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Ryland finds the alien first, but the idea to follow the falling star is Colt's.
It doesn't count as part of their discovery, though, because Ryland had been the one planning to track the celestial object's drag path through the sky with his telescope. It's an amateur piece of equipment, nothing like the model specifications that Ryland had written down on his Christmas wish list, but Court had dryly informed him that NASA got special Santa money for stuff like that. The telescope is still his favorite gift in the entire galaxy, and he spends more time scanning the night sky than he does watching movies with Colt or reading with Court.
From what Ryland knows about falling stars, they are actually not stars at all. Colt is less enthusiastic about hearing about space debris that enters the atmosphere and burns up before landing, so Ryland calls it a falling star anyway.
The little meteor is bright, a streak of brilliant light cutting through the night, and Colt elbows him out of the way to peer into the scope himself. Ryland is two inches taller, but Colt likes to lift weights with Court, so he is much stronger. Ryland stumbles out of the way with an indignant squeak.
Frazzled but awed, Ryland tracks its path with his naked eye. He pushes his glasses up his nose without blinking and sighs in frustration when he realizes his fingers smudged the lenses again. The small smudge just barely hinders his clear view of the meteor.
This is the most exciting thing he has ever seen in his entire twelve years of life; he doesn't have time to fumble with his glasses and wipe them clean on his shirt!
Colt makes a low, intrigued hum. Ryland shoves at his shoulder and ribs to get him to move out of the way, but Colt locks his knees and braces himself directly in front of the telescope. All Ryland can do is give him a rough jostle.
"Colt!" Ryland shouts. "Lemme see lemme see lemme see!"
"Woahhh," Colt sighs out dramatically, just to infuriate his twin a little more.
Ryland squints up at the sky, scanning for the bright light that once beckoned him, but there is light pollution from the distant city mucking up the horizon line. Still, he twists his head around to search for any sign of his meteor, jabbing his fingers into Colt's side all the while.
His twin had been smart enough to layer up before coming outside to the cool night air for star-watching. The plush Miami Vice jacket they found in a Goodwill is a size too large on him, so he has plenty of room to shimmy out of direct reach of Ryland's poking. He keeps his face stubbornly glued to the telescope, searching.
At once, both of them notice the final starburst of light descending from the sky.
It is far closer than either of them could have presumed.
Colt staggers back from the telescope with a surprised gasp. He collides instantly with Ryland, and together the brothers go down in a tangled heap of flailing limbs. A punctured gasp leaks out of Ryland when Colt's elbow lands directly into his solar plexus, and all he can do is wheeze in shock as the light flares out above their heads and lands in the thick grove of trees lining the back of their yard.
Still stacked haphazardly on top of Ryland, Colt screams in terror.
The boom that follows the meteor's arrival is nearly as deafening. The ground trembles beneath Ryland's splayed back.
"It blew up!" Colt hollers. He scrambles off of Ryland, his hands and knees digging roughly into Ryland's torso and hip as he gets back up to his feet. He stands there, slack-jawed, and eyes the trees warily.
It takes Ryland longer to collect himself. He lies in the grass, struggling to catch his breath, and rubs a hand over his chest ruefully. He thinks his entire musculoskeletal system is bruised from the way his twin dropped on him like a sack of bricks.
"You're heavy as heck, Colt!" Ryland wheezes out.
That snaps Colt out of his stupor quickly. "Court says no swearing."
"I didn't!"
"Did too!" Colt says smugly. "Heck is a bad word, even Mom said so!"
"Augh," Ryland whines, because his brother is right and he doesn't want to argue about it anymore. He sits up, fumbles his hand in the surrounding grass for his wayward glasses, and checks to make sure Colt's heavy body didn't crush the frames before shoving them onto his face. The lenses are hopelessly smudged with dirt and fingerprints.
Ryland squints out at the treeline. Colt puts his hands on his hips just like Court does when he's confused about a car's mechanical problem. Both of them stare out at the inky, eerie shadows that lurk along the undergrowth.
The neighbor's ancient yellow Labrador is barking, but otherwise the air is quiet. Ryland realizes, with a shudder of cold horror, that he can't hear the crickets anymore.
"Um," Ryland says, his voice small. "Wow."
