Alien Superstar

by Henry Winkler

  “The rings are even more beautiful in real life,” I said, remembering the glowing shades of brown, gray, and pink I had just seen the day before.

  “How would you know?” she asked. “Have you been there?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Eloise,” Cassidy said. “No one has ever been to Saturn.”

  These humans had a lot to learn.

  “Over there is my dresser with my unicorn collection on top,” Eloise continued. “Don’t touch it. There’s a little comb for styling their manes. Don’t touch it. And over there on my nightstand is my jar of sour gummy dragons. The best ones are the purple ones, but don’t touch them. Actually, I’m taking them with me. Cassidy, I’m keeping them right next to my pillow for middle-of-the-night snacks.”

  “Fine, go ahead and rot your teeth,” Cassidy said. “See if I care.”

  Eloise went on with her tour. “And over there is the bathroom I share with Cassidy,” she said. “She makes you knock first.”

  “And what’s that?” I asked, pointing to a long wooden door resting on two stools that ran down the middle of her room. It was covered with colorful plastic building blocks.

  “That’s Eloise-ville, silly. Daddy and I are building a whole Lego city named after me. We work on it every time Cassidy has a show night.”

  “Maybe I can help you guys build a space station?” I volunteered.

  “Hands off,” she said. “See the sign on the table? DO NOT TOUCH. It’s just for me and Daddy.”

  Mr. Cambridge came into the room and swooped Eloise up in his arms.

  “I’m taking off now, jelly bean,” he said. “You got a big kiss for Dad?”

  “See you next week, Daddy,” Eloise said. “Remember, we’re building the supermarket.” She gave him a slobbery kiss on the cheek.

  “Nice meeting you, Buddy,” he said.

  “Would you like a big kiss from me too?” I asked. I wanted to fit in with the family customs.

  “A handshake will do just fine,” he said. He gave me another one of his power handshakes, but this time I managed to stay on my feet.

  “One last piggyback ride,” Eloise said. Mr. Cambridge bent down and she climbed up on his back. “Giddyup,” she giggled as they headed off down the hall toward the front door.

  “Your father doesn’t live here?” I asked Cassidy when they were out of sight.

  “Remember, I told you my parents are separated. It’s a trial separation, because they have issues.”

  “Because she’s so bossy and doesn’t let anyone else talk?”

  Cassidy burst out laughing. “Wow, Buddy, you certainly call it like it is.”

  I was suddenly overcome with a wave of weakness so strong I thought I was going to collapse right where I was standing.

  “Cassidy, could you leave now?” I blurted out.

  She looked surprised, hurt even.

  “It’s not that I want you to leave,” I added quickly. “It’s that I need you to.”

  “You are quite the mystery person,” Cassidy said.

  “You have no idea,” I said, practically pushing her out of my room. I didn’t mean to be rude, but I had to do something about my physical condition. My mouth was so dry. My human eyes burned. I could see tiny cracks forming in my Zane Tracy hands and arms.

  Water. I needed water. Not just drinking water either. I needed to submerge myself in it. Soak in it. Flood myself with it. Absorb it through every pore in my alien skin. I had waited way too long to hydrate myself. Grandma Wrinkle had warned me that without proper hydration, my life force would dry up. What was going to happen to me? Would I shrivel up? Shrink to the size of a molecule and wither away?

  I looked around the room desperately, and then my eyes focused on the door to the bathroom. I wobbled over to it and pushed it open. Yes. There it was. A bathtub.

  Pulling off my Zane Tracy clothes, I dropped to my knees, crawled across the cold tile floor, and climbed up and over into the tub. It was so high and I was so weak, it felt like climbing a mountain. Once inside, I couldn’t lift my arms to turn on the water, so I used the suction cups starting to sprout on my feet to grasp the handles. When I finally got the water on, I noticed that the tub didn’t fill up. All the water was going down the hole at the bottom. I was just able to reach a silver lever sticking out of the wall, and when I pushed it down, the drain closed. Water started to fill the tub. I grabbed the titanium amulet around my neck and held it in the palm of my hand.

