Becoming Alien Read Online Free PDF Page B

table. He drew the question sign on the United States.
    “He wants to know where the egg is, Warren,” I said softly.
    “I’m gonna burn that damn atlas,” Warren said, putting it by his chair.
    When Warren went to the bathroom, I got the atlas and quickly drew a little black egg on the West Coast, in California.
    Nostril slits twitching, Alpha touched his shoulder and my shoulder, and pointed to the map, circling with his long finger. I touched the map in the Virginia mountains.
    Alph seemed to know the distances involved—he sighed. Like a human sigh, with exasperation in it. I felt awful.
    “Stop, Tom, you can’t help him.”
    Singsonging at Warren, Alpha drew two pictures: one of humans running from an alien like him, the other of humans touching elbows with the alien, side by side. On the first drawing, he drew himself getting shot that night before Halloween. Then, just like a nervous human, he got up and paced.
    Warren raised his arms as if holding a gun and said, “Blam!”
    The alien flinched and cried out.
    Warren grinned. “He knows humans don’t like him from getting bird shot in his legs. We’re the only nice humans there is.” Picking up the drawing of the humans screaming and running from an alien, Warren shook it in Alpha’s face.
    Alpha went rigid and hissed at Warren. When Warren grabbed his elbow, the alien’s head hair rose like a cat’s, and blood veins swelled, then collapsed in the web of the arm Warren held. The alien tried to jerk away, but Warren grabbed a handful of web and twisted.
    Warren shoved Alpha away. The web skin bled red weeping crescents where Warren’s nails had punched through. “Tom, you tell him where the egg was?” The alien stumbled, then ran for his room.
    I tried to explain, softly, “I just indicated California, didn’t…I don’t know the town anyway.”
    “We’re humans, he’s not. Stick with humans. Shit, Tom.”
    He came up to me, took my head in his hands. I was afraid he was going to hit me, but he just held my forehead against his.
    “I need all the help I can get.”
     
    I dropped out of school, and the state abandoned me to Warren. To hell with humans, I thought, the day I realized no school people were ever going to try talking me back.
    The next time Warren was gone, the alien sat me down at the table and drew pictures of us crossing the country, of me among aliens, all of them friendly, hugging me.
    No, I shook my head.
    The alien tried to make me nod yes, holding either side of my jaw. “Yes,” he said. I stiffened and brushed his hands away. He got put the map book, drew a car, and dragged it across the United States map. Then he took my head again and tapped my face with horn-colored nail tips.
    I shook my head again. He stared down at the map. Then he began writing, the script going up and down the paper; first up then down, squiggling pencil lines. Obviously agitated, he singsonged to me.
    “No, baby, we just can’t do it,” I said, but… The hair on my thigh skin stood up. It’d be easy. I could escape this drug mess. Warren’d come home with too much money for quick deposit in his banks, so he’d have lots of cash around until he eased it all into his accounts. But stealing from my own brother?
    The alien flipped to the map of California, stared at it awhile, then tapped Berkeley. He looked across the table, talking to me in his language, low breathy sounds and trills.
    I want to be a star people’s biologist, I thought, but not one that cuts up people. I wanted to be able to talk to Alph, really talk, not just draw pictures and signs. I wanted both of us to be safe.
    After I set the house alarms, we both spent all afternoon wrestling up sheets of roofing tin onto the hen house and nailing down a new roof. By four, we finished the job, both of us sweaty, fingers all tin cut and dust in our hair. Alpha mimed turning on faucets and washing and oo’ed a bit.
    Then after we washed and ate dinner, him drinking down some thawed