Chapter 11

There was still pizza left to be eaten.

Well, technically, not pizza. Pizza pods. Real pizza would be a bit impractical, given the cooking situation. There was no way to cook something flat so all the ingredients stayed on the dough, so instead Tammy and Melinda had wrapped cheese, sauce, and other goodies in dough and baked that. Technically that probably made it a calzone, but Pizza Plant called them "pods" so they were going with that. Didn't turn out that bad, either. They probably shouldn't have let the dough sit overnight, but for a first attempt it was very good. Same with the wings. Anthony had donated his mother's recipe, which was hot but not TOO hot. Much better than most of the commercial crap. (if it says "Buffalo Style", it's not)

Hannah watched, amused, as Rinda took a tentative nibble on a wing. The Orang's had nothing in their culture against eating meat, they just generally didn't. Maybe all the good tasting stuff had gone extinct. The blue furred girl rolled the piece of drumstick in her mouth, considering the flavor. Hannah counted. Three, two...

"Ah!"

The humans broke into laughter as Rinda let go of the wing and grabbed her water bottle. Chuck, rescuing the fleeing wing, dipped it into the dish of blu cheese. Holding it out for her, he grinned.

"Try it now. Come on, it's not that bad!"

Her eyes turned to him, wary now. Slowly, she took the wing with her left hand, right still clutching her drink as if ready to put out the fire. Eyes staying locked on Chuck, she brought it to her mouth and took another bite, this time with the cold blu cheese. Her eyes widened in surprise.

"Mmm!"

Chuck turned to the others.

"We'll make Buffalonians out of them yet!"

"So, have any of you heard of the vanishing Park Edge?"

Dinner was over, apart from the nibbling. Two dozen wings remained, eyed by all as they mentally calculated what could be grabbed without seeming to be greedy. Hannah took another sip of her beer, looking over the table. This had been a great idea. Everyone was relaxed, happy. It had been a taste of home. Later, she suspected, for some that reminder of home would bring sadness, but then maybe not. Already it seemed like this was how life had always been. Life on Earth, back with family and friends ... it was a dream. She had always felt that way as a kid at summer camp, the day before leaving. There would be no leaving this, though...

Justin, sitting on one side of Daium while Alicia surprisingly sat on the other side of her, pushed up his glasses and looked up at Hannah.

"What the hell is a Park Edge?"

"It's the edge of a park, doofus!" Melinda laughed, sticking her tongue out at him. Chuck, next to her, let out an exaggerated sigh, asking the world to feel sorry for what he had to put up with. He turned to his roommate.

"So, what, you think she's talking about some suburban sprawl gone bad?"

"I don't know! Ask her!" Grabbing her half empty beer, her second, Melinda took a swig. Pausing to let out a burp, she looked back at Hannah. "So, what IS a park edge?"

"It's a supermarket that vanished in the 70's."

Hannah had their attention now. Anthony, on her right, put a hand on her knee under the table while giving her a puzzled look. She put her own hand on his knee.

"I honestly never remembered it until today, Honey. I went up into the store office to look for some things, and tucked away was an old Park Edge flyer and it brought back the memory."

"Wait." Alicia leaned forward, breasts taking the lead. "Are you saying ... we're not the first?"

1978. Next to the recently built Eastern Hills Mall, on the border of suburban Williamsville and the, at that time, rural town of Clarence, was a small plaza. It consisted of Child World on one end, a couple restaurants on the other, and in the middle ... Park Edge Grocery Store.

There was nothing special about it, just one of many stores under the umbrella of local chains. Every day its employees came to work, trying to do more for their customers to keep them from visiting the competition: Super Duper, Tops, Bells. The local market was fierce. Every Thanksgiving stores gave away free turkeys to those who collected enough Turkey Stamps, every Easter they gave away free hams. Anything to win a few more shoppers.

One night, during a rare spring blizzard ... the store vanished.

"I remember my dad mentioning it, years ago, when I first got a job at a supermarket. It was a ghost story to scare me. It was written off as some sort of freak fire, he said, or explosion, even though there was no sign of either. Just a hole between the two ends of the plaza."

