SORRY, HUMANS (ESPECIALLY GREG)

CHAPTER 1

Sorry, humans.

Well, firstly, thank you.

You shared your world with us, and we are more grateful than you know. We have seen enough of the universe to realize how rare your generosity is. It is why we came to you in the first place (well, eleventh place). Earth is truly a beautiful planet: so colorful, so varied, its people so warm and passionate. So, thank you very much.

And secondly: again, we are very, very sorry. We lied. A lot. Oh, and also, sorry for exploding your planet. It was not at all intentional, not a reflection of how we feel about your lovely world. We liked it very much, and we feel so sad. ☹

We are sorry, though the destruction was not entirely our fault. Some of the blame should lie with all those rules and stipulations you put into the Occupational Accord nine years ago. You remember, those 94,537 regulations that your UN presented to us on Arrival,¹ mainly repetitions about keeping ourselves separate from the “general public ignorant to our presence.”² We thought you simply liked trivial rules and high numbers, so we did not take them as seriously as we should have at first.³ Which was maybe why you kept us locked deep underground in a special Compound guarded by bazooka-wielding peacekeepers—so we did not even have the choice to break the rules.

I still managed to break one or two anyway.

I should be clear. Most of the blame does lie with us, not you. Thus: this very long apology. But more specifically, the blame lies with me. I should not include all of my people in the blame, as most of them had nothing to do with it.

And also, at least 22 to 24 percent of the fault lies with Greg.

I know you are probably thinking:⁴ What is a Greg? Greg who? Or maybe: What does my brother-in-law/uncle/neighbor/uncle’s neighbor have to do with this anyway? Depending on your origins, I understand Gregs can be common.

Well, this Greg is different.

Ah. Sweet, sweet Greg.

Anyway, I am not making excuses, but I would like to explain myself. I cannot return your planet unscathed to you, but I do think you deserve to know the whole story. Let me start at the beginning. No, not that far—let me start a year ago, before any of this happened, when the Earth was still whole and shiny.

I was attending a political gala in Washington DC in October. Once a year on the anniversary of the Arrival, a friend and I would sneak out of the Compound and attend an event, one event of our choosing, incognito. We had an annual “females’ night out” as I think you call it.

We went in disguise as humans, and never told anyone we were aliens. I would not call this a lie. I simply do not think I need to share everything about myself with strangers. By the way, do you know how often you humans introduce yourselves by saying, “Hello, I am Barbara and I am a human”? Never. Even the ones named Barbara.

But more to the point, since it is literally rule number one in the Accord that said we were not allowed to reveal ourselves to the “ignorant general public” (which constituted 99.999999 percent of the total population), I tended to be silent on the subject. Should not my keeping this rule count for something?

True, rule number one also prohibits leaving the Compound, which rule we did not keep and which carried with it the consequence of possible planetary expulsion by catapult. You made this sound very scary. We did not want this consequence to be enacted much, so, we tried to be careful and discreet. But also, since our excursions were so rare, we tried to make them count.

Once, my friend and I went to a street soccer event in Africa, and once a high school swim meet in Chile. Two years in a row, we attended the swing dance night at the Springdale Community Center in South Carolina. That excursion was my favorite. With each outing, we spent an hour or two learning about you (with no ulterior or nefarious motives), collected needed supplies, and then we went back to the Compound in Alaska, back to our people, and none of you humans even noticed our presence—or, at least, not until a year ago when we attended the gala.

This particular gala was shaping up to be a boring disappointment, and I was ready to leave early.

I wore a jaw-dropping, eye-popping dress with a low back, red silk contrasting my dark human skin, my silver tentacles safely disguised as silver hair. Looking human, and amazing. It did not help.

Being on a giant, fancy yacht, the Lady Blue, should have been interesting, but that did not help either. And there was music, but the exact wrong tempo for dancing.

It was my friend’s fault we were there in the first place. Political events, even human ones, are not my idea of fun. My friend kept trying to convince me that observing these boring United States representatives and senators while they did not dance was better than attending a commencement at the charter high school down the street (my first choice for the evening). I told her that this gala was a waste of an excursion. She won the argument by using her signature move—a particularly stern look—and I had just stormed away, when I saw him.

Greg.

Not your brother-in-law/uncle/neighbor. The other one. That one.

Midtwenties,⁵ tall, light skin, blondish-brown hair—he wore a tux, but I could not tell by the outfit if he was government or staff. He had confidence, but it was not the I am the smartest and most important person in the room kind of confidence most government humans there had; it was more like he was comfortable with himself. His nose was a bit big for a human, and his eyes a bit small, with a few too many laugh lines to be taken seriously. His suit was a bit loose, though only barely long enough at the wrists and ankles for his tall frame.

And he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Booger.⁶

He locked eyes with me, smiled, and then approached without hesitation or embarrassment. He introduced himself, but all I heard was romantic music wafting through my brain like red snorsgrass ink through white clothes in the wash.

