Aliens and Girls

Two boys ponder the mysteries of the universe

On a Friday night, Scott and I looked at stars through the telescope

We were up in the treehouse Scott built with his father

We watched for anything moving like UFOs

There was no moon, so the stars were very bright

We saw shooting stars which are not really stars

They are small rocks burning up in the atmosphere

We were hungry because we ran out of snacks

We decided to walk to the 7-11 on Progress Avenue

Scott thought it was about four miles and would take a little over one hour

It’s the only place open at 1:00 in the morning

It was warm out and we didn’t even need jackets

It was very dark along Crums Mill Road which has lots of hills and turns

When we saw headlights of a car we hid in the bushes but only a few passed us

On the way I told Scott about Mai who is the girl at Indiantown Gap

Mom matches Vietnamese families with people they can live with

They came to the USA after the Vietnam war to live here

Scott asked what I do all day

Mainly I just wander around and say hello to people

One day I went into a big mess hall with like a hundred people

They were learning to speak English and there were three teachers

One of the teachers asked if I would help and I said yes

They said to take a group over to a tree and go over the names of family

Mother, father, son, daughter, brother, sister and etc

A group of people followed me over to the tree with a blackboard on a stand under it

I wrote the names of family on the board

But I spelled daughter wrong (I spelled it dauter)

This girl came up and took the chalk out of my hand and fixed it

That was not good!

I’m not good at spelling

But she was beautiful!

After that I saw her a lot

I would wait by a Coke machine until she came by

We didn’t really talk much because she didn’t know much English

We did math problems because it was hard to talk

Scott asked if I kissed her yet and I said no

But it’s true that I wanted to

I had only kissed a girl one time at Mark Goldberg’s bar mitzvah party

Then one day an MP saw me and asked me what I was doing – he was mad!

He made me show him where mom was

He asked me how old I was and I said eleven

He said “I had a piece of ass by the time I was your age”

Scott said that he was saying he had sex with a girl when he was eleven

Mom was not mad but said we should watch out for MPs

I didn’t go to Indiantown Gap the next couple of days

I was at home and the phone rang and it was Mom

She put Mai on the phone

“I go today” she said

She was going to live with a family in York

“I am very sad” she said

I wish I was there to say bye and I was there almost every other day!

When Mom got home she gave me Mai’s address so I could write to her

But back to the walk to the 7-11

Just the second we got to the parking lot of the 7-11, a police car pulled up next to us!

The cop got out and walked over to us

Scott said “There isn’t a curfew is there?”

And the cop said yes there is

He told us to get in the car and he drove to the police station

He called Mom and talked very nice to her

He said that we were not making any trouble

Mom came and got us and I felt bad but she was not mad at all

She said she felt bad that there wasn’t much food in the house

She took us back to the 7-11 to get snacks!

On a pole outside the 7-11 was a sign about a circus coming

It was going to be on City Island in the middle of the Susquehanna River

Mom said she would take Scott and me if we want to go

When we got home we went back to looking at stars

We talked about what if a circus performer was an alien

It was pretending to be a human that was pretending to be an alien!

What might they be able to do in the circus?

I told Scott I wanted Mai to come to the circus with us

We made a project plan to do this

Here are the steps I wrote down

[1] Call to find out how much the ticket is

[2] Write letter to go with the ticket

[3] Find stamps and envelope

[4] On Sunday go to JCC for basketball but don’t go in!

[5] Walk to the bus station and buy ticket

[6] Ask for directions to nearest mailbox or post office

[7] Put letter and ticket into envelope with stamp and mail

Scott helped a lot with the plan because he is good with that

Yesterday was the circus

Mom dropped us off by the bridge and we walked to the island

We walk all around the island all day looking for Mai but we never saw her

We ate cotton candy and candy apples but they looked much better than they tasted!

We were about to leave when we saw a tent about joining the circus

We went in and they were very nice and gave us applications

We wondered what we could do that nobody else might do?

We wrote down ideas and a secret plan to run away and join the circus!

I wonder if I will ever see Mai again