How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend Read online

  “It’s fiberglass and wood. Very unique. Give it back.” I desperately try to reach for it, but she has such long, strong arms. “Please.”

  “If I break the wood off…”

  Break is such a cruel word. “Choose something else! We can cut some cardboard and paint it.”

  “I need this artifact.”

  “It’s art!”

  “What you Earthlings call art is useless. Weapons and shields are necessary.”

  It’s a tough universe out there.

  She lifts the vase above her head and then slams it against the wall. Clunk!

  “Noooo!”

  There’s no reasoning with this girl. She has broken Mom’s vase in two and now slides her arm into the fiberglass part, looking very pleased with herself.

  We’re so busted! “Mom will kill both of us for this.”

  “No. She will just kill you. Good-bye and good luck, Earthling,” she says, shooting toward the door with nothing on but a tiny bikini, knee-high leather boots, and a broken vase around her left arm.

  “You can’t possibly go out dressed like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “This is France! You’re practically naked. You’re going to start a riot! Please!”

  She sighs, grabs a black coat hanging in the foyer, and buttons it over the swimsuit. “Are you happy now?”

  “No!” She’s chosen Mom’s absolute favorite summer coat. “That’s a Lagerfeld!”

  But Zelda doesn’t care. She opens the door, pausing in front of the mirror to inspect her reflection, and then grabs Mom’s vintage Cardin sunglasses to complete her outfit.

  “You cannot take those glasses,” I say with a trembling voice. “Mom would rather give me away than see those gone.”

  “Your problem.” Zelda shrugs. “I must go find my chosen one. Good-bye, dwarf.”

  I follow her to the staircase. “You’re going to bring the coat back, aren’t you?”

  “Stop following me!” she says as she crosses the road toward the park.

  “Mom really loves that coat. Seriously. It means the world to her.”

  And the sunglasses! There’re, like, five pairs of them left in the entire world, and those were given to Mom by one of her clients as a token of his appreciation for getting him divorced so quickly. Mom adores those glasses.

  “Okay, dwarf. Take the coat back and leave me alone.”

  She’s about to take it off. It’s one o’clock. The Jardin du Luxembourg is crowded with people on their lunch breaks, kids going to the pond with their miniature sailboats, old people feeding pigeons. She’s about to show them all her tattoos—or biological markings or whatever they are—and create a scandal.

  “Keep the coat on!”

  “Not if you keep following me. What is wrong with you?”

  I don’t know. She’s bonkers, no doubt. Way more than anyone Dad ever fixed, even that poor boy who thought he was three people at the same time. But…I’m…I just…I want to…to be with her, very badly. “I can be useful.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I know this city inside out. I know…Earthlings. I’m able to talk to them without smashing anything on their heads. I…I’m very good with maps! Er…there are so many ways I can help you. I can be, like, your…guide.”

  She takes off Mom’s sunglasses and stares right into my eyes. She looks a bit scary. “Are you offering to become my Pudin?”

  “What’s a Pudding?”

  “A Pudin: a lower life-form renouncing its freedom to serve a Traveler.”

  “Oh. You mean like…a slave?”

  “Exactly, Earthling.”

  Slave sounds bad. Still, it’s better than “that miserable guy she abandoned in the middle of the park.”

  “Sure,” I say. “I can be your Pudding or Pudin or…anything!” As long as she lets me stay with her.

  “Good.” She puts both hands on my shoulders and starts making noises like a dolphin: Quikidizikzik taaak taaak!

  “What was that?” Does she want fish?

  “I swore you in. You are now officially my Pudin and will serve me until you die or until I leave this planet.” And—zoom—she walks away at high speed.

  “Where are you going?” I call after her.

  “To the Temple of Zook, Pudin.”

  I love it when she calls me that.

  “Zook? Your goddess? Here in Paris?”

  “There’s a Temple of Zook in every major city in the universe.”

  “Oh, but of course!”

  She stops. “Are you mocking me again, Pudin?”

  I might have laughed a little. “Sorry.”

