Out There - Book One: Paradise

by David Gordon

The day Sami visited Brian’s family her mother had, unexpectedly, come home early from work. Mrs. Lightfoot had knocked on the door to Mr. Sanchez’s apartment, thinking she would surprise Sami. Instead it was Mrs. Lightfoot and Mr. Sanchez who were surprised. And suddenly frantic with worry. Naturally, Sami’s mother was furious when Sami got home a short time later. While Mrs. Lightfoot stomped back and forth, yelling and shaking her finger at her, Sami sat on the sofa, trying to look sorry. The truth was, however, that she was not at all sorry. For the first time in a long time she had a friend. And what an unusual friend she had! And what a family! And she really liked them. So behind the sorry face she was making for her mother, Sami was actually feeling happier than she had felt in a long time.

  When Mrs. Lightfoot finally ran out of steam, she collapsed onto the sofa beside Sami and started crying. Now Sami did feel bad. She put her arms around her mother to comfort her and said, “But I’m okay, mom. Look! I’m fine!”

  “Well I wasn’t fine!” her mother sobbed. “I had no idea where you were! I thought I would lose my mind!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Sami, and this time she meant it.

  Her mother looked her in the eye and said, very seriously, “Sami, you must promise to never do that again.”

  Sami nodded. “I promise.”

  “I mean it. You have to promise. Never lie to me again or not tell me where you are.”

  Sami hopped onto her knees so that she could look her mother right in the eye. Then Sami worked at making her face as serious as she could, scrunching down her eyebrows and tightening her mouth. “I really, really promise,” she said slowly. “I will never, ever, ever lie to you again or not tell you where I am.”

  For a moment they stared at each other’s very serious faces. Then Mrs. Lightfoot’s started to crack into a smile, then Sami’s serious face cracked, then both of them burst out laughing. Mrs. Lightfoot put her arms around her daughter and said, “Well that isn’t going to happen, is it?”

  Sami shook her head. “No way, mom.” And the two of them exploded into more laughter.

  That evening at the dinner table Sami told her mother everything she could remember about Brian’s family and their strange house. Her mother had a lot of questions. It was really one of the best evenings Sami and her mother had ever spent together. Sami’s stories of the alien family intrigued Mrs. Lightfoot. In fact, her curiosity became so great that she suggested that Sami should invite Brian over to play on Saturday. Sami was thrilled with this idea.

  Trouble. It was everywhere, everyday for the rest of that week. The television news shows were filled with reporters with worried faces and tight voices reporting from cities where people lined up for bottled water, from forests where rivers were nothing but sand, from farms where fields were drying up and blowing away. Fires burned in the mountains and across the prairies, and there was no water to fight them. So they just burned. Instead of water, ash rained down on many cities. Everywhere people were arguing about who should get what water there was, and what to do about getting more water for the country.

  As bad as things were in the United States, things were even worse in many other places in the world. Most places in Africa had already gone for years with almost no rainfall. And when it did rain, most of the water created enormous floods that swiftly swept to the sea, instead of soaking into the ground where the people could eventually use it. (Sami thought about Konoko in Kenya, and wondered if he was okay.) In India and Asia they were having long storms that dumped too much water on them. It was so much that the people who lived in that part of the world had trouble growing crops. Their crops were often drowned in water, or were simply washed away. There was a drought in Europe as well. Reservoirs were drying up, and that meant there was not only less water to drink and use, but also less water to turn the turbines that generated electricity. Some countries were trying to dam up their rivers so that they could keep all of their water for themselves. But most rivers flow through countries, so those dams meant some other country was being cut off from their source of fresh water. Many of these countries were no longer arguing about water; they were fighting over it.

  Sami did not understand everything that was going on, but she could tell from watching the faces of adults as they watched the news that things were getting unusually, frighteningly tense in the world.

  Even away from the television, adults still seemed to be upset all the time. One minute the teachers at school were acting extra nice and extra happy, then suddenly they were angry and yelling. Sami did not like the yelling, of course, but she liked it better than when the teachers were being extra nice and happy. She somehow knew that they were faking it, and that felt creepy to her.

