Dating an Alien Pop Star

by Kendra L. Saunders

  Devon and Kammie are still frozen in place with their protection spells or whatever, so I find myself alone to help Griffin in the empty, destroyed room. His pale face is even whiter than usual, and his chest barely rises and falls with his weak breaths. It’s as if he’s empty, missing, right in front of my eyes.

  How do you fix a broken alien? My mom definitely never prepared me for this situation.

  “Griffin,” I whisper, but I wince at the sound of my voice in the silence of the room. “You’re tired, I know you’re really tired, but you have to wake up. I promise you can rest soon, but you need to free Devon and Kammie, so they can help me fix you. Griffin?”

  Not even the flutter of an eyelash.

  After a few seconds of frantically looking around and searching my brain for any answer, I notice the chain I’d yanked off Taug’s neck, and the small, gold stone attached to a pendant. The home stone!

  I snatch the necklace up. “Please help,” I whisper to it, and then look down at Griffin again as I straddle him. His tuxedo has survived the day’s events without much damage, other than a popped button, a slightly frayed sleeve, and a rip in one knee. With shaking hands, I unbutton his fancy white dress shirt and slip the home stone over his heart, pressing it against his skin.

  He’d said something about self-healing, hadn’t he? He’d said it was more difficult than healing someone else. And it was harder without being on his planet, because he didn’t have as much power as usual.

  “Come on, home stone,” I say. “Come on, come on. Come on!”

  Griffin’s face remains slack and empty, his limbs splayed out haphazardly without so much as a twitch.

  “You can’t do this to me,” I say, but this time to Griffin. “You can’t just show up on my planet and kidnap me and drag me around and drive me crazy and run around wearing that ugly sweater and—and—and…” Tears choke my voice, which is kind of beyond annoying at a moment like this. “You’re a pop star, remember? Everyone loves you here. Think about all the people on Twitter. Think about the people at the concert!”

  No response.

  “And what about Dev? He’s your best friend. What’s he going to do? I mean, he’s stuck over there, for one thing.”

  No response. This damned home stone isn’t doing anything at all!

  With a creeping sensation of hopelessness, I lean down and place my hands on either side of Griffin’s face, like every prince ever does to the sleeping princesses in fairy tales.

  “You promised me, Griffin Valentino. You promised you wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye.”

  I press a kiss to his cold lips, fully expecting him to wake up. When I pull away, he’s still deathly pale and motionless.

  This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

  My whole body aches from everything we’ve been through today—the early start, the plane, getting knocked out and waking up on the floor, and everything that just happened in this room. With a deep sigh of resignation, I shift my weight so I can lay down with my head on Griffin’s chest.

  Crying won’t do any good, of course, but I feel like crying, so I don’t even resist when a few fat, warm teardrops roll down my cheeks and land on Griffin.

  “You made me cry,” I mutter, through wet, noisy sniffles. “Why don’t you just wake up and apologize? We could go… we could go shopping for some new Michael Kors shoes.”

  A quiet wheeze rustles from Griffin’s mouth, so I sit up straight.

  “Michael Kors,” I say again, in case he can only hear in designer labels. Somehow, I wouldn’t put it past him. “Dior. Errr… Gucci.”

  Nothing.

  I’m about to stand up and go look for help when Griffin splutters just a little and his eyes flutter open, halfway. The eerie, blue glow of his eyes is dimmed considerably from what it should be, and I have to lean down over him before he seems to register I’m there.

  “Griffin! Griffin, you have to free Devon. He’ll know how to help you,” I say, but I can’t resist kissing him quickly, just because. “Griffin, can you hear me?”

  I think I can hear his voice in my head, but I can’t be sure, so I lock gazes with him. Without really knowing what I’m doing, I tell myself to connect with him, to look into him.

  This time, Griffin’s memories are dull and painted like watercolors, dripping at the edges.

  I search through his mind frantically, running into pain and emptiness at almost every turn. There has to be something here that can help—some clue of what I can do to help. How did Griffin recover last time he burned out?

  Instead of answers, I find only one core truth standing out above all else, tightly protected at the center of Griffin’s mind. Dev, Daisy, safe. Loved ones, safe.

  Heal yourself! You have the home stone! I shout at him. You have a wager to win, and fans and a planet to go back to, and great clothes to wear. And you have me, and Dev. We’re okay. Heal yourself!

  A powerful, intimidating presence fills Griffin’s memory, spilling over into my mind. His father, a man of cold strength and menace, barreling unasked into our mental hideout.

  I yell at Griffin again and again, though my thoughts wander and I slip into some of my own memories, because they’re stronger than his blurry recollections. There’s the time I stood up to my teacher for the sake of my friend in third grade, which got me sent directly to the principal’s office. Mostly, I just remember feeling proud of myself for being a little kid and still winning against an adult, even when the principal called my mom and she freaked out over the phone so loud that I could hear her from my seat across the room.

