ALIENATED: GROUNDED AT GROOM LAKE

Chapter 5: Making Friends, Making Enemies

Groom Lake may have been a new school, but getting bullied was an old ritual. Graz shook us upside down maracas and I had braced myself for imminent trash impact when suddenly, Graz stopped shaking us.

"You've filled your bully quota, fuzzface," called a female voice from behind me.

"Move it, pinky," Graz growled, "or I'll dunk you too."

I twisted around, to try to catch an upside-down glance at who he was growling at, and spotted a five-foot pink lizard in glossy black overalls. She was glaring, hands on hips. And she was actually kind of cute; you know, in a rose-hued iguana kind of way.

"The name's Sonya," she said to the monster. "Or is that too many syllables for you?"

"Who you callin' silly?" he spat.

Sonya suddenly slammed all three lids closed, leapt on top of the center one, and folded her arms liked she meant business. Three green tongues flicked from between her lips.

"Not a good move, Aristox," said the shimmer-kid.

"Don't mind NED," Sonya said to me. "He just acts like he owns the place."

"He owns your planet's Ballet-thingy," Graz grunted.

"It's Balleropera," Sonya said. "I know that's too many syllables for you."

She turned back to me. "It's not like we choose to spend our lives learning dances for the creepiest deities around." She rolled her eyes towards the shimmer-kid—NED.

"Bite those tongues, reptile," NED hissed. "One day, your little pink family will be performing for me. I'd hate to be...displeased."

Sonya clenched her fists, and her black eyes bulged. I could tell she was holding back the urge to rant a little more.

"Good little lizard," NED said.

Graz flipped the barrel lid to Sonya's left, grabbed me in the crux of his elbow and raised the pair of us into the air above the slimy alien leftovers. Jessica was still trapped in Graz's left hand, like a goth version of Fay Wray in King Kong's clutches. He curled me up into his stinking, hairy armpit and grabbed Sonya, my would-be savior, by her collar, all three of us now dangling in the air above the refuse.

"Thanks, Sonya," I said, wanting to introduce myself before being covered in trash. "I'm Sherman."

"No probs, newbie," she said. "There's showers in the locker rooms off the gym. Round the corner on the left."

"Oh, good to know," I said. And it was. At my new schools, I'd been egged, toilet papered and in Korea, kimchied. "Drop them, Grazzat," NED ordered.

I closed my eyes, covered my head.

And fell.

Until a giant python caught me.