  There was plenty of other trouble at school, too. Sami was not someone who typically faked her feelings or hid what she thought. So it was immediately obvious to the other kids that she and Brian were now friends. Many of the kids simply snickered and pointed at them, then whispered foolish things to each other and tittered together. This did not bother Sami in the least. Other kids found opportunities to say the usual, nasty little things, like, “Are you getting married?” and “You must be an alien!” and other things that make no sense at all, if you think about them. Even these nasty remarks did not bother Sami too much. She did not like them, of course, but as we know, she was used to it. By the end of the week, however, Alejandro had figured out that the best way to enrage Sami was to be mean to Brian.

  On Friday, Alejandro waited until Mrs. Fox was working with a small group of kids in a corner of the room. Then he put on a big show of distorting his fingers and pretending to have difficulty picking up his pencil. And then he started softly hooting, like a frustrated monkey. He made sure that he was being seen by both Sami and Brian. The first time Alejandro put on his show, Brian was embarrassed, and Sami was fuming. She wanted to leap onto Alejandro’s head, but she controlled herself and told Brian to ignore him.

  The second time Alejandro did it, Sami snapped at him, “Knock it off!”

  Suddenly Miss Fox’s head popped up from the circle of students she was working with. “What’s going on, Samantha?”

  Sami glared at Alejandro, who grinned back. She pursed her lips and looked down at the paper work on her desk. “Nothing,” she mumbled. Miss Fox’s head dropped back into her circle of kids.

  “It’s okay, Sami,” said Brian. He patted her arm, which set off a new wave of whispers and snickering among some of the other kids.

  Minutes later, Alejandro pulled the same stunt again as Sami was walking by his desk. He barely got out his second “ooka” before Sami screamed in his face, “Shut up!” and swept his papers and pencil off his desk with a swipe of her hand.

  “Hey!” he yelled.

  “I hate you!” she snarled at him.

  Miss Fox was on her feet. “What is going on over there?! Samantha!”

  Sami was out of control, jabbing her finger at Miss Fox, Brian, and Alejandro and yelling, “Well tell him to leave me and Brian alone! He won’t stop!”

  Miss Fox could move pretty fast when she wanted to, and right now she wanted to. Before Sami could take another breath, Miss Fox was already behind her and had her hands on Sami’s shoulders. Miss Fox said, “You go sit down immediately, young lady, “ and steered Sami back toward her seat.

  “But—!”

  “Now,” said Miss Fox, and she meant it.

  Sami trudged back to her seat, making awful faces the whole way. Alejandro was pretending to laugh, until he heard over his head, “Alejandro.” He looked up at Miss Fox staring down at him. “Come with me.”

  His smile faded as he slowly got to his feet to follow Miss Fox to her desk. She kept him over there for quite some time, talking to him in a low but strong voice. He whined and complained, but that only made her angrier, and she threatened to call his father. At the mention of his father, Alejandro immediately stopped complaining. He stiffened, turned pale, and looked scared. Now he just stood quietly while Miss Fox lecture
d him. Sami was still so angry herself that she could take no satisfaction in Alejandro being chewed out by the teacher. Instead she stared down at her desk, fuming and imagining horrible machines she could stuff Alejandro into that would grind him up and teach him a lesson.

  Miss Fox eventually finished with Alejandro and sent him back to his seat. If Sami had not been so busy grinding him up in her imagination, she would have seen him looking daggers at her as he passed her desk.

  The bell clanged at the end of the day. Miss Fox waited until the class was quiet before releasing them. And then, as usual, the room erupted with shouting, talking, pounding feet, chairs banging and scraping, and the zzzzip and skriiitch of zippers and Velcro. Because Stephan and Marquette already had out their PSPs and were busy playing “The Gathering Storm,” Stephan tripped over Toby’s backpack. Stephan crashed into Marquette, who squawked as his PSP flew out of his hands and went skittering across the floor. Tim whooped with joy to see this, then swung his backpack over his shoulder, accidentally hitting Ellen in the head and messing up her hair. She shrieked at him, Maribel made a how-could-you-do-such-a-terrible-thing?! face at Tim, and Tim promptly fell to the floor and started rolling around. While rolling around, he bumped into Ming just as she was finishing carefully arranging everything in her backpack. She had to start all over again.