“Booger,” I said aloud, tipping my head to the side and shaking it to get the music out and the feeling back into my brain. “I mean, very nice to meet you and what do you want?”

“What was that?” he asked, his mouth quirked in an annoyingly adorable half smile.

“I am sorry, what I meant was, I did not catch that, who are you and who do you represent?”⁷

He grinned. “I’m Greg, who I work for is top secret, so if I told you I’d have to kill you, and uh . . . who are you?”

Booger. It was exactly the sort of inane thing any average human would say. He was perfect.

“Booger,” I said aloud again.

“That’s not your name, is it?” Greg chuckled, a low rumbling I felt in my toes.

Stupid Greg.

For those Human Survivors reading this, I am not sure what your clearance level is. Perhaps you are one of the two or three dozen humans who were read in on the Arrival from the start, but more likely you were part of the general public ignorant to the reality of aliens, on your planet or otherwise. Either way, I should probably explain: among the many stipulations in the Accord,⁸ it was specified that there was to be no “fraternization”⁹ with humans, aware or ignorant of our presence (Accord 499a). Well, so far, this was a rule we had made no attempt to subvert in the slightest. Considering that we rarely saw humans at all, it was barely worth mentioning anyway. Also, the rule seemed to be mainly about sanitation, and we believe in good hygiene.

Greg was clearly human, one of the general public “ignorant to our presence” like the rest of the 99.999999 percent of the planet, and therefore had no right to be so exquisitely dreamy.

I looked over at my friend Penny. She stood to one side next to a long table with drinks and empty glasses on top. She frowned at me, which was normal for her, to be honest. Her bluish-black, shoulder-length human hair framed her face like curtains around a stage, and I could tell looking at her stage-face that there was going to be trouble. I looked back at Greg again even though looking at him brought me physical pain.

“You’re not going to tell me your name?” he was asking, since I’d only continued to stare and swear at him.

“Did I not?”

He smiled. “Will I have to guess?”

I let out a breath of relief. “Oh, would you? That would help me quite a lot.”

Greg chuckled again. Then Penny was there, stepping in front of me.

“Goodbye,”¹⁰ she said in her heavily accented English. She pushed me away toward a refreshment table draped in
dark blue.

Greg could not be so easily dissuaded. “Is this your friend?” he asked as he caught up to walk beside me.

I nodded. “This is Penny,” were the words that popped out.

“Nice to meet you. Where are you from, Penny?”

She gave him a fiery glare which he countered with open friendliness. She may have been a head shorter than his two-meter height, but with her small black eyes, she had a stare that could frighten mother grogoolas, and I had not seen many people from any planet stand up to it. Greg simply smiled.

“We are from Booshlaboo,” I found myself answering as we approached an overflowing food table.

Penny looked at me like I had lost my faculties, her severe eyes bulging.

“Is that in Europe?” asked Greg.

I closed my mouth.

Apparently taking this as confirmation, he continued. “You both are? You too?”

I nodded and shook my head at the same time.

“Wow, your English is unbelievable. You don’t even have an accent,” he said to me.

“Yes. Or thank you. It comes with the job.”

“What do you do?” he continued, grabbing a tiny clear-glass plate from a pile on the table.

I picked up a plate too. “I am the seventh daughter of Morr, Keeper of the Sacred Sponge, heir to the Fallen Branches of Bough . . .”

What was wrong with me? I truly was not trying to spill all of my very important and classified alien secrets, but spill I did. If you knew Greg, you would understand.

He grinned. “What was that?”

“Keeper of the Sacred Sponge—” I started again, seemingly incapable of holding my tongue.

“Like . . . you wash dishes?” He was piling tiny food onto his tiny plate now.

“. . . Uh, yes. Well . . . I mean, those titles are sort of honorary,” I lied, piling food onto my plate too.

He smiled but only with half his mouth. “So you’re an honorary dishwasher?”

I puffed my cheeks up and nodded again. Penny’s head was on the verge of splitting open.¹¹

“Wow. I have no response to that. So you can tell me your job, but not your name?”

I opened my mouth, my eyes bouncing over to Penny’s scorching glare. I tried to close my mouth, but instead my name flew out.

“Aria.”¹²

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Aria, beautiful honorary dishwasher and arranger of fallen branches. You are not at all what I expected when I saw you across the room.”

“You were looking at me across the room?”

“Absolutely,” he replied without a hint of shame.

We started walking in a circle around the edge of the large ballroom, Penny stomping along behind us.

“Almost everyone here is exactly what you expect,” Greg said. “They’re talking about the same things they always talk about: taxes, politics, other people’s secrets. Have you met anyone interesting here? Besides me, of course.” He actually winked.¹³

I may have twittered like a sniveling borshwat. He looked sideways at me, the half smile making me sure he was X-raying my brain, and I turned away, trying to look like I was examining a swath of gauzy drapery with tiny lights under it on the wall. “Um . . . ” I tried to remember his question. “The South African diplomat told a pretty good story.”

