Chapter 1
Everyone in my university’s cafeteria was talking about the world-ending UFOs in the sky while I was thinking of him, Rafael Saavedra, whom I had bumped into on the city bus. He was holding a copy of Wuthering Heights tucked over his medical textbook and wearing what looked like a healthcare uniform, though upon closer inspection, he was wearing a tag for the massage parlor where he worked. A sports massage therapist like he had planned to do after high school. He was also in university on the other side of town for Sports Medicine, from what I saw on his social media profile. I had deactivated Facebook, only opening it up every now and then to check up on him. We exchanged glances when he hopped on where my stop was at. I was going to say hi, but I was quickly rushed off the bus. When I looked back at the departing bus his eyes were still on me like he desperately wanted to say something. There was no denying it now after years and years of my paranoid doubt. This made me think…do I run back? Chase after him at his job? Finally tell him I could no longer take the longing and yearning and waiting around? But instead I went to the cafeteria for breakfast, the TVs in the corner blaring flashing red suddenly while I was in line trying to get some food. That’s when the chaos ensued; the line cooks shutting off their stoves and abandoning my half-cooked eggs.
God, everyone was screaming and running around when we already knew about the alien invasion that was coming for months, technically years. I needed these sounds to drown out so I could reflect again for the thousandth time about him. I was prepared to let go of my old life. No more social media, phones, movie theatres, malls, college classes, fast food, cars, the modern life as we knew and took for granted. I knew life could change forever in a heartbeat, but most people acted as if this was an impossibility, which irked me greatly. Watching these idiots flail around me only made me retreat further into myself, deeper into the only thoughts that had ever felt genuinely worth having. Thoughts about Rafael. I was surprised to see him reading Wuthering Heights. It was not a love story, but I related deeply to the two cunts starring in it. And even wondered if my love for Rafael was even more toxic than theirs.
I had a crush on him my freshman year of high school, but backed out because I hated myself.
He was multilingual. I should have been at the very least bilingual. But my mom never bothered to teach me Tagalog. He spoke Spanish and English, but what impressed me the most was that he also knew ASL and Mexican Sign Language due to his partial deafness.
The crush began when I was fifteen years old when I met him for the first time. Freshman year, he had left the last dessert for me at the end of lunch period, which I was late for. He must have been late from something too, because it was just him and me in the lunch line that was usually backed up. I was late because a teacher had tried punishing me for talking during class, even though I was never speaking to anyone. Rafael and I both reached for the dessert, and he got it first. But he set it down on my tray and walked off to pay for his now dessert-less tray. When I went to thank him at his table, he said “You’re welcome” so loudly that everyone looked in our direction and snorted with laughter. My friends later explained to me who he was and that he was friends with the weird kids who dressed like school shooters and weeaboos. The girls in my friend group said he was ugly because he had a slight cleft lip, bushy, unkempt brows, and a prominent brown mole on his face. They even said out of all his brothers he was the ugliest one. I found him uniquely beautiful. And even more beautiful than the chiseled, Adonis jocks, everyone scampered to kiss the ground they walked on.
We spoke as friendly acquaintances during those four years of high school. I was always in proximity to him in some way, whether that be at lunch, sports games, or in after school programs. My best-friend Noora dated his older brother Gabriel in my junior year of high school and after that we became even closer. He had no idea that for the four years of high school I had been secretly learning sign language more than just the basics. He didn’t use ASL much, though, just with teachers. I had to learn Mexican Sign Language or what is also known as Lengua de Señas Mexicana, or LSM, as that was the one he used the most among his closest peers and brothers at school. He was born in Mexico City and moved here after his accident from what I was told by Noora. They would sign back to him sometimes, and he would speak and sign along as he spoke Spanish or “Spanglish”. If his American friends and brothers could learn sign language just for him, so could I. Though for the most part communicating with him went just fine. I admired how extroverted he was still was despite his disability. It never seemed to stop him from making friends or doing what he wanted.
I remember my mom called me a wacko and all kinds of rude things under her breath in Tagalog when she caught me practicing in the mirror. She was less weirded out by me learning basic Spanish and informed me that sometimes her native language had Spanish words too. Sometimes the same words we use mean something completely different. “Puto” was a funny one. I wasn’t that well versed in my mom’s language because she didn’t have time to teach me, she claimed, but a part of me feels she wanted to Americanize me as much as possible. I hoped that one day if he ever asked me out or if I was brave enough one day to do it myself, I could surprise him with my sign language skills.
But I was pretty sure I blew it due to the Latino Festival incident that happened right before prom. After that I thought there was no way I’d have a chance to be with him until Noora informed me that the girl he went to prom with instead never became official with him and parted ways. This admittedly relieved me but not enough to make me think I would ever have a chance with him again.
