How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend Page 12

  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.

  And poof. Lights out.

  When I come back to life, I’m in Dad’s arms. He’s carrying me like he did when I was a kid. He’s practically running through the corridor, he’s so eager to get me out of this place.

  I can see Mom over his shoulders. “You nearly killed him, you idiots! I’ll sue the ass off you!” she yells at the Red Tie Man, who follows us into the corridor, taking off his tie, coughing, and yelling harsh words.

  He’s gone from purple to simply red.

  No one’s talking in Édouard’s car. No one mentions Mom’s car and what we did to it. Dad sits between Malou and me in the backseat.

  “Get her out of there,” I say.<
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  Dad never lies, and he tells it the way it is: “I can’t get her out of there.”

  “Mom?”

  She turns to me, hiding her eyes behind her large purple sunglasses again.

  “Can you get her out of there?” I repeat.

  She shakes her head. She can’t get Zelda out, or she just doesn’t want to.

  “She’s not crazy.”

  They pretend I didn’t say anything.

  “She’s not schizophrenic. She’s…”

  “She’s what?” Mom asks coldly.

  “She’s really from outer space,” Malou answers for me.

  “Say something!” Mom gives Dad a furious look. “You’re the cuckoo expert.”

  “This is not about you and your stupid fights,” I shout before Dad can explain that no one is ever cuckoo. “This is about Zelda. She needs my help.”

  “They’re going to help her in that place,” Mom says. “It’s not your business, anyway.”

  She leans over to grab my arm and show the tattoo to Dad.

  “I found a clinic that will laser this thing off.”

  I pull my arm away. “You’re not touching it!”

  She turns back to the highway. Her hands shake as she lights her next cigarette. She takes a few drags before she can speak again. “This crazy girl has turned my son into a terrorist.”

  Damn right. And I’ll give them more terror. “Malou is coming back to live with us,” I declare, like I’m in charge now.

  Mom and Édouard exchange a look. They thought they could just drop her off anywhere in Paris and forget all about her.

  “Maybe Malou doesn’t want to live with us,” Mom says hopefully.

  “I don’t want to be alone right now,” Malou whispers.

  “I guess she can live with us for a while,” Mom concedes hesitantly, “if she promises not to touch any of my things or drive Édouard mental.”

  “I won’t touch your things,” Malou says. She can’t promise anything about driving her father mental.

  19

  KEY TO VAHALAL LOCKED ON THE EARTHLING CREATURE CALLED DAVID GERSHWIN—VALIDITY: REMAINS UNLIMITED

  “Wake up,” I say, squatting in front of Malou in the middle of the night. She’s sleeping on a mattress straight on the floor in the middle of my room. I give her a serious push.

  “Wha-at?”

  “You snore.”

  She moans. “You woke me up because I snore?”

  “No, I woke you up because we’re getting Zelda out.”

  Zap! That does it. Malou sits up as if the devil just poked her ass with his tail.

  “Tadpole, you know I’m all for it. But that nuthouse is like a freaking prison.”

  I shrug. “I don’t care. We’re going back.”

  “It will take, like, an army to get Zelda out.”

  “Good. I know exactly where to find one.”

  “Oh no no no! You’re not really thinking of those girls.”

  I’m precisely thinking of those girls. “Mom and Édouard are asleep. Hurry up.” I throw her jeans on the mattress. “Are you in or out?”

  “You don’t want to involve the freaking Valks,” she protests, but she starts pulling on her jeans. “Remember how they are: Kill this, destroy that!”

  “Great!” I kick her sneakers toward her. “That’s exactly the sort of attitude we need.”

  This time, we steal Édouard’s cherished BMW SUV, since Mom’s Mercedes is still impounded by the police.

  “You’ll see. He’s totally going to blame this on me,” Malou says, stopping the car in front of the abandoned school.

  “They’ll never know.” I get out of the car and face the decaying building. Somehow it’s even more sinister than I remembered. “When they wake up, we’ll be sleeping in our room. The car will be in its parking place. Zelda will be in my closet.”

  Two Vahalalians spring out of their foxholes the second we pass the playground. Their faces are covered in markings. We’re dealing with two angry Valks.

  They squeak nervously, circling us, their batons in hand. “Look, they came back, the fools,” they seem to say.

  “We want to talk with the mother,” I tell them, trying to avoid looking them in the eye.

  Instead of answering, they start sniffing me like two hound dogs.

  “Okay, that’s disturbing,” Malou whispers.

  But we haven’t seen anything yet. One of them grabs my hair, pulls my head back, and kisses me roughly.

  “For Chrissake!” Malou pulls me away from the girl’s embrace. “Easy now,” she tells the second girl who’s charging like she wants some, too.

