The True Meaning of Smekday (15 page)

“Well, that’s one thing we humans do better than you Boov,” I said. “Families are better.”

J.Lo shook his head as much as an alien with no neck can do that.

“Families are meaning you have to care about some peoples more than others,” he said. “But all peoples are just as good. Alls have a job to do.”

I didn’t know how to argue with that.

“I haveto seen the human families,” he added. “Some of them, the peoples, they stay in a family they do not like.”

“Yeah? What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

J.Lo flinched. “Did I say wrong? I meanted only that some humans do not have an easy living with their family-mates. The brothers and sisterns, especiably.”

“Oh. Yeah. Some families…don’t always get along like they should,” I agreed. “Some people even hate their family sometimes. But they love them, too. They still love them. You Boov…do you…”

“Do the Boov what?”

I didn’t know how to ask what I was asking. So I just asked it.

“Do you have love?”

“Maaa-aa-aa-aa-aa!” J.Lo laughed. “Of course the Boov love. The Boov love
everything
!”

I didn’t feel up to arguing about it, but I was pretty sure if you loved everything you didn’t
really
love anything.

I changed the subject and asked more about Boov stuff. Eventually J.Lo explained that all Boov could breathe just a little bit underwater—enough to last for a half hour or more. He was shocked to learn that most humans could only last for about thirty seconds.

I complained that he should have told me about this before, and that he’d as good as tricked me into hugging him, but then I forgave him. He was enthusiastically grateful.

I could try to tell you all that he told me, but I doubt I’d remember everything. And I might as well let him tell some of it himself.

J.Lo made this after we left Florida. He was sure his people would have to leave Earth now that the Gorg had arrived, and he wanted us humans to understand who the Boov were. He couldn’t write, of course, but he could draw okay. Apparently comic books were, like, a serious art form on Boovworld, not just stories of badly dressed men hitting each other.

By the end of the second night, we were trying to learn each other’s language. J.Lo already spoke mine pretty good, of course, but he wanted to read and write as well. He even said something along the lines of how he was going to
have
to learn to read and write humanspeak now. I wondered what he meant. It sounded like he was fixing to stay on Earth even after the Boov left. I knew he was afraid to face his people, but I still expected he’d suck it up and go back to them at some point.

As for me, there was no way I could learn to speak Boov. According to J.Lo, I didn’t have the anatomy. I said we just needed a sheep and some bubble wrap, but J.Lo had no idea what I was talking about.

He thought I might be able to
understand
Boovish one day, though, and I could probably learn to read and write. I was especially into trying that bubble writing in the air. It was pretty, once you got used to it.

“Okay…” I said, steadying the little turkey baster thing, “so…if I add a smaller bubble here—”

“No. No,” J.Lo said, and I could see he was trying to hide a smile behind his hand. Which must have been a human habit he’d picked up, because Boov smiles are about three feet wide and Boov hands are the size of wontons.

“This bubble must to be lapping over.”

“Overlapping.”

“Yes. Over-lapping,” he said. “The small bubble must be over the lap of the big bubble.”

I tried again, but I squeezed too hard.

“Too big! Too big,” J.Lo said, and now his wonton hand was forcing back a laugh, which honked out around the edges like he had an invisible trumpet.

“C’mon,” I said, “it can’t be
that
funny. I’m really trying, here.”

“Yes…snnrx…yesss. I am sorry,” he said, hopping up and down. “It is only that you have not written ‘Gratuity’ now, but instead a rude word for ‘elbow.’”

“The Boov have a rude word for ‘elbow’?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a very advanced race.”

“You see? I am saying.”

“Anyway.” I sighed and put the baster down. “YOU have no room to laugh, that’s all. I’m not doing any worse with Boovish than you did with English.”

“Get off of the car,” J.Lo huffed. “I am an English superstar.”

“Uh-uh. There’s no comparison. ‘Gratuity’ in written Boovish has seventeen different bubbles that all have to be the right size and in the right place. ‘J.Lo’ in written English only has three letters, and you
still
spelled it ‘M—smiley face—pound sign.’”

Thunder cracked again. It was kind of all bark and no bite now. It was drizzling so lightly that we were actually sitting on top of the car. I slid off the roof and looked over the edge of the building to the falling floodwaters below. It made me think of someone else who’d found himself on a high place after the rain stopped.

“I
told
you,” said J.Lo as he joined me. “Was
not
a ‘smiley face.’ Was a ‘five.’”

“You know,” I said, “we have a story in the Bible about a flood. God tells this guy named Noah to build a boat big enough for his family and two of every animal on Earth. Then it rains for forty days and nights.”

“Huhn. This is very interesting,” said J.Lo. “The Boov have a religion story about a girl who keeps all the animals into a big jar of water for when there is a year of
no
rain.”

“Do they make it through the year okay?”

“No. She forgets to punch the airholes and they die of asphyxiation.”

“Ah.”

Soon it would be dry enough to leave. The water had dropped, leaving a dark bathtub ring on every building in the city. The clouds were even breaking up, and needles of sunlight poked through. It was also perfectly possible to see the Gorg’s big purple ship again.

And I wondered what it was like for Noah, thinking the rain had stopped and the worst was over, but no—he still had a family and about a million animals to lead down a mountain. And he had to find a place to live, and build shelter, and start the whole world over again.

“When I was a little girl,” I said, sitting down, “the wallpaper in my room had pictures of the Noah story.”

“Pictures of forty nights of raining?”

“Well, no,” I said. Now that I thought about it, that wallpaper didn’t show any rain at all. Wasn’t rain the whole point? “No, it had cute pictures of Noah’s ark. His boat. Adorable little zebras and elephants and things. It’s a popular story for little kids, I guess because of the animals.”

“Little people like the animals,” said J.Lo, nodding and folding his hands. “Is true with the Boov as well.”

“You know what’s weird, though? It’s weird that the ark would be such a kids’ story, you know? I mean, it’s…really a story about death. Every person who isn’t in Noah’s family? They die. Every animal, apart from the two of each on the boat? They die. They all die in the flood. Billions of creatures. It’s the worst tragedy ever,” I finished, my voice tied off by a knot in my chest. I’d been speaking too fast without breathing, and I sucked down air before speaking again.

“What the
hell
,” I said, “pardon my language, was that doing on my wallpaper?”

J.Lo understood me well enough by now not to answer. So I looked off to the west in silence, and saw a thousand miles of hopeless wasteland before we reached Arizona, with only a terrible new purple god to watch over it

J.Lo’s hand was on my shoulder suddenly, and he said, “Rainbow.”

I looked up. First at him and then at the sky where he was pointing.

“A doubled rainbow,” he said. “These are lucky. I have been missing rainbows. On Boovworld we had them alls the time.”

It was a perfect, bright, unbroken rainbow stretching over the western horizon like a door. It was so beautiful it looked fake. Above it was another, fainter one in reverse, and I exhaled and thought, Of course. Of
course
there’s a rainbow. ’Bout time. We sat and looked at it for ten minutes. I stared until I couldn’t stand sitting still any longer.

I hopped up. “We should go. Don’t you think? Don’t you think it’s safe to go now?”

J.Lo looked at me funny. He probably wondered why I was smiling.

“Yes. I am thinking it is. Safe. Safe for going.”

“We have a lot of ground to cover, after all,” I said, bounding back to the car. “It’ll be at least a few days before we get to Arizona. And once we’re there, we have to help everyone get rid of the Gorg. Or the Takers. Whatever you want to call them.”