Angela's Alien

by Janet Taylor Lisle

  “Well!” said Mrs. Lambert, trying to cheer things up. “We’re certainly going to have a party!”

  At this juncture, Poco asked her mother if after dinner they could walk to Walter’s house to watch a movie.

  “You mean alone?”

  “Yes.”

  Everyone nodded. This was their plan for getting to the dam, a place they would never otherwise have been allowed to go at night. Poco guessed her mother would not want to bother Walter’s grandmother, who was rather deaf (even with her new hearing aid), by checking up on the phone. And Walter’s house was only around the corner.

  Mrs. Lambert, however, looked wary and surprised. “I’m not sure about this. What time will you be home?”

  “We promise to be here by ten-fifteen at the latest,” Poco said. “We only have to walk one minute to our door. If we get scared, we’ll call you, okay?”

  This remark threw Mrs. Lambert completely off the track. She immediately began to worry that they would try to be brave when they were really terrified. She remembered how frightened she had been of walking outside in the dark as a child, and urged them to call her at the tiniest twinge of fear. “I’ll come get you! It wouldn’t be any trouble!”

  In the meantime, she forgot to inquire any more into exactly what movie they would watch, or whether Walter’s grandmother knew they were coming. Indeed, she felt absolutely content that she was the best and most watchful mother on earth. Georgina was shocked to see how easily she was fooled. Mrs. Lambert had always seemed so clear-sighted.

  chapter nine

  AND NOW, WITH THE expedition to Wickham Dam about to begin, all thoughts of other problems were pushed to one side. The small group had no sooner stepped outside into the night when the vast black vault of the sky opened over their heads, drawing toward it all their concentration. For the first time in weeks, Poco forgot her robin.

  “Look!” she cried, pointing. “A crescent moon.” It looked like a silver horseshoe flung over the horizon by invisible hands.

  Walter forgot his shyness and awkwardness around Poco, and walked out into the dark like any normal person—that is, looking nervously over one shoulder.

  Even Georgina managed to escape from the heavy shadow of Angela for a while and regain a bit of her old confidence. She took up her usual position in the lead, and the three set off in single file through the woods, escorted by a flashlight and flickers of moonlight. They had not gone far when they came upon a well-worn neighborhood path that turned in the direction of the reservoir.

  They saw the glint of water through the trees from a long way off. Soon, the sloping bulk of the dam loomed into view. Poco, who knew the way here better, stepped in front and took them around a point of shore to where a narrow stone staircase led sharply upward. Wickham Dam was not very large and had nothing modern or technological about it. In fact, in daylight, one of the dam’s main charms was how old and vine-ridden and abandoned it was. And how silent. Especially now! From somewhere, the investigators heard a faint trickle of water; otherwise, the place seemed eerily removed from the normal town noises they were used to hearing.

  They had no sooner reached the top of the stone steps and walked out on the dam, however, than they saw headlights across the way and heard a series of car doors closing. An old parking lot was there, barely hidden by trees on the other side of the dam. Another flight of stone steps led down to it, and from this the tramp of feet suddenly rang out.

  “The Skywatchers,” Walter whispered, and so it was. Silent bands of shadowy shapes began to climb toward them, accompanied by the bobbing yellow eyes of flashlights.

  The friends stopped where they were, and jumped up on one of the dam’s thick walls, where they sat, nervously, feet dangling down. As they waited, they looked out across the reservoir, and were struck by its powerful dark beauty—the almost-invisible water, the mysterious line of shore, the black body of the surrounding forest. Above, low on the star-speckled horizon, glowed the crescent moon that had accompanied them through the forest.

  “No wonder they like to come here,” Walter said, and Poco and Georgina knew whom he was talking about.

  Then, very quickly, people were all around them, and over the rustle of feet rose the soft rumble of voices trying to be quiet. Then came the sharp sh-sh-sh of someone attempting to keep control. The friends knew that sound from school corridors. They turned around to see the teacherish profile of a fluffy-haired woman carrying binoculars. It must, they supposed, be Madeleine Toska. As they watched, she spoke.

