by Mike Jung
Dad’s greenhouse is right up against the part of the backyard fence opposite from the house — he says if it was up against the house it would make it too hot. I heard the back door of the house open and close behind us as Dad unlocked the greenhouse, and Mom appeared next to me with a bottle of vinegar in her hand. Dad looked over his shoulder as he opened the door and saw the bottle.
“Red wine vinegar? Really?”
“It’s all we have.”
Dad made a “huff” noise as we followed him into the greenhouse. As usual, walking in there felt kind of like having a very thin, light, damp blanket draped over me. Trickly water sounds came from everywhere, and the smell of leaves and grass from outside was immediately taken over by the smell of water and fish. Something always smelled like fish at the Cho house.
“Dad — ”
“Here.”
We stood in front of the biggest tub of water and plants, right in the middle of the greenhouse. Dad dipped a hand into it, swirled the water around for a minute, then pulled it back out with a fish in it. It was one of the smaller fish in the tank, about half the size of Dad’s hand.
“They look healthy,” Mom said in her scientist-at-work voice.
“This is a species that’s native to our home world in Tau Ceti,” Dad said, holding the wiggly fish up for me to see.
“Dad …” This was not doing anything to reassure me. “You’re not gonna bite its head off or anything like that, are you?”
“I won’t hurt it at all — in fact, this can be beneficial for the fish, if not so much for us.”
Dad brought the fish up to his face and LICKED IT.
“EEEEWWWW!” I couldn’t believe my eyes.
It was a fast, tiny lick — it was almost like Dad poked the fish with his tongue, superfast — but it was still licking a live fish! It was like seeing a terrible accident on the side of the freeway; you know it’s bad, but you just have to look.
This day was never going to stop getting weirder.
“Aren’t there eighty kinds of bacteria in that water??” I said, meaning normal Earth bacteria. “You’re not gonna barf, are you?”
Dad managed to pucker his mouth and lick his lips at the same time. A strange smell started coming from the fish, or was it coming from Dad? Mom must have seen me twitching my nose or something.
“I don’t like the smell either,” she said with a little bit of a smile. “It goes away quickly, though.”
“There’s a chemical reaction between our saliva and the fish’s mucus coating,” Dad said. “It also takes care of the bacteria issue — the water in this tank is different from the water in the rest of the tanks.”
“And let me guess, the spit in your mouth is also different from the spit in other people’s mouths?”
Dad nodded. “Not a big difference — on a genetic level we’re 99.999 percent identical — but the enzyme mix in our saliva is one of the only noticeable differences.”
Spit. That was the difference between being human and being alien — spit. Humans rule, aliens drool. I was suddenly more aware of the spit in my mouth than ever before.
“The chemical reaction happens right on the skin of the fish, but its skin has a lot more mucus. When there’s more saliva than mucus the air interferes with the reaction, so it needs to happen inside our mouths or on our tongue.”
Dad’s generous use of the word “mucus” wasn’t doing anything for my stomach. He held the fish in front of his chest, and I wondered if it was dying from lack of oxygen.
“Shouldn’t you put that back in the water?” I couldn’t help worrying about the stupid fish.
“It’s fine, it has a reservoir of oxygen inside. Watch, now.”
The fish from another planet was glowing where Dad had licked it. The glow was almost like a turquoise color, and when Dad stuck out his tongue, the tip was glowing the same color. There was just a tiny spot of color in both places, but the glow started spreading outward as I watched.
An albatross could have flown into my mouth with room to spare.
“Whoa …” I leaned in for a closer look. The fish and Dad’s tongue both looked partly transparent, as if the glowing slime-and-spit mix had sunk into their surfaces.
“Oh my god, so freaky. Does … does doing that make you sick or something?”
“A little nausea, only because I don’t do it very often. The vinegar counteracts it …”
Mom handed the vinegar to Dad. He took the bottle and took a swig out of it, blech, and swished it around in his mouth. He spit right into the tank of plants and fish, making me promise myself that I’d never put my hand into that tank unless it was really, really important.
