I bet there’s a mathematical equation for that. One person in California and one person in Sweden and the odds of meeting someone on a planet with more than six billion people.
In a way, I am kind of jealous of Earl.
He wraps up the meeting and everyone files out of the room. But I’m still sitting in my chair. My mind is racing.
At first nothing I’m thinking is coherent. Thoughts burst like summer lightning in my brain. It’s so random, and scary, that I’m sure that my synapses will explode into an unmanageable fire.
All this time, I knew I couldn’t have been alone. But somehow I was. And whenever I tried to look for others and to reach out, it seemed so silly. How could a person sift through what was real and what wasn’t real out there? Part of me always believed that if it had happened, then they would come and take me again. And that would prove it. But they never did.
That’s when I began to doubt myself.
Of course there were people who were just plain crazy. Who made it up. Who were crying out for attention. And I already had doctors saying that I was crazy. I didn’t want to add to it. So I never said anything. I just hinted. Hoping that someone would say, “Oh, yes. That could be what happened.”
But now, I had found others, and to them there was no question. It was real. The way Nadine shook when she talked about the Atfatfatf and the way they turned colors depending on their mood. Or the way Earl looked like he really missed that lady. Or the way Devon talked about the reptilian men made me think I wasn’t crazy.
But what scared me, what made me feel like I would explode, was that if it had happened, then I couldn’t sometimes pretend that maybe the doctors were right and I was crazy. Maybe I had a hallucination. Maybe I had wandered all that way on my own. Maybe I was too sad.
Because like everyone in the room said, there is no evidence. There is no proof. There is only this weird feeling, sitting at the edge of your memory.
After listening to everyone speak, I feel embarrassed. Because now I know for sure that I had never had to be alone.
I squeeze my eyes shut because something is breaking through, right up to the surface. Then, in my brain, there is a buzz and a hum and it feels familiar and not scary. So I relax into a calmness that I haven’t known in years.
I know what I’m going to do.
I know that when I’m ready, I’m going to share.
16.
Before and after is how things are divided.
17.
It had been eight months since my dad had left.
It was a little bit cold for the beginning of July. I remember I rubbed my arms to get warmth into them. My mother was over by the sausage truck. She was drunk, and no matter how many times she tried putting the sauerkraut onto the bun, she kept missing. There were little piles of kraut by her feet. I was embarrassed.
There was a man selling sparklers. He wore a hat. It wasn’t a porkpie hat. It was a cowboy hat. But it triggered something inside of me. Like, who was this man, standing there, casually selling sparklers? Smiling. Having a good time. I didn’t know him. But he had a little boy with him. His kid, who he kept touching on the head. And leaning down to smile at. There was so much love there.
Whenever the little boy got a little too far away from the man, the man would remind him that he was right there. That he wasn’t going anywhere.
And I think I broke.
Right then.
There was this stinging in my eyes. And this swell of salt. I had been numb for what seemed like an eternity. Sitting on my front porch, looking out the window, waiting and hoping that my dad would come back.
Surely he was going to come back. Surely he wasn’t going to leave me there, with my mother on the floor. Surely he wasn’t going to leave me all by myself.
And there, watching that man with those stupid sparklers, I knew for sure, my dad wasn’t ever coming back. He didn’t care at all. He could be standing right in front of me and he could see how much I hurt and he wouldn’t care.
I looked back at my mom, the sauerkraut at her feet. The dog only half eaten but two big cups of beer next to her on the table. And I imagined that if I felt this bad, she felt a million times worse. And suddenly it was like there was a piano sitting on my chest. The only way to breathe was to walk, to make sure that oxygen was coming into my body. So I started to walk. But I couldn’t see which direction I was going in. I just kept walking. I didn’t have a flashlight. I tore my pants. The stars were so bright that I could swear they were changing colors. And then the fireworks stopped. I couldn’t hear the voices of everyone gathered to watch them. I was winded. I was farther away from anywhere than I’d ever been before.
I knew that there were scorpions and rattlers all around. And I was too heavy. My limbs were so heavy. My eyes so heavy. My heart so heavy.
I dropped to the ground.
Ready to die.
But instead, the lights came.
They were small at first. And then they came.
18.
There are kids everywhere on the lawn, on the sidewalk, on the stairs, at the picnic tables because it is fifth-period lunch. I am sitting by the flagpole next to a garbage can, by myself, eating a peanut butter and banana sandwich. Josh and his boys are at the picnic tables right in front of me. The boys are trying to pinch the girls who are with them. Posey is sitting on the ground. She is eating a roast beef sandwich. There is mayonnaise on her face.
Darwyn is sitting on the ground between me and them. It looks like he might be with them. But I know he’s not. That’s where his spot is, though.
I’m close enough to observe everything. It makes me glad to not have friends.