  We’re pretty good at fighting back, I think, both for Griffin and for my own affirmation. We can do this.

  There’s another part of his mind that glows a little brighter than the rest, and I nudge it, finding a warm and comforting shell around it. Wait—is that the healing part? Yes, yes, that must be the healing part. Wow, I’m inside of an alien’s brain! Kammie is going to be so—no, no, stop it, stop, this is important, back to the task at hand…

  I concentrate on his healing ability and will it to expand.

  Something disrupts our connection, and I find myself blinking and staring down at Griffin. He’s blinking, which is a hopeful sign.

  “Griffin?”

  “Wanda…”

  “Griffin, you have to free Devon! You don’t need to protect him anymore; he’s safe now. He’ll know what to do.”

  Griffin squeezes his eyes closed and winces. “My father…”

  “I know, I’m so sorry about your dad, Griffin, but you have to concentrate right now. You have to free Devon and heal yourself. I sort of tapped into your brain or something, so, I hope that helped.”

  “No, he’s… he’s… He’s here…”

  Oh no. “Griffin, look, don’t you dare walk into the light or something, even if you see your dad waiting for you. You are not going to die!”

  “Step back, human.”

  Instinctively, I jump up and turn around, prepared to fight if I have to. I’ve only taken half a self-defense class, once upon a time, but they always say that in the moment of need, most people gain a bunch of adrenaline and can pick up cars and stuff.

  “Leave us alone!” I say, and then realize that the grim, blue-eyed creature in front of me is Griffin’s dad. “Oh. I thought you were…?” It’s never polite to tell someone they’re supposed to be dead, so I just stand up straighter and raise my chin. “Can you help Griffin?”

  Two, three, four, five more aliens appear in the room, creating swirling, hissing entrances with their arrival.

  Griffin’s dad brushes me aside and crouches beside his son. He mutters something that sounds scolding, but then he looks back at me. “You saved him.”

  “Well, we all sort of helped each other through this,” I say. “Will he be okay?”

  “He needs to go home.” Griffin’s dad turns and motions his hand at Dev and Kammie, which effectively releases them from their protective shield. Dev darts for Griffin so fast
that he trips on his way; he jumps back up and then falls on his knees beside his friend.

  Dev speaks to Griffin frantically in their native language, as if they are the only beings in the room, and hugs him with reckless abandon. The other new aliens close in, pushing me farther and farther away from Griffin.

  I turn to look for Kammie, who’s tearing her fingers through her hair and slapping her own cheeks, as if to wake herself up after a long sleep. “Oh my God, Kammie. Are you okay?”

  “Me? Not the best, but then, I’ve never been attacked by aliens before, so that’s to be expected, I suppose,” Kammie says, walking on unsteady legs toward me. “You were like an action hero! Indiana Jones would be so proud.”

  I pull my friend into a tight hug, clinging to her. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

  “Wait until everyone on my conspiracy message board hears about this,” she says. “Hey, are they leaving?”

  It all seems to happen at once. Griffin’s levitating above the ground, suspended by seemingly nothing, with Devon standing by his side, and then both of them have vanished from sight, along with all the other aliens except for Griffin’s father.

  “No!” I shout, before I can stop myself. “No, you can’t leave us!”

  Griffin’s father turns slightly and looks at me, his bright blue eyes frightening in their intensity. Though he’s not much taller than Griffin, he seems to fill the room, fill even my insides. “You belong here,” he says in a voice that invites no question or argument.

  “Yeah, I do, but you can’t leave us behind after everything we’ve just been through.” My voice is shaking way more than I’d like it to, so I prop my hands on my hips in the most faux-authoritative gesture maybe ever. “I saved his life, so in return, I want you to—to take me back to your planet. At least for a couple of days.”

  Kammie steps up so she’s standing by my side. “I want to come, too.”

  “Every other being in this building will sleep for hours, providing you with adequate time to escape and return to your homes. Thank you for services to my son.” He turns away, so I leap forward, closing the distance between us rather easily, and grab hold of his arm.

  “Griffin and I have a mind-connection thing, because of our star matter,” I say in a rush. “Please, please just let me at least see him one more time, and then you can send me back here if you want.” It’s only then, as I can see that he’s about to relent, that I hesitate. “Well, I’m not going to be torn to pieces in space or something, am I?”

  The Emperor President peers at me with narrowed eyes, but finally, he shakes his head. “Not if you’re traveling with me.”

  I’m about to ask him some questions about the whole space travel thing when I’m hurtled full-throttle into a kaleidoscope of colors and lights and painful stretching and a crushing, buzzing noise that takes over my whole head…