“I know that’s unpleasant, but the nutrients can still be used by the fish,” Dad said with an apologetic shrug. He put the cap back on the vinegar and folded his arms. Then the three of us spent a hundred years standing there and not looking at each other. Actually, I didn’t know if they were looking at me or not, because it was too hard to look at them without thinking … strange thoughts.
“Do you believe us now?” Dad’s voice was gentle.
“Have you tested it on a normal person?” I said in a wobbly voice.
I let my hand flop down to my side, because I knew what Dad had done just wasn’t normal. People’s tongues don’t light up like glow sticks. Mom put her hand on my shoulder, and I shook it off. Mom left her hand hanging in the air for a second, but I stared at it and not at her, and she slowly pulled it back.
“I have, actually,” Dad said. “I know this is all new to you, but it’s not new to us — we’ve spent a lot of time learning about all of it.”
I took a deep breath and ran my hands through my hair.
“So what does that … do?” I said, my voice shaking a little.
“What do you mean?” Dad said.
“I mean can you, like, read minds or, I don’t know, breathe underwater now? Is the fish slime magic?”
Dad smiled a tight, pained-looking smile.
“No, there’s no magic. The reaction looks pretty dramatic, but it’s purely cosmetic.”
“Can I … is that something I can do too?”
Dad nodded.
“Do I need to do it?” Dad shook his head, and I felt relieved, because if I had to lick a fish to, I don’t know, live under the light of a yellow sun or something, I’d basically have to light myself on fire.
That was when I realized I did believe them.
Believing we were a family of aliens made no sense. We had no antennae! Where were the bug eyes? Our skin wasn’t green. Maybe that’s why Dad licked the fish slime, though, to keep his skin from turning green! But I’d never had any fish slime. Not that I knew, anyway! WERE MOM AND DAD SECRETLY FEEDING ME FISH SLIME??
I spun on my heel and walked outside. I heard Dad say “Chloe” from behind me as I bolted across the yard. It took me two tries to get a grip on the doorknob, and I made a NNNNNNGGGGG sound until I was able to open the door, get inside, and close the door behind me. I slumped back against the door for a minute.
Not Korean. Not even human. Not me. Looked like I’d wasted a hundred bucks on that GeneGenie thing —their database probably didn’t include people from other solar systems.
I couldn’t decide if I wanted to keep moving or stop moving. I stalked back and forth across the living room twice, then stopped and stared at nothing. I heard the back door open and close, and when Mom and Dad came into the living room I blinked at them, kind of wanting to throw something at them and kind of wanting to lie facedown on the floor.
“So we’re not Korean at all.”
“We should have told you earlier than this,” Dad said. Mom gave him an angry look, but managed to wipe the anger off her face before looking back at me.
“We’ve spent a lot of time talking about it, honey,” she said. “We wanted to do the best thing for you.”
“Lying to me was the best thing, huh?” I kicked at the carpet, leaving a dirty scuff mark.
“No, it wasn’t,” Dad said.
“Will you stop?” Mom barked it out without even looking at Dad. “You know it’s never been that simple!”
“Maybe it is, though,” Dad said. “Maybe it always has been. Can we all sit down? Please?”
Mom and Dad sat on the couch with a three-foot gap between them that looked all wrong, and I decided to sit down on the carpet, right where I was standing. Then I decided to flop onto my back and stare at the ceiling, because it was still hard to look at Mom and Dad.
“It is … was the fourth planet from the sun in the Tau Ceti system. Tau Ceti Four. Our home world.” Mom’s voice sounded different enough to make me lift my head off the carpet and look at her. She was looking down at her hands, and it was a relief to see Dad reach out and put his hand on her back. I sat all the way up.
“That’s not the most interesting name, I know, but it’s what we call it here on Earth.”