“Oh, was it the one about the toilet brush and the basket of dragon fruit?” he asked, his half smile breaking into a full grin. “That’s a good one. He’s a nice guy.”

I took a bite of something orange on a toothpick from my tiny plate (some kind of your cheese, I think) and tried to remember if there had been anyone else worth talking to over the course of the night. “That waiter over there recently lost their electric bass player to a ‘rival band’ and has tryouts for a new player on Sunday. I am thinking of going for it.”

“Do you play the bass?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Well, no, but I play the didgeridoo.”

“You play the . . . I don’t think those are interchangeable.”

I contemplated this. “Okay. I will learn the bass too, then. How hard could it be? What is a bass?”

He laughed out loud. I could not tell if he was laughing at me or not, but if so, this human’s laugh made me want to keep saying the wrong thing forever just to hear it again.

Penny finally managed to get me away from Greg when another human started talking to him. She pulled me to the other side of the room, hissing chastisements that I only half heard, urging me to go back to observing humans not named Greg.

“I know, I know,” I responded in order to stem the stream of hushed yelling. “Time to get boring again.”

I tried to stay away from Greg after that. Sort of. And maybe if I had succeeded, none of that whole exploding/destruction/screaming-in-the-streets thing would have happened. I tried to focus elsewhere, but my eyes kept straying over to Greg. Every time I started up a conversation with some senator or congressperson or king or janitor, Greg was in the background, smiling and making it look like his end of the room was so much more interesting than mine. I kept trailing off in the middle of conversations, my feet walking toward him of their own accord. Penny stepped in front me as I subconsciously started walking in his direction again.

“No,” she said in our language.¹⁴

“What? No, it is fine, I am only—”

“No.”

“But, Penny, I am not—”

“No. I see your eyes looking at him. I see you, and I am telling you, that is a very bad idea.”

I scoffed. “Some wingman you are turning out to be.”

“I am not your wingman,¹⁵ I am not your friend, I am your adviser and I am telling you, Aria, Seventh Daughter of Morr, Keeper of the Sacred Sponge, Heir to the Fallen Branches of Bough, Final Monarch of the Thirteenth Planet of LifeStar, Your Majesty, do not pursue that human.”

Oh. Um, yes. I do not think I have mentioned it.

I am the monarch of the Brooshaloo people. I am the alien queen.

 

CHAPTER 2

Yes, it was me. I was the one to say “take me to your leader” nine years ago.

By the way, we already knew before we arrived that you would make the Accord, and what kind of stipulations you might include, though we did not predict there would be so many. We studied you from afar for years before we invaded approached. And then, we became what we believed you wanted. We became desperate refugees (which we actually were anyway).16 We hid our weapons and power. We showed ourselves to be weak but not too weak, and similar but not too similar.

We also revealed ourselves to be green skinned and bald, with giant bug eyes. But that is not what we truly look like, of course. Other than our silvery skin and completely-black almond eyes and tentacle hair and pointy teeth and bioluminescence, we actually look exactly like you.

I am sorry I did not specify my royal title to you sooner, but I thought the term alien queen might be misleading.17 And also it sounds super dumb. I had only recently inherited my title from the previous queen (my aunt Sonata) when we started our journey through space, making the Arrival my very first act as queen, and I have
done almost nothing you would consider queenly since. I do not lead or govern, per se, though I do wave and smile sometimes for my people, and I receive and (occasionally) read reports from my advisers. Even as I say that, it sounds embarrassingly silly and useless. So, quite a bit like the role of your US president, come to think of it.

Traditionally, the queen is supposed to be more like a buffer than anything else. We do not want our innocents to come up against the hostile aliens directly (which is you,
by the way), so the queen is gifted with the technology to communicate with strangers (you, again) on their behalf. I use this technology to speak every Earth language with
almost no accent. I can also change my appearance18 and that of anyone in the close vicinity with a clap of my hands (or two if it needs a jump start). But not counting
the initial Arrival, I have not had much cause to use these gifts, in an official capacity at least. After the Accord was created, we were locked into the Compound, and no
one said a word to us ever again. No one fun, anyway.

At least you can be comforted in the fact that Penny and I were the only ones to ever break out of the Compound, it was only once a year,19 and I think I was the only one to enjoy it. But despite Penny and my differing opinion on fun, she does keep me in line, and I make an effort to listen to her, as my royal adviser.20 When Penny told me to stop talking to Greg at the gala, I did. I did not even say goodbye to him when we left. I may have gazed longingly at his back and broad shoulders, but for this you would not fault me if you had seen the faint outline of his shoulder blades. They were magnificent.

Penny and I hid in a broom closet that smelled like ashmell dust, activated our gravitator, and transported away.

