The Girl Who Fell to Earth Read Online Free Page A

anticipated. “English. Me.” Here he stabbed his pink waistcoat. “No good.”
    â€œWell, that’s okay, we don’t have to talk.” Gale opened her magazine on the table and the two leaned over together to flip through the saturated color photographs of the Eagle landing on the moon and then leaving orbit again. Matar recognized the awed look on the faces of American kids laid out on living room floors in front of General Electric. He remembered Kuzahmiah’s TV and watching the moon landing on the other side of the earth.
    By the end of the magazine a wordless familiarity had grown between Gale and Matar. The rolling thunder of bowling-ball-on-pine was too loud to talk over anyway. Eventually, when the rain let up, they stepped out to the wet black curb and a deep orange sunset over the Cascade Mountains. An unlit cigarette hung from her mouth, and her blond hair caught the silvery neon of the sign.
    â€œHey, how old are you today, anyway?” She spoke thinly through curled lips so as not to drop the cigarette.
    â€œNineteen,” Matar answered.
    Gale lit her smoke, hiding her surprise. “Most boys around here only have peach fuzz at nineteen.” She flicked her finger along his thick moustache and quickly looked out down Sixth Avenue toward the peak of Mount Rainier. “See that? That’s my mountain.” She waited for him to respond, but Matar was too absorbed in observing how her light hair ruffled like a static halo around her face. “Do you have mountains like that where you’re from in Arabia?”
    Matar turned to look at the ice cream colors melting off Rainier’s snowcapped peak. Of course there were no mountains like that where he’d come from, but he didn’t have the words to explain what there was. It was too much, too big for him, too different from the terrain of his home.
    Meanwhile Gale eyed him up and down. His suit was still damp. “We need to find you some better outfits. Where’d you get that nasty suit?” She poked at the horrible spongy polyester just like Matar’s mother had.
    Matar just shook his head, lightly drunk and unable to explain the morbid backstory. Instead he tugged a little at the strap of her overalls. “What is this?” he asked.
    He reminded Gale of a foal nuzzling around for something to eat. “These are overalls.”
    â€œAll-overs?”
    â€œOveralls. What the farmers wear. You know. No?”
    Matar’s eyelids were now drooping with exhaustion. Gale guided him back safely to the Ballard Motel, where she showed him how to open the minibar full of snacks. Matar opened and shut the refrigerator door in awe. All this food had been there all along.
    â€œYou’re a weird one, you know that?” Gale said from the door. “Tell you what, how about I take you to see the mountain tomorrow?” She triangulated a link between the mountain, Matar, and herself to explain before making a driving gesture and pointing back at the fading peak. Of course his answer was yes.
    That night, as jet lag kept Matar awake in bed, he remembered the first time he’d heard someone speak English in person. It had been in Kuzahmiah one winter, when a strange truck drove into town. Matar and Mohamed had been sitting in front of their house as a Land Rover pulled up beside the mosque. In it was the first white person Matar had ever seen not in black-and-white. He was surprised that he was in fact pink, the same color as the locusts that sometimes blew into their desert from Africa. He loved when they landed in huge swarms, because they were easy to catch, skewer, and roast, and made delicious snacks. The pink man was young and wearing a white thobe in the style of city people. He wore a hat to protect his face from the sun and had a leather camera satchel over his shoulder. Matar longed to look inside it. His Saudi guide stepped out of the truck and disappeared into the mosque to ask