“Time to go, Pig,” I said as I burst into the MoPo, my guts jangling like a nervous doorbell. She tried to slip out the door, after the alien, I guess, but I scooped her up.
“Stupid cat.”
I pushed all the cat food and health bars into my bag and dashed out to the car. One last check to make certain I had everything, then I was gone. At the passenger door I remembered the cell phone, and wondered if I should take it, and it was about that time that I got a wicked idea.
Pig squirmed in my arms.
“Wrooowr’ftt,” she said.
I laughed. “Don’t worry. We’re not going anywhere. We’ll just march into the store and wait for your friend to come back.”
Pig hissed quietly to herself.
Let me tell you how I thought this next part happened. I figured the Boov hovered around the old highway for a bit, dum de dum, thinking, I sure for to am hoping I find Gratuity or whoever it am being, I eat her or I am to be turning her in or beaming her to Florida or something, then the Boov maybe checked around the MoPo and probably in my car, and then he thought, Ho hum, it am probably being just my imagination, there am no girl or whatever, me sure am stupid, sheep noise bubble wrap bubble wrap.
Then the Boov parked his antler spool and went back inside the MoPo, and wondered where Pig was, and when the door stopped jingling, he heard something. So he thought, What am that? and went to investigate. And as he neared the frozen food section, he could maybe tell it was the voices of other Boov, even though he was so stupid. And he saw there was a freezer door standing open that hadn’t been open before, so he went right over to it and peeked in and made a sheep noise. Maybe at that moment he noticed all the freezer shelves on the floor next to my cell phone, but it didn’t matter, because that was right when I kicked his alien butt inside and barred the door shut with a broom handle.
The Boov hopped up and down and turned to face me. I was happy to see he looked pretty startled, or frightened, and he pressed his thick face against the glass to get a good look at his captor. I did a little dance.
“What for are you did this?” he said. I think that’s what he said. It was hard to hear through the glass. I wondered, suddenly, if he’d run out of air after a while. The thought made me uneasy, and I had to remind myself of the situation I was in.
“Good,” I whispered. “I hope he does run out of air.” I wished he could have been really cold in there, too, but there wasn’t any electricity.
“What?” said the Boov faintly. “What said you?” His eyes darted from side to side like little fish. His frog fingers pawed at the glass.
“I said, you’re getting what you deserve! You stole my mom, so I get to steal one of you!”
“What?”
“You stole my mom!”
“Mimom?”
“MY…MOM!”
The Boov seemed to think about this for a second, then his eyes lit.
“Ahh. ‘My mom’!” he said happily. “What is it about her, now?”
I shouted and kicked the glass.
“Aha.” The Boov nodded as if I’d said something important. “Ah. So…can I come into the out now?”
“No!” I yelled. “You cannot come into the out. You can never come into the out ever again!”
At this, the Boov looked genuinely surprised, and panicked.
“Then…then…I will have onto shoot with my gun!”
I jumped back, palms up. In all the excitement, I hadn’t thought of that. My eyes darted to where his hips would be, if he’d had any. I frowned.
“You don’t even have a gun!”
“Yes! YES!” he shouted, nodding furiously, as though I’d somehow proven his point. “NO GUN! So I will have to…have to…”
His whole body trembled.
“…SHOOT FORTH THE LASERS FROM MY EYEBALLS!”
I fell into a row of shelves. That one was new to me.
“Shoot forth the lasers?”
“SHOOT FORTH THE LASERS!”
“You can do that?”
The Boov hesitated. His eyes quivered. After a few seconds he replied, “Yes.”
I squinted. “Well, if you shoot your eye lasers, then I’ll have no choice but to…EXPLODE YOUR HEAD!”
“You humans can not to ex—”
“We can! We can too! We just don’t much. It’s considered rude.”
The Boov thought about this for a moment.
“Then…we are needing a…truce. You are not to exploding heads, and I will to not do my DEVASTATING EYE LASERS.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Truce.”
“Truce.”
A few moments passed in the utter quiet of the store.
“Soo…can I come into the out n—”
“No!”
The Boov pointed over my head, tapping his fingertip against the glass.
“I can to fixing your car. I seen it is the broken.”
I folded my arms. “What would a Boov know about fixing cars?”
He huffed. “I am Chief Maintenance Officer Boov. I can to fix everything! I can surely to fix primitive humanscar.”
I didn’t like that crack about my car, but it did need fixing.
“How do I know you’ll do anything? You’ll probably just call your friends and cart me off to Florida.”
The Boov furrowed what might have been his forehead. “Do not you want to go to Florida? Is where your people is to be. All humans decide to move on to Florida.”
“Hey! I don’t think we got to decide anything,” I said.
“Yes!” the Boov answered. “Florida!”
I sighed and paced the aisle. When I looked back at the freezer case, I saw the Boov had picked up my cell phone.
“I could talk to them,” he said gravely. “I could call to them right now.”
It was true. He could.
I slid the broom handle free of the door and opened it. The Boov lunged forward, and I instantly regretted everything, except then I realized he wasn’t attacking me. It must have been a hug, because I can’t think of any better word for it.
“See?” he said. “Boov and humanskind can be friend. I always say!”
I patted him gingerly.
It sounds crazy, I know that, but suddenly I was searching the little town for supplies while the Boov worked on my car. I don’t think I have to say at this point that Pig stayed with him.
I hit five abandoned stores and found crackers, diet milk shakes, bottled water, really hard bagels, Honey Frosted Snox, tomato paste, dry pasta, a bucket of something called TUB! that came with its own spoon, and Lite Choconilla Froot Bites, which broke my usual rule against eating anything that was misspelled. The Boov had told me some things he liked, so I also carried a basket of breath mints, cornstarch, yeast, bouillon cubes, mint dental floss, and typing paper.