  “Do you realize what being a Pudin means?”

  “I guess we’re like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. I’m Sancho.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. Let’s go fight some windmills.”

  6

  EXPIRATION: 55 HOURS

  I always wondered what was behind the medieval walls of some of the oldest palaces in Le Marais.

  According to Zelda: an extraterrestrial temple built to the glory of Zook, goddess of the Vahalalians.

  “This is it,” Zelda says, nodding toward an ancient chapel squeezed between two tall buildings at the end of a dark courtyard off the tiny rue des Oiseaux.

  It’s not the futuristic metal-and-glass construction I imagined it would be. It’s more like any other old Gothic church in Paris—if darker, smaller, and yes, somehow scarier.

  Zelda pushes the old wooden door. There’s no lock, no chains, but then again, there’s nothing to steal. A few wooden benches, a few burning candles giving off the only light to see by, bare stone walls, and a fading depiction of the Virgin Mary painted on the back wall behind the altar.

  “Are you sure this is the place?” I point at the painting. “This is a painting of the Virgin Mary. And she’s very Catholic.”

  “This is not Mary. This is Zook.”

  Oh, sorry—my mistake!

  “And this is not a painting, it is a door.”

  “A door?” I approach the painting and knock on it. Bonk bonk bonk! It’s stone hard. “Is there a secret passage behind it?”

  “You could say that.”

  There is some sort of pit at the base of the painting, like some-one actually tried to dig his way to the other side. “Is the real temple behind this wall?”

  “No, this is the temple.”

  “So what’s behind the wall, then?”

  “You see the star Zook is pointing at, the one right above her head?”

  That’s right. Mary—I mean, Zook—is pointing two fingers at a fading white spot right above her head.

  “That is my sun.”

  “Okay…”

  “Do you understand?”

  “No.”

  She puts it in plain words for me: “Whoever walks through this wall will travel back to Vahalal.”

  “You mean…this is a freaking STARGATE?” I laugh again. Oops.

  She gives me a dark look.

  “It’s just funny because of the show. You know with the…” I try to draw a door with my hands and pantomime opening it. “And then—zoom—into a wormhole. Right?” At least I know where she gets all her ideas from: TV!

  She sighs. I’m such a disappointing Pudin.

  “Zelda, I don’t want to ruin your thing. But this is a stone wall.” I slap the Virgin Mary’s stomach. It’s hard, cold, and painful on my hand.

  “It looks like a wall because it is locked,” she explains, squatting behind the altar. “But like every door, it has a key.”

  “And you have that key?”

  “Yes.” She puts her hand inside a large crack at the base of the altar and pulls out a small metal box.

  “Is that the key?”

  “No, this is not the key. It is a few items I brought from Vahalal.”

  Like an essential interstellar travel pack.

  “There,” she says, lifting the sleeve of Mom’s coat and showing me a tattoo that loo
ks like a strange triangular octopus proudly holding a stick.

  “There what?”

  “That, Pudin, is the key. Whoever carries this marking can walk through the door.” She caresses it gently. “I don’t have much time left. Look. It’s already fading.”

  It does look lighter than her other tattoos, like a cheap homemade one she got years ago.

  “In a few days, the key will expire. If I don’t find my chosen one before that, I’ll be trapped on this ridiculous planet forever.”

  “Oh. That would be awful.”

  She sighs, totally missing the irony in my voice. She puts her hands on my shoulders. “Many Travelers have come here and failed.” She squeezes my shoulders till it hurts. “But we’re going to find him or die trying. Won’t we, Pudin?”

  I nod. Sure thing. Dying should totally be part of my job description.

  She stops mauling me and lets go. “Good Pudin.”

  “Okay, let me get this straight.” I rub my shoulders. “Because you have that weird octopus thing on your arm, you could just…walk through this wall and, zoooof, shoot back to your planet right before my eyes?”

  “It’s not an octopus. It’s a key. And no, Earthling. I won’t open the door.” She kneels in front of the painting. “My chosen one will, once I give him the key.” She touches her goddess’s feet in a sign of obedience. “And then together we will fly through space and back to my planet.”

