I stutter stepped backwards as the silver "lid" rose slooowly, revealing the big onyx black "eye" that stretched across the top of the metal monster's face.

And as the red laser dot in the middle started pulsing just like in the movie and the big saucer behind him started to "buzz" and glow neon blue underneath like it was about to take off...

I let out a high-pitched, horror movie scream.

AJ ran up and hugged me from behind, cooing, "Gwenchana, aegiya (It's okay, baby/love)," while Star slip slid up the little ramp in front of the saucer yelling, "Lyle! Turn it off!"

They'd planned this little "prank" behind my back at the camp after the kids had fallen into food comas and we grownups had started sipping on Lyle's homemade hooch.

But it had backfired big time.

Only...when Star fell and slid all the way back down the front of the saucer on her butt, I busted out laughing like a lunatic—she did, too.

Cause the hooch that had made me scream also made that fall feel like the funniest thing we'd seen all day.

Even so, Gort and his saucer were quickly deactivated while the other adults carried the kids into the amoeba house.

Neither the scream nor the laughter had awakened the wee ones. Didn't surprise me.

Everyone had gotten the kind of groggy that makes you sleep through all the stupid football games and whatnot after Thanksgiving dinner.

And we'd had a feast and a half, boy. I mean, I thought my gumbo and AJ's mala dish would be the stars of the show, but those women had learned to make miracles out of the simplest things.

Dar threw together a salad full of foraged berries, greens, flowers, shrooms and roots that was almost too beautiful to eat. But after the first bite, I couldn't stop eating it.

And the Williams fam had brought a big quiche type of thing with wild onions and mushrooms in it, too. Melted in your mouth, whatever the hell it was.

I'm still trying to "reverse engineer" a recipe for both dishes. Wouldn't add it to our menu or anything—the world has stolen enough from those people, you know? But I sure would love to serve them on holidays or at parties. Just to see people's eyes light up.

They reminded me of Mama Sadie, who could also pick something wild and turn it into the best meal you'd ever had.

Told us, "They threw us the innards and scraps and then they'd come slinkin' down to the quarters wantin' a little taste o' what we made out of it."

Talking about the plantation and field owners who came down to beg for bits of the bits they'd begrudgingly given us. Because we made those bits taste better than all the fancy food they'd had for dinner that night.

Lyle came back, hauled Star up off her butt and said, "Y'all c'mon out to the shack with me! Gonna blow their minds this year, boy!"

I figured he was about to show us the still he made his hooch in when we were struggling through the tall brush and tiny spindly trees.

But remember that Sturgis biker gathering I spoke of once? Well, Lyle sold custom "super bikes" to all the crazy rich celebs who made the pilgrimage every year.

Sexiest cycles I'd ever seen in my life. Course, I don't know dick about bikes, so I can't give you a rundown of all the alterations and "elaborations" he'd added to the two he showed us.

But the one AJ fell in love with was tricked out like something a Marvel superhero would chase bad guys on. Looked like it could fly almost.

One had sold for over half a million after being featured in some magazines. Which explained why he could live out there in the middle of nowhere making crazy cars and gadgets like a big happy kid.

And when AJ started stroking that bike like it was me, I sensed it might not even make it to Sturgis. Wasn't sure where we would put it, but AJ was too juiced to be thinking about logistics just then.

He was "ooooing and aaaahhing" over his new love when Yoli sidled up behind me and said, "Could we...talk for a minute? All us women folk?"

Wasn't exactly thrilled when she headed back toward that spaceship, though. Only it turned out to be just a big, wide-open space inside with a stove/heater thing under the middle dome and a bunch of cushions and bean bag chairs all around that.

So we women plopped our butts down, giggling like teenage girls at a slumber party. Teenage girls who'd nicked a blunt from their parents' stash, more like.

Connie didn't come with, of course. Life had pretty much kicked all the conviviality out of that woman.

But Dar was up for a good time, still. Army crawled over to me and said, "You might wanna go easy on that hooch, kiddo." With this little twinkle in her eyes.

"What the—"

"That was a conception dream, girl," she told me. "That thing you had out in the river."

I'd forgotten that I'd told them about the "feeling" I'd when the minnows swirled up and started nibbling at my feet...

"But I wasn't asleep," I said.

"Dun matter," Yoli said. "That was your spirit picking up on something. That dizziness."

"God, you sound like my aunts," I huffed. "Everything means something."

"Everything does," Yoli said. Tipsy eyes all squinty and intense.

So I informed her that, "I've got one o' those little...gizmos up in there."

And she came back with,"Yeah, well that little one tryin'a find a way in—it'll ease that on outta there so smooth you won't even feel it."

"Had a friend whose little girl was born with one sorta imbedded in her butt," Dar said.

"Oh, for Christ's—"

"Just nature's way of telling you he's that guy," Star said. "The one you're meant to make babies with."

Dar pinched my leg and cooed, "Gonna be cute, your babies. You're both so pretty."

I was about to agree with that much at least, when I heard a child's voice. Singing, like...from a short distance away...

And I was sure it was another prank. Piped in over a sound system to "haunt" me.

But Star chuckled and said, "Knew that child couldn't stay down while the grownups were still up."

"That's Lu?" Yoli gaped.

Because that little girl was singing the hell out of this funny little Janice Joplin song with the drawl and some serious lung power.

"Her grandpa taught her that song," Star said. "He'd wink at her and sing 'Oh Lord, won'cha buy me a Mercedes Benz.' And she'd take it from there."

