How to Date an Alien (13 page)

I spent a lot of my time reading through
books of alien folklore, figuring out what I could about alien and
human relationships.

"Find what you were looking for?" Malcolm
yelled from underneath a ship.

I walked over, crouching next to him. "It
just doesn't make any sense. I don't know why he would save me from
the Cephalopod if he knew that aliens and humans aren't supposed to
be together."

Malcolm slid out from under the ship. "Did
you ever think that's maybe why he's so intent on saving you? Every
time there is trouble he's always there for you. Like your knight
in shining armor or something."

That was when it all started to make sense to
me. The only person that Ace was really dangerous around was anyone
who tried to hurt me. When the Cephalopod tried to kill me, he was
there. When the two aliens fought in the cafeteria, he was there.
Even when my nightmares threatened to hurt me, he was the first one
I leaned on and without him around I was afraid that I really would
fall.

I spent all day wondering how and when I'd
ever see him. Too concentrated on my thoughts to do anything else,
I went back to my room at the end of the night in a haze. My world
was in a fog, and I wasn't sure if I would ever get out.

"Are you okay, Alex?"

It was the first time that Jen had spoken to
me since our confrontation in the hallway. I was shocked to hear
her say my name. I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling and
thinking how hard it would be to just travel through the pipes
until I found Ace. I wanted to see if my ankle bracelet would go
off if I wasn't technically in his room, but in the ceiling above
it.

"Yeah, just fine." I pointed my finger up at
the ceiling and started making circles in the air.

"Okay." Jen got up from her bed and plopped
down next to me. "Obviously we've established that you're a
horrible liar, so when are you going to tell me the truth?"

I put my hand down and looked over at her.
How could I explain everything? I didn't even know where to begin.
I didn't want to look crazy talking about my nightmares or how I
didn't understand all things alien, so I just stared at her,
blinking slowly.

"Come on, Alex." She scooted closer, until
she was lying next to me. "I know we haven't talked lately, but
I've wanted to."

She stared at the same spot I had in the
ceiling as she cocked her head toward mine. "I see how mopey you've
been without Ace, and I definitely can't ignore those screams you
try and muffle with your pillow in the middle of the night. It's
kind of scary."

"Do you think I'll ever get to see him
again?" I looked up at Jen. My glasses were so dirty from being
stained with my tears and dust from the hangar that I could barely
see through them.

"Well, maybe once you leave Circe you can
convince your mom that he's just a foreign exchange student," Jen
said, smiling. I took off my glasses and wiped them on my
shirt.

"You don't think I'll get to see him again
before I leave? There's still a few weeks left," I protested,
sitting up and positioning my glasses back on my face.

"I don't know. They've tightened security
quite a bit and have tried to keep everything mum between the
Caltians and humans so this doesn't start some kind of a conflict."
She slowly sat up, leaning her back against the wall.

"Why would this start some sort of a
conflict?"

Jen rolled her eyes. "Did you and Ace never
talk about these things when you were together?"

"Yeah, sometimes." I widened my eyes as I saw
Jen raise her eyebrows. "Not like that! I just meant that he never
mentioned anything that would signify that us dating would cause
some Caltian conflict."

"Anyways, since it seems like you weren't
really talking, it looks like he didn't happen to tell you that
he's what Caltians would refer to as a prince. His mom's the queen
of Calta."

My mouth dropped open. "Shut up, no he's
not!"

She nodded. "I take it that's one he didn't
tell you?"

I shook my head. "No, I had no idea. Not that
it would change anything, but it's kind of an important detail to
find out that your boyfriend is prince of a planet."

"I found that out right after that night we
went bowling. I thought there had to be a reason that he would be
able to get away with a dangerous classification, but still stay at
Circe. I wanted to tell you, but after our argument in the hallway
I thought that was the last thing that you would want to hear." She
looked down at the bedspread, making shapes with her fingertips on
the comforter.

