by Tom Upton
Early the next morning, I dressed in a sweatshirt and shorts and took a short run. Getting into really good shape was one of my summer-time goals, because when high school began in the fall, I’d been planning to go out for some teams-- probably football and wrestling. So I started each day with a run, and then three or four days a week, while the heat baked everything out side, I’d lift weights in our cool dank basement, systematically increasing poundage and repetitions so that my muscles grew and my strength increased significantly over the course of the summer.
After eating a lunch free of junk food, I spent the afternoon in the backyard or the tree house. Spying on the neighbors next door had already become a steadfast part of my daily routine. Though I had never seen anything, watching had already become a sort of hobby, as if fishing is a hobby for the fisherman who never catches anything. Having seen lights in the house the night before, though, I felt encouraged that I might start seeing some activity during the day. I climbed up into the tree house, and started my watch. After a while, I dozed off-- what with all the sleep, I’d missed the night before-- and when I woke, I heard the buzzing sound of a lawn mower. Sure enough, when I gazed through the small window of the tree house, I could see, past the gnarled limbs of the tree, that somebody was mowing the lawn next door. Through the leaves, I caught glimpses of a figure moving back and forth, and the air was filled with the scent of freshly cut grass.
I climbed down from the tree house, then, and crept over to the six-foot security fence that separated the yards. I tried to peek between the boards of the fence, but could not find a space between them. At five-foot-eight, I was in no way tall enough to glance over the fence, and there was nothing nearby on which I could stand. So I ended up hopping a couple times to try to catch a glimpse of whoever was mowing the lawn. On my third hop, I saw that it was Eliza Laughton. I didn’t see her face, though, but just caught a glimpse of her blond hair as she passed. She was so close to the other side of the fence that I could smell the strong odor of gasoline from the mower, and some smoke from its motor drifted over my head. I hopped up and down then, and each time my head popped over the top of the fence, I called out “Hey.” I was already resolved to talk to her, despite the fact that I was socially inept. I had decided that I wanted to dispel as soon as possible these notions that she was an alien and that something bizarre was happening in her house. I was starting to feel a desperate need to know the truth, even if it meant risking getting my brain sucked out of my head through my eye socket or whatever other fate aliens reserved for humans who discover them. But she didn’t hear me calling at first; either my voice was being drowned out by the racket the lawn mower was making, or she was simply ignoring me.
She finally responded to my calls, after she cut the lawn mower motor-- to empty its clipping bag, I guessed.
“Yes, I hear you,” she said, rather testily. “What do you want?”
I kept hopping up and down, and with each jump, got out part of a sentence: “I just wanted to…say hi…. I’m Travis MacDuff…your neighbor…”
“Oh,” she said. There was little interest in the tone of her voice.
“Mowing the lawn?” I asked, before realizing how dumb a question it was.
“Not anymore,” she said dully, and I caught a glimpse of her emptying the clipping bag into a large paper trash bag.
I was starting to get winded from hopping up and down, and I was sure that my legs would give out before I could break the ice in the conversation-- if you wanted to call it that. The trick to gaining the interest of a girl who is an utter stranger to you, is to say something that strikes on the things in which she is most interested. The problem has always been, though, if she is an utter stranger, how can you probably guess her interests by looking at her? She can be interested in a hundred things, and you could guess all day long and not strike on one of them. Here, too, this fundamental problem is compounded by a shortness of time; either my legs would give out, or my lungs, or she would finish with the lawn and disappear into the house. The only other way to get a totally strange girl to notice you quickly is to be absolutely honest-- honest to the point of appearing stupid, in fact. Females of all ages love that kind of thing, because they expect males to be liars, cheaters, and basically all around devious. Upfront honesty is an attention grabber. Of course, all these theories had been imparted to me by the same guy who had convinced me my new neighbor couldn’t be anything other than an alien. Still, I decided the honesty approach might be worth trying.
“One of my friends… told me that… I’m socially maladroit,” I said. “What do you think?… I don’t even know… what maladroit means….”
I was sure I had her attention now, as the crumpling sound of the trash bag stopped as if she was postponing her chore to consider the question.
“You ought to look it up in the dictionary,” she said at last, “if you don’t know what it means.”
“Oh… I just trust… my friends… in their use of… long words,” I said. “You know… that they’re not… using them… to make fun of me.”
“Do yourself a favor,” she said, in earnest, “trust no one.”
“Is that any way… to go through life?”
“It’s as good as--” she started, and then stopped abruptly. “Are you going to keep doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“Jumping.”
“Why?”
“I feel like I’m talking to a kangaroo.”
“Sorry.”
“Why don’t you just walk around to the yard?”
“With you?”
“Yeah.”
“That would be okay?”
“Yeah, that would be okay,” she said, as if maddened that she was being forced to talk so much.
“It’s safe?”
“Yeah.”
“Promise?”
There was a lengthy pause before she asked, “Are you mentally afflicted in some way?”
