I had known all along what Adam meant about him and Baby coming to a new place, trying to escape a bad situation. My parents had done the same thing for me, only the bad people they were running from were actually in charge of their country.
I don't remember the getaway or their deaths, but when I asked the lady at the foster home about it, she had grinned like a serpent and called my parents heroes. According to her, they had sacrificed themselves so that I could have a better life with The Quinns.
I think she wanted me to be grateful or something,
But all I felt was this deep, intense hatred every time I thought of them leaving me alone in a strange place, not knowing anyone or anything.
So I guess I had more in common with Space Boy than I thought.
"Yeah, we'll take four Mega Double Cheese Whoppers and a kid's meal," Adam tells the bored-looking lady behind the Burger King counter once we stop for lunch on our way to Roswell. "Oh, and what kind of toys do you have? I know you had Lion King toys last month, but..."
I stand over by a stack of newspapers while he orders for us and I thumb through them, trying to find something talking about the weird lights over Backwater or Baby's unexpected arrival when he'd crash-landed right on top of my fucking car.
"Kevin, look! Colored fizzy water!" Baby calls to me from where he stands over by the Coke machine, and then I hear the whoosh of him squirting soda into his cup like five million times.
"Wow, that's so cool!" I call to him without turning around, and then I open the newspaper to a page that shows a big-ass picture of an almond-shaped spacecraft lurching out of the ground surrounded by police officers and random people. Holy shit, it seriously looked like the whole town of Backwater had come out to see the thing.
"Kevin!" Adam says, and suddenly he's standing in front of me carrying a huge bag of greasy food. "What the hell happened to you watching Baby while I ordered us food?"
"Oh, put a sock in it, Professor! He's perfectly fine--!"
I turn around to point at Baby and freeze when I see that little alien bastard shooting soda out, bent over, and latched onto the rootbeer spout, sucking it down like a goddamn calf on an udder.
"Oh, Christ!" I go over to Baby and I pull him away from the machine, hand locked onto his skinny wrist. "Are you out of your mind!?" I demand, "You can't just chug that shit through the spout like an animal. You have to use a cup or else you'll get our asses kicked out! You goddamn crazy-ass Blueberry!"
"I-I'm sorry..." Baby admits, his tan face dribbling soda onto his wet shirt, "I think I may have developed an addiction to your planet's colored waters, Kevin. They're fizzy, sweet and they make my stomach tickle."
"Come on, Kev, just forget it," Adam says, and he puts a hand on my shoulder to try to get me to calm the hell down, which was impossible, but still. "The manager's already giving us the stink eye. We should probably get out of here before she calls the cops."
I look over at the counter and sure enough the Piggly Wiggly pink-haired manager's glaring daggers at us from where she stands, eyeing the huge-ass puddle that Baby had made on the floor and counter.
So we hustle out of there shortly after that and pile back into the van with our food.
"Look at this," I tell Adam as we're devouring our burgers, and I hand him the newspaper that I'd been looking at earlier. "They printed an article about Baby's spaceship crashing the other night! It's pretty much calling Backwater the second Roswell Incident."
"Seriously?" Adam wipes off his ketchup-stained hands and then he opens up the paper, skimming the article. "Man, the police artist really did you dirty. They got your mullet and ginormous ears right, though."
"What the fuck? Let me see!" I snap, and I snatch the paper from him. Sure enough, my big face stares back at me from the middle of page five. The only difference was, was that they'd made my eyebrows embarrassingly nonexistent and made my ears huge.
I mean, seriously. They looked like giant cauliflower protruding out of my head.
"What's the Roswell Incident?" Baby questions from the back seat, and I turn and watch him peel the meat patty out of his burger and slop it into his bag like it was hot garbage.
"It's a space ship that supposedly crashed in the desert a long time ago," Adam explains, "Nobody ever found out what it was because the government got there first."
"We all just assumed it was little gray men that came and visited us," I toss in, and then I crumple up the newspaper with my picture and then fling it out the window. "Who would have thought you guys would be bright blue and two feet tall?"
"I'm blue because I'm young, like you," Baby explains, "We only become gray colored when we're ill or extremely old. The final stage of our life is when we lose our glow, then it's time to release us into the universe."
"Sounds like my grandma, only she's still alive," I mutter, and then I suck soda through a straw before I pass the cup off to Baby to polish off.
"What's a glow?" Adam asks Baby, who swallows down my soda like he was a fat little bumblebee slurping up nectar.
"It's the warmth inside of me," Baby pauses to explain, and then he holds up his shirt so we can see his flat, currently tan stomach and faint glow peeking through his skin. "There's an Arcturian legend that our Elders tell us about a creature named Aanick making a bargain with a star. In exchange for a long prosperous life, he promised to respect our planet and all the creatures on it."
Adam and I listen like we're two little kids at storytime. Baby's voice was gentle and sweet, and frankly, his stories were pretty fucking interesting. So who wouldn't want to listen to that?
"Aanick consumed the star as part of the bargain, but only on the condition that it would leave him if he broke his promise," Baby continues.
"And did he? Break his promise, I mean?" I question, and I swirl around a fry in my puddle of ketchup.
"Yes," Baby explains quietly, "Aanick devoured a fellow beast and its family shortly after climbing the great mountains of Arcturus. But he didn't let the star go as promised. So it contorted him into something awful."
I open my mouth to ask Baby about what happened to jackhole Aanick and if the star had gotten his revenge, but then I hear a crowing from far off in the distance.
"What the hell is that?" Adam questions and he shoves his burger back into his bag.
"I don't know," I look around and then I open my window, looking out into the empty parking lot and desert scenery all around us. And sure enough, I see a tiny white speck approaching, the heat making clear waves around him as he walks along the hot concrete.
It was Cluck Norris, fresh from the battle, bloody and torn, but alive.
That little asshole had actually survived.
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