The sun blazed down on me through the windshield, practically blinding me. Five Directions was on the radio while I was driving through the amazing Chicago suburbs to visit my estranged uncle. My parents had warned me not to visit him, but I didn’t care. 

The car was a mess of fast food wrappers after I’d eaten McDonald’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My parents weren’t gonna be happy when I got back (I had stolen the car from them). I also brought my mom’s cat, in case I got lonely. He kept me company on those long nights driving through the countryside. His green eyes filled with wonder every time he saw a sheep, though I could do without the mass amounts of black fur that now lined the seats. The joys of the American West. 

Driving was still something I wanted to get used to, after only having gotten my license last month. And now I was driving away and finally tasting freedom! My parents and I hadn’t been getting along lately, which was why I was running off to my uncle. 

I didn’t say why I wasn’t allowed to visit my uncle. I had actually seen him a few times when I was younger, and I only just realized that some of those times he had been drunk. But that isn’t why. My mom had turned on my uncle after the fight of ‘99, and we’d moved to Nevada right after. He’d been banned from seeing us again. Then impulsively, a few weeks ago, I’d looked up his name online and saw that he now made a living fixing old machine parts and tinkering with cars and the like. He had set up a good business. Maybe he could take me on as his apprentice or something. 

I had never been to Chicago before, much less its suburbs. Maybe we could go to Subway or something and he could show me some good restaurants. Also, I was getting tired of McBurgers. 

I knew his address from the Christmas card he’d sent me when I was seven. The card was next to me on the passenger seat. Sparkly reindeer and trees depositing glitter decorated throughout the cover reflected the sun’s light and caused my eyes true, crippling agony when I looked down at it to confirm the address. I still remembered what his house looked like after all these years. It was white with a red roof and a red door—the standard house in a suburban neighbourhood. I parked right in the middle of his driveway in front of the garage door, double checked the address on the card, and sighed loud enough to make the cat JUMP and hit the roof of the car. I got out of the car and walked up the steps to the front door with the cat. 

I rang the doorbell, and the guy who answered the door looked slightly familiar. Also, he was holding a bottle of wine. That made sense, it was Friday night. Would he be the kind of chill uncle who would pour me a cup or let me have a sip? 

“I’m not interested in any Jesus pamphlets or finding God’s lo—” He sighed before looking up at me. He instantly scowled. “What are you doing here?” he said. “What do you want? Are you selling Girl Scout cookies?”   

“Ugh, please. I’m your niece.” Uncle Hob never really had a good memory. Carl (the cat) started to meow. 

“Rhonda? Really?” He squinted and leaned closer to me. Then he grabbed my arm and pulled me inside. His house had the bare necessities: one chesterfield, a table, an old boxy television in the corner. Boxes of yellowed newspapers gave the room a crowded feel. He looked me up and down, and like a hawk to a rabbit, he narrowed in on the cat. 

“I see you still have the cat,” he said sourly. “Your mom can’t bear to part with it? Whatever. Want to see what I’m working on, Rhonda?” 

My name wasn’t actually Rhonda. That was my sister’s name.

He pulled me by the arm again and led me down the stairs to the basement. There was a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and the basement was unfinished. I couldn’t believe how cluttered and busy it looked. A huge work table lined the wall, and it was covered with small machines, sheets of metal, stray nuts and bolts, and a bandsaw. Handsaws hung on the walls, and bigger machines were scattered around the room. Boxes filled with spare parts and an assortment of random items, like parts of a clock and batteries, covered the floor. An old toolbox sat in the far corner of the room next to a big, tall object covered in an oil stained sheet.  It seemed like my uncle’s workspace was pretty well made. He’d clearly made a space for himself doing…whatever he did down here. Fixing things, probably. It was a good place to hide drugs.

My uncle went over to the corner and picked up his rusty toolbox. He took off the oil stained sheet and revealed a big metal structure. It was slightly curved, had a dome on top, and was as tall as me.

“Look at this, Rhonda!” He slapped his hand heavily on top of it, then quickly took it away and inspected the part where he’d struck it. “Better not do that. I don’t want to leave dents. But don’t you think it’s so beautiful? And so big?” He took a sip from the bottle of wine that he was still holding. “This has some family history, you know. I think my great-great-grandfather brought it over with him when he was immigrating here from Mars. This is a family relic, a remnant of our family roots.” 

“Can I have some wine?” I said. 

“Here, I’ll show you what it does.” He flipped a switch on the machine, and the machine started making a clunking noise. I stood back and let it do its thing. With a whirr and a few sparks, a strange, blue-coloured light was projected out of the top of the dome. After a few seconds I realized the light was forming an image of the globe—a translucent image, for you could see straight through to the wall on the other side. 

“I bet you’ve never seen this before,” my uncle said. “Bet you don’t even know what it’s called. It’s a hologram, but not the kind that you see on TV like Star Trekkers or some shit. This is the real stuff! Only we Mars People know how to make it!” He started chugging the wine bottle, and wine streaked down his shirt and onto the floor. I held onto Carl so he wouldn’t jump to the floor and start lapping it up. I’d never given a cat wine before, but I knew I didn’t want to see a drunk cat. 

