Lightspeed: Year One

“I can’t get pregnant the human way. It’s got to be my own pollen. You’re not even the right species.”

“A girl who can’t get pregnant,” I say. “The boys are going to love that.”

She shrugs. She doesn’t even care that she just lost her cherry. It doesn’t even faze her.

“So did you orgasm all over good ole Skippy?” I ask. “Was he good? Can Jupitarians even get off?”

“You’re so stupid,” she says. “Would a species survive if they couldn’t orgasm?”

“Screw you,” I say. I grab my towel and shower caddy and slam the door behind me. Emily, our next-door neighbor, is just leaving for class.

“God,” I say, “that Bibi is such a whore. I wish she’d warn me before she fucks guys in the room.”

Emily says, “Really? Bibi? I didn’t know she could. We were wondering about that.”

“Yeah,” I say. “She’s a little bitch.”

“Didn’t she go to your house?” Emily says. “I thought you were friends.”

“Not anymore.”

I pound down the hall as hard as I can, though flip-flops don’t make much noise. I slam the bathroom door to let the whole floor know Bibi’s a skank. I let the hot water wash over my back. “Slut,” I say under my breath. And then a little louder, “At least I’m not a slut like you are.” I say it as though I’m talking to someone in the opposite shower stall. “You’re such a slut,” I say again and imagine Bibi across from me. I say it once more, almost shout it, “You’re the biggest slut in the galaxy, and I wish you’d go back to the moon!”

I’m not sure if it was Skippy who spread the word or Emily. It might even have been me, proclaiming loudly from the shower stall that day. Whoever it was, my bra ended up on the door an awful lot the next month. I left a note on her desk that said, “Stay the hell away from my underwear drawer.”

Bibi did a different guy nearly every day. I saw one of those little black books on her desk. She had all the boys on the hall penciled in. There were even some names I didn’t know. She really had turned into a whore. I wondered if they paid her or if she did it for free. I missed the old Bibi. The Bibi who forgot her shoes. The Bibi who studied all night. The Bibi who didn’t know jack shit about boys.

We didn’t talk anymore. We just came and went as though we didn’t know each other. I moved my futon into Emily’s room and slept there most of the time. I wondered what would become of Bibi. I figured her grades would plummet, and she’d get kicked out of school. But when I got back from Christmas break, her marks were posted to the wall, nine A’s. She’d completed a whole year of college in four months.

I’m not sure how she kept it up, the sex and the studies. Her second semester she upped her course load to ten. They even let her into a graduate class. Like I said, if you’re not from America, they let you get away with that shit.

Then around February she starts looking greener. I wonder if she has that seasonal depression thing. Then one day, I get back to my room, and Bibi’s jumping all over her bed. She’s got the music cranked as high as it goes, some god-awful Broadway crap, and she’s singing, “I feel pretty. Oh so pretty.” And she’s wearing this outfit that’s half her clothes and half mine with my sparkly panties around her head.

“What the hell’s going on?” I say. “I thought I told you not to touch my stuff.”

She jumps off her bed and dances this little jig. She looks so goddamn ridiculous I have to laugh.

“Did you find some solution to Jupiter’s baby problem?” I ask. “Is your research going well?”

“No,” she says. “I’m pregnant.”

“You’re not,” I say. “I thought you couldn’t.”

“Well, it’s not like I had proof it was impossible,” she says. “I guess it is. I’m pregnant with a half-human baby.” At this, she bursts out laughing. Pollen puffs out her ears in yellow clouds.

“Who?” I say. “Whose baby is it?”

“A boy’s,” she says. “A human boy’s.” And then she’s surrounded by pollen again. She swirls it around with her hands. “Can you believe that?”

“Are you going to keep it?” I say. “If you give birth, it’ll kill you, right?”

“I’m giving birth to the first half-human, half-Jupitarian baby ever!” she screams. She rips the panties off her head and twirls them in the air.

“Can’t you get an abortion? Those are common here. They’ll get rid of it. You’ll be fine.”

“I don’t want an abortion,” she says. “I want to be eaten alive.”

I didn’t know what to say. She’d turned ten types of crazy. It must have been that euphoria she told me about. I began to wish I had a normal human roommate I could take to the abortion clinic so things would be better. I’d never had a friend with a life-threatening illness. Only grandfathers and uncles. And they died. There was nothing I could do. Bibi had lost it. Her condition was terminal, and she didn’t even care.

In the weeks that followed, Bibi stopped seeing the boys. I moved my futon back into our room, and we started talking again. I became Bibi’s bodyguard, shielding her from all the male scum on the floor. Boys would stop by and say, “I’m here for some alien sex.”

I’d say, “Fuck off, asshole.” And they’d go away.