“Hey, Darwyn,” Josh yells. Darwyn perks up at the sound of his name.
“Yes, Josh?” Darwyn says, and takes it as an invitation to move just a little bit closer to that special circle.
“We’re going to have a party at my house next Friday night,” Josh says. “My parents are going out of town for the weekend. You can come if you bring the beer again.”
Darwyn brightens.
“I can get some from my dad’s store,” he says. “No problem.”
“Outstanding,” Josh says. Posey gets up, maybe to throw away her napkin. Josh takes his legs and squeezes them around her, to trap her. She laughs and pretends to beat him away. Finally, he lets her go. She goes to the garbage can. She picks up something else that didn’t make it in and places it in there, too. I like that she sees things like that.
“Bring more beer than you did last time,” Josh says. “Loads of it.”
Darwyn nods his head a couple of times. Then he looks at me for confirmation that he was really invited. Because he assumes that I must’ve heard it.
I give him the thumbs-up. He gives it back to me.
He doesn’t go back to reading his book. He just stands around, hovering. Laughing with the group. Interjecting here and there. And today they’re encouraging him. So he’s going on and on about something or other.
Right now I hear them doing trivia, and Darwyn is answering every question right. Sometimes they treat him like he’s an idiot savant.
And they laugh right at him, right in front of him, right in his face, and they say, “Lung knows it all!”
I can’t remember the last time I ate lunch with someone. Mark and Sameer never eat outside. They say that it depresses them too much. They eat in the library. But I like the sun. The sun is a star. I wonder what constellation we’re in.
It seems strange to sit here and listen to Josh and the other kids share everything that is boring and mundane when all I want to do is talk. But if I do, I want to talk about big things and big ideas. Not about parties that I don’t want to go to. Not about what trivia Darwyn knows or doesn’t know. I wonder what would happen if I went right up to them and shared the news that there are people walking around who have bigger, more interesting things to consider. Things like the fact that there is probably life on other planets and they are visiting us
here on Earth.
But then I freeze up. Because even allowing that thought to be fully formed in my head makes me feel kind of sweaty and sick.
Today the only things that want to share anything with me are a plastic bag that is stuck in the garbage can and a squirrel making off with someone’s Cheeto.
19.
Chem class.
“So our hypothesis is incorrect,” I say.
“Are you sure? I don’t believe you,” Suki says.
Suki is chewing on her pen cap. She does not want to be my lab partner. Neither does Natalie.
I’ve got the beaker in my hand.
My hand is shaking.
Sometimes when I look at the beakers, it makes me nervous. Being in a lab brings something back up, some half-remembered memory inside of me that I don’t like.
Experiments. It seems unbelievable to me that school teaches us to be the experimenters. The observers. The prodders. The measurers. The destroyers.
We are never taught what it would be like if the tables were turned.
We are never taught what it would be like if we were the rat in the maze.
Or the frog on the dissecting table.
Or the atom being split.
We don’t like to think about that.
We like to think that we are being civilized.
I’m not so sure what science means anymore. Part of it seems beautiful and part of it seems monstrous. After all, how can we understand the unknowable without experimentation?
How could they understand anything about us without seeing what we are made of? I can’t blame them for being curious. For wanting to know what makes us tick. I am curious about them, too.
Then I think about a cold, hard metal table and I close my eyes for a moment.
At least we are not dissecting anything this year. I had to take a D in biology because I couldn’t handle the bio part. I just couldn’t handle those frogs, those pig hearts, pinning the skin back and reaching inside.
“Just write it down, Suki,” Natalie says.
Suki leans over on her stool to ask Posey at the next lab station, “Hey, what did you get?”
“Correct,” Posey says.
“That’s not what we got,” I say.
“It’s not?” Posey checks her notebook. “Are you sure, Mal?”
“I’m sure,” I say.
“Well, he must be wrong,” Suki says.
“Who cares?” Natalie chimes in. “We still get a B for completing the lab.”
“Wait,” Posey says. “Wait.”
She leans over and rechecks the work of her group.
“I see — it’s a trick!” she says. “Mal’s right.”
I start disposing of the chemicals. I suppose I could feel smug. But I don’t. I’m just glad that science speaks for itself so I don’t have to.
“Hey, Nat,” Posey says. “Can I go to your house to hang out before the party? I don’t want to go all the way home.”
“Sure,” Natalie says.
I wipe down the lab station.
“There’s a party tonight, Mal,” Posey says. “It’s at Josh’s. You can come if you like.”
I see Suki roll her eyes. Which means I’m not really invited.
“Everyone is invited,” Posey says. This is not a pity invite. She’s making sure I understand that I’m welcome. “Even your friends.”
