Oh God, there he was again! Had he been following her? He lurked half-hidden in the shadows of an alley across the street, but those big orange eyes of his seemed lit up like a car's headlights—and they were clearly glaring at Faye!
Faye looked away and tried to focus on what her friend Claudette was saying. Talking about boys as usual. Patty was immersed in sucking her butterscotch sundae off her plastic spoon, her cheeks rosy with excitement. She would enjoy eating ice cream so much she couldn't hold a conversation at the same time.
The three girls sat in their regular booth by the window in the Dairy Queen, early spring in Odessa, Texas, 1963. The warm sugary air in the place always made Faye feel like she was a little girl again. They weren't little girls anymore, they were now sixteen years old, and grown men would sometimes whistle at them on the street. It was quiet at this time of the day in the Dairy Queen, and the girls didn't want to spend their last few quarters on songs from the jukebox. The ice cream maker hummed in the background.
"Next time he gets fresh with me, I'll tell Spencer about it and he'll be set straight all right..." said Claudette, trailing off at the end as she followed Faye's gaze out the window.
"Holy Mackerel!" she squealed, "What's that fleabag looking at us for?" Even Patty stopped eating for a moment to look at the lemurian skulking on the other side of the street; tilting back her head to peer through the glasses that had slid down her snub nose.
"Aw..." said Patty, who always got sad when she encountered a lemurian.
The lemurian clearly didn't like all this attention and slinked back, disappearing in the dark alley.
Was he gone?
Claudette told the other girls they'd best beware! "These lemurians, don't you know, they seek out virgins to sacrifice to their pagan gods! They can smell it if you're a virgin. Sniff you right out!" she jeered.
Claudette would always find an excuse to remind her friends that she was the only one in class who had put out with a guy. Couldn't get enough of it, she claimed, nor could her beau, the simple-minded Spencer.
Faye peered out the window while Claudette tried scaring the girls some more recounting various tales they had all heard before, in several variations: They eat cats/ dogs/ garbage, they can see in the dark and come into our homes to watch us sleep, they weren't allowed to show their tails because they peed and pooed out of them, etc.
Faye wondered if she was just being silly. Had the lemurian in fact been looking at them, like Claudette had squealed, and not specifically at Faye? Could she even be sure this was the same lemurian as the one that had startled her yesterday? Didn't lemurians all pretty much look the same? Like lemurians?
No, she was definitely certain this was the same one. He looked weirdly different from other lemurians. He was taller than others, but still shorter than most human boys Faye's age. And this lemurian had an actual hairdo, instead of just fur on top of his head like on the rest of his body—he had an impressive ducktail and quiff, like the leather clad greasers that hung around street corners bothering people.
Faye had gotten a good look at this lemurian the day before.
Yesterday she had turned and there he was, right behind her! So close she could smell him! (He hadn't smelled nearly as bad as she had imagined they did, sort of like wet earth, she thought.) He had seemed as startled as she was. Faye was about to scream when he had turned and scampered off.
Faye was sure these lemurians weren't supposed to get that close to people. She was used to seeing them keeping their distance and their eyes mostly to the ground. In fact, she had understood they weren't even allowed into town, unless they had a good reason, such as doing dirty work most people didn't want to do.
When the girls left the Dairy Queen they didn't bother taking a look into the alley. Claudette and Patty seemed to already have forgotten about the lemurian. Faye hadn't. She kept looking over her shoulder, thinking he was still following her.
She walked home as the sun set, after having done her homework at Patty's, and having joined Patty's family for diner. Patty had asked her several times what was the matter, as Faye clearly had had a hard time concentrating on the homework at hand. Nothing, she had said.
Why was she still thinking about the lemurian? She wasn't really that afraid of him, was she? If she would tell someone about it, the police would certainly take care of it. Lemurians weren't supposed to pester teenage girls, that was a fact!
Or was it a matter of vanity? Did she perhaps like the attention? Why, she wondered, would a lemurian, or anyone for that matter, pick her out of all the girls in town? She believed she was pretty plane looking.
As she made it home, the sky was milky white and the twilight had drained the world of its colors. The lemurian stepped from behind a van.
"Hey," he said in a husky voice, those big orange eyes glowing at her. "My name is Johnny."
"Leave me alone, you stinking fleabag!" she yelled in his face and dashed to her front door. She opened it and slammed it shut behind her, hard.
Her father clutched his chest like a comedian, but then saw the alarm on his daughters face.
"Honey? What's the matter?"
