I didn’t think it would be possible to sleep after experiencing a real altercation with multiple forms of alien life, but I managed. I was probably exhausted from shock. Saturday morning, I opened one eye to glance at my clock and realized I’d overslept. I wouldn’t make it to Charlie’s game. Groaning, I buried myself deeper under my down comforter. I would have to explain to Charlie later about oversleeping due to alien trauma.

Eyes closed and slipping in and out of sleep, I reran the previous night’s events through my mind. Real aliens showed up in my backyard. One of them seemed curious, and the other, just plain mean. Upside-down Face saved my life and told me to get away. And after I’d escaped to safety and risked looking out the window to check on the alien fight, they were gone. Maybe if I stayed in bed under this warm blanket all day, I could convince myself it had all been a dream.

Someone nudged my foot, which hung over the side of the bed.

I rolled over, groaning. “Five more minutes.”

I didn’t want to get up, because then I’d wake completely and have to somehow deal with what happened. The person nudged me again, harder. It was strange. Mom usually woke me with a kiss on the forehead, and Dad with his general loudness and clomping footsteps. I opened my eyes and peered over my shoulder.

The alien from last night—Upside-down Face—stood by the side of my bed.

I shot up and jumped off the bed, taking a tangle of blankets and sheets with me. The alien was blocking the path to the door, so I dashed to the opposite corner.

Okay, I was definitely all the way awake now.

This was the nice alien who’d saved me, but I still didn’t like the fact that it was hanging out in my room, waking me up.

“Wh-what do you want?” I stammered.

The alien made its strange clicking sounds again, but softly, like it didn’t want to attract attention from anyone else in the house.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “You spoke to me in English last night.” Well, two words, but still. “Can you do that again?”

The alien turned its blockhead back and forth, like it was looking for something in my room. Then it held a hand out and pretended to press buttons on its hand with its finger. I couldn’t believe an alien had traveled all the way to Earth just to play charades with me, but I’d roll with it.

“Buttons! Tapping! Morse code?”

The alien let out a burst of air that seemed sort of like a sigh and dropped its upside down face into its hands.

Then something clicked in my brain. Could it mean my phone? I’d had my phone in bed with me last night. It had to be in this pile of bedding on the floor. I held up one finger, which I’d hoped was a universally-known sign for “hold on a second.” Then I tore through the pile of sheets on the floor.

“Found it!” I called, holding the phone in the air.

The alien enthusiastically bowed its head. So I’d done something right. But now what? I thought through the events of last night. I had my phone with me in the backyard. The Alien Invasion game was off when the aliens did their angry click-talking. But then I’d reopened it to try to laser Bad Hair back to its home planet. And after that, Upside-Down Face seemed to understand me and had even told me to get away.

My eyes widened. Did the game work as a translator app?

I excitedly tapped on the icon and waited for the game to open. Then I spoke. “Can you understand me now?”

“Yes, thank you,” the alien said. Its mouth moved the same way as before, but its strange clicking sounds were now words. Robotic-sounding words that came from my phone’s speaker. I hadn’t even noticed last night that when the alien said, “get away,” the sound had come from the phone in my hand.

But now … this was amazing. The Alien Invasion game was working as an actual alien translator. I was probably about to have the first human–alien conversation in the history of time! What would its first question about Earth be? Adrenaline shot through me. I couldn’t take the suspense!

A knock came on my bedroom door. “Bexley? Are you awake?”

My mother. My eyes nearly popped out of my head. And the alien’s eyes did, too. Except, you know, they were on its neck.

“Um, yeah, I’m awake but, uh,”—fake cough, fake cough—“I’m not feeling super-great. I’m going to keep resting my eyes.”

“You didn’t come down for breakfast. You must be starving.”

Mom labored under the delusion that if I skipped one meal I would immediately drop dead. And then everyone would say it was her fault and call her a bad mother because I didn’t eat a bowl of cereal.

“I’m fine,” I called. “Not hungry at all.”

“Okay,” she said in her I’m clearly concerned voice. “I’ll check back on you later. Get some rest.”

I waited until her footsteps echoed back down the stairs. Then I turned to the alien. “We can talk now. What would you like to know?”

The alien cleared its wrinkled throat. “Are you the leader of this world?”

I blinked. “Um, what?”

The alien pointed to the phone in my hand. “Is it not working correctly?”

“No, it’s working. I just—why would you think I’m the leader of Earth?”

“Because you were the one who summoned us.”