How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend (4 page)

“Who?”

“Never mind. Let's go fight some windmills.”

I
always wondered what was behind the medieval walls of some of the oldest palaces in Le Marais.

According to Zelda: an extraterrestrial temple built to the glory of Zook, goddess of the Vahalalians.

“This is it,” Zelda says, nodding toward an ancient chapel squeezed between two tall buildings at the end of a dark courtyard off the tiny rue des Oiseaux.

It's not the futuristic metal-and-glass construction I imagined it would be. It's more like any other old Gothic church in Paris—if darker, smaller, and yes, somehow scarier.

Zelda pushes the old wooden door. There's no lock, no chains, but then again, there's nothing to steal. A few wooden benches, a few burning candles giving off the only light to see by, bare stone walls, and a fading depiction of the Virgin Mary painted on the back wall behind the altar.

“Are you sure this is the place?” I point at the painting. “This is a painting of the Virgin Mary. And she's
very
Catholic.”

“This is not
Mary.
This is
Zook.
”

Oh, sorry—my mistake!

“And this is not a painting, it is a door.”

“A door?” I approach the painting and knock on it.
Bonk bonk bonk!
It's stone hard. “Is there a secret passage behind it?”

“You could say that.”

There is some sort of pit at the base of the painting, like some-one actually tried to dig his way to the other side. “Is the real temple behind this wall?”

“No, this is the temple.”

“So what's behind the wall, then?”

“You see the star Zook is pointing at, the one right above her head?”

That's right. Mary—I mean, Zook—is pointing two fingers at a fading white spot right above her head.

“That is my sun.”

“Okay…”

“Do you understand?”

“No.”

She puts it in plain words for me: “Whoever walks through this wall will travel back to Vahalal.”

“You mean…this is a freaking STARGATE?” I laugh again. Oops.

She gives me a dark look.

“It's just funny because of the show. You know with the…” I try to draw a door with my hands and pantomime opening it. “And then—
zoom
—into a wormhole. Right?” At least I know where she gets all her ideas from: TV!

She sighs. I'm such a disappointing Pudin.

“Zelda, I don't want to ruin your
thing.
But this is a stone wall.” I slap the Virgin Mary's stomach. It's hard, cold, and painful on my hand.

“It looks like a wall because it is locked,” she explains, squatting behind the altar. “But like every door, it has a key.”

“And you have that key?”

“Yes.” She puts her hand inside a large crack at the base of the altar and pulls out a small metal box.

“Is that the key?”

“No, this is not the key. It is a few items I brought from Vahalal.”

Like an essential interstellar travel pack.

“There,” she says, lifting the sleeve of Mom's coat and showing me a tattoo that looks like a strange triangular octopus proudly holding a stick.

“There what?”

“That, Pudin, is the key. Whoever carries this marking can walk through the door.” She caresses it gently. “I don't have much time left. Look. It's already fading.”

It does look lighter than her other tattoos, like a cheap homemade one she got years ago.

“In a few days, the key will expire. If I don't find my chosen one before that, I'll be trapped on this ridiculous planet forever.”

“Oh. That would be
awful.
”

She sighs, totally missing the irony in my voice. She puts her hands on my shoulders. “Many Travelers have come here and failed.” She squeezes my shoulders till it hurts. “But we're going to find him or die trying. Won't we, Pudin?”

I nod. Sure thing. Dying should totally be part of my job description.

She stops mauling me and lets go. “Good Pudin.”

“Okay, let me get this straight.” I rub my shoulders. “Because you have that weird octopus thing on your arm, you could just…walk through this wall and,
zoooof,
shoot back to your planet right before my eyes?”

“It's not an octopus. It's a key. And no, Earthling. I won't open the door.” She kneels in front of the painting. “My chosen one will, once I give him the key.” She touches her goddess's feet in a sign of obedience. “And then together we will fly through space and back to my planet.”

“You're taking
him
back with you?” My voice gets a few notches higher with surprise.

She turns away from Zook and stands up. “That is what we do, Earthling: We give them the key and take them back to Vahalal, lock them in the Tower of Tor, and make sure they never escape.”

