Only Alien on the Planet by Kristen D. Randle

there, and suddenly he gets up and he goes over to Russell and he throws this glass of orange juice right in Russell's face. I mean, right in his face.”
    “ Smitty did?” I said, just making sure I'd heard right.
    “I know. It's weird. Maybe he was upset about the bird—”
    “Which you could hardly blame him for.” Personally, I think people who kill things for pleasure are sick.
    “Or, maybe not—who knows what's going on in his mind? Anyway, Russell got up and knocked Smitty halfway across the room. Knocked him out totally.”
    I stopped. “Knocked him out?”
    “Yeah. Come on. We're going to freeze if we just stand here. They had to take Smitty to emergency, and they ended up having toleave him overnight because they couldn't wake him up. So it was in the middle of the night, this nurse went in to check him, and Smitty was crying in his sleep.”
    The pain in my chest caught me a little bit by surprise.
    “She still couldn't wake him up, so she called the doctor and got the family history from him. As it turns out, she was a student at the university med school, in psychology and counseling, and she ended up getting real interested in Smitty. The next day, she asked the Tibbses if she could work with him. Of course they thought that was a great idea. But then something happened, like her father died, or something, and she had to go away for a while. Then she had to go and do her specialization and internship somewhere.
    “When she came back here a couple of years ago to work at the university clinic, she was still interested, but they couldn't get Smitty to go for it. I mean, it's not like he actually objected or anything— you know the way he disappears. Every couple of months now she calls. It never works out. Mrs. Tibbs called her last week—I guess she was thinking, since he's been letting us come over, maybe he'd go for it this time. But he faded on her again. Anyway, the psychologist wants us to keep coming around.”
    I looked at him. This scared me.
    “I know,” he said. “It makes me feel weird too.”
    “And now your mother will tell Mrs. Tibbs about the other night…”
    “And then Mrs. Tibbs'll tell the psychologist,” he finished.
    “I don't like it at all,” I said, feeling this awful pressure in my chest. “I feel like Judas.”
    “I know,” he said.
    We stood there huddled together in the cold.
    “Let's not go to the Tibbses' tonight,” I said, shivering. “He never asked for any of this. We've just done it to him. And then we go over there and ask him for help.”
    “No, I think we ought to go,” Caulder said. “It's up to him to decide if he wants to help us or not. If he didn't want us to come, he'd let us know. I think he wants us there.”
    So we tucked up our guilt and we went. And it was business as usual—me confused, Smitty patiently going over the problems, time after time, every step spelled out so a kindergartner could understand it.
    It was nice that one of us should understand something.

chapter 8
    P ete Zabriski—who had never, not for the tiniest fraction of a moment, ever been remotely aware that I existed— smiled at me during lunch.
    It was so embarrassing, I dropped my spoon.
    “What?” Caulder said. We'd been sharing his tapioca. I just looked at him. “ What? “ he asked again.
    “A person should be able to do her chewing and swallowing secure from the risk of humiliation,” I said.
    “Pardon me?” he said.
    “I've got some studying to do.” I stood up.
    “What? Now? “ Caulder said. “It's lunch. ”
    “Yes, now,” I said, and I left him sitting there all by himself with the rest of the tapioca. I had a sudden horror of finding myself in an unstructured environment with a person like Pete Zabriski who obviously knew how to capitalize on a person's discomfort. No more first lunch. Not for now. Maybe never again.
    The only alternative was to switch lunches, at least temporarily. It would take some finagling, but I have always found