The door to Mr. Sanchez’s apartment burst open, and Sami flew into the room. She was so out of breath from running that she could hardly talk. “Mr.…Mr. Sanchez, I’m here! You’ll never guess…what happened—”
“Just a moment!” Mr. Sanchez’s voice came from behind a door.
“But you’ll never guess—”
“Sami!” Mr. Sanchez boomed. “I’m in the bathroom! Just wait!”
Sami scowled. “Rats.”
She closed the door, dropped her backpack onto the floor, and started wandering around Mr. Sanchez’s living room. It was exactly the same shape as the living room in Sami’s apartment, and there was a television (which was on), but those were the only similarities between their two apartments. Sami wandered over to the wall that was covered with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. She loved to poke around the books, which were stacked this way and that into every space in the shelves. There was no system as to where books had been placed. Mr. Sanchez crammed them into whatever space he could find. This was fine with Sami. It meant that every time she searched the shelves she would discover a book that she had somehow not noticed before. And the books she found there could be about anything. There was a book about how smart crows are; a book that showed ancient doctors using leeches and drilling holes in people’s heads; a book about how automobile engines work; a book about African masks; a book about a man who sailed around the world on a raft; a book about how to fish; a book about how to build your own airplane; a book about sharks; a book about insects you can find in your own backyard; a book about graffiti artists; a book about how stars are born and die; a book about amazing kites from all over the world… and on and on. Many of the books were all words, of course. But even those books she would thumb through (if they had an interesting cover) and read paragraphs that caught her eye. Fortunately, however, Mr. Sanchez seemed to prefer books with plenty of photographs and illustrations. During the summer, when Mr. Sanchez had first started looking after Sami, he had bought a stepladder for her. He now always left it next to the bookcases so that she could get to the books on any shelf she wished.
But Sami was too excited about her day to get interested in any of the books. Instead she ran her fingers along their spines, making a rattling sound and sending up a fine cloud of dust that rolled in the sunlight coming in from the window. Beneath the window was Mr. Sanchez’s old stereo system. He had a record player (the only one Sami had ever actually seen) and a CD player sitting on a couple of splintery, wooden boxes. His records were stacked inside these boxes. Sami thought these were pretty cool. She liked the fact that they were big. And she really liked the fact that she was the only kid in her class that had actually handled or listened to a record. Mr. Sanchez’s CDs—hundreds of them—were stacked in tall piles beside the wooden crates. These piles were always falling over, and it was Sami’s job to stack them back up. It seemed they were toppled over almost every time she visited Mr. Sanchez. She sometimes wondered if he knocked them over on purpose.
Next to the stereo, in the corner, sat the television. A news program was on at the moment. The reporter was standing on top of a dam, talking about the draught. There should have been a huge lake of water behind that dam, but now there was no water in it at all. Tacked to the wall behind the TV were many school pictures of different classes of children. Mr. Sanchez had been an elementary school teacher for years, and all of his past classes were there on the wall. Facing the television was his green, over-stuffed chair. Sami loved this chair. It was soft and velvety and a bit dusty, and just right for curling up in.
The toilet flushed and water started running in the bathroom sink. Sami plopped herself down onto the green chair and flopped her left leg over the chair’s padded arm. She looked up at the wall beside the chair. Tacked to this wall were postcards. Hundreds of them. At the end of every school year Mr. Sanchez had asked his students to send him postcards from the many places to which they traveled. He always assured them that they would, in fact, visit many, many places in their lives. He had post cards from New York, Montana, Alaska, Hawaii, and Vermont. He had cards from Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, Saskatoon, Shiloh, and Beaverville. There were cards from the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Grand Teton National Park, the Everglades, and Lake Superior. And there were cards from France, Russia, China, India, Guatemala, Argentina, Morocco, Egypt, Madagascar, the Galapagos Islands, and even Antarctica. There were so many cards that the newer ones were tacked on top of those that were older. Sami thought it was the best wall in the world.
The door to the bathroom opened and Mr. Sanchez came out smiling. “Hola, mija. Cómo estás?”
“Okay, I guess.” Then Sami suddenly remembered her day and jumped onto her knees in the green chair. “Boy, have I got news! Bet you can’t guess what—”
“Va, va.” Mr. Sanchez waved her off of his chair. Sami huffed loudly and wriggled out of the chair. Mr. Sanchez sank down into the green softness. “Ahhh,” he said, and smiled at her.
Sami jammed her hands onto her hips and glared at him. “Are you going to let me talk or not?”
“Who’s stopping you?” Mr. Sanchez pretended to look innocent. “Talk.”
“Okay,” said Sami, brightening. “Guess what happened at school.”
“You had a crummy lunch?”
“No! I mean, yes, but that happens every day. Something special. Really really special.”
Mr. Sanchez stroked his chin, thinking, then he said, “Mrs. Fox brought cookies even though it isn’t Friday?” Sami glared and growled at him. “Okay okay okay,” said Mr. Sanchez, waving at her. “Give me another chance.”
