My Cousin, the Alien Read Online Free PDF

garden, past the hedges, and to the Japanese garden and its arched bridge. Overhead, a nearly full moon sailed behind shredded clouds, and trees stood like dark cutouts against the sky. Shifting through the branches, silver light glinted on the coins scattered below us. Taking off our shoes, we stepped into the water.
    It wasn’t very cold, but the bottom of the pool was slimy. Hoping there wasn’t anything too yucky down there, I began picking up coins, slipping them into a pocket. Soon my jeans were soggy but nicely heavy and jingly.
    I almost yelled when something brushed past my feet—a huge, ghostly pale goldfish. Moments later, Ethan thrashed a foot and squealed, “Something tried to eat my feet!”
    “Relax,” I said smugly. “It’s just goldfish.”
    Finally, instead of the excitement of the hunt, I began noticing how heavy and cold my legs felt and how my eyes ached from staring through the moonlight.
    “I think that’s enough,” I said.
    “Almost. Looks like a quarter over here.”
    Climbing out, I sat heavily on a mossy bank. When Ethan joined me, he said, “Should we count our take now?”
    “No. A gardener might come by.”
    “A gardener? At night?”
    “Well, maybe a security guard,” I answered. “Anyway, if someone catches us, they’d probably tell our parents.”

    “Right. We’ll count later.”
    We’d just pulled our socks and shoes onto our wet feet when we heard footsteps on the gravel path. My heart jumped, and I rolled under a sticker bush. Ethan disappeared under a bush beside mine.
    The footsteps stopped not far away. I wanted to close my eyes and pretend I wasn’t there. Not useful. Instead, I peered between leaves to see if we had any chance of running.
    Two dark, portly figures stood on the other side of a low hedge. Moonlight glinted off their bald heads. They weren’t looking our way, instead pointing to something high up on the hotel building. I caught a few stray words in their whispered talk: “At the end” and “eliminate” were among them. So were “won’t be traced.” I thought I heard something about “baiting a trap,” but I wasn’t sure.
    With more gravel crunching, they moved farther along the path and out of sight.
    When we finally crawled from our hiding places, Ethan looked pale, even for him. “They were bald—fat and bald,” he whispered.
    “So are lots of people,” I said, wanting desperately to stay with the pirate-treasure game instead of the alien game. But everything seemed a little less gamelike now.
    We stood up and, like deer and things on nature programs, peered around to see if danger had passed. I looked up at the building to see where the men had been pointing. I stifled my gasp, but Ethan had seen it too.
    That’s where our rooms were. On the top floor at the end.
    We didn’t speak until we were back in the stairwell, climbing to our floor. “They’ve found me,” Ethan said bleakly.
    “They’re probably just guys working on fixing up the building,” I said firmly.
    “At this time of night?”
    “So maybe one of them got an idea about something and wanted to show the other? Who knows? Just forget them.”
    Once back in my room with wet jeans peeled off and hidden, I couldn’t take my own advice. Those fat, bald guys
were
starting to seem sinister. This was stupid—I was letting Ethan’s games get to me again.
    If they were games.
    No! Of course they were! It wasn’t aliens he needed protection from. Somehow I had to protect Ethan from his own imagination, just like I’d tried to protect him from bullies.
    I groaned and rolled over. There I was again, trying to protect things! Stray cats, lost baby birds—I’d even spent hours picking worms off rain-washed sidewalks and putting them back in the grass. Adults thought that made me a “good citizen.” I thought it made me a chump. But I did it anyway; I couldn’t help it.
    Somewhere in all this thinking, I fell asleep. By morning, everything, even weird guys in dark