How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend (11 page)

I snatch the blanket back.

She gives me a wary sidelong look. “What did I miss, Tadpole?”

“Zelda's gone.”

“Gone
where
?”

“I don't know. Can you let me sleep now?”

I turn my back to her. Zelda abandoned me while I was sleeping. I woke up, searched for her. Waited an eternity. Now I'm sure she's not coming back under that blanket. The world can crumble. I don't care.

“What did you guys do?”

“Nothing!”

“Did you…?”

“Mind your own business.”

“Taaadpole!”

“Stop calling me that! I'm not a kid anymore.”

“Oh, I see. You're a
man
now.” She grabs my arm. “What's that?”

“What?”

“That! On your arm!”

I look at the inside of my left arm.

“Is that a freaking
tattoo
?” Malou yells.

“I don't know. It's…” I can't believe it. There's a black triangular octopus proudly holding a stick on my arm! It's the key—the same tattoo that was vanishing on Zelda's arm. I try to brush it off, but it's deep under my skin, the sharp black edge all red and irritated.

“Did she give
this thing
to you the way she said you give it to people?” Malou holds my arm, inspecting it closely.

“I think so.”

“You think so? Tadpole! Sex with a Spacegirl! Tattoos! What's wrong with you?”

“Nothing's wrong with me. Leave me alone!”

I can't stand Malou anymore. I can't stand myself, either. I reach for my clothes, throw off the fur blanket, and shoot for the bathroom. At least there's a lock on the door and I can be alone in there.

“Nice butt, lover,” Malou calls after me.

A cold shower doesn't help. Banging my head against the freezing tiled wall is just marginally better.

Why did she do that? Why did she give me the key and then leave? The more I try to wash it off, the redder it gets. Is this some sort of sick Vahalalian trick? A stupid souvenir that will remind me of her forever?

Like I need a freaking tattoo for that.

Malou knocks on the door. “What are we going to do with out Zelda?”

If only I could have another attack of Eol-69 and be done with it! I stick out my tongue and check it in the mirror. It's never been pinker.

“David! Let me in!”
Bang bang bang!

I stop the water, snatch a towel, cover myself with it, and lie down in the cold bathtub. I plan to disappear into a cocoon and never ever reappear.

“Don't leave me alone,” Malou begs. “The phone's ringing. David!”

I put my hands over my ears. I close my eyes. The pain just won't go. It's everywhere in me.

“I hear something in the garden. Frog! Please open the door.”

What have I done? Why did she have to go? Will she ever come back? Why couldn't she stay with me? Why does everything have to be so painful?

“There's someone at the door.”

“Zelda,” I say, passing my fingers over the weird symbol on my arm, “why did you give me the key?”

“Omigod. They're coming in. Get out of there, David! We need to—”

Then Malou's gone. Then they break down the door. Then they drag me and my cocoon out of the tub.

And then I don't care.

“D
o you believe you were the instrument of a higher power?”

The Red Tie Man waits for an answer, tap-tapping his pencil on his questionnaire.

“Can you repeat the question?” Malou asks, frowning.

“Are you responsible for your own actions?” he repeats, pronouncing each word carefully.

I look up at his old, wrinkled face. I'm pretty sure this man hasn't smiled in at least two decades.

“David?” he asks me.

Forget about me. I'm not even here.

“I'm not sure what you mean,” Malou says, trying to read his questionnaire upside down. “Is there, like, a right and wrong answer to that?”

“This person you were after, the actor, Johnny Depp.” The Red Tie Man makes a face, like mentioning a celebrity is filthy. “He could press charges against you. Sue you and your parents. He could make you miserable. Do you realize that?”

Ha. Make my life miserable. Get in line!

“Are we, like, going to jail?” Malou asks.

The man sighs and brushes imaginary crumbs from his red tie. He's not an old policeman. He's an old therapist working for the police. We're not in a sinister interrogation room in a sinister police station; we're in a sinister interrogation room in a sinister juvenile nuthouse near Paris.

The Red Tie Man is trying to establish how deeply Zelda has messed up our sanity. He moves on to the next question: “Do you realize Zelda put your life and the lives of others in great danger? David? Can you answer that for me?”

Okay, I'll answer that for him. “Go to hell!”

He clears his throat and checks a box with his pencil. The “go to hell” box, I suppose.

“I bet you that wasn't the right answer,” Malou whispers to me.

The Red Tie Man sends me back to my cell. There's a metal net over the window to remind me I'm a dangerous nutcase in a nut-case prison.

A bed, a toilet, a sink, four gray walls. Very minimal, just the way Mom would like it.

They gave me the excessively large and worn-out type of clothes Zelda was wearing the first time I saw her. I have slippers for shoes.

