Day 452: 5 Minute Freewrite: Tuesday - Prompt: orbit

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The sun rises and sets

around Renda, who wasn't the prettiest girl at Pittman High until she found a makeup tutorial on YouTube, but she has "it," the charisma and the chutzpah to make everyone fall into her orbit. Everyone but me, the rogue planet, the girl she threw under the bus when we left middle school behind.

I helped her with math and science. She'd have flunked if not for me but I'm the one she framed when the school's computers were hacked. Everyone believed Renda. She knew all the flattering words, all the body language, all the subterfuge of war. Why did power matter so much to a girl who had more than her share of it already? It wasn't enough that the town of Pittman elevated her to a virtual queendom. She wanted to rule the world.

And I'd helped create this monster. If she needed to look good, I upvoted her MyFace photos and got her videos to go viral and spread the word whenever she was marching five miles to raise money for kids with cleft palate in Guatemala or lunch money for the refugee kids. As long as the refugees were obviously different from the fair-skinned kids of Pittman High, it was cool to make a show of welcoming them and raising funds for their families. She made a hue and cry about "illegal aliens" being the most offensive term since "harelip." Judenfolk, however, were safe targets for her Broad-Mindedness.

My people were here first but we were not warriors. We were peacemakers, and what was our reward? We'd been segregated on the outskirts of town. The toxins in our well were "accidental" acts of nature, beneath the concern of Renda the Do-Gooder who'd purge the world of bigots and oppress the allegedly oppressive Judenfolk. Grandma and I had survived by brewing beer instead of drinking the contaminated water from our tap. Highly illegal, in Pittman, but Renda didn't know everything. She was better at pretending than actually learning. No matter what she said or did, everyone in Pittman would "ditto that" and rally to her cause.

When the ship descended from the sky and landed in a cornfield behind Pittman High, the real aliens entered our world, or "intruded," Renda said. At first an impenetrable bubble of some kind of high-density plastic surrounded their ship, which looked like a cylinder. Renda led marchers around the bubble, chanting and waving signs that spelled out "Go Back Home" to the green humanoids who disembarked.

I didn't have time for Renda's nonsense. My grandma knew where the beer caves used to be in the days before refrigerators, so she unlocked the door hidden behind our fridge and we climbed down the steep, narrow stairs, stepped over damp brick floors, our headlamps lighting the way, and walked, and walked, until Grandma calculated we must be standing right under the space ship. Using her cane, she tapped on a door in Morse code, "We come in peace." I don't know how she and Renda figure aliens should be able to speak our language, but it worked. The door opened.

A green man and a green boy who appeared to be the equivalent of a teenager stared at us. We stared back.

"We want to welcome you," Grandma said. "Whoever you are, you just can't be any worse than Renda Hartzell and her minions marching around your ship."

"An old one," the boy said. "Let's keep her."

The adult greenie shook his head. "Only if she wants to join us." He looked at me. "You caused a major blip in the force field around this Renda creature. We've been following your science blog with great interest ever since."

Uh-oh. I had some pretty crazy things at that blog.

"We would like to see the earth split open and swallow that Renda creature whole," the boy said. "You have the ideas, and we have the technology. Would you like to press the button?"

Grandma and I traded stares of wonder and horror. Would I? Would I?

"I'm afraid you may not grasp satire," I said. "I didn't really intend to vaporize, or dismember, or annihilate Renda."

Grandma stamped her cane and stood straighter. "I would. Take me to this button."

"Come." The green man took her by the arm and led her up the steps and through a trap door, into the bubble. Renda and the mob stopped chanting when we stood beside the two greenies and stared out at the Pittman minions.

"I don't know about this, Grandma." I felt queasy and sorry for all the diabolic plots I'd secretly blogged about. I never even published those blogs. How was I to know it wasn't just Russian hackers but tall green men from across the universe who'd intercept my secret ramblings? Admittedly, I did try to send radio signals to other worlds, but I never dreamed I might actually alert space aliens who could overcome the time barrier and find me during my lifetime.

"Think of it as a purge," the green man said. "Like weeding your garden. Or flushing the toilet."

"These are people, not weeds."

"So you believe. We think otherwise."

Grandma held me in her sad, faded blue gaze. "The world isn't what it used to be. I say we flush the toilet."

Renda was screaming at us but I couldn't hear the words. Her shaking fist, the gaping hole of her mouth under her flashing eyes, and the way everyone fell into place around her just made something snap inside me.

If my science blog caught the interest of green men from another world, and they wanted to erase Renda from the world, I really didn't have the power to stop them. Right?

Grandma's finger hovered over the button.

"Wait! Will it hurt? Will they die?" I couldn't help but worry about these kids, however mean they'd been to me. Tempting as it was, I didn't want the responsibility of playing Judge and Executioner.

"You have another option," the man said. "Push Button Number Two, not One, and we take you away. Whatever harm Renda does to your world will be of no concern. You'll be in another galaxy."

"Why should I shoulder the burden of choosing her fate?" I cried out. "You have more information and technology at your green fingertips than I do. You decide."

"Good answer."

The man nodded and the boy reached for Button Number.....

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