Angela's Alien Read online

“It’s Wickham Dam. You know the stories. There’s something about the reservoir that draws things to it. Lately, people have been reporting a lot of sightings.”

  “Sightings?”

  “Well, no one really knows what they are. I think we should go. What do you think?”

  Walter felt the weight of Poco’s gaze fall on him.

  “We could walk through the woods this Friday,” she said, moving closer. “I know the way. My parents take me over sometimes in the summer.”

  Walter began to jump up and down on one foot. This was the kind of behavior that tended to break out when he hung around Poco for too long. As usual, she didn’t notice.

  “We should set up a plan,” she was saying, with studiously bent eyebrows. “I’ll call George and see if she wants to help. It would get her mind off Angela.”

  Walter began to hop on the other foot. “Why does Georgina care so much about Angela?” he asked. He flapped his arms out in a winglike way. It seemed right somehow, and helped him keep his balance.

  “They used to be friends,” Poco replied. “Before we met you. Now Georgina can’t give her up.”

  “It’s sad how people never seem to like each other in equal amounts,” Walter panted. “There always seems to be one person flapping—I mean, trailing along after the other.”

  “That’s true.” Poco looked toward the window.

  “And the other person hardly even knows they’re there. …” Walter watched as she examined the apple tree. “But the person keeps trailing along anyway, hoping maybe something will change.”

  “Yes,” Poco murmured. “Do you think it ever does?”

  “I don’t know!” Walter said. By now, he was breathless. He wished he could stop his ridiculous jumps, but they rose up as uncontrollably as hiccups. Not that it mattered. Poco’s head was turned away. She’d thought the whole time they were talking about her robin.

  chapter seven

  UNTIL SHE MET UP WITH Angela outside the school that first morning, Georgina had considered herself a tall person. “A regular beanpole,” people had always called her, and it was true that her skirts were invariably a little too short. Her wrists hung out the sleeves of her sweaters. She was put in the back row for school photographs, and forced to file on stage first for choral performances. Most of the boys in her classes were shorter. Just last spring she had surpassed petite Mme Mianette, the lower school French teacher.

  “And she wears high heels,” Georgina said with pride.

  Poco, of course, had long ago been left in the dust.

  “What size are your feet?” Georgina had asked her one day, glancing with a superior eye at the two tiny boots standing under the yellow rain slicker hanging in Poco’s locker.

  “Ten,” Poco said.

  “Ten! But they couldn’t be. That’s bigger than mine.” Then Georgina understood. “Oh, you mean baby sizes!”

  “I guess so.” Poco didn’t care about such things.

  Georgina’s feet were six and a half, adult size, and she had considered that quite exceptional. Ahead of the pack is how she thought of her feet, in the lead, like Georgina herself.

  On the way over to Angela’s house, Georgina looked down at her feet and for the first time found them wanting. She couldn’t help wondering how big Angela’s feet were. Size eight? Or maybe even nine. They would need to be that big to go with Angela’s legs, those long, tan, ribbon-thin legs that had stepped so elegantly out of the limousine.

  Georgina was about to stop and give her own legs a new appraisal (she had a feeling they were too thick, especially around the knees) when Angela’s house reared into view. It seemed to have a hundred windows and appeared much larger and fancier than she remembered. The grass was freshly cut along the wide stone walk leading to the front door, and new flower beds had been dug on either side. No plants had been put in yet, but the dirt had a rich, expectant look.

  Georgina rang the big lighted doorbell. There was a long wait. Normally, she would have rung again, and knocked. Georgina didn’t like to stand around. But something this time pinned her hand to her side. Her eyes rose up to the broad, gleaming windows of the second floor, where—what was that? She saw a shade move. But at that very moment, the door opened.

  “Yes?” It was Miss Bone, with her hair tied up in a cloth. She sneezed, then held up a giant feather duster. “Georgina! Good heavens. You’ve caught me amidst a storm. I was just taking a whack at the dining room curtains.” Tendrils of dust drifted off her clothes.