It gets worse for the poor chosen one by the second. “You want to give the guy a piece of your own skin and lock him up in a prison?!”

“The Tower of Tor is not a prison. It's more like…what you Earthlings call a zoo. And I won't give him a piece of my skin. I will transfer the key to him during sexual intercourse. Are you all right, Pudin? You appear to be emotionally disturbed.”

“I'm fine.” Except all the blood in my body rushed to my face the second she said
sexual intercourse.

It's windy over the Seine River. We're crossing the Pont Notre-Dame, going back to the Rive Gauche. I'm thinking about the painting of Zook, the door to Vahalal, the Tower of Tor, the key octopus tattoo thingy on her arm. But mostly, I must confess, I'm thinking of Zelda…well…removing her Speedo and
transferring
the key to
her chosen one. I feel dizzy. And a bit scared. I wonder if I should phone Dad immediately and have the cuckoo squad come pick her up with their butterfly nets and tranquilizer darts, because if she believes any or all of these things she's talking about, I've become the Pudin of one seriously deranged girl. But I just can't resist her. She's the most interesting person I've ever met. The most…I don't know. Special.

She stops right in the middle of the bridge and takes off Mom's sunglasses to take a better look at my city. “He is out there somewhere,” she says. “And I will find him.”

Oh God, I'm so confused I could scream. The wind plays with her long hair, most of it landing over her face. She's so damn beautiful.

“Zelda?”'

“Yes, Pudin?”

“People on Earth don't walk around spelling out their DNA.”

“I know that, Pudin. I've been studying your primitive civilization.”

“My point is, that's not how we find a, you know, girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever.”

“Not boyfriend, chosen one.”

“What I'm saying…it might come as a surprise to you, but if all you know is his DNA, it's going to be really hard to find him. Probably impossible.”

And then, out of nowhere, she grabs my face and kisses me. Her lips part. Her tongue touches mine.

Olivier was wrong. This isn't anything like raw chicken at all. It's more like
spinning
and
falling.

I close my eyes and clumsily put my arms around her to make sure we'll stay like this forever.

It's the first time I've ever kissed a girl.

I'm kissing a girl.

I
.
AM
.
KISSING
.
A
.
GIRL
. Until—
zoom
—she abruptly pushes me away and all the happiness drains out of me.

I open my eyes. “Did I…? Was I…? Did you…?” But, more importantly, “Why did you do that?” You should hear the high pitch of my voice.

“To show you how it works.”

“
What?!
”

“Travelers are experts in gustative biochemistry. That is how we sample someone's DNA. By the way, you are not a match.”

Sometimes her little Spacegirl fantasy totally sucks.

“Why are you emotionally disturbed again?” she asks, trying to keep up with me as we pass Saint-Eustache Cathedral. “Pudin, stop running away from me!”

“I'm not emotionally anything!” But I am running away from her. I just don't feel like playing her little games anymore.

I stop and turn around to face her. “I don't think you're funny!”

“I am not meant to be funny.”

Apparently.

“Are you upset about me sampling you negative?”

“Oh, so shoving your tongue inside my mouth is called ‘sampling me negative'?”

“It is the most reliable way to determine who is my chosen one and who is not.” (I.e., me.)

“That's that, then? You're going to kiss every boy, man, and grandpa in Paris? That's…very unhygienic, Zelda.” I tap my head. “You might want to change your story a bit and just pretend you carry around a picture of the lucky guy.”

“I do have pictures of him,” she says, opening the metal box she got from the altar and retrieving a small booklet from it. “But face
recognition is only seventy percent accurate. Sampling is ninety-nine percent accurate.”

Sigh. “I don't know what's more annoying. That you believe all this crap or that you're just playing me.”

“I am not
playing
you, Pudin. Lying is a sin.”

She takes my hand and slams the booklet into it. “There. That is he. Take a look.”

I open it. It's a collection of credit-card-sized pictures printed directly on metal. Let's see. He's…omifreakinggod!

“See, you do not look like him at all. I just sampled you as a matter of illustration.”

“This is a joke, right?” I ask, looking at the first picture.