“No… I don’t think so.”
“Then, be normal, and walk around.”
I was giddy at the invitation; either that or it was all that hopping catching up with me. I walked out and round the front of her house, and then to the back yard gate. When I entered the yard, she was struggling to dump the lawn clippings into the trash bag. She was somewhat on the small side, and she wrestled with the two bags. A lot of the clippings were spilling out onto the patio. She paused when she saw me standing there.
“A little help,” she suggested.
“Hunh?”
She looked from me, to the bags, and then back to me.
“Oh,” I said. “Sure.”
I grabbed the clipping bag from her, and emptied it into the trash bag, which she held wide open; the chore was easily completed with two people. She then took the clipping bag, leaned over and reattached it to the mower. She stood up, brushing away the hair that had fallen across face, walked over to a lawn chair, and flopped down onto it. She appeared overly tired, as if she’d never mowed a lawn before in her life. She was wearing white shorts, a blue sleeveless top, and old-fashioned looking deck shoes with no socks. Her legs were so pale they almost blazed under the bright sun. You could see the map of blue veins beneath her skin. She seemed to catch her breath, and then she squinted up at me.
“You were in my house yesterday?” she asked in a tone that was not quite an accusation.
“Yeah, with my friend,” I said.
“Why?”
“Just curious,” I told her truthfully.
She frowned as though she didn’t quite understand it-- what was there to be curious about?
“And who is it that I have to thank for my father’s sudden insistence that I get out of the house more often?” she asked.
“Uh,” I hedged. “That might be me.”
“Thanks,” she said wryly. She frowned. “You actually said that I needed a suntan? You actually said that about me-- a total stranger who has never done you any harm?”
“Did I mention that I
was socially maladroit?” I asked.
She sighed. “Yeah, I think you made that clear.”
“Sorry.”
“Never apologize for what you are,” she murmured, and then said, “You know, it’s just that some people don’t tan, and I’m one of them. I just burn and peel. One time I got such bad sunburn, I looked like a lobster. My skin was so hot I had to lie down in the bathtub in cool water. Well, I fell asleep in the tub, and while I slept, the water soaked through my skin. When I woke up, I had all these huge blisters all over and-- why am I telling you this?” she said, suddenly irked.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Anyway, my father is one of those people who think being outside under the sun is healthy. You know, a real outdoorsy type, though he hardly looks like it. I don’t think he ever heard of skin cancer.”
“What about your mother?” I asked.
She tilted her head slightly, squinting up at me.
“I don’t have a mother,” she said; she said it with something that sounded like pride but was probably more defiance. When I didn’t say anything, she didn’t go on to explain. She didn’t say whether her parents were divorced or that her mother had died or anything. Whatever the truth of the matter, I sensed it might be a sore spot. “I just have him,” she said, “and he’s a little, well, odd. Since you’re going to be next door, you’ll probably talk to him from time to time. Don’t take everything he says seriously. He goes on sometimes. I’m just letting you know up front. He’s not, like, crazy or anything-- no, nothing like that. He just manages always to say the wrong things, and he ends up giving people the wrong impression.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know-- sometimes, he just says weird things, and then people start thinking weird things.”
“What, like you guys are aliens or something?” I asked.
“Oh, no, not that,” she said seriously. “Of course, we’re aliens. Isn’t it obvious?”
“You are?” I said, and I began to hear a buzzing sound in my head.
“Sure,” she said, as though it was no big deal. “We’re here to take over the world-- that’s why we’re starting here in Hamilton, Indiana-- the nerve center of the entire planet.”
I stared at her, waiting for a little arm to shoot from her mouth. I must have looked dumbfounded.
“That was a joke,” she said at last, glumly. “You were supposed to laugh.”
“Oh.” I chuckled uneasily.
She frowned and wagged her head.
“Look,” she said, standing up from the lawn chair. “Here’s the deal-- and I think it’s only fair. Since your big mouth got me into this trouble, you’re going to help me with the lawn or with any other outdoor chores my father comes up with for me. I’m just not cut out for it. I think it’s the air. The air on my planet isn’t nearly this thin.”
“That’s a joke, right?”
She looked me up and down, and said, “Well, there might be a ray of light.” She didn’t sound very hopeful.
I helped her finish mowing the yard and the front lawn, and with bagging all the clippings and setting the bags out by the curb for the garbage men to pick up. Afterward, we sat on the front porch of her house, and talked awhile. She was no longer as distant or as surly as she had seemed, and listening to her talk was really quite enjoyable. It was as though once certain things were established-- for example, that I was sort of a moron, and that she wasn’t-- she could let her guard down and relax and be herself, which was very pleasant. Smiles came to her easily, now, and her eyes would flash now and then when she heard or said something she thought was funny. She had the most incredible eyes, actually; they were emerald green, and whenever she had a mischievous thought, they shimmered and made her look even prettier than she looked when she was moody.
