Alien in the House

to bore me faster than reading a bunch of bills. Gathered up all the stuff on our dresser, including the folded piece of paper that had been in the eagle puppet, and headed out of the room.
    Dumped the stuff on the couch, turned on the table lamp, closed the bedroom door quietly, and went to the kitchen. “A big cup of hot chocolate with a lot of whipped cream, please, and thank you,” I said to the pantry. Opened the door, and there it was, complete with a tonnage of whipped cream. “You guys just totally rock.”
    As I’d said to Stryker and the rest of Hacker International only a few hours prior, ability and desire were not the same things. I had the ability to read and comprehend pretty much anything that wasn’t the highest-level science or mathematics. And despite appearances, if I’d really wanted to, I could have learned them, too, and not only because Chuckie would have helped me.
    What everyone tended to forget was that I was in every class but one language class with Chuckie all through high school and most of college. He took German, I took French. That was our entire deviation. Meaning I was in honors classes. Idiots didn’t score the honors track, at least not at our high school, and not at ASU, either.
    However, in school, being the brain was never a fast track to popularity, which Chuckie’s school career as the Bully Magnet proved. I had no ego attached to proving I was as smart as anyone, and since my best friend was the smartest guy in the entire school district, there seemed to be little point in competing with anyone else, anyway.
    So I didn’t worry about what anyone thought, including whether or not they thought I was smart or an airhead. Chuckie called this protective coloration—that I could give the impression that I was a fun party girl while at the same time getting straight As in honors classes all through school. He’d never mastered this skill, at least not as a kid.
    Once out of college, though, I’d learned another really important lesson—in marketing, you didn’t have to read every, single, minute, boring detail in order to know how to sell something well and accurately. You only needed the high-level, pertinent facts, features, benefits, and so on. Turned out, that was true for a lot of the world. I’d proved that every single day since my first superbeing had appeared on the streets of Pueblo Caliente.
    But despite my desire to avoid the dull and boring reading, I had the ability to read these bills and understand exactly what they were trying to achieve, both the stated purpose, the real purpose, and the hidden purpose. That each bill had all three of these was something my father had taught me at a young age.
    Took my cocoa and settled in for some dull reading. Only, it wasn’t all that dull.
    The bills were a variety—some from each of the major committees. And there were a lot of them. Clearly Congress felt that the way to look supremely busy to the aliens outside our solar system was to pass a lot of legislation. Or at least ask to pass a lot of legislation.
    The first one I decided to read was a Transportation bill focused on the travel of “undocumented aliens” between states. I read it carefully, and was rewarded with the certain knowledge that Jeff should fight this bill with his last breath.
    There were too many clauses and lines about “aliens not naturally from Earth” which was not the same as “naturalized citizens” or “illegal aliens” or “illegal human aliens”. There were a lot of negatives about all of these in the bill that I was sure was supported by the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi lobbies, but far more about the aliens not naturally from Earth.
    Decided I wasn’t going to enjoy the rest of my cocoa if I read another bill, so I checked out the piece of paper I’d found in Reyes’ stuffed eagle.
    Unfolded the paper with one hand while I held my cocoa with the other. There was nothing on the paper. Turned it over. Blank on that side, too.
    “What the hell?” Put my cocoa down and held the paper up to the light. Nothing, nada, zip.
    “What are you doing, kitten?” Dad asked sleepily as he came into the room.
    “Reading stuff. Why are you up?”
    He shrugged. “I’m not used to the dogs in the room with us any more. Their snoring woke me up and I couldn’t get back to sleep. Figured I’d make some cocoa and see if it helped.”
    “Sit, Dad, I’ll get it. Is this a whipped cream or marshmallows night?”
    “Marshmallows,