“What do you mean?”

I turn the cards, slowly at first and then faster and faster. I look up, waiting for her to break into a laugh and say “Of course this is a joke. Now let's do something different, like rob a bank.”

“You're going to tell me you have no idea who this is?” I show her the last picture in the booklet.

“That's the Earthling I came for. My chosen one. His image was reconstructed based on his exact genetic code.”

All the way to the Internet café, I think, she's not nuts at all, she's just nasty, and she's been playing me the whole time.

I sit her in front of a computer. I open Google. I choose the images search. I type the name. I hit Enter and get 2,990,000 results. I turn to her. Her eyes widen.

“See anyone familiar?” I ask.

“It is
him,
” she says, pointing at the screen, her eyes getting wider and greener.

“Oh, stop the act.” I click on a picture where he's not dressed
like Jack Sparrow, a nice black-and-white picture from when he was younger. “Is that the guy you're looking for?”

“I must kiss him to be sure.”

“Ha! Kiss him! Sure!”

Zelda is just like any other girl on earth.

She wants what they all want. She wants JOHNNY DEPP!

“L
et me just say it out loud so we can laugh together: You're going to find Johnny Depp, take him back to Vahalal, and put him in a zoo?”

“Who?”

“Him, him, him!” I yell, hysterically pointing at the computer screen. The other customers in the café turn to see what bit me.

“He looks…exactly like the one I am looking for. I told you, I need to—”

“Kiss him! Good luck with that, and good-bye!”

I don't even bother to log off. I drop two euros on the counter and head for the door. I've had enough. I'm going home. I'm going back to my life the way it was before she came to Cornouaille.

Johnny Depp?! Come on!

“Pudin!” She runs after me in the street. “Stop!”

She catches up with me and grabs my wrist.

“You must obey me. Disobeying a Traveler is a sin, Pudin.”

“I quit!” I'm her Pudin no more.

“You cannot quit.”

“Watch me!”

“What's the matter with you?” She tightens her grip on my wrist till it hurts.

“You walk around in a swimsuit. You say you're from space. And now you want to take Johnny Depp to a galaxy far, far away! Ding-dong! Doctor Schweitzer, we have reached our conclusion: You're an act, and you think I'm a fool. Period.”

But she's not listening to me. She looks straight into my eyes with a weird intensity and sighs. “By Zook, I don't believe it.”

“Don't believe what?”

“I have no time for this, Pudin.”

“No time for what?”

“Eol-69,” she says, shaking her head and looking very frustrated.

“What?”

“Show me your tongue.”

“Are you kissing me again?”

She sighs, grabs my hair, pulls it back, and squeezes my cheeks until I open my mouth. But she doesn't kiss me. She just studies my tongue carefully.

“I need to sing to you. Urgently. And we must find some stones.”

“I'm not interested in your crazy fantasy anymore.”

“Fine,” she says calmly. “If I don't do anything, you'll be dead in an hour. Considering I don't have much time to spare saving your life, your sacrifice will be much appreciated.”

Oh.

I
do
feel slightly light-headed suddenly. My legs give out.
Poof.
I land on my ass on the pavement. It's like all the energy is being drained out of my body. “Zelda…I don't feel too good. I think I need your help.”

She sneers. “I knew making you my Pudin was a bad idea.” And with that, she pulls me up, puts my arm over her shoulders and hers around my waist, and helps me walk.

Everything starts to spin around me. I turn to Zelda. She looks very beautiful and very focused, like she wants to be done with me quickly. “Did anyone ever tell you you're so pretty?” I mumble dizzily.

“Walk, Earthling! Delirium is a common side effect of Eol-69. And stop staring at me.”

I look away. But I could swear I just made a Vahalalian blush.

“AAAAAAAAH!” I scream. “What happened to my eyes?!”

There are no more pupils, no more white. My eyes have turned into two shiny black balls, rolling around in terror and staring straight back at me in the bathroom mirror. I pull at my tongue. Black, black, black! Just like ink.

“I told you: Eol-69.”

“What's Eol-69?!”

