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they said must upset him but he wouldn’t tell me what.
    Fine. It’s not like it matters.
----
    Sometimes I like Leonardo. Like, when he explains big words to me like “hyperbole” and “paradoxical.” He doesn’t explain like he’s smug and that’s good because I don’t like people making fun of me. They make fun of me, Fabiola and Mario. I got funny music in my player, they say. I tell them to eat shit.
    Leonardo just lays out it real clear and he knows I get it. He ain’t gotta explain ten times before I understand. I’m real good at languages and I remember words. He looks a bit surprised when I can remember some stuff, real quick, but I tell him I’ve always been a quick learner.
    He says I could’ve done well in school, if I finished. He asks me if I’d wanted to study anything.
    What would I’ve studied, I ask him. All the women ’round were maids or picked garbage. My dad was a scavenger, I was one too. Sort glass from wood, sort paper from plastic, while aggressive flies buzz ’round your face and stray dogs wag their tails.
    I told him my biggest dream was to go to California.
    He asked me why I wanted to move so far away.
    I told him I meant the restaurant with the buffet.
    And he smiled and I felt stupid for telling him that.
----
    I didn’t understand Leonardo’s books when we first started sharing a room. It seemed so stupid to hang on to those. They were not even fun books, but the textbooks he’d been carrying in his backpack when he was hauled off by the aliens. But now I guess I kinda see the point. The books are like the music to me. They click in your head like a big puzzle piece and make you whole.
    Leonardo doesn’t like my music, but he’s sat down next to me, on the bed, and we’ve listened to the same song. For kicks. To starve off the boredom because you can’t study the alien language all day long and there are those patches in the day that must be filled.
    This feels normal. I’ve never done normal. It’s… kinda fun.
----
    Leonardo told me the aliens conduct experiments and we are like mice. I told him that’s as idiotic as the people who say aliens eat people, ’cause they don’t. He says they’re parasitical and some of them are going to live inside us. I ask him how something as big as the aliens (’cause they’re real tall, real pale) can live inside you. But he says they can.
    He watched too many cartoons when he was a kid. I now have access to some of the alien databanks and there, and in our conversations, it’s pretty obvious it’s not like that. We’re too coarse, too violent, too stupid and they are going to help us. I suppose some people would prefer to think they’ll cook us for supper. That would be easier to understand. This… well, it’s harder to stomach.
    Not that I can’t stomach it. Alien cops, space cops, whatever you wanna call it… they ain’t so different from regular cops. You just gotta talk the right way, act the right way, think the right way, bribe here and there, and we’re all friends. We’re a nice, happy family.
    It’s kinda funny that Leonardo doesn’t get it. Seems simple to me.
----
    Leonardo’s been nicer and quieter lately. That’s good. When he’s nervous, he makes me nervous. Pisses me off. He’s all mellow today, laying on the bed and reading his books. He even asks me how the language is going and I tell him it’s real good. I’m going to be a translator. Maybe one day I’ll be a section supervisor.
    He nods and stares at me. He asks me if I miss my family. I miss my sisters. I don’t miss my parents. He asks me “what if they’re dead.” I tell him if my parents are dead, they got what was coming for them. My sisters… they didn’t do nothing, but bad stuff happens to good people. Happens all the time and good people bite a bullet just ’cause it’s the way it is.
    He tells me he misses his parents. He had a girlfriend. He doesn’t know where she is now. I tell him not to think about it. It’ll