  “You’re taking him back with you?” My voice gets a few notches higher with surprise.

  She turns away from Zook and stands up. “That is what we do, Earthling: We give them the key and take them back to Vahalal, lock them in the Tower of Tor, and make sure they never escape.”

  It gets worse for the poor chosen one by the second. “You want to give the guy a piece of your own skin and lock him up in a prison?!”

  “The Tower of Tor is not a prison. It’s more like…what you Earthlings call a zoo. And I won’t give him a piece of my skin. I will transfer the key to him during sexual intercourse. Are you all right, Pudin? You appear to be emotionally disturbed.”

  “I’m fine.” Except all the blood in my body rushed to my face the second she said sexual intercourse.

  It’s windy over the Seine River. We’re crossing the Pont Notre-Dame, going back to the Rive Gauche. I’m thinking about the painting of Zook, the door to Vahalal, the Tower of Tor, the key octopus tattoo thingy on her arm. But mostly, I must confess, I’m thinking of Zelda…well…removing her Speedo and transferring the key to her chosen one. I feel dizzy. And a bit scared. I wonder if I should phone Dad immediately and have the cuckoo squad come pick her up with their butterfly nets and tranquilizer darts, because if she believes any or all of these things she’s talking about, I’ve become the Pudin of one seriously deranged girl. But I just can’t resist her. She’s the most interesting person I’ve ever met. The most…I don’t know. Special.

  She stops right in the middle of the bridge and takes off Mom’s sunglasses to take a better look at my city. “He is out there somewhere,” she says. “And I will find him.”

  Oh God, I’m so confused I could scream. The wind plays with her long hair, most of it landing over her face. She’s so damn beautiful.

  “Zelda?”’

  “Yes, Pudin?”

  “People on Earth don’t walk around spelling out their DNA.”

  “I know that, Pudin. I’ve been studying your primitive civilization.”

  “My point is, that’s not how we find a, you know, girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever.”

  “Not boyfriend, chosen one.”

  “What I’m saying…it might come as a surprise to you, but if all you know is his DNA, it’s going to be really hard to find him. Probably impossible.”

  And then, out of nowhere, she grabs my face and kisses me. Her lips part. Her tongue touches mine.

  Olivier was wrong. This isn’t anything like raw chicken at all. It’s more like spinning and falling.

  I close my eyes and clumsily put my arms around her to make sure we’ll stay like this forever.

  It’s the first time I’ve ever kissed a girl.

  I’m kissing a girl.

  I. AM. KISSING. A. GIRL. Until—zoom—she abruptly pushes me away and all the happiness drains out of me.

  I open my eyes. “Did I…? Was I…? Did you…?” But, more importantly, “Why did you do that?” You should hear the high pitch of my voice.

  “To show you how it works.”

  “What?!”

  “Travelers are experts in gustative biochemistry. That is how we sample someone’s DNA. By the way, you are not a match.”

  Sometimes her little Spacegirl fantasy totally sucks.

  “Why are you emotionally disturbed again?” she asks, trying to keep up with me as we pass Saint-Eustache Cathedral. “Pudin, stop running away from me!”

  “I’m not emotionally anything!” But I am running away from her. I just don’t feel like playing her little games anymore.

  I stop and turn around to face her. “I don’t think you’re funny!”

  “I am not meant to be funny.”

  Apparently.

  “Are you upset about me sampling you negative?”

  “Oh, so shoving your tongue inside my mouth is called ‘sampling me negative’?”

  “It is the most reliable way to determine who is my chosen one and who is not.” (I.e., me.)

  “That’s that, then? You’re going to kiss every boy, man, and grandpa in Paris? That’s…very unhygienic, Zelda.” I tap my head. “You might want to change your story a bit and just pretend you carry around a picture of the lucky guy.”

  “I do have pictures of him,” she says, opening the metal box she got from the altar and retrieving a small booklet from it. “But face recognition is only seventy percent accurate. Sampling is ninety-nine percent accurate.”

