind. C’mon, I think Rachel’s working at VS now.”
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    “ H ey , did you hear?”
    Sometimes Annie liked to pretend she was a sociologist, and her job was to evaluate her own life. It was a kind of meta-distancing trick she pulled under certain circumstances, in which she saw herself interacting directly with the world while at the same time standing back and taking notes.
    In the ninety-odd minutes it took to nearly complete a full circuit of the outer ring of shops—with one brief stopover at the ice cream shop at the inner building—Annie encountered over a dozen people she might call friends. Sociologist Annie’s notes listed them as fellow tribal members , with additional margin notes like potential mate and competition .
    The standard greeting for this tribe would be Hey, did you hear? It was how they all said hello, and how they verified their tribal statuses. It was also the preamble to the transmission of vital social, political and legal issues concerning members of said tribe, which were of critical import to the entire unit.
    None of it mattered, while at the same time all of it was terribly important. This was what Violet—who was a much more authentic sociologist, really—never entirely understood. It was true that in the proverbial Grand Scheme of Things, it wasn’t terribly important that Rachel broke up with Luke after hearing he made out with Lucy at Marko’s party—which she wasn’t even invited to! —and then got, like, sick drunk and passed out on the floor of Marko’s pool house, especially since that wasn’t half as Earth-shattering as the news that Tina was completely gay for Nona, except Nona was only pretending to be a lesbian to piss off her parents while Tina was pretending to be straight so as not to piss off her parents, which was amazing news except for the much more amazing story about Dougie shaving his entire head for no reason at all except Dougie is a dork who thinks he’s going to join the army, which is stupid because the army doesn’t let in dorks, besides which , the army wasn’t even all that cool, and oh, did you hear Rick thought he saw a vampire? No joke!
    “I have an important question,” Violet said, over two burgers and a shared milkshake. They were sitting in the dining area of the bowling alley, which was not at all like a typical New England bowling alley, for a number of reasons. First, the food was actually excellent. They had the best burger at the mall, only nobody knew it because when people wanted a burger they went