"Oh, God," Nona groaned, hands going to her head, "this makes no sense."

"What, it did before?" Alicia just laughed at her. Nona shook her head.

"I could pretend this was God, or the universe, punishing me, or you guys, or maybe that it was just one of those things. But ... it happened before?!? What, something out there is collecting supermarkets? It's so stupid!"

Chuck raised his beer.

"To stupid gods!"

Tammy was deep in thought, finally shaking her head.

"I ... seem to remember the name, at least. I think there was one near where I grew up in the Southtowns. Never heard this story, though. Jesus..."

"Don't think he did it," Anthony put in, cheerfully, "although if we find him out here we can ask."

"You do that," Nona told him dryly. Taking a deep breath, then letting it out, she looked at Hannah. "Any other stories we should know about? Furry aliens searching the Earth for the best wing recipe?"

"Nope," Hannah told them, sighing. "At least, nothing else important. Just stupid local legends, like that fallout shelter in the gypsum mine. My family has been in the area for awhile."

"How come," Justin asked, "I never heard any of this?"

Melinda took another beer out of the case, floating it over to him.

"Too much reading, not enough drinking."

Nona's attempt to slip out of the Commons without much fuss didn't go unnoticed. As she stepped into the doorway leading to the main corridor, Daium gently held her arm.

"You are not staying for the movie?" Her eyes, behind those glasses, seemed concerned. Nona noticed, though, that she spoke English. She was confident enough now to not even slip back into her native tongue when just speaking to Nona. That, she thought, was incredible.

"No, I'm ... I'm tired, Daium. Just tired. I want to be alone." Her friend, and she did see Daium as such, slowly nodded. Her hand slid up and down Nona's arm, almost petting her, then let go.

"Sleep well."

Nona closed her bedroom door behind her, locking it. Letting out a sigh, she removed her clothing. First the bikini top, freeing breasts as yet unseen by any non-doctor male, then the bottoms where the same was definitely true of what was revealed there. It's not the same, she thought. There was always this great sense of release when she retreated to her room at home and shed her clothing, as if she was shedding all the day's problems. She was no longer wearing enough for the same to be the case here.

Maybe she should try and scrounge fabric for a burka.

Yeah, right. That would help.

Almost without thinking, Nona grabbed her phone from where it was charging against the wall. Flicking it on, her finger went to the photos icon.

She had almost deleted it. That's how angry she had been, in the week leading up to all this. She had almost deleted her photos of her parents. Especially this one. Her dad, taken at his last birthday. Dad, smiling, happy. He...

She didn't blame them, for how she turned out. Nona had aged enough in the past week to truly understand it was all on her. On how she had reacted to the world outside her family. Especially, the way she found herself now.

She had abandoned God, and now couldn't find him.

It was the fault of her friends...

No, no, don't blame them. It was ... not their influence, really, but her reaction to it. That was it.

Nona was Muslim. Daughter of two immigrants, Malaysian students who met at the University of Buffalo and decided to stay. That hadn't been the original intent, naturally. Both had planned on returning to friends and family. But, graduating a year before Mom, Dad had found a job at a local company so they wouldn't be separated. When Mom herself was offered a job upon graduation, well...

She couldn't blame her actions on not being raised well. Her parents did their best. They taught her to love God, that he loved her, and all the joy that relationship had. She loved being a Muslim. It was, well, what made her, her! All her little friends were children of her parent's friends, with the same beliefs, the same life. It was, well, how the world was.

Then she went to school.

It is one thing to have your friends picked out for you, to form bonds based on a small group around you. It is another once you are part of a large crowd. There, old bonds break and new ones form, based on personalities and interests. By the end of Kindergarten, she was part of a second circle. A circle of girls, and a few boys, unlike the other. Christians, Jews, even a Hindu. They accepted her, brought her in, showed her an entire new world.

Children do not see religion as adults do. It is not about dogma, faith, truth. Nor is it about NOT believing the religion of others. Sarah going to temple instead of a mosque was just something she did, no different than the fact that her parents had different jobs than Nona's. It wasn't even something to talk about with her parents, because who cared?. Now, if kids DON'T like each other, then such differences do become important, the subject of teasing, harassment.