Until I heard her bolting down the stairs.
Which panicked me again. Here I was, trapped inside the room. With water, yes. With food, yes. But time was moving very slowly. Time can do that on Earth. When Olive didn’t come back around lunchtime, I gave up kneading the blankets and jumped onto the windowsill, tucking myself behind the curtains. I could see the whole neighborhood from there: rows of greenery and houses on stilts, hydrangea bushes and golf carts. And Olive. Olive striding back and forth, hands gripping the sides of her hair, looking very much like she was about to fall apart.
I felt terrible. Maybe that’s too simple a statement to encompass everything that was building inside me, but I’m not sure I can explain it any other way: an aching, hollow sensation that grows and grows. But why was I feeling so terrible? I began purring just to calm myself, and sat there, vibrating on the windowsill, my lungs fluttering wildly.
It was almost three hours before Olive returned, opening the door, peeking inside. I’m not sure what she was expecting to see—if she thought she’d imagined me entirely. But there I was, paws-deep in blankets again.
“Okay,” she said, still breathing in little gasps. “Please tell me this is real, because right now I’m thinking that I am by far the weirdest kid on the planet. I need confirmation that you are who you say you are, and it’s not just me.” Cautiously, she switched on the laptop again and gestured for me to type—if I wanted to, if I could. So I hunted and pecked at the letters, trying to get the message exactly right.
you are not weird you are of this earth, I responded. what confirmation do you need.
“I don’t know,” she said shakily. “I think it’s the computer. It needs to be more than the computer. What if someone’s playing a prank on me or something? I don’t know how they could get into my laptop, but maybe they did.”
Quickly, I typed, look wall behind you, and she turned to see the scratching of a brown crayon, written thinly on the paint.
“How did I miss that?” she said. “Alien. Okay. You’re an alien . . . I’m going to sit down.” Her knees buckled as she leaned back on the bed. There was a slight tremor in her hands. Earlier that week, I’d seen Stanley lick Olive’s fingers—a long slurp with his enormous tongue—but something told me that cats didn’t lick humans with the same frequency. My tongue felt like sandpaper, even to me. So I let my animal instincts guide me, moving onto Olive’s lap and headbutting her gently in the face.
And I kept it there, my skull to her nose. Here’s what I was hoping to communicate: that I meant no harm, and that this wasn’t just in her head.
“Your fur is going up my nose,” she said.
I pulled back.
“I’m still not sure if any of this is real. Can you give me some time?”
I nodded.
“Did you just nod?”
I nodded again.
And she told me, in a quiet way, “This is all very astonishing.”
We stayed up incredibly late that night, talking and typing. At some point, Stanley scooted his way to the foot of the bed, splaying himself on the blue rug. And we built a tent around him, Olive grabbing a sheet from the linen closet and draping it across some chairs. In the light of the miniature turtle, the lint from the fabric looked like stars.
“Tell me about it,” she said, still wary, but warming to me. “What’s it like, where you’re from?”
beautiful, I wrote. safe. i am never alone.
My forelegs were becoming sore from all the typing, all the careful pressing of letters, but I was aching to write. It felt like someone, for the first time, was really listening.
Olive rested her chin in her hands, leaning cautiously closer. “What else? Tell me more.”
my planet is made of helium.
“Helium?” she asked. “I thought helium was just a gas, like for balloons and stuff.”
humans have much to learn.
“I bet we do. I bet we don’t even know half of what’s out there. I mean, people are still debating who built Stonehenge.”
the venusians.
Olive batted her eyes. “What?”
that is who built stonehenge.
“Oh,” Olive said, clearly stunned. “Wow. I’m guessing those are aliens? The ven-ooo-sians.” She pronounced it perfectly. “What’s your species called, then? I don’t even know the name of your planet.”
it does not translate well.
“Just try.”
need paper and crayon.
“That’s a funny name for a planet.”
no I need them.
“Oh, sorry! Sorry. It’s been a long day.”
She handed me a piece of paper along with raw sienna, which had rolled next to her nightstand. Carefully, with the crayon gripped in my mouth, I drew a spherical symbol, adding the strings—like ribbons fluttering around a balloon.
“That’s the name?” Olive held the paper up to the turtle light. “It’s cool. If you squint, it kind of reminds me of a moon jellyfish.”
what is moon jellyfish, I asked, and she told me in a rather animated way. She told me lots of things: not just what a moon jellyfish was, but also that her daisy barrettes were a gift from her father, when she was still very small; that Frank was charming with everyone else, just not with her; and that she’d do just about anything to have a conversation with a penguin. “Their flippers,” she said. “The way they waddle.” And every once in a while, I’d catch her peering at me intently, when she thought I wasn’t looking—studying me, as I’d studied her.
“How old are you?” she asked.
300, I typed.
“Wow,” she said. “That’s really old. Oh, I mean, no offense! I wish . . . I wish that everyone could live that long.”
i am not offended, I said—then wondered, as Olive’s eyes misted at the corners, if she was thinking of her dad.
“So are you . . . what’s the word?”
immortal.
“Yes, that.”
not on
