Only Alien on the Planet

by Kristen D. Randle

I folded it up, watched for my chance, and tossed it over to Hally's desk.

  I never dreamed the teacher would get that one.

  Not only did she intercept it—she read it. Out loud. In front of the entire class.

  “I believe this is yours, Ms. Christianson?” the woman said, just in case anybody should not have had a completely clear idea who it was being publicly executed.

  This kind of thing doesn't die an easy death. By first lunch, every human being in that school knew I had a crush on Pete Zabriski. That was just all I needed.

  “Do not invite him to that party,” I told Hally after class. “Because if you do, I'm not coming.”

  “You got it,” she said. Made no difference to her. “By the way, Smitty Tibbs was looking at you today.”

  “Oh, yeah?” That gave me a little jolt too.

  “Well, as much as he ever looks at anything. It was more like he was looking through you, but yes—his eyes were definitely focused somewhere over your left shoulder. It was toward the end of class. It's not like you would have noticed. You weren't doing a lot of looking around today.”

  That was an understatement.

  “Well, you gotta stop passing notes,” Caulder said to me when he came over to study that night. He was grinning his head off.

  “Shut up,” I told him. I put my nose in the air and picked up my World History text so he'd know I wasn't interested in discussing it. “Who told you?” I asked from behind the book.

  “Who didn't?” he said cheerfully.

  I slammed the book closed and pressed the cover against my face. “I'm not ever going back there,” I said.

  “Come on,” he said.

  “I'm not.” I slammed the book down onto my knees. “I hate stuff like this.”

  “Stuff like what?” James asked, glancing up from his English.

  “Like, public humiliation.” I really didn't want to talk about it.

  “She got caught passing notes this morning,” Caulder said.

  “Oh yeah?” James said, interested.

  “Was it awful?” Kaitlin asked, looking very sympathetic.

  “The note was all about Pete Zabriski and how cute he is,” Caulder said. “And Mrs. Attila the Hun read it out loud.”

  “Did you die?” Katie asked. From my face, she got her answer.

  “I think it's romantic,” Melissa said. “He'll probably ask you out now. He probably didn't know you were interested in him before.”

  “I'm not that interested in him,” I said, but I had to admit—it would have been nice to dance with him just once at Hally's party. No chance of that now.

  “I am never,” I said solemnly, “ever going to step outside of this house ever, ever again.”

  “She's just tired,” Caulder told them. “Come on, you,” he said to me, pulling me up by the back of my sweater. “Let's take a walk.” He made me put on my coat, and then he made me go outside.

  “It's cold out there,” I protested. Well—whined, actually.

  He put his arm around my shoulders and steered me down the front walk. “Now, now,” he said, using resoundingly pear-shaped tones and patting me on the head. “Nice girls like you just seem to get less dates than the other kind do. You mustn't let this bother you. Some day, the right man will come along…”

  I hit him with my elbow. “Funny.”

  He let me go. “Well, what do you expect? Writing that kind of thing about Zabriski. You should have written something nice about me. Then nobody would have been surprised.”

  I sighed. “Is there some reason we have to be out here in the freezing cold?” I asked him. “I mean, besides the fact that I swore I'd never come out of my house again?”

  He didn't answer for a moment. Then he said, “I told my mother about the other night. That you saw Smitty crying. I told her not to say anything to Mrs. Tibbs about it, but she probably will anyway.”

  “Oh, Caulder,” I said.

  “I know. But it's good I did it. Because she told me something I didn't know before.”

  I breathed on my hands and waited.

  “There was one other time he cried.”

  “I thought you told me he never had,” I said.

  “Well, like I say, I didn't know.” He turned us around back toward my house. “It happened about five years ago when Russell was still living at home.”

  “Who's Russell?”

  “Smitty's brother.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “I asked you about him before. How come I never see him?”

  “He's been away at school for the past couple of years. He's getting married this Christmas. My mom's supposed to help with the flowers. She's not real happy about it.”

