My friend has alien fingers—long and bony with short half-moon nails. We sit on my bedroom floor and bring our fingertips together. He recoils. I don't like that, he says. I tell him it's because our fingertips have the most nerves in our whole body. It's not weird for them to tingle at the touch. It's just biology. My mom says he's allowed to not like it, so we don't touch fingers anymore.

My friend has no hair; his head is as shiny as a spoon. His eyes have no brows. They don't even serve a purpose anyway, he tells me on our walk home from school. I think that's probably true and consider shaving my own. I wonder what I'd look like without them, or what he'd look like with them. I ask him if he can show me a picture from before. But he just turns and walks away. From behind, I think he looks like a small old man, like Mr. Ricketts from next door.

My friend wears a baseball cap to school and he's the only kid in class allowed. Some kids have a problem with it, but I don't. When I asked him why he wears a hat, he told me, My head gets cold. That seems fair to me. My head would never get cold, not with all these curls. I hate brushing my hair. I wish I didn't have any, like my friend.

My friend always gets asked if he has cancer. The worst was the day Vanessa asked him. My friend loves Vanessa and loves when she chases us around the playground. I like it, too. One day, Vanessa stopped chasing us and we didn't know why until a week later when she popped the big question. No, he said. If I had cancer, do you think I could run this fast? He sprinted around the basketball court. He coughed so hard after, we didn't hear the bell.

My friend is an astronaut, and I am one, too. He holds up his alien fingers and counts backwards from five. We take off in our toybox-shaped rocket and blast into the stars. My baby sister is a dangerous creature on an evil planet. We crash land through her door, leap onto her bed, and shoot her with laser beams. She starts crying and runs away. I tell my mom it was just a game, and that the lasers weren't even real, but she says it's never okay to go into my sister's room uninvited. She makes my friend go home early.

My friend stops showing up for school. I beg my mom to take me to his house, but she tells me he's too sick to see me. When will he get better? I ask. She says she doesn't know when, but that I should add him to my nightly prayers. I've already added him, along with almost everyone else I know. The prayer is so long, I barely get to sleep on time.

My friend comes to class one day without warning, and I wonder if it's because of what I said to God the night before. I told him I'd be nice to my sister every day for a month if he made my friend better, and I guess I have to do that now. My friend's skin is ashy and sunken in, not like it used to be. Around his eyes is blue, like he got in a fight. The teacher releases everyone for recess, but my friend stays at his desk drawing a map on his paper. It's a new planet, he tells me. There are no aliens here. I ask him what we will do there if there's no evil species to fight. Explore, he says, handing me a box of colored pencils. I begin filling in the lines.

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