I don’t bother to tell her that I wouldn’t really go to a party with Mark and Sameer. But they’re okay to sit with sometimes. They’re pretty okay guys. Regardless of what the truth is, it’s thoughtful of her to include them. “Thanks,” I say. “I’ll think about it.”
I think about it for exactly a nanosecond.
No.
20.
I am thinking a lot about what I know. I know how big the ship was: 250 meters. I heard them talking about it. I don’t understand how nobody else saw anything that big in the sky. Maybe everyone is blind. Maybe no one ever looks up. They just take the sky for granted.
You’d think that it’d be in the newspapers, or online, and people would blog about it and shit, but I check every day and there are never any reports of UFOs. Well, sometimes in other places, but not in my town.
I figure
a) they have some sort of stealth technology.
b) there is a government cover-up.
I’m not crazy. Not like I suspect some of the other people in group are. Like this guy Greg, who wears a tinfoil hat and says he gets messages in his teeth. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I mean, who am I to judge?
If I thought that tinfoil would tune me in or block me out, I would totally do it.
It’s now my fourth meeting. I’m slouched in my chair. I still have not shared. The other group members are talking across one another now, and arguing. There are about ten people in the group tonight, and they’re all older than me — some of them much older. There’s only one guy, a new member, who could possibly be a teenager. He’s sitting across from me, as quiet as I am. He says his name — Hooper — when it’s time for the introductions, which is the only reason I even know his name at all. He’s interesting to look at, so when I listen to the other people speak, or when I zone them out, I watch him.
His hair is curly and a weird kind of blond except for the tips, where there are hints of black. It doesn’t look dyed. When he turns his head to the side, he seems to be much older than I am, like an old man, but when I look at him face on, he looks young. At first I think he has no eyelashes, but I realize that they are just translucent. They make his eyes look much bigger than everyone else’s. He smiles at me. When he smiles, he looks extra goofy.
“What are your aliens called?” Earl asks Nadine, the woman who’s sharing.
Someone stifles a yawn. Maybe a laugh.
“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s not like they were chitchatting with me. They were probing me.”
“Well, usually they say something, like ‘We are the Martians’ or ‘Klexians’ or ‘Malolians!’ ‘Greetings, earthling!’” one of the other guys, Harold, says.
“Be cool,” Earl says. “No one laughed at you when you shared.”
“I don’t want to share anymore,” Nadine says.
Hooper plays with his long fingers the whole time. It’s like he’s never seen fingers before. He wiggles them and examines his nails. Feels the knuckles. Makes a fist. Clasps his two hands together. Flips them open and over and examines his palms.
He sees me staring and stops what he’s doing. But I can tell it’s hard for him because he sits on his hands. Then he looks at me and kind of laughs, like he can’t keep from looking at his hands for long and knows it. I wiggle my fingers for a little while so he doesn’t feel alone. Or stupid.
I don’t like it when I feel stupid. And I’m pretty sure that no one else does, either.
At the end of the group, Earl looks at me when he asks if there’s anybody else who wants to share. But I can’t do it. I can’t tell whether everyone else in the room thinks I’m a fake, that I’m just some kid getting off on their weirdness. But here no one ever pushes. Maybe because we’ve all been probed before. Or maybe they realize that I get it. Maybe there’s some kind of radar where you can tell when another contactee is in the room. All I know is that listening to them talk makes me feel safe.
Hooper comes over to me after group when I’m unlocking my bicycle.
“Hello,” he says.
He says it weird. Like he doesn’t have much practice using his voice or his tongue.
“Hello, Hooper,” I say.
“Mal,” he says.
“That’s right.”
“Mal means bad.”
“Yeah,” I say. “In Latin. Or French. Or Spanish. But I’m not Spanish. And I’m not bad.”
“No,” Hooper says, like he’s sure of that, even though he doesn’t know me.
“It’s short for Malcolm,” I tell him. In case he wants to know. He nods.
“Mal,” he says, and then he looks up at
the sky and wanders away.
21.
Malcontent
Mal du siècle
Malediction
Malefaction
Maleficent
Malevolent
Malfeasance
Malformed
Malfunction
Malice
Malign
Malignant
Malnourished
Malodorous
Malpractice
Maltreatment
22.
I got lost and disappeared.
For days.
Sometimes I wonder which part of me came back.
23.
Mom is lying on the couch. She’s got the TV on low. I’m sitting with my laptop and I’m doing homework. She starts snoring.
After he’d been gone for two years, my mom finally got enough money to do the surgery, but ever since then, she snores.
She believed that if she had the perfect nose, my dad would come back. She thought that maybe it would help. He always used to say that she was beautiful except for her nose. He said that her nose ruined her perfectly good face. Then she would cry. Then he’d take it back and he’d hold her and say that it was okay, that she had other things about her that were good.
First Day On Earth Page 3