  “Hello, Miss Bone. Is Angela here? I know you said she was busy, but …”

  “I’m so sorry. I believe she’s left.”

  “Could I come in and wait?”

  “She won’t be back until dinner, I’m afraid. She and her mother … but you already know. She does want to see you. Perhaps when her mother’s gone. You girls must get together soon.”

  Georgina heard a light tread on the stairs inside.

  Dislodging more dust, Miss Bone turned to look. “Heavens, my dear! I had no idea you were home.”

  The door was flung wide. Angela loomed in the opening.

  “Hello, Georgina.” It was hardly a welcome.

  “Angela! I’m sorry if this is a bad time, but I just had to see if … if …” Georgina faltered.

  “Please come in.” Angela stepped politely aside.

  Miss Bone smiled. “Well, here you are, then; no sooner said than done. I’ll excuse myself and go back to my curtains. I imagine you two have some catching up to do. If you hear falling bodies, don’t bother yourselves. It will just be me in the throes of suffocation.”

  Georgina laughed as Miss Bone marched off, brandishing the duster like a battle sword.

  Angela did not look amused. “Do you mind if we stay here?” she asked, pointing toward a bench in the big front hall. “The house is being painted. We have workmen everywhere.”

  “What about your mom? Weren’t you going to the city?”

  “She had to leave early, so I couldn’t go.”

  They sat side by side, stiff as logs. Georgina smelled the reek of turpentine and fresh paint. From some distant reach of the house came a murmur of voices and radio music.

  “Is your room being painted?”

  “Papered,” Angela said. She pulled her long hair back with a practiced hand.

  Georgina stared. This new, tall person must be Angela Harrall. And yet even up close, she looked drastically changed. Her face had lengthened and sleeked down around the cheeks. It was so different that Georgina found she no longer knew how to read it. Was this Angela angry? Was she sad?

  “Don’t you like it?” Georgina asked about the wallpaper.

  “Why wouldn’t I like it? I picked it out.”

  “You just don’t seem very excited.”

  “Wallpaper isn’t something you get excited about.”

  “Angela …” Georgina paused. She was about to say that the old Angela always got excited about things like new wallpaper. She wanted to ask Angela what was wrong, why she was acting so strange, why they couldn’t run around her house the way they used to instead of sitting here talking like two wooden puppets.

  Georgina glanced down. The blue shoes Angela had worn to school were gone. In their place was a pair of long-tongued clogs, with a black web of straps that wound up her legs. Georgina had never seen anything like them, and a little wave of fright broke suddenly inside her.

  “Have you heard about the alien sightings at the reservoir?” she asked.

  “No.” Angela stared straight ahead.

  “People say they come at night and hang over the water. Some dogs have disappeared, and a doll flew out the window. Poco and I thought we saw them one time. Alien spaceships, I mean. They looked like marbles.”

  Angela turned. “What did you do?”

  “Well, nothing,” Georgina admitted. “Later, we thought they were probably something else. There’s a group called the Skywatchers that’s been formed to keep watch. They meet at the dam on Friday nights�
��in case the aliens try to come down.”

  Angela gazed at her. She looked tired. The skin around her eyes was puffy and pink. Georgina wondered if she’d been crying. In the background, the painters’ music rose to a wail, placing a new wall of silence between them.

  “How was Mexico?” Georgina finally asked.

  “Okay.”

  “Was it hot?”

  “Yes. You can’t stay in the sun.”

  “Because you get burned?”

  “You can pass out. Once, I couldn’t breathe, and I passed out in our yard. When I came to, I was lying on the ground, staring up at a clothesline full of blowing laundry.”

  “Did you have to go to the hospital?”

  “Oh, no. I didn’t tell. No one was home.” Angela looked away. “It’s just something that happened.”

  “But you learned to speak Spanish.”

  Angela paused. “I could when I wanted.”

  “I bet you felt sort of like an alien yourself.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Angela glared at her.

