The True Meaning of Smekday (Smek 1)

“Why,” I said. “Why is the pink gapputty smooshed in the glove box.”

“It was rattling.”

“The putty?”

“The gloves box,” J.Lo said as he hoisted himself inside the car.

“And just so we can put this behind us,” I said, “squishable gapputty is…”

“Something you smoosh into places for making them stop rattling.”

“Right.”

“I supposed you were looking for it. It is the only thing missing fromto my toolsbox.”

I just fell forward and hugged him. I didn’t think about it. I squeezed my arms around him and hugged. His body gave more than I expected, like dough, except for a hard boxy shape that cut into my hip. It was the camera. He’d brought back the camera.

J.Lo patted my head. “If this is about the gapputty, you can still use the brown. Is just as good, just not pink—”

“Shut up,” I said, and pulled back to look at him. Then I climbed into the front seat so he wouldn’t see me cry.

“We better get to higher ground,” I said. “Roll up the window.”

I found a half-finished building a half mile away. It was just a skeleton of girders and partial floors, and I could thrust Slushious up through the gaps until we were a few stories above the rising water. Here we waited out the storm. This took two days, and J.Lo and I managed to explain a lot to each other about humans and Boov. He didn’t understand, for example, about families. I began to get why he never seemed to think Mom’s abduction was as big a deal as I did.

“So…the humansmom and the humansdad make the baby all by themself,” J.Lo said slowly. “Aaand…afters they make the baby they…keep it?”

“Yes.”

“As like a pet.”

“No.”

“No?” J.Lo frowned and opened and closed his hands.

“No. Not like a pet. Like a baby. It’s their baby,” I said, “so they love it and take care of it. The mother and father together. Usually.”

“Usually,” he repeated. “But not with Tip?”

It was funny to hear someone just ask this question like it was nothing at all. It didn’t bother me to talk about my dad, but people always figured it did.

“No, not with me,” I said. “My mom raised me, of course, but I never knew my dad, and he never knew me.”

“Ah, yes,” said J.Lo. “This is the way it is being with the Boov. Nobody knows their offspring, and nobody knows their parents.”

“Nobody?”

J.Lo explained. It seemed that, of those seven Boov genders he’d mentioned before, nearly all had some part to play in order to make a baby Boov. When a female had an egg to lay, she did it and just walked away. There were special places to leave them all over the cities. And if a passing boy, or boyboy, or whatever, saw that there was an egg that needed attention, he did what needed to be done and left. Eggs that were ready to turn into Boov were collected by those whose job it was to do so. Somebody else had the job of feeding and raising the babies, and still another Boov taught them. The closest thing the Boov would ever have to a family was the work unit they were assigned to as adults.

“Well, that’s one thing we humans do better than you Boov,” I said. “Families are better.”

J.Lo shook his head as much as an alien with no neck can do that.

“Families are meaning you have to care about some peoples more than others,” he said. “But all peoples are just as good. Alls have a job to do.”

I didn’t know how to argue with that.

“I haveto seen the human families,” he added. “Some of them, the peoples, they stay in a family they do not like.”

“Yeah? What’s that supposed to mean?”

J.Lo flinched. “Did I say wrong? I meanted only that some humans do not have an easy living with their family-mates. The brothers and sisterns, especiably.”

“Oh. Yeah. Some families…don’t always get along like they should,” I agreed. “Some people even hate their family sometimes. But they love them, too. They still love them. You Boov…do you…”

“Do the Boov what?”

I didn’t know how to ask what I was asking. So I just asked it.

“Do you have love?”

“Maaa-aa-aa-aa-aa!” J.Lo laughed. “Of course the Boov love. The Boov love everything!”

I didn’t feel up to arguing about it, but I was pretty sure if you loved everything you didn’t really love anything.

I changed the subject and asked more about Boov stuff. Eventually J.Lo explained that all Boov could breathe just a little bit underwater—enough to last for a half hour or more. He was shocked to learn that most humans could only last for about thirty seconds.

I complained that he should have told me about this before, and that he’d as good as tricked me into hugging him, but then I forgave him. He was enthusiastically grateful.

I could try to tell you all that he told me, but I doubt I’d remember everything. And I might as well let him tell some of it himself.

J.Lo made this after we left Florida. He was sure his people would have to leave Earth now that the Gorg had arrived, and he wanted us humans to understand who the Boov were. He couldn’t write, of course, but he could draw okay. Apparently comic books were, like, a serious art form on Boovworld, not just stories of badly dressed men hitting each other.

By the end of the second night, we were trying to learn each other’s language. J.Lo already spoke mine pretty good, of course, but he wanted to read and write as well. He even said something along the lines of how he was going to have to learn to read and write humanspeak now. I wondered what he meant. It sounded like he was fixing to stay on Earth even after the Boov left. I knew he was afraid to face his people, but I still expected he’d suck it up and go back to them at some point.

As for me, there was no way I could learn to speak Boov. According to J.Lo, I didn’t have the anatomy. I said we just needed a sheep and some bubble wrap, but J.Lo had no idea what I was talking about.

He thought I might be able to understand Boovish one day, though, and I could probably learn to read and write. I was especially into trying that bubble writing in the air. It was pretty, once you got used to it.

“Okay…” I said, steadying the little turkey baster thing, “so…if I add a smaller bubble here—”

“No. No,” J.Lo said, and I could see he was trying to hide a smile behind his hand. Which must have been a human habit he’d picked up, because Boov smiles are about three feet wide and Boov hands are the size of wontons.