“It is a common bacteria on Vahalal. It is malignant to certain weaker forms of humanoids.”

“Weaker?”

“Children.”

Okay, now's the right time to panic. “Zelda! What's happening to me?!” I feel faint. I sit down on the toilet. Now I really wish she were just crazy. I wish Eol-69 were another of her fantasies. But look at my eyes! “What's going to happen to me?”

“Drowsiness. Paralysis, coma, and death. It is fast and painless, Pudin.”

“You. Gave. Me. THIS?!”

She nods. “I suppose sampling you was not a good idea after all.”

“I'm…sleepy.”

She helps me to stand and walk into my room. I fall on my new futon. Ouch. Even when you're busy panicking and dying from an alien bug, it's impossible to ignore that this damn thing is harder than the floor.

She takes off my T-shirt. I'm so far gone, I don't even care when she unbuttons and slides off my jeans.

“Zelda?” I manage to whisper.

She hushes me and sets the stones she picked up in the Jardin du Luxembourg on my stomach. “David, I need to tell you. You are probably going to die.”

Indeed.
Zoom.
I feel like I'm falling down a very large, soft hole, trying to grab something before I slide away forever. I try to reach for her hand, but my arms and legs refuse to move—paralysis! Just like she said. I've got coma and death to look forward to, then.

“If you never wake up, thank you for what you did for me,” I hear her say through a billion light-years of wet cotton.

She takes my face in both hands, leans over, and sings to me.

She sings nicely. I really love…

“David?”

“Yes?”

“Are you on drugs?”

“What?”

“If you're on drugs, I will kill you.”

“I'm not on drugs.” I sit up. The stones fall from the bed and roll onto the floor.

Mom is standing in the middle of my room, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. “If it's not drugs, then why are you sleeping totally naked with stones on your stomach?”

“I'm not—” I look down. Oh shit! I
am
totally naked. I pull the
brand-new white duvet over me and cover my eyes to hide them from her.

“My black coat was on the floor in the middle of your room. Are you dressing up in…
my clothes
?”

A drug addict and a cross-dresser. That's what she thinks she's dealing with.

“No. It's…my eyes.”

She switches on the light and squats beside the futon to take a good look at her transvestite junkie son's eyes. “What about them?”

They've been contaminated by an intergalactic bug.

“They're…weird.”

“You have my eyes, my face. They're not weird. They're beautiful.” She pushes my face this way and that to examine it better. She likes my face. It reminds her of hers. “You should be thankful you didn't inherit your father's droopy features.”

She looks at me intently. A normal mother would probably hug her son now. Mom's not a hugger. I'm not much of a hugger, either. I guess I got that from her, too.

She sighs, picks up the stones, and stands up. Enough bonding.

“Dinner's ready. Édouard's waiting. You know he hates waiting.” She stops on her way out of the room. “Oh. By the way. Touch my coat again, and I'll give you a solid reason to take drugs.” Then she abandons me, closing the door on her way out.

“Zelda?” I call.

“Here,” she whispers, popping her head out of my walk-in closet. “You live, Pudin. You are stronger than I thought.”

I bet she says that to all the boys.

I wait until Édouard and Mom disappear into their brand-new redecorated boudoir, where they will most likely yell at the TV for
the rest of the evening. I gather leftover food on Mom's breakfast tray and add a carton of milk and a glass. I don't know what's with me trying to feed her milk all the time. I just picture her as a big milk lover.

She's sitting on the futon, watching the night sky through the French doors. “No stars,” she remarks.

She's right. There are never any stars over Paris, just this mushy brown pollution mash.

“You shouldn't be out of the closet. And you should put some clothes on.” Just imagine Mom catching her in here wearing nothing but the Speedo. Now, that would be a scene to remember.

“I should be out there looking for him.”

She touches the tattoo she said was the key back to her planet. “There's so little time left.” She shows me. I don't know. Maybe she's right. Maybe it does look like it's slightly fainter than the last time I saw it.

I set the tray beside her. “Did I really nearly die?”

“Yes, Earthling. You nearly died,” she says, forgetting about her fading tattoo. “I sang for hours, losing precious time.”

