2010-

Ten year old Tanner Lerner smiled as he watched the night sky. He had spent a lot of

time picking out his spot. He planned to watch as much of the meteor shower that he

could before his parents came out to fetch him.

They encouraged his interest in the stars, but they had set a curfew they enforced. He

was not supposed to be out after ten on a school night.

He had picked his spot so they couldn’t find him easily when they came out to call

him in. He could put not responding down to having his earphones in while watching

the sky.

He thought that wouldn’t fly over well, but it would get him time to watch the stars

as the shower started.

“What you doing, Squirt?” His cousin, Darla Huitt, approached from the base of the

hill. She was in the same grade as he was, and he thought he couldn’t get rid of her

easily.

“Star watching.” Tanner wondered what he could say to get her to leave him alone.

He didn’t need her to get in his way while he was making his observations.

“Are you allowed out this late?” She grinned at him. “Only big boys are supposed to

be able to get out of their play pens.”

Anger boiled in his system but he forced it down. He didn’t need the pest getting

close to his parents and getting grounded because he was not home.

“Don’t you have someone else to troll?” Tanner gritted his teeth. If he could hold on

for a few moments, then his project would fly.

“Not really.” She smiled. “All my homework is done.”

Great. She planned to hang out with him and drive him crazy. Maybe he should pack

it in and go somewhere else. Packing the telescope would be a pain, but he thought

about it and realized unless he went home, she would follow him around to tell him

how she felt.

And he didn’t care how she felt.

He looked at his watch. The shower was supposed to start in a few minutes. He

looked for the first streak heading across the sky. Once he had a visual bearing, he

could turn and focus the telescope on the meteors heading toward Earth.

He could ignore his cousin for the time to the shower starting. Maybe if he ignored

her, she would go away. He decided that wasn’t going to work. She would just get in

his way to keep him from doing that.

Maybe he should pack it in. There would be other meteor showers he could watch

without her interfering.

He didn’t want to give up his hill.

“What’s so cool about these meteors?” She covered her mouth as she yawned.

“They only show once in a century.” He realized that maybe talking to her might not

be a good thing and slowed things down. On the other hand, he might be able to

knock everything over with a grudge and set up somewhere else.

Tanner spotted the leading edge of the storm and smiled. He watched the flames with

his telescope. Concentrating on that would be better as a whole than watching for

someone who had a problem temper try to get him in trouble.

Why didn’t she move on? She didn’t have any interest in the stars as far as he was

concerned.

Why wasn’t she home?

“Parents fighting?” Tanner scanned the sky. One of the meteors seemed to be

wobbling. What was going on there?

“When aren’t they, Squirt?” She sighed. “They should just get a divorce and be done

with it.”

Tanner silently agreed. Uncle Bill and Aunt Jamie fought all the time. They never

seemed to say a nice thing to each other whenever he saw them together. It was

embarrassing to him. He didn’t want to take sides, but frequently they asked him an

opinion. His answers seemed to always make things worse.

And he could rarely extract himself from the situation without making both of them

mad at him.

One of the meteors veered out of the stream in the sky. He studied it with his

telescope. It seemed to be getting bigger. He looked at it with his naked eye. It was

coming down close by.

“We should get away from here.” Tanner looked at his setup. He didn’t want to lose

his telescope, but he didn’t have time to pack it up. He decided to move. If the meteor

hit and missed his telescope, he would come back for it. “Meteor hits look like

cannon shots afterwards.”

“What are you talking about?” She looked up at the approaching light. She smiled.

“Are you crazy?” Tanner grabbed her arm. He pulled on her to follow him. “We’ll be

killed if we stay here.”

“That’s fine with me.” She pushed him away. “It beats going back home.”

“We have to go.” Tanner pulled as hard as he could. She resisted, digging in her

heels. “It’s not safe.”

“Run if you want.” She punched him in the face. He went down. “This is what I

need.”

Tanner got to his feet. The light in the sky was closer. He looked at his cousin. Then

he did the only thing he could think of to do. He tackled her, pushing her down the

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hill in front of him. They rolled from the apex, his cousin screaming in his ear. He

took a shot to the face as they hit bottom.

Darla unleashed a stream of invective as she tried to get to her feet. A fist to the face

didn’t slow her down. She retaliated with a kick.

Tanner clenched his teeth. The light from the stars hung above them as they wrestled

on the ground. An explosion picked him up and sent him tumbling to the ground. He

landed on his back.

He stood up. Darla lay on her face. She didn’t move. He wondered if she got her wish.

He decided to check on his telescope before he dealt with her. He had no interest in

getting involved with her parents.

He marched up the altered hill. He didn’t have to like astronomy to know he and his

cousin were lucky to still be in one piece. The top of the hill had been carved out. The

trees and his telescope were gone. He supposed they had been reduced to fragments

from the impact.

How was he going to explain losing that to his parents. First, he violated his curfew.

Then he lost his expensive telescope. And if his cousin said anything, he would be

grounded for punching her in the mouth.

He should punch her again to make it worth getting punished.

He walked to the edge of the crater. He spotted something glowing at the bottom of

the bowl. Maybe the meteor had survived impact. If it had, it would be worth losing

his telescope.

He took off his shirt and touched the edge of the glow with it. He smiled when his

shirt didn’t catch fire. The thing was cooling off fast.

