Gene Doucette - The Spaceship Next Door

The Oakdale Mall (everyone still called it this) also benefited greatly from being the only shopping center of consequence within a twenty-mile radius of the spaceship. Sure, there were the authentic and semi-authentic shops on Main Street, but almost without exception those shops ended up being places to stop at briefly, and not to linger. Plus, one of the things that made Main so very authentic was a thorough lack of parking.

The typical activities arc of the Sorrow Falls tourist was, in order: see the spaceship; discover the ship was not all that interesting a thing to look at; visit Main; if lucky, find parking; shop for approximately forty minutes; hear something about ‘The Oakdale Experience’ and conclude incorrectly that it was perhaps—with a name like that—an amusement park; head to the mall; spend remainder of vacation there.

One would think the town of Sorrow Falls would be interested in encouraging people to stay, perhaps by building a mall of their own, but after three years the town’s attitude toward visitors was permanently affixed somewhere between blandly courteous and get the hell off my lawn . Just about any local, when asked, would tell a visitor, “You should really check out Oakdale!” and not think twice about it. They would even offer directions.

It was one of the only places Annie visited outside of Sorrow Falls on any kind of consistent basis. It was too far to bike, though, so she had to rely on people with cars. This was also one of the reasons she didn’t have a job there, although not the only one. She also didn’t want to be too far from the ship, for more or less the same reason Mr. Shoeman and the rest of the rooftop city people couldn’t bring themselves to leave. She didn’t want to be the one who gave up waiting on something to happen right before something happened.

She also didn’t want to be too far from her mom for too long at a time.

VIOLET FOUND a spot at the top corner of the plaza; right in front a fiberglass model of the ship. It was an impressive replica, built to scale, with enough detail to pass as the real thing when one was squinting. It sat in the middle of an extra-large sidewalk in front of the movie theater, which was appropriate: it was one of the models used in the movie version of the Sorrow Falls story, donated to the town by the filmmakers as thanks for their hospitality. Naturally, the town thought the replica was tacky and immediately donated it to Oakdale.

The two things Annie thought particularly funny about the replica: first, everyone assumed it was not to scale because they thought the actual ship was much bigger; second, there was a glass case around the ship and a velvet rope around the case, to prevent anybody from touching it, meaning even when fake versions of the ship were put together, nobody could put a hand on it.

This was the most ostentatious of the dozen-or-so things in the mall that were meant to connect the Experience with the slow invasion happening up-road. That list didn’t even include the gigantic souvenir shop.

“Hello, Shippie,” Annie said to the model as they got out of the car.

“Don’t talk to it, people will stare,” Vi said.

“Ignore the olds, skatergirl, let’s go smoke some cigs.”

“…what?”

“Never mind. C’mon, I think Rachel’s working at VS now.”

“HEY, did you hear?”

Sometimes Annie liked to pretend she was a sociologist, and her job was to evaluate her own life. It was a kind of meta-distancing trick she pulled under certain circumstances, in which she saw herself interacting directly with the world while at the same time standing back and taking notes.

In the ninety-odd minutes it took to nearly complete a full circuit of the outer ring of shops—with one brief stopover at the ice cream shop at the inner building—Annie encountered over a dozen people she might call friends. Sociologist Annie’s notes listed them as fellow tribal members , with additional margin notes like potential mate and competition .

The standard greeting for this tribe would be Hey, did you hear? It was how they all said hello, and how they verified their tribal statuses. It was also the preamble to the transmission of vital social, political and legal issues concerning members of said tribe, which were of critical import to the entire unit.

None of it mattered, while at the same time all of it was terribly important. This was what Violet—who was a much more authentic sociologist, really—never entirely understood. It was true that in the proverbial Grand Scheme of Things, it wasn’t terribly important that Rachel broke up with Luke after hearing he made out with Lucy at Marko’s party—which she wasn’t even invited to! —and then got, like, sick drunk and passed out on the floor of Marko’s pool house, especially since that wasn’t half as Earth-shattering as the news that Tina was completely gay for Nona, except Nona was only pretending to be a lesbian to piss off her parents while Tina was pretending to be straight so as not to piss off her parents, which was amazing news except for the much more amazing story about Dougie shaving his entire head for no reason at all except Dougie is a dork who thinks he’s going to join the army, which is stupid because the army doesn’t let in dorks, besides which , the army wasn’t even all that cool, and oh, did you hear Rick thought he saw a vampire? No joke!

“I have an important question,” Violet said, over two burgers and a shared milkshake. They were sitting in the dining area of the bowling alley, which was not at all like a typical New England bowling alley, for a number of reasons. First, the food was actually excellent. They had the best burger at the mall, only nobody knew it because when people wanted a burger they went to one of the two places that specialized in burgers. Second, it was 100% ten-pin bowling. Most of New England bowled a version called candlestick, which used narrow pins and shot-put sized balls. It was about a thousand times more frustrating than ten-pin, which meant it served an important regional purpose of teaching local children how to swear effectively.

“Hit me.”

“Do you like any of those people?”

Annie laughed.

“How long have you wanted to ask me that?”

“About as long as I’ve known you. Or since you started trying to indoctrinate me.”

“Ooh, indoctrination. That’s definitely what I’m doing. No, come on, I’m just trying to, I don’t know, insert you into the world a little.”

“I’m perfectly happy with my degree of insertion.”

In the ninety-odd minutes of their whirlwind shopping circuit (in which there was virtually no shopping) Violet had said approximately five words, and all five of them were hi . The people of Annie’s tribe knew her exactly well enough to understand that Vi was meant to be ignored, and that she preferred it that way.

“I know you are, but it’s not healthy!”

“I’m perfectly healthy as well.”

“But I can’t be your only lifeline to the world, what if something happens to me?”

“What’s going to happen to you?”

“I don’t know, but something could! And if it did and I wasn’t around any more, your meager social skills would just wither away. A decade from now you’ll be like Nell, grunting in a cabin in the woods.”

“I already live in a cabin in the woods.”

“ That’s my point .”

Violet sighed grandly.

“All right, I will try . But seriously, the banality is difficult to stomach.”

“You are so full of it.”

“Me? How so?”

“Nobody is actually this pretentious. People have to work at it.”