  All of this confusion still scared Brian, so he preferred to sit quietly until most of the kids had left the room. Sami was standing beside him, stuffing her homework and books into her backpack. She said, “You’re still coming to my place tomorrow, right?”

  “Yes,” said Brian. “Mr. Sombra will bring me.”

  “Cool. He isn’t going sit out there and wait for you or anything, is he?”

  “I don’t know,” said Brian.

  “Okay, well I got to get to the bus. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Okay, Sami.”

  She shouldered her backpack and headed out the door.

  Besides Brian, only Miss Fox, Pedro, and Holly were still in the room. Like Brian, Pedro and Holly did not like the confusion and waited until the room had cleared before gathering their things. Brian stood up, put on his backpack, pushed in his chair and walked to the door. As usual, Miss Fox was at the board, erasing.

  She looked over at him and smiled. “Have a nice weekend, Brian.”

  “You too, Miss Fox,” he said, smiled, and left.

  When Brian got outside the classroom, he glanced to his right, just in time to see Sami hurrying around the corner of the building, heading for the buses. Before he turned himself to the left, however, he saw Alejandro, and two other boys appear from behind another room and run after Sami.

  Sami had her back pressed against the wall. She was glaring at Alejandro, who stood in front of her with a nasty smirk on his face. Standing on either side of him (also smirking) were Mike and Franklin.

  “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you,” said Alejandro.

  “Anyone’s smarter than you, jerk face!” said Sami.

  The smirk instantly disappeared and his face clouded with anger. His hand shot out and roughly grabbed the strap to Sami’s backpack.

  “Alejandro…”

  He turned his head to see who had said his name. “Oh look. The monkey’s here!” he said.

  Brian stood there, gazing steadily at Alejandro. “Please let go of Sami,” he said.

  Instead of letting go, Alejandro shook her by her backpack strap and said, “Here’s your boyfriend, creep!”

  Brian stepped closer. “Please let her go, Alejandro.”

  But Alejandro ignored him. “Oh wait, I forgot, he can’t be your boyfriend because you’re a boy!” He gave Sami another shake. “Aren’t you!”

  Mike and Franklin pointed at her and laughed. Brian took another step closer and said, “Please…” and put his hand on Alejandro’s arm.

  “Ugh!” Alejandro yelled and let go of Sami to slap away Brian’s hand. Then Alejandro shoved Brian on the chest, knocking him to the ground. “Don’t touch me!”

  The first thing Brian did was to look up at Sami and say, “Sami! I’m okay!” He had seen that she was about to leap at Alejandro and knew he had to stop her. He got his legs under him and stood back up.

  Alejandro was breathing hard and rubbing his arm where Brian had touched him. “Don’t you ever touch me again, you monkey!”

  Brian watched him for a moment, and then took a step closer and held out his hand. Mike and Franklin were delighted. “Hey, Alejandro,” said Franklin, “the monkey wants to shake your hand!” and he and Mike hooted with laughter.

  Alejandro shoved Brian in the chest, knocking Brian to the ground again. Again Brian looked first at Sami and held up his hand to stop her from jumping in to help. And again Brian stood up, faced Alejandro, and held out his hand to him.

  “Whoa, he’s beggin’ for it,” said Mike, grinning and elbowing Franklin.

  But now Alejandro was confused. He grabbed his arm where Brian had touched him and stared at the alien boy with the outstretched hand. “What are you doing?” said Alejandro.

  “We could be friends,” said Brian, and took a step closer. Alejandro’s hand instantly came up and made a fist, and all five of the kids stopped breathing. But before anything more could happen, the principal, Mrs. Aguirre, came around the corner of the building with Mr. Horace, the school custodian. They froze the moment they saw the kids.

  Mike and Franklin were the first to snap out of their surprise. “We just came over to see what was going on,” spit out Franklin. Alejandro glanced at his friend, surprised by what he had said.

  “Yeah,” Mike agreed, then stammered, “We weren’t— it was Alejandro— we just came over to watch.” He tugged at Franklin’s sleeve and said, “Come on,” and the two boys ran off. Alejandro’s face grew dark and angry as he watched his friends disappear around the corner of the building.