  But the second Vahalalian is not after a kiss. She lifts my sleeve and looks at my key tattoo and—oh boy! They start squeaking like dolphins eyeing a bucket of sardines.

  “They are right,” the mother says as soon as we step into the gym, where she awaits us. She gets closer and sniffs me just like her watchdogs did. “You stink of it.”

  “Stink of what?”

  “Check his tattoo! Check his tattoo!” the disciples seem to chant in their lingo, whirlpooling closer and closer around us on the basketball court. Even the failed Travelers get closer to me, some of them pinching me and my clothes like they want to chew off a piece of me.

  “I need your help,” I say. “Zelda is being held prisoner.”

  The mother isn’t listening. She grabs my arm, lifts my sleeve, and checks my tattoo. “Clever girl,” she sneers. “She transferred the key to you before it expired.”

  And to make absolutely sure I’m the real McCoy, she closes her eyes and…er…samples me.

  Some of the Vahalalians howl and rattle the climbing ropes; they find all this extremely exciting.

  “He’s just a kid, you vinyl freak,” Malou screams, trying to pull me away.

  “Delicious,” the mother whispers, licking her lips like she just tasted a great wine. “He has the key!” she yells.

  And the girls go wild! They touch me. Pull my hair. Drag me this way and that, like they all want a piece of me.

  Malou is holding me tight, trying to protect me from this pack of lunatics. “Frog, I’m going to be honest with you. I think they’re going to eat you.”

  Ooouch. There’s some truth to that. One of the failed Travelers just went on all fours and bit my left calf.

  I turn to the mother and look her straight in the eyes. I don’t care if it’s a sin. “Help me get Zelda back,” I beg. “I will give you the key. Even if it means…transferring it to you.”

  Ooouch. Another one bites me on the butt. Jeez, these girls are eager.

  “I’ll do anything you want if you free her.”

  The mother sneers, like, “isn’t he cute?” and then she asks the million-dollar question: “Will you open the door to Vahalal for us?”

  “I will,” I say, moving away from a particularly voracious Traveler.

  “So be it!” The mother raises her hand. Her disciples stop trying to eat me alive to listen to her. “Girls, pack up! We’re going home.”

  “Woohoo!” they hoot collectively.

  “Oh, one last thing.” The mother turns to me with a wicked glint in her eye. “Did Zelda tell you how we open the door?”

  “No.”

  “Let me tell you, Earthling,” she says with a nasty smirk. “You’re in for quite a ride.”

  This feels just like a school field trip. Since all the exiles are coming to Zelda’s rescue, the Valks stole two school buses to transport everyone comfortably. We’re zooming through the distant Parisian suburbs. The moon is up. I’m sitting beside Malou, thinking of Zelda.

  The Vahalalians are singing beautiful songs in their dolphin dialect—a girls’ soccer team celebrating a victory wouldn’t look happier.

  “We meet again, Earthling,” a Vahalalian says, leaning over my seat and putting her hand on my shoulder. It’s Lena. She looks much better, almost fully recovered from our trip down south.

  “What are they singing?” Malou asks her.


  “War songs. This one is about chopping your enemies’ heads off and making trophies out of them.”

  The Red Tie Man and his goons are doomed.

  “I feel like murder!” the mother says, stepping off the bus holding two scary old axes. “Let the engine run. This won’t take long.”

  “Just one more thing.” I stop her before she charges with her troops.

  “What?” she shouts.

  “Actually, I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t do the Ugo thing with those.” I nod toward the axes.

  “Why?”

  “Consider it part of the deal. If you chop off anyone’s head, I won’t open the door.”

  “What about gutting?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Cutting off limbs?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “Killing at all?”

  “Nope.”

  “Argh!” she groans and throws the axes on the ground, drawing her baton instead. “Girls! Find Zelda, destroy this place,” she orders. “And, well, no killings!” she adds sadly.

  I swear, the Valks moan in disappointment.

  Twenty minutes later, every building is on fire and all the patients and nursing staff are running around the lawn like head-less chickens.

  “They know how to get things done,” Malou says approvingly. We’re leaning against the bus, watching the show. Even the failed Travelers are participating in their own way by chewing on bits of grass and dirt from the lawns.

  Then I see her. My very own Vahalalian, dragged away from the mayhem by our old friends Lena and Pela.

  Zelda! I’m flying, I’m overwhelmed, I’m running toward her, I’m—

  “Don’t do it, David!” Zelda screams the second she sees me. “Don’t open the door for them! They’ll—”

  Pela claps a hand over her mouth, and they drag her onto the bus before she can say more.