I woke up with a headache and the taste of sand in my mouth. I’ve never eaten sand (that I know of), but that’s how my mouth felt. Maybe there was sand in my eyes, too, because it actually hurt to open them. After lying in bed for several moments, trying to decide if I was alive or not, I groaned and pushed back the blanket.

Whatever had been in that drink the night before, it didn’t sit well with human biology.

After a few more minutes, I tried to sit up. I failed to sit up. Maybe sitting up was the wrong thing to do. I lay there, half-covered by the blanket, feeling like I’d been run over a few times by Willie Joe’s truck.

Willie Joe … had prom been last night? Only last night? Had I been … My thoughts were as sandy as my mouth. I couldn’t seem to wake up properly. So I lay there and let the world spin around me for a while.

Not the world, I finally thought. The space ship. I wasn’t on Earth any more. I was in space, far away from Earth and my family and everyone and everything I knew. I was stuck on a spaceship going so far away that the people who kidnapped me thought I would never see Earth again. 

I heard a groan and then realized it came from me. Taking a deep breath, I heaved myself upright so I could sit on the bed. THe lights in the room were off except for a little nightlight under the bed, so I couldn’t see much. Since my eyes felt so gritty, I probably wouldn’t be able to see very well anyway.

My thoughts shifted slowly for a while as I sat there. Why was I here? I was here because of Willie Joe. He had asked me to prom, and I’d said yes. My friends had told me it was a bad idea; everyone knew Willie Joe wasn’t a good date. But I’d never been asked out before, and I wanted to know what it was like, you know?

I blinked and breathed deeply. Then I lifted myself up and stood next to the bed. My body rocked back and forth a little, but I didn’t fall over. Weren’t ships supposed to rock back and forth? Or was that only ships on water and not ships in space? This was my first time on a ship. I’d been in little boats on the lake before, but not a real ship. 

When I was sure (mostly sure) I wouldn’t fall over, I began walking to the bathroom. The shower room. The place with water so I could try to wake up. Where was it? Over there. Somewhere. I found the wall when my foot smacked into it, followed by my face.

I felt around the wall with my hands for a while before I found a control panel. I couldn’t remember how to make the door open, but I must have pressed the correct buttons because I was suddenly blinded by bright light. After blinking several times, my eyes adjusted and I could see the shower in front of me. I tripped over the door frame and stumbled inside.

Have you seen those movies where the person stands in a shower and stares at nothing? The camera slowly moves around so you can see their face (but not their body, not that anyone would want to stare at me). I stood under the warm water for so long that it turned off, and then I had to wave my arms and push at the walls until I found a way to turn it back on. 

It did help me wake up a little. I opened my mouth so I could rinse out the weird taste, and then I drank a little bit. The shower water tasted flat, like it had been sitting in a bottle for too long. Little by little, I woke up more.

These crazy things had really happened to me. It wasn’t a dream or a crazy prank. I was here.

So what was I going to do?

I didn’t have an answer then. I hadn’t had an answer any time someone asked me what I wanted to do after high school. I thought I would get a job somewhere, but I didn’t know what job. I didn’t have big dreams, you know? I just hoped that I wouldn’t be miserable.

If I thought too much about my situation, I would definitely be miserable, so I decided not to do that. What could I do?

The water turned off again, and I waved my arms to make the dryer turn on. As it blasted me with air, I thought about my choices. The aliens didn’t want me here, but they were too polite to just drop me overboard. Or push me outside into space, or whatever aliens might do on a space ship.

What were they called? It felt a little rude to keep thinking of them as “aliens”. Surely they had a word for themselves, like we call ourselves humans. They definitely had a language. Maybe I could ask for language lessons.

Wait, hadn’t I asked about that last night, right before I started crying? That was an embarrassing memory. Almost as embarrassing as realizing that my pajamas were soaked and I didn’t know where the clothes were kept.

I made the door open into my room and looked around. The lights were still low, but now that my thoughts were clearer, I could see better. Xandria wasn’t there, and no clothes were laid out on my messy bed. 

I was still a little damp from the shower, so I shivered as I walked over to the bed and pulled the blanket around myself. A quick investigation of the desk did not reveal any drawers with clothing, and I couldn’t see anything that looked like a closet. I sighed and turned to the door leading to the main room. I took a deep breath and pressed the control panel.

The swooshing door let in the light from the other room, but I was prepared. My eyes adjusted quickly enough that I could see the absolute shock on the faces of Xandria, Draxar, and Lyraan. Then their expressions changed to embarrassment, probably because they noticed I only had a blanket on, and Xandria jumped up.

The thought occurred to me that they weren’t expecting me to be awake. Had they drugged me?