We did not return to the Compound directly, of course. Even with the assistance of our transporting gravitator technology, Washington DC is a long way from the mountains of Alaska, in case you do not know your geography. (Sorry, I am sure you do, no insult intended.) So to break up the trip, avoid suspicion, and save our precious energy, we gravitated two or three blocks away and stayed overnight at one of our many prepared secret places of safety—a safehouse you might say. It was a one-room condo we secretly owned in the neighborhood. A safecondo.

That night, after removing our human disguises (and the ‘green alien’ disguise layer we always wear underneath) with a clap of my hands, I lay resting on the very soft bed between a fluffy comforter and a fluffier mattress and tried not to replay every word of my conversation with Greg. Could anyone be that perfectly imperfectly human? I’d always been fascinated by you and your varied cultures, but never on such a singular level. I realized he’d never told me anything about himself or his profession, only that he would have to kill me if he told me. Could that be a joke? Was he a joke someone was playing on me?

The next morning my thoughts were still full of gray laughing eyes and light-brown, wavy hair. Penny was scowling in the morning, but that is her resting face, so I ignored her. I got up, fluffed my head tentacles, sharpened my teeth, and got re-humanned up for the day using the facebender tech so we could take the train. The train would take us to the waypoint where we would gravitate the rest of the way to the Compound.

“Maybe we should leave early,” said Penny as she picked through her array of all-black clothing hanging in the tiny closet. “You absorbed enough zest last night, right? So, we have no other reason to stay. The sooner we get back, the better.”

“Yes, I got the zest, but what is the hurry?” I asked.

“No hurry.” She put her hands on her hips, watching me. “Can’t you move any faster?”

I sat on the edge of the bed to put my socks on. “Penny, everything is fine. I got the zest from the senator of Texas, so the zest gauge is completely full. Does not that make you happy?” I looked down at the charm on my necklace, my Royal Everything Device: full zest, and two hundred eighty power units, which was still enough for anything we might need. I looked back up at Penny’s face. She was staring me down.

I sighed and started on my other sock. “Yes, I know I went ‘off script,’ last night, and spoke too long to . . . that human, but no real harm was done, right?”

She clenched her fists. “Not yet, no. Ready?”

I nodded, but then I just sat there on the bed.

Penny watched me a few moments, then she sat next to me, her voice dropping low. “You know that whole thing would never have worked out, right? Even if we don’t consider Accord law—which I know you try to never do—you have responsibilities to us and our future. And you know the future of our people could never involve a fling with some thing that lives out here.”

I chafed at her use of the word fling and thing (despite the fact that it was a very good rhyme), but I did not try to deny it. She was usually right. It was her talent. And my talent was forgiving her for how annoying it was.

We were silent as we left the safecondo, walking toward the train station. We had only gone a few steps when I slowed to a stop again. While the thought of riding your human trains normally entices me, knowing we were then gravitating back to the Compound again for another year—back underground to our tiny, curtained spaces, to the hundred thousand Accord stipulations and the ten thousand expectant faces—I could not put a single foot in front of the other.

Instead, I started walking the other direction. Penny called after me, but when I did not stop, she followed me, swearing.

Yes, Penny was right, but this was not about Greg—or even so much about a reluctance to face my responsibilities—as it was a reticence to crease the amazing jeans I was wearing. Why, on the once-beautiful Earth, did we bother to go shopping, find that adorable pink sweater, the perfect human jeans, and those stompy boots simply to get onto a train and go back to a crowded Compound to wear a sheet toga? Sometimes an outfit is so adorable, it calls for exciting things to happen while you wear it. I think this is something every species in the universe can understand.

So we walked. I smiled and Penny glowered, a constant stream of creative swear words spewing from Penny’s lips that luckily no passing human understood.

I picked a flower growing beside the sidewalk, its many petals frail and yellow. I do not think you realize how fascinating it is: a living thing sending a smell to attract bees for its own benefit and humans by accident, without doing any damage to either. My own planet had something similar, but of course our plant life is also sentient and evil and much larger. And the only plants that put out a smell also put out spores, killing you dead before you could say thanks for the flowers.

So this was nice.

I found my steps being drawn to a small farmers market, booths of more flowers than I knew the name of, fruits and vegetables that were so plump and colorful and fragrant they competed with the flowers for beauty. We were not allowed fresh food in the Compound. If we wanted any fruits or vegetables, we had to get them chopped up into tiny pieces, then frozen and smuggled in. Sounds violent, does it not? Our dietary needs are very similar to yours, but I had very rarely eaten a fresh anything from your planet.

I took one bite of a big pink peach, a sample given to me by a tall man with white hair and no shirt under his overalls. I felt the peach juice squish down my chin.

And then I guess I went a bit . . . wild.

I ran, stumbling from booth to booth, snagging green melons, colorful citrus, earthy roots, and berries of every color, taking bites willy-nilly while Penny ran back and forth behind me, throwing paper money at the stunned vendors.

