If someone came up and asked me where the strangest place on Earth was, I would have told them Walmart at midnight in the middle of a town like Backwater. 

The shelves were always stocked despite the lack of customers, all they played was Sheryl Crow, and there were like two employees who I was pretty sure they'd pulled out of a tomb somewhere and thrown behind the cash register. So it was haunting, to say the least. 

The doors slide open and I run inside like a guy with a screw loose, smelling like smoke and roasted to hell. But by the time I pass the registers, the blue boy has disappeared among the cheerful smiley face displays, racks of four-dollar socks, and candy bars.

 It was like an alien planet in here. There was no way I would be able to find him without going down every damn grocery section.

Shit, where the hell was the little freak? 

I hear a woman scream as I'm looking for him down the pasta sauce and Hamburger Helper aisle, and I take off running as fast I can, careening around the corner in time to see an old lady fighting with Alien-Boy in the middle of the dairy section.

"You absolute animal! Let go of me!" The old bat screeches and she beats the alien with her purse when he grabs her by the shoulders and starts shaking her, babbling like a lunatic in his weird, obscure language that made no damn sense to me.

"Hey, Blueberry!" I snarl at him from where I stand next to the gallons of milk. "What the hell are you doing!?"

I must have been scarier than I looked, because Alien-Boy takes one look at me, launches the old lady into a wall of vegan cheese like a sack of garbage, and bolts the other way. He goes skidding down the aisle like he's Tonya Harding on the ice-rink and I'm right on his tail, I swear to God, I was going to catch his scrawny ass. 

We run past the pickles, turn the corner, and I start grabbing shit to throw at him, trying to stop him from destroying the store completely. Bags of bread and hot dog buns fly down the aisle and bounce off his head before exploding all over the floor. 

But then he gets wise. Real wise.

I turn the corner when Alien-Boy takes a left, but what I'm not expecting is for him to peg me in the face with a giant bag of flour. 

I stumble backward, pain exploding through my already injured nose. White powder flies all over the place, going down my lungs and throat until I'm hacking like my grandma during Bingo Night after her twelfth cigarette. "You goddamn asshole!" I scream, and I reach for a bag of sugar to chunk at him. "You're gonna pay for this!"

"Excuse me, sir!" A man shouts from behind me, and I turn around in time to see all two Walmart employees come marching up like the living dead. "What do you think you're doing, young man!?" The older guy with salt and pepper hair demands, all while the lady beside him glares daggers at me.

"Oh, hey, just in time!" I tell them, and I take a few steps backward, "Looks like you guys got a cleanup on aisle five, and I got a cute boy to catch up with, so peace out, dawgs!" I salute them and then I take off running as fast as I can, their shouts echoing behind me before I lose them, a swagger to my walk as I go.

Once I found Alien-Boy, I was going to drag him out of the store by his pretty hair and give him a warm welcome to Earth. He wouldn't know what hit him when I knocked him clean out.

I round the corner of the candy aisle like a boss, and that's when I see him.

He's lying in the middle of the store, his arms and legs outspread. His soft blue color was all washed out now, his silvery hair splayed out like a halo around his head.

"Blueberry? Holy shit!" What the hell was going on? Just a few minutes ago he'd been throwing flour in my face and attacking old ladies. Now he was laid out on the floor, completely lifeless? Was this some kind of alien mind trick he was using on me to get me to feel bad?

I jog over to him and I get down on my knees, hesitating a little before I slide his head over so that it rests on my lap. "Hey, Alien-Boy, wake up. I don't want to have to peel your dead body off the floor. " I slap his cheek a little and he groans, his eyes cracking open so that he's gazing up at me before he shuts them again.

"Kevin! What happened to you? Why does it look like The Pillsbury Doughboy crapped on your face? " Adam Kavinsky's voice rings out through the store and I look over my shoulder in time to see him marching up to us, out of breath and all sweaty. He's in a pair of blue penguin pajama pants and this white shirt that shows the outline of his chest and stomach. 

God, those sweater vests had done nothing for him.

"I got here as fast as I could," Adam explains quickly, "Which isn't that fast at all. Walmart's literally like ten minutes from my house, but my mom wanted to know where I was going and---"

He stops when he catches sight of the alien in my arms.

I repeat, I have a freakin' extraterrestrial passed out in my arms, with his head in my lap.

"No... no fucking way!" Adam gasps, and then he reaches up to push his mop of curly hair back, shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose in the process. "I totally thought you were pranking me when you called earlier. I mean, you're a big enough asshole to pull something off like that. But you really did find a little blue man. And he's here. He's actually here in the middle of Walmart! "

"Hey, Adam?" I sigh, "Mind doing me a favor and coming over here? Huckleberry Hound's not doing too hot right now. "

"Oh, right!" Adam breathes, and then he comes over and kneels down with me, his hands shaking, his breath coming out in quiet, excited gasps. "He's so blue and delicate," he murmurs, fascination in his tone. "He's absolutely gorgeous!"

"Alright, keep it in your goddamn pants, Professor!" I snap at him, "What's the matter with him? Why can't he stand up on his own? "

"Well, I'm not an expert in alien anatomy, but it's possible that the crash caused internal damage," Adam responds smartly, and then he glances up at me.

"Oh, shit..." I whisper, "Is he going to die? I can't have that resting on my conscience, man! "

"I don't know, Kevin," Adam admits, and his voice is quiet when he reaches for Alien-Boy's hand, timidly touching his fingers. "There's another option that I've read about in my alien contact books. If he can't adapt to our atmosphere, he might be having trouble breathing. You know how fish suffocate without oxygenated water? It's possible it could be kind of like that. "

I swallow hard, suddenly fighting a rush of sadness and maybe even tears. 

Because fucking hell, I was brave and I was tough but seeing some kid suffocate in front of me when there was nothing I could do? That was like a punch to the gut. It was like watching someone drown and being helpless to stop it.

Then Alien-Boy reaches for my face. He touches my throat, and then he slides his hand up to my cheek, and I feel warmth radiate from him, into my body. 

"What the hell is he doing?" I question, and I shoot a nervous look at Adam, whose fingers are now locked firmly in Alien-Boy's hand.

"I don't know!" Adam gasps, which seemed like a common thing for him to say.

"He's burning my face with his hand, Kavinsky!" I shout when the warmth starts to pick up heat. Suddenly, I'm imagining my face melting off under this blue guy's fingers. Maybe he was pissed that I'd taken him from his ship. Maybe he was actually a murdering monster that was going to peel my flesh off and wear it.

I reach to tear off the Blueberry's fingers, but before I can, something weird happens. His skin starts to change color, his white hair turns a luscious gold, and his eyes shift until they're a weirdish-yellow, contrasting sharply with his now freshly tanned skin. 

I hear him suck in a breath of air, gasp, and choke, and then he rolls over like he'd been suffocating the entire time until he touched Adam and me.

"Oh, wow!" Adam gasps. "Kevin, I think he just shape-shifted! He must have absorbed our DNA or something when he touched us! I read about this in Alien Nation, but I never thought I'd see it in real life! "

I fall backward and press myself up against a wall of ramen, then hold my face in my hands, hoping that this would all go away when I opened my eyes again and that maybe somebody had slipped something in my tacos earlier.

Newsflash. It doesn't.