I turn to Lena to see what she thinks about that. “Omigod! She’s dead!” I poke her arm, and she collapses against the door like a bleeding bag of potatoes.
Zelda leans over the seat to check her pulse. Lena opens her eyes. They’re like two big white balls against a sooty black background.
“Squiiik squiiiik, squikiti squik,” she whispers, trying to sit up. Zelda helps her.
I’m sorry to be so materialistic at such a highly dramatic moment, but now the entire door is covered in blood and tar!
“Squiiiikiti squiiik,” continues Lena, looking at Zelda with a strange intensity.
“What is she saying?” I ask.
“She just met Zook,” Zelda translates.
“Zook talked about Zelda,” Lena whispers. “She said she needs to go into the forest and save my sisters.”
“Ha. How convenient,” I sneer. “Did Zook say we should take your baton and beat ourselves over the head?”
“Shut up, Pudin.” Zelda gives me a nasty push on the shoulder. “What else did she say?” She turns back to Lena, cupping her face in her hand and forcing her to focus.
“She said you’ve been struggling with sinful thoughts. She said you shouldn’t be scared. She said sometimes you need to do something very wrong to accomplish something very good. Zook said she will always protect you and be with you, Zelda.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“It means stop the car!” Zelda shouts.
“What?!”
“You heard her. Zook asked me to rescue the Vahalalians.”
Crap! “She’s lying!”
“Vahalalians don’t lie.”
Okay, let’s change strategy: “Zelda. There will be, like, a gazillion policemen in that forest, and they all think you’re a menace to society, an arsonist, and a cop hater.”
“He’s right,” Malou agrees. “The cops always get jumpy when you start kicking their own kind. Especially since you’re a girl and all that.”
“It won’t matter,” Zelda says, grabbing Lena’s baton and warming up for combat by smashing it against multiple invisible heads. “Zook will protect me.”
I wish they had invented skepticism on Vahalal.
I don’t completely freak out until Malou stops the car at the very end of a dirt road, right at the edge of the forest, and I hear dogs barking madly.
No one said anything about dogs.
“Dogs!” I say. “Let’s drive away before it’s too late!”
But Zelda has another plan. “You all stay in the car,” she says. “I’ll bring them back.” And—zoom—she’s heading toward the forest all alone.
I jump out of the car and try to follow her. “Dogs, Zelda!” I say as if it were totally self-explanatory.
She doesn’t stop. She doesn’t say “Oh yes, dogs and armed policemen, helicopters flying over our heads. You are totally right, David. Let’s forget about this and go get some sun in Saint-Tropez.” No, she just hangs Mom’s coat on the barbed-wire fence edging the forest and jumps over.
I’m sure the policemen are going to have a fit just seeing her swinging a baton in a vintage Paco Rabanne swimsuit.
“What if they catch you?” I call after her. She stops and turns to me. I swear she even smiles. “They’ll never catch me, Pudin. The forest is my favorite combat field.”
I feel a pressure point on my chest as she disappears in the vegetation. “She’s gone,” I say to no one in particular, and retrieve Mom’s coat from the fence, doing my best not to tear it on the barbed wire.
I walk back to the car, squeezing the coat against me. I look up and freeze.
Holy spaghetti! Police cars are driving up the dirt road, blocking all possible exits. Malou gets out of the car. “What are we going to do, Frog?”
Lena opens the car door and stumbles out, knowing exactly what we should do. “Run! To the forest!”
Despite her injuries, she grabs Malou’s arm and pushes her toward the fence. “Come on!” she yells at me.
“I can’t go in there,” I plead. And since she doesn’t seem to get my point, I explain it as simply as I can: “Dogs!!!” Barking, yapping, ready-to-bite-juvenile-delinquent-butt dogs.
She comes back and grabs my arm, too, dragging me toward the forest like she did with Malou. “You will die fighting, Earthling!”
Is that her idea of a pep talk?
