THE ALIEN LANDS

Afterward Cordelia could not remember much of that night, except she spent it there at the academy. She was beyond exhausted, and tired, like she had stayed up all night preparing for one of the hardest examinations of her life. Her chest felt smaller like all the food she ate had been drained from it. She was not even hungry anymore, all she wanted to do was sleep. She felt like someone had put a dunce cap on her head, but no one seemed to have minded, Natalie Cole, that was the name of the black woman she did a scene with earlier told her it was natural to be this exhausted that when the true version of yourself was revealed it often takes a lot out of you. She also promised her that the school had contacted both her parents and explained the situation to them and that they were pleased that she got in. By that time Cordelia was tuning her out, she just wanted to pass out and go to sleep.

She let her half lead, half carry her up approximately twenty thousand flights of stairs to a small, neat room containing a platform bed with cool satin sheets. She lay down on it with her shoes still on. Mrs. Cole took them off of her – it made her feel like she was back in the palace in the Colonial home world to have someone take off her shoes for her. She covered her up, and she was asleep before Mrs. Cole was out the door.

The next morning, it took her a long, confusing set of minutes to figure out where she was. She lay in bed, slowly piecing together the memories of where she was the day before. It was a Saturday morning, and by rights she should be on her way of hanging out with Ingle and Lisa now. Instead, she was waking up in an unfamiliar bedroom wearing yesterday’s clothes. If her mother saw her like this she gets yelled at for not changing clothes. Cordelia felt regretful, like she had eaten too much at a party when she knew she had something physical to do the next morning. She wondered if this was what it was like for people on drugs to realize that they should not have taken them.

What happened yesterday? What had she done? Her memories didn’t match what she was feeling. She thought she had dreamed. But she was in the room and it wasn’t a dream. A bird landed on her window and stopped as if it was noticing something new in the room for the first time in years. There were no other sounds and that terrified her.

From where she was lying, she took a mental picture of the room she was in. The walls had brown paneling which she hated. The one thing she noticed from HGTV was that paneling brought out the worst in a room. The outer wall was brick, the inner wall had custom cabinets. Impressively, she thought. There was a custom-built writing desk in the room. She had to admit it had all the basics. Nothing to indicate that she was in danger, yet. Maybe this wasn’t a wasted opportunity. Come on Cordelia, get over this fear, act like a woman, a future actress, stand up, shake it off and figure out what the hell is going on.

She got up and padded over to a window. The stone floor felt cold on her bare feet. It was early, the sun was just coming up over the horizon, and she was very high up. Nothing scared her more than being high up in the sky. She could see the trees on the ground. She had slept for eleven hours. The bird chirped at her and flew away.

A note on the desk informed her that she would be having breakfast with Director Ashman at his earliest convince. Cordelia discovered a dormitory-style bathroom the floor below, with shower stalls and walls of modern sinks and stacks of neatly clean towels. She washed up--- the water was hotter and stronger than what she was used to at her parents’ house, and she let it blast her until she felt clean, calm, and relaxed. She took a long warm-yellow piss in the shower and watched it go down the drain. Sure, that was un-lady like, but it felt good to be free from her parents and to do what she felt like doing. It felt weird that she was not in Chicago, not at her high school, not hanging with her friends. She told herself she was on a magical adventure to a new land full of wonders and new things to explore. She wondered if her friends back in Chicago would realize that she was not there. She made herself presentable as possible in her day-old, slept-in interview suit and walked downstairs.

Cordelia noticed how deserted the place was. She was expecting to see the other students, but she had to wonder around for thirty minutes, through empty hallways and drawing rooms and classrooms and out to balconies, before the cook of the day before finally found her and deposited her in the Director’s office, which was small and mostly taken up by a desk that was bigger than the Director was. The walls were lined with an assortment of books on acting, singing, and directing.

The Director arrived a minute later wearing a light pink linen suit and white tie. She thought, a man wearing pink? I thought pink was a taboo color on Earth. He was happy as if he had taken his share of happy pills. He had already had breakfast, Ashman explains, but Cordelia would eat while they talked.

