Friends in Secret Places

I first met her a month after my twelfth birthday…the day I got my first period. At first, I thought I had a minor stomach bug. I’d told Mum I’d be fine, and she went to work while I worked on my studies. I was working on a problem in differential calculus — a side benefit of being home-schooled by a theoretical physicist mother — when I felt it.

Seeing the stain on my shorts, I cleaned myself up and changed, adding a pad in the way Mum had taught me. I was so excited for it, that I ran to her office to tell her. She wasn’t in her office. The door to the labs was behind her desk, but it was off-limits.

I’d tried to open that door once, when I was younger and received a stern lecture on how dangerous it would be. My hand shook as I reached for the knob. Wait, I thought, I’m a woman now. I can do anything Mum can.

Maybe I should back up a little, first. They say the pill is ninety-nine percent effective. That seems like decent odds…unless you’re in the one percent like me. I was an “accident,” but my mother thanked me for my existence every day.

Aside from me, Mum had no living family, which, she said, is why she was selected for this job, where she met my father, the microbiologist. He died when I was two. He went outside in the middle of an August storm, the only explanation his health report that showed he had symptoms of early-onset Alzheimer’s. They didn’t find him until the annual supply drop in the December summer.

Growing up in the complex under the ice, I never got the appeal of going outside. Mum assured me that most of the world isn’t like here, a barren expanse of blinding ice and snow. I’ve seen loads of it on the telly, but it doesn’t feel real to me.

I never knew what they did in the labs, or why a theoretical physicist was needed in Antarctica, but Mom said she was committed to the position for life. She assured me that when I was old enough, I could leave to explore the world, go to university, whatever I desired. With my body telling me I was growing up, that seemed not so far away as it used to.

I set my shoulders with false confidence and went through the door. The hallway on the other side was underwhelming. Beige walls, floor, and ceiling, doors to other offices along the opposite wall, and a large door with an “Authorized Personnel Only” sign at the end of the hallway.

I was about to slink back into the office when she barreled around the corner and ran into me. “I’m sorry,” she said, disentangling herself from me. “I know I’m not supposed to run here, but I was bored.”

She was shorter than me, with pale, blue skin, huge copper eyes, and four arms. While I wasn’t frightened by her, I was shocked, and rather than introducing myself properly I blurted out, “I just got my period. I—I mean, I’m not supposed to be here, but I was looking for my mum.”

She smiled with her eyes, her wide mouth opening the slightest bit, and the slits where a nose should’ve been widening. “Hi. You’re small for a human. You can call me Liz. I’m a kellian.”

Her voice sounded like tinkling glass, and she seemed thin and frail to the point of fragility. There was something in her manner that endeared her to me in that moment of our clumsy awkwardness.

“Sorry. I’m Abigail, and I’m not small, I’m twelve. Is my mum around? I was just excited to tell her.”

“I don’t know anyone named ‘My Mum.’ Sorry.”

“No, I mean, her name is Dr. Marilyn Arthur.”

“Doctor Marilyn is in the labs. I’m not allowed in there.” Her large eyes grew even wider. “Did you come from one of the doors on that side of the hall?”

I nodded and put my hand on the door to Mum’s office. “This one. Which door did you come from?”

She pointed to the door opposite Mum’s. “My progenitor’s office. Wait, does ‘mum’ mean progenitor…parent?”

“Exactly. Were you born here, too?”

“No, but this is a neat planet.” She looked back and forth down the hall. “I should probably sneak back before someone notices. See you tomorrow at the same time?”

That was the first meeting of thousands. Not every day, but most days. How we evaded detection for five years is beyond me, but we did. I snuck her into my room every day both our mums were in the lab.

Some days we would speculate about what our parents were doing. Others, we would watch one of Mum’s DVD movies in my room before I snuck her back to the hall.

We made up songs and told each other stories based on the most outrageous concept the other could imagine. She comforted me when my period cramps were bad, and I massaged her when her growth spurts came with the attendant muscle and joint pain.

She put up with my constant complaints about my nearly non-existent breasts and short stature, and I consoled her when she was feeling bad about her changing skin color. I thought the swirls of darker blue were beautiful, but she assured me that until she was uniformly dark, she would not be considered an adult.

My first crush, Brian from the Breakfast Club, was a frequent topic of discussion, at least until I let the credits run on Mum’s DVD. When I realized that he was older than Mum, he was my first heartbreak as well. Liz comforted me in the way only she could, two arms holding me tight, one hand petting my hair, and one hand rubbing my back.

It turns out, I was Liz’s first heartbreak. I didn’t mean to hurt her, and if I’d known then, I wouldn’t have said anything. I had just gotten my passport and was working out with Mum where I’d go to university.

I was more scared than excited about leaving and told the only person I could, Liz. She didn’t say anything; just stared at me for a few moments before her nostril slits closed and her eyes narrowed, and she got a hitch in her breath. By then, I knew her well enough to know that she was doing the closest thing her kind can do to ugly crying.

She stormed out of my room to go back to the hallway and to “her side” of the station. I was on her heels, but not fast enough. Liz stormed into Mum’s office as I was crying and apologizing and begging her to tell me what I’d done wrong. She’d stopped in front of me, and as she was now taller than I, blocked my view.

