Nanny for the Alien Lord by Tammy Walsh

 

Belle

The Choer NewYear’s Ball was the biggest, most exciting event in the entire galaxy’s calendar.

The creme de la creme took part and anyone who was anyone was invited.

The biggest and most successful business entrepreneurs, the most powerful politicians, the most beautiful holo movie stars, and other famous creatures seemingly famous for being, well, famous.

And amongst the cream of upper-class society?

Little ol’ me.

I felt like a hobo at the Academy Awards.

My mouth felt dry and I could hardly control my nerves.

I shouldn’t be here!

I found myself hoping the ticket my sister had bought me was a fake.

At least then I wouldn’t have to face all those judgmental, condemning eyes from the creatures with egos the size of dumper trucks.

Cannons fired and showered the photographers and ticketless bystanders with multi-colored strips of plastic that rained from the purple twilight sky.

Always nice to be reminded of how good the party you hadn’t been invited to was, I thought.

For as long as I could remember, I wanted to walk the halls of the Choer New Year’s party.

I watched it on TV as a youngster back on Earth, enjoying the spectacle of the intergalactic superstars turning up at the event to end all events.

Now I was here, it didn’t seem quite so mesmerizing.

It was terrifying.

As I ascended the red-carpeted steps, the photographers turned their attention to me.

They looked me over head to toe, deciding whether or not I was worth snapping a photo of, if I was someone their readers might be interested in.

To a man, their eyes slid past me and looked for someone better to snap.

A pink limousine pulled up and a young teenage starlet climbed out with her equally young crooner boyfriend.

The photographers pivoted with the poise of a preeminent ballerina and snapped with bulbs so bright they almost blinded me.

The celebrity couple sauntered up the steps past me and handed over their tickets.

They were allowed through immediately, the photographers calling after them in their wake.

The funny thing was, I had no idea who the celebrities were.

They looked like a regular pair of teenagers to me.

Normal for this planet, anyway.

The starlets sported horns that had only just begun to come in and wouldn’t stop growing until they came of age.

Someone cleared their throat behind me.

I turned to find a powerfully built member of the security team who appeared to have been sewn into his suit.

He was the meanest looking creature I’d ever seen.

“Ticket,” he growled.

“Oh,” I said, reaching into my clutch purse. “Give me a sec.”

I rifled through my purse.

For such a small bag, it sure held a lot.

The guard just stared at me.

Unmoving, unwavering.

A statue held more expression.

I scabbled at the purse’s tiny corners.

“I swear, this thing must be a Magic Bag of Holding with the amount of stuff it contains!”

The guard didn’t give any indication he understood my Harry Potter reference.

Doubtful, I decided, considering movie distribution deals didn’t reach galactic proportions until after we made contact with aliens.

I felt the end of the ticket with my fingertips and dug a little deeper.

“Ah!” I exclaimed. “Here it is!”

I placed it in the creature’s oversized clawed hands.

I licked my lips and don’t mind admitting my mouth was drier than a dung beetle’s asshole.

I couldn’t wait to get inside and relieve my parched throat.

That is, if the ticket my sister bought really was genuine.

The creature fingered the ticket and then glanced up at me.

And I knew right then, I wasn’t going to get in.

Abbie’d had such high hopes too…

“Close your eyes,” she said breathily as she tucked my birthday present under her shirt. “No peeking!”

I said, “Just give it to me—”

Abbie slapped my hand aside and scowled at me.

“You know the rules!”

I sure did.

Living alone with your one and only sister on a distant alien planet meant you learned her every foible and strange little habit.

Over the past seven years, we’d developed private traditions for everything.

That was what tended to happen when everything you held dear had been stripped from you.

It was worse for Abbie.

I only lost my parents.

She also lost the use of her legs.

All it took was a so-called “professional” driver to be one unit over the drink-driving limit to kill our parents, take my sister’s legs, and ruin our lives.

It made us realize how important we were to each other.

I was nineteen at the time, Abbie twenty-one.

I dropped out of college to take care of her.

We were the only family we had left.

When the bills for Abigail’s treatment began to pile up, we had no choice but to sell our parents’ house and use what little inheritance money we received.

Abigail eased her wheelchair a little closer to our tiny dining table.

I covered my eyes with both hands and waited as she placed her gift in front of me.

“All right,” she said. “Open them.”

I found a handmade envelope sitting perched upright on its unglued flap.

On the front was written:

TO THE BEST SISTER IN THE WORLD!

Abigail had pushed the boat out and festooned the envelope with glitter.

For such a talented dressmaker, it was amazing to me that none of her talent extended to other areas of design.

“Did a three-year-old help you with this?” I said, arching an eyebrow at her.

“Who doesn’t love bling?” she protested. “Open it! I can’t wait to see your face!”

I opened the envelope and my jaw hit the floor.

The invitation to the Choer New Year’s Ball glinted golden inside the mauve envelope like stardust.

Stardust was a good analogy.

That was precisely how rare they were.

“Is it genuine?”

“Of course it’s genuine!”