He tries to think about everything he has read about meteors. The fragments of debris can travel up to 70 kilometers per hour, or about 43 miles per hour if his mental calculation is correct, which means that there should be nothing left to hit the earth as a physical impact.
"Wow?" Colt repeats incredulously. "Dude, a freaking star fell into our yard!"
"We don't own those trees," Ryland interjects immediately. They have both spent enough time listening to their mother and Court lecture them about boring things like trespassing and private property that Ryland knows better than to assume otherwise. Still, he stares out into the impenetrable darkness as if the meteor will come rolling out of the trees like the Chef Boyardee commercial that always plays on television.
"What if it just comes rolling out?" Colt asks wistfully. Ryland knows he's thinking of the very same commercial. It is the only commercial that causes Colt to spring up, rush to the screen, and study it, just in case he can notice a string or a person propelling the can forward. He is always a nerd about the technicalities of filming.
Ryland doesn't care about any of that. He just thinks about how it would feel to find a piece of a meteor, and what it would feel like if he held it in his hands. He's seen the fragments of other meteors in a museum before, but it had only been through the thin covering of display glass.
He wants to touch it.
He also feels that the woods' foreboding darkness warns him to wait to begin his search until morning.
"We gotta go get that star," Colt says suddenly. His tone is decisive. Just like that, Ryland knows that his mind is made up. With a straight back and stubborn lift of his chin, Colt starts to trudge across the yard to the trees. He doesn't even have a flashlight, just the dim light of the moon above and the soft amber glow of the living room windows behind him.
"What are you doing, Colt?"Ryland scrambles up to his feet. His sneakers slip in the soft grass, and his laces tangle over one another, but he manages not to fall flat on his face. He hurries after his brother, but he casts a punitive glance at the house behind them.
Right now, their brother is at work, and their mother must be at the kitchen table, clipping coupons as she watches Jeopardy from a room away. Neither of them would notice the twins going space rock hunting for a while yet.
That does nothing to ease Ryland's worry. "Colt!"
"You know what I'm doing," Colt calls back. "I'm going star hunting."
"It's not actually a star," Ryland tells him. He has to half-run to catch up with Colt's determined stride. The undergrowth tangles and whips at his legs, and he can feel the sting of the stronger stems through the thin fabric of his pajamas. Colt is wearing shorts but looks entirely unfazed by the thicket they're walking through.
"Falling star, schmalling star," Colt waves a dismissive hand. "It's probably worth like, a million dollars if we find it. I can buy a new bike!"
"You can't sell it!" Ryland gasps. Colt is much faster than he is, and much more athletic. It's taking nearly all of his lung capacity to breathe as they climb through the undisturbed terrain. "If it's really a meteorite, then we have to give it to a museum, or NASA, or something! As a donation!"
"Meaty-what?" Colt repeats. He sounds dumbfounded. "I thought you said it was a star."
"I told you it's not actually a star!"
"It would be a sucky star," Colt concedes. "Like, it isn't glowing or anything. I can't see anything out here!"
The canopy of leaves above filters out most of the dim moonlight they had been using to navigate. Colt charges through the undergrowth with little care, but Ryland slows down and does his best to scan for any sign of a meteorite making landfall. He expects there might be signs of obvious damage to the landscape, like broken branches or charred ground, so he takes in their surroundings with a critical eye.
Ryland tilts his head back to study the tree canopies for damage. He isn't concerned about the ground until his shuffling gait catches on a tree root and sends him stumbling into the dirt. He hits the ground with a muffled grunt. He is going to be covered in bruises tomorrow, never mind that his brother will be so annoyed when he does laundry and finds Ryland's dirty pajamas.
He can't see anything; his knee hurts from bumping it on a rock, and he doesn't want to be out here anymore. They should retreat to the house and ask Court to come out with them in the morning to look for their possible meteorite. He doesn't realize that Colt has disappeared into the endless darkness ahead of him until he finally pulls himself up to his feet and brushes off his dirty pants with little success.
"Colt," Ryland whines. "Where did you go?"
There is a harsh rustling in the woods to his right. Ryland blinks harshly in the dim light. He makes an aborted motion to raise his hand to pull his glasses up over his nose, but he finds that it isn't hanging off his chin like usual. He lost his glasses again.
