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strong wet arms clamped around my waist. He had me off the ground and headed back to the water.
    “Jackson! If you throw me in that creek...”
    I could hear him laughing through his breath at my ear. He held me over the pool, and I didn’t move. Struggling would only make him drop me.
    “Say it now,” he said, still holding me off the ground.
    “Jackson!”
    “This is your last chance.”
    “I love you!” I cried, pulling on his wrists holding me tight around the waist.
    They relaxed, and as soon as my feet touched the ground, I spun around mad. I pushed his chest hard with both my hands and stomped down the path frowning.
    “I hope D’Lo’s buddies pound you into the turf,” I yelled back over my shoulder.
    “But you love me!” His holler broke with his laugh.
    I kept stomping away as a smile crept across my lips.
    ––––––––
    I sat up straight in my bunk. A sob caught in my throat, and I pulled my knees to my chin. For a moment I held on, quiet in the dark. Sounds of sleep filled the large room where we were all housed together, but I heard someone else whimpering in the darkness, someone like me, missing a loved one or wanting to go home.
    I eased down onto my side, still holding my knees to my chest. My head turned, and I studied the metal grid of the bunk above. I thought about windows on the ceiling. Maybe he was somewhere in the woods, sleeping under the stars. Maybe he was thinking of me and wondering if I were still alive, believing just like I was that we’d find each other and everything would be okay.
    I closed my eyes and breathed the musty smell of old mattresses and the sharp tang of pine needles. My mind drifted to what I’d heard behind the dining hall—about our captors calling us humans and talking about ships. It was crazy, and I still didn’t know what to think of it.
    I bet they knew I was there the whole time and staged that conversation to trick me.  They wanted me to believe they were something... alien . The word made me want to throw up, but if it was a trick, it was smart. Just like that chicken-wire fence.
    They wanted to scare me or make me think I was losing my mind. The fair guy had been watching D’Lo and me and smiling in his creepy way. He probably hoped I’d tell everybody what I heard, and we’d all be too scared to do anything. That was the most reasonable explanation. Defeat us from the inside.
    Besides, aliens had skinny little bodies and big bald heads with giant black eyes. I’d seen the pictures, and Jackson made me watch that alien autopsy show on TV.
    Chewing my lip, I remembered that second time I woke up in the room with the gun. The nurse’s eyes made me shiver in the dark. They were close to alien, but at the same time, nobody else had them. What if that was part of the trick? Plant the idea when I was drunk on anesthesia.
    Aliens glowed in the dark and made weird screeching noises. Or they busted out of people’s chests and looked like overgrown insects with machine gun arms. Not only that, the woman Cato said we were working for the common good. That was what the Communists always said. If they had ships and could leave, why hold us at all? What did they need us for?
    The only way it made sense was if it were a trick. They thought we were dumb Mississippi rednecks who could be duped into believing alien invasion stories. They expected us to go on the TV shows and talk about how we’d been probed once this was all over.
    Well, I’d show these Communist losers. I’d find Jackson and we’d both show them.
    Rolling over in my squeaky cot, I tried to go back to sleep, but my brain kept working. We were the grassroots heroes—just like in the movies. We’d identify their one weakness and exploit it. A yawn pulled my jaw hard, and I blinked a few times, picturing us hiding out, amassing an army of resisters. My eyes grew heavy, and I drifted back to sleep dreaming of Jackson taking charge and us saving the world.
    * * *
    T he loud tone