"So, why did he come here? Was the queen not
happy about it or something?"

She looked up from the comforter. "Well Queen
Mama wasn't too happy with her son's constant longing to travel to
Earth, and she was even less happy when he turned of age and
decided to come down and help out with World War II."

"So, finding out that he was in love with an
Earth girl could make things even worse for Earth and Calta
relations," she added, raising her eyebrows at me.

"Jen, how do you even know all of this?"

She laughed. "Well
Miss-Wants-to-be-a-journalist." She nudged me with her elbow. "Some
of it I learned from what I researched on Caltians, some of it I
learned from the alien database, but most of it I learned from my
co-workers gossiping about the other planets."

"I guess gossip does come in handy
sometimes." I laughed.

"Only when you use it right, but seriously."
She cleared her throat. "Do you understand now why we were all so
worried about your interest in Ace? Being a prince, his interest in
a human is a good enough reason for his mom to be pissed."

"So basically like my dad's reaction times a
million?"

"More like a billion."

Jen got up off the bed and headed toward her
dresser, pulling a towel out of the top drawer. "What's it like
being with an alien anyway? Like
really
being with one?"

"Do you mean sex, Jen?" I raised an eyebrow
as she threw the towel over her shoulder.

"No!" She walked back toward my bed. "But if
you want to give me those details, you can." She wiggled her
eyebrows.

"We definitely haven't done that, but just
feeling the warmth from his hands on mine is enough for me." My
eyes glazed as I imagined his hands intertwined with mine, and
tried to picture what they looked like in my head.

She rolled her eyes. "You sound like my
grandma getting excited about hand holding."

"Hey," I called as she headed for the
bathroom. "Don't knock it until you've tried it."

She shook her head. "You are something else,
Alex."

She closed the door behind her while I sat
staring at the blank wall. Maybe I really was something else.
Someone like Helen of Troy who whole cities fought over, or just
another teenage girl that got stuck in a feud between families. Now
how would I get to my Romeo when I needed him?

After making up with Jen and spending the
night gossiping about different humans and aliens around the
center, we finally fell asleep. That was until a scratching sound
at the window pried my eyes open and knocked me out of my
sleep.

I sat up, pulling the covers close around my
body as I looked around the room. It wasn't a nightmare, or else I
would have felt the darkness and seen the woman, but I saw neither.
I looked over at the window to see a shadowed figure standing
outside, its fingers tracing along the glass.

I wanted to scream, but at the same time, I
was more confused than frightened. I wondered if this was someone
from my nightmares coming to kill me or just an alien out for a
midnight flight. A small popping sound came from the screen and I
realized that the shadowed figure had broken the glass out of the
window. I reached at the side of the bed for my pepper spray gun
that my dad had given me as a sixteenth birthday gift. I didn't
know what pepper spray would do against an angry alien, but it was
all that I had.

I crept toward the window, looking around to
see if Jen and Riley were still asleep. Figures, they were both off
in dreamland unaware that we could all be attacked and killed. A
long white hand slipped around to the lock on the barred window,
melting it until the bars swung open, and the shadowy figure
perched on the windowsill facing me.

"Freeze dirtbag!" I yelled, holding up the
pepper spray gun to the figure's face. I was hoping that the look
of the gun would scare whoever it was and they wouldn't just laugh
at my cheesy cop show line.

Jen immediately stirred, sitting straight up
in bed and looking around until she gasped when she saw the figure.
Riley, of course, slept with her headphones on and the sleep mask,
so she was oblivious. I guess if one of us had to die I wouldn't
have chosen me or Jen.

"Alex, it's me," the figure whispered as he
raised his arms above his head while still crouched in place on the
windowsill.

"Ace?" I raised an eyebrow. leaning forward,
and dropping the gun in the process.

He moved his head so that the moonlight
danced on his face. It was definitely Ace.

"What are you doing here?" I whispered.

"Are you coming to kill us?" Jen whispered in
a panic as she came rushing to my side.

