3, Life Hacks for a Little Alien

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Y OUR MIND IS SLUGGISH and your eyes heavy as you lounge in the living room, lying on your stomach under the rug but above the carpet.

Other more conventional seating options are available. For instance, you could be sitting on both the rug and the carpet, much like your cousin is currently doing. Or you could be lying on the sofa much like your dad normally does. Or perching on the pouffe much like your mum normally does. Or standing straight up on one leg, like flamingos do, even though they seem to have at least two legs at their disposal.

You don’t do any of these things. Instead, you lie underneath the rug but above the carpet, watching The Simpsons . You are next to your cousin. Like a normal person, he is sitting cross-legged above both the rug and the carpet. Like an abnormal person, he is eating prawn cocktail crisps. You are not eating prawn cocktail crisps. You are eating salt and vinegar because salt and vinegar is a much better flavour than prawn cocktail. In your opinion, this isn’t even an opinion. In your opinion, it is a fact.

But you are young, and due to the inclusion of words and phrases such as ‘wang’, ‘crap factory’, and ‘homersexual’, The Simpsons has an advisory viewing age of thirteen. Due to this advisory viewing age of thirteen, it is inadvisable that you, a four-and-a-half-year-old, watch it with your cousin, a six-and-a-half-year-old.

I imagine your mum isn’t aware of this viewing advisory age, but if she were aware of this viewing advisory age, she probably wouldn’t care. Why would she? Life throws age-inappropriate things at you all the time. What else are depressive episodes? What else are hangovers disproportionate to the quantity of alcohol imbibed? What else are unhelpful GP reception staff, polite requests for your child to find somewhere else to go to primary school, not-so-polite requests for your child to find somewhere else to go to primary school, and a relentless series of overdue library fines?

As it happens, you don’t care about the viewing advisory age either. No one advises you on anything. Take this whole school situation. No one has spelt out what has been happening, and so you simply don’t know. You don’t know why your half-term holiday has been so long. Similarly, you don’t know why tonight’s dinner has so far just been salt and vinegar crisps when it has never before entailed even a single crisp.

The rug serves as a blanket; the carpet as your bed. On the telly, another alien exists.

‘When I was a young boy,’ the alien says, ‘I wanted to be a baseball.’ i

In the corridor, your mum and dad are talking. Your dad has just got home. They are talking about someone, but you don’t know who. They are talking about someone but you don’t think that it’s you.

‘But she’s only been going there since September,’ your dad is saying.

Your cousin turns up the volume. ‘But tonight,’ the alien says, ‘we must move forward, not backward—’

‘Hey,’ your cousin interrupts, pointing at the green alien but looking at you. ‘That one looks like you!’

You study the alien. After careful thought and consideration, you shake your head. ‘No, he doesn’t,’ you say, calmly and accurately. This alien is not like you. He is green with tentacles and a balloon around his head. You do not have those things. Instead, you have arms, legs, a head, and a face.

‘He so does,’ your cousin says. ‘You dribble like that too!’

You raise your hand to your mouth. There is no dribble. Not unless you reach right inside your mouth. Then there is dribble.

‘I’m not an alien,’ you say.

Your cousin lets out a scoff. ‘You so are.’

You frown. You don’t like your cousin saying you’re an alien. You don’t like it because it’s not a nice thing to say. Also, you worry he might be right. You look at your arms and hands. Glowing in the light of the TV, they look alien to you.

In any case, your parents are still in the corridor. ‘What did they say exactly? Let me read it.’ Your dad’s voice sounds different from how he normally sounds.

‘I mean, how is this even allowed? Vandalism? She’s not a vandal. She’s a five-year-old girl—’

‘She’s four and a half.’

‘Four and a half, whatever—’

‘It’s not just about the vandalism. They also have concerns about the class fish.’

‘What class fish?’

‘She tried to put it in the bin, apparently.’

‘Jesus.’

You turn up the volume on the remote. You wonder if – technically speaking – you should look like the alien on TV. If you should be dribbling. If you should be green with tentacles and a balloon around your head.

‘Oi, can you two turn that back down?’

You pretend not to have heard. Even though you are four and a half years old, and even though you are what human people commonly refer to as a girl, you don’t want to think they are talking about you. How could they be talking about you? They are talking about someone who isn’t going to school any more or might not be going to school any more, or at least not her usual school. But you go to school all the time – not recently, but all the time. Don’t you?

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