He started thinking again. As a hint, Sami made her eyes as big as she could and looked back and forth from Mr. Sanchez to the newscast droning on the TV screen. He saw her doing this, and he grinned. “Ah! I have it.” He leaned forward. “You watched television in class!”
“Uff!” Sami snorted, and shook her fists. “No! We got an alien.”
Mr. Sanchez looked exactly like a cartoon character when it gets hit in the face with a frying pan or a door or a piano: wide-eyed and stunned. He stared at Sami for a long moment, then sank back into his green chair.
At that same moment the newscast switched to talking about the freeing of the aliens. As the newscaster explained that the aliens were finding homes and schools for their kids, suddenly a shot of Mrs. Aguirre flashed onto the screen. She was welcoming Brian the alien boy to Salt River Junior High. Sami jabbed her finger at the screen.
“There! That’s him! That’s Brian!” They watched as Mrs. Aguirre talked with the alien parents and pushed her glasses back up on her nose. Standing around them were several policeman and men in dark suits. (Sami noticed that none of those men smiled.) Then, for the thousandth time that year, the newscaster described again how the aliens had come to Earth, and showed the pictures of their destroyed spacecraft burning in some wheat field in Kansas. “It’s so totally awesome,” cried Sami. “I mean they come from some other galaxy or solar system or something and crash here and now one is going to my school! Isn’t that cool?”
Mr. Sanchez continued to stare at the screen. He shook his head and mumbled, “They didn’t crash here any more than I did.”
“Yes, they did, Mr. Sanchez. You saw the pictures. Everyone saw them.”
“Well it was no accident,” he said.
“But on the news they said—”
“They said! They said!” Mr. Sanchez interrupted, suddenly angry. Then he sighed and gently took hold of her right hand. His own hands were brown and leathery and dry, and Sami liked them. “I apologize, Sami. I’m not angry with you. Just…people.”
“I’m a people,” she said.
Mr. Sanchez smiled and patted her head with his other hand. “You certainly are.” Then he grew serious. He took both of her hands now and said, “There is so much going on in the world. You must learn to think for yourself, mija. Do you think they just crashed?”
“The news—“
“What do you think, Sami
? Does it make sense to you? Does it seem likely that the entire alien ship is destroyed but all of the aliens are safe?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. They were smart enough to get here. Maybe they were smart enough to build a spaceship that could crash and everyone would be all right. What do you think?”
Mr. Sanchez grinned at her and said, “I think you are a good thinker.”
“If you want, I could ask Brian about it tomorrow.”
“Okay,” laughed Mr. Sanchez. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
“No trouble.” Sami opened her eyes as wide as she could and jabbed her thumb to her right, like a hitchhiker who is looking at a ghost. Mr. Sanchez was confused for a moment, then he sat up, surprised.
“What, he sits next to you?” he asked her.
Sami nodded. “Yep.”
“Well, well, well.” Mr. Sanchez had to think about that for a moment. He sat back in his chair and looked up at her. “So, what do you think of him?”
“Most of the kids in class are all weird about him, and make faces and say dumb things and, you know, just weird stuff.”
Mr. Sanchez nodded. “That’s just their point of view.”
“Their point of view sucks,” said Sami.
“Here now, Sami! Where did you learn to talk like that?”
“From watching TV.”
“Yes, of course. Well… Well the kids are just scared.”
“They call him a monster,” Sami said. “They think he’s a monster.”
Mr. Sanchez laughed and nodded. “Okay, you’re right. Their point of view sucks. So now, what do you think of him?”
Sami had a lot to think about as she lay in bed that night. Everything had been the same for so long, and now suddenly everything seemed different.
Earlier that evening Sami’s mother had looked worried when Sami told her what had happened at school that day. To Sami, this was strange. Her mother might get angry or annoyed or busy, but she hardly ever worried about things. “There is always a mountain of worries to move,” she would say, “and all I have is a spoon.” Then she would smile and shrug, and that would be that. But this evening Sami could see that she was worrying. She had asked Sami a lot of questions, but Sami did not have answers for most of them.
Finally Sami’s mother had said to her, “Just keep your distance, okay?”
Sami lay in bed, thinking about that. It might be hard to keep her distance from Brian the alien. After all, he sat right next to her at school. She could see him very clearly in her mind’s eye, sitting there just beside her, but with a space between them. Sami noticed that the space did not feel empty. It felt like a wall. It was strange. Then she recalled Mrs. Aguirre bringing Brian into the classroom. Usually the principal would put her hand on a student’s shoulder and scoot him in. But Sami clearly remembered that Mrs. Aguirre had instead waved Brian in, the way you would shoo chickens into a chicken coop. And Mrs. Fox didn’t shake Brian’s hand or pat him on the shoulder, which was odd, thought Sami. She carefully reviewed the rest of the day at school, watching everyone staring and pointing at the alien.
But no one—including her—had dared to touch Brian.
Chapter 6
“You look weird!”