Not Your Ordinary Alien Story

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Franklin walks up to me holding two ice cream cones in his hands.  It's Saturday and I'm taking a break at the Farmers Market. "Chocolate or strawberry?" he asks.  I point to the chocolate. He hands it to me and we walk over to a patch of grass beneath the shade of a maple tree. "Tell me about yourself, Zoe," he says as we sit down.

"I'm an alien from another planet," I tell him.

He throws his head back and laughs then turns his cone sideways and licks the strawberry ice cream. There's a smeared entry stamp from some club on the back of his hand and he's wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a band on it I've never heard of before. "Have you graduated from high school?" he asks.

"Yep, last year."

"I just finished my first year at Southern Oregon U." he tells me.

"I like Ashland."

He nods his head in agreement. "Good vibes."

"I'm going to San Francisco State next year." I almost add maybe but then I stop myself. I wonder what he'd say if I told him I might be on another planet next year. It would probably make him laugh again.

"I love San Francisco," He says.

"Me too."

"So, what do you like to do?"

"I like to hike in the forest," I tell him. "With my boyfriend, Blue," I add pointedly.

"Yeah, yeah, you got a boyfriend. We can still be friends, right?"

I shrug. "Sure." My ice cream's melting. I take a bite off the top. "What do you like to do?" I ask.

"Take road trips."

"Where?"

"I dunno... anywhere, everywhere - Portland, Seattle, places like that. I don't like to plan it too much. I just like to take off at the spur of the moment. You know, born free - live for today."

"And never think about tomorrow?"

He looks up at the sky and squints. "Not if I can help it."

"Do you have a job or anything?"

"Nah," he shakes his head.  "I'm not into working. I tried it once - don't like it." He takes the last bite of his cone.

"Then how can you afford to take all these road trips?"

"My father sends me money every month. It's bribe money. He bribes me to stay away from him." He tosses his dreadlocks back and laughs but it's an isn't-that-messed-up-laugh, not so much a light-hearted laugh. "He pays me not to call or visit him or do anything where we might actually have to talk to each other." He turns to me. "And so, I don't. As long as the checks keep coming."

A mime with white grease paint on his face wearing a black and white horizontally striped shirt walks up in front of us. He pretends like he walked into an invisible wall then the mime falls back, a startled look on his face. A few people gather around us.  The mime walks up to the invisible wall and feels it up and down with the palms of his hands.

I point to him. "Maybe he'll find a door."

"Maybe there is no door." Franklin pulls his knitted cap up from his forehead, his eyes narrowing contemplatively. "Ya know, there's nothing weird about a wall without a door," he says. "But a door without a wall? That's crazy-weird."

I laugh.

The mime is acting as though a rope is dangling before him. He reaches out and pretends to climb it. More people walk up and watch. The mime wipes imaginary sweat from his brow, his face in a grimace as he clambers up the rope then slides back down. He lets go of the imaginary rope then begins to feel the wall again.