First Day On Earth (4 page)

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.

Sometimes he’d say to her, “I know you’ll leave me one day.” He’d be crying a little bit. I could hear them through the door, and Mom would swear on her heart that she never would.

“I love you,” she’d say.

He promised her that he would never leave her. Never, ever. He swore.

And then they’d coo and coo and get quiet except for the grunting.

I never remember him saying that he loved her back.

24.

 

I hop on my bike. I think maybe I’m just getting out of the house to get some air. Or a Thai iced tea. Or to get away from the flickering television and the take-out boxes that I don’t feel like cleaning up. Away from the smell of sour wine. Away from the homework that I don’t want to finish. If I had gas money I might go to the desert. But instead, I’m on my bike. My legs pumping. The wind making the dry heat cool.

I go down one street. Pass another. Make a left at the gas station. Make a right at the bottom of the hill.

And there I am.

Josh’s party.

Someone is throwing up on the lawn.

There is underwear and toilet paper in the tree.

I lock my bike. I don’t want any of these cool kids to steal it. Even if it’s beat-up, it’s still my bike.

I don’t rush inside. I go slowly. I figure I’ll just inch in there. Check it out. I’m already regretting finding myself here when someone throws an empty beer can at me. I duck inside the house.

As soon as I get in the door, someone puts a drink in my hand. He’s wearing a peacock headdress. I’m not sure why. Maybe he’s on drugs.

I sometimes wonder why they took me when there are so many other stellar specimens of how fucked up humanity can be. Then again, in group, the one thing that strikes me is that everyone seems so incredibly normal. Well, almost everyone. I know that they didn’t take me for what I knew. Because at twelve, what could I possibly have known about anything? Except that people leave with no explanation.

Then again, so do aliens.

On the couch, there are a bunch of people making out. They keep switching who’s kissing who. I turn away and head to the kitchen. Josh is in there slicing up limes for tequila shots and asking who’s up for one. I catch eyes with Darwyn, who’s sitting at the butcher-block table. He’s like, “Yeah!” But he doesn’t say it as strongly as the others.

Someone hands me a shot. I lick the salt. Take the shot. Bite the lime. It’s pretty good. But I pass on doing another.

I go to the back porch. There are a bunch of girls dressed like weekend hipsters and they are giggling like crazy. There’s a cat hissing at them.

“Mal.” Posey says my name when the cat screeches by me in an attempt to escape.

“Hey,” I say.

Natalie comes up to me and dances all slow. Like some dance she saw in a movie or a TV show on how to be sexy. Only it’s really not sexy.

“Well, I just thought I’d stop by,” I say. “Since you invited me.”

“Cool,” Posey says.

I wonder why she’s nice to me. Is it because her mom works at the pound and is the one who checks in all the lost animals I bring in? Maybe she’s supposed to be nice to me. It doesn’t really matter. Nice is nice.

Suki slips her arm around Posey’s waist the way girls do and whispers something in her ear. They both turn to each other and away from me.

I wander back through the party, saying hello to the few people that I talk to on occasion and having interesting conversations with some kids from another school. By the time midnight rolls around, the party has gotten too big and too loud for me, so I bail.

But I’m actually glad I went. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Every now and then, it’s good for me to get a sense of how everyone else lives. In case they come back and ask.

25.

 

The papers arrived when I was fourteen. I was the one who picked up the mail. The return address was from a lawyer. The envelope was thick.

My mother screamed when she saw it.

And then, when she was done screaming, she called everyone she could. Begging them to make it not true. Begging them to tell him to change his mind.

He didn’t care what had happened to her.

What he’d left behind.

This mess of a woman.

This woman who was my mother.

Me with all the pieces, broken and un-glueable.

He was happy where he was. He was
happy
.

He just wanted to get rid of us so he could move on.

He had moved on.

But we had stayed.

He was never coming back.

He was never looking back.

I found my mother on the floor. A bottle of pills next to
her. I called 911. And stroked her hair and sang songs to her until they came and took her away and pumped her stomach.

26.

 

I want to be taken away from here.

27.

 

On Monday, as I pass by some of the kids who I talked to at the party, they jut their chins out at me in a sort of weird, passive hello. The thing that’s weird is that I know they don’t really want to talk to me or anything, but now I’m full of things that I want to talk about.

My secret is blowing up inside of me, but now it doesn’t hurt.

I almost feel high. Or what I imagine being high is like. Despite what you probably think, I’ve never been high. But right now, I feel euphoric. I’m
happy
. Almost crazy happy, but it’s because I feel like I want to burst. I have to keep putting my hand over my mouth to stop myself from blurting things out. Or maybe it’s to hide the fact that I’m smiling so much.

Hanging by the lockers before first period, Sameer and Mark look at me like they want an explanation. But I don’t say anything. I just take my textbook down off the shelf in my locker and put it in my bag.

We start to move together down the hallway to our classes, and I want to put my arms around their shoulders in happiness. I want to squeeze them and tell them that everything is going to be okay. Not because I know that it is, but because I feel
so relieved about everything. Because I am not alone.
We
are not alone.

As I’m about to peel off from them to go up the stairs to the second floor, they kind of stand there and look at me. That’s when I notice it. They have a look in their eyes. It’s a look I haven’t seen them give me before, and I don’t have to be able to read minds to know what they are thinking.

Sometimes, silence is very loud.

Their feelings are hurt. And I am the reason.

“I guess I should have asked you guys to come to Josh Nelson’s party,” I say.

They kind of shrug. But from the way they shrug, I know they agree with me.

I feel like a bonehead. I wouldn’t survive these halls every day if it weren’t for them. We are the reason why none of us ever has to be alone in a sea of people who don’t understand us. But just like I could never tell them about the sky and what happened to me, I can’t tell them that I need them to get through each day.

“You didn’t miss much,” I finally say.

“Yeah,” Sameer says.

“That’s not the point,” Mark says.

A part of me is surprised that they even care about something like Josh Nelson’s party. But that’s something else we never talk about — parties, or school, or feelings. And since we talk about nothing, I know nothing.

I have to make it up to them because even though they don’t say anything, they’re mad at me. But I don’t know how to fix it.

So instead, we just stand there, our eyes darting around, not really falling on each other.

“I gotta go to class,” Sameer finally says. He adjusts his backpack, and he and Mark go on their way.

I watch them walk down the hall, admiring how they stick out as being so different from everyone else.

It hits me that I have never even told them that, and I doubt I ever will. All the happiness that I felt just hisses out of me. I’m like a deflated balloon and it’s not even nine.

I’m back to everything being like it always is. Back to feeling as though nothing will ever change unless I say something.

I have to say something to someone.

28.

 

I decide it’s time to share.

“I’d like to share,” I say.

“Go ahead, Mal,” Earl says. And then all eyes are on me. I feel a bit parched. I take a sip from my water.

Hooper is across from me again. He’s looking at me and his eyes never seem to blink. It makes it hard to read his expression. But he seems interested for the first time I’ve ever noticed. Then again, he also seems interested in his fingers.

This guy Greg smiles at me, encouraging me on. Like it’s going to be all right if I tell my story.

So I look up at the ceiling and I start to talk.

“I was twelve. It happened right out there in the desert on the Fourth of July,” I say. “They said that it was only fireworks in the sky that night. But it wasn’t. I know that.”

The others start nodding. I don’t have to feel silly about what I’m saying. They’ve been there. Or somewhere close to it. They believe me.