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s got one of those fancy hologram stickers on it! See?”

I rubbed a finger over it, producing a hologram of a pair of dancers.

“And why would anyone want to make fake invitations anyway?” Abbie said defensively.

“Uh, because the real ones cost a thousand credits?”

“Only chumps pay full price!” Abbie announced.

I ran a discerning eye over her expression.

That was another thing that happened when you lived with someone day in and day out.

You learned to read their body language and expressions so well it was almost as if you could read their mind.

“Abbie, how much did this cost?”

Abbie licked her lips.

“Much less than a thousand credits!”

She turned to wheel away.

I jammed my foot under the wheel to stop her.

“Abbie? Where did you get the money to buy this?”

Her eyes darted left and right, worse than the guilty look on a child’s face.

“Abbie…” I said with soft condemnation.

“I… I might have sold a few things.”

“What things? We don’t have anything!”

When we moved to Zev, we got screwed on the house.

It had more holes than Swiss cheese and was in constant need of repair.

No sooner had one thing been fixed than another beckoned for help.

We figured we’d save money versus having to rent, and so far that decision had bitten us on the ass.

Whenever we turned the water tap on, there was a loud and ominous knocking sound from behind the kitchen wall.

Abbie lowered her head and gave the impression of a beaten puppy.

“I just… thought you deserved something special,” she said sadly. “You work so hard and deserve a little fun. You know, for putting up with me.”

She damn near broke my heart.

I took her hands in mine.

“You’re worth putting up with, babe. Even if you are a colossal pain in my ass.”

Abbie wiped a hand under her nose and peered up at me through her milk bottle glasses that made her eyes swell to twice their normal size.

I kissed her on the back of her hands and wiped them with my thumbs.

“Seriously, I never need to put up with you. You’re never in the way. Ever.”

I looked at her meaningfully.

“You’re my sister,” I said.

“And so am I,” she said around a toothy grin.

It was an affectation we shared from a young age.

I peered closer at the invitation.

It was a thoughtful gift but we really could have done with the money instead.

“Where did you even buy it?” I asked.

Please don’t say Whizzbang,I thought.

“Whizzbang!” she cried. “Can you believe someone actually wanted to sell it? I saw it and knew I had to have it. I had to stay up to the middle of the night to make sure I got it. It’s a weird time to have the auction end though, don’t you think? In the middle of the night?”

Not if you want people to think it’s genuine,I thought. To drive the price up twice what it’s worth.

“No one else believed it was genuine!” Abbie said. “That’s why no one else bid on it and I won! Haha!”

Yeah, I thought. They’re the real fools.

Not the girl who’d hand a fake invitation over to the hardboiled security guards outside the hottest party.

They’d probably been trained to take anyone with a fake ticket around back and beat the hell out of them.

“Yeah,” I said with more conviction than I felt. “Idiots.”

“Hurry up and get in the shower!” Abbie said, wheeling around the dining table to shove me from my chair. “You’re going to need every ounce of my considerable talents to make you look half decent for tonight!”

“I’m going, I’m going!” I said as I headed into the shower.

I paused at the door frame to peer back at my darling sister.

She wheeled over to one of her many wardrobes and sorted through the endless line of dresses she’d made over the years.

It broke my heart to know she would never get to make the most of them.

She never left the house, despite my best attempts.

I couldn’t let her down and not go, I thought.

She’d already suffered enough heartache.

Slobbing out in front of the holo-TV sounded perfect right about now but how could I turn down my sister’s beaming grin?

I couldn’t.

I took my shower and put on the knock-out dress Abbie had made especially for me.

It was a racy little black number that showed off plenty of leg—by far my best feature—and cut a diagonal line across my shoulders.

There was an open gap in the waist that I wasn’t altogether thrilled about.

It showed off my lower back and a slither of my waist.

Abbie also happened to be a master of makeup and hairstyles.

She slicked my hair close to my head and added an artistic curl across my forehead.

She gave me little makeup, just enough to heighten my cheekbones.

When I checked myself out in the mirror, I had to admit, I looked a complete knockout… absolutely nothing like the real me.

“You are a wizard,” I said.

“Witch,” Abbie corrected. “Your fee for me is to go out and have the best damn night of your life. And I want to hear about all the juicy things you get up to when you get back.”

I wasn’t sure I would have many stories to share with her, especially not if the ticket was fake as I one hundred percent assumed it to be.

Worst case scenario—leaving aside the beaten-to-a-blood-pulp-around-back outcome—I figured I could head to a coffee shop and enjoy a nice hot steaming cup of hot chocolate while I came up with stories I would tell Abbie.

I didn’t want to let her down, so I would make up everything she would want me to say.

I was in two minds about even attempting to get inside the ball.

But as I was already there, what was the harm?

The guard poked at the ticket and then handed it back to me, just as I expected.

“Thanks anyway,” I said, half turning to leave.

I paused only when I noticed the guard reach back with one of his many arms and lift the little velvet rope for me to enter.

Wait, what?

The ticket was genuine?

Holy smokes…