16
EXPIRATION: 13 HOURS
I’m nothing like Zelda. Or Tena, Lena, or Pela. The forest will never be my favorite combat field. I fall on my knees and scratch my hands on the spiky undergrowth. I try to stand back up, but the thick, wet ground sucks me down and I slide backward on a slope of dead leaves and mud.
“Come on, Frog. You’re slowing us down,” Malou shouts back at me.
“Wait for me!” I call desperately. What can I say? I don’t have the right physique to be running away from the police.
When I look up, I don’t see Malou or this Lena Supergirl anywhere. It’s so damn humiliating on top of everything else. “Malou!” I call.
“Woof woof,” the dogs answer for her.
I’m panting so hard, I expect to spit out a lung any minute.
“There, boys, there. Catch!” I hear a voice shout far behind me.
Oh, crap, crap, crap!
I told you already. Rottweiler. German shepherd. Freaking house poodle like Pipette. I just don’t like dogs.
I go for a desperate final sprint uphill, and all I can hear is those dogs panting and galloping after me. I feel a paw first, like the dogs are poking me and teasing me, and—SLAM!—a shooting pain jolts my calves before I fall flat on the ground.
I roll my body into a ball and the dogs gather for the feast. They work on my arms. My butt. My legs. My skull. They’re eating me alive!
“Let him go, boys, let him go,” a man shouts.
The dogs yelp as the policemen pull them away from me. A thousand hands grab me and rough me up. “Where do you think you were running, you little shit?”
“Hey, easy with him,” someone more considerate says. A police-man lifts me to my feet. “He’s just a kid.”
The dogs yelp even harder: “A kid? Damn it! We love eat ing kids!”
I check my leg and rub the bruise. Oh boy. I don’t want to end up in a juvenile prison—with my height and good looks, I bet it’s not going to be like summer camp.
They lock me in the back of a police van parked with the rest of their armada at the other side of the forest and tell me that my friends will join me soon. They sound pretty confident about that. They also tell me I’m in plenty of trouble and, by the looks of it, I have to agree with them.
I tell you. These policemen really hate us. They gave me plenty of dirty looks while they dragged me into the van, and they have only nasty things to say about Zelda. I wish they would call Dad. Dad’s a champion at handling angry cops and defending bad kids.
The back door of the van opens. A man comes in. He nods at me, and I recognize him: He’s the bald policeman from Cornouaille. The one who chased us on the roof. He looks a bit different with two blackened eyes, a bruised face, and a broken nose hidden under a large bandage.
He’s holding two plastic cups and hands me one. “Hot chocolate,” he says rather gently. I take it. He takes a sip of his coffee. I take a sip of my hot chocolate. “Quite a mess, huh?”
“Yes,” I agree.
“I was just talking with your dad on the phone. He’s in a lot of trouble because of you.”
We sip together.
“She’s quite a girl, isn’t she?” he says.
“You have no idea,” I whisper, looking down at my Converse.
“If I were your age, I’d do all sorts of crazy things to impress her. You know what I mean?”
I nod. We sip.
“This is going to end in tears if you don’t help us stop her.” His voice is a little nasal because of his broken nose. “The boys are getting anxious, and when the boys get anxious, they make mistakes. You kno
w what I’m talking about?”
The boys = the policemen, and I have bruises and bites all over my body to help me get his point.
“Any idea where she could be hiding, David?”
He stares straight into my eyes. It takes superhuman power to say, “I don’t know.”
He shakes his head, like I’m a total disappointment. I’m about to take another sip of the chocolate, but he slaps the cup out of my hands.
“Look what I’ve done now.”
Yeah, look. There’s hot chocolate all over the van, and my fingers hurt so much I need to squeeze them under my armpits.
“I have another question for you, David. But this time I’d like a straight answer.” He puts his coffee cup down, probably in case he decides to slap me some more. “Why is she after Johnny Depp?”
I can’t answer that. If I did, it would make things worse.
“Your fingers hurt?”
My throat gets tight, but I’d rather die than cry in front of him. “If you smack me again,” I say with a trembling voice, “I’ll tell my dad. He gets people like you fired all the time.”