  “How come?”

  “Well—she's not that hot about Russell, actually.” He was going to say something else, but he pulled his mouth closed.

  “Why not?” I asked, prodding him with my elbow.

  “Well, because…” He sighed. “Russell's not…well—I'm not so hot about him either.”

  “Why? He beat you up when you were little?” I teased.

  Caulder glanced at me and grinned. “Not me. I never got in his way.” He hunched his shoulders against the cold. “You know how Mrs. Tibbs is about community service? Well, she's always been like that. When Smitty was little, she would leave him with Russell, but Russell had always been left more or less on his own. So he's always done pretty much whatever he wanted. Like once, Carmen Anders, the lady in the yellow house down at the end of the street? Carmen yelled at Russell for running across her flower beds. Two days later, somebody threw a rock through her front window. A week later, her cat disappeared.”

  “Come on,” I said.

  “Nobody could ever prove anything. Russell used to get away with murder. See, Russell used to have two kinds of effects on people— either they didn't like him, and they could see right through him, or else they really bought his act—because, see, he could be sweet as anything when he wanted to be. His mother always bought it. I, myself, always thought it was wiser to stay out of his way altogether.”

  “Didn't anybody ever complain to his parents?”

  Caulder laughed. “Sure, they did,” he said. “And Mr. Tibbs was always willing to pay for the damage or whatever, but Mrs. Tibbs always complained to my mother about it afterward. She'd say 'I know Russell didn't do it. He would never do anything like that. Sometimes I wonder if John really loves Russell, the way he's so hard on him.' And then she'd talk about how 'boys will be boys' and how intolerant she thought the neighbors were. My mom really doesn't like Mrs. Tibbs very much either. But don't ever tell anybody I said that.”

  “So, what's he like now?”

  He lifted one shoulder. “Who knows? Maybe he's grown up. Maybe not.”

  “Why didn't his dad just wale on him?” I said, disgusted. “My parents would never take stuff like that from us. If it was even hinted I'd done something wrong, they'd be on me like Velcro on a shoelace.”

  Caulder looked thoughtful. “I think Mr. Tibbs tried—at least, at first. The Tibbses used to fight about it a lot—I could hear them out my bedroom window sometimes. But then they stopped. Now Mr. Tibbs hardly ever says a word. I mean, he'll say 'hi' to my dad over the back fence. But when he's home, he's usually hanging around this shop he's got out in the garage—he restores antique cars. Other than that, he just kind of keeps to himself.”

  “Nice family,” I said.

  “They're okay neighbors,” Caulder said. “They could be worse. Anyway, Mrs. Tibbs asked my mom to do the flowers for the wedding, and my mom couldn't tell her no.”

  “You were going to tell me a story,” I reminded him.

  “I was? Oh yeah, I was. Okay, so, about five years ago, Russell got into archery. He had this target set up in the back yard, and the neighbors—including my mother—were always yelling at the Tibbses because they were afraid Russell was going to end up killing somebody. Or shooting somebody in the eye with an arrow or something. So finally, his dad went out ther
e and took the target down, and told Russell he was going to have to go out to the country if he wanted to shoot.

  “So, this one day, Russell comes home—from shooting in the country—he comes home and he's all proud of himself because he's shot a bird. You know—like, on the wing, which is not easy. Probably illegal, but not easy. So, he's in the kitchen, telling his mother about it—and this is the strange part—Smitty's just sitting there, and suddenly he gets up and he goes over to Russell and he throws this glass of orange juice right in Russell's face. I mean, right in his face.”

  “Smitty did?” I said, just making sure I'd heard right.

  “I know. It's weird. Maybe he was upset about the bird—”

  “Which you could hardly blame him for.” Personally, I think people who kill things for pleasure are sick.

  “Or, maybe not—who knows what's going on in his mind? Anyway, Russell got up and knocked Smitty halfway across the room. Knocked him out totally.”

  I stopped. “Knocked him out?”