"My glasses fell off," Ryland sniffles. "Colt, can you help me find them? I can't see 'cause it's so dark out here and my knee hurts."
The sound of something approaching gets louder, but Colt doesn't say anything. He doesn't even tease Ryland for losing his glasses like usual.
"Don't scare me," Ryland pleads. "I jus' wanna go home!"
The moonlight permeates through the leaves above just enough to illuminate a thin strip of the woods in front of Ryland. He can just barely see the direction where the sound originates, and he squints as if he can catch a glimpse of his brother's bright red Spider-Man pajamas.
Something scrapes over a branch or a rock, and the thin light of the moon reveals, for just a moment, a shiny hamster ball with something crawling inside.
It's heading directly for him.
Ryland screams as loud as he can muster, his lungs strangling with the abrupt terror strangling him, but all he can hear is the answering trill of distress echoing back at him. The ball with the monster inside draws to a halt, half-lit by the moon, and Ryland raises his hands in surrender.
"Don't kill me," he sobs out. His voice pitches higher with a new surge of panic. "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! Colt!"
His brother is gone, and this monster is here in the woods with them. What if it killed his brother and ate him? What if it ate Ryland next? And then what if it was still hungry and it ate Court and their mom and even the neighbors?
He can barely see it. The light from the moon refracts off the top panels of the ball, but the sides are translucent enough for him to decipher movement. The little figure inside is bulky and angular, no taller than Ryland's shin, with multiple limbs that brace against the ball's sides to steady it.
Ryland watches, on the verge of complete and utter hyperventilation, as the being inside of the glass ball raises two of its limbs to mimic his surrendering pose.
He stops breathing entirely with a startled whistle of a gasp.
The being lets out a single chirp in echo, its arms raised unflinchingly.
Blinking, Ryland raises one of his feet to stand on just one leg, wavering slightly from lack of balance. He watches with rapt interest as the little figure lifts another limb to copy him. It even sways side to side with a gentle shimmy to mimic Ryland's bad balance act.
"Holy Skittles," Ryland whispers.
He drops his leg back to the ground, and his arms fall to his sides. The strangely shaped being does the exact same thing, then waits, expectantly, as if waiting for a new routine to begin. It reminds him of Colt when they would play Mirror Me and try to predict each other's moves.
Ryland is very good at Mirror Me. Mostly because Colt is predictable and likes to try the same moves in every round, but also because he knows his brother better than anyone else in the world, even when it's new stuff they have never tried before.
It might not be much different than that game, Ryland presumes, and he tests his hypothesis thoroughly.
They dance. It's awkward and stilted, since Ryland only has two arms and his untied shoelaces keep getting caught up on the plants and branches on the ground. His newfound mimic is patient, though, and painfully accurate in copying every movement he makes. Ryland thinks it might be mocking him like Colt does, especially when he trips in the bushes and he hears a trilling note that could be a laugh.
It's laughing at him. The little spider-looking thing in the hamster ball laughs at him just like his brother does.
Ryland is offended at first. "Hey!"
It trills at him again in a short note. It could be an interjection, but it doesn't sound like a language Ryland has ever heard of. It sounds like a piano. Ryland doesn't know how to play piano, and he silently laments his lack of knowledge. This could be an advanced robot that escaped a lab and came to find someone like him for help. It makes the same pitched whine that WALL-E does, so it could be a robot.
He might be the robot's chosen one.
"Okay, sorry," Ryland says. He's only panicking a little. "Um. Sir?"
The little hamster ball sways as it looks to him. At least, Ryland assumes it is looking at him. As far as he can tell, the maybe-robot doesn't have a face. There is no discernible slit for its eyes or mouth. A robot doesn't have to eat, but doesn't it need a mouth to speak? Wouldn't it need a camera or something as an eye to see?
Suddenly, he feels a lot less frightened.
He's utterly ecstatic.
Colt finds them after nearly ten minutes.
Ryland is sitting cross-legged in the dirt, hunched over the hamster ball, studying the little robot's features with rapt interest. He had managed to gesture the little thing over to a new patch of moonlight for his inspection, and it looks content to sit in a crouch and let Ryland whisper excitedly over it.