“Now.” He clapped on his knees and blinked his eyes. “That performance you gave yesterday, the best I have seen in a long time. You have the gift.”

Cordelia said nothing. She kept her face the same, her whole body carefully still in her chair. She looked at a spot over Ashman’s shoulder. She did not want to reveal what she was feeling. Certainly, he had the authority to admit into the academy anyone he wanted. Part of Cordelia, the part she trusted the leap, wanted to run for the hills and head back to Chicago. But in the light of everything that has happened to her, something was compelling her to stay. She had spent so many years praying for the Lords of the Colonial home world for an opportunity like this. The opportunity to study at a school that had the capability of making her dreams come true. She was not that easily fooled or suckered in by a scam artist.

She let Ashman talk.

“To answer your questions about last night, you are at the Arcadia Academy Music and Drama school.’ The cook arrived with a tray covered with dishes, which he hurriedly uncovered, like a room-service waiter. “Based on your performance yesterday, we’ve decided to offer you a place here. Try the sausage, it’s very good. All the food that is served here is locally grown in the area. We like to support our local farmers and local businesses through the year.”

“You want me to go to school here. University?”

“Yes. You come here instead of traveling to some dull, boring university where maybe in four years if you are lucky you might meet someone who could open the door and allow you to chase your dreams of becoming famous in Hollywood. Now, if you like it, you can even keep the room you stayed in last night.”

“But I can’t just ---“Cordelia didn’t know how to put everything that was ridiculous about the idea into a single thought. “I’m sorry, I’m a little confused. I don’t want to put off college.”

“No, Cordelia. You would not put off college. You would be getting your college education here; Arcadia Academy would be your college.” The Director had been practicing what to say to her all night. “Arcadia Academy has the connections and the clout to make your dreams of working in the arts come true. If you want to act, we know the people who can make that happen, do you like to direct, we can give you the opportunity to take a class where you learn from the best directors in the world has to offer. You would never be a delta or get a job working for a major business firm. But, you stick with us, learn the craft that we must teach you and when you are done, you can literary determine how famous you’re going to be. Arcadia can make that happen.”

“Let me get this straight. I stay here for four years, right?”

“Six, actually.”

“—At the end of which I get what? A bachelor of Arts in theater, drama?” It was kind of funny. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation,” she said to nobody.

“At which by the time you have acted in all the plays, even directed a movie, you will be an established actress. Your guidance counselor may not like this career path. No one will know what you are doing here, at least not yet, but in six years when you are done, the movie studios will be begging to come in and hire you for a role, if you like singing, you can sing anywhere in the world.”

“What about my friends in Chicago?” she asked

“Your friends would not know where you are, only that you are attending a well-funded university where you are working towards your dream of being famous without having to rely on your family’s name or their connections. Arcadia Academy would become your world. It’s not a decision to be taken lightly.”

Well, no, it wasn’t. Cordelia pushed her plate away and crossed her arms. She was trying to stall.

“How did you know I wanted to be an actress?”

“We scout all of social media.” Ashman indicated, he picked up his laptop and opened it: “we use the internet, we use word of mouth, we even have an app that we wrote that lets us find people who have untrained talent like yours.”

“What about the people at the house in Chicago?”

“They were hired actors,” he added. “They also will get IMDB credit and we paid them a nice fee for participating.”

“The guy, the dead body in the house?”

“An actor, he made the most money. I mean, if you think about it, getting paid one hundred thousand dollars to lie on the ground and pretend to be dead. You got to be an amazing actor to pull that off.

“The female paramedic was with you guys too?”

Ashman’s face became empty.

“In a manner of speaking. She dropped out of our academy after the third year, family crisis. She wants to come back, but because of a situation with her mother, she can’t get away long enough to come back and finish her studies. She has the potential to become the next Sigourney Weaver. But her mother’s health keeps her away. The academy supports her by letting her work freelance acting gigs and we compensate her well for her time. Anything to help out.”