I was just getting my teeth into a small round watermelon—refreshing on the inside, but difficult to bite into without completely unhinging my jaw, which I did not like to do in public. I was sort of gnawing on the rind, some watermelon pulp mixing with all the other juices on my cheeks and chin, when I looked up to see someone blocking my path.

Greg.

See? He seemed innocuous, but he had the worst knack for turning up at the wrong time and place. It was like he was pulled out of my treasonous hopes and dreams and placed there as a temptation right when I was at my least dignified.

I swallowed my bite of mangled fruit pulp, but there was not a lot I could do about my bouquet of half-eaten fruits and vegetables, or the mess I had likely made of my makeup, not to mention my adorable pink sweater that was probably ruined under all the fruit I held. I smiled weakly at Greg.

“Aria, isn’t it? Do you remember me? Greg? From the gala?” He looked me up and down, a mixture of confusion and amusement in his expression.

“No,” I lied. Penny caught up to me and slid to a stop. I could not see her face because the watermelon and pumpkin in my arms blocked that side, and also my sight was locked on Greg.

His eyes bounced between all the produce I held, and I tried to gracefully put it all into a basket I spotted on the ground. Some of it rolled out to trip other farmers-market shoppers.

“Finish this up for me, will you, Penny?” I said in English, in my most regal, unflustered voice, motioning to the mess with a sweep of my arm.

“Is that a Royal Command?” she muttered under her breath in Booshy. I tried to glare at her as she scrambled around to get the fruit and then left to find another basket. We both knew my request to help with the fruit was not a command—she did not have to obey—but we also both knew she would do it anyway.

“Uh,” Greg said, still taking in my fruity and flustered state. “Don’t you have fruit in . . . where did you say you were from, again?”

“Brooshaloo.”

“Right.”

We both paused while I decided whether to answer about the fruit or wipe the juice from my chin. I settled on both. “Well, yes we did have fruit there, but it had to be picked before it ripened, before it could develop venom or deadly pollens or spores, so the flavor was not great.”

“Ah,” he said, a little dazed. By the ghost of his smile, he might have thought I was joking, or crazy. At least he was not having me arrested. Or catapulted off the planet. I should have said simply yes or no to his questions, but somehow, almost every time I opened my mouth in this man’s presence, the truth fell out.

Penny was suddenly by my side again, her black human hair swinging in her face, with two baskets full of my colorful produce mushed and mangled beyond recognizability.

“Hey, Penny,” Greg said, eyes still locked on mine.

She swore at him, which, by his broadening wry smile, he somehow seemed to be able to understand despite it not being in his language.

“So, assuming there is any of it left, I’m here for some fruit, too. Care to . . . walk around the market with me, Aria?”

Penny side-knocked me so hard I squeaked. I tried to mask it with what I hoped was a girlish human giggle. “Um, no. No, we already have all we can carry here, so . . .”

“Right.” He nodded and moved to walk past us. “Well, if you change your mind and want to join me later—”

“Okay,” I said, turning around and hopping over to step beside him.

Greg raised his eyebrows and chuckled. I tried to muster up some shame, but could not quite manage it. Penny trailed along behind us, growling, which I had not heard her do since youthschool when BigThroat sniffed her tentacles.

“So,” I said in the awkward silence of having to now face all the vendors I had practically stolen from a few moments ago. “Do you live here in Washington DC?”

Greg smiled. “Sort of. I’m just here for work. But I’m originally from a town a few miles away from here.” We stepped up to one of the booths, and Greg started filling a bag with fruit.

I nodded. “And you love apples?” I pointed at the red, yellow, and green apples filling his bag.

He looked down at the bag. “Oh. We have a big meeting tonight before we leave, and my boss wants to have a bowl of fruit on the table. Make it feel homey or something. I thought apples would be easy and colorful? I’m supposed to get flowers too.” He looked over at me. “You, um, you have some pulp on your . . .” He touched my cheek, but the juice had become sticky, so he pulled his finger away and wiped it on his pants.

I tried to wipe any remnants from my face with my sleeve. I got a glimpse of Penny’s murderous expression as she followed behind us, and I quickly looked back at Greg.

“Do you know anything about flowers?” he asked. He paid and we moved on from the apple booth, wandering through the narrow aisle.

“I do, but where I am from, our flowers are more . . . carnivorous,” I answered.

“Like Venus fly traps?”

“Sure.”

“Like your fruit, too, then?”

“Well, all plants really.” I shrugged.

He laughed. “Cool. Maybe something like that might be fun for the meeting?” We had moved from the fruit to the flower area now.

“No,” I said, cutting in before he got too excited about that idea. “Trust me, I speak from experience. A carnivorous plant might look good for business meetings, but you would change your mind when your secretary is halfway down its throat in the middle of a slideshow on workplace safety.”

He laughed again, a comfortable sound like an old engine. As we wandered, we found some already prepared bouquets at one of the flower booths. Greg bought one, paid the smiling woman, then pulled a flower out of the bouquet and handed it to me with a little bow.