"You have five arms and legs! Or is it two arms and three legs? Or is it all arms? Your skin is scratchy like a rock! Sorry, that was mean; you just have bumps! Do you feel rough like a rock?"
The rocky-robot chirps at him periodically, nothing more than a low chime, but Ryland only grows more excited with each tune. He doesn't hear Colt approach until the little robot curls up on itself and sinks into the lower portion of the ball.
Ryland tilts his head, concerned, and nearly leaps out of his skin when Colt's voice breaks out in the darkness around them.
"Dude, where have you been? I think I just found an alien spaceship!"
Colt is thundering through the underbrush with little finesse, so Ryland can clearly tell that he is coming up on their left side. He will have a perfect view of the robot…
No. Not a robot.
Ryland stares down at the strangely shaped being that speaks in a language he has never heard on Earth before. It sits, curled up politely, and makes no sound in response. It seems to be taking a cue from Ryland in waiting for Colt to come up to them.
"It's not big at all!" Colt complains, still trudging through the woods with graceless efficiency. "I could only put my head in it, and it was hot in there! I think it might really be a star!"
"That's my brother," Ryland whispers to the alien. He is talking to an honest-to-goodness alien that looks like a rock spider. He thinks this has to be a crazy dream. Maybe he hit his head and blacked out when Colt fell on top of him earlier. Either way, he will definitely laugh in Colt's face when he gets scared about the new alien. Nothing ever scares Colt; he can handle mind-dizzying heights and fast amusement park rides, and he didn't even cry when he crashed his bike into a mailbox and broke his arm last year.
"Say 'boo'," Ryland suggests to the alien, speaking just softly enough for it to hear him. Colt is making too much noise to catch it, and he's still yelling about a spaceship.
Ryland thinks it is the dumbest thing he's ever heard, but he'll have to check it out anyway. Just in case. Colt wouldn't know what an alien spaceship looks like because all he does is watch television aliens, and he doesn't read about them as Ryland does.
It could just be a weather balloon. The books always say that any UFO is a weather balloon, whatever that is.
"An' anyway, I had'a find you 'cause I know you're probably scared being alone out here," Colt says at top volume, finally shuffling into view. He's running a hand through his dirty blond hair, mussing it up hopelessly, and his face lights up with a grin when he spots Ryland.
Then, within the very next moment, he sees the alien.
His jaw drops. Ryland grins, prepared to break out into laughter when Colt screams like a little girl at the sight of it, and the alien even gives a soft chirp that could be a 'boo' like Ryland suggested.
"Woah," Colt says breathlessly. Then he grins, wide and delighted. "I knew aliens were real! The movies were right!"
"Those are just movies!" Ryland shoots back instantly. He can’t hide the disappointment underlying in his voice. "This guy is real!"
"And then so are the movies," Colt says smugly. He comes bounding over to sit beside Ryland, staring at the hamster ball with utter fascination. "He looks like a rock."
"That's what I said," Ryland chimes back. "Look, he has a lot of arms!"
Colt waves at the alien and crows with delight when it waves back at him. "This is like Mirror Me!"
"He can dance," Ryland confirms. "We did the Cha-Cha Slide."
That is all the encouragement that Colt needs. He scrambles up to his feet, startling a squawk from Ryland as he uses his shoulder for leverage upwards and a surprised chime from the alien, and then he begins to dance. It's much more passionate than Ryland's earlier attempt was, but he messes up the order of the moves until Ryland punches him in the thigh and starts singing the rhyme for him to follow.
The alien rises to its full height and mirrors Colt with the same efficient ease it gave to Ryland. It chirps with laughter, just like Ryland does, when Colt messes up a move and makes a rapid correction that sends him stumbling back a step.
"He dances better than you!" Colt shouts with glee. "Look, he can even take it back!"
Colt wiggles back, shimmying, and the alien sways with him in perfect sync. Ryland scrunches up his face at his brother before his smile breaks loose again. This is a real alien. If Colt can see it, then it has to be real.
Then, if it's real, Ryland will learn everything about his new alien friend that he possibly can.
Colt assures both his brother and their alien that he will lead them back to the spaceship.
Rather, he tries to.
They get lost for nearly twenty minutes, which feels like eight hours in twelve-year-old time, before they finally stumble into the clearing of their own backyard instead. The lights from the living room are still on, but Ryland can see the shadowed silhouette of their mother moving around inside as she tidies up before going to bed.
