I made friends with a creature from outer space. For one week, I was the luckiest kid in the world.
I don't feel so lucky anymore.
There are consequences to helping an alien escape from the government. Because I helped him, only ET got to go home.
I should have joined him in the spaceship.
The men in Hazmat suits grabbed me the moment ET's ship disappeared. My big brother Michael and his friends tried to fight back, but then the adults pulled out weapons.
Mom, who had been watching all of this happening, tried her best to get them to release me, you know, arguing that since the alien was gone, and I was perfectly healthy, they had no right to do anything to me, but they only pushed her away and threw me into the back of a black van. Someone said that I wasn't healthy, I still looked sick. I didn't feel sick.
They did radiation tests, sticking me with needles and heart monitors and everything. I even had my hands cuffed to the stretcher because, I guess, they thought I'd pull another escape attempt.
I could hear my sister Gertie screaming, but they'd put her in a different truck.
"What are you going to do with her?" I asked, but the people in space suits weren't much on conversation.
The truck kind of looked like an ambulance on the inside, or maybe an FBI surveillance vehicle. They had television cameras, oscilloscopes, radar, and a bunch of scientific equipment. I could hear the crackle of their radios, the squeaking of the reel to reel magnetic tape on their refrigerator sized computers.
Still giddy from my recent victory, I chuckled, grinning at my captors. "We beat you. You'll never see ET again."
A fat face peered at me through the plastic window on one of the space suits. "Yeah? That means you'll never see him either."
I kept smiling. "It doesn't matter. He can go home now."
The guy had nothing to say to that.
The van rumbled noisily away from the clearing where the spaceship had been.
I touched my chest, thinking about ET's last words to me. That he'd always be in my heart.
When we at last arrived at our destination, and the men had begun their work, I would be the one crying, "Home phone."
Unfortunately, no telephone on earth could fix this.