  “Be the real me,” I chanted. “Be the real me now.”

  I felt that melting sensation as my human skin began to dissolve. My fourteen bony fingers poked out of my soft human hands. My hair receded into my scalp. I looked down and saw all of my suction cups replacing my toes.

  As I sank into the steaming bathwater, it was my desperate, urgent hope that my mixed-up body would be able to survive here on Earth.

  15

  The hot bathwater penetrated my scaly skin, and I could feel myself absorbing it like a sponge. It was as if my whole body were gulping every last drop of water. Back on my planet, there is no such thing as a “bath.” We have cleaning drones that travel up and down our bodies, sucking up all the red dust particles that have attached themselves to us. (Be warned, if you ever get a cleaning drone as a gift, it does tickle when it sweeps the back of your knees.) After the drone has removed all the dirt and grime, it sprays us with essence of honeywort so we smell fresh.

  I closed all six of my eyes and lay motionless at the bottom of the tub. My life force was renewing itself just as Grandma Wrinkle had promised. I could feel the water molecules helping my cells bind together again, repairing the breakdown that my body had begun to experience. But the process seemed to be taking a very long time. What if it took all weekend? I couldn’t take the bathtub to the mall.

  “Buddy!”

  I thought I heard someone calling my name, but with so much water in my ears, I couldn’t be sure.

  “Buddy! Can you hear me?” This time the voice was accompanied by someone knocking on the bathroom door.

  I popped my head out of the water with a splash.

  “Buddy, you’re not going to believe what I’ve just found!”

  Cassidy was in Eloise’s room, shouting through the locked bathroom door.

  Or was it locked? Oh no. I rotated all my eyes to the door, but I couldn’t tell. I jumped out of the tub and grabbed the first thing I saw hanging on the back of the door. It was a fluffy pink robe with a unicorn horn on its hood.

  “Buddy!” Cassidy called. “Come out here this minute! It’s really, really important.”

  “I’ll be right there,” I called.

  Grabbing the titanium amulet in the palm of my hand, I concentrated with all my might, and whispered, “Be Zane now. Be Zane now.”

  Oh my gosh, I was getting good at this. Within seconds, human hair sprouted like weeds from my head, and it was even wet. Looking in the steamy mirror, I watched as my alien face transformed into Zane and my bony arms and spiny fingers disappeared under my human skin.

  “Buddy, your eyes are going to pop right out of your head when you see this!” Cassidy called.

  Thank goodness I only had two eyes now. Six eyes popping out of my head would be messy, and I’d also have to run around picking them up from the floor like marbles. That would be hard because they could see me but I couldn’t see them.

  One final check in the mirror showed me that all my eyes were safe under my Zane face. I closed the unicorn robe and tied the belt around my waist, took a breath to compose myself, and pulled open the door that led to Eloise’s room.

  Cassidy was jumping up and down in the middle of the bedroom, holding a laptop computer.

  “You’ve gone viral!” she said, her eyes glued to the screen.

  “I don’t think I have a virus,” I answered. “I was feeling weak, but I’m much better now.”

  “No, gone viral on the internet,” she said. “Someone in the audience recorded your big scene on the show. It’s onl
y been up for five minutes, but you already have thousands of hits. Look at these comments! Everyone thinks you’re so funny.”

  She flashed me a gigantic smile. Then she noticed the pink unicorn robe and burst into laughter.

  “Don’t let any of your new fans see you in that,” she howled.

  I joined in her laughter, and I thought we were sharing a great moment, when suddenly, her expression changed and her laughter evaporated. I followed her gaze and saw that she was staring at my feet. They were still my alien legs with the suction cups attached. Apparently, my transformation to Zane Tracy hadn’t gone as quickly as I’d thought.

  “Why did you take a bath with your costume on?” she said.

  “Now that is a very interesting question,” I answered, saying the words slowly to give myself time to think. “Um . . . I left my costume feet on . . . because I walked around on them all day, and they get dirty. It’s a known fact that suction cups don’t adhere well when they are clogged with particulate matter.”