The woman smiled wider, her face like sunshine to match her yellow dress. As we walked away, I heard her say quietly, “That’s a hibiscus. It’s edible, you know.”

Hibiscus, I repeated to myself, smelling the flower. When Greg turned his head, I took a giant bite of the hibiscus, trying to chew and swallow before he turned back around.

“So . . .” Greg said, drawing out the word like it was a sentence. He turned around to face me, and I hid the flower stem behind my back. We’d reached the end of the small market. Beside us was parked an orange truck vehicle that looked like it could be a hundred of your years old, all curves and gradients of rust color. Greg opened the door to the truck, and I fought off a wave of panic, knowing he was about to drive off and Penny was going to squeeze me back into the Compound and I would never see Greg again (unless I could somehow steal one of your satellites and direct it at him later).

“Do you wanna get something to eat with me after my meeting tonight?” Greg asked, one of his hands resting on the truck door.

I gulped. “Eat?”

“I have to fly back home tonight, but my flight isn’t until like four in the morning, so I’ll just be lounging around somewhere. Will you still be in town? Do you already have plans? If not, you could be my date for dinner. Uh . . . maybe without your bodyguard?” He looked back at Penny.

For a moment I thought we’d been made, as your undercover operatives say, but then I realized calling Penny a bodyguard was meant to be ironic.

A date? I tried very hard to look into those sweet, sincere gray eyes and tell him it could never happen, but judging by his responding smile, whatever came out of my mouth must have sounded like yes.

 

CHAPTER 3

It only took maybe one of your hours to convince Penny to let me go—that one more night could not hurt, that this was no treasonous and dangerous human fling, but a closer observation of humans. Or well, of a human, but the logic still held.

And then, while I switched to a blue cotton top and denim skirt, I told her she was welcome to join us as long as joining us meant eating at a different table with a different face. She never exactly agreed, but she did not stop me when I walked to the nearby café on The Wharf that night.

The café was perfect. Outdoor tables sat under a pergola-style roof, happy red flowers dangled from hanging planters at each column, and sweet and bready smells hovered like a blanket. Lanterns on each table provided the only light, the nearby dark water reflecting the lights back at us.

And there was Greg, leaning his shoulder against a column with his feet crossed, a green shirt that made his eyes look greener, a pair of dark jeans, and his attention and thumbs on the telephone device in his hand. His angles and colors were like a painting, like he was a model in a catalog with the caption, “regular, adorable human.” Looking at him, I could almost forget about my masked alien physiology, about Penny hiding somewhere behind me, about my responsibilities, and simply pretend I was a human girl, nervous but excited for a night out.

Almost.

“Hi,” I said breathily when I was a meter away. The ambient noise of the café was mild even with the other people there chatting at the outdoor tables, and Greg looked up, smiling and stowing his phone.

“I was worried you weren’t coming.” He stepped a little closer.

“Oh, am I late?”

“Not at all, but since you wouldn’t give me your phone number, I was worried maybe you might stand me up and I would never see you again.”

We gazed at each other for a moment, and then Greg motioned toward a little table, bowing with a playful hand flourish, and pulled out my chair.

We sat at the wrought iron table, and someone brought us large paper menus. “How was your meeting?” I asked a few blissfully awkward moments later.

“Great. Long. The flowers and fruit were a hit.” He smiled and laid his menu down, leaning his arms on the table. “Did you like the hibiscus? I’ve never eaten one before.”

So he had seen. I twittered and tried to redirect the conversation back to him as he took a drink of water. “Where do you work? I think you said something about having to kill me if you told me? If that is true, please do not tell me, I do not think it will be worth it.”

He coughed into his water, but came up smiling once he could breathe again. “Um, yes, ha, just a—just a joke. I forget English isn’t your native language. I’m an aide for the Alaskan senator, Gwyn Kilcher?”

To which I thought, Booger. Alaska.

Gwyn Kilcher was one of my senators—or, at least, my Compound was in her state, so she would have been my senator if I had been human with rights and a vote. I had never met her personally, but I had been led to believe that the two Alaskan senators were among those elite few who knew about our existence, since we were (sort of) their constituents. Was it possible Greg knew about us too since he worked for her, knew what we were? And if so, did he suspect me of being an alien? Was he toying with me?

I asked/said none of this. “Do you like it? Your job working with a senator?”

“Sure, yeah. Gwyn’s great.”

“What is your favorite part?” I asked, eager to keep the conversation on him, and also genuinely interested.

“The sticky notes,” he responded without hesitation or artifice.

“Sticky? Notes?”

“Yeah, you know, the little square note paper with a sticky back,” he held his fingers up in a square. “Post-Its?”

“Ooh,” I responded, leaning forward in my chair.

“Yeah, I used to have to buy them myself. Even though they don’t cost much, you’d be surprised how quickly that adds up, but now I get as many sticky notes of as many types and colors as I want. I don’t even have to reorder them myself—they’re automatically refilled for me whenever I get low. Did you know there are waterproof sticky notes?”