  “Please! We must have silence!”

  Gradually, the rumbling died away. All eyes turned toward the reservoir. Many in the crowd had been there before and knew without coaching where to look. For newcomers, Mrs. Toska made a short speech explaining the sorts of things to watch for—lights in a pattern, quickly turning or pulsing “stars,” a sudden stillness or weight to the air. Poco shot a glance at Georgina. It sounded so like their experience in the apple tree.

  Stationed as they were in the very center of the Skywatchers, the three children began to fill with excitement. Even Georgina was affected, though she did not approve. There was the clear sense that things were on the move … would be there soon … were arriving … now!

  But then nothing happened. Time elapsed. The moon drifted an inch lower. From below came the lap of invisible water.

  In the midst of this breathless pool of silence, a loud explosion suddenly went off. Poco jerked so hard she might have fallen if Georgina’s hand hadn’t leaped out and grabbed her.

  “Georgina! What was that?”

  “Someone coughed.”

  “What?”

  “A cough, that’s all.” Georgina was smirking.

  After this false alarm, the sky lost some of its high mystery. Minutes passed with terrible slowness. Around them, the Skywatchers started their shuffling and muffled talking again. And though Madeleine Toska hissed for quiet, it was soon clear that the spell had been broken.

  People began to slip away. From the parking lot came the sounds of car doors slamming, of motors grinding into action. The night that had seemed so full of promise would open no window on the unknown this time.

  Georgina was heard to snort. “Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s get out of here.” Poco and Walter followed her, downcast.

  “The luck of the draw,” Mrs. Toska was telling people as the three passed her on the way to their own side of the dam. “Come again next Friday. Patience and watchfulness are rewarded.”

  “But what if the aliens fly in on a Wednesday or Thursday?” a woman asked her, rather reasonably under the circumstances.

  Mrs. Toska’s eyes snapped with impatience. “Of course, you may come whenever you like. We Skywatchers work together, so our sightings are official.”

  Just then, Poco caught sight of a face.

  A flashlight beam had played up over the crowd, shining on the tops of heads and sparking off eyeglasses. Suddenly, it stopped and rested in place. In that instant, Poco saw the pale model’s brow of Angela Harrall.

  chapter ten

  ANGELA. THERE COULD BE no doubt. Poco saw Angela’s dark hair falling smoothly to her shoulders. She saw the ruler-straight line of one of her cheeks. She saw the sophisticated tilt of her head, and her wary eyes caught out by the light. They were turned exactly in Poco’s direction. Then, Poco knew that Angela had seen her, was looking straight at her, cool and attentive. She’d been watching them all for some time, Poco thought, spying out from the tower of her new height. “Georgina, look!”

  The face was gone. A mob of bodies eclipsed the spot where it had been. The light beam was hurled in another direction. And Poco was so short.

  “Poco! What’s wrong?” Walter saw her jumping up.

  “I thought I saw something.”

  “Well, what?” Georgina looked at her angrily. “Stop leaping like that. You’re knocking into everyone.”

  “I think I saw Angela. Over there.”

  “Angela!” Georgina
spun around. The crowd was still thick and chaotic, and though Georgina was taller than Poco and Walter, she was not yet the height of most of the adults. She could see no farther than a few feet. After some desperate leaps of her own, she pushed her way back to the dam’s high wall. Clambering up, she stood on the top.

  “Can you see her?” Poco stood wide-eyed below.

  “No.”

  Walter said, “Call her name.”

  Georgina yelled, “Angela!” But there was no answer. She climbed down, embarrassed.

  “Wait,” she ordered. “Let’s just wait.”

  They huddled to one side of the dam while the Skywatchers’ ranks thinned slowly into the parking lot. Five minutes went by, then another five. There was no sign of Angela or anyone like her.

