A Case of Space: Reach for the Mars Bar

Alien Admirer Barrette Brooch

Everyone wonders if there's something else out there.  Like little green men on a moon made of cheese or slimy mammoths that can crush us like bugs.  But Roswell-based, seventeen-year-old Mallory Sullivan is certain that Earth isn't the only game in the solar system.  A fan of outer space and all things alien, she's a regular on a message board called We Are Not Alone, or WANA.  On it, she connects -- and argues -- with a brilliant but snarky stranger.  

"Um, okay, Tote Trove Lady," you may be thinking.  "But who the heck's Mallory, and why should I put down my Pringles to care?" 

I'll answer that question by asking another.  Remember Kerry Winfrey, author of rom com-rific novels Waiting for Tom Hanks and Not Like the Movies?  Well, her first book was a YA novel called Love and Other Alien Experiences.  It's light-hearted and colorful and bubbly.  And it's about a girl named Mallory who never, ever leaves the house.  Mallory's always been anxious.  But her agoraphobia didn't start until her dad left her, her mom, and her younger brother Linc.  Now she gets panic attacks every time she opens her front door and goes to school via Zoom.  Other than her mom and Linc, her best friend Jenni is the only person she talks to IRL.  Her mom and therapist are frustrated with her, and her mom has installed a tracker on her computer to limit her time online.  It isn't until Mallory is -- surprise! -- nominated for homecoming queen that she's forced to interact with others.  This means partnering up with school heartthrob and quarterback Brad on a physics project.  It also means spending time with Brad's stepbrother, the mysterious and arrogant Jake.  Brad is a loveable dunce; Jake is an antisocial genius.  But both are important in encouraging Mallory to begin to confront her phobia.  

Now, that's all pretty out there.  And I'm not just talking about the homecoming queen part (although Mallory does get to try on some funky thrift store dresses).  The really weird thing is that in the last book I read, Elin Hilderbrand's 28 Summers, the heroine was also named Mallory, the love interest was also named Jake (sorry not sorry; surely, you saw that one coming), and there was another Linc.  Only this time it was spelled Link and he was Mallory's son instead of her brother.  I don't know about you, but I can already hear The Twilight Zone music playing.  28 Summers, by the way, is a Nicholas Sparks-level tearjerker.  No one in it has a debilitating psychological disorder; it's a drama about star-crossed love vs. humdrum marriage.  But it's super sad and made me cry.  Love and Other Alien Experiences, on the other hand, seems like it would be as serious as an abduction but instead has a top-forty-soundtrack-neon-palette vibe.  I mean, the popular guy isn't even a jerk!  Which just goes to show that it's the tone and not the subject matter that makes or breaks a novel's gravity -- and a protagonist's spirit.  On the surface, I prefer 28 Summers.  Because I'm a grown-up.  And because it includes yet another reference to Cherries in the Snow as being someone's ideal red lipstick (even if that someone is the villain).  Yet romance and Revlon aside, it's Love and Other Alien Experiences that I'm compelled to quote here today.  This is what Mallory tells us:

"That's what I like about the Internet -- I'm allowed to be silent, to think, to just sit.  I don't have to worry about whether I have something in my teeth or if my bangs look greasy.  My awkward conversation skills don't even matter, and I can be the best version of myself on-screen." (99)

A girl who's afraid to go outside but obsessed with the wide open spaces of, well, outer space, is a closed and open book all at once.  The idea of running into the mean girls at school unnerves her, but aliens?  No big deal.  The great unknown of the galaxy is more comforting than the certain uncertainty of high school and a runaway dad.  Unlike the Mallory in 28 Summers, I've never had a forbidden romance.  But like the Mallory in Love and Other Alien Experiences, I know what it's like to be more comfortable in the virtual world than the real one.  To lean in to the luxury of being able to process and curate my thoughts instead of delivering a clever comeback with zero prep time.  Also, to fart whenever I want to.     

Which is, of course, one of the many reasons that I love crafting (the solitude, that is, not the farting).  Crafting, like reading and writing, is a party for one that runs on my own timetable.  I made this Alien Admirer Barrette Brooch before I read Love and Other Alien Experiences.  But the book had been hiding, Jedi-style, in the recesses of my Amazon shopping list.  So maybe it did influence the idea for this disembodied green head floating amid the flowers.    

Tank: Say What?, JCPenney

The husband says that the alien and steer skull eyes in my felt work are the same.  Which is kind of funny because both aliens and steer skulls can be found in the desert -- the desert of Roswell.  Here's one of my much-posted desert scapes for comparison: 

Fabulous Felt Desert Barrette

This felt phenomenon is my kind of eerie; no Fire in the Sky for me!  But I like that Mallory likes aliens.  Because they, and the other people who like them, make her feel like she's less alone.  I'm glad that one of them turned out to be her person.  

And that she didn't wear that bloodstained dress to the prom.