How to Date an Alien (2 page)

Then the woman's grip loosened and the air
whooshed back into my lungs. I gasped, relieved that I might
actually survive. I tried to focus on what was in front of me, but
all I could see was the outline of a very tall man in a silver
jumpsuit.

“No!" she screeched. “You, of all of us,
should know what she is capable of!”

I looked up to see a pair of coal-black eyes
staring at me as the man heaved the shaking woman away from my
neck. The last thing I felt was the warm touch of his hand on my
cheek before everything went dark.

My eyes snapped open, only to awaken to the
smell of rotten eggs and a pair of beady bug eyes that stared right
back at me. I bent my head back.

"Holy—!" Only then did I realize that I was
lying on a small white hospital bed and my arms were covered in
large purple welts.

"It looks like she's coming to." A tiny
orange fist poked my forehead.

I tried to swat the little orange bug away,
but when my hand reached its arm all I ended up with was a palm
full of clear goop.

"What the…?"

I tried to sit up, but my head spun. The last
thing I remembered before blacking out was a pair of coal-black
eyes. But now I was in a large, white room filled with hospital
beds and blinking machines like I was in some sort of a spaceship
hospital.

"Are you doing okay, honey?" I looked over to
see my dad sitting at the edge of the bed, his eyes locked on
me.

"Magpie did a pretty good number on her neck
and arms, but the bruises will wear off soon and she'll be just
fine." The bug paced on the bed toward my dad. It couldn't have
been more than a foot tall with orange scaly skin and a body like
Mr. Potato Head.

I pinched myself to see if I was dreaming.
Nope, definitely wasn't dreaming and it just made the marks on my
arm sting.

"Uh, Dad?" I slowly looked around the room. I
wasn't in a normal hospital ward, but more like something you'd see
out of a science fiction movie. Creatures of all shapes and colors
lay on different cots, with nurses taking their blood pressure and
speaking in languages I had never heard. Where the hell was I?

"I think that's my cue to leave you two
alone." The bug patted my dad's arm before fixating those round
little eyes on me. "You'll be fine in no time. Have fun at
orientation and welcome to Circe!" The bug flashed a big gummy
smile before pouncing off the bed and waddling toward another
cot.

"I'm glad you're doing okay, Alex," dad said
as he scooted closer to me. "That was quite a scare."

"Dad, what the hell is this place?" I sat up,
my eyes darting all around. I was sure there had to be some sort of
an explanation. Maybe I was just hallucinating or something.

"I didn't know the best way to tell you this,
but remember when I said that I wasn't exactly doing Air Force
duties anymore? That I was doing more government work?" His eyes
shifted nervously. "Well, Circe is actually an alien operations
center." His eyes stopped and met mine, the wrinkles on his wide
forehead creased as he waited for a response.

"You're joking, right?" I leaned in closer.
"I mean, aliens don't exist. That's a myth, like the tooth
fairy."

"As you can see, Alex." He stood up, reaching
his arm out to me. "I'm definitely not joking and you are
definitely late for orientation."

I let him help me out of bed. I was too
stunned to protest. All those years I had sat in science class
listening to my teachers trying to debunk myths about life existing
on other planets, and now my dad was telling me it was real. More
importantly, I was going to spend my summer working at an alien
operations center. I felt like I was going to faint again.

We walked out of the hospital room and into a
large hallway. I tried not to stare, but it was hard to keep my
eyes off all the things going on around me. There were small,
spiderlike creatures crawling on the walls and yelling gibberish to
the people walking by. In the real world there was some sort of
professional etiquette about saying 'hi' to the people that one
passed in the hallway, but when the person that I passed had three
eyes, it was hard to say anything at all. Of course my dad acted
like nothing was wrong, even high-fiving the spiders as we walked
by.

"Alex?" I hadn't even realized that he was
talking to me. It was as if I was walking in a daze, one of those
hazy dreamlike states were I wondered if I would ever wake up.

"Uh, what?" I blinked hard, looking up at him
and realizing that he stopped in front of a bulky metal door.

