How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend (5 page)

“I have never tried ice cream,” she confesses. “Is it anything like apples?”

“Not even close,” I say, jumping out of bed and slipping discreetly out of my room on a quiet expedition to the freezer.

I come back with a full pint of old-fashioned vanilla ice cream. “This, Zelda, is the greatest gift to mankind.”

I switch on the light and organize an impromptu ice cream picnic on my futon. I hand her a spoon. “Try.”

She brings the ice cream to the tip of her tongue, the way she always samples anything, from food to a potential boyfriend. She makes the happy face. Because this is not just ice cream. Mom
buys it from überpâtissier Lenôtre. This is
zee
best ice cream in Paris and probably in the entire galaxy and beyond. Worth the interstellar trip just in itself.

“Ish cold,” she says around a large spoonful.

“Ish good?”

“Ish good!”

Some things are universal. Lenôtre vanilla ice cream “ish good,” no matter what planet you're from.

A pint of ice cream later, we lie side by side on my futon.

“Our northern shores are filled with giant life-forms and magnificent plants, most of them carnivorous. Someone ignorant of our ways would be killed, eaten, and digested in less than a second.”

Her hands rest on her stomach, moving up and down as she breathes. She's staring up at the perfectly white ceiling and telling me all about her planet.

“Winter lasts for about two of your Earth years. There is no daylight, and electrical storms kill Vahalalians by the thousands.”

I'm staring at her incredibly beautiful face while I listen.

“But spring on Vahalal is glorious,” she continues. “There are more than a thousand shades of orange in our skies, and Zook is everywhere. It lasts for a very short while, then summer comes and we must hide from the sun and sulfuric storms. Sun in summer will melt you.”

I'm not sure someone like Johnny Depp is going to enjoy that kind of climate.

“I wonder where he is,” she says. “And how to find him.”

“I was just thinking about him. All in all, you're lucky.”

She stops staring at the ceiling and turns to me. She has a spot of vanilla ice cream on the side of her mouth.

“He's a celebrity,” I explain. “He can run, but he cannot hide.”

Her eyes! When you're this close to her, they truly look out of this world.

“What will you do if he refuses to follow you?”

She doesn't even need to think about it: “I will have to use violence.”

They have a pretty peculiar definition of romance on Vahalal.

“Zelda?”

“Yes?”

“If you were to kiss me again—not that you will—but if you did, by accident or something, would I risk dying again?”

“As long as you are a child.”

“I'm not a child.”

“Eol-69 disagrees with you.”

Damn bacteria!

“I need to sing to you a bit more.” She flips around so she's sitting on top of me, and then presses down on my shoulders. “How do you feel?”

“I feel…” I shrug. I don't think there's a human word for what I feel with her pressed against me.

“You don't look well.” She puts her hand over my heart. “Your heart beats too fast.” She leans over and presses the tip of her tongue against my forehead. “I can't detect any trace of Eol-69, but your temperature is rising again.”

And if she keeps licking my face like this, my blood is going to boil and my heart is going to pop.

“I'm good, I swear.”

“You're not good. You're not even breathing normally.” She stares at me with her amazing green eyes, her face just an inch from mine. “Are you having some kind of attack? You look all twisted.”

I never thought I'd end up like this, trapped between the legs
of the most fascinating girl in the world. And the most dangerous, too. Not in my wildest dreams! “I'm more than okay. I promise. I'm actually
great
!” And I mean it, too.

She shakes her head. She recognizes emotional disturbance when she sees it. “I'm going to make you sleep.”

“No, wait! I don't want to sleep right now!”

Too late. She sings. I close my eyes and—
whiiiiish
—it's the end of that dream.

D
aylight. Mom bursts into my room. She looks a mess. She's only vaguely wearing her bathrobe. Her eyes aren't all the way open yet, but her bad mood is already in full swing. She drops the phone on my bed. “Your father,” she barks, and she's off.

She's so busy hating Dad that she doesn't even notice Zelda sleeping beside me under the duvet. She slams my door, mumbling something about idiots (her son, her ex-husband, probably Édouard, too) ruining her Saturday sleep-in.

Dad says, “I'm coming to Paris today.”

“Because of Zelda?” I ask, rubbing my eyes.

“I want to be around when they catch her.”

“Who's
they
?”

“I just spoke with the prosecutor in charge of her case. He talks like she's a menace to society. He's a zealous idiot who wants to make the headlines.”

I've never heard Dad call anyone an idiot before—the prosecutor must be a real special breed.

“I just wish I knew where she was,” Dad says.

Actually, she's getting out of my bed, yawning, stretching, adjusting the Speedo, and disappearing into my bathroom. That's where she is.

