Terrestrial Alien ✔

Chapter 13: The Girl Named Ying

Joshua

Over the next week that follows, I get to know Ying a lot better. She's sweet and cute, and yes, that much was obvious, but I get to learn much more than just that. For example, her favorite colors are pastels, she has a tortoiseshell cat named Totoro, and she has an older brother in college whose name escapes me. We see each other in the hallway almost every day, but we don't talk much there, and it isn't where I come to find out most of this. We haven't even started eating lunch together yet, but I suppose that might just be because of our different friend groups.

Most of our conversations have occurred over text. Despite my phone being hella damaged and shit at holding a charge, it's thankfully not destroyed, and we've been able talk after school and late into the night, when both of us probably should have been sleeping. Through this, I found out that she's not just shy. Since she was little, Ying has had a deathly fear of public speaking. It's to the point, she explained to me, that she has trouble speaking one-on-one with people she doesn't know very well and people who give her anxiety, like... me for example. She says she's started to get counselling for it, and the doctor is actually the one who suggested finally approaching me. Which, I told her, I can fully appreciate it. (She thought that was funny— the number of giggling emojis she sent was adorable.)

I also found out that, though she appears younger, she's actually a junior like me, and the two of us are in the same language arts class. I never noticed her before now; She always sits in the back and never raises her hand. But as of late, I'd try to get to class early to sit next to her, as possibly one of the only clues to other people that we're talking to each other now. Well, aside from Ethan's teasing and Maggie's gushing about it. The two of us still don't talk extensively, and we're still awkward and blundering messes around each other, but we're trying.

Through text, I've also come to find out about two of her other interests, one of them being modern witchcraft. I don't quite understand it, but I know it just has something to do with black cats and ghosts maybe and herbs that smell nice. I believe. I understand her second passion more, at least, which is animation. She loves anime and western cartoons (mostly ones for kids, she admitted later), and while she isn't into animating herself, she says she enjoys drawing. She claims she's not very good at it though, or possibly just not as good as she'd like, but I'd beg to differ. It was on Wednesday that I eventually managed to coerce her into showing me a drawing, and, though she sent an army of embarrassed emojis with it, I thought it was absolutely amazing and I made sure to tell her just that.

She explained to me that it was fanart for a show; I've already forgotten the name of it, but I believe it had to do with volleyball. Her drawing style looks like a strange aesthetic mix between Steven Universe and a modern cartoony anime.

In order to show her that the drawing really wasn't that bad, I tried to recreate the same characters in a drawing of my own— needless to say, it was horrible. At the time, I had an APUSH essay I probably should have finished first. (That is, an AP US History essay.) But for once, I didn't regret not doing it promptly, even when I had to stay up late to finish it after. Ying had found the crappy drawing positively charming, and she told me she really appreciated it.

Reading this message made me feel strangely light and happy, and it isn't even the first time I got this feeling because of her. Talking to her in general has made me feel like this, to be honest, like for once, I'm just a normal person. For once, I'm not someone being stalked by a clueless, dangerous alien, and for once, I'm not someone who's moved to get away from a secret that's followed me here.

I know she has no idea, but that's probably why chatting with her is so nice. When I text her, I forget all my shitty problems and my shitty past because she has no idea they exist, and she doesn't push me about them if she does. When we text, it's just me and her. A boy and girl talking, both of us with our own issues that don't matter at all.