  “Particulate matter?”

  “I believe you would call that dirt.”

  “Listen, Buddy, if you’re going to be as big a star as all these internet hits are indicating, you’re going to have to knock off that ‘particulate matter’ talk and stick with ‘dirt.’ You don’t want to weird out your new fans.”

  She held up her computer screen so we could both see it and played me the clip someone had put together of the moment on the show when I farted and when I took my bow as Zane Tracy. It was the first time I’d ever seen my two selves on video. It was thrilling.

  “Whether you know it or not, you’re a star,” Cassidy said. “This is going to be so good for our show. We used to be the number one rated show in kids’ programs, but lately our ratings have been sagging. You could shoot us right back to the top slot.”

  My mind was racing with the excitement of Cassidy’s vision, so at first I didn’t notice the slight movement coming from the middle of my back. But very soon, it became impossible to miss. My sensory enhancer was coming alive and was on the hunt for something.

  “Oh no,” I said out loud. “This is not good news.”

  “Trust me,” Cassidy said. “I’ve been in television since I was three, and this is spectacular news.”

  “Your news is not the same as my news,” I said.

  Just then, my sensory enhancer totally escaped from the pink robe. It shot past the unicorn hood, burst into the open air, and started snorting like a hungry rhinoceros. Cassidy opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Her eyes got as big as the flying saucers we use as taxis on our planet.

  My sensory enhancer had gone completely wild, snorting and grunting and spinning around and around so fast I thought it was going to throw up. It jerked me around the room as it searched for the source of what it was smelling. First it rummaged in the closet, picked up a gym shoe, and took a giant whiff. Letting out a disgusted squeal, it tossed the sneaker across the room. It whizzed right by Cassidy’s head, but she was in such shock, she didn’t even duck. Luckily, since they don’t have eyes of their own, sensory enhancers are known for having bad aim.

  Next it pulled me over to the dresser and knocked over a bunch of little glass bottles of perfume. Liquid spilled out of each one, forming a small puddle so stinky it made my nose itch all the way across the room.

  “Ah-choo!” I sneezed.

  “Ah-cheer!” Cassidy sneezed.

  “HA-HA-HA-HA-CHOO-UMMMM!” my sensory enhancer sneezed.

  Air came blasting out of it with such force that it blew the bedspread right off the bed. The sunflower-patterned fabric circled in the air like a flying carpet until it landed on top of my enhancer, draping around it like a floral superhero cape. Any other time, I might have laughed at the sight, but this was no time for humor.

  There was no controlling this rampage. Whatever my sensory enhancer was smelling, it wanted badly . . . and immediately. Wildly, it dragged me toward the bed as I helplessly watched it pick up the pillows and toss them around. And then, sensing that it had arrived at its destination, it froze in midair, snorting vigorously. It had found what it was looking for.

  Tucked under the bed pillows was Eloise’s hidden stash of sour gummy dragons. My enhancer sniffed the bag and let out a yelp of delight. With great speed and precision, it snatched the plastic bag from the bed, ripped it open, and inhaled a handful of the gummy dragons.

  The sour gummies disappeared into its long trunk, and it let out a contented sigh, which was followed by total silence.

  The room was completely still.

  But the silence only lasted a few seconds because as soon as the sour taste of the candies made contact with the sensory buds inside my enhancer, chaos broke loose. A burst of sour gummy dragons came flying out of its snout like cannonballs, propelled with such force they embedded themselves in the ceiling.

  Smack! Thwack! Zwak!

  One by one, each sour gummy dragon was expelled from my sensory enhancer and catapulted into the air until the ceiling was covered with them. When it had gotten rid of the last of the sour dragons, my sensory enhancer went into a frenzy of sneezing and coughing, trying to get rid of the sour taste left behind. And then it was quiet, as if recovering from the assault on its sensory receivers.