Cordelia’s mind spun. Maybe she should ask to see a brochure. She needed to know her options. She also noticed he had not talked about money yet. She knew deep down this school had to be expensive. How did they pay for the houses on the grounds? How do they pay for the food that they use to cook? Was this a good school with connections? She had to think about what to ask next. She did not want to go to some backwards school that can’t deliver on their promises.

“I have taken the SAT’s already, but I am not happy with my current scores.”

“There is no need to worry about your SAT’s,” Ashman said patiently. “And a lot more than that. But yesterday’s Audition was all we really needed. It’s very comprehensive. Admission here is quite competitive, you know that. There are many dramas and acting schools all over the country, hell all over the world, but they are not as exclusive as ours. We have made deals with the heads of networks, the heads of movie studios, the heads of television studios that they will give our graduates first dibs at any role because they know our people are qualified. Let me put it another way, we hold six auditions this summer for thirty places. Only two passed yesterday, you and the girl name Cristina.”

“This is the only drama school in North America that can guarantee you a job when you graduate from here,” Ashman went on, leaning back behind his desk. He almost seems to take evil pleasure in the fact that Cordelia was not comfortable and unsure of herself. “Now, there are some drama schools in the UK, Japan and China, but they don’t have arrangements with the studios and networks that we do.”

“I want to know how I will have the experience and the chops to go out and say audition for a role in a movie?”

“Every year we hold a major theater production here at the Academy. We invite the studio heads and the movers and shakers in Hollywood to come and see the production when they leave here you’re going to have people begging you to come work for them.”

“I like the idea and everything you’re saying,” Cordelia leaned back, “but my parents are so over protective of me. What if they won’t like it if I come here.”

“We’ve already had a discussion with your parents and thanks to some unauthorized technology they have already given their blessing and their approval for you to be here. As far as they know, you are attending a very exclusive, very private university which isn’t that far from the truth.”

“I almost forgot, you will start right away. The new term starts in two weeks, so you won’t be able to finish your junior year and your senior year. But I really shouldn’t be telling you all of this before we’ve done your paperwork.”

Ashman took out a pen and a fat sheaf of handwritten paper that looked like a treaty between the United States of America and any foreign country.

“Christina signed yesterday,” he said. “Very talented singer that young lady is. What do you say?”

That was one hell of a sales pitch, Cordelia thought. Ashman put the papers in front of her and held out the pen. Cordelia took it, a pen so thick that it reminded her of the pens her father used back in the Colonial home world. Her hand floated over the page. This was silly. Was she really going to go to this school, throw away a potential future where she could do what her father wanted her to do. Everything: everyone she knew, Lisa and Ingle, whatever life she was going to have, everything she thought she was getting ready for. For this? This was her oh shit moment.

She stared out of the window. Ashman watched her patiently, just waiting for her to fall for it. If she cared one way or the other, she was not showing him her emotions.

Then, it happened. The flash of confidence that Cordelia was waiting for. It suddenly lifted off her heart. An invisible force field that was preventing her from moving forward. It hit her like an invisible voice. A voice that said, sign the paper Cordelia, Mount Arm-Joy is waiting for you. She then caught a glimpse of a couple of boys from the novel waving at her in the corner. She nearly jumped out of her body when she saw the faint images. She was starting to panic. But the voices told her to trust Director Ashman. Of course, she was going to sign. This was everything she always wanted. The break, she had given up on years ago. It was right in front of her, through the looking glass. She was going to sign those papers and she was going to be on her way of being an actress, on her terms, otherwise, what the hell was she going to do with her life?

“Okay,” Cordelia said evenly. “All right. On one condition: I want to start now. I want to stay in that room. I don’t want to go home.”