Any moment, she will peek out of the back door and urge them to come inside to sleep. If she looks out now, then she will see both of them covered in dirt and grass stains with an alien in a hamster ball.
"Colt," Ryland hisses, grabbing his brother's pajama sleeve. Colt makes an indignant noise at being tugged on, still scanning the trees for a familiar sign of the spaceship. Ryland knows they don't have the time. Not now, anyway. They're going to have to check again in the morning.
"Colt," Ryland pleads again. The hamster ball that faithfully rolled along at his feet makes a distressed chirp in response to his own. "Colt, we have to sneak him in before Mom sees! She's gonna make us go to bed!"
"Oh, shoot," Colt groans. "You're right, she's gonna freak out. She doesn't even like hamsters."
"He's not a hamster," Ryland says, mildly offended on behalf of their new alien friend. "He's… a rock spider. Much scarier."
"She hates spiders too! A spider in a hamster ball has gotta be her worst nightmare!"
"Okay, look," Ryland says. His mind races desperately as he scans the back of their house. He can see the window of their shared room on the far side of the backyard. The window is just a few inches taller than Ryland, and he is the taller twin, but he thinks they can shove the ball through the window if they work together.
"I have a plan," he announces.
The alien chirps happily at the decision in his tone. His brother sighs loudly enough to drown out the tune.
"Oh, great," Colt says dryly. "Are you gonna make me jump off the roof again?"
"No, that was only one time," Ryland shrugs. "You need to climb into the window of our room to help the alien inside. I can lift him up to you!"
Colt gapes at him. "I jumped off three times! You told me it had to be done three times!"
"One experiment,"Ryland amends. "Now are you gonna climb into the window or not, Colt?"
Colt climbs into the window.
He has to use Ryland's lean frame as a ladder, and he makes sure to dig the heel of his sneaker into the top of Ryland's hair like a noogie before scrambling inside. He lands with a harsh thud and a muffled groan of pain. Belatedly, Ryland remembers that they have a small bookshelf leaning against the window with disassembled Lego models on the top of it. His brother must have landed on a pile of loose Lego pieces.
"Oops," Ryland says loud enough for Colt's benefit. He's snickering quietly back down to the alien, though. It chirps up at him with just as much mirth. He likes this little guy, he decides. He enjoys laughing at Colt just as much as Ryland does.
That's what he gets for kicking Ryland in the head.
"Okay," Colt grunts out. His head pops out of the window to eye them warily. "Pass Rocky up before Mom comes out."
"Rocky?" Ryland echoes.
"The alien," Colt says, as if his brother is hopelessly stupid. "He needs a name. Calling him an alien is rude."
"Rocky?" Ryland repeats. "He has, like, a real name!"
"Do you speak piano?" Colt demands. "Just help Rocky up here, Ry!"
"Do you speak piano?" Ryland mocks back, but he obediently leans down to lift up the hamster ball. Rocky the alien is small, no larger than a basketball, but his ball is slightly larger to allow full range of movement. Ryland isn't particularly strong, and Rocky turns out to be dense and heavy.
It takes a lot of strangled groans and shaky maneuvering, but Ryland manages to haul the little ball up to Colt's waiting arms.
"What the heck," Colt wheezes out as he hauls Rocky up. "What do you eat in space, dude? You're heavy!"
"Don't swear," Ryland wheezes back. "And don't hurt his feelings!"
"I'm not speaking in Rocky's language," Colt groans out. He carefully supports the ball’s dense weight as he guides it through the window frame. It just barely fits, and Colt clips his fingers on the edges as he tugs Rocky inside. He lets out a whine of pain. "How do you say 'you're heavy' in piano?"
Ryland doesn't dignify that with a response. He rushes back to his telescope just as his mother opens the back door to call him inside. She raises an eyebrow when she sees him hustling up with his telescope carefully tucked under one arm and his pajamas rumpled with stains.
"Did your brother wrestle you out here?" She asks. She doesn't sound angry, merely amused, and she smiles sympathetically when Ryland grimaces at her in response. "I thought I heard yelling out there."
"We were just dancing," Ryland says weakly. "The grass is slippery."
