My Cousin, the Alien (4 page)

“Stop talking like that,” my mom objected. “You know very well that Paul loves you and you love him.”

“Of course I love him! He’s family. I just think he’s a jerk!”

We went, of course, despite Dad’s blusterings. When Mom tried to help in the kitchen, she got chased out by cooks and maids. Then she and Dad were whisked off by Aunt Marsha for a grand tour, leaving me in the hall facing Ethan under a huge light hung with crystal blobs.

“Four hundred and thirty-nine,” he said, catching my stare. “I counted. Yeah, I know, this house is majorly ostentatious. But it’s got some okay stuff too. I’ll show you.”

Ethan always liked using big words. An “ostentatious” habit, but I didn’t point that out.

And his room
was
pretty cool with its floor-toceiling windows and massive computer equipment. I noticed that among all the posters covering the wall there wasn’t a single scene from a space movie. A pretend alien in hiding sure loses out on a lot.

After showing me the wonders of his room, the rest of the mansion, the four-car garage, and the formal gardens, Ethan led me to the food tables beside the swimming pool. Despite disapproving glares from the guys in white coats serving the food, Ethan demonstrated how to build a cracker wall around the edge of the little plastic plates so they could hold more food. With scientifically piled plates, we settled into a couple of deck chairs half-hidden by a giant outdoor umbrella. Around us, the talking, laughing, posing adults were paying attention only to themselves.

After a while of silent stuffing, I asked, “So how’s this tutoring thing? Really bad?”

“No,” he said, sticking black olives on all his fingers. “I can ignore the tutor just like I ignore teachers. But it’s infuriating—a waste of time.” One by one, he sucked the olives into his mouth. “My parents and I keep fighting about it. Last night, Mom yelled that if I loved her, I’d try to learn something, and I yelled that if they loved me, they’d stop trying to make me learn that stuff. Our two species don’t communicate very well.”

I tried not to sound too nerdy. “Maybe they think that wanting you to do well in school shows they do love you? I mean, adults are always lecturing about getting good grades so we can get good jobs. Your dad probably wants you to make lots of money like he does instead of like my dad.”

“But I don’t care about all that. See? That’s another way I’m not like them. My
real
parents would love me without always bringing money into it.”

He suddenly lowered his voice so I could barely hear it above the chattering crowd. “Even throwing a party like this is dangerous. If they loved me and cared about keeping me safe, they wouldn’t do it.”

“What do you mean?” The party looked harmless to me. Just a bunch of adults standing around talking and trying to impress each other.

“They’re calling attention to us. They invited all the town’s bigwigs, but they don’t know half of these people. An alien looking for the hidden Imperial Prince could slip in easily. It could be any of those people—like that fat, bald guy by the bar.”

I checked the guy out and almost choked laughing. “Not that one, Ethan. That’s the Mayor.”

“Could be a cover identity,” he huffed.

Standing up, he threw his empty plastic plate like a Frisbee into the garbage can. “Never mind, let’s go swimming.”

The rest of the evening was okay. Ethan didn’t accuse any other prominent citizens of being aliens. And his indoor/outdoor pool was amazing.

Next morning my dad made a surprise announcement over our cheese omelet breakfast. Our kitchen wasn’t as grand as Ethan’s, but our crowded little breakfast nook was cozy. “Believe it or not,
want
it or not,” he intoned, “we’re taking a vacation.”

“What?” my mother asked, nearly dropping her fork.

“Where?” I asked.

“And why?” my dad grumbled. “Because my little brother wants to show off again.”

After a long pause, my mother prodded him. “Meaning . . . ?”

“Meaning Paul told me last night that he won some surprise drawing, and his company is giving him an all-expense-paid stay at Deer Springs Resort for his family and another family of his choice. He chose us.”

I let out a whoop. Mom and I exchanged big grins. I didn’t have a clue about Deer Springs Resort, but it sounded better than our usual vacations in run-down motels.

Mom cocked an eyebrow. “I hope you had the good sense
not
to turn him down.”

Dad glowered. “Yeah, I swallowed my pride and accepted. But I only did it for you two! Otherwise I wouldn’t go near that rich snobs’ playground—particularly not on my brother’s charity.”

“It isn’t charity, dear, it’s family togetherness. When do we go?”

Turns out we were going the week after school let out and staying in the place for five days with our rooms, meals, and use of all the resort facilities paid for. Maybe five solid days with my crazy cousin would be a little too much togetherness. But once Dad showed me the resort brochure, I figured I could stand it. Horseback riding, swimming pools, incredible gardens, and a building right out of fantasy stories. Fantastic and very Earthly looking.

Maybe we would spend the whole time without thinking about aliens.

Amazing how wrong I could be.

It took several hours to drive to Deer Springs Resort. The brochure said that it was once one of the poshest hotels in the country, and lots of rich, famous people bathed in its mineral springs to get healthy, then drank bottled “Vulcan Wasser” to cure just about everything.

Maybe I’d been thinking too much about aliens lately, but Vulcan Wasser reminded me of TV space people. The brochure said Vulcan was the old Roman god of volcanoes, and
wasser
was German for water. Whatever.

