American Girl On Saturn (8 page)

“Chloooooeeeeeee.” Emery hisses my name from my bedside. “Chloooooooeeeeeeee.”

I feel around for my cell phone and glance at the time. It
’s too early in the morning for Emery to be in my room whispering my name at great lengths.

“
What?” I mutter into my pillow.

“
Tate’s head is on your door,” she says.

Her words are as
clear as the windows after Godfrey has Windex’ed them.

I push off of the bed just enough to see her face. She
’s serious, but there’s no way Tate’s head is on my door. Did Emery get all hyena happy in the night and decapitate him or something?

“
What are you talking about?” I ask her.

My attempt to glance at the door is useless. She closed it behind her on the way in. Oh God. What if she has gone crazy and decapitated Tate and plans to hang my head on the door next to his? What if we
’re her trophies from the summer of lockdown?

Emery isn
’t a guillotine or a game hunter. That late night firefly-catching session must’ve really jacked up my brain. I need more sleep. But I’m awake now. My mind explodes with fireflies and Saturn droplets and the fact that Milo said there’d be a next time.

“
Tate’s head is on your door,” she repeats. “Aralie put it up there.”

I throw the covers back. Aralie could definitely be a guillotine. She might could even pass for a human game hunter. But then Jules
’s head would be on my door instead. I know that much.

At the risk of being seen with bed hair and smudged, leftover makeup, I venture across the bedroom and pull my door open. Emery wasn
’t lying. A magazine cut out of Tate’s head is taped onto my door.

“
I was going to get him down for you,” Emery says. She walks over to me. “But I can’t reach him. I think you should stick it back on Aralie’s door. She’s crazy.”

The tape is still fresh on the back of the photo and peels easily off of my door. I take the few steps down the hallway to Aralie
’s door and gently press Tate’s head to the surface so I don’t alert her. She probably just did it to entertain Emery anyway, so I’ll play along. Emery slaps me a high-five upon seeing my handiwork and rushes down the stairs in a mess of giggles.

I disappear back into my bedroom to brush my hair and freshen up my makeup. There
’s no way I’m going downstairs looking like death-warmed-over. Any other summer day? Sure, who cares. When Spaceships Around Saturn is crashing at your house? Never.

Emery harasses Benji with another Q&A over breakfast. Yes, he likes the friendship bracelet. No, no one else has ever referred to him as ‘Benji Bikini’ to his knowledge. Yes, chocolate milk is better than regular milk. No, he doesn’t like bananas. Where does she even come up with this stuff?

“
I saw something about you on the Twitter,” she says.

It always cracks me up how she calls it
‘the’ Twitter. She also watches ‘the’ YouTube. As annoying and loud-mouthed and wild as she can be, it’s moments like this that make me appreciate her five-year-old mind.

Benji takes another gulp of milk.

“Please don’t talk about Twitter,” he says. “I’m going on three days without it, and I feel it.”

Emery ignores him and continues.
“She said you have twenty-seven tattoos. Do you?”

Benji buries his face into his hands.

“I have a lot,” he says into his own skin.

“
Twenty-seven?!” Emery’s eyes bulge like a scared frog slipping off of a lily pad.

“
Yes!” Benji throws his arms into the air. “Yes, I have twenty-seven tattoos, and I plan on getting twenty-seven more.”

Note for girls on Twitter: @
Benji_Baccarini does not like to talk about his tattoos at breakfast.

I grab a muffin from the plate on the table, wave to Mom in the kitchen, and disappear out onto the back patio. The Saturn boys will have to fend Emery off on their own. It
’s too early, she’s too fangirlish, and I have to deal with her year-round. They can have her during lockdown.

An hour later, Emery hauls me back inside, away from the warmth of the morning sunshine. I follow her back to Dad’s game room. The guys are already in here. Aralie curls up in the corner of the sectional.

“We’re all here,” Emery says with a proud smile. “Now we can watch the DVD.”

“
What DVD?” I ask.

“
Our live DVD,” Milo answers, nodding toward the flat screen. “You know how arrogant we are. We like to watch ourselves.”

Noah looks over at me.

“And you need to be here so you can tell me how awful my tour stylist is,” he says. “In fact, you should come sit on the other side of Milo. That way, you can lean around him and give me that disgusted look you gave me yesterday when you dissed my shorts.”

If everyone in the room wasn
’t looking at me, I’d give Noah the best evil-eye possible, but with this audience, it’d possibly raise questions. If nothing else, it’d get comments. So I bite my tongue, crawl over Noah’s and Milo’s outstretched legs, and squeeze into the empty spot next to Milo. I smell his body wash from here. I have to stop sitting so close to this boy.

 
Emery shushes everyone and starts the DVD. She spends more time glancing around to make sure we’re all paying attention than she does watching the TV herself. I feel like she’s going to give us a Spaceships Around Saturn pop quiz when it’s over. Maybe I should take note of what the guys are wearing, just in case she asks. Or maybe I should count the number of wardrobe changes. 

We sit through the first two songs in silence. Then, in true-Emery-style, she
’s the first one to speak up in the middle of the third song. 

“
Why is that girl crying?” she asks. “I would be happy at your show, not a stupid crybaby.”

 
Benji answers, probably on impulse, since she’s usually grilling him.

“
They just get emotional because we’re they’re favorite band,” he says.

Emery studies the TV for a moment. “Why do all those people make posters?”

“So we’ll notice them,” Benji says. “They want to stand out.”

Noah cracks up, and dread rushes through my veins. I don’t know what he’s about to say, but I know it’s going to involve me.

“Chloe would make one,” Noah says. “She likes to draw. It’d probably say, ‘I love Noah’s shorts!’”

Milo elbows Noah in the ribs.