“Waterproof?”

“Yeah, so I can spill stuff on them, write on them with a permanent marker, paint on them.” He rubbed his hands together, genuinely excited by the prospect.

I giggled with secondary enjoyment. “Wow. I had no idea.”

“Yep. I have access to all kinds of great office supplies: all thicknesses of paper and notebooks, ballpoint pens that write smoothly for days, and remind me to show you my collection of folder tabs, it’s incredible. But yeah, the sticky notes are my favorite part.” He sat back, sighing contentedly.

“Sticky notes,” I said reverently.

His eyes crinkled. “Does that make me the most boring person in the world?”

“Not at all.” Sticky notes sounded like the most interesting thing on any planet, but I was afraid admitting that might make me sound too alien. “So, you live there in Alaska when you are not here, then?” I asked.

“Yep, I just got a house there. They only brought me on staff about nine months ago, so I’m still getting settled. Usually I stay with my parents when I come to DC, but I’m staying at a hotel right now.” He pursed his lips, watching me. “So, tell me, how does a dishwasher, even an honorary one, get invited to a big DC government soiree like the one last night?”

I coughed. “Well, I was not strictly invited. Penny and I sort of sneaked in.”

Greg chuckled. “Of course you did.” He waved his hand and a black-and-white suited waiter approached. Greg nodded at me. “Know what you want?”

I punched my finger randomly at the menu and hoped.

“The tilapia? Great choice. What vegetables?” asked the waiter, a younger man that seemed too tall for the size of his head.

“Whatever you have that is fresh,” I responded, which made Greg laugh again.

He glanced up at the waiter. “She uh . . . she doesn’t get a lot of fresh fruits or vegetables where she’s from.”

“Oh, where are you from?” the waiter asked.

I paused, looking at Greg. “Originally?” I had already told Greg the truth. Could I lie now?

Greg smiled. “I don’t know how to say it. Is it Booshlaboo?”

I blew out a puff of air and nodded.

“Oh, yeah. Cool,” said the waiter like he knew what we were talking about.

My people had been told that those who knew about us numbered maybe thirty at most in the whole world. But the waiter’s non-reaction made me begin to wonder, had we been lied to? Did everyone know?

After the waiter left, Greg and I chatted until we got our food and started eating. The food was amazing, Greg was amazing, everything was amazing, but the guilt of having this amazing evening was starting to creep up on me. I pushed it aside, hovering instead in the perfect euphoria. As our meal wound down, Greg excused himself and when he came back, he had someone with him, a nondescript man just a few inches shorter than he was, with dark hair and small dark eyes.

“Aria, this is my friend [Andrew?],” Greg said, pointing to his friend (I cannot recall the man’s name, but I am sure it started with an A). “He’s one of the chefs here tonight, so if you liked your food, he’s the one to thank. [Aaron?], this is Aria.”

I smiled and bobbed my head.

Greg’s friend looked back and forth between us for a bit longer than seemed polite before responding. He seemed amused. “Nice to meet you, Aria. Greg’s great—you got yourself a pretty good human being there.”

“Yes.” I blinked a few times, flustered. “He is not technically my human being, but he is good.” They both laughed, and I cleared my throat. “You two are friends?”

The man nodded. “Greg was in one of my cooking classes over at Virginia Tech. ’Course, Greg moved on to bigger and better things, didn’t you, Greg?”

Greg rolled his eyes. I glanced at Greg, looking him up and down. He could cook human food, too? My heart stuttered.

The two men stood by the table, chatting for a few moments, and I watched Greg’s eyes crinkle in a smile even when his mouth was not smiling. I only barely stopped myself from reaching out to touch him.

Greg’s friend was giving me a penetrating look. He stepped closer. “How did you two meet? What do you think of Greg? And how long are you in town?” he asked with a conspiratorial smile.

Greg chuckled and whacked him playfully on the arm. “It’s a first date. Give her a break.”

The friend was still looking at me. “But . . .” Greg shooed him away.

“He’s a great guy,” Greg said after his friend was gone, sitting back down at the table. “I’m glad we caught him—I wanted him to meet you. And sorry, he’s kind of overprotective.”

“Like Penny.” I glanced over my shoulder, trying to spot her, but I did not know where she would be sitting, and she was too good at hiding when she wanted to.

Greg took a drink of water. “Yeah, she seems very . . . loyal. How’d she take you leaving her behind?”

I cleared my throat. She could undoubtedly hear our conversation. “I am not sure. Knowing her, she followed me here rather than be left behind and is now listening in on our whole conversation.”

He laughed and then leaned forward. “I guess we need to talk a bit quieter and closer, then.” He winked.

He had not said anything blush-worthy, but I could still feel myself blushing. Ahem. “Actually, we were supposed to go home today, so Penny is already mad that I delayed us.”