"I just asked if you wanted me to walk you
in." He leaned an arm against the door. "I don't have to if you
don't want me to. I can understand if you're embarrassed."

"Uh, no that would actually be great if you
walked me in." I smiled weakly, but I was actually happy, for once,
to have my dad there. With everything that was going on I figured I
needed someone there if I were to faint again, or if some lady
tried to kill me…again.

He pushed open the door and led me into a
room that was so dark my eyes had to rapidly adjust before I could
see anything. I squinted as my dad put his hand on my back, guiding
me into the room.

"Vince, what a surprise to see you here!" a
lumberjack-looking guy with a beard like a schnauzer called from
the front of the room.

After a few blinks I noticed that there were
five people, maybe a few years older than me, sitting in a small
circle in front of the lumberjack. All their eyes were locked on me
as I entered the room and it wasn't a good stare, more like the
kind you give to someone that interrupted you in the middle of a
speech and made you lose your place.

"Well, after Alex had her little scare I felt
that I should walk her in." My dad patted my back, beaming from ear
to ear. My little scare? A woman or alien or whatever she was tried
to kill me and he calls it a little scare!

"What the hell?" A petite brunette popped up
from her chair, pointing her thin finger in my direction. "My
bestie and I spent three years studying the effects of plant life
on Three Mile Island and she doesn't get in, but some little
military brat gets in because her daddy works here?"

My eyes widened. "I…uh…"

"Calm down, Riley," the lumberjack bellowed.
"Let's not make judgments of people before we get to know
them."

"Whatever." She rolled her eyes and plopped
back down.

"Are you going to be okay?" my dad whispered
and stepped behind me.

My throat felt like it had completely dried
up. I swallowed and nodded, taking the seat in front of me. The
eyes of the other people in the circle stared me down. They all
seemed comfortable, like it was perfectly normal to be sitting in
the middle of an alien operations center. I avoided their eyes and
pretended like my chewed up fingernails were the most interesting
thing in the world, instead of wondering if they were thinking the
same thing that Riley had yelled.—That I didn't belong.

"Okay then." My dad patted the back of the
chair. "Ody, I'll see you at squash later?"

"Oh, you'd better be ready for a little
Martian versus human action!" He chuckled.

"I'll count on it." My dad shut the door,
leaving only the echo of his laugh behind.

"Well, Alex." The lumberjack's eyes drilled
into me, like he was really looking inside my head instead of at my
face. And since he was an alien, I was pretty sure that he could.
"Welcome to the intern program."

He plopped a large white packet labeled
Intern Program on my lap before walking toward a small, silver
podium just outside the circle. "From what I've heard, you've
already been acquainted with the infirmary and some of the
locals."

He came back toward the circle with a large
steel box that he dropped on the floor in the middle of us. "Now,
before you all start getting to know the ins and outs of our
operations center, get suited up. This would be an excellent time
to become acquainted with your fellow interns."

He pushed a small red button on the side of
the box and it flew open. A cloud of smoke billowed from inside. We
all inched closer as the smoke started to fade away.

"These," Ody said, reaching into the box,
"are going to be your uniforms." He pulled out a silver
wetsuit-looking outfit with black patches on the shoulders and a
large black belt circling the garment's waist. He tossed one to a
guy with a coffee-colored complexion and a button-down shirt. The
guy grabbed it, feeling the material between his fingers.

"These are temperature controlled so you can
deal with the different environments that humans and aliens work
in. This way we can keep everyone at their normal body
temperature." He passed around the uniforms, throwing one to each
of us from the box.

"Um are these supposed to be like
one-size-fits-all or something? Because I'm a size zero and I'm not
sure that this will fit me." Riley held up the uniform in front of
her, snarling her upper lip.

