My UFO

               My UFO

        Sitting at the dinner table, watching the news, I began to wonder, “Is there more life?”  My imagination went into overdrive.  I began to imagine little green men with huge, big, black eyes the size of tennis balls.  I laughed.  The next day at breakfast I asked my mom, “Are UFOs real?”

“No, Amy, of course not.  Why would you ask that?  Now eat your breakfast.”

“I don’t know, I just, well, lately  haven’t there been a ton of UFO sightings?” I said with a mouthful of oatmeal.  She didn’t respond.  Later at school I asked Tiffany, my best friend, “Do you think UFOs are real or that guy on the news last week was just crazy?”

“Ummm.  Well.” Before I could hear her response she was cut off by the recess bell.  “Gotta go,” she called as she ran off.  

Later after school I sat on my phone googling everything about UFOs.  From every sighting and report to the chance of them being real.  

“Bedtime,” mom called from the kitchen.

“What?  But it’s only 8:30, but what about Max?”

“Max is 13.  You are 11.  So he can go to bed at 10pm,” mom said, as if explaining that 1 and 1 made 2.  

Max, my brother, looked up from his phone, confused.  

“I want to stay up,” I screamed, standing up.

“No,” mom said.

I’d never heart mom say anything like that.  Far from angry she sat down and put her head in her hands.  I forced myself to look away, and stormed up the stairs, hot headed.  I could almost see the smoke billowing out of my ears.  I turned out the lights and feigned sleep.  It was easy to pretend.  Five minutes later mom came in.  She seemed to believe it, or at least she left.  I pressed my eye to the lens of my telescope sitting behind my window.  I gazed at the stars.  They seemed to mesmerize and call me, as if my invisible flame had been extinguished.   “Was that just below the Little Dipper a UFO?” I thought to myself excitedly.  I stared amazed by my important discovery.  It would be in all sorts of magazines.  I got my phone out and filmed that black shape pressed against the shimmering stars, going to bed at 9:45. 

The next morning I woke up at 8:45, groggy and tired.  Mom glared and Max stared.

“I’m sorry mom, I shouldn’t have…” I paused, refraining from saying stayed up late, “argued,” I finished.  She pondered whether or not to accept my half-hearted apology and compromised by flashing a false smile and a single word of thanks:  “Get ready for school.”

Later at school I told Tiffany everything, expecting her to be lost for words, blown away, begging on her knees for more details, but what I did not expect was for her to cross her arms, purse her lips, and say, “No,” so flatly that she could have been my mom.  

“What do you mean no?” I asked.  

“No, it’s not possible.  Amy, tell me, was Max outside with something in his hand?  And guess what?  The UFO sighting was on April 1st” she said just as flatly.  

I wasn’t stupid enough to need help putting the pieces together.  Max was flying his drone the night I spotted the UFO and the sighting had been a prank.  We both laughed at the thought that I had believed UFOs to be real.