Danny Flash and the Alien Crash

CHAPTER TEN:

Andrew was right. No one was in the music room. We made our way inside and stood amongst the unattended instruments. We spoke in low, hushed tones, though the room echoed enough that even a whisper reverberated like the thin echo of a symbol crash.

"Okay, walk me through this whole thing," said Andrew. "How did you end up with an alien?"

I told Andrew about the bright lights, my trip out into the woods, the pajamas, bringing my little alien in my backpack, losing it, finding it again, giving him food, bringing it into the bathroom to try to see what was wrong, and then realizing it was just that it was thirsty. When I got through with everything, Andrew paused for a long moment. He looked down at the floor. He looked around at all the instruments almost as if he was counting them. His pause was just long enough that I started to wonder if what I said even registered. Had he completely checked out?

"I feel a little better now." Andrew said. "Since you only had him one day."

"Yeah?" I asked. "How's that?"

"Well," Andrew said, "I thought you've been hiding him from me for a long time."

"Clearly, I don't know how to hide an alien." I said. "Although, I'm trying."

"All right," Andrew said. "So, you say he can speak?"

"Well not so much speak," I said, "but understand. So far, he's just kind of repeated things that I've said." I pulled my little alien friend back out from my pocket and placed him on top of a drumhead.

He fell down on his bottom with a little plop.

"Shhh..." Andrew said.

"Shhh..." my little alien friend said back. We both smiled.

"You see what I mean?" I asked.

"Okay," said Andrew. "Let's give this a shot."

Andrew leaned in close to the alien and tapped his chest. "I'm Andrew."

The alien tapped his own chest.

"I'm Andrew."

Andrew snorted, trying to contain a laugh. "Okay," said Andrew. "You can be Andrew, Jr."

"That's not fair!" I said. "He's my alien, and I found him, and his name's not Andrew Jr. It's Flash."

"Oh, yeah. That's fair," Andrew snorted.

"Flash," my little alien friend repeated. Andrew caved.

" Well then, nice to meet you." And then as an after thought. "You have a middle name? Because if not, it could be Andrew Jr."

"Drop it," I said.

"Why did you come here?" Andrew asked. My little alien blinked, staring at him blankly.

"I've tried all of this," I said.

"Okay," Andrew said, looking around the room as he spoke. He ran over to the teacher station and grabbed a pen and a piece of blank paper. He placed both items in front of the alien, picked up the pen and scribbled a little bit on the paper.

"You see?" Andrew said. "You can draw, or write." Andrew scribbled a little bit more and then handed the pen to the alien. The alien stood with the pen, which was just a little bit taller than it was, and stared at the blank page. He looked up at us and blinked slowly.

"Nice try." I said. But just as soon as I spoke, the alien started to draw with a fury. It drew quickly, grasping the pen with both hands like it was a pogo stick, and running around the page. It scribbled this way, and that, up and down, left and right, and quickly an image started to become apparent through all the scribbling and drawing and bouncing and pushing and pulling of the pen. It was a solar system. And in it, the planet with rings that went up and down, instead of left to right.

The alien stopped drawing and held the paper up for us to see.

"This is where you came from?" Andrew asked. The alien lowered the paper, looking up at Andrew. He blinked his eyes.

"What do you need?" Andrew asked, his eyes staring straight at the alien.

"What makes you think it needs something?" I asked, a little annoyed that Andrew was finding it easier to communicate with my little alien than I had.

"You think he's here on vacation?" Andrew asked, as if my question was below him.

Somehow the alien seemed to grasp Andrew's question. Maybe, perhaps, because of the order in which it fell in the conversation. Naturally if someone told you they'd come here from a faraway planet, you might ask why, and the alien seemed to understand the sequence of questions this time.

It pointed at its mouth, and made a little groaning noise.

Andrew pointed at his own mouth, and made the same noise, but raising the end up, like a question.

The alien repeated the noise back again, his little tiny mouth, with its little tiny teeth, moving up and down, but this time ending it with a little "Um, Um," thrown in at the end.

"Um, um?" Andrew repeated. "I think he means food!" Andrew's finger shot up, like he had just made a great scientific discovery. Perhaps he had. Had this little alien come all the way from its planet in search of food? Was it that hungry? And all I gave it was some lousy potato chips!

Andrew reached into his backpack, and pulled out an apple.

"Food?" Andrew asked.

Suddenly my little alien friend leapt into the air, excitement not just on its face, but radiating through its whole body. Its fists clenched, and untightened, clenched and untightened repeatedly. Its knees looked wobbly, while its legs stood unnaturally firm. It stood looking at the Apple.

"Zap-Zapple!" the little alien said.

"Apple," Andrew said.

"Zap-zapple," the alien repeated, now jumping up and down.

"Zap-zapple is your word for apple?" Andrew asked. He looked at me. "That's pretty funny. It's so close to—"

The alien jumped up and latched itself onto the apple, holding it with both of its hands and both of its legs. It held onto the apple as it swung back and forth on the stem, which Andrew was now holding between his fingers.

"Hey," Andrew said. "That's my lunch." The alien took a bite and quickly devoured a portion of the apple. It stuck its hand in the apple, deep inside the core, and pulled out a seed.

"Zap-zapple," it said, holding the seed up as high as it could. It then carefully lowered the seed, and hugged it close to its chest.

"You want the seeds?" I asked. Suddenly, it all made sense. It didn't come here just because it was hungry. It came here because its whole planet was hungry, and it wanted to bring seeds back to feed its people.

My little alien picked back up the pen, and now on the back of the paper, drew a seed. It then showed it growing into the ground, then sprouting a tree, which then grew more apples, which then made more seeds.

I dug my finger into the apple and ripped out a chunk, pulled another seed out, and handed it to my little alien.

"We can help you get some Zap Zapple seeds, but you've got to stay hidden."

The alien blinked back at me. I took this as at least a thirty-percent chance it understood what I was saying.

"Good," I said. "Andrew, you want to help us find some zap-zapples?"

Andrew answered with a happy chuckle. I looked over at him, as if to say, "use words" – or "be cool."

"Sure," Andrew managed to get out. "Let's do this."