My Cousin, the Alien (3 page)

“Well, if you give it a try, they’ll probably stop bugging you about schoolwork,” I said, adding a handful of withered weeds to my little stack.

Ethan snorted. “My species is good at some subjects and not others. Why fight it?” he said with a shrug. Ethan had squatted down and was pretending to study the little seed packet propped on a stick at the end of the garden row. But I could tell the subject of tutors wasn’t being shrugged off.

“But maybe if you tried . . . ”

“Why? Dogs are good at barking but can’t fly no matter how hard they try. I’m good at math and science, but social studies and spelling just don’t work for me. Different species do different things. It’s inherent. Let’s go to the mall.”

Subject closed. This pretending he was an alien might be maddening for everybody else, but it sure was handy for him. Don’t like a subject in school? Your species doesn’t do it. Period.

Anyway, I wasn’t grumbling as we headed to the mall. Ethan always had plenty of money, and I never did. His parents might not spend a lot of time with him, but they didn’t neglect his finances.

We headed straight for the pizza place. Guzzling down extra-cheese pizza and sodas, we watched puppies climbing over each other in the pet store window. Then we went to the bookstore. Ethan got himself a couple of game books and bought me the latest in the
Spacerats
series.

Next came a computer store. “I’m looking for a new screen saver,” he explained. “Dad got me the stupid fish, but I’d like the one where you’re flying through space at warp speed. It’d make me feel at home.” He stopped to examine a display.

“You’re on the Internet, I guess?” I asked with a pang of jealousy.

“Of course. Aren’t you?” He looked at me like I was the alien.

“Not yet. Not at home, anyway. My dad says you can waste a whole life that way.”

He snorted. “Or you can
get
a whole life. It’s great what you can learn on it.”

“Ever look up websites about UFOs?” Maybe that’s where he got his ideas.

Ethan grunted. “I wouldn’t log onto anything like that.”

“Why not?”

Again, I got that how-dumb-can-you-be look. “Because aliens would have ways to trace what people log onto. I’m in hiding, remember? If the bad aliens are looking for me on Earth, they’ll check which people are interested in aliens and UFOs. I can’t risk it.”

I laughed. “Wouldn’t they have better things to do?”

He looked around, checking to make sure nobody could overhear. “We don’t know what information they already have. Suppose they know the Imperial Prince is hidden in this country, or even this town? I’ve got to be careful.”

I felt myself slipping into his game again. “Careful of what?”

“Of attracting too much attention—particularly from strangers. Like those two guys over there. No, don’t turn around! I noticed them outside the pet store, and now they’re outside this place. Forget the screen saver—that’d be a dead giveaway anyhow. Let’s go.”

Abruptly he left the store and began striding down the mall. I followed, wanting to look behind, but I didn’t. I remembered the time years ago when Ken and I played we were secret agents and followed people around the mall, pretending they were foreign spies. We thought we were pretty secretive until a couple of jerks threatened to call mall security on us.

Ethan was good at this. He weaved through the crowd then dodged into a department store. Turning right at the perfume department, he pushed through racks of flowery blouses as if they were jungle plants and we were being chased by raptors.

Then we broke into a clearing. Housewares.

“Too exposed here,” Ethan whispered. He ducked into the towel section, keeping to the valleys between shelves until we reached lingerie, and bolted for the store’s other doorway. A couple of ladies pursed their lips as we rushed by, but nobody called security.

“Did we ditch them?” I asked as we moved back into the flow of people. I’d totally surrendered to the game.

“For the moment,” Ethan whispered. “But let’s hide in here for a while.”

A toy store. Good plan. At the action figures, Ethan concentrated on superheroes, avoiding aliens and spacemen. He sure took this thing to extremes.

After moving to computer games and checking those out, Ethan said, “Come on, we’d better keep moving.”

Out among the river of shoppers again, I was about to suggest we could keep moving just as easily with ice cream cones in our hands when Ethan whispered, “There they are again, on that bench. Act casual.”

As we walked by, I casually glanced at the benches. On one, a mother was changing a baby’s diaper. On the other, a couple of guys were sitting, both bald and bulbously fat. They looked like better candidates for foreign spies than aliens, but this was Ethan’s game.

We strolled to the food court, ideal for losing ourselves in the crowd. Also ideal for ice cream. Armed at last with cones, we found a bench concealed by a drooping potted tree and concentrated on our chocolate swirl and blueberry crunch. We’d slurped down to cone level when Ethan whispered, “There they are again. They’re persistent.”