I pour her a glass of milk. My theory holds: She drinks it bottom up.

“This thing with my eyes, it really came from…?” I point at the starless night sky.

She nods. She has a funny white mustache from the milk.“ Eol-69 is very common past Galaxy zeta-784. It is good that you did not get Eon-77.”

“What does Eon-77 do?”

“You would have exploded instantly.”

I look around my spotless white room. “Mom would have hated that.”

We sit in front of my new iMac. Zelda's browsing through more and more pictures of Johnny Depp. Young. Older. Pirate. Pirate. Pirate. “I wish I could kiss him now,” she says matter-of-factly.

“I tell you, Zelda, you're probably not the only girl thinking that right now.”

“Who is that?”

She stops on a picture of him with his partner, Vanessa Paradis.

“He already has a girlfriend. He has children. He might not want to…
you know.
”

She shrugs. “This is not about what he wants.”

Even with my door closed, we can hear Édouard and Mom going through another major argument. Zelda listens to them. A door slams. They will carry on the fight in their bedroom.

“She'd have less trouble with him if she had him neutered.”

“Zelda! Don't say that word. Not in this room.”

“What word?” She stands up, stretches, and yawns. It's been a long day, even for an ET.

I turn off the computer. “
Neutered.
It's sort of…freaky.”

“Define
freaky.
”

“Well, the idea of…” I make a
snip-snip
motion with my fingers. “There are other ways to settle conflicts, don't you think?”

We can hear Mom yelling at the top of her lungs and then Édouard yelling back at her.

Zelda nods toward my hand. “If you knew that one of your fingers was turning you into an illogical, primitive mess and that cutting it off would make you a better person, would you hesitate?”

“A finger's, like”—I close my fist—“totally not the same thing, Zelda,” I say, lying down on the bed. “You wouldn't understand. It's a guy thing.”

She's too tired to keep making the case for mutilation. She lies down beside me and closes her eyes.

“You shouldn't fall asleep here,” I say.

“Where should I sleep, then?”

I nod toward the closet. “Sorry. We'll make it snug.”

She drags herself in. I push my sneakers aside, add some pillows, drop my sleeping bag from last year's ski camp right in the middle, and we have the perfect nest for a Spacegirl. I turn off the light.

“Why did you get emotionally disturbed?” The way she asks, it's almost a whisper. “You saw the face of my chosen one, and you became…
strange.
”

Images flash through my mind: The kiss on Notre Dame Bridge. The very first time I saw her in Dad's office. Her face when she sang to me. Plenty of pictures of Johnny Depp.

“I don't know. I thought…
I don't know.
”

“Emotions are bad, David. They are your weakness. You should overcome them.”

I love it when she calls me David instead of dwarf, Pudin, or Earthling. But that's an emotion, right?

“If any of the symptoms of Eol-69 come back, wake me up.”

I promise I will.

I can't sleep. The door to the closet is slightly open so Zelda won't die from the smell of my sneakers. I'm totally focused on the door. Imagine that. A real ET. And to think I was already obsessed with her when I thought she was just a regular loony in a supersexy swimsuit. Now I feel like my spine is connected to a high-voltage wire.

“Are you sleeping?” I call.

“No.”

Silence.

“How would you rate yourself?” she asks suddenly.

“Rate myself?”

“As an Earthling, I mean.”

“I…I never rated myself.”

Silence.

“I've never treated a live male hominid before. I've done plenty of autopsies on deceased samples, of course. I normally find them utterly disgusting. The deceased ones, I mean. But some have been terribly mangled before they land on my autopsy table. The Valks can be so rough with male subjects.”

Silence.

“I do not find you utterly disgusting,” she says.

“Thank you,” I reply hesitantly.

Silence.

“Do you like ice cream?” I ask.

“I do not know, Earthling.”

“
You don't know ice cream?!
”

“I know exactly what ice cream is. It's a frozen food with very little nutriment and a high level of carbohydrate and fat, used by Earthlings to simulate pleasure.”

I sit up on my bed. She needs to know the truth. “Zelda! Ice cream is
not
that at all!”