He wasn’t watching the road, or rather the alpaca farm, so I stretched forward to slap his hand away from the tuner and grab it myself. I steered us through the animals and into what appeared to be someone’s homemade motorcross course. We ducked and dove through gullies, and launched over hills and ramps tall enough to keep Pig airborne most of the time and ensure that I bit my tongue at least twice.
“Whah ah thoo twying to do?!” I asked as J.Lo kept punching the dash.
“Yes, please!” J.Lo answered. “Feeds them to me as I drive!”
“No…whath are hyoo twying to do?”
“Ah! Trying to make! Safety! Devices! Work!” he said, punching after each word. “Work! Work! Work!”
We were through the obstacle course and drifting toward what I would later learn was an arroyo, but could easily pass for a big ditch. But brakes or no brakes, we were running out of momentum, and I sighed with relief when we finally came to a stop right at the arroyo’s edge.
“Yes,” said J.Lo. “Good. But still I am wondering—”
There was a noise like boof, and a limp parachute farted out Slushious’s backside.
“Aha. But that is still not explaining what happened to the—”
Eighteen enormous pink beach balls sprouted out of Slushious in every direction and bounced us end over end into the arroyo.
J.Lo smiled weakly as the cloud of dust and jackrabbits settled, and the beach balls began to squeal and deflate. I squinted at the highway sign that was still lodged in front of our windshield. NOW ENTERING ROSWELL.
“Ha. Well,” I said, “the next time someone claims no aliens ever crashed here, I’ll know what to tell him.”
“Is not my fault!” said J.Lo. “There was a boy human onto a bicycle!”
“A boy hu—a kid?”
“Onto a bicycle! Bicyclisting! I swerved to miss, and missed missing the green sign instead.”
“Are you sure? Maybe you were just…what’s the word…hallucinating.”
“I am assured.”
“Look, J.Lo, once back in Florida I thought I saw a bunch of goats in little cars. I was just tired—”
Then, in the distance, I heard a shout—maybe the word “Hurry,” but definitely a kid’s voice. J.Lo’s and my eyes met.
“Ohmygosh,” I said. “We have to go.”
“But…Slushiouscar cannot move until the Safetypillows unflate! And we have no brakes—”
There were more voices, a group of people, a many-legged multiheaded thing coming to get us.
“Go!” I whispered. “Hide in those trees!”
J.Lo squealed something in Boovish and looked every which way, grabbed a bedsheet from the backseat of the car and forced a door open, then pushed his way through the hissing beach balls and ran, half shrouded like a billowing ghost, with Pig chasing after.
I hesitated. Should I stay or go? The voices were close, right on top of us. Suddenly I was beating back the beach balls and pushing a door open, too. I ran halfway to J.Lo’s hiding place when I remembered his toolbox. If the weird car didn’t give him away, the weird tools certainly would. So I raced back, grabbed the box, and stumbled through the low shrubs and stones to the little copse of trees where I’d seen Pig and J.Lo disappear.
I rustled through the leaves and stinging branches to find J.Lo small and huddled, clutching the bedsheet around his face like a shivering old woman. Pig squatted between a few of his legs.
“I didn’t know what to do,” I whispered. “Like, should I talk to them? Try to explain about the—”
“Sh!” said J.Lo.
A group of people were shuffling down into the arroyo. They circled Slushious but kept their distance, like it was a strange dog. The Safetypillows were flat and waggling now like pink tongues, until they slipped with a Thwip! into the car’s cracks and gaps, and were gone.
Everyone jumped—the kids, the women, the men—and took a step back. Slushious was quiet now, looking as innocent as a car can when it’s floating six inches off the ground.
“Hello?” one of the men called out.
“Shhh!” said another.
“What?”
“What if the driver isn’t human? What if this is an alien car?”
“Kat, this is a Chevy Sprint.”
“So what if it is?”
“It is hovering….”
“Shut up, you guys!”
I counted two men, two women, two little boys, and a baby girl. The boys were peering into Slushious and calling dibs on our food.
“It tried to hit me,” said one of the boys. “But I did…I did a jump on my bike and I jumped over the car, and the car missed me and it crashed. BKOOOSH!”
“You weren’t supposed to be riding your bike this far out in the first place,” said the woman named Kat, and the boy scowled.
“Dibs on the bug spray!” said the other boy.
“Nuh-uh!”
“Yes-huh!”
“I called it first!”
“Did not!”
J.Lo leaned toward me. “But I called it first,” he whispered. “You heard me do, back in Mississippies.”
“Shh,” I said.
The adults were fanning out, trying to understand what they were dealing with. It was only a matter of time before they found us. I looked at J.Lo’s sheet, and remembered that I was holding his toolbox.
“Is there anything in here that’d be good for cutting cloth?” I asked.
J.Lo quietly rummaged through the toolbox and produced something that looked like a fat ballpoint pen.
“Squeeze the handle and draw the cut,” he said.
“Good. Put your helmet up.”
“Whatnow?”
“Put your helmet up. I have an idea.”
“I do not want my helmet up. It gets hot.”
“Please.”
J.Lo said a word in Boovish I couldn’t make out. Something like “Claap,” but with a popping sound in the middle. The clear bowl snapped up from all sides and met in the middle, above his head. There was a little circular vent in the front. I pulled the sheet all the way over him.
“Ah, aha,” whispered J.Lo. “Good. With the sheets as this, we will not be able to see the mens. Here is my question: can not they still see us?”
As he spoke I trimmed the excess sheet where it lay in the dirt. Then I cut a little circle where I thought J.Lo’s eye might be.
“Oh, hello,” he said.
I lined the hole up with his eye, then cut another.