  “Yeah. Come on. We're going to freeze if we just stand here. They had to take Smitty to emergency, and they ended up having to leave him overnight because they couldn't wake him up. So it was in the middle of the night, this nurse went in to check him, and Smitty was crying in his sleep.”

  The pain in my chest caught me a little bit by surprise.

  “She still couldn't wake him up, so she called the doctor and got the family history from him. As it turns out, she was a student at the university med school, in psychology and counseling, and she ended up getting real interested in Smitty. The next day, she asked the Tibbses if she could work with him. Of course they thought that was a great idea. But then something happened, like her father died, or something, and she had to go away for a while. Then she had to go and do her specialization and internship somewhere.

  “When she came back here a couple of years ago to work at the university clinic, she was still interested, but they couldn't get Smitty to go for it. I mean, it's not like he actually objected or anything— you know the way he disappears. Every couple of months now she calls. It never works out. Mrs. Tibbs called her last week—I guess she was thinking, since he's been letting us come over, maybe he'd go for it this time. But he faded on her again. Anyway, the psychologist wants us to keep coming around.”

  I looked at him. This scared me.

  “I know,” he said. “It makes me feel weird too.”

  “And now your mother will tell Mrs. Tibbs about the other night…”

  “And then Mrs. Tibbs'll tell the psychologist,” he finished.

  “I don't like it at all,” I said, feeling this awful pressure in my chest. “I feel like Judas.”

  “I know,” he said.

  We stood there huddled together in the cold.

  “Let's not go to the Tibbses' tonight,” I said, shivering. “He never asked for any of this. We've just done it to him. And then we go over there and ask him for help.”

  “No, I think we ought to go,” Caulder said. “It's up to him to decide if he wants to help us or not. If he didn't want us to come, he'd let us know. I think he wants us there.”

  So we tucked up our guilt and we went. And it was business as usual—me confused, Smitty patiently going over the problems, time after time, every step spelled out so a kindergartner could understand it.

  It was nice that one of us should understand something.

  chapter 8

  Pete Zabriski—who had never, not for the tiniest fraction of a moment, ever been remotely aware that I existed—smiled at me during lunch.

  It was so embarrassing, I dropped my spoon.

  “What?” Caulder said. We'd been sharing his tapioca. I just looked at him. “What? “ he asked again.

  “A person should be able to do her chewing and swallowing secure from the risk of humiliation,” I said.

  “Pardon me?” he said.

  “I've got some studying to do.” I stood up.

  “What? Now? “ Caulder said. “It's lunch.”

  “Yes, now,” I said, and I left him sitting there all by himself with the rest of the tapioca. I had a sudden horror of finding myself in an unstructured environment with a person like Pete Zabriski who obviously knew how to capitalize on a person's discomfort. No more first lunch. Not for now. Maybe never again.

  The only alternative was to switch lunches, at least temporarily. It would take some finagling, but I have always found inconvenience more than slightly preferable to terminal humiliation. Of course, as it turned out, it would have been much better if I'd just toughed it out and left things as they were.

  Just after third period next day, Caulder passed me in the hall and stuffed a wad of papers on top of the books I was carrying, waggling his eyebrows and grinning like he was really satisfied with himself.

  When I got to Mrs. Shein's room, I put the books down on the floor and spread Caulder's wad out flat on the desk. It turned out to be a long report, folded into loose quarters, as if somebody'd meant to throw it away. The title read: A Partial Analysis of Bismarck's Application of Selected Machiavellian Principles by Michael S. Tibbs.

  So this was one of Smitty's papers.

  I rifled through the pages—ten pages long with footnotes on every page. For Leviaton's class. Leviaton hadn't assigned any research so far this year. So, this was Smitty's idea of what you did for a regular assignment. Top of the class? I guess so.

  I'd read as far as the third page when the bell rang. It was impressive; he wrote like an adult, with a sentence structure that was definitely more complex than anything I could have done. Actually, it read like a well-written textbook—clear, but without much life in it. No personality. It was actually more or less exactly what you'd have expected.

