Wendy was eating a grilled cheese sandwich when Kanto crept in and sat beside her. She was immediately suspicious.
“I was on the computer today,” he said.
“You’re not going to talk about aliens right now, are you? About how they might be alive on some planet far off that nobody has heard of.”
“No,” he said. “But there are ones that are alive on Earth.”
“I told you, when people get called aliens here it’s some sort of anti-immigrant thing!”
“No, this is different,” Kanto said. “I found a website about people who had adopted alien babies. They talked about some program.”
“What else did they say?” Wendy asked.
“Lots of stuff about food or whatever,” Kanto shrugged.
“Are you sure it’s not some vampire thing? Like people writing stories?”
“No, it’s real!” Kanto said. “They said it was for extended jury duty!”
Wendy froze when she heard those words. She hadn’t thought about that in so long, and yet…
“Well what am I supposed to do about it?”
“Can’t you post in there and say that I’m here? That you have me?”
“Why don’t you do it yourself?”
“You have to be over 13.”
“Kid! I keep telling you that there’s nothing wrong with lying on the internet! Everybody does it! Don’t you remember about that woman who pretended to have cancer so people would send her money? It’s the same thing.”
“It’s not right!” Kanto said.
“Right and wrong is an illusion used to keep people in control!” Wendy said.
“Please!” he begged. “Please post on there! What if I have brothers and sisters?”
Wendy sighed. She hated when the kid begged.
They sat in front of the computer and Wendy looked at the forum critically. “Nobody has posted on here in ages,” she said. “Nobody probably uses it anymore.”
“So?” Kanto said. “Maybe they just don’t have anything new to say?”
“If all they talk about is happy times at school I will strangle them when I first meet them,” Wendy grumbled. “School isn’t supposed to be fun!”
“You promised you’d write on it!”
“Fine, fine.” She created a username, and then Kanto helped her find an avatar to put next to her name. She started a thread and began to type.
Kanto watched her, not reading what she wrote, but hopeful. Just the sound of her smashing keys made him excited. She turned to look at him. “Anything else?”
“Tell them…” he hesitated. “Tell them that I heard singing. In my head.”
Wendy looked at him. “Were you messing around in my pill drawer again? I told you not to take the ones with rabbits on them!”
“No, I wasn’t, I heard singing. Tell them.”
“Fine,” Wendy said, adding another sentence. She hesitated, and then clicked send. Hopefully the forum was abandoned. Hopefully nobody would check it. Hopefully nobody would take Kanto away.
There really is a forum! You can find it here. In case you’re wondering, Wendy’s username is a reference to this song, and her avatar is of Siouxsie Sioux.
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