I glanced over in Jen's direction, shaking my
head before I turned back to Ace. I was sure if he was there to
kill us he could have already done so. He shook his head and hopped
down from the window. His feet didn't even make a sound as they
landed on the floor below.

"I just couldn't go another day without
seeing you." His eyes met mine and all those feelings of nightmares
and sadness were wiped away in their own pool of shadows. He
stepped closer, taking my hands into his gloveless ones, letting
the heat from them send an electrical current through my body.

"You know, this is really illegal. We could
get in so much trouble for this." Jen's eyes darted around the room
while she tried to control the pitch of her voice.

"Well ,then we just won't let anyone find
out." Ace grinned and crouched down at my feet.

"Ace, what do you think you're doing?" I
looked down, only to see the top of his spiky black hair as he
wrapped his fingers around my ankle cuff. "That might have some
sort of a sensor."

He let his hands sit on the cuff until I felt
the heat radiating onto my ankle. The cuff opened and fell off me,
like it was nothing more than some plastic toy.

"It does have a sensor." He slowly inched up,
rising to his full height as he held the cuff in front of me. "And
that's why I had to take it off you, so that we could leave."

I didn't ask any questions, just smiled back
at him, and took his hand as he threw the ankle cuff onto my
bed.

"Where are you going? Are you going to come
back?" Jen piped in as Ace led me to the window. He was already
half in, half out when I realized what was going on. We were
actually leaving.

He sighed. "I don't want to, but I'll bring
her back. I promise that she'll be in good hands." He smiled in
Jen's direction and hopped out of the window, standing there with
his elbows resting on the edge and holding out his hands for
me.

"Alex." Jen grabbed my hand. "Just be
careful, okay?"

I offered her a small smile. "I will, Jen, I
promise. I trust him with anything."

Jen wiped her eyes and smiled back. "I know
you do, and so do I. That's the only reason I haven't called
security or set off your ankle cuff. Just promise you'll be back
before breakfast?"

I smiled, looking from Jen and back to Ace,
not taking my eyes off his as I answered Jen, "I promise."

I approached the window, looking past Ace and
hoping that I wasn't going to have to jump all the way down to the
desert floor. But when I looked down I saw what looked like a
floating red Vespa.

"What's that?" I whispered, pointing at the
Vespa as he secured his feet on the bottom.

He smiled and reached to help me out of the
window and onto the vehicle. "It's a hover bike."

“Do they seriously make these?" I looked
below my feet to see nothing but rocky earth. "And more
importantly, if you can't leave Circe, how did you get one?"

Ace ignored my question, smiling as he bent
over the bike, placing his hands on either side of my face,
instantly making my whole body tingle. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” I whispered into his
lips. He leaned in to brush them against mine.

He pulled away, looking into my eyes while
cupping my face in his palm. “Ready to see this place from the
outside?”

I nodded as he turned around, situating
himself in front of me. He placed his hands on the steering levers
of the bike. He turned his head in my direction and glanced over
his shoulder. “Are you holding on?”

I pulled my arms tightly around his waist and
pressed my legs against his. The coldness from his body didn’t
radiate the same shivers from my nightmares, but more of a tranquil
touch, like the feel of the first snowflakes of winter as they fall
to the ground.

“You better hold on tight; it’s going to be a
little bumpy.”

I gripped tighter, leaning my face into his
back and inhaling his wintery scent. I'd missed him so much that
past week. That scent of desert sage lapped onto my cheek as the
warm night air swirled around me. He revved up the bike’s engine
and it came to life.

I looked back as we sailed above the valleys
and made our way from my room. I saw the faintest hint of blond
hair looking out of my bedroom window, but saw it disappear as we
darted behind a mountain. Jen was watching me and probably had her
reasons to be worried. I was out in the open, exposed with my arms
around Ace. But I wasn’t scared or even worried. All I cared about
was that I got to be with him, no matter how brief that moment
was.