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pattern, paired with red bangle bracelets and strappy sandals. In a curtained area I unbuckle my sandals and remove the bracelets. Run out of the building. Get out while you still can . Instead, I slip off the straps of my dress and let it fall to the floor. Unhook my bra, pull down panties. Naked, I pass my belongings outside the curtain for bagging. I want to cry over the loss of my clothes. It’s like they’ve died and been placed in a body bag.
    “Will I get my clothes back?” I ask from behind the curtain. No one responds.
    One at a time, we must move to the shower area. When it’s my turn, a HAZMAT worker gives instructions from outside the curtain. “You must scrub using the special disinfectant soap. Make sure to do your entire body. Even your hair.”
    The lukewarm water hits my body like spittle. The soap smells like chemicals used to scrub a toilet, not a person. The wound on my elbow screams when the soap hits it. What if the soap travels through my bloodstream? What if it’s toxic? When I rub it into my hair, my curls mat into a sticky, knotted nest. As I rinse, a dry film covers every pore of my skin, every strand on my head. It won’t rinse off. Get it off me! Get it off me! I scrub and scrub and scrub without breathing until my skin turns a livid pink.
    Outside the shower area a towel waits for me. After I cover up, a HAZMAT woman hands me two paper hospital gowns, one to put on facing backward, one to put on facing forward, so I’m not exposed as I walk. As soon as I’m ready, I must turn in my towel for bagging just in case I’m still leaking alien radiation after the shower.
    Next, another worker points me toward a sectioned-off area labeled with a paper printout that reads CLEAN. The sign makes me wonder what they considered us before. My body shivers uncontrollably as I shuffle barefoot down the corridor. Cardboard and plastic cover the floor. A worker assigns me a hospital cot and tells me to leave the curtains open. My file is clipped to the end of my bed. I am a disinfected patient with a serial number.
    Time passes. More women and children join the CLEAN area. I touch my hair. It’s drying wrong and curling in weird directions. I need the extra ponytail elastic that’s in my purse. Then I think of the vertexes. The holograms. My hair shouldn’t be important during a world crisis, but it still is. If I’m going to die, I’d rather not die wearing a paper hospital gown with my hair sticking up like a ball of brown cotton candy.
    My hands start to shake. I need to talk to Dominick or Rita or my parents, but they confiscated my cell phone with everything else. I refuse to cry. If I do, I’ll crumble.
    Another HAZMAT worker appears at my side. She reads my name and birth date from the file, then asks a billion questions:
    “How much do you weigh?”
    “Approximately how long were you exposed to the phenomenon?”
    “How close were you standing to it?”
    “Do you feel any itching, burning, tingling, or swelling?”
    “Any nausea?”
    “Vomiting?”
    “Diarrhea?”
    “Headache?”
    I try my best to answer all her questions truthfully, but the whole experience is becoming a blur. I have no idea how close I was to it. I can hardly believe I was there at all. That it was there at all.
    She proceeds to take my temperature, blood, and a urine sample. When she discovers the wound on my elbow, she asks, “When did you get this?”
    I’m not about to tell her that I froze in a line of police fire, so my boyfriend had to throw me to the ground. She might send me for a psych evaluation. “I fell getting on the bus.”
    “Are you sure?” I hear the urgency in her voice. She wants to turn me into a lab rat. Her alien lab rat.
    “Yes, I’m sure. I fell. There was even dirt in it earlier. Before the shower.”
    She jots down notes into my file. Probably writing crap about me. About my nervous behavior being a possible sign of exposure to extraterrestrial energy. Further evaluation needed.