The hotel was really big, or as Ethan called it, “gargantuan.” It had columns everywhere like a huge wedding cake. Guys in red uniforms hauled our luggage up the wide front stairs. The enormous lobby sprouted potted palms, thick marble columns, and crystal chandeliers.

Once we’d checked in, a young guy in a uniform piled our luggage onto a cart and led us into a creaky elevator that, after a slow, noisy, and very cramped trip, opened again on the top floor. Our rooms were at one end of a long hall. Each family had a huge master bedroom with a bathroom grand enough for an emperor. Ethan and I each had our own bedrooms next to our parents’ with our own doors to the hall. The windows showed rambling gardens and another wing of the hotel that was covered with scaffolding.

We unpacked and went downstairs to a restaurant so fancy I was sure I’d do something wrong. There were white tablecloths, candles, cloth napkins folded like peacocks’ tails, and pieces of silverware I hadn’t a clue how to use. The menu prices were scary too, but since it was already paid for, I ordered lobster. It looked gross but tasted okay. Ethan had steak. Maybe he thought lobsters looked too much like aliens.

He certainly did not like the fat, bald waiter and whispered dire warnings to me. He watched the guy like a hawk when he served our food in case he pulled out some paralyzing weapon or sprinkled radioactive poison on our salads. But in a hotel that, like my dad said, caters to rich, middle-aged golfers, Ethan would either have to get used to seeing fat, bald guys or pick another game. After dinner even Ethan relaxed, and the six of us were so stuffed we just sat in rocking chairs on the big hotel porch and made plans for tomorrow.

Turned out, it rained buckets the next day, so Ethan and I stopped arguing about whether to go horseback riding or swimming and explored the hotel instead. Our moms took mud baths at the hotel spa, and our dads went bowling.

This hotel demanded a lot of exploring. Ethan might be scared of enemy aliens, but he sure wasn’t scared of doing things we probably weren’t supposed to. We took back stairs, slipped through unmarked doors, and explored areas roped off for renovation.

In one corridor, we saw a heavy guy who was kind of balding step out of his room. Like a scared cat, Ethan ducked into an alcove, opened a window, and stepped onto the fire escape.

“Hey, you can’t do that,” I whispered sharply.

“Why not? These things are made for people to escape from danger.”

“Yeah, but they look plenty dangerous themselves.” And they did. All rusty and covered with pigeon droppings.

“You scared?” He was already climbing down. I was scared, but even more scared that Ethan would hurt himself, and it’d be my fault for not watching out for him. So I followed. You could see through the slatted metal steps all the way to the ground. They swayed and creaked with every step. It wasn’t raining just then, but the rusty steps and hand rails were wet and slippery.

Ethan wanted to keep going, but I stopped at the next floor. “Look, that guy probably caught an elevator to the bottom. Let’s duck in here. He’d never think of looking for us just one floor down.”

“He won’t think of looking on the fire escape either.”

I stayed put. “How come you’re scared of getting on a horse but you don’t mind scrambling around dozens of feet off the ground?”

“Maybe my planet has lots of mountains, but we don’t ride on big snorting animals.”

Okay, I could think fast too. “So, what if that alien guesses we took the fire escape and starts climbing up from the bottom?”

“Then I’d pull out my pendant and see if I can make it work as a weapon.” He yanked at the chain until the weird metal disk was swinging against his chest. “I keep thinking that if I press the bumps in the right order, the crystal will fire a death ray or something. But I haven’t found the order yet.”

I looked at the shimmering pendant. The bumps seemed scattered with no pattern at all. “Have you tried drawing lines between them to see if they make a picture, like connect-thedots?”

“Yeah. It just makes a mess.”

A raindrop bounced off the disk, and several more off my head. “Let’s go in. If we’re soaked at lunch, our folks will know we didn’t stay inside like they told us.”

The rain was getting more serious as we struggled to open the window. Finally we forced it up in a shower of dust and dry paint flakes. Dramatically, Ethan scanned the empty corridor, then gestured for us to slide in. If I could just get over feeling overprotective, I admitted to myself, this game could almost be fun.

After lunch, which fortunately had no bald waiters, the adults went to play tennis in the indoor pavilion. Ethan and I just sprawled on the plush couches in the lobby, feeling a little heavy after our triple-decker sandwiches, fries, and large chocolate sundaes.

Even so, sitting out in the open like this, Ethan made us take turns being on guard. One of us would sit up watching for enemies while the other lay back in an overfed stupor and stared at the fancy ceiling. It was painted with cupids and with people wearing flowing bed sheets and riding chariots. They were surrounded by stars connected by gold lines forming constellations.

“You know,” I said lazily from where I was slumped amid big squishy pillows. “That pattern of stars over there looks sort of like the dots on your pendant.”

Ethan swiveled his gaze from suspicious doorways to the ceiling. “It does! Maybe that’s the secret of the pendant? It’s not only a weapon, it’s a map showing where I’m from! What constellation is that?”