  In all the frenzy, I hadn’t had the courage to check on Cassidy, to see how this was affecting her. But I knew I had to face this moment. I turned to her, and not surprisingly, she looked like she had seen a ghost. Actually, she looked like she had seen a crowd of ghosts, zombies, vampires, werewolves, mummies, banshees, and any other undead creature you’ve ever heard of.

  “I can explain,” I said.

  “No!” she said, her voice trembling. “Tell me I didn’t see what I just saw.”

  I took a few steps toward her, and she took a few steps back.

  “Cassidy,” I began.

  “Don’t even talk to me,” she said. “You’re a freak. What I just saw attached to your back was not human.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m not human. Cassidy, I’m an alien.”

  She gasped and ran for the door.

  “Just give me a minute, and I’ll explain.”

  She was shaking from head to toe and crying.

  “I don’t understand anything you’re saying. I thought you were my friend.” She looked me right in the eye with an intensity that made me really uncomfortable. “Who are you? Where are you from? And what is that thing on your back?”

  “It’s my sensory enhancer,” I said. “Everyone on my planet is born with one, but they get deactivated when you turn thirteen. That’s why I’m here.”

  Cassidy covered her ears with her hands and started to hum, like she was trying to block out everything I was saying.

  “I feel like I’m in the plot of a bad sci-fi movie,” she said. “And I hate sci-fi, so I’m out of here Buddy or Zork or Space Man or Captain Zoom or whatever you call yourself. I’m going to tell my mom and the police and the FBI.”

  “Please don’t call the authorities,” I begged. “They will lock me up and study me. They’ll poke me and prod me and I won’t be able to do Oddball Academy, either. I’ll never be free again.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I won’t call anyone. Just leave and go back to your rocket ship and fly back to your planet, because I am not a big fan of hanging out with aliens. And you can take that snorty-gulpy thing on your back with you.”

  “Cassidy,” I said. “Please calm down and listen.”

  “Get out of my way,” she snapped, flinging open the door. “I am going to the kitchen to get a healthy snack. Actually, forget that. I’m going to get a chocolate-dipped mint ice cream sandwich. And I don’t care what my mother says, because I think I deserve anything I want right now. And when I come back, you had better be gone and never return to this house again.”

  She stomped out of the room without a backward glance. I watched her walk down the hall toward the kitchen, taking all my hopes and dreams for my life o
n Earth with her.

  16

  I watched Cassidy disappear, then turned and went back into my bedroom—actually I went back into what had been my bedroom until my sensory enhancer decided to blow up my life. And I mean, literally, blow up my life.

  “I hope you’re satisfied,” I said to it, but its only response was a small squeak of a hiccup. It was weak from all the sugar and excitement, and frankly, so was I.

  I sat down on Eloise’s bed and tried to figure out what to do. Where would I go? I felt so alone. Even though thousands of fans were liking me on social media, I was still alone. Maybe I was a viral superstar, but inside I was nothing but a blob of shaky, scared jelly. An alien kid with nowhere to go.

  I put my Zane Tracy head in my Zane Tracy hands and tried to think creatively. I had seen a House of Pancakes from the freeway that said it was open twenty-four hours. I could go there and just keep ordering stacks of pancakes until the sun came up. But I didn’t have any money, and besides, my stomach was still in a very bad mood from all that garlic bread. Gallons of melted butter and syrup probably would not help the situation.

  I could sneak back to the Universal lot and spend the night in my rocket ship. That worked once, but it wouldn’t work again. That guard—the one who liked baloney sandwiches—would turn me in for sure this time.

  I could call Luis and tell him it didn’t work out with Cassidy. He’d ask what happened. And I’d make up a story like her family has a whole lot of cats and I’m allergic to cats. But what if Luis’s family had cats too? Then what would I say?

  I rubbed my head, and even in my worried state, I noticed the soft, fluffy texture of human hair. I wondered if way back in our evolution, the citizens of my planet had hair too. Maybe the hot temperatures from our red dwarf sun caused us to shed all our hair.

  “You know, you look pretty stupid in that unicorn robe.”

  The voice from the hall totally startled me.

  “Cassidy?” I said. “I thought you were going to get an ice cream sandwich.”