"Yeah, but the voice, though," I said. "I mean she's not playin' around."

"I used to sing in little clubs on weekends 'way back when, but my voice is more Judy Collins...Joni Mitchell. That one can belt."

"I gotta see this," Yoli said, struggling up from the floor.

So, we all stumbled out to where Lulu was sitting on Lyle's lap. Laughing at something he must've said after she finished singing.

And I whined, "Aw, she's done? We missed it!"

"Sings all day," Lyle said. "Chirps like a little bird up there in the treehouse. Makes up little songs."

"Caught it," AJ said, cell in hand. "Do you play any instruments, Lu?"

"My mama's mandolin a little," she told him. "But only a little."

I went to sit at his feet. And when I turned to smile up at him, he gave me a look that said he was about to spill our Big Secret just this once.

I did it for him. "He's a musician, too."

"K-Pop," Yoli said. All bubbly like one of his Angels. "Big star, this one."

And Dar said, "Yeah, we knew you hadda be some kinda actor or model or something. Cause..."

She drew an invisible circle around her face. Like his face had given that secret away long ago.

"Well, we'd appreciate it if you kept it on the down low, that he was here," I said.

"So, the mask and all that—it's not just for sanitation purposes, huh?" Star asked.

"He's tryin'a have a life," Ronnie said. "For a little while, anyway."

Lyle nodded toward the other guests and said, "You respect their privacy, we'll respect yours. Good?"

Took me a minute...and then I remembered that they were living on borrowed time out there in the wild.

And AJ said, "I'm gonna give you the links to some things online she can play around with--Net's not too reliable, though, right?"

"Well, we can use it pretty good at certain times," Star said.

"Okay, well, Google Meet. Can it handle that?"

"We Zoom now and then. Relatives on holidays, that sorta thing," Lyle said.

"Well, we can video chat a few times, all of us, so I can show you how to work them. If she wants to, that is. It's gotta be her decision."

Lulu grinned up at Star then, and said, "Can I just go with them?"

And Star gave her a little shove and said, "G'wan then! Good riddance!"

Lulu laughed, shoved her right back, and then looked over at AJ.

Said, "Now you gotta sing."

"I'll do you one better," he said, waggling his cell at her.

So Lyle brought out this huge board he'd painted shiny white and one of those projectors you can hook up a cell to. Same way the district showed movies on "Disney Drive In" nights over in the Whitman town square during the summer.

But we got to see AJ rock one of those huge, sports stadiums. It was packed to the rafters and they made all those Angel wing light sticks change colors and patterns with the music.

Lulu kept looking from the screen to AJ's actual real-life face trying to make her brain put the two together. And maybe imagine what it was like to have, like, 60,000 pairs of eyes glued to your every move. And 60,000 mouths screaming every time you moved, too.

Had to be stronger than the hooch we were drinking. The strongest drug in the universe, TBH.

And the most dangerous.

After the last big burst of fireworks turned into Angel wings--in tribute to his stans--Lyle nodded...shrugged...and said, "Yeah, go on and take 'er, dude!"

But then a voice we'd heard only maybe twice the whole day growled, "My daddy was a musician."

It was Connie. Wearing one of those lethal scowls I thought the ladies back in The Quarters had a patent on.

Her husband Beau scowled even deeper. And grunted, "Aw, woman, don't you start now."

But she raised her chin and said, "Ran all over the damned country singin' in little dive bars. Died in a car wreck, him and some woman he'd hooked up with—drunk as a coupla skunks. Course I never saw that man more'n' maybe 10 times before he died. Come home just long enough to give my mother hell and another mouth to feed."

"Well, he ain't your father," Beau scolded her. "Don't be scarin' the kid like that."

AJ trained a soft, sympathetic gaze her way. "I've lost a few friends." And I thought, "Yeah, no shit," remembering how one "flew" away...

And then he smiled at Lulu and said, "You gotta love it more than anything. Even more than your parents and living out here, you feel me?"

And Lulu hugged knees to chest and shrugged. "I don't know if I love anything better than that."

AJ winked and said, "So you do know how lucky you are, huh?"

She nodded thoughtfully. And then this devilish smile crossed that face. "Yeah, but I still might run away with you guys, though. And eat that ice stuff for breakfast every day."

"Oh, so that's how it is, huh?" Lyle said. "I see."

And then he tickled her 'til she squealed for mercy.

She wriggled up onto AJ's lap soon after that, trying so hard not to nod off while us grownups were talking. But her little body finally went limp. And her father carried her off to bed again.

And as I watched her little curly head bobbing against the crook of his neck, I remembered she was the one who'd shown me those little fish that all the women said were more than just little fish.

If that "dream" ever came true, I wanted us to have a magical child just like her.

Only...was AJ really "that guy?"

I mean, I'd just watched him rock that stadium full of shrieking stans. He couldn't just be for me alone.

And Hae Won's call, whenever it came, would jerk us right back into that world again. I'd tried to Google some news but the stories came up in Hangeul. On pages that wouldn't translate.

Nothing in his world translated to any language I could understand...

So, I leapt up, raised a Mason jar from a tree stump next to us and called out, "Let's have a little more o' that fire water, huh?"

Hoping Lyle's battery acid would burn all the doubts out of my mind at least for one night.

But AJ snatched away that Mason jar and said, "What's this...fish dream thing I heard the ladies talking about?"

And you know how you hear people say, "You weren't nothin' but a twinkle in your father's eyes back then," sometimes?

That's the kind of look he gave me...