How to Marry an Alien Read Free Page B

expected
either of them to show up at my house, especially so early in the
morning.
    I glanced back to see Ace glaring, but he
still gave me some space. After the fiasco with Brody's crush and
the big battle with Simone, Ace had a tendency to get even more
jealous.
    "Leaving so soon?" Brody stammered. I turned
back to him and a waft of stale beer and something even more toxic
wafted from the window. Brody and Brad both looked like they never
actually went to bed with their bloodshot eyes and disheveled
clothes.
    "Yeah, got to get on the road." I forced a
small smile.
    Brody reached through the window, gripping my
hand in his. "I'll miss having you around here, Alex."
    "Uh, yeah, I'll miss you too Brody." I tried
to pull my hand away, but he had a vice grip. It brought me back to
the Cephalopod that attacked me last summer at Circe. Brody had
been controlled by an alien before, so I worried that one could
have been controlling him again.
    "No, Alex, I mean I'll miss you when you are
gone." His eyes widened, empty as ever.
    "I'll be back for breaks..."
    "No, Alex, don't make excuses. I know."
    I cocked an eyebrow. What did he really know?
"Excuse me?"
    "Simone. I know she wasn't like us. As soon
as she came to town I felt different. Then when she left, everyone
acted like nothing happened. But me and Brad, we never forgot."
    I looked across the seat to Brad. He slowly
nodded his head and stared out the front window.
    "Come on, Alex. We need to get going," Ace
yelled behind me.
    "Sorry, Brody, but I have to go." I broke my
hand free of his. "Good luck with, um, everything."
    I turned and walked as fast as I could back
to my car.
    Circe operatives said they came up with a
good story about Simone robbing Cuppa Java and going crazy, but
maybe not everyone believed it. Maybe it was best that I got out of
Winnebago. The less people wrapped up in my alien world, the
better.

Chapter 5
     
    There is absolutely nothing exciting to look
at when you drive hundreds of miles on the highway. Somewhere after
Oklahoma I felt my eyes start to drift. There hadn't been any sort
of a gas station or rest stop for miles, and I was running low on
energy.
    Ace was lightly snoring in the seat next to
me. He drove most of the morning and into the afternoon. The sleep
I had while he was driving was to sleep off the hangover. Now at 3
a.m., I needed actual sleep. I should have stopped. Why didn't I
just stop at the rest stop an hour ago and take a nap? There really
wasn't any hurry to get to Flagstaff, but I was determined to make
good time.
    I sang along with every stupid song on the
radio, blasting the air conditioning just to force my eyes to stay
open. I constantly found my eyelids drooping and jolting myself
awake, so that the car would slightly swerve.
    No, I wasn't going to fall asleep and ruin my
new car. I had been driving around in the Pox for too long to take
something so nice for granted. I had to stay awake.
    The road ahead was completely dark, save for
the few lights that would hang on the overpasses every few miles.
There wasn't another car in sight and no reason why another one
would be out as late as we were anyway.
    A flash of brown streaked across the road so
fast I could have blinked and missed it. A deer? Off the highway
with nothing around? I banked my wheel hard to the right, trying to
avoid hitting it. It was definitely too small to be a deer. I
looked to my left and saw the grass ruffle on the other side of the
highway. I'd never seen something move so fast, and it was so dark
I could only make out a faint outline of something sprinting
through the field.
    Before I could turn my head back to the road
in front of me I felt my whole body jerk back into my seat and the
crushing sound of metal on metal. Screeeeech .
    Ace stirred awake, his eyes wide and looking
straight ahead. "Alex, what the—?"
    Before he could finish his sentence, the car
bounced off the guardrail and before the scream could leave my lips
the car rolled to the