SAM IS AVOIDING ME. AT SCHOOL HE SEEMS TO DISAPPEAR WHEN HE
SEES ME, OR ALWAYS MAKES SURE WERE IN A GROUP.
At the urging of Henri whos desperate to get his hands on Sams magazine after combing through everything that came up on the internet and finding nothing like Sams magazine I decide to just go over to his place unannounced.
Henri drops me off after weve trained for the day. Sam lives on the outskirts of Paradise in a small, modest house.
Theres no answer when I knock so I try the door. Its unlocked and I open it and walk through.
Brown shag carpet covers the floors, and family photographs from when Sam was very young hang on wood-paneled walls.
Him, his mother, and a man who I assume is his father, who is wearing glasses every bit as thick as Sams. Then I look closer. They look like the exact same pair of glasses.
I creep down the hallway until I find the door that must be to Sams bedroom; a sign reading ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK hangs from a tack. The door is open a crack and I peer inside.
The room is very clean, everything consciously put in a place.
His twin bed is made, has a black comforter with the planet Saturn repeated across it. Matching pillowcases. The walls are covered with posters. There are two NASA ones, the movie poster from Alien, a movie poster from Star Wars, and one that is a blacklight poster of a green alien head surrounded by dark felt. In the center of the room, hanging from clear thread, is the solar system, all nine planets and the sun. It makes me think of what Henri showed me earlier in the week. I think that Sam would lose his mind if he were to see the same thing.And then I see Sam, hunched over a small oak desk, with headphones on.
I push the door open and he looks over his shoulder. He isnt wearing his glasses, and without them his eyes look very small and beady, almost cartoonlike.
Whats up? I ask casually, as if Im at his house every day.
He looks shocked and scared and he frantically pulls the headphones off to reach in one of the drawers. I look at his desk and see that hes reading a copy of They Walk Among Us. When I look back up he is pointing a gun at me.
Whoa, I say, instinctively lifting my hands in front of me. Whats going on?
He stands up. His hands are shaking. The gun is pointed at my chest. I think that hes lost his mind.
Tell me what you are, he says.
What are you talking about?
I saw what you did in those woods. Youre not human. Iwas afraid of this, that he saw more than I had hoped.
This is crazy, Sam! I got into a fight. Ive been doing martial arts for years.
Your hands lit up like flashlights. You could throw people around like they were nothing. Thats not normal.
Dont be stupid, I say, my hands still in front of me. Look at them. Do you see any lights? I told you, they were gloves that Kevin was wearing.
I asked Kevin! He said he wasnt wearing
gloves!
Do you really think he would tell you the truth after what happened? Put the gun down.
Tell me! What are you?
I roll my eyes. Yes, Im an alien, Sam. Im from a planet hundreds of millions of miles away. I have superpowers.
Is that what you want to hear?
He stares at me, his hands still shaking.
Do you realize how stupid that sounds? Quit being crazy and put the gun down.
Is what you just said true?
That youre being stupid? Yes, its true.
Youre too obsessed with this stuff. You see aliens and alien conspiracies in every part of your life, including in your only friend. Now quit pointing that damn gun at me.
He stares at me, and I can tell hes thinking about what I said. I drop my hands. Then he sighs and lowers the gun.
Im sorry, he says.
I take a deep, nervous breath. You should be. What the hell were you thinking?
It wasnt actually loaded.
You should have told me that earlier, I say. Why do you want so badly to believe in this stuff?
He shakes his head and puts the gun back in the drawer. I take a minute to calm myself down and try to act casual, like what just happened is no big deal.
What are you reading? I ask.
He shrugs. Just more alien stuff. Maybe I should cool it a bit.
Or just read it as fiction instead of fact, I say. The stuff must be pretty convincing, though. Can I see it?
He hands me the latest copy of They WalkAmong Us and I sit tentatively on the edge of his bed. I think hes calmed down enough to not spring a gun on me again at least. Again, it is a bad photocopy, the print slightly unaligned with the paper. It isnt very thick eight pages, twelve at the most, printed on legal-sized sheets. The date at the top reads DECEMBER. It must be the newest issue.
This is weird stuff, Sam Goode, I say.
He smiles. Weird people like weird stuff.
Where do you get this? I ask.
I subscribe to it.
I know, but how?
Sam shrugs. I dont know. It just started arriving one day.
Are you subscribed to some other magazine? Perhaps they pulled your contact info from there.
Iwent to a convention once. I think I signed up for some contest or something while Iwas there. I cant remember.
Ive always assumed thats where they got my address.
I scan the cover. Theres no website listed anywhere on it, and I didnt expect there to be, considering that Henri has already searched the internet high and low. Iread the headline of the top story:
IS YOUR NEIGHBOR AN ALIEN?
TEN FAIL SAFE WAYS TO TELL!
In the middle of the article theres a picture of a man holding a bag of trash in one hand and the lid to the trash can in the other. He is standing at the end of the driveway and were to assume hes in the process of dropping the bag into the can. Though the whole publication is in black-andwhite, there is a certain glow to the mans eyes. Its a horrible image as though somebody took a picture of an unsuspecting neighbor and then drew around his eyes with a crayon. It makes me laugh.
