Octavia Girl

Chapter 14

The Thundering Inside Your Skull

Jenna pushed her sticky hair off her forehead. She was in a graveyard. It was two in the morning and she’d been digging for an hour. The ground was so hard that she didn’t think there was a snowball’s chance in hell that she’d get the six feet down she needed in order to reach her grandmother’s casket. Would she even be able to clear the dirt enough to open the coffin and what if they’d poured cement over the whole thing? Then she wouldn’t be able to check for the crowns herself. She’d need alien intervention. That was if she was lucky enough not to get caught while she was digging. Someone was going to see her, call the cops, and there would be a whole new mess to deal with.

She hated the whole ordeal, so she was pissed off.

And Sardius wasn’t helping her.

He’d told her a couple of techniques for digging that she hadn’t known, but he was no help because he wasn’t there. After a while, she turned on her headphones and listened to some brain-breaking death metal/electro-fusion, though it didn’t help much with her wretchedness.

She had a light that was supposed to attach to her forehead but was hanging around her neck since she had to look down, and another sitting like a lamp next to the hole, but the light was scattered and sketchy.

When there was a break in the song, Sardius’ voice came through her earpiece that her headphones fit over. “Are you finished with your tantrum?”

Jenna whipped her headphones off and threw them next to the hole. “I am not having a tantrum.”

“You listen to music that sounds like that normally? Octopi don’t have great hearing, so you’re not punishing me… if you thought you were. I can also shut you off and just read a transcription of your text, so you’re not hurting me if that’s your goal.”

Jenna cracked her neck. “I’m not trying to punish you with my angry music. I’m not happy with this situation. I don’t want to dig up my grandmother’s grave. I’m unimpressed that there isn’t a better way to do this. Can’t Favel use some tech on his ship to scan the area to make sure I’m not wasting my time? Like what you mentioned before when they scanned my grandfather’s house?”

“If such a thing were possible, I would have already recommended it, and it would have already been done. If it’s any fuel for your motivation, Lucy and Armen have been recovered and if the Adamis military has seen her ears, then they already know she isn’t you.”

“Charming,” Jenna laughed sadistically. “You know what I think?”

“What, sweetpea?” Sardius asked in a sexy drawl.

“Oh, I hate you,” Jenna complained tersely. “Why are you rubbing this in my face, at this moment? Shut up!”

“Rubbing what in your face?” he asked in a fake innocent voice.

“Don’t play stupid,” she barked, heaving out a shovelful of dirt. “You know I’m pissed off.”

“Yes, but I don’t know what I have to do with it. I didn’t make any of this happen.”

Jenna forced the tears back by screaming. “On top of everything, I was waiting for him!”

“Who?”

“Damn Armen. I was waiting for a man just like that. Apparently, I had turned down hundreds of other men, waiting for a man like that! I could scream. Did you know that I loved screaming at the hipposyphis? I loved it! You know how I’ve felt about this? Armen was a fricking disappointment. And if you ask me, I shouldn’t have sent him off with Lucy.”

“Why? Everyone thinks you were brilliant to do that,” Sardius interrupted.

“You don’t get it! Armen didn’t fall in love with me. He faked interest in me. Think of how he treated me, how I treated him. How he didn’t forgive me for being cross. How he treated me like I was an asset... like I was his lame responsibility!” She hacked at the dirt. “I don’t trust easily. You said most men would like that in a woman. Armen didn’t. We didn’t see eye-to-eye, but you know who sees eye-to-eye with everybody? Lucy! If they spent any time together at all, I bet they got along together just swimmingly. He probably dropped his pants for her and I’ve never known if Lucy was good at keeping her legs together.”

“I thought you hated him. Why would you care?”

“I do hate him. He sucks,” Jenna said weakly as she spun the shovel handle between her fingers. “It’s that damn thing about eleven guys in the universe. There are only five left and they all found me so bloody unappealing that they refused even if they could prevent a war. I feel so sickeningly sorry for myself, I could puke and die.”

Jenna waited for Sardius to offer a smart remark. Maybe he would say something funny that would bring her out of her head, or something serious that helped her reconsider her position, or even some news from the outer rims of the universe to redirect her focus.

She kept digging.

After a bit of progress had been made, she reached for her headphones.

“Jenna,” Sardius said before she could turn them on. “The boat your grandfather used to own has been scrapped. This is the last place to look.”

“Thanks for doing your job,” she replied before she dug further.

Whack!

Her shovel hit something. “That wasn’t a rock,” she announced.

“Excellent. Dig it up.”

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” she said snarkily as she dropped to her knees and pawed around the object.

“Jenna, you don’t have to take this out on me.”

“Talk to me in a sexy voice again and I’ll take whatever I want out on you! I don’t need you rubbing my romantic failures in my face,” she growled before she cleared off the top of the box and loosened the dirt around it until she could pull it free. It was wooden and heavy, but she managed to get it onto the grass beside her. It was locked with a heavy-duty padlock. “How do I get it open?”

“We’ll have to take it back to the ship and get Favel to work on it.”

“Underwater?” Jenna asked doubtfully.

“He can drain a workshop for you to work in. He’s a versatile Octavian, so he can come in and help you.”

“Isn’t there anyone else aboard his ship?”

“I don’t know that there is. I’ve been operating on the assumption that he’s alone. Favel is a level eight pilot in his own right. If you’re an Octavian, eight is always the highest level. Who is he going to bring with him? If the ship goes down, it’s easier to save everyone on board if you’re the only pilot.”

“Let’s go,” she said, lugging the dirty box to the car.

“Don’t you need to replace the dirt?” Sardius wondered.

“No. If we don’t get out of here quickly, we’ll have a harder time getting back. I don’t want to get caught by the cops because I was sentimental. If we’re unlucky, these are her ashes and instead of grave robbers, we’re body thieves.”

“I thought you were expecting a coffin?”

“I was, but who knows what happens when you’re five and no one will let you go to a funeral?”

“Run, then!”

Janna saw three sets of headlights coming toward her and killed all her lamps.

They passed her in a heart-stopping moment where even breathing hurt.

“I hate it here,” she muttered. Pocketing her stuff, she blew a kiss at her grandmother Letty’s tombstone. “Love you, Granny.”

At that moment, the light of the moon shone on her grandfather’s tombstone and illuminated his name.

“Grandpa,” she said softly. “I’m going to do everything you always wanted me to do. Please watch over me and if it’s at all possible, help me find that one man in the whole universe who is for me.”

She blew him a kiss too and laid her hand on the wet grass that covered his resting place.

“I may not be back. Guide me through the stars, Granddaddy.”

She gathered her things and Sardius shut up.