  Mrs. Shein had started going over the last night's assignment.

  I leafed through the rest of the paper while I reached down for my notebook. I hauled the notebook up onto my desk, flipped it open to the math section, and blew Smitty's report off the desk. I bent over to retrieve the report, and when I straightened up with it, a little piece of paper fluttered from between the pages. I shoved the rest of Smitty's paper into my notebook, and then I reached down again for that little scrap. I could see that there was writing all over it, as though it were a note of some kind, which was curious. I wanted to read it right then, but when I straightened up again, I finally noticed that everybody was watching me.

  “Are you quite finished?” Mrs. Shein asked—not unkindly.

  My cheeks went hot, and I nodded. She smiled. I leaned over to get my math book which I deposited, unopened, on my desk, and then leaned over again to stick the little scrap from Smitty's paper into my purse.

  “You weren't finished,” Mrs. Shein observed.

  “I am now,” I said. Her smile had thinned a little. I wanted to put my head down on the desk.

  That feeling was destined to last way past lunch.

  I spent first lunch hiding out in the library—which was legal, as long as you didn't bring in food. I buried myself back in the reference section, away from slings and arrows of social ridicule, spread out my books, and started digging around in my purse for my pen. When I finally unearthed it, there was that mysterious little scrap from Smitty's paper wrapped neatly around it. I'd nearly forgotten about it.

  I still thought it was a note. As I peeled the bit of paper off the pen, I pretty well decided it couldn't have been Smitty's; who was going to be passing notes with Smitty Tibbs? Then, when I could see the writing more clearly, the regularity of the lines made me think it was probably just the rough notes he'd made for his paper.

  But as I began to read, the planet slipped quietly on its axis; the truth of the matter was as far from my conjecture as Beta Centauri is from Chicago. This was not a note of any kind. It was a poem.

  I read the first line and stopped.

  Poetry is not my best thing. T. S. Eliot, I never understand— Edgar A. Guest and his clones, I understand all too easily. I land somewhere to
the obscure left of middle—E. E. Cummings, I like. And Gerard Manley Hopkins, who I also never understand, but whose words make music inside me.

  This poem was like that, like Hopkins. At least, the first line was.

  I read the first line again, and then I read it still again, out loud this time, whispering. I went on through all the lines, going slowly, carefully, because the meaning wasn't at all concrete.

  The images were full of flight. Lights lanced through them, glancing off edges that might have been the tips of wings—and there was air, like the headiness of freedom, like an independence from the bounds of earth—exactly the opposite of darkness. It was an incredible thing to read.

  I finally stopped and put my hand down on top of the paper, my eyes closed against those pictures.

  What was this doing in Smitty's paper? And how had Caulder gotten a hold of it?

  I read it through one more time, my hands pressed together, the tips of them at my lips.

  The fact that this had been stuck inside Smitty's paper was uncontestable—you could see the fold lines on it. The question had more to do with how it had gotten there. I picked up the scrap, squinted at the writing, trying to see some element of Smitty's math proof printing in it. If I'd known for certain the writing was Smitty's, that would have told me something—or maybe not; obviously, he'd copied it down for a reason, maybe for another paper… but maybe not. Maybe he'd just copied it because he'd liked it. I thought about that for a moment, and felt my heart speeding up.

  If Smitty Tibbs read poetry—if he liked it…

  I looked down at the little piece of paper in my hands. If he had written this down the same way I do, he'd done it to make the words his own, because these words had spoken something he couldn't have said himself. And if that was so, what I had in my hand was an open window into somebody else's house.

  I put the poem down on the table in front of me.

  I was trespassing.

  The interim bell rang. I swallowed, picked up the little paper and slipped it into the pocket of my shirt. Then I gathered up my things and went to meet Hally.

  She was waiting for me by the cafeteria door. “I'm so glad you deserted Caulder,” she said. “I never could figure out why you guys feel like you've got to eat so early.”