My uncle drained the wine bottle and set it on the floor. “You see, this machine is not JUST a place to project holograms, you can also CREATE new holograms.” He turned to face me sharply, his eyes suddenly piercing into mine, and his gaze landed on Carl again. “That damn cat,” he said. “You know I created him when I was in high school? I gave it to your mom for her sixteenth birthday because I knew she always wanted a cat.”   

“Impossible,” I said. 

“How do you think he’s managed to live so long, then? Your mom’s had him since she was sixteen, and you’re sixteen now, so he’s been alive for a century.” 

“You can’t prove that, and I don’t believe. . .” Wait a minute. Uncle Hob’s math wasn’t adding up. 

“That’s why she had that fight with me, when you were like five.” He pitched his voice higher in an imitation of my mother. “She said that I’m ‘too reckless’ because ‘disturbing the balance’ and making whatever I want can have ‘consequences.’” He rolled his eyes so far back, all I could see were the whites of his eyes. Then he settled his gaze on me again and started to slowly approach me. Carl meowed in my arms, and I began to back up. 

“You know who else is not of this world? You know who else is a fictional, meaningless, empty hologram that I created in my basement? That’s right…Harry Fashions.” 

“No,” I said. 

“Yes. He is a hollow shell of a man, nothing more than a litcheral projection for others to project onto. He is not of this earth, for he is not only a hologram but an alien—and a goddamn freak.” 

My hands started shaking so violently that Carl started to scramble out of my grasp. “You’re a sicko. I know about you, you know? I heard that you ran a business fixing cars and old parts. But instead you just lie here in your cavern of LIES and do THIS kind of business? The honourable job I THOUGHT you had is just a cover up for your wicked lies? What kind of mind do you possess? What kind of person are you?” 

“Well, you see, my car business isn’t a cover up for the hologram business,” Uncle Hob said. “That would be pretty shallow. Holograms aren’t worth enough to invest all that time and effort into. My day job is a cover up for my intergalactic drug business.” 

I litcherally could not believe it. My other uncle, Gob Schneider, got deported for running a drug ring! (Look him up in the news, it was pretty huge.) 

“I know I could get deported to Mars, just like your other uncle,” he said. He was approaching me slowly now, his hands held out in front of him cautiously, like how you might approach a dog or something. “Which is why you can’t tell—” 

“But, uh,” I said. “They told us he had been deported to Canada.” 

“Not true,” my uncle said. Carl was thrashing about wildly now, and his meows were so loud they sounded like a person screaming for help. His paws and tail kept on slapping my face. 

“They sent him up to Mars in Elon Musk’s spaceship,” he continued. “You probably haven’t heard of that yet, because it takes place in the future. They sent him into the future and deported him there. I guess you can see him when he gets sent up, 12 years from now—” 

“STOP!” I screamed so loud, Carl stopped moving for a minute. I couldn’t take this shit anymore. It was too much. “Stop telling me these LIES. Just stop! You need to stop making shit up and trying to scare me! None of this is true; this is all impossible, because Mars isn’t real!” 

I dropped my arms suddenly, and Carl fell. He meowed upon hitting the floor. 

“Get him, Carl! Tear him to shreds! NO mercy!” 

But unfortunately, Carl was not a dog, or a guard dog, or any kind of rabid animal. He was merely a cat. And he didn’t do tricks. 

“Look, Rhonda,” my uncle said. “Don’t tell anyone, especially not your mother. God. If you keep my secret and don’t tell the authorities, I can give you some of my profits every now and then.” 

That seemed like a pretty shitty way to go down, to be bribed for silence. And why was my uncle offering me money?! 

“I don’t want your drugs, your profits, or to be involved in your shitty ass business.” I spotted the wine bottle on the floor behind him. “Can I have some wine? And can we go to Subway?” I hadn’t eaten anything since stopping at McDonald’s an hour ago. 

His left eye twitched. “Wine? But you’re not even legal. Do your parents even know you’re here?” 

***

Reader, how can I explain the effect that this sudden twist in conversation, akin to whiplash, had on me? How could he simply just begin asking about my parents’ knowledge of my whereabouts when previously he had just confided in me what no child under the age of 18 should have to experience? He had dumped this information onto my shoulders, unknowingly, unaware of the weight I now had to carry, like an ignorant zookeeper parent who drops a 500 kg jungle snake onto the shoulders of their 5-year-old child while forcing the child to pose for pictures and saying things like “You look so cute!” as the child begins to cry. That summer, after staying at my uncle’s place, I had driven home to my parents’ house through the sunset, as the rich gold rays of light spilled into the car and onto my hands on the steering wheel, with a strange sense of calm and peace that you can feel only in the summer; and it really felt like the end of something, like some part of me had changed as well, and I felt it strong with the ending day. I spent the rest of summer lounging around the house, sitting in my room, listening to music, basking in the warm evenings; and after summer ended I went to school, and sitting amongst my classmates, while they chattered around me, I had to hold this secret inside of myself, not telling a soul. I learned the cruel truth of things better left unsaid. Five Directions was big that year, and even though I held this revealing knowledge that no one else knew—I still would rather not have known, although I know I would have been harboring a false image of Harry Fashions had I never found out. The truth can be disruptive, for better or for worse, and so I will forever regret the summer of 2010.