I fell to this foreign earth like an angel falling from the Heavenly skies above. Drifting through the clouds, limbs being caught by the slipping and raging winds as their hands fought desperately to hold my body afloat.

The wind had not been aggressive. I can still feel the echoes of it over my frame when I close my eyes. It felt like a familiar warmth among the cold atmosphere I had slithered through.

Despite being young when my body first touched the wet earth I remember everything in precise, meticulous and accurate details. I can still feel the brush of the wheat against my bare child’s skin as I crawled through the dense fields. The crumbles of black dirt under my tiny fingers.

I do not know for how long I fell, within the echo of space I drifted for more unknown time before being swept up by the current of earth’s atmospheric current. I do not know how far my home is from here, only that it is nowhere close.

There are billions of miles between where I came from and where I am.

Suddenly pulled back to reality I find myself levitating two feet above my bed. Upon realizing it, I promptly crash downwards and through the bedframe. My light blue quilt and pillow tumble across the floor and do not break my fall in the slightest.

“Damn.” I groan, a bit obnoxiously since I've just been pulled out of not only my sleep but since i also slammed my chest into the crumbling wooden bedframe as i fell. Pulling myself up from the ground, small splinters now decorate the hardwood floor of my bedroom. These are the only pieces of dirt and debris on my floor.

I have learned during my years here that humans like cleanliness; and therefore, I stay clean. Immaculately clean. My room, my clothes, my life.

I try to scramble and put together the broken pieces of my bed frame, in a bundle it looks more like a garbage heap than a bed now. I groan internally at the mess.

Below me I can hear the toaster pop; my parents are up.

Slowly, I get dressed, pulling on my beige flannel and a pair of simple jeans. Following the steps in my mind. My school bag is already full and prepared. My books and notepads have already been slipped into the notebook pocket. Everything in my backpack has a very specific place.

I make my way downstairs, my hand slides down the banister as I do. My mother is adding more milk to her coffee. Her brown hair is pulled back into a low ponytail that just barely touches her hoodie and light grey jacket combo. I can tell she’s been up for hours because of her attire, and despite it barely being fall she is always cold.

“Good morning,” I peep, “How did you sleep?” Pressing bread into the toaster I leaned against the counter. The red kitchen cabinets always made me think of the 70s, which made sense considering that was when the house had been built. But mostly, the colour made me re-envision a very specific photo I had seen in a magazine years ago.

The red cabinets of the photo’s kitchen were a shade darker but the layout was exactly the same; a large U-shape with a smaller island in the middle. The photo’s kitchen had many photos lining the bare wall to the left of the island while ours only had one photo. A photo of Bedlam’s first sign that my father had helped build before I had landed on their wheat fields.

“Again Rory?” My father chastises from the table, his coffee is steaming from the edge of the brown mug but he hasn’t touched it. He doesn’t look up from his newspaper, though his displeased voice echoes in my mind.

He isn’t wrong for chastising me. This is the fourth time this month that I’ve broken the bedframe. I am just lucky that they haven’t walked on and me flying and levitating in the early morning.

Despite living with humans for the past many years of my life they are still the most simple and yet confusing creatures I have encountered. I am grateful that the Curie’s have taken me in and therefore I don’t want to jeopardize it by showing them anything more than what they’re used to.

Ignoring my father’s words, my mom kisses my cheek before she sits down next to dad, “Good morning.”

Grandma is knitting at the table beside my dad. Teal string is pooled atop the brown table, it mixes with dark blue. Each line is more tangled with the other the farther down the string goes. She doesn’t greet me, too focused on the next stitch and stitch after that.

I can see the bulge of her cigarette packet in her sweater pocket. Mom frowns on her smoking and so most likely, the moment we all dispersed from the house, she’d light a cigarette.

Mom said that I was like her fallen angel. She used to be devout, at least that’s what dad says. Though I would say that it is probably extremely difficult to believe in a higher cause when you have an alien living beneath your roof.

Meekly, I focused on brushing peanut butter onto my slightly burnt toast, “You heard it?”

“I think Canada heard it.” Evelyn adds sarcastically as she slams down the steps. She’s wearing bell bottom jeans that match the flip that the bottom of her burnt sienna hair has.

I mash down on the toast as I talk despite being aware that you’re not supposed to speak with your mouth closed, “Sorry, I’ll fix it when I get back from school but I’m already kind of running late.”

My mother rolled her eyes, she always sees through me. “You’re not late. You’re never late, but fine. Fix it after school.”

With a voice as buttery as a con man Evie jingled the keys in her hand. “Speaking of afterschool, “I’m stealing the truck afterschool, going to study at Marks.” We shared an old red truck, though to be honest it was mostly Evie’s. I don’t have many places to go.

“Be home by curfew.”

“Yes ma'am,'' she mockingly saluted at my mom with a wide smile on her face. “He’s going to help me ace this math test!” Evelyn and her boyfriend Mark have been dating for a while, mom and grandma adore him but dad is almost impossible to please. I once read about trust issues in a physician’s journal; perhaps he has those.

Both Evelyn and I grabbed our bags as the clock ticked down to the time to go to school. Evelyn grabbed an apple for the road as we left. I walked behind her, holding the door open for myself.

“Oh! Rory!” I turned immediately at my name, it was my fathers gruff voice.

“Yes?”

“After you’re done fixing your bed, the tractor metal got bent again, can you bend it back?” He finally takes a sip of his coffee, the deep wrinkles on his face become partially obscured from the mug.

“Sure,” I smile and nod monastically, making sure that the smile touches my eyes, humans like things like that sort of thing, “good day.”

“Why do you talk like that?” Evelyn's sarcastic tone burst at the seams, “Good day.” She mocks, “Why do you talk like you read it in a nineteenth century book?”

“I did.” I say, my hand firmly clutched onto the truck's handle, there’s still condensation dripping on it from the night before.

She chuckled lightly at me as she unlocked the truck door, “Of course you did.”

I look human but I am far from it. That’s the issue.