Marci Thompson is not an alien. I’ve never met a more annoyingly determined and punctual human being in my life.

It’s Mom who answers the door.

“Hi, Ms. Delaney,” Marci says. “Is Mac here?”

When she gets to the kitchen, the table is still covered with syrupy plates and forks and crumbs, empty mugs and half a glass of orange juice that I couldn’t stomach after the syrup and chocolate chips.

“Good morning, Marci,” I say before she even rounds the corner of the hallway. I hear myself say it. I sound forty and like Marci is coming to my office. As if last night I was a sixth-grade boy and this morning I’m some kind of insurance salesman.

“So. Are we ready to go?” Marci asks.

Grandad says he has to get his bucket of candy. I put my shoes on. Marci hands me a sign. It says STOP CENSORSHIP AT INES!

“Do you have anything more snazzy?” I ask.

She holds up her sign. INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM IS A RIGHT.

“We’re going to have to work on some slogans,” I say.

“Yeah. I can’t say it was my most inspiring sign-making night. My cat kept throwing up.”

Grandad arrives with his bucket and a baseball hat so his head doesn’t get sunburned. He grabs three lawn chairs and we say goodbye to Mom. I don’t want to leave her today. Sometimes I think I don’t want to leave her ever.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” I ask.

“I have errands to run. Don’t worry. I’ll keep myself busy.”

I wish I could tell you that the protest is exciting, but it’s just me and Grandad and Marci sitting outside Tad’s with our signs and eating candy. It isn’t much different from any other Saturday when we eat candy. The same old people stop by to talk to Grandad. They ask me and Marci questions just to be nice.

“What’s going on with those signs?”

“They’re really censoring books?”

“Do you think you can stop them?”

A few tourists stop and ask what the signs mean. Marci shows them the black rectangles in her book. One guy offers to give a donation but Grandad says we don’t have a need for money. Just for action.

The whole time, I think about how I’m treating what Dad did like he’s a guy who works in my office who resigned and is getting a job somewhere else. Not a big deal. Whatever. But on the inside, I know I’m not okay. I’m mad for how he hurt Mom. I’m mad about my baseball stuff. I’m mad he lied to me and made me look like a dumb kid because I believed him. Each thing that makes me mad, I put it in a dull-colored folder and file it in a gray filing cabinet.

We protest for three hours, have a lot of cool conversations with people, and then Marci says she has to get home. Grandad says we should get some lunch, so we start walking home, too, with Marci at first until she takes a left to go up her street.

“See you on Monday, Mac,” she says. She opens her arms and I think she’s going for a high five, but then she hugs me and I hug her back kinda—my right arm is still raised for the high five that never came.

Grandad and I walk quietly after that. When we get home, we go to his flat to put the candy bucket away.

“That was fun,” Grandad says.

I don’t know what to say at first, but then all these feelings hit me at once and I say, “I feel like I work in an office.”

He looks confused.

“I feel old. Like I’m in an office and I’m handling all this stuff like a real office guy,” I say. “Not like I know what it’s like to be an office guy but you get what I’m saying, right?”

“You are one cool cat,” Grandad says.

“None of it feels cool.”

“I mean you have a way with words, kid. When you write a letter to that author, you should ask if she can help you write a book. I bet you could.”

I tilt my head and wonder if Grandad is not hearing me on purpose or if he’s doing it by accident. It makes my eyes wet and I take a deep breath, but when I exhale, the quiver from my lip moves to my chest and it comes out like I’m shivering. Or crying—which is what I seem to be doing.

But like an office guy, I don’t feel like I’m crying, I’m just crying—same as asking people to come into my office and leave work on my desk or empty my trash can like that’s normal. I don’t feel a thing. But I also feel my whole body shaking and it’s like it’s not my body. I’m twelve, by the way.

This is when Grandad wraps his arms around me.

My whole body goes limp the minute it knows he will support it. I am a sobbing blob of 100 percent human. I never wanted to be half alien. I never wanted any of this. I just took it in and filed it. Dad told me he was an alien, and I believed him because he’s my dad. I saw the McDonald’s parking lot from a half mile high. I did all that. I made my own anime series about us in my head and wrote and drew every episode and every season.

Feels like it was for nothing.

Not just because he left and stole Grandad’s car and my baseball stuff, either.

When he said he smashed Mom’s mug last week—it felt like it was for nothing every time he got like that. And he got like that a lot. It’s hard to know when they’re sitting right there at your dinner table with you, but people can be real jerks while you make up excuses for them.

“You just get it all out,” Grandad says, and I do—for what feels like ten minutes.

When I finally sit up and gather my used tissues from the floor, and Grandad stretches his right arm and shoulder, I say, “Sorry for crying.”

“Don’t you dare be sorry for crying,” Grandad says. “Crying is one of the most important things to learn how to do.”

I laugh. “Nobody has to learn how to cry,” I say. “Babies do it!”

“Next up, talking. Babies do that, too,” he says.

“Hey! I talk,” I say. “I even get in trouble in school for talking!”

“You’re great at standing up for the abolition of Columbus Day, but most days you keep your feelings inside. You get what I’m laying down?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I get it.”

For the rest of the night, I still feel like an office guy, though.

Unreasonable Curfew

My son and his friend were driven home in a police car last weekend because the officer said they were out past curfew. I was not aware of this 9 p.m. curfew and I don’t understand how we are enforcing it. My child and his friend were simply taking a walk and did nothing wrong. Plus, some restaurants on Main Street are open until 11 p.m.! Do the people leaving them and walking to their cars also get ticketed for such ridiculous things?
—Mike Fallon, Locust Street

Re: Unreasonable Curfew

Those who stay up to all hours are known to have lifestyles that bring a town like this down. Good people are asleep or close to it by 9 p.m. and two boys walking and talking outside others’ homes can wake up people who have to work in the morning. Try to think of others and keep yourselves and your children inside after 9 p.m.!
—Laura Samuel Sett