“Was?” I said.
“There was a solar event,” Dad said. “We don’t know what exactly happened, but the sun … changed. We were forced to leave.”
“We were in the equivalent of college,” Mom said. “It was the only reason we were able to escape.”
“It was chaos,” Dad said. “Nothing was working the way it was supposed to. We were extremely lucky that your mom was working in the astrophysics department.”
“I was involved with the development of an experimental spacecraft.” Mom sounded proud, even though a tear was leaking out of the corner of her eye. She wiped it away with the tip of her pinkie. “Your dad and I were …”
“We were looking at your mom’s work,” Dad said. “We were in the astrophysics lab when it happened. We didn’t know if the ship would even fly, but it was the only choice we had.”
“I knew it would fly.” Mom sat up a little straighter.
“So we left, and just in time. The planet …”
Dad stopped talking, took a deep breath, and rubbed his chin with one hand. I was listening so hard I could hear his fingers make a raspy, sandpapery sound across his chin stubble.
“So you flew to this planet. In a spaceship.”
“Yes.”
“And you decided to come to Primrose Heights? The most boring place on …”
I was going to say “on Earth,” ha-ha.
“We were able to do some research,” Dad said. “Initially we decided to go to Korea, because of all our physical similarities — it seemed like the best place to blend in. That turned out to be a mistake.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.
“It was the hardest place to blend in, because we so obviously weren’t Korean,” Mom said. “We did it all wrong, everything from speaking the language to finishing a bowl of noodles. It was very, very uncomfortable.”
Mom and Dad traded little smiles, like they were remembering something that was funny and awful at the same time.
“So we decided to come here instead,” Mom said. “We’ve been able to pursue our work and have our family here.”
“But … but … here? You know people in this town don’t know anything about being Korean, right?”
“That was the point,” Dad said. “People don’t know any better here. It matters much less if we accidentally do or say something that reveals our true identities. Sometimes I still say occasional words in our native language, but anyone in Primrose Heights who hears me will assume I’m speaking Korean.”
“We’re still learning how to function in this world,” Mom said. “It helps that every time we make mistakes about being Earthlings, our neighbors all assume they’re mistakes about being American.”
“What about me, though? Do you know how much stupid crap I have to listen to every day? ‘Hey, Chloe, nice kimono, hey, Chloe, I didn’t know Oriental girls talk so much, hey, Chloe, you’re good at math, right?’”
“Well, you are very good at math,” Mom said.
“I don’t even know what a geisha girl is, but I know I’m not one of them.”
“Er, no, you’re definitely not.” Dad sighed. “I’m sorry you have to deal with that. That’s … I’m sorry. The alternative is worse, though.”
“What’s worse than being surrounded by racists all the time?”
“That might be a little harsh, Chloe … The alternative is, well, almost anything. If our secret became known there’d be no shortage of people who’d view us as a threat to global security. At best, we could be the targets of constant harassment. At worst, we could be captured and imprisoned. We have to hide our true ancestry.”
I had to stop and think about that. Jail. Jail for aliens. Or maybe lab experiments ON aliens, which would at least be kind of interesting, but probably even worse.
On the plus side, this opened up a whole new territory of snappy comebacks. Abigail Yang’s a great violinist, but can she make her tongue glow in the dark? No, I’m not Japanese, you’re LIGHT-YEARS off.
Nobody would believe me, of course. Which I guess was the whole point of coming to our nowhere town, like Dad had said. It actually made sense.
“So … we’re freaks, then,” I said. “We’re not Korean, we’re not even human. You’re saying we’re just … freaks.”
“NO.” Mom’s expression was fierce. “We are not freaks!”
“But we’ve just been pretending to be Korean. Well, YOU’VE been pretending, anyway. I thought it was all real.”
“Honey …” Dad paused to heave a sigh. “It’s true that we’re Korean by choice, not by birth — ”
“By CHOICE? How can we be Korean by choice? We’re not even from this solar system, right?”