They did not make her go home. Instead, her things arrived from home in a collection of suitcases and boxes that were taped up, packed with her parents, who had, as Ashman promised, being okay with the idea that their only child was suddenly transferred schools in the middle of the semester at a mysterious educational institution that they never visited or heard of. Cordelia slowly unpacked her clothes and her books and put them away in the cabinets and cubical in the little room. Director Ashman told her that cable television was provided to all the students because homework would involve them watching movies and television shows. She would not need her clothes unless she was going off campus, which Director Ashman said would be a rare thing. Everything that she would need would be provided for her on campus, food, clothing, shopping, everything. She didn’t even want much to do with her old life, sans some of the pictures she cherished growing up and her laptop which was sent from home. The only thing missing was the book the paramedic gave her, the one which told the story of her new life. When she inquired about it, Director Ashman and the cook plead ignorance.

Sitting alone in her room, her folded clothes around her on the bed, she thought about Lisa and Ingle. I would totally kill to know what they are doing and thinking right now. Did they miss her? Now that she was gone, would they realized that they were wrong for each other all along? She should probably get in touch with them somehow. Though to be honest, what the hell could she say? She wondered what would have happened if Ingle had taken the exam, as well. Maybe that was part of the test.

She let herself cry a little at the thought of not seeing her friends ever again, she stopped bracing for the cosmic blow she knew, she felt deep in the pit of her stomach that was coming. She was starting to let herself be open to the possibility that maybe, just maybe the universe was going to let her have a win for once.

With nothing else to do, Cordelia roamed through the huge house, unsupervised and unaccompanied. The Director and the instructors were nice enough when she ran into them, but they had their own classes to teach and their own problems that they had to deal with. Cordelia read about the island of Jamaica when she first got to Earth. She was fascinated with that island and begged her parents to take her there. The hotel décor reminded her of what she would see and read about on the internet, empty rooms, empty gardens and empty hallways. She ate her meals alone in her room, loitered in the library --- naturally they had the full collections of Harry Potter, who she has fallen in love with since arriving on Earth. One day, she made her way to the Gold building and spent the entire afternoon in the building reading Harry Potter for full enjoyment.

Sometimes, she burst out laughing, for no reason. She was worried that if she got happy for too long, the universe would punish her for being happy. Cordelia would go down to the gym and take a relaxing dip in the pool. The water always calmed her, made her feel better. She lifts weights when she was certain no one was watching her. Staying physically fit was important to her. She did not want an ounce of fat on her body, ever. She knew comedy was not her strong suit and telling jokes was something she was terrible at. She wasn’t like Ingle, who was a natural at comedy. Like he always said it was timing and that was something she felt like she did not have. In Chicago, she had been trying to fit in for the last year. At her school and the people who were working there. She felt like her life was meaningless. Or maybe it was the other way around, being at this school served a purpose. She just could not make out what it was yet.

She didn’t spend all her time alone. Occasionally she spotted Damien from a distance, loping across the empty green or resting his back against the wall. He had an air of perfect symmetry about him, somewhere between infinity and the Borg from her favorite Star Trek series. Cordelia often wondered why he spent the in between semesters here at the campus. Did he have a family? Where was he from?

One day Cordelia was walking the edge of the great lawn when she came across Damien leaning against the tree, a sonic burger in his hand and reading a play he had planned on presenting as part of his fourth-year thesis project in the spring. It was the same spot where they first met. Cordelia also noticed a second bag full of food.

“Want one?” Damien asked politely. He stopped reading and picked up the second bag and handed it over to her. They hadn’t spoken since Cordelia’s first day at Arcadia Academy.

“How do you manage to get Sonic all the way out here?” she proudly accepted it as she loved their burgers. “Mr. Maxwell goes into town once a week and asks if I want one. I figured that you might want one too, that’s why I asked him to buy too.”

“Cordelia had never met anyone so staggeringly and unapologetically affected before. When she had first met Damien, she was not sure how to react to him. In fact, Damien came off as being cold and unsociable towards her, but the fact that he had brought her something that she had been craving for days made her change her mind about him.

“You are a life savior,” she said.

Damien looked at her appraisingly. He was starting to warm up to her as well.

“Very true and if we wait about five minutes, Mr. Maxwell will be coming back with ice cream for us.”

“Get the fuck off the planet,” she said, “for real, sonic ice cream?”