  Poco consulted her watch under the flashlight. It was after 10:15. They were already late. But Georgina still would not give up.

  “She must have come through the woods like us,” she was saying. “It’s the only way from our side of town.”

  “Not if you were driven,” Walter pointed out.

  Into all their minds came the vision of Angela’s limousine, rippling through the dark like a piece of white satin.

  “Come on,” Georgina cried. “Let’s check the parking lot.”

  They ran across the dam and peered down, but most of the cars had already driven away. None of those left was white or long.

  Poco said, “We have to go.”

  “Oh, all right!” Georgina started back toward the stone steps. “All this fuss for nothing. I’m sure you made a mistake.”

  “It looked like Angela’s face.”

  “But why would Angela have come here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So, how did she look?” Walter asked.

  “All lit up. She was watching us.”

  “But why?” Georgina could not bear it.

  Ignored by Angela for two solid weeks, and now, in the dark, to be spied upon? It was maddening!

  More than that—it was strange. Georgina’s heart gave a skip of alarm. Poco felt nervous, too. “Come on, we have to go!” She grabbed Georgina’s arm. “Okay, okay. I’m sure it was nothing.”

  “Nothing,” Poco agreed. “It wasn’t even her.”

  “Of course not,” Walter said. “How could it have been?” Outright panic seemed now to descend, and they turned and ran headlong down the steps to the woods.

  There was no more time that night to think about the eerie specter of Angela Harrall at Wickham Dam. On the back porch of Poco’s house, a far more menacing figure rose to meet the friends as they broke clear of the forest and entered the yard. It was, unfortunately, Mrs. Lambert.

  “You deceitful things! Where have you been?” She strode in a fury across the lawn. “I called Mrs. Docker. She said you’d never come.”

  It was a ticklish position to be in. At first, the friends were tempted to concoct another story to cover up the one they had already concocted. But in the end, their powers of invention failed and there was nothing for it but to tell the truth.

  “The Skywatchers! That foolish group?” Mrs. Lambert could hardly believe it. “I would have thought you children had more common sense.”

  By now, they had all begun to think the same thing. Poco squirmed and glared at Georgina. It was she, after all, who had made them so late. Walter tried to slide off into the shadows. Somehow, these actions angered Mrs. Lambert even more. As a result, the sleepover at Poco’s house was canceled.

  Poco was ordered into her room. Georgina and Walter were rudely driven home. Mrs. Lambert returned and stamped upstairs to bed, where Poco heard her name brought up harshly to her father. To be talked of in such tones when she wasn’t even there—Poco’s eyes filled with tears.

  Silence came at last to the house. Then—a faint mew from the backyard. Juliette—left outside in all the confusion. Poco crept downstairs to let her in.

  The poor old cat was sodden with water. She came dripping into the kitchen and immediately set about licking herself off. Poco tried to help with a dish towel.

  “Juliette, you deceitful thing! Where on earth have you been!”

  Poco’s heart was softer than her mother’s, though. One soggy cat glance and Juliette was forgiven. “It’s all right. What happened? Did you fall in?”

  It did look exactly as if Juliette had been swimming, which was odd, because usually she never went near water. Like most cats, she had a special dislike of it. And where would she have found enough water to swim in? No one in that neighborhood had a pool.

  Sitting on the kitchen floor, Poco suddenly narrowed her eyes. There was only one place the old puss could have been.

  “Were you at the reservoir?” she whispered. But Juliette, being a cat, did not have to tell the truth about anything she’d done. With a secretive shrug, she rose to her feet and sauntered upstairs to lay claim to her bed.

  chapter eleven

  WHATEVER THE FRIENDS HAD been hoping to see in the black air above the reservoir, it could not compare to the mystery that now began to swirl around Angela Harrall. As the next several weeks of school wore on, they followed her movements with watchful eyes. No one dared to ask her about the dam, or to make any other friendly approach. Poco’s sighting weighed on their minds.