I put my hands over my face, then pushed them up into my hair and grabbed a double fistful. If we weren’t from Korea, then we didn’t have any family members in Korea. Or … anywhere?
“Did anyone else get away?” I said in a strangled voice. “From Toe City Four or whatever your planet was called?”
“Tau Ceti Four,” Dad said quietly. “And we don’t know. There’s no way to know.”
“What about your … I mean our …”
I couldn’t say it. I just couldn’t.
“Our family?” Dad said, and I nodded. He and Mom looked at each other, and suddenly it felt like I was drowning in their sadness. Tears started running down both their faces this time.
“We don’t know about them either,” Mom said.
“They’re dead,” I said.
“Probably,” Dad said, almost whispering.
I’d never felt every single feeling in the world all at the same time before. My head felt like it would pop like a supercheap balloon. I’d always been so jealous of Shelley for having such a big family. I went to her cousins’ house for Easter once, and it was so much fun playing with all of them that I didn’t even care when her aunt kept asking me if I was a Buddhist. Well, not much, anyway.
Did I have … used to have cousins? I started to ask, but I couldn’t do it. I was too afraid to know the answer.
Did Mom and Dad have cousins? Not anymore, I guess. They just had me, and I just had them. We were like orphans, right? The most orphaned orphans ever. Well, I wasn’t an orphan, but as a family we were like orphans. I decided it was absolutely legit to have a flexible definition of “orphan” if you find out you’re from another planet that was destroyed by an exploding sun.
I collapsed all the way onto my back again.
“I can’t believe my whole life has just been a fantasy,” I said. “I can’t believe it.”
“Chloe — ” Mom said, wiping her eyes, but I interrupted her with a laugh. It might have been more like a screech.
“I mean, at least you’re telling me stuff about our real life now. I guess I should be happy, huh?”
“You should feel however you feel,” Mom said a few seconds later. “It makes sense that you’re upset.”
“Upset” was so not the right word. There really wasn’t any one word that captured it all; only a phrase would do, like “head in a blender
.”
“Honey — ” Dad said, but I waved him off.
“Don’t. Just … don’t.”
Then, because they don’t call me Crabby McCrabberCho for nothing, I ran out of the living room and into my room, where I slammed the door, belly-flopped onto the bed, and smashed my pillow on top of my head.
I was an alien from the boringly named planet Tau Ceti Four, in the Tau Ceti galaxy. My life as a normal human being was over — no, it hadn’t even existed in the first place. Mom and Dad were so wrong about not being freaks. We were literally the biggest freaks in the world. And I’d thought being Korean in this town was hard! At least I could talk about it, even if Shelley was the only one who cared. What was Shelley going to think about all this?
I yanked the pillow off my head and stared at the wall.
What would Shelley think?
Could I even tell her?
The next morning Dad left early to deal with a new shipment of fish at the store — at least that’s what he said, who knew where he was actually going? Maybe he had to go make crop circles or something. I stared at Mom as I shoveled in my bowl of cereal, wondering what was going on inside her twisted brain. She just smiled and drank her coffee. I scooped up a spoonful of cereal so carelessly that milk sloshed onto my place mat, and that finally got her to react, even if it was just putting her cup down on the table and folding her hands in front of her mouth. I stared at the puddle of milk on my place mat, suddenly feeling sad about it, and the place mat, and the table, and Mom and Dad.
When I left the house I started walking to Shelley’s out of habit, but I stopped in mid-step a block away from home. I still had no idea what to say to her —there was no way to tell her the truth without sounding like one of those scary-bizarre newspapers they sell in the supermarket checkout lanes. Korean Girl Is Actually From Mars! Or maybe Legal Alien! It was your basic unprecedented situation, and after standing there on the sidewalk like a zombie for a couple of minutes, I spun on my heel and walked to school alone.
