The holidays left Paige stir-crazy and craving stimulation, something besides the mindless chatter spewing from the living-room television. Stepping outside, she inhaled the winter air, the sensation foreign to her lungs as she coughed and sat down on the old wooden porch swing. Pine needles swept across her feet and she shivered, rubbed her hands together and embraced the change of scenery. A tall forest surrounded her parent’s modest two-story house, but she looked beyond the tree line and searched in vain for an absent moon. Coyotes wailed in the distance, their high-pitched howls chasing a passing train while neighborhood dogs rounded out the late-night chorus. She smiled and shivered again, continuing her hunt for the moon until a strange sight distracted her.

Against the backdrop of the starless night, a faint glow materialized over Houston’s southern sky. Paige held her breath as the curtain of pale green lights grew brighter, swaying in the sky, slow and languid like an underwater dance. She stood from the swing and walked out into the yard, but the dancing lights dimmed and faded, forming a translucent veil before disappearing out of sight. The night fell still. Engulfed by silence, Paige wracked her brain for some sort of logic to decipher the bizarre event. She lived too far south to enjoy the Northern Lights, but a better explanation eluded her. Her cell phone struck midnight and an explosion of fireworks sabotaged her thought process—who has money for fireworks these days? It occurred to her that fireworks were exactly what she’d witnessed, and though instinct disagreed, Paige shrugged it off as best she could and retreated from the cold, closing the door behind her on another tiresome year.

Paige and her parents were still recovering from a late September hurricane that spiraled through South Texas and ripped apart their one-acre plot of land. Forecasters dubbed the expired hurricane season the worst on record, a declaration they made every year. Galveston resembled a ghost town due to rising tides and strong storms, but after this last one it seemed unlikely the island could ever bounce back. Devastation lessened further inland, but the Holland’s battled roof damage some three months later; thankful though, they still had a home. It wasn’t their first storm to weather and it wouldn’t be their last. People who braved the Gulf Coast were old pros when it came to hunkering down during a storm, but if the floodwaters rose, heed the sirens, abandon ship and git the hell outta dodge.

Eighteen and college-bound, Paige lived at home with her parents to cut down on costs and help out around the house, specifically taking care of her father. Mr. Holland fell ill about six months ago with flu-like symptoms rendering him weak, feverish and nauseous most of the time, but his strong aversion to doctors ruled out a proper diagnosis. A daddy’s girl since birth, Paige refused to accept the notion of her father’s own mortality. She suppressed those thoughts, pushing them out of her head along with the recurring nightmares that stripped her of sound sleep lately.

Successfully avoiding the snooze button, Paige scurried around the house leaving behind a trail of toothpaste and hair gel in her wake. The bathroom took the hardest hit, a minor casualty in her attempt to arrive on time at her first class of the semester. Chronically late back in high school, she spent most mornings looking for a missing shoe or misplaced keys, but with a new year underway and a more efficient routine, she hoped for a less chaotic experience. Time to get it together, she thought, before I become one of those twenty-something drifters—yeah right. She knew better, her post-graduation plans were still pending. She tackled most of her chores the night before in an effort to fulfill just one of her New Year’s resolutions—Monday morning ran like clockwork. Ten minutes ahead of schedule, she nearly took out the family dog as she stumbled downstairs in her race against time. Strutter may be a well-suited name for a younger dog, but Paige thought perhaps Sputter would be more appropriate as of late. He mimicked an old car, sputtering around and making a lot of noise but never actually getting anywhere. Strutter was a mutt, a genetic disaster her mother might say. An original mix between Collie and Terrier, he’d been with the family for thirteen years and developed a recent skin allergy that left him flaky, smelly and difficult to endure. Mrs. Holland condemned the poor thing to the backyard years ago, snapping, he’s an outside dog now! Mr. Holland fought her on this ever since, letting Strutter inside whenever she turned her back, as it was, she turned her back a lot.

Paige jumped from the last step and managed to clear the sleeping mongrel. Sputter flicked an ear, yawned and then rested his head between his two front paws. Paige hit hard, feet first, on the ceramic-floor landing. Her father’s voice echoed from the kitchen, catching her off guard as she turned the corner to find him engaged in his old morning routine—scanning news headlines on his laptop, sipping coffee and eating breakfast.

“Fireworks?” he asked. “People really buy that load of crap?”

“Probably,” Mrs. Holland answered, biting into a biscuit.

“Paige,” he yelled, “you just come in for a landing or did the rest of the roof collapse?”

Paige kissed her father on his forehead, hugged her mother around the waist and bustled over to the freshly brewed pot of coffee. “You’re out of bed,” she commented. “How’re you feeling?” Mr. Holland shifted positions in his chair keeping most of his attention on the news story he currently picked apart.

“Better,” he nodded. “Don’t know why and don’t know how, but let’s not jinx it.” Mr. Holland wasn’t what one might call a superstitious man, but he had his quirks, and believing in jinxes was one of them. He was also a self-proclaimed conspiracy theorist.

“More dead birds,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “Denver this time. Hell Allie, I thought fireworks were banned.” His wife Allison stood in her bathrobe and slippers, sipped coffee out of an oversized mug and thumbed through a stack of unruly bills on the kitchen bar.

“Don’t get yourself all worked up, dear,” she yawned. “Let’s save conspiracy theories for dinner tonight. I haven’t even finished my first cup of coffee yet.”

“It’s not a conspiracy,” Justin answered. “You know exactly what’s going on. It’s that crap they keep spraying, but The Council, hey, just tell the press it’s fireworks. Idiots. Check out these pictures.”

Allison walked around the bar and stood behind her husband, “There you go,” she said, “getting all worked up.” Resting her hands on his shoulders, she leaned in to view the latest carnage. “Alright, alright, let me see. My goodness, look at them all,” she whispered, placing her hand over her mouth.

Paige doctored her coffee with cream and sugar and wondered if she’d ever enjoy drinking it black the way her parents liked it. She tried it once but found it entirely too bitter. She wondered if taste buds changed with age. Her parents discussed the latest news stories while cloaked in their robes and clutching their coffee cups. She smiled. Despite all the talking heads on the television discussing death, destruction and disaster, all was right in the world at that moment. Speaking of news!

“Oh, Dad, I forgot to tell you about these strange lights I saw in the sky the other night.”

“What kind of strange lights?” Justin asked, his eyes glued to the computer again.

“Well, on New Year’s Eve when I was out on the porch, I saw these pale green lights in the sky that looked exactly like an aurora borealis, but that couldn’t be—”

“Paige, sweetie,” Allison said, “Did you get all the books you need?”

“Not yet,” she shrugged. “Anyway, Dad, I figured it was fireworks, but I’ve never seen fireworks like this before. I mean, it really looked like the Northern Lights. What do you think it was?”

“Don’t know,” he answered. “Could have been The Council, or maybe the aliens have come back for us,” he said in a low voice, his eyes darting from left to right.

“Dad, be serious!”

“You’ll be late if you keep egging on your father’s imagination,” Allison said, returning to her stack of hate mail. Ripping into another tightly sealed envelope, she concluded, “We’ll talk aliens later tonight.”

“Yeah okay, I’ll see ya’ll this evening.” Paige grabbed her sack lunch from the bar, swung open the front door and paused long enough to catch her father’s last minute remark,

“Hey! Watch out for those aliens, they’ve been known to look human!”