Mom and Édouard are heading to their Saturday morning brunch. I'm not invited. It's not like they're going to let me ruin their very first weekend of July plans.

“Daaaaavid! My ice cream!” Mom screams from the kitchen. I hear her slamming the freezer door. When she comes out of the kitchen, her lips are so tight they've turned blue.

“What did I tell you about my ice cream?!”

“Not to eat it,” I answer carefully.

“And?”

“I ate it.”

“It's not such a big deal,” Édouard says, trying to appease her, the fool!

She pinches my cheek hard and shakes it. “You're going to get fat. Is that what you want?”

Mom hates fat on anyone. You should see the portions she gives Édouard. The poor guy's always starving.

“I'd rather have you dead than fat!” She actually laughs.
Yak yak yak!
That's her idea of humor. Then she slams the door, leaving me alone in the corridor.

“Zelda!” I call, going back into my room.

Where is she?

“Zellldaaa!”

“Here.” She hops out of Mom's room. She's swapped the Speedo for a silver, white, and metal vintage Paco Rabanne swimsuit that Mom bought for
mucho, mucho monedo
at an auction.

She browses from one page to the next on my iMac like she can read a full tabloid article in a nanosecond.

“This is useless, Earthling! I'm losing precious time!”

She's right. It's incredible, but it's very hard to find a Web page that will help you whisk Johnny Depp away to another solar system.

“Enough!” She pushes away the mouse, stands up, and roars. She's not a big fan of the Web.

“How would you search for him on your planet?” I ask, taking control of the mouse.

“I would ask Zook,” she says, sliding the Starck vase back on her arm like it's time for less computer, more action.

“Like, you would pray?”

“No, I would kill myself. Meet Zook. Be revived by a priestess with all the answers I'd ever need.”

Google feels safer.

She zips on her boots and—
zoof
—she's on her feet, ready to hunt for him old style again.

“Wait!” I call after her. “Look.” I point at the screen and click on the link. “This Thursday, July sixth. At the Champs-Élysées.”

She looks at the fan page I just opened. It's announcing the premiere of Johnny's new movie. She doesn't seem able to make sense of it.

“He's going to be at his new movie premiere. Here in Paris. It's in, like, six days. You know what a movie is, right?”

“Yes. A primitive form of entertainment designed to distract Earthlings from their real-life problems.”

More or less. “So we know exactly where to find him on that date.”

Uh-uh. She shakes her head. Not good enough. She shows me the key tattoo on her arm. It's greener and weaker than the last time
I looked at it, like it's really disappearing fast.

“I need him NOW. Today! This very second. Are you coming, or what?” She's not waiting for me anyway. She's already on her way out.

I'm about to turn off my computer and run after her. But some-thing very familiar and unpleasant catches my eye on the screen. It's a picture of Johnny on the same fan page, and standing right behind him is…I click on the picture to see it full size. “Zelda! I found something!”

“What?” she barks, coming back into the room with Mom's black coat on, even though I begged her not to touch it ever again and volunteered my own old duffel coat instead.

“Malou,” I say, pointing at the girl behind Johnny Depp in the picture. “I know her. It's Édouard's daughter. Sort of my stepsister. Only Mom and Édouard aren't married, so she's not
really
my stepsister.”

If you search for Johnny Depp long enough on Google, you'll end up finding Malou.

Malou the pest.

Malou the black sheep.

Malou the devil.

The picture was taken in some nightclub, Malou looking joyful in the background, Johnny looking bored in the foreground. The caption reads, “Johnny and friends partying the night away.”

She's just eighteen, but she's been living on her own since Édouard kicked her out of our apartment at age sixteen.

Édouard calls her “emancipated.” Mom calls her “promiscuous.” Mom is also known to have used stronger words to describe Malou's lifestyle.

“She writes a blog about the celebrities she knows. She's a model, too. She's been in weird movies. She's very…strange.”

“Get her!”

“What do you mean,
get her
?”

“She knows him.” Zelda taps Malou's face on the screen. “Bring her here!”

“I can't bring her here.”

There are about a million rules in this apartment. One stands very high on Mom's list: Malou is never to set foot in here ever again, especially since she stole thousands of euros worth of Mom's couture and jewelry and auctioned everything at a charity gala. “It's for saving the freaking kids in Africa—chill out!” she explained when summoned to give everything back.

Zelda grabs me by my T-shirt collar and lifts me off my seat. “I've been wasting all morning on that useless piece of plastic.” She points toward my iMac. “Stop challenging my orders and bring her here. NOW!”

Dad's right: Too much computer time makes people edgy.

“Frog?” Malou sounds like she's eating something crunchy. “Why are you phoning me? Is Dad dead?”

Crunch crunch crunch.

“No, your dad's fine. He's having brunch with Mom.”

