My Cousin, the Alien Read Online Free Page A

hotels in the country, and lots of rich, famous people bathed in its mineral springs to get healthy, then drank bottled “Vulcan Wasser” to cure just about everything.
    Maybe I’d been thinking too much about aliens lately, but Vulcan Wasser reminded me of TV space people. The brochure said Vulcan was the old Roman god of volcanoes, and
wasser
was German for water. Whatever.
    The hotel was really big, or as Ethan called it, “gargantuan.” It had columns everywhere like a huge wedding cake. Guys in red uniforms hauled our luggage up the wide front stairs. The enormous lobby sprouted potted palms, thick marble columns, and crystal chandeliers.
    Once we’d checked in, a young guy in a uniform piled our luggage onto a cart and led us into a creaky elevator that, after a slow, noisy, and very cramped trip, opened again on the top floor. Our rooms were at one end of a long hall. Each family had a huge master bedroom with a bathroom grand enough for an emperor. Ethan and I each had our own bedrooms next to our parents’ with our own doors to the hall. The windows showed rambling gardens and another wing of the hotel that was covered with scaffolding.
    We unpacked and went downstairs to a restaurant so fancy I was sure I’d do something wrong. There were white tablecloths, candles, cloth napkins folded like peacocks’ tails, and pieces of silverware I hadn’t a clue how to use. The menu prices were scary too, but since it was already paid for, I ordered lobster. It looked gross but tasted okay. Ethan had steak. Maybe he thought lobsters looked too much like aliens.
    He certainly did not like the fat, bald waiter and whispered dire warnings to me. He watched the guy like a hawk when he served our food in case he pulled out some paralyzing weapon or sprinkled radioactive poison on our salads. But in a hotel that, like my dad said, caters to rich, middle-aged golfers, Ethan would either have to get used to seeing fat, bald guys or pick another game. After dinner even Ethan relaxed, and the six of us were so stuffed we just sat in rocking chairs on the big hotel porch and made plans for tomorrow.
    Turned out, it rained buckets the next day, so Ethan and I stopped arguing about whether to go horseback riding or swimming and explored the hotel instead. Our moms took mud baths at the hotel spa, and our dads went bowling.
    This hotel demanded a lot of exploring. Ethan might be scared of enemy aliens, but he sure wasn’t scared of doing things we probably weren’t supposed to. We took back stairs, slipped through unmarked doors, and explored areas roped off for renovation.
    In one corridor, we saw a heavy guy who was kind of balding step out of his room. Like a scared cat, Ethan ducked into an alcove, opened a window, and stepped onto the fire escape.
    “Hey, you can’t do that,” I whispered sharply.
    “Why not? These things are made for people to escape from danger.”
    “Yeah, but they look plenty dangerous themselves.” And they did. All rusty and covered with pigeon droppings.
    “You scared?” He was already climbing down. I was scared, but even more scared that Ethan would hurt himself, and it’d be my fault for not watching out for him. So I followed. You could see through the slatted metal steps all the way to the ground. They swayed and creaked with every step. It wasn’t raining just then, but the rusty steps and hand rails were wet and slippery.

    Ethan wanted to keep going, but I stopped at the next floor. “Look, that guy probably caught an elevator to the bottom. Let’s duck in here. He’d never think of looking for us just one floor down.”
    “He won’t think of looking on the fire escape either.”
    I stayed put. “How come you’re scared of getting on a horse but you don’t mind scrambling around dozens of feet off the ground?”
    “Maybe my planet has lots of mountains, but we don’t ride on big snorting animals.”
    Okay, I could think fast too. “So, what if that alien guesses we took the