I learned a fair amount about her. She told me that she’d been home-schooled her entire life, and had never set foot in an actual school. She’d lived in quite a few different places already, her and her father moving every two or three years. This last fact I found rather puzzling. There was no obvious reason why they would be relocating so often, and she rendered no explanation. All she did was name off the places they had lived: Fort Myers, Florida; South Bend, Indiana; San Diego, California; Batavia, Illinois…. I found it intriguing, but I wasn’t about to ask her why, for fear she might become distant and moody again. She certainly had a secret side-- which I doubted had anything to do with being an alien-- and, after all, I was just some clown she’d just met. I couldn’t expect her to reveal to me her innermost thoughts, yet still I couldn’t help wondering about the odder details of her life.
“What is there to do around here for fun?” she was now asking. It was a strictly small-talk question; she didn’t really seem interested, and I suspected she already knew the answer.
“Well, not a lot, really,” I said.
“What do you do?”
“Uh…” I was hard pressed to think of something. “I lift weights.”
She raised an eyebrow. “For fun?” she asked, and then laughed-- she had a delightful laugh; it sounded like water trickling into a rain barrel, bubbling and burbling from the back of her throat. “We’re going to have to work on your idea of fun. Lifting weights,” she scoffed.
“I enjoy it,” I said, “on some levels.”
“You mean lifting weights has more than one level?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” I said, although she appeared doubtful.
“Well, what about going places, doing things?”
“I don’t have friends,” I admitted. “Who wants to go somewhere alone?”
“Well, what about that guy you were with yesterday?”
“Raffles? Raffles isn’t really a friend. His more like a stray dog that started following me a few years ago.”
“That’s rather harsh,” she said.
“Whenever he comes around, he makes me nuts.”
“For instance…?”
“He’s just irritating,” I said.
“How?”
“He makes me explain everything I say.”
“Like I’m doing now?”
“Sort of.”
“Sorry. Am I irritating you, now?”
“No,” I said, and was surprised that it was true: she was interrogating me that same way Raffles would, but coming from her, all the questions didn’t bother me in the least. “No, you’re not.”
“What else does he do?”
“Oh, I don’t know-- he makes me feel dumb.”
“How?”
“Well, like, he’ll use big words. I think he does it on purpose; he knows I won’t know what they mean, but he uses them just the same. It’s like he’s trying on purpose to make me feel dumb.”
“Maybe he’s just trying to get you to use a dictionary, improve your vocabulary.”
“No, he just enjoys it,” I said, certain.
“Well, why don’t you do something?-- start looking things up in the dictionary? Maybe you’ll learn something-- then maybe he’ll stop doing it.”
“Nah, I just don’t have book smarts,” I explained. “It runs in the family. Even my father said I come from a long line of males with strong backs and weak minds. Except for my brother, of course.”
“Why, what’s his deal?”
“He’s, like, twelve years older than me,” I said. “He got a couple college degrees. He’s an instructor at the University of Iowa.”
“What department?”
“The writing workshop.”
“Published?”
“All the time,” I said. “Won an O. Henry award last year.”
“Impressive.”
“Yeah.”
“A lot to live up to, huh?” she asked.
I had been staring at the ground as we spoke, and now looked up at her. I wondered how I’d been lulled into revealing so much personal information. She was almost a total stranger, after all, yet I realized I no longer experienced the least bit of anxiety speaking to her.
It suddenly seemed that I had known her forever, and exactly when that started, I couldn’t say-- only that it seemed like magic.
She was now looking at me with curiosity mixed with concern.
“Sounds like you need to have some serious fun,” she said.
“And that will change things?” I asked.
“No, but it’ll help you live with the things you can’t change.”
“Oh?” I was doubtful.
She paused, thinking, biting her lower lip, as if formulating a plan. “First,” she finally went on, “you need to know what fun is, and it’s not lifting weights. Trust me, here. It’s even logically wrong.”
“How’s that?” I wondered.
“Well, fun is fun. The more fun you have, the more fun it is. So if lifting weights were fun, you have to conclude that lifting a lot of weights is even more fun, right? But if you lift too much weights, that can led to a hernia, which is not fun at all. It’s pretty simple, really: having fun can only lead to having more fun-- it cannot lead to injury, pain, or dismemberment.”
“You’re making this up, aren’t you?”
“Pretty much so,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe it…. Hey, I have an idea,” she said, and there was a glint in her eye that troubled me. She got to her feet, then, and ran up the front stairs, vanishing into her house for a moment. When she returned, she was all giddy with excitement-- so very different from the gruff Eliza that Raffles and I had witnessed the previous night. She stopped and stood on the stair on which I was sitting, and I had to lean back to look up at her face, trying really hard not glance at her bare legs, which were right next to me.
“How old are you?” she asked, looking down at me.
“Fifteen, why?”
“Fifteen-- fifteen?” She paused. “You were held back in school, then?”
“Just the one year.”
She wagged her head sadly, and then asked, “Well, what is it that makes having fun so hard when you’re fifteen?”