Page 13 of The Bully Alien

"I sure did, but if I also reached out an olive branch, offering to get you dinner, and all you did was—"

"I'm not answering your questions."

"Like I said, fine. People usually give and take—"

"Friends don't."

I snort. "Do you have friends?"

"Do you?" he counters.

"No," I say easily enough. "It's the first day of classes. Everyone is looking to make friends."

"Not me."

"You're doing a bang-up job of that," I snap.

"Not you either."

I lift my chin but say nothing.

"And that's because of you putting up airs," he says. "You have walls up. Won't let anyone in because you don't want to be hurt again, not physically or emotionally."

I glare at him, hating that he's reading me so well already.

"Goodbye, Alien Man."

"You call me that, even if we're alone, then I'm going to call you that name you don't like," he warns.

I wave and then give him the finger before walking away.

But after a few steps, I glance back at him. To my surprise, he's watching me. His eyes are so intense that something inside me stirs.

I'm embarrassed by his looking at me and then for him catching me looking back at him again, but then something else takes over. Confidence? Curiosity? All of these things swirl through my head and body until I'm finally far enough away that I can't see him anymore.

I return to the cafeteria, feeling transformed somehow, exhilarated after our fight and my learning his secret.

There is something about Piercing Blue Eyes that makes me feel alive in a way I haven't felt in such a long time. Is it because of the knowledge that there are aliens out there? That I can maybe one day leave this planet and never return?

I want that. I never thought it possible. I wanted to go to the moon and maybe live there or on a satellite or Mars or something like that, but now, there's hope for something better.

Alien Man can breathe here. Maybe that means I can breathe on his home planet.

Wouldn't that be something?

But he's stuck here.

And I'm stuck here.

I have hope, but I don't have faith that leaving Earth can actually happen.

* * *

The next day, Wyatt is late to every class, and then he hangs back to talk to every professor so the cycle repeats. I hate that it means he's lost always forced to sit next to me since I always sit up front. Most everyone else hangs out in the back.

During our last class, Stellar, Galactic, and Extragalactic Astronomy & Astrophysics, we're assigned partners for a project already. We don't have a choice who we're with, and as luck would have it, the professor is lazy and picks people based on where we're sitting.

Which means I'm with Alien Man.