After graduation, I didn’t see him for a whole year until recently at a frat party and just now on the bus. And now he was a massage therapist studying Sports Medicine. Made sense for him. He loved basketball just like his eldest brother, Gabe, and I had overheard him tell his brothers that his dream job was to work for the NBA and help athletes with their injuries.
Getting a massage license was probably easier than what I was pursuing. Not sure about the sports doctoring part, but I was studying horticulture. I was driven by an obsession with beautiful things and their healing power; how simply looking at something beautiful could fill something missing inside me. The world felt increasingly ugly, and I wanted to change it. All of it. The filthy streets, the clusterfuck of corporate buildings…everything was so chrome and grey and not even the pretty kind of grey. Though I’d always been drawn to beauty, I’m certain my fleeting interactions with Rafael had inspired me to spiral deeper into this obsession.
The other fuel for my beauty obsession was because of this scientist or rather, phytochemist called Dr. Velveteen. He was a scientist in all sorts of fields, but he was mostly well-versed in plants. For years he was this meme everyone was making fun of because he was known for building a Garden of Eden in the middle of our state. He bought a massive plot of land nearly the size of a medium-sized city and conducted an experiment on it to make a new Garden of Eden. It was called Manna of Heaven, which I figured was inspired from other parts of the bible itself. He said aliens were coming decades ago and that we had to prepare for it sooner or later. He discovered that they were allergic to nearly all plants and flowers, and this gave him the idea for a sanctuary of sorts for the people. He was written off as this crazy old buffoon, even though there were a few other space scientists who confirmed his theory of colonizing, hay-fevered aliens coming to end our world as we knew it.
I didn’t believe him, but I still supported him and donated hundreds of dollars to him. I even got an internship with his practice, but it didn’t work out. I wanted so badly to see the Manna of Heaven, which was nestled somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
That fateful day he was right about the aliens. They did come. They came a few months ago, actually destroying the other side of the planet immediately just as the doctor said they would. Our country took defensive measures quickly and created a massive system of underground bunkers. The military was able to hold them off from entering our side of the pond until that day I so happened to see Rafael again after the frat party fight. Americans were pretty cocky about how we could protect ourselves. Most people for months just carried on with their lives, just as I was doing the day they came over.
So, this is what happens when you don’t listen to the boy or rather old man every time he cries wolf eventually, huh?
“Lilith!” Noora slammed her hands on my table where I had gone to sit as everyone rushed to get out of cafeteria. “Did you not hear the sirens? We’re all evacuating to the bunkers!”
“Oh,” I said, breaking out of my rapid-cycling daydreams.
She grabbed my hand and rushed me out with the other students. Outside, the sky was turning an unusual shade of ambrosia. I kept stopping to look, but my friend kept tugging at my hand, making it hard for me to study its colors. Probably another false alarm, they all said the other day when I knew it wasn’t. I knew all these pretty colors in the sky were a sign of their impeding arrival. But honestly, I didn’t care. I was depressed anyways before all of this. Everyone sucked and this is what we are finally getting as a result of not listening to the doctor.
Our town was in the middle of a bunch of small mountains. Everyone was reassured for months that if these so-called aliens came, we would be safe regardless as the USA military was also stationed there. At the front entrance to one of the smallest mountains where everyone was escaping to, I peered far ahead to see a familiar face also looking at the sky. I snatched my hand away from Noora.
“Lilith, what are you doing?”
“That’s Rafael…” I said.
Noora knew Rafael almost as well as I did, but because of the massive chaos enveloping around us she was desperately trying to get me to turn back around towards safety. She was no longer dating his older brother, and they ended on good terms, but her priority seemed to be just me right now and not trying to figure out if the man who I was sure was Rafeal was standing stupidly in the distance.
“That can’t be him?” Noora said frantically, trying to urge me to turn back. “Are you sure?”
Noora grabbed for me again, but I broke from her hold. She screamed for me to wait, but I would not turn back. That had to be Rafael. He was standing in a clearing between the hills that were in the opposite direction of the bunkers.
As I ran towards him, he glanced over at me. He opened his mouth to say something, but he collapsed. Before I could kneel to see what was wrong, something soft brushed against my cheeks. I looked up and saw nothing but a swirl of pink petals filling the sky. Suddenly everything blurred…the sights, the screaming, and even my whole body went dull like I had just downed several shots of vodka.
The last thing I remember was falling headfirst into Rafael’s chest and smelling what was probably his pheromones, his sweaty armpits, and possibly the smell of what he had last eaten: a Subway sandwich, Teriyaki Chicken, which was also my favorite order; something we had actually eaten together on a “study date” together once. Darkness came over all my senses, finally.
Then I thought I was dead.