He sighs. “Who’s smacking who, huh?” he says, picking up both cups from the floor. “I’m taking you back to Paris to see if your famous dad can beat some answers out of you.”
He’s wrong. Mom’s the real smacker in the family.
He sits me down in his car, buckles my seat belt. There, all cozy for the ride home. He waves at the other policemen before driv ing away.
“There’s something I want to ask you,” he says as we drive off. “When we were on that roof, you know, did you see…anything strange?”
Here we go. “Like what?”
He clears his throat and sucks a cigarette out of his pack. “She was…you know…like…she was beside you and…then…she was…” He can’t find the right words to describe what he witnessed.
“Forget about it,” he finally says, lighting the cigarette.
“Space Splash,” I mumble hesitantly.
“What did you just say?”
“The ability to be at two points in space at the same time. That’s how she…you know.” I nod toward his broken nose.
He turns to me as if I actually poked it. “You think you’re so smart, you little shit?”
See? They just get more upset when you tell them the plain truth.
“Do you know how this little adventure is going to end, David?”
I look him straight in the eye. “My money’s on Johnny Depp departing Earth for a very long intergalactic vacation.”
He pokes my forehead with the two fingers holding his cigarette. “She’s going to mess up your head so bad, even your famous dad isn’t going to be able to fix you.”
I try to open my window, but it’s locked.
“What happened on the roof…” He shakes his head. He really doesn’t like thinking about the roof episode. “I know what’s real. And I know what’s fantasy. And you, kid, you’re lost in a fantasy.”
“Can you open my window?” I ask.
He presses a button and my window rolls down. “I’ll tell you how it’s going to end: When she’s done using you, she’ll abandon you, and you’ll end up in a padded cell telling everyone your Space girl story.”
“Go to hell,” I say, looking away. “Get a wig!”
He actually laughs. “That’s a funny one, kid,” he says, looking in his rearview mirror. He turns around. “That’s odd.”
I turn around to see what’s so odd. A police car is catching up and flashing its signal lights at us. The bald guy presses a few keys on his car radio. “Why don’t they use the radio?” he says, stopping our car in the emergency lane.
The police car stops right behind us. I look more carefully and see the driver waving at me from behind the wheel. It’s not a police-man at all. It’s Malou!
Three doors open at once. Pela, Tena, Zelda, and whatever is left of Lena come out of the police car, all of them looking exhausted, worn out, and beaten down but ready to kick some more police butt.
I get out of the car just in time to see the bald man turn white. “Damn,” he whispers. He puts his hand on his service gun. Zelda shakes her head. Uh-uh. I don’t think so, pal.
“Oh no, not again,” he whines.
Yes, again. She does her thing: Space Splash! Poof, she reappears right beside him, her baton raised above his head.
She slams. His bandage flies away, and he falls like a sack of soup. Sleep tight.
“You’re all right?” Zelda asks, putting away the baton.
I think of all the dog bites and my burned fingers, but then I nod. I am rather all right. Actually, I’m freaking great now that SHE’S BACK!
“Tadpole!” Malou jumps out of the car and sprints to me with the velocity of a torpedo. Boom! She squeezes me senseless.
“How did you get a police car?” I ask when she stops frenetically kissing my face.
She dries her tears. “Not peacefully, I tell you. Those girls have real issues with violence.”
“Let’s move,” Zelda says coldly, bringing us back to business. She walks away. I run to catch up and walk silently beside her until I find the strength to tell her why my heart is racing. “You came back for me.”
“No.” She points at Malou. “She’s the one who insisted that we get you back.”
“Like hell I did!” Malou shrieks. “The minute she realized you didn’t make it, she became hysterical. She was, like, Where is my pudding? Where did they take my pudding? We need to get my pudding back!”
I turn to the other Vahalalians. They frown suggestively: She really was.
“Ha. You two are so funny,” Malou says, laughing. “Come on, Zeldie,” she calls after her. “Just give him a hug.”
