Bernie Kosar watches from the bed. It’s nearly midnight and I’m not tired in the least. Bernie Kosar jumps off the bed, sits beside me, and watches my reflection. I smile at him and he wags his tail.
“How about you?” I ask Bernie Kosar. “Do you have any special powers? Are you a superdog? Should I put your cape back on so you can go flying through the air?”
His tail keeps wagging and he paws the ground while looking at me through the tops of his eyes. I lift him up and over my head and fly him around the room.
“Look! It’s Bernie Kosar, the magnificent superdog!”
He squirms under my grip, so I set him down. He plops on his side with his tail thumping against the mattress.
“Well, buddy, one of us should have superpowers. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to be me. Unless we go back to the Dark Ages and I can supply the world with light. Otherwise, I’m afraid I’m useless.”
Bernie Kosar rolls onto his back and stares at me with big eyes, wanting me to rub his belly.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SAM IS AVOIDING ME. AT SCHOOL HE SEEMS TO disappear when he sees me, or always makes sure we’re in a group. At the urging of Henri—who’s desperate to get his hands on Sam’s magazine after combing through everything that came up on the internet and finding nothing like Sam’s magazine—I decide to just go over to his place unannounced. Henri drops me off after we’ve trained for the day. Sam lives on the outskirts of Paradise in a small, modest house. There’s no answer when I knock so I try the door. It’s 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 Sam’s. 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 Sam’s 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
“What’s up?” I ask casually, as if I’m 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 he’s reading a copy of
“Whoa,” I say, instinctively lifting my hands in front of me. “What’s going on?”
He stands up. His hands are shaking. The gun is pointed at my chest. I think that he’s lost his mind.
“Tell me what you are,” he says.
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw what you did in those woods. You’re not human.” I was afraid of this, that he saw more than I had hoped.
“This is crazy, Sam! I got into a fight. I’ve been doing martial arts for years.”
“Your hands lit up like flashlights. You could throw people around like they were nothing. That’s not normal.”
“Don’t 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 wasn’t 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, I’m an alien, Sam. I’m 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 you’re being stupid? Yes, it’s true. You’re 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 he’s thinking about what I said. I drop my hands. Then he sighs and lowers the gun. “I’m sorry,” he says.
I take a deep, nervous breath. “You should be. What the hell were you thinking?”
“It wasn’t 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
“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 don’t know. It just started arriving one day.”
“Are you subscribed to some other magazine? Perhaps they pulled your contact info from there.”
“I went to a convention once. I think I signed up for some contest or something while I was there. I can’t remember. I’ve always assumed that’s where they got my address.”
I scan the cover. There’s no website listed anywhere on it, and I didn’t expect there to be, considering that Henri has already searched the internet high and low. I read the headline of the top story:
IS YOUR NEIGHBOR AN ALIEN?
TEN FAILSAFE WAYS TO TELL!
In the middle of the article there’s 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 we’re to assume he’s in the process of dropping the bag into the can. Though the whole publication is in black-and-white, there is a certain glow to the man’s eyes. It’s 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
Sam looks at it. Then he shrugs. “I dunno,” he says. “It could be real. Like you said, I see aliens everywhere,
