“I wish for my house.”

Apparently, she should’ve asked for the ability to speak English better. Arizona meant to ask to go home, but in her excitement, the words come out wrong. Unfortunately, based on Georgie’s numerous attempts to exchange his car for something else (“I wish I didn’t have a Lambo but I did have a billion dollars!”), the wishes seemed permanent, and each person only got one.

Arizona could see her tiny apartment cube under her favorite tree in Yelsnag, completely unattached. It could’ve been worse, she supposed. All her stuff must still be there: her bunk, her repair kit, her extra uniform. She ran back through the door to the roof, down the stairwell, and down the street to the park where her cubicle stood waiting.. She stopped short at the door. A couple of kids stared at her from the playground, but in her excitement she wasn’t too worried about keeping up appearances.

The door collapsed sideways into the wall. “Welcome home,” the AI said in a language only she understood. The air was stale and the lights were dim, the power having switched to the back-up generator after unplugging from the rest of the building. Her bunk, unmade, still hung from the ceiling. It was home.

Arizona climbed into her bunk to think. She couldn’t just leave her belongings laying around; her living space wasn’t waterproof, and Coco was known to be light-fingered. On the other hand, she wasn’t sure if the wish would last. She needed to get everything inside to 7B. She ran back to the rooftop.

“George Mendoza!” she called. “I need a box.”

Georgie shook his head as if to wake himself. He was still slightly shocked from the appearance of the car. “Any particular kind of box?”

“For moving. My house appeared in the park, and I want to move my things inside.”

Georgie looked slightly confused, but agreed to help her nonetheless. Soon, armed with two cardboard boxes he found in the dumpster, Arizona began to make her apartment in Pointe Place more like the one sitting out in Yelsnag. The more she transferred, the less of the slight sadness she felt about the failure of her wish. About 15 minutes later, apartment 7B looked like it came from the domed city that was her home. Maybe she’d got her wish after all.

Ryan Lochte took a sip from the water bottle on the corner of the stage and returned to his previous position at its center. “While I was a swimmer, I focused on only one thing: speed. I wanted to be the fastest person in the pool, and if I wasn’t, I either got more determined or depressed. Most of the time, it was the latter. I threw everything into swimming during the season and partied constantly during breaks to avoid acknowledging my emotions, all while refusing to admit to my friends and family that I was in a dark place. This dangerous behavior came to a head at Rio in 2016.”

At that point, Arizona stopped listening. The rat, crouching nearly invisible in the far left corner, was more intriguing. It stared at Ryan Lochte unblinkingly; occasionally it seemed to frown a little bit. She wondered what it would say if it could speak English. It would probably say more interesting things than a disgraced swimming champion.

She caught herself. If her time on Earth had taught her anything about its culture, it was that ignoring people or their ideas without prior experience was rude. She tried to listen to the speaker again, but he had gone off on a tangent about swimming technique. In an effort to be a “decent human being”, as Agent Henry would say, she thought back to what he had already said. That bit about dangerous behavior and not telling your friends seemed to stab her a little bit in the bottom of her stomach. Arizona hadn’t told Agent Henry about her decision to go find the Nightwatcher. She didn’t want her to worry about her safety. She didn’t need other people looking out for her. She could do this herself.

Now the rat was staring at her. Silly little alien, it seemed to say. Too lonely to admit she’s alone. Or was that just her subconscious? It didn’t matter. The fearlessness she’d acquired after the storm was slowly diminishing. If she was going to do anything risky, like go after a professional criminal who wanted to kill her, now was the time. Arizona stood up abruptly. Heads turned as she walked quickly out of the auditorium, humming Mr. Rattlebone under her breath.

"Call me Mr. Rattlebone, Holy Ghost who haunts your home."

There it was again. Arizona had asked George Mendoza where the noise was coming from, but he just shrugged. "This is a sad, odd place, my dear," he'd told her. "I think the mysterious song is the least of our worries." He was probably right. Nevertheless, she didn’t like that song at all. It made her think of the grayish-green desert surrounding her home city, full of nothing but rocks and bones.

Suddenly, she remembered the box. She'd forgotten all about it in the chaos. Evidently it belonged to a man who lived on the sixth floor, though she didn’t understand how it came to be in his possession. She had immediately recognized the faint infrared glow characteristic of perilium alloys, but not until she touched the lock did she realize it was morbidium. Death metal. It sent an electric shock up her arm, numbing her skin and turning it turquoise. She desperately needed to call Agent Henry.

“Theodora Henry, AETA.”

“Agent Henry, where is the John Doe?”

“Oh