Who am I?

August 18, 2154

Dear diary,

All this weekend and all day today, I spent a lot of time thinking about everything that happened yesterday. Honestly, I’m not sure if I believe all of it. It all just seems unreal. How could I, Sophia Smith, be an alien? It doesn’t make sense to the logical part of my brain.

But the other part of my brain – the part that makes up fantasies in my mind, and helps me write stories for English, and believes everything – that part wants to believe the whole story. It tries to persuade me to agree, to go with it, and to ask, What’s wrong? Why shouldn’t you believe it? Just go with Mrs. Meyer and see what happens .It could be true!

The two parts of my brain have been battling all day. I have a splitting headache and I don’t know what to think. I went through all my classes in a daze, and my mind was numb as I shoveled my school lunch into my mouth. It took Henry multiple tries to get my attention.

“Sophia!!”

“What?”

“I’ve been saying your name for two minutes and you’ve just been staring into the distance and ignoring me! What’s wrong?”

 “I… It’s kind of hard to explain, Henry.”

“Give it a go.”

So I told Henry all about my… um… adventures last Friday. At the end of my story, the look on his face was a mixture of everything I’d been feeling in the 18 hours: shock, fascination, fear, and doubt. The doubt was the expression that took over as the next few words came out of his mouth. “Sophia, is this some kind of joke?”

“What?! Henry, do you think I would, or could, make this up?”

There was a pause as he pondered this. Slowly, it dawned on him that I wouldn’t make up something like that story, and that I wouldn’t have the imagination to describe everything in such detail, anyway. As the disbelief disappeared from his face, curiosity took over, and he started to ask me questions.

“How far away is it? How deep underground do they live? How do they reproduce if they only have 45 chromosomes? Do they all have brown shades of skin like we do? Do they speak English, or some other language? Or multiple languages? How advanced is their society? Are there any other cases like yours on earth? Are there a lot of their kind among us? Do they-“

But I cut him off. “Henry, that’s not the point! The point is that I'm one of them and they want to take me to their planet and let me live there!” Henry looked kind of impressed. “I think you should do it! I would I f I were you.” But that’s the exact point. Henry’s family is never home; his parents work day and night to keep money in their pockets and food on the table, and his brother moved out a year ago. If Henry left Earth, he wouldn’t miss anyone (except possibly me). But I have a family and I have ties to this town. I’ve lived here for my entire life and known all the people here just as long. If I left I would miss everything about Earth!

But I didn’t mention that part. I just told Henry that it would be harder for me because of all the ties I feel to Phoenix. He agreed with me, and we kept talking about Anlahay.

He was astonished that an entire planet existed with an entire population of intelligent creatures, and we had never discovered them. To be honest, I find it really amazing, too. I thought our society was advanced.

If I do go, it would be amazing to see everything on their planet; not just the technology, but the natural things too. However, all things science related would remind me of Henry, and that would be really sad.

At the same time, now that I know I'm different, I’ll never feel like I belong on Earth again. And if I don’t go, I will always regret it.

Maybe I’ll do it.

I don’t have a lot of time to decide.

            -Sophia