“She wouldn’t waste a poster on your shorts,” Milo says. “It’d say, ‘Milo wasn’t dead. He was with me!’”

“Ooh la
la,” Tate pipes up. “Let the rumors begin. Chloe Branson – the girl who destroyed Tito. How dare you!”

Milo shoots this sly grin my way, and I absolutely crumble to a million pieces. I can somewhat handle his flirtatiousness when we’re alone…in a dark tent…where he can’t see my face. But here, in my dad’s
game room, with his four Saturn brothers and my two Earth sisters, I just can’t.

“You know,”
Milo says. “You’d have all kinds of juicy gossip about you. Destroying Tito, hanging out with the dead guy in Saturn…”

Whatever else he was going to list is immediately cut off by Jules, who leaps up from the sectional and points at Aralie.

“Dead guys are your thing!” he shouts. “You’re the one who likes that zombie band.”

He spins around and looks to Benji for help.

“Dude, you know the one,” Jules says, talking with his hands. “We always laugh at their contacts and weird hair colors, how they’re trying to be all rock star and trendy and sing about blood and all that shit.”

“Language!” Milo shouts. “Emery’s in the room.”

Jules sighs all dramatically, and I wonder how he even pulls off this whole bad boy vibe. Sure, he looks the part. Black hair, dark eyes, eyebrow piercing, tattoos, reeks of cigarettes. He’s stereotypical at best. At least One Direction’s “bad boy” Zayn can sing…and draw. Jules isn’t even that talented. He’s just here to fit the quota, I guess.

Benji’s blonde
eyebrows narrow together then his eyes widen.

“Yes!” he says. “Mutated Arteries or something? That guy has the red and black hair. They’re
effed up.”

“
Mutilated
Arteries,” Emery, of all people, corrects Benji. “It’s Mutilated. And that is my sister’s favorite band, so you need to be nice.”

She grabs the remote and pauses her forgotten DVD. The screen freezes on a woman who is far too old to be holding that “
I want to date and mate with Tate
” poster. She’s old enough to pass for Tate’s mom.

“Thank you, Emery,” Aralie says. She pushes herself off of the sectional and crosses the room to standoff with Jules. “At least my band actually plays their own instruments. It’s more than I’ve seen any of
your
band do.”

Milo clears his throat next to me, but I shake my head. He doesn’t need to jump into this battle. Instead, Benji does. Of course he would. He has to defend
Jenji. This is one of those moments that calls for an epic eye roll, but I don’t want to break my attention away from them.

“I can play piano,” Benji says. “Milo plays guitar. Noah can play the drums. We do actually have other talents, just for the record.”

Aralie laughs. “Then what talent does Jules have? I didn’t hear his name in your little instrumental list, and he sure as hell doesn’t have the best voice of you guys.”

Milo squirms around next to me, readjusting his T-shirt and glancing awkwardly around the room. Tate pulls his legs up toward his chest and buries his face into his knees. Emery swaps panicked expressions with Noah. I feel exactly how they all look.

Benji folds his arms over his chest, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to defend Jules to the death. But he glances in our direction. Emery pouts her lips, and her eyes widen with this sad-faced-doe look, and Benji sits back down. Did Emery seriously just put a dent in Jenji?! Holy hell. Why must we be on lockdown? The Twitter-verse needs to know that my baby sister just burst the Jenji bromance bubble.

Jules shakes his head and laughs. It’s almost condescending.

“When you’re an international superstar, then you can bitch about whether someone has talent,” he says, stepping a bit too close to Aralie. “You’re just a pretty rocker girl who wants a badass rocker boy.”

Aralie shoves
Jules with both hands, slamming him back into the sectional and crushing the right half of Benji’s body. Benji pushes Jules off of him and dashes toward the safety zone – with us. He sits next to Emery, and she snuggles up between him and Noah like she’s in boyband heaven.

“At least when I find me a badass rocker boy, he’ll know how to do more than stand on a stage and try to look
good while his band mates out-sing him!” Aralie’s voice rises to an octave that I’m not sure even Milo could hit.

Jules jumps up again but doesn’t advance toward my sister.

“This is bullshit!” he shouts. “I should be out there living our DVD, not watching the damn thing on lockdown!”

“Well,” Aralie says, crossing her arms. “I can’t blame them for shooting at a
jerkoff like you!”

Through the cursing and shouting match, Emery hasn’t winced – until Aralie said ‘
jerkoff.’

“
Uhh, Aralie?” Emery speaks up. “Remember what Mom said? You’re supposed to say ‘jerkface’ if I’m in the room.”

Oh, Emery. Why? Why must you taunt Aralie when she’s two breaths away from slamming her fist into Jules’s face and making his eyebrow ring meet his skull?

“Shut up!” Aralie shrieks.

Mom rushes into the room, arms flailing and jaw dropped. She’s really slacking off on her refereeing skills. She never takes this long to enter a shouting match. Aralie and Jules remain as statues, still facing off next to the frozen image of a cougar who wants to mate with Tate.

“Okay, okay, let’s just all calm down,” Mom says in her soothing-mom-voice. “What’s going on? Why the screaming?”

Jules talks first. “Aralie said I couldn’t sing. She insulted
all of my talents.”

“
After
he made fun of Mutilated Arteries,” Aralie clarifies. “And I only said what everyone on Twitter has already stated.”

Mom sighs and looks over at the rest of us. We stay planted, like a jury who is staring at a judge yet too scared to hand over our final verdict. So we remain silent and emotionless.

“Aralie, can you please not insult our company?” Mom asks.

My sister opens her mouth to argue, but Mom holds up a finger to stop her. Then Mom turns to Jules.

“And can you please not insult my daughter’s favorite band just because you may not like them? You do a great job at provoking her,” she scolds the bad boy.

She steps back and examines the competitors for a moment.