What? Sam asks.
This is a terrible picture. It looks like something from Godzilla.
Sam looks at it. Then he shrugs. I dunno, he says.
It could be real. Like you said, I see aliens everywhere, and in everything.
But I thought aliens looked like that, I say, and nod to the blacklight poster on his wall.
I dont think all of them do, he says.
Like you said, youre an alien with superpowers and you dont look like that.
We both laugh, and Iwonder how Im going to get myself out of that one. Hopefully Sam never finds out I was telling him the truth. Part of me wants to tell him, though about me, about
Henri, about Lorien and Iwonder what his reaction would be.
Would he believe me?
I flip the paper open to look for the publishing page that all newspapers and magazines have. There isnt one here, only more stories and theories.
There isnt a publisher info page.
What do you mean?
You know how magazines and newspapers always have that page listing staff, editors, writers, where its being printed, and all that? You know, For questions, contact so and so. All publications have them, but this doesnt.
They have to protect their anonymity, Sam says.
From what?
Aliens, he says, and smiles, as though acknowledging the absurdity of it.
Do you have last months issue?
He grabs it from his closet. I quickly flip through it, hoping that the Mogadorian article is in this one and not an earlier month. And then I find it on page 4.
THE MOGADORIAN RACE SEEK TO TAKE OVER EARTH
The Mogadorian alien race, fromthe planet Mogadore of the 9th Galaxy, have been on Earth for over ten years now. They are a vicious race on a quest for universal domination. They are rumored to have wiped out another planet not unlike Earth, and are planning to expose Earth's weaknesses in a quest to inhabit our planet next.
(more to follow next issue)
I read the article three times. Iwas hoping there might be more to it than what Sam already said, but no such luck. And there is no NinthGalaxy. Iwonder where they got that from. I flip through the new issue twice. There is no mention of the Mogadorians. My first thought is that there was nothing left to report, that more news failed to present itself. But I dont believe thats the case. My second thought is that the Mogadorians read the issue and then fixed the problem, whatever the problem was.
Do you mind if I borrow this? I ask, holding up last months issue.
He nods. But be careful with it.
Three hours later, at eight o'clock, Sams mother still isnt home. I ask Sam where she is and he shrugs as though he doesnt know and her absence is nothing new Mostly we just play video games and watch TV and for dinner we eat microwavable meals. The whole time Im there he doesnt once wear his glasses, which is odd since Ive never seen him without them before. Even when we ran the mile in gym class, he kept them on. I grab them from the top of his dresser and put them on. The world becomes an instant blur and they give me a headache almost immediately.
I look at Sam. Hes sitting cross-legged on the floor, his back against his bed, with a book of aliens in his lap.
Jesus, is your vision really this bad? I ask.
He looks up at me. They were my dads.
I take them off.
Do you even need glasses, Sam?
He shrugs. Not really.
So why do you wear them?
They were my dads.
I put them back on. Wow, I dont see how you can even walk straight with these on.
My eyes are used to them.
You know these will screw up your vision if you continue wearing them, right?
Then Ill be able to see what my dad saw.
I take them off and put them back where I found them. I dont really understand why Sam wears them. For sentimental reasons? Does he really think its worth it?
Where is your dad, Sam?
He looks up at me.
I dont know, he says.
What do you mean?
He disappeared when I was seven.
You dont know where he went?
He sighs, drops his head, and resumes reading. Obviously he doesnt want to talk about it.
Do you believe in any of this stuff? he asks after a few minutes of silence.
Aliens?
Yeah.
Yes, I believe in aliens.
Do you think they really abduct people?
I have no idea. I guess we cant rule it out. Do you believe they do?
He nods. Most days. But sometimes the idea just seems stupid.
I can understand that.
He looks up at me. I think my dad was abducted, he says.
He tenses the second the words leave his mouth and a look of vulnerability crosses his face. It makes me believe that he has shared his theory before, with someone whose response was less than kind.
Why do you think that?
Because he just disappeared. He went to the store to buy milk and bread, and he never came back. His truck was parked right outside the store but nobody there had seen him.
He just vanished, and his glasses were on the sidewalk beside his truck. He pauses for a second. I was worried you were here to abduct me.
Its a hard theory to believe. How could nobody have seen his father abducted if the incident occurred in the middle of town? Perhaps his dad had reason to leave and he plotted his own disappearance. Its not hard to make yourself disappear; Henri and I have been doing it for ten years now. But all of a sudden Sams interest in aliens makes perfect sense. Perhaps Sam just wants to see the world as his dad did, but maybe part of him truly believes that his dads final sight is captured in the glasses, somehow etched into the lenses.
Maybe he thinks that with persistence one day hell eventually come to see it as well, and that his dads last vision will confirm what is already in his head. Or maybe he believes that if he searches long enough hell finally come across an article that proves his father was abducted, and not only that, but that he can be saved.
And who am I to say that he wont one day find that proof?
I believe you, I say. I think alien abductions are very possible.