“Enough, Earthlings!” Zelda shouts, getting in the car. She slams the door behind her.
“Ooh la la. Touchy!” Malou winks at me and pinches my arm exactly where it hurts. “I’m so not buying her Ice Bitch Princess act anymore. She totally has a crush on you!”
I feel strange walking to the car. Strange and terribly happy. Because I know there’s some truth to what Malou just said. I sit right beside Zelda. Malou starts the engine and drives away. No one talks. Everyone stares at the road ahead.
I do something incredibly courageous. Probably the most courageous thing I will ever do in my life. I search for Zelda’s hand and take it in mine without any hesitation. I don’t need to look at her to know that she’s all right with that. She just squeezes my hand back. And I feel like the happiest creature in the entire universe.
17
EXPIRATION: 3 HOURS
We all used to go to the villa together, Mom, Édouard, Malou, and I. That was a long time ago, before they kicked Malou out and started sending me to Cornouaille for the summers.
I love the villa. It has a swimming pool with a wooden deck and a terrace that gives you a view all the way to the Saint-Tropez bay. There’s a large olive tree with a swing. I used to spend hours on that swing.
There’s always black currant sorbet in the freezer in the pool house. Every time I taste something with black currant flavor, I think of summertime, Malou, and swimming pools.
The villa is just a few miles away from Saint-Tropez in a fancy-pants lot of villas called Beauvallon. Édouard’s so proud to own here. Normally, only celebrities and absurdly rich people can own a villa in Beauvallon. Édouard is not a celebrity, and he is definitely not absurdly rich (Mom’s the big earner). He just inherited the villa from his parents.
Pela drops us off in front of the villa. She’s going to hide the police car far away. We climb over the gate as she drives away.
“I didn’t remember it being so small,” I say, walking toward the main building.
In my memory, Édouard’s villa is like a bright white castle surrounded by a park, not this little gray bungalow in the middle of a messy little garden. There’s no swing in the olive tree anymore, and the tree is actually so small, I don’t see how it ever could have
carried a swing anyway.
“I can’t believe it. Even the swimming pool has shrunk.” To be honest, it’s just a glamorized bathtub, empty and filled with dead leaves.
“Everything always looks better in memories,” Malou says, getting the pool house keys from a loose brick in the wall.
She goes to get the main house keys from inside the liquor cabinet, and I check the freezer in the pool house. It’s turned off, totally empty, and smells stuffy. No black currant sorbet. How horribly disappointing.
It’s Vahalalian opera night in the living room. As dozens of African statues and masks from Édouard’s collection gaze down from the walls, Tena and Pela take turns singing to Lena while Malou lounges on the gigantic white sofa by the old fireplace, emptying a bottle of rosé wine. “This is better than a rave,” she says, closing her eyes and moving her hands to the strange melody.
“Quiet!” orders Pela, taking her turn singing.
I leave them to it and go to find Zelda. She has set up camp in my old room. The door is wide open. She sits on the bare mattress like a sexy Buddha, her legs crossed lotus style, her eyes closed, her palms turned skyward. I feel like I’m disturbing something and try to walk away silently.
“We’re back where we started,” she says without even opening her eyes. “You’re staring at me strangely, and I still don’t know why.”
She opens her eyes. They’re still beautifully green, but maybe not quite so mean.
“What were you doing? You looked like you were meditating.” I walk hesitantly into the room. The walls are still covered with large framed posters of my favorite Marvel heroes: Wolverine, Nova, the Silver Surfer.
“I was praying to Zook,” she says. “I’m trying to understand what she wants from me.” She gets up from the bed and takes a step toward me.
“Do you want me to leave?”
She puts her hands on my shoulders. “I’m done. I’ve already made up my mind.”
“About what?”
She smiles faintly and checks her key tattoo. “About this.”
“What about it?” I get closer to see for myself. You can hardly see it now.
“I believe Zook wants me to wait a bit longer,” she says calmly, like running out of time and fading tattoos are no longer burning issues.
How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend Page 10