“Home to Booshlaboo?”

“Well . . . no. We do not live there anymore.” I looked down.

“That must be hard, to be away from your home?”

I sighed. I’d been barely more than a youth when we left. Our refugee situation here was not the best, but I’d adapted to it.

Still, there were so many parts I missed from home. Before the plant uprising and Manyleaf War and before our backyard garden ate my parents and kicked us out, I had many pleasant memories. I could not share any of that, however. I looked down as Greg reached across the table to hold my hand, his fingers loosely entwining mine. A zing of energy zipped up my arm and settled in my chest.

Watching our hands, it was like our hearts were entwining as well. It was a magical moment, the dim light making it hard to see, hard to breathe, iridescent bubbles blown from somewhere, gently floating, adding to the dreaminess of the moment. I knew I should pull back, pull back my hand and my heart. I was crossing a threshold here, one I could not back away from, one that maybe I had crossed the moment I first saw him. None of this was fair: not fair to my people, not fair to me, and not fair to Greg. And it was my fault if it went any further. I had to cut it off now or my heart was going to be irretrievable.

I watched as his thumb stroked mine in the magical candlelight, willing myself to pull back.

Willing, but failing.

Instead, he was the one that pulled away. “While we’re on the subject—” his tone was light, but his expression betrayed a sudden nervousness, “what’s with that whole honorary dishwasher title thing you do?” He blushed, and when I did not answer beyond a noise of confusion, he went on. “Don’t get me wrong; it’s charming, but it’s almost the only thing I know about you, and it sounds like, well, nonsense. And where are you from, again?” I opened my mouth, but he went on. “I looked up Booshlaboo or whatever.”

“Boovashoo,” I corrected, clearing my throat.

“You say it differently every time you say it.”

“It is conjugated differently depending on the speaker’s mood.”

He blinked. “Huh. But nothing close to that is a country, city, municipality, or village that I can find, anywhere on Earth.” He leaned back in his chair, tapping the table with his fingers.

Booger. “Well . . .”

“At first, I thought you were teasing. Flirting. Like the poisonous forbidden fruit thing. But you’re really doubling down on all of it. I have to ask myself, why would you double down on such an obvious fabrication?” He flushed pink again at this. I shook my head at him, but he was not slowing down now. “And assuming Aria is even your real name, what’s your last name?”

I should have been more prepared with things like last names and a credible origin city before this. Penny was always telling me to be prepared. But I kept forgetting humans had things like last names in the first place. Also, preparation had seemed boring and unnecessary until that moment.

Greg looked up at me and smiled, but it was with a tinge of sadness. “Look, I get it. You can’t tell me. But I’m in government, so I’m not a complete stranger to these things. I figured it out. I know what you are.” He paused, as if waiting for confirmation. I opened my mouth again, but my mind was a blank; what could I say? When I did not answer, he just nodded. “I should have known from the start. You are just way too interesting to be true. So, I guess my only question is, why are you here?”

I closed my eyes. He knew I was an alien. What would he do now? Were there already UNOOSA agents here about to jump out with a giant catapult? Could I run away? Was Penny overhearing this, ready to tackle Greg from behind? When I opened my eyes again, the bubbles behind Greg were starting to blow our direction, but the magic of the moment was gone. Scrunching my napkin, I watched my traitorous little hope pop away like the real bubbles around us did not. I tried not to let my disappointment drown me, but some of it spilled out my eyes anyway.

Of course he knew. Had known the whole time. This very danger was why Penny warned me to stay away. Now he was going to tell me he could not possibly have an alien for a date, especially one who broke rules, and my people would be kicked right off the planet.

I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. “So if you knew, why did you still ask me as your date? Why did you not report me?”

“So it’s true? You admit it?” he whispered. I could feel his foot tapping on the ground below the table.

I did not answer. It was time to get out of there. If he had any intention of reporting me, I did not want to be here when he did. Maybe I could still salvage something for my people, stand up for them, finally be the buffer I was meant to be, as suffocating as that felt to think about. I looked into Greg’s gray eyes for the last time. I tried to memorize his face, the flicker from the lantern reflecting in his eyes, the smells, the feelings, but a glimpse of movement behind him distracted me.

It was a face I recognized, a face that could not be there: only a flash, and it was gone.

I stood, scanning the faces around us in the lamplight, searching where I had seen the anomalous person, but bubbles kept getting in my way, blocking my vision. Bubbles. Why were there so many bubbles?!

Everyone around us started coughing, batting at the bubbles, which were multiplying and swarming like choig locusts. I continued to scan the faces behind Greg, swatting the bubbles out of the way. Had I imagined it?

Then, as Greg turned to see what I was looking at, a sudden gust of wind popped the bubbles all at once. As if in slow motion, a wave of shimmering light next to the pier burst outward, creating a luminescent blooming explosion of red, orange, yellow, blue, purple, and black.

Purchase Sorry, Humans (Especially Greg) now!