The burger tasted as Cordelia had imagined. It was hot, it had chili, the cheese was melted and it had just the right amount of onions on it. As she bit into it, she savored every bite she had in her mouth. It reminded her of those days when her parents were not looking that she would sneak out of the house, run five blocks up the street to the local sonic, grab a burger and fries and make it back before they realize she was missing. Fun times in her mind.

“I said eat it, not have sex with it,” Damien said curtly.

“I’m sorry, but you have no idea. Since coming to this planet, Sonic is my favorite place to eat and if my parents knew I was eating this right now, they blow a gasket.”

“Well, this is what true freedom feels like,” Damien said as he grabbed his drink and took a sip. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does.”

They enjoyed the rest of the afternoon together. Maybe he felt guilty for giving Cordelia a demanding time the first day they met, or maybe Damien decided that being alone was greater than enjoying her company. Maybe he just needed a friend. A role which Cordelia was happy to play.

“You’re a freshman and like everyone else you’re going to notice that the weather down here in Georgia is the same as if it was in June. But when winter decides to show up, winter will come with a vengeance and you’ll feel it.”

“Has it ever snowed down here?”

“It has on occasion, but a large snow storm is rare in Georgia.”

Cordelia did not know whether to act awestruck as she tried to produce an imitation of trying to act cool when she did not feel that way. She thought the best thing to do was to change the subject.

“Do you think we will have any say in our schedules during our first year? Is Director Ashman flexible?”

“No,” Damien beamed as he bit into his burger, “You don’t have any choice about your schedule your first year. Henry” --- Damien only ever referred to Director Ashman by his first name --- “makes everybody do the same thing. Are you intelligent?”

There was no way she could wisely answer the question.

“I like to think I am.”

“Don’t worry about it, everyone here is. If they brought you in for the audition, you were the smartest person in your school, even smarter than the teachers if you can believe that. Everyone here is smart in their own little way. Except now that we’re all on the totem pole in this grand little experiment together. I hate to burst your bubble, but for the first time in your life, people are going to be equal to you and that’s got to make you feel better or you may not like it. It’s hard to say right now.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” Cordelia answered, “I mean I felt different all of my life. It would be nice to be in a place where I didn’t feel like the freak, the outsider.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about that here. The work is different too. It’s not going to be what you think. You won’t be handed a bunch of pages and be told to act on some scenes. There’s reasons why most people who sit in front of a computer, try to write something ultimately fail at it. Writing is just not in their genes.”

“What about acting?” asked Cordelia.

“You have a talent Cordelia. I saw it the day you auditioned and I’m sure the teachers here also saw it because you were the topic of conversation. The acting you’re going to do here is hard, and they’re not going to drop the matter. Everything you do here will be added to your imdb page. Are you familiar with the IMDB?”

“Somewhat, I know it keeps track of what you acted in.”

“A page is being set up for you as we speak. Only the teacher can add and take away your credits. When you leave here in six years you’re going to look so attractive to the movie studios that they will be tripping over themselves to offer you parts in their movies.”

“What if I want to do television?”

“You’ll be trained to do anything your heart’s desire.”

“Even singing?”

“If you got the chops for it, I don’t see why not.”

Silent for a while, they walked along a lush, pencil-straight isle of trees heading back towards the lawn. By now, Cordelia had finished the burger and was starting on the tater tots.

“Listen, I don’t want to be nosy or anything,” Cordelia said, “but you know eating burgers like this have a lot of calories. Do you have some way of staying thin while eating food like this?”

“It’s kind of you to ask. I go into town, kill a bunch of girls and dump their bodies in a place the cops will never find them. Then, the power that comes from their bodies keeps me young and sexy, forever.”

After that Cordelia saw Damien most days. Damien spent one entire afternoon teaching Cordelia how to navigate the hedge maze that separated the House ---“as everyone calls it” --- from the great lawn which was officially named Summer’s Lawn after the first African-American director the Academy had. There were a series of trees that blocked the director’s view of the rest of the campus. There were six fountains scattered through the maze and each one had a name and a mark of paint on it so that people navigating could automatically figure out where in the Maze he was located. The hedges were cut in such a way that it resembled some animals, including tigers, lions, cats. They moved along slowly. Eventually Cordelia learned the markers to look for. One day, Damien sent her into the Maze by herself. She came out of the other end on her own. She felt proud about that.