“Oh. Are you alone in the apartment?”

“Yes.” I look at Zelda. “I need you to come here.”

Crunch crunch crunch.

“Why?”

“There's something I need to ask you.”

“Is there champagne in the fridge?”

“I suppose,” I say hesitantly.

“I'll be there in five minutes.” She hangs up.

An hour later, Zelda is turning in circles in the apartment, kicking furniture, punching walls. “Why isn't she here yet?”

I'm also turning in circles, picking up and hiding all the ridiculously expensive knickknacks that Malou might steal. “I'm not even sure she'll come at all. You can never trust anything she says. And she surrounds herself with really bad people. Like, her boyfriends always look like aging serial killers. Édouard gets a rash just from thinking about her.”

Zelda shrugs. All she cares about is Johnny Depp and time running out.

Ding-dong.
Here comes the hurricane.

“I'll deal with her.” Zelda shoots toward the door.

I shake my head. “No way. You hide; I'll deal with her. Trust me. She sees you, and we're in trouble!”

Zelda grumbles in her dolphin talk all the way back to my closet. Malou keeps ringing.
Ding-dong. Ding-dong.
“Tadpole? Are you in there?” I hear her calling. I open the door.

“Tadpole!”

Humph!
Malou hugs me and squeezes all the air out of my lungs. She always hugs me and kisses me and tells me I'm the only person she likes in this family. “I've missed you so much. Let me see you.” She holds me at arm's length. “You've gotten so cute. Give you another three or four years, and you'll be, like, totally hot!”

Malou's very pretty, too, for someone so destructive. Long, jay-black hair, olive skin. As usual, she's dressed in a dozen layers of designer clothes. “Layering is very practical for shoplifting,” she always explains. The result is a sort of gypsy bohemian chic look, like Esmeralda on a catwalk.

“I don't know why you haven't escaped yet,” she says, zooming into the apartment.

“Because I'm fourteen.”

She frowns. “So? I know people younger than you living on the streets.”

Like that's supposed to inspire me.

She walks into the living room and sneers at the perfect order of things. Even the fresh layer of morning dust looks white and still.

“So cold in here. Like a tomb for the rich.” She turns to me and sighs. “Poor Frog. I wish I could afford you. I'd take you with me.”

And without further ado, she moves directly into Mom's room to see what couture she can snatch.

“No no no no no! You can't go in there.”

“Chill out, Frog. I'm just checking what's new in the queen's closet.”

She crosses Mom's room with the grace and velocity of a fashionable missile and enters the walk-in closet. She ignores the regular designer items and goes straight for the extraexpensive stuff. “Is that Saint Laurent?”

She zeroes in on the YSL piece and holds it against her. “Oh ho.
We likey
!”

“Just put the dress back, please. Look, I need something from
you
for a change.”

“Something from me? Do you need drugs? I can hook you up with some really good people.”

“No. No drugs.”

“I get it.” She gives me this sidelong look. “
Froooog!
”

“What?”

“Do you really think you're ready?”

“Ready for what?”

“Losing your virginity, silly.”

Oh boy!

“It's a bit yakky, since we're practically brother and sister, but I'm honored you thought of me.”

I sit down on the bed and hide my face in my hands. I don't know how she does it. She always drains the energy right out of me. “Will you just listen? It's not drugs. It's not
that.
And it's not money.”

“Good. About the money. Because I was about to ask if you can lend me some. I'm totally broke!” She laughs.

“Do you know Johnny Depp?”

“Johnny?”

I nod. She drops the Saint Laurent dress on the floor and goes back to browsing through Mom's collection.

“Of course. Johnny and I are, like, totally best pals!”

She removes five or six layers of her clothes to try on one of Mom's tops.

“Do you know where I can find him? Like, where he lives?”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“You tell me why, I tell you where.”

“Because…I'm a big
fan.
”

She puts on the top and pauses in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror. “What do you think?”

“Take it off. Put it back on the rack. Tell me where to find him.”

“I can get you his autograph if that's what you want. But it'll cost you.”

“I need to see him in person.”

She takes off her boots to try Mom's new stilettos. “Why do you need to see him?”

“I told you, I'm a big fan.”

“I don't believe you. You blush when you lie.”

“Please! Just tell me.”

“Why?”

“Tell him immediately, Earthling! Or be ready to suffer at my hands.”

Oh God! We both turn to Zelda—she's standing right there behind us in the corridor. A strong draft comes from nowhere and blows back her coat and hair. Her fists are firmly locked on her hips, and her black leather knee-high boots shine in the sunlight. She looks exactly like a Supergirl about to kick some ass.

“Man! Is that your mom's Paco Rabanne swimsuit this girl's wearing?”