I looked where he gestured with his dripping cone. A couple of fat, bald guys were buying egg rolls. They looked a lot like each other, but I wasn’t sure if they were the same ones we’d seen before. That made them a good choice for the game, I guess. The world is full of fat, bald guys.

Ethan stuffed the last of his cone into his mouth and headed down another branch of the mall. As I caught up, he said thickly, “This calls for evasive maneuvers.”

Darting sideways, he pushed through a doorway marked “Employees Only.”

I nearly panicked as the door shut behind him. He’d be caught. Someone would call security for sure. Still, he was my younger cousin, crazy or not, and if anyone ever needed protecting, even from himself, it was Ethan. Glancing around, I slipped through the door too.

It was a narrow hallway, drab and dim compared to the bright bustling mall outside. No smell of nachos and scented candles in here— just damp cardboard and cleaning fluids. On my left was a small closet with sink, buckets, and mops. “Ethan,” I whispered urgently as I walked on. No answer.

The hallway turned a corner. A single ceiling bulb lit the empty stretch in front of me. “Ethan?” A faint noise came from somewhere ahead.

Scarcely daring to breath, I tiptoed on. A door on my right was partially open. Pushing it, I saw a forest of bristly Christmas trees. Nestled among them was Santa’s gold throne with cousin Ethan perched upon it.

“Cool hideout, huh?” he said cheerily. “We could stay here until the aliens stop looking for me. Or better yet, we could stay until the mall closes and then walk around it at night.”

“That’s a bad idea, Ethan,” I said stamping out a sudden spark of temptation.

“Sure is,” said a gruff man’s voice. “A really bad idea.”

I spun around and stared. A fat, bald guy stood in the doorway.

Agent Sorn looked at herself critically in the dressing room mirror. Her lovely purple skin was now boring native beige, but at least it wouldn’t clash with the hideous clothes she’d picked up as an excuse to use the store’s dressing room. Not that she planned to try them on. She just needed someplace private to transmit her report.

After disabling the security camera, she brought out her sender and began.

“I’ve located our Agent. He and another youngster, a relative, spent part of the day in a large commercial complex. I also believe I have identified two Gnairt agents. They seem to have a device by which they can home in on our Agent, but apparently it is not precise. It led them only to his general vicinity. I don’t believe they have identified him yet. I will attempt to misdirect them with a diffuser.”

Sorn examined several other devices in her satchel, lingering briefly on a trim silvery laser gun.

She continued. “Hopefully violence can be averted. Oddly, our Agent may have some sense of danger. He and his relative carried out impressive evasive maneuvers when near the Gnairt. Possibly, the earlier encounter you reported with our feline agent had some lingering effect. I will attempt to manipulate situations to move our Agent beyond the Gnairt’s detection range in hopes that they will abandon their pursuit. Agent Sorn out.”

Slipping the sender into her satchel, Sorn again examined one boldly-patterned garment then fought down a laugh as she imagined Chief Agent Zythis wearing the thing. It would need a lot more arm holes.

She held the native garment up to herself, studying the mirror. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to try it on. Might even help with her disguise. Gnairt were a tricky enemy and always suspicious. She had to be careful not to tip them off. This assignment could be more dangerous than she’d first thought.

Minutes later, looking at herself in the human dress, she shrugged. Not bad really. This assignment could also have its compensations— if she didn’t get herself or her charge killed.

Ethan leaped from the throne and looked around like a trapped animal.

The fat, bald man leaned his broom against a wall and said, “What are you kids doing in here anyway? Didn’t you read the ‘Employees Only’ sign?”

He was looking at me like I was the responsible adult. “Er, yes . . . sort of. But we were . . . looking for restrooms and figured there’d be some in here.”

“Sure there are, but they’re for ‘Employees Only. ’ Get it? Come on, I’ll point you to the public ones.”

He stood aside so we could squeeze out past his belly. Then he herded us down a different hallway to a closed door. The fat, bald, and probably very human guy in the janitor’s uniform opened the door to the bright, bustling mall.

“Public restrooms by the exit. And kids, don’t try staying here overnight. We’ve got security men patrolling the place. You’d get in big trouble.”

“Don’t worry, we won’t,” I said. “It was just a game, anyway.”

And it had been a fun game, I admitted to myself as we headed home. The one thing that kept nagging me was that I wasn’t sure my crazy cousin thought it was a game.

Weeks went by, and I was definitely not upset that I didn’t see much of Ethan now that he was being tutored after school. You can only take so much of crazy people, family or not. Then came the invitation to “the Big Show-Off Party.” My dad called it that, ranting that it was just Uncle Paul’s “showing off his posh new house to all the other snobs in town— and showing how much better he’s done in life than his brother.”