Who really just announces they are a size
zero? You never heard girls like me just announcing their pant
size. Oh, excuse me, do you think that these skimpy things will fit
my big Italian ass? No, I definitely wouldn't be saying that,
especially when I noticed Mister Tight-jeans-and-side-swept-bangs
peering at me from across the circle. Okay, maybe the internship
wouldn't be so bad. I wondered if he was the guy who had pulled the
woman off me, but when his eyes met mine there was no mistake that
they weren't the same. I wondered if I would ever see the guy who
saved me again. I also kept thinking why he needed to save me in
the first place.

"Is everything okay, Alex?" Ody questioned,
snapping me back to reality.

"Are we going to have to stop everything for
this girl?" Riley huffed.

"Oh, give it a rest already, Riley," a blond
girl with a Chicago accent clucked.

I bit my lip, trying to hide my smile. I
could already tell that Riley was like the granola-chewing hipsters
at my high school. The ones who claimed to be very eco-friendly,
but carried leather purses and wore really expensive clogs. I
looked back over at the blonde, who gave me a quick wink. It was
good to know that not everyone at Circe thought I was a
problem.

"Well on that note, let's suit up and meet
back in here for your tour." Ody motioned his arms to either side.
"Boys' rooms are on the left and girls are on the right."

We all stood up and started heading in our
separate directions. The three boys were already talking and joking
around like they were best friends. The third boy with a red crew
cut swatted the other guys with his uniform.

The girls and I were a different story.

"So, you're Alex?" the blonde piped up. She
towered over me as we walked to the bathroom. Riley sulked behind
us.

"Yeah, Alex Bianchi." I smiled, looking up at
her. "And you are?"

"Jen Davis, bio chemistry major at UCLA.
Where do you go to school?" She didn't take her eyes off me as we
walked into the cleanest, whitest bathroom I had ever seen.

"Uh, well I'm going to be a senior, applied
at Columbia for its English program." I stared down at my
internship packet, wondering if the giant stack of paper would
count as my summer reading, or if I'd even have time to read
it.

Riley stormed past us, turning back around
and holding her arms up. "Whoa, whoa did you just say that you're
only going to be a senior in high school? And an English major
wannabe?"

"Well, when you put it that way…" I shoved my
hands into the front pockets of my jeans.

Riley shook her head before pushing open a
stall door. "Great, I get to spend my summer babysitting some high
school writing chick."

"Oh I don't think you're going to have to
babysit this one." Jen laughed as she pushed open the next stall.
"I heard she already survived a Cephalopod attack."

"Seriously?" Riley yelled as I slunk into my
stall. The suit was thicker than I thought and felt like rubber
sliding up my legs.

"Well, that's what I heard, a Cephalopod
started choking her and it took like ten guys and a Caltian to pull
her off. Is that true, Alex?"

Jen was tall enough to see over the top of my
stall. I had to zip up my suit as fast as I could before she could
see anything.

"That's what they tell me." I stepped out of
the stall to meet the girls.

"Is it true that you gave the thumbs up?" Jen
looked at me, the suit molded to her body and made her look like
space Barbie.

I shrugged. "Yeah, just letting my dad know I
was fine."

Jen covered her mouth to stifle a giggle.
"You do know that giving the thumbs up in an alien operations
center is like walking in and doing the Heil Hitler sign in a
synagogue, right?" She shook her head. "I guess it's good that
Caltian was there to save you."

I stared down at my feet, trying to hide my
embarrassment. I had a million questions running through my brain,
but felt like I should ask the obvious one first. "Uh, what's a
Caltian?"

Riley groaned. "Okay, seriously, I'm going
back out with the guys." She stormed out, leaving Jen and I staring
at each other before Jen approached the counter.

"It's one of the planets that they
conveniently leave out in astronomy. If people really studied it in
school, then everyone would know that there is life on other
planets. Just like Ranga or even Mars. No one ever tells students
the whole truth, and they just go on believing what they want." Jen
smiled at my reflection and I couldn't close my mouth fast enough
to hide my gaping.

"So what's the big deal with Caltians, if
they're just from another inhabited planet?" I stared back at Jen,
who smiled at me like I was a simpleton.

"You know how in high school you have your
different cliques?"