  Sigh. “I don’t know what’s more annoying. That you believe all this crap or that you’re just playing me.”

  “I am not playing you, Pudin. Lying is a sin.”

  She takes my hand and slams the booklet into it. “There. That is he. Take a look.”

  I open it. It’s a collection of credit-card-sized pictures printed directly on metal. Let’s see. He’s…omifreakinggod!

  “See, you do not look like him at all. I just sampled you as a matter of illustration.”

  “This is a joke, right?” I ask, looking at the first picture.

  “What do you mean?”

  I turn the cards, slowly at first and then faster and faster. I look up, waiting for her to break into a laugh and say “Of course this is a joke. Now let’s do something different, like rob a bank.”

  “You’re going to tell me you have no idea who this is?” I show her the last picture in the booklet.

  “That’s the Earthling I came for. My chosen one. His image was reconstructed based on his exact genetic code.”

  All the way to the Internet café, I think, she’s not nuts at all, she’s just nasty, and she’s been playing me the whole time.

  I sit her in front of a computer. I open Google. I choose the images search. I type the name. I hit Enter and get 2,990,000 results. I turn to her. Her eyes widen.

  “See anyone familiar?” I ask.

  “It is him,” she says, pointing at the screen, her eyes getting wider and greener.

  “Oh, stop the act.” I click on a picture where he’s not dressed like Jack Sparrow, a nice black-and-white picture from when he was younger. “Is that the guy you’re looking for?”

  “I must kiss him to be sure.”

  “Ha! Kiss him! Sure!”

  Zelda is just like any other girl on earth.

  She wants what they all want. She wants JOHNNY DEPP!

  7

  EXPIRATION: 54 HOURS

  “Let me just say it out loud so we can laugh together: You’re going to find Johnny Depp, take him back to Vahalal, and put him in a zoo?”

  “Who?”

  “Him, h
im, him!” I yell, hysterically pointing at the computer screen. The other customers in the café turn to see what bit me.

  “He looks…exactly like the one I am looking for. I told you, I need to—”

  “Kiss him! Good luck with that, and good-bye!”

  I don’t even bother to log off. I drop two euros on the counter and head for the door. I’ve had enough. I’m going home. I’m going back to my life the way it was before she came to Cornouaille.

  Johnny Depp?! Come on!

  “Pudin!” She runs after me in the street. “Stop!”

  She catches up with me and grabs my wrist.

  “You must obey me. Disobeying a Traveler is a sin, Pudin.”

  “I quit!” I’m her Pudin no more.

  “You cannot quit.”

  “Watch me!”

  “What’s the matter with you?” She tightens her grip on my wrist till it hurts.

  “You walk around in a swimsuit. You say you’re from space. And now you want to take Johnny Depp to a galaxy far, far away! Ding-dong! Doctor Schweitzer, we have reached our conclusion: You’re an act, and you think I’m a fool. Period.”

  But she’s not listening to me. She looks straight into my eyes with a weird intensity and sighs. “By Zook, I don’t believe it.”

  “Don’t believe what?”

  “I have no time for this, Pudin.”

  “No time for what?”

  “Eol-69,” she says, shaking her head and looking very frustrated.

  “What?”

  “Show me your tongue.”

  “Are you kissing me again?”

  She sighs, grabs my hair, pulls it back, and squeezes my cheeks until I open my mouth. But she doesn’t kiss me. She just studies my tongue carefully.

  “I need to sing to you. Urgently. And we must find some stones.”

  “I’m not interested in your crazy fantasy anymore.”

  “Fine,” she says calmly. “If I don’t do anything, you’ll be dead in an hour. Considering I don’t have much time to spare saving your life, your sacrifice will be much appreciated.”

  Oh.

  I do feel slightly light-headed suddenly. My legs give out. Poof. I land on my ass on the pavement. It’s like all the energy is being drained out of my body. “Zelda…I don’t feel too good. I think I need your help.”