  “Nothing! I only thought you might have.”

  Angela stood up. “It was so nice of you to come by.”

  “But Angela!” Georgina was now truly alarmed. The voice that had spoken was flat and false. It sounded like a recorded message.

  “And I hope you’ll come again at a better time.”

  “Wait!” Georgina rose, and found herself being ushered toward the door. “Don’t you want to help us investigate? The way we used to, remember, before you left? We made a promise to watch out for invisibles, and things that can’t be explained, like these sightings.”

  “Invisibles?” Angela asked with wary interest. “Is that what you’re doing now?”

  “Yes!” Georgina leaped toward her.

  “I remember. We had a name for ourselves. We were going to be investigators of … of something.” She looked down helplessly from her new height.

  “Of the unknown,” Georgina said.

  “The unknown!” Angela’s hand flew to her mouth. “I wonder,” she added in a lower tone, “if I still have those strange gold dust letters.”

  “Get them out. We should take another look.”

  “You know what? My father still says he never put in the gold dust.”

  “He does? Oh, Angela, now you sound like you again!”

  And for a moment, there did seem to be a glimmer of the old Angela. From somewhere incredibly far off, a spark of her old spirit flew in and hovered just out of reach. Her thin face showed a bit of color and her eyes flashed with excitement and curiosity. But then—zip!—in the next instant, her manner changed back to being cool and distant.

  “The trouble is, there’s so much going on right now, with our moving back here and fixing up the house. I really don’t have time to play.”

  “To play!” Georgina was stung.

  “And Mother is leaving next week for California.”

  “Mother!” Georgina gazed at her aghast. The Angela she knew had never called her mom that. None of them would think of using that word. Mother was the term older people used for the mothers they no longer needed, the mothers that had been outgrown or lived apart in another town. “But isn’t your mom—I mean, your mother … isn’t she ever coming back?”

  “Well of course she’s coming back! She’s only going for a month.”

  “A month! But Angela, that’s terrible!”

  A weary look passed over Angela’s face, as if Georgina were a small, bothersome gnat that had somehow gotten into the house and refused to fly off, even with the door open. And the door was very much open now.

  “Good-bye, Georgina.” Angela posed with her hand on the knob, waiting for Georgina to pass through. She looked lofty and beautiful, exactly like a model.

  “How tall are you now?” Georgina asked.

  “I don’t know,” Angela said. “Does it really matter?”

  She didn’t wait for Georgina to answer. With a whir and a click, the door swung closed. Georgina was left staring at an enormous brass knocker.

  And now a thing happened that was worse by far. For the old Georgina would never have allowed this sort of treatment. She would have reached out and taken hold of the brass knocker and knocked her way back into Angela’s life. She would have shouted at Angela, told her to wake up and to stop using that horrid recorded voice.

  But even before the door closed, a new Georgina was stepping into the old one’s place. Now, without a word of protest, this new Georgina turned and crept away down the stone walk. She slunk off home with a burning face and her dry eyes itching. (What was wrong with them, anyway?) And no worm in the Harralls’ new flower beds could have felt so small and low as she felt walking along, or so weak and discarded, or so helplessly changed by the terrible changes in Angela.

  chapter eight

  “THE THING ABOUT ALIENS IS, they fly in quietly and take people over before they realize what’s happening,” Poco was saying to Walter. “I found a book on them at the library. It says they might even be walking among us. No one can tell for sure.”

  A school week had passed. It was Friday afternoon. They were on the sidewalk, trudging home again. There is nothing like a sidewalk for private conversation. Walter spoke beneath the roar of passing traffic:

  “So you think these marble things have landed?”

  “Probably not. No. Not around here. They couldn’t land here without somebody seeing. Deserts and mountaintops are the usual places.”

  “And reservoirs?” Walter asked, with an uneasy look.

  “Well, not ours,” Poco assured him. “Mrs. Toska’s got it covered.”