She gives his untied sneakers a pointed look. "I'm sure. You better change before bed. Colt, too, if he's just as dirty."
"Okay, Mom," Ryland says over his shoulder. He rushes into his room before she feels the need to follow and inspect Colt for herself. He wants to make sure there's a suitable hiding spot for their alien before he gets discovered by their mom.
Colt was right about one thing: she would freak out if she saw a giant spider in a hamster ball in their room right now.
Rocky goes into the closet, and the twins take care to pile their dirty pajamas over him with reverent attention. They leave him a tiny window to look out of. Ryland isn't sure if he can actually see, because there isn't any visible sign of eyes on the surface of his rocky exterior, but he taps the glass of his ball when Colt and Ryland give him a fist bump before bed.
Their mother peeks in to wish them goodnight, tells them she loves them, and reminds them that Court will be there when they wake up in the morning after she heads off to work. She's always gone early to start her shift, but their brother is always there to keep them safe while she's gone.
When she finally shuts off the overhead light, leaving just the nightlight that projects dim green-tinted stars onto their ceiling, and closes the door, Colt lets out a shaking sigh of laughter.
"There's an alien in our room," he marvels. "I named the first alien ever."
"He has his own name," Ryland says softly. "I wonder if his mom misses him."
They both fall silent at that. They can hear a soft hum from the closet as Rocky's limbs clamor into a sitting position and he joins in with their discussion. He likes to mimic their cadence and tone. Ryland is starting to decipher certain words, he thinks, like Colt's name. Every time he calls for his brother, Rocky mimics him with the same chime.
"We'll keep him safe until he goes home to his mom," Colt decides. "An' Court can't get mad about it 'cause he always says we gotta help people when we can."
"We're helping Rocky," Ryland agrees.
Then, a thought occurs to him. "Court is gonna be so mad when I tell him I lost my glasses."
"Oh." Colt sucks in a breath. "Yeah, he is gonna freak out about that. I forgot."
Rocky, tucked away in the closet, chimes sadly with them. Ryland hopes he can distract Court for just a moment so he doesn't ask about the glasses lost in the woods, but he knows his brother. He will be upset that they went someplace they weren't allowed, risked getting hurt, and, for the moment, lost the last pair of glasses Ryland owned.
"Yeah," Ryland says, glumly. "Maybe Rocky can take me home with him so Court doesn't notice."
"That would be cool," Colt says wistfully. "Imagine all the hamster balls!"
That breaks the mood. They dissolve into laughter loudly enough that their mother comes back in to scold them for not sleeping, and even Rocky chirps with mirth when she's finally out of earshot again.
Ryland figures he will never be able to sleep. He listens to Colt snore for what feels like forever, and he can feel Rocky watching him. Rocky doesn't have eyes, of course, but Ryland can sense it as in instinct. He lies in bed for a while, just thinking, before he finally grows sick of it.
He lurches out of bed, yanking at his comforter until it escapes the tight tuck that Court gives their sheets every morning, and he drags it over to the closet. Rocky trills a soft greeting when Ryland drops down next to him.
"Hey, buddy," Ryland whispers. He doesn't want to wake up Colt. He hasn't heard the front door open, so he knows his brother hasn't come home yet, and there are still hours to go until dawn. He's tired, but more than anything, he is too excited about the alien to sleep.
Still, he takes care to curl up next to the hamster ball, his covers wrapped around him like a cocoon. He presses his temple to the edge of the glass. It's slightly warm, but it is comfortable, not unbearable.
When he presses his palm to the glass, Rocky puts his three-clawed hand against his.
"Watch me sleep?" Ryland jokes. Rocky trills with what Ryland assumes is agreement, and he laughs softly. "You're a cool alien spider, just for the record. You are heavy though. My arms still hurt from picking you up. Just don't tell Colt that I said that."
Softly, Rocky begins to hum a series of notes. It is rhythmic and slow, and Ryland listens, trying to pick out a pattern he can decipher. He wonders if, someday and somehow, he can learn this strange language of his new friend enough to be fluent in it. It would be their own secret language, like him and Colt.
He thinks he would like that. A lot.
Ryland falls asleep dreaming about it, and Rocky sings to him all night long in that comforting, alien tongue.