The Alien by K. A. Applegate Read Free Book Online

I knew there was a wall between me and them. But they were all I had. Without them, I was utterly alone. And Prince Jake’s anger and suspicion had hurt me.
    It is a terribly lonely thing to be hundreds of trillions of Earth miles from every living member of your own people.
    The next day, Marco invited me to “hang out” with him. This was a surprise. Marco has never been very friendly, unlike Cassie and Tobias and Prince Jake. Rachel, too, has never seemed to take to me.
    I morphed into my human body and met Marco at the edge of the woods. “So,” he said. “You want to be Pinocchio, huh?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œPinocchio was a little boy carved out of wood. He wanted to be a real, live human.”
    â€œI do not want to
be
a human. I merely wish to study them.”
    Marco smiled. “What a coincidence. And I want to study Andalites.”
    It took several seconds for me to understand what he was saying. “Oh. Prince Jake asked you to press me for information.”
    â€œJake was a little ticked off that you didn’t tell us everything you know,” Marco said. “Rachel was even more ticked. Come on, we have to catch the bus. You want to learn about humans, right? I thought I’d take you to a bookstore. Smart as you are, you can learn to read English.”
    â€œBookstore? Book-kuh-store?”
    â€œYeah. Books. Fiction. History. A hundred thousand books all about the human race. And you get to choose any of them you want. We have no secrets, unlike certain species I could mention who don’t even tell us a little thing like how they eat with no mouth.”
    â€œI see. You open your society to me. Societeee. Teee. And you want me to do the same in return.”
    â€œI told Jake I could cleverly weasel all the information out of you, but he said, ‘No, Ax is a friend. Show him we have nothing to hide. Maybe he’ll finally decide to trust us.’”
    I felt a pang of guilt. They were treating me with trust. They had never done anything to hurt me. On the contrary, they had been wonderful to me. Good in every way.
    â€œI have reasons for keeping secrets,” I said.
    Marco nodded. “Yeah, we know. Rachel says you probably aren’t allowed to interfere with primitive races like humans.”
    I was surprised. It was very close to the truth. At first I did not know what to say.
    Marco smiled a cold smile and nodded his head. “So, that is it, right? Kind of too late for that attitude, isn’t it? After all, the Yeerks are interfering with us like crazy.”
    I had no answer to give. But as I looked around at the street, at all the humans in their cars, and all the humans lurching along on two legs, it occurred to me just how defenseless I would be without Prince Jake and Marco and the others.
    We had reached the bus stop. Suddenly Marco slapped his pants. “Oh, man. I left my money at home. We all pitched in for your book fund. I left it on my desk. Come on.”
    â€œWhere are we going? Ing? Ing-ahng-ing. That is a
very
satisfying sound.”
    â€œYeah, everybody loves a good ‘ing.’ We have to run over to my house. Don’t worry, it’s just around the corner.”
    Marco led me down the street. There were houses on both sides. Big, boxy structures with transparent rectangles here and there.
    â€œThat is Prince Jake’s house,” I said. I had spent time in Prince Jake’s house.
    â€œNo, it’s just the same model as his house. This is a subdivision. There are only, like, five different models of houses. They all look alike. Welcome to the suburbs. But it beats the place I used to live in.”
    He was correct. There were only five types of house. Although some had more grass, and some had less. Also, some houses were decorated with items that had been placed on the grass.
    â€œWhat is that decoration?” I asked.
    Marco followed the direction of my gaze. Then he rolled his eyes