  It had become impossible to talk of anything else. All week, they had imagined the transparent spheres. That night, there was a chance they might really see them. They were going to meet the Skywatchers at the Wickham Dam. Mrs. Lambert had been persuaded to let Walter spend the night. He would sleep in the guest room. Georgina would sleep in Poco’s room, as usual—if she came, that is. There was some question.

  “I think these aliens want to land,” Poco went on. “They want to come down and understand our world. That’s why they float up there and watch, to be ready to land if the right time comes.”

  “But they’re nervous,” Walter said. “They don’t want to get caught. What if they came down and then couldn’t get back?” He adjusted the knapsack he was carrying on his shoulders.

  “Well, I guess they’d die, because they couldn’t live here. This place would be much too different. They probably couldn’t eat the food, and they wouldn’t understand half of what was going on. They couldn’t speak the language, either, which means if anyone spoke to them, they’d most likely end up being discovered—even if they had taken over a human body.”

  “That’s true,” Walter said. “Someone would know. I’ve seen it on TV—they never act normal. Their eyes have this way of rolling back in their heads, or they hiss like snakes when they get mad.”

  Poco shivered. “Aliens scare me.”

  Walter shifted his knapsack again. Inside were his toothbrush and pajamas and a change of clothes. The thought of spending an entire night at Poco’s house made him feel a little like an alien himself. Would he have to ask if he wanted to use the bathroom?

  “Is Georgina coming?”

  Poco shrugged. Georgina was not her usual self. She had hardly spoken to Poco all week.

  “She said she might not. She’s been feeling sick.”

  This information made Walter feel both better and worse at the same time—better because Georgina usually upset him, but worse because if she didn’t come, he would be alone with Poco. He felt the twitch of a jump come into one leg.

  But, after all, the afternoon went by smoothly. Poco was building a “birdominium” for her robin. It was her term for a bird condominium. Birds needed larger homes when they spent the winter. The usual birdhouse was a miserable one-room hut built by someone who had never been a bird and had no sense of bird comfort, she ex
plained.

  They rummaged in the garage. There was a hammer and nails, and a stack of ancient twig-colored shingles. Poco set to work on a floor and walls. Walter looked on with a helpful expression.

  “How do you know this robin will be living here at all? Don’t robins always fly south by nature?”

  Poco said, “My bird would never leave without Juliette. They’ve made a pact to be together forever. And now that Juliette is staying with us …”

  She stopped hammering and looked up. “That’s the great thing—did you hear? Juliette isn’t going back to the Harralls’. My mom finally talked to Angela’s mother.”

  “What happened. Didn’t they want her?”

  “Not until later, if Mrs. Harrall moves back. Right now, she’s always coming and going and no one ever knows what her schedule will be. Miss Bone wanted Juliette, but Angela said no. She said an old cat would be too much trouble.”

  “That’s strange. I’d think she would really have missed her.”

  “The other Angela would have, before Mexico. Now she doesn’t have time for pets.”

  “But why? What happened down there?”

  “Angela turned into a selfish person. I heard that nobody liked her at school—which you can see why if she acted like this. And she hated the food and wouldn’t eat, so she kept getting thinner, and then she got sick. By then, she’d been so mean to everyone that no one even cared a bit. But whenever her mother called to ask how she was, Angela would lie and say everything was perfect.”

  “But where was her father? I thought he was there.”

  “He was, but his job is important, you know. He couldn’t be watching her every moment.”

  “Poor Angela. How do you know all this?”

  “Georgina found out. She talks to Miss Bone. And Angela isn’t poor. Her family is rich. Why do you think she rides around in that limo?”

  At this moment, their conversation was interrupted. Poco’s robin flew in with a feathery flap and the subject matter veered toward condo construction.

  “Should we put in a bathroom?” Poco asked the bird. “Or would you rather keep taking your showers outside?”

  In the end, Georgina decided to come. She arrived at the Lamberts’ house with her sleeping bag and a halfhearted look on her face at about 6:00 P.M., just in time for dinner.