  Had Angela been taunting them? Was she somehow connected to the Skywatchers? Why had she hidden when she knew she’d been seen? Or maybe it hadn’t been Angela at all.

  “What if,” Walter said, “it used to be her but now she is an alien walking among us? Remember the night she came home from Mexico was the same night you saw those floating marbles.”

  “Good grief! That’s ridiculous,” Georgina sputtered.

  Poco said, “Walter and I have been reading a book. It says that aliens can take people over.”

  “That is the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Why?” Walter asked. “She’s done it to you.”

  Georgina opened her mouth to protest, but then she looked embarrassed and closed it.

  They were sitting on the jungle gym at school, waiting for the lunchtime recess to be over. Around them rose the babble and shriek of the playground.

  “There she is.” Walter pointed across the cement. They all looked. Above the throngs, Angela stood tall and motionless, a mystery ship moored in its own harbor.

  Poco said, “You know, I’m sure it was her. At the dam, I mean. I’m positive.”

  Georgina looked away. “I guess she was meeting her friends the aliens. Except they forgot to come and take her home, and now she has to go on walking among us.”

  She was joking. In a way, they all were. Even Walter did not truly believe what he’d said. And yet, the more they watched Angela that fall, the more like an alien she seemed to become.

  She dressed in a style unfamiliar to their school: long skirts, hoop earrings, bright fashion blouses—when every other girl her age wore sweaters and jeans. With a self-conscious lilt, she strode along the halls, her head a head above all others.

  “I can’t believe she’s still only eleven!” Poco’s mother exclaimed after catching sight of her one day. “She must have a new interest in boys.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Poco said. “She doesn’t care about them. She’s pretending to be a model, but no one believes her.”

  “How very odd,” Mrs. Lambert said.

  It was odder than that. Far more unsettling than Angela’s appearance, to her old friends at least, was her manner. There was no other way to describe what she did than to say that she walked and talked like an adult. It was as if she had decided to stop being a child, had shed that skin and stepped out of their world.

  She never ran in the halls the way they did, never jumped or screeched, never got excited. In class, while everyone wiggled and fidgeted, or waved their arms to be called on, she sat at her desk with her hands folded.

  “Angela? Can we hear your views?” Miss Glade would ask from time to time. (Walter reported on such things.) And
Angela would glance up and clear her throat, then speak like one grownup speaking to another. From somewhere, she had acquired a certain tone of voice, low-pitched, controlled, respectful. Miss Glade was so impressed by this pose that she never stopped to wonder if anything was wrong.

  “A lovely child!” she was heard to exclaim. “So well brought up! So polite.”

  Too polite to be real—every other child knew that. In the minds of nearly everyone at school, Angela Harrall was a faker and a show-off.

  Feuds, jokes, in-group remarks—two years ago, Angela had been part of them. Now, as in the beginner’s Spanish class she was forced to sit through (a scheduling mistake the school would fix soon), she looked on from a distance, silent and haughty. Left to herself—and she often was—she studiously read a paperback novel or arranged her possessions importantly around her. The word went out that she wanted to be a lawyer.

  “Like her mother?” Poco asked.

  Walter said, “Well, she acts as if she’s already going to law school. I watch when she comes in our room in the morning. The first thing is, she never says hello. She waits till you say it and looks surprised. Then she goes to her desk, takes her things out, and puts them in their special places.”

  “Their special places!” Poco said. “What do you mean?”

  “Her notebooks are always stacked on the left; her tissue box is on the right; her three lucky stones with the white rings around them are all in a line across the top of her desk.”

  Poco made a face and said, “Scary.”

  “Then she takes out this battery-powered pencil sharpener and sharpens absolutely all her pencils. She has twenty-five because they came in a pack. After that, she picks five to use that day and lays them down on top of the notebooks. Then she checks her shoes in case they’ve gotten smudged—and if they have, she wipes them off with a tissue. Then she fixes her hair—she’s always doing that. And then she sits and stares at the clock.”