On the last day before classes began, Damien led her around to the front part of the house, which looked out on to the Hampton River. There were trees between the front terrace and the river of wide stone steps that led down to what the students call the boat shed. They decided on that spot that the day was so pretty that they had to go out onto the water. As Damien pointed out, they were both acting superstars how hard could it be to row a damn boat?

With a lot of grunting and yelling at each other, they were fighting a long wooden double scull down from the rafters. It reminded her of a war tiger from the Colonial home world minus the butt ugly smell that would knock her on her ass upon smelling it. They got good at it and Cordelia was enjoying herself. She had always wanted to take a boat out on the water, but her parents would never let her do that. They developed a cool, steady rhythm with it. Cordelia was not out of shape, but Damien was but that didn’t stop them from enjoying the experience.

They got about half a mile upstream before the summer day vanished and became chilly. It was the Colonial technology that had been given to the Academy that affects the weather around the school. They quickly tried to navigate back towards the protection of the school and its grounds and when the temperature changed back and warmed up. They both let out a laugh that could be heard all over the woods.

The two of them were exhausted and allowed the currents to take them back. Damien laid against the skull. Before they left the cook game them ice cream from Sonic. Damien had the ice cream in a cooler designed to keep food cold, so that the ice cream would not melt. He handed one to Cordelia. She never felt out of place around him and in fact, the more she thought about it, Damien had become her first true Earther. The first boy she met who wasn’t from her home world who didn’t bow to her because of her bloodline or who didn’t kiss her ass. That was one of the main reasons she felt so comfortable around Damien. She saw him as a big brother. Her introduction to Earth culture.

“My parents were not nice people,” he said, “They ran a hard life of crime. My mother was a prostitute. She went to bed with men for money while my dad was a member of the 19th Street boys.”

“The 19th street boys?” Cordelia said, “that sounds like a boy band.”

Damien let out a hearty laugh. He was starting to like Cordelia. Not because she was a half black and half white woman from outer space, he liked her for the fact that she had an innocence about her that needed not to be corrupted by the harsh realities that being on Earth was going to offer her.

“Now, if only it was that simple. No, the 19th street boys were the most dangerous criminal game in Miami’s history. Since the nineteen seventies. My dad’s criminal record is so long that many thought he would be a danger to me. I turned to acting to try and escape the life of crime that had surrounded me and when I came to Arcadia Academy, I asked Henry if I could stay here in between semesters so I wouldn’t have to go home and worry about being sucked into that life. I want to get out of Miami and go somewhere that I am not surrounded by crime all the time.”

“Your life sounds so sad,” Cordelia said as she put her hand on his left shoulder.

“You probably feel sorry for me,” he went on airily. He wore a series of newly purchased jeans that he brought with his own money, which gave him an average street kid look. “You shouldn’t, you know, since coming here and being at this school I am so happy. I have a chance to act in an action movie this summer as part of my school project. Rumor has it Samuel L. Jackson is going to be in the movie as well as providing the financing for it. If I do an excellent job this summer, that will go a long way towards my final grade in my Movie Project class.”

Cordelia hadn’t realized how hard-won Damien’s air of innocence must be. That façade of lofty indifference must hide the problems that were going on in real life. Cordelia liked to think of herself as some sort of regional champion of unhappiness, she wondered if Damien had her outclassed on that score, too.

As they drifted home, they were passed by a few other boats, sailboats and cruisers and a hard-charging nine-woman, three men scull out of West Point, they waved at the two. Cordelia and Damien waved back at them. They couldn’t understand why Damien and Cordelia were dressed the way they were. The teams all went on about their day while Damien and Cordelia laughed their asses off all the way back to the Arcadia Campus.