  Brian turned to face the grown ups, Alejandro lowered his fist, and Sami peeled herself away from the wall. Mrs. Aguirre’s eyes were locked onto Alejandro as she and Mr. Horace walked over. She pushed her glasses back up onto her nose and demanded, “What exactly is going on here, Alejandro?”

  He was scared and would not look at Mrs. Aguirre. “Nothing,” he said.

  “It don’t look like nothing to me,” said Mr. Horace.

  Mrs. Aguirre waved her hand at him. “I’ll handle this, Mr. Horace.”

  “Oh. Okay,” he said, but he was a bit hurt that Mrs. Aguirre was not interested in his opinion. He thought that his two cents on the current situation ought to be heard. Just as Mrs. Aguirre opened her mouth to speak again to Alejandro, Mr. Horace looked up at the sky and said, “I was just observing that it looked like something, rather than nothing. That’s all.”

  This time Mrs. Aguirre did not even look at Mr. Horace as she said in her sternest voice, “I said I’ll handle it, Mr. Horace. Thank you.” She took a breath, focused again on Alejandro, and said, “Now children—”

  “You’re welcome,” announced Mr. Horace, who was still pretending to gaze up at the sky. This time Mrs. Aguirre did look at him, and jammed her glasses back up on her nose with such force that Mr. Horace knew he had better not push her any farther.

  Now, this annoying exchange between Mrs. Aguirre and Mr. Horace was actually useful. In fact, it was fortuitous, because while they were busy annoying each other, Brian and Alejandro had a few moments to look at each other. At first Alejandro tried to show how tough he was by glaring at Brian. But Brian could see that he was actually scared. And, more importantly, Alejandro could see that Brian could see he was scared. Alejandro knew that Brian knew Alejandro’s secret, which was that he could be scared.

  Mrs. Aguirre was at last free to continue with the Alejandro, except that now she was even more upset because of Mr. Horace. She had no patience left for asking questions. “Alejandro!” she snapped. “You were threatening these children, weren’t you, and I’ve had just about enough of that kind of behavior from you. I can see that
I will have to call your father again.”

  Alejandro’s eyes went wide and his shoulders jerked at the mention of his father. He opened his mouth to protest, or perhaps to plead with Mrs. Aguirre, but before he could say anything to her, Brian stepped between them.

  “There is no need to call his father,” said Brian. Mrs. Aguirre leaned back and looked down at him. “You are quite mistaken,” he continued. “I had tripped over my own feet and fell, knocking Sami against the wall in the process. Alejandro was just helping me back up.”

  Mrs. Aguirre bent down so that her face was on the same level as Brian’s, pushed up her glasses, then said, “Now Brian, you don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”

  “I sure wouldn’t,” said Mr. Horace, then he quickly walked away before Mrs. Aguirre would have a chance to chew him out.

  Brian watched him go, then he stared back up at Mrs. Aguirre. After a long moment he said, “I’m hoping you will believe it, Mrs. Aguirre.”

  She straightened up, obviously unhappy with how this whole situation was turning out. She sighed. “Alright, if that’s what you want, Brian.” She glanced at Alejandro. “I’m watching you.” She hurried after Mr. Horace.

  When Brian turned around, Alejandro was watching him. Alejandro looked confused again. After a moment, he ran off down one of the corridors. Sami patted Brian on the shoulder.

  “Cool! You just told your first lie to an adult,” she said.

  “Is that good?” asked Brian.

  Sami shrugged. “I don’t know. But it’s way human.”

  Brian nodded. “Cool.”

  Suddenly they heard the bus engines roar to life. “Heck!” said Sami, “I got to get going! See ya’!” She darted off, but skidded to a halt, looked back and said, “Say, why did you let him keep knocking you down?”

  “I saw a character do it in one of your movies,” Brian explained.

  “Did he get beaten up pretty bad?”

  Brian nodded. “Yes, very bad.”

  “Thought so. See you tomorrow!” said Sami, and she ran off to her bus.

  Chapter 10

  “It was a fiasco”