The door is locked. Zelda's out there somewhere. I want to be with her. I'm not. I'm dead.

Someone unlocks the door, and Dad comes in. I don't move. I stay quietly crouched on my bed, hugging my legs even tighter. I'm not even sure I'm happy to see him.

Dad's going to do all he possibly can to prove that
my
Zelda was just a daydream. I don't want her to become a daydream. I want Zelda to be Zelda.

There's no chair in my room, so he sits on the toilet. “I just talked with the judge,” he says.

Dad's a real ace at looking poised when everything's crumbling around us. “So far, he's refusing to let me take Marie-Louise and you under my care.”

Dad's about the only person in the world who calls Malou Marie-Louise. He doesn't believe in nicknames.

“Did they abuse you physically?”

“No.”

“Did they imply you were crazy?”

I shrug.

“Don't let them tell you you're crazy. You are not crazy. You hear me?”

“Did she get him?” I ask.

“Who?”

“Johnny Depp. Did Zelda get him?”

Dad gets off the toilet and sits beside me on the bed. “Would it matter to you if she did?”

That's it, he's in child therapist mode.

“If she got him, I'll never see her again.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because she will take him to her planet, and she will never come back to Earth.”

Dad seems to think about this. “David?”

“Yes.”

“Try not to talk to anyone about Zelda until I get that order from the judge.”

I'm not crazy—no, no—but other, less
understanding
people might think otherwise.

“She got him, then?”

“No, she never got to him. He's not even in France. He's away somewhere promoting his movies. It's…” Dad's looking for the right words. “You know, I believe this actor…what's his name…the pirate.”

“Johnny Depp.”

Dad nods. “He is not the real issue here.”

“You're wrong. She's obsessed with him.” She would stop at nothing, not even breaking my heart—or killing me, which is the same thing.

“No, David. She doesn't really want him. She's never even met him. He's just a name she put over her real purpose.”

“What purpose?”

“Zelda is just like anyone else. Like you or like me. She wants exactly what we want.”

“What's that?”

“To love someone and be loved back.”

A young girl, also wearing worn-out, oversize clothes, brings me my dinner tray. “The food here sucks. It's freaking revolting,” she
says, leaving the tray beside me on the bed. “My name's Suzy, by the way. Suzy for Suzanne.”

She drops a folded piece of paper on my lap when the male nurse isn't looking. “Don't worry, I'm cool. You're cute, but I'm not coming on to you. It's from your sister.”

When they're gone, I unfold the note. It reads, “Hello, my little tadpole. Or is it ‘Mister Man,' now that you're all clued up? How's life in your part of the nuthouse? I'm surrounded by totally crazy girls. Never felt so much at home. Ha ha ha! You can write back to me and give the note to Suzy. She's cool, but she probably told you that. She's here because she's a nymphomaniac, and since you're a sex beast, I'm sure you're going to love each other. Did you get any new tattoos? Write to me. I love you (like a sister, you perverted boy!).”

I stuff the piece of paper in my pocket. This is new. I never thought I'd miss Malou so much. It's good I don't have anything to write with, because if I did I wouldn't be able to resist the impulse to tell her I love her, too.

I'm not myself anymore.

Before Zelda, I was a shy, obedient boy.

“Your father is making quite a ruckus to stop us from helping you,” the Red Tie Man says.

I shrug. My father is a great therapist. This man is just a glam-orized prison warden.

I'm meeting him in his office, one on one. The door's locked. A male nurse is waiting for me in the corridor outside the office, since I'm a dangerous loony.

“When you think of Zelda, how do you feel?”

I scratch the key tattoo. It's very itchy. I wonder if there are
any side effects to it—like rage and the desire to strangle people with their red ties.

“Do you still believe she came from another planet?”

Before Zelda, I was a stupid Earthling like the Red Tie Man. Ignorant and weak. Since she transferred the key to me, I feel part Vahalalian.

“Should I take your silence as a yes?”

I shrug.

“Do you remember when you started to believe she was really from another planet?”

I have an answer for him this time. “When she started beating up people like you. That was totally out of this world.”

The Red Tie Man is very sensitive. He cuts our session short and sends me back to my room.

The second the male nurse opens the door and pushes me into my cell, I smell trouble: Chanel No. 5 and menthol cigarette smoke.

MOM!

She sits on my bed, wearing purple-tinted bug-eye glasses, her legs crossed, waiting for me.

“You can't smoke in here,” the male nurse tells her.

She drags on her cigarette dramatically. “Why don't you go wipe some ass somewhere else?” she tells him, and flicks the cigarette into the toilet.

She sounds lethally pissed off. I'm lethally pissed off, too. Let's get ready to rumble.

“For once, your father and I agree on one thing: My son doesn't belong in a nuthouse. You belong in your room, where you will be locked for the rest of your teen years.” She taps on the bed beside her. “Come and sit here.”

I don't move.

“Now!” she orders.

I shake my head to let her know I won't. This is new, too: I'm not scared of her anymore.

“I care for you, David. More than I care for anyone else. More than I care for myself.”

“More than you care for your stupid black coat? Your car? Or the gazillion-dollar vase we broke?”

She sighs and closes her eyes. I'm sure she's struggling not to yell and scratch my face off, thinking of all her beloved items that we destroyed. “It was a
very nice coat,
you know.” She takes off her purple-tinted bug-eye glasses. “But yes, I care for you marginally more than I care for that stupid coat or that vase.”

She lights another cigarette. Drags nervously. “You should have seen how my parents treated me,” she sneers. “Ha! Do you think they cared about me? Do you think they spoiled me like I spoil you? Though I didn't go stealing cars and burning down gas stations to upset them.”

I take a few steps toward her. I'm going to do something I should have done years ago. I can see a mix of surprise and apprehension in her eyes as I get closer and lean over her. She probably knows I'm going to hug her. But before I do that, I grab the cigarette and throw it in the toilet.
Pssssst,
it whispers before dying.

“I hate when you smoke,” I say, and before she can start screaming, I wrap my arms around her. I rest my head against her chest. I feel her arms going around me. Hesitantly at first, then firmly.

She breathes deeply, squeezing me against her for the first time in a very long while. “I hate the terrible influence this crazy girl has on you,” she says, her voice breaking.

We break apart. She quickly puts her glasses back on to hide that she's crying. She looks up at me and seems to notice something. “David?”

She stands up as if she just saw a ghost standing beside me. She grabs my arm. “What's THIS on your arm?” She lifts her glasses to get a better look at it. Oh, she's not crying anymore. “Is that a…a…a…?”

I retreat into my cocoon. My arm hurts where Mom squeezed it. She screamed so much the male nurse rushed in to take her out of my room. She threatened to sue the nuthouse. She threatened to sue whoever put this “monstrosity” on my arm. But mostly she threatened to scratch the thing off with a butcher knife as soon as I'm back in her custody.

At dinner, Suzy has no new note from Malou, but she does give me an old chewed-up pen. She kisses me on the cheek. I guess it's a fair fee for her service.

I write on the back of Malou's last note, using the toilet seat as my desk. “Dad and Mom are going to get us out of here. My money is on Mom. Didn't get any new tattoos. Miss you, too. Strangely. Your brother.”

I also write “Thinking of Zelda hurts,” but then I scribble over it until you can't read the words anymore.

The male nurse pushes me into the Red Tie Man's office. Mom. Dad. Édouard. More nurses. Even Malou is already in there. They're all looking at me.

“What's going on?” I ask.

The Red Tie Man has a black eye and fresh scratches all over his face. He sits behind his desk, doing his best to produce his first smile in years.

“You and your stepsister are released into your father's custody.” He sounds particularly smug for someone losing two of his favorite prisoners.

“But Zelda will stay here with us,” he says, sending a massive electroshock down my spine.

“Zelda?” I turn to Malou for confirmation. “Zelda can't be here.”

Malou nods her head sadly. “She came back for you, Frog.”

The Red Tie Man is so intensely happy, his smile gets all twisted. “Do you know what schizophrenia is, David?”

I turn to Dad. I don't care what schizophrenia is. Zelda is not crazy. “Tell me he's lying. Tell me she's not locked up here.”

Dad is incapable of lying. “She's here, David. I saw her. She's heavily drugged.”

“We have her on antidepressants. She was very upset,” the Red Tie Man says. He has a scratched face and black eye to illustrate his point. “But we can manage her violent behavior in here.”

I'm staring at his red tie. Something nasty is rising up in me.

“Zelda belongs with us,” he says.

I leap forward and land on the desk. The nurses try to drag me away. It's too late for that. I get a good hold on their boss's red tie. The more they pull me, the more the Red Tie Man screams like a girl. Even Dad begs me to let go of him.

I scream. Malou screams. Mom screams the most.

The nurses are pulling and punching me with renewed energy. They jerk me, squeeze me, and squash me. I can't breathe, but I'm okay with that as long as the Red Tie Man can't breathe either.

“Let me go,” I whisper. They push and pull me harder, pinning me down on the desk with their knees. I spit out the last tiny bit of air in my lungs. I'm suffocating. If only I could take one last deep breath, I could finish him. Everything turns soft and yellow. I can't fight anymore. I let go of the tie.