Nana scowled at her reflection in the dusty shop window. Another Tuesday, another utterly unremarkable day. Even her pigtails, usually perky and bright, seemed to droop with the sheer ordinariness of it all. At eight years old, Nana felt like a beige crayon in a box of dazzling neons. Her classmates excelled at everything – spelling bees, soccer, even competitive thumb-wrestling. Nana, however, was spectacularly average.
Suddenly, the sky above crackled with an electric blue light, followed by a sound like a giant zipper being ripped open. Nana shielded her eyes, expecting rain, but instead, something plummeted from the heavens, landing with a *thump* in Mrs. Higgins’ prize-winning petunia patch.
Nana cautiously approached the impact site. A cloud of dust and pulverized petunias settled, revealing… a boy. He was sprawled on the ground, limbs akimbo, wearing the most peculiar outfit Nana had ever seen: a silver jumpsuit, slightly singed, and beneath it, shockingly fluffy, pinkish underpants.
He groaned, blinked his eyes open, and stared at Nana with an expression of utter bewilderment. His eyes were the color of warm honey, and his hair, a messy tangle of auburn curls, stuck up at odd angles.
“Where…where am I?” he whispered, his voice raspy.
“You’re in Mrs. Higgins’ petunia patch,” Nana replied, matter-of-factly. “And you’re squashing her ‘Blushing Bride’ blooms. She’s going to be *furious*.”
The boy sat up, wincing. “Petunias? Blushing Bride?” He patted his head gingerly. “I… I don’t remember anything.”
Nana studied him with a critical eye. He didn’t *look* dangerous, just incredibly confused. And those underpants… they were truly something else. “You fell out of the sky,” she explained. “Like, *whoosh*, right out of that big blue crackly thing.”
The boy’s eyes widened. “I fell? From… the sky?” He looked down at his fluffy underpants, a blush creeping up his neck. “These… these aren’t mine.”
“Obviously,” Nana said, stifling a giggle. “My name is Nana. What’s yours?”
He frowned, concentrating. “I… I think… it’s Eddy.”
And so began the most extraordinary week of Nana’s unremarkable life. Eddy, the boy who crashed to Earth, had absolutely no memory of his past. He didn’t know what planet he was from, how he got here, or why he was wearing someone else’s fluffy underpants.
Hiding Eddy from Nana’s parents and the perpetually suspicious Mrs. Higgins proved to be a challenge. Nana’s treehouse, usually her sanctuary of boredom, became Eddy’s secret hideout. The scent of pine needles mingled with the faint, metallic odor that clung to Eddy’s jumpsuit.
Eddy was fascinated by everything. The taste of Nana’s peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (he ate six in one sitting), the feel of grass beneath his bare feet (he’d never walked on anything but smooth, silver surfaces, apparently), the sound of birdsong (which he initially mistook for an alien distress call).
He was also incredibly clumsy. He tripped over air, bumped into walls, and once, nearly set the treehouse on fire while trying to “investigate” a flickering candle with his finger. Nana, surprisingly, found herself enjoying his mishaps. She, the queen of the mundane, was suddenly a guide, a protector, a… friend.
One evening, as they sat on the treehouse floor, sharing a bag of Nana’s favorite sour gummy worms, Eddy looked up at the star-studded sky. “I feel… a pull,” he murmured, his voice tinged with longing. “Like something’s calling me.”
Nana felt a pang of sadness. She knew, deep down, that Eddy wouldn’t stay forever. He belonged somewhere else, somewhere among those twinkling lights.
The next morning, the blue crackle returned. This time, it was accompanied by a low hum that vibrated through the air. Eddy stood in the backyard, his silver jumpsuit glowing faintly.
“I think… I think this is it,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
Nana nodded, tears welling up in her eyes. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, smooth stone, her “lucky” charm, though it had never brought her much luck before. She pressed it into Eddy’s hand.
“For… for when you remember,” she said, her voice choked with emotion.
Eddy smiled, a genuine, heart-melting smile. “Thank you, Nana. For everything.” He closed his eyes, and the blue light enveloped him, lifting him gently into the sky.
Nana watched until he was just a speck of silver against the vast expanse of blue. The hum faded, the crackle disappeared, and the sky returned to normal.
Mrs. Higgins emerged from her house, shaking her fist. “That blasted noise! And my petunias! Who’s responsible for this?!”
Nana, however, didn’t hear her. She was looking at her own reflection in the glass of the back door, but this time, she didn’t see a beige crayon. She saw a girl who had befriended a boy from the stars, a girl who had shown kindness and courage, a girl who was anything but ordinary. She saw a hint of sparkle, a touch of neon, and she knew, with absolute certainty, that her life would never be the same. She had found her own extraordinary, and it had fallen, quite literally, right into her lap.