It was only after I hugged her from behind, asking her to wait and talk it out, that I realized we weren’t alone. I peeked around her upper shoulder to see Mum’s face. The last time I’d seen that look was when she talked about my father walking out into the storm.

“M—Mum, what’s wrong?”

“You two first,” she said, regaining her composure. “Lisiakta, what are you doing in the human quarters?”

“Hang—hanging out with Abi.”

“How long?”

“Not even half an hour,” I said, “and she won’t tell me why she’s upset.”

“I mean,” my mother said, “how long have you two been sneaking around?”

I stepped around Liz and found it difficult to look Mum in the eye. “Since I was twelve…the day I got my period.”

“You’ve known about them that long and never said anything?”

“Liz said she’d get in trouble if anyone knew, and I thought I’d get in trouble for going in the hall that first time.” I set my shoulders the way Mum did when she put her foot down about something. “Mum, I’m seventeen, I’m an adult. You can’t keep me away from my only friend here, and I’ll be back to visit her from Uni every chance I get.”

I felt Liz tighten up behind me when I said it. “Oh my god!” I spun around and grabbed her. “I’m so sorry. Am I your only friend here, too?”

She hugged me back and her breath hitched in the way that meant she was crying. “You are,” she said, “and I’ll miss you.”

Mum cleared her throat and we faced her. Grief etched lines across her face. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to go to Uni. I did my best to protect you, but anyone who has had contact with our guests is not allowed to leave…ever. That’s why we only recruit people with no living family.”

Liz’s eyes narrowed and her head dropped. “I’m sorry I got you in trouble, Abi. Now you’re stuck here forever and it’s my fault. It’s okay if you never want to see me again.”

“You silly goose! Of course I want to see my best friend in the whole world! That’s why I was trying to tell you that I’ll be going to Uni in Australia to make it easier to fly back here on break.”

“Abigail Rose!” When Mum said my middle name I knew it was serious. “Don’t take this lightly. You can’t leave. I’ll make sure you finish a proper education, along with some of my colleagues. You don’t have to study physics if you don’t want to, but you’ll have to find something to make you useful around here. As of now, you work here.”

“Why, Mum? I still don’t get it.”

“Her Majesty’s government, along with the others of the G20, have determined that anyone not working here that knows about our visitors must either be held in permanent solitary or…eliminated. It’s just too dangerous if the information gets out.”

There was a knock on the door to the hallway, and Mum opened it up. I knew right away it was Liz’s mum…progenitor. She looked like a darker version of Liz. “Your mum’s pretty, just like you,” I told Liz.

She stood frozen in the doorway, until Mum spoke. “Sarilakta, I’d like you to meet my offspring. It seems she’s been aware of your presence for some time now. She’ll be working with us moving forward.”

“Abigail, it is a pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard much about you over the past years.” She crossed all four of her arms and berated Liz in a language that made no sense to me.

I felt Liz tighten up as she went on and hugged onto one of her arms. When her progenitor had finished, she said, in English, “Yes, Mum.”

My mother smirked and wiped it away as quick as she could. “Abi, for now you’ll do janitorial duties until you decide where you want to work and finish your studies. Lisiakta, you shouldn’t be on the human side of the station, it’s dangerous.”

“Yes, Dr. Marilyn,” she said.

“Why don’t you show Abi around the shared sections, the common room, and so on. Tomorrow, I’ll take her down to the labs and introduce her to what we’re doing, and what kind of jobs are available.”

True to her word, I had an employee badge the following morning and spent the first half of the day working and the second half studying. Every spare minute was spent with Liz watching Mum’s old movies on the big screen in the common area.

Pushing a mop five days a week was good motivation to finish my studies with all haste. I ended up deciding on Materials Science, was accepted into the lab eighteen months later, and the usual rotation started back up. Every one of the humans would spend a week doing janitorial work, from the lab techs all the way up to the director.

A month into my job in the MS lab, Liz came in, pushing the cleaning cart. “What are you doing?” I asked. The kellian didn’t have to partake in the cleaning roster.

“My progenitor is returning home in a month, but I want to stay. Means I have to make myself useful.”

“I hope you’re not planning on mopping floors and scrubbing toilets for the rest of your life on my account,” I said.

“No, just while Dr. Marilyn gets me up to snuff on physics, then I’ll be helping her in the lab.”

“Working with the kellian teams?”

“Nope. I’m the first kellian employed by humans. I’ll be learning stuff from my home world at the same time as you.” She pulled a small box with a bow out of the cart and handed it to me. “I missed your birthday, since you were busy in here, but Dr. Marilyn assured me you would love this.”

I opened the belated gift to find a sliver of metal. It felt smooth, polished, yet it reflected only a tiny fraction of the light that hit it. “What is it?”

“It’s a piece off a kellian ship. What it’s made of, is up to you to figure out.” Liz gave me one of her patented hugs and whispered in my ear, “Dr. Marilyn suggested you write a dissertation on it.”

I hugged her back. “Don’t you two start ganging up on me, now. I’ll write it, for sure. I just hope I can figure out how it’s made.”

She was halfway out the door when I said, “By the way, common room tonight. You and I are watching Out of Bounds.”

“Again? I thought you were over Anthony Michael Hall.”

“I am. Well…mostly.”