If he could get the thing out of the hill, he could take it home and look at it. Maybe

he could call a museum and ask them what he could do with it. There might be some

money in the thing.

If there was a reward, he could replace his telescope with the money.

All he had to do was get the thing out of the crater and get it home.

He heard Darla moan at the bottom of the hill. He needed to grab the thing and head

home. He wasn’t going to share credit with her. She had almost got them killed with

her reluctance to flee.

He decided to wrap his shirt around the glow. If he could carry it away, he expected

it to cool while he ran home. It should be completely safe to touch by the time he got

it to his house.

Then he could come back for Darla, if he felt like it. If she didn’t know about the

thing, she couldn’t try to use it as some kind of lever for promises.

He wasn’t getting involved with her, or the rest of her crazy family if he could help

it.

Tanner started into the crater. He looked for the source of the glow as he spread his

shirt out to catch it. Once he had the thing covered, he planned to tie the shirt together

so he could carry it like a bag.

He dropped the shirt. He grabbed the edges and started to scoop up what was left at

the bottom of the bowl. Pain ran up his hands. He dropped the shirt.

He examined his fingers. Lines colored the pads, then spread up one arm as he

watched. He gritted his teeth at the thought he might be dead thanks to Darla.

He should kick her to get some revenge before he died from whatever he had touched

through his shirt.

He picked up his shirt. The shine was gone. He spotted two holes through the cloth.

Whatever had poked him in the hands had done it through the shirt. How was he

going to explain things to his parents?

What was this writing on his arm? It looked like buttons. He realized it looked like

a typewriter keypad. He could make things like letters out under the stars, but not

exactly what. How was he going to explain a big tattoo like that.

Things just kept getting worse for him.

He should kick Darla for what she had got him into. He sat down on the edge of the

crater and wondered what he was going to do. All of his options looked bad to him.

He should have known something bad was going to happen the moment she showed

up. He looked down the hill. What was he going to do?

Pain throbbed in his hands. He needed to have that checked out. He couldn’t let some

unknown fungus eat at him. He should get to the hospital and let them keep him from

melting, or whatever he was going to do now.

He stood up. At least Darla was safe until she got home. That had been his good deed

for the day. He might as well lord it over her as much as he could.

He got to his feet. He noticed a stream of glowing particles heading down the hill for

the first time. He grimaced. The stream headed right for Darla.

He rushed down to pull her out of the way. The last thing he needed was to get

blamed for a tattoo on his cousin.

He grabbed her shoulders and picked her up in a sitting position. He frowned. Two

squares had written themselves in at her temples. An eye disfigured her forehead. Too

late to do anything for her now.

He couldn’t carry her. He had to wake her up and get her on her way before anyone

investigated what had happened. He wasn’t explaining an alien tattoo to anyone if he

could help it.

He certainly wasn’t going to take Darla home and tell her parents that she had been

knocked out and some glowing stuff had pierced her brain.

He knew better to expect anything good coming out of that.

He slapped Darla’s face. That felt good. He did it again. She moaned.

“Wake up.” He slapped her again. “We don’t have time for this, Darla.”

“Don’t hit me again, Squirt.” She opened her eyes. They were the wrong color.

Tanner grimaced. How were they going to explain glowing yellow eyes. He decided

to let Darla handle it.

He didn’t want to look out for her. He didn’t need the hassle her parents would cause

him if he was reported to his own parents.

“Let’s go.” He got to his feet. “You took a bad hit, and I need to change my clothes.”

“All right.” Darla got to her feet. “I feel sick as a dog. My head hurts, and I’m craving

some pizza.”

“I’ll walk with you to your house.” Tanner pulled on his shirt. “After that, I have to

get home and clean up myself.”

“I don’t need your help.” Darla staggered toward her house five steps. She paused and

hung her head.

Was she going to be sick? Could she make it on her own? What should he do?

He decided the best thing he could do was help her if she wanted it. Then he had to

get home and take his punishment from his own parents.

He could take it. He was alive. He had saved his cousin’s life. He had been infected

with something, but the initial pain was over. He could live with that after he talked

to a doctor about it.

He needed to make the best of what he could do at the moment. He didn’t want to be

confined to the hospital, but if it helped him figure things out, then that might be the

best solution to the sudden focus.

Maybe the doctors could figure out why the thing resembled a typewriter. He doubted

that was accidental, but he had no clue on what it meant.

He walked behind Darla as she cut across several lots to her house. He watched as she

went inside. He hoped the tattoo on her face wouldn’t get her in trouble. He knew that

was forlorn. Her parents liked to fight too much for them to let it go.

They would be on her like rabid squirrels.

He turned and headed for his own house. He had to get home and sneak inside

without his parents catching him. He didn’t want them telling him that he had broken

curfew and he was going to be punished. Helping Darla would be seen as a plus, but

not mitigating. He shouldn’t have been out there to have to help Darla in the first

place.

He would figure something out while he was trying to sneak into his house.

At least his parents didn’t generally make things hard for him. He was thankful for

that.

He scratched an itch on his newly tattooed arm. Three of the buttons glowed. He

looked at the shining buttons. Then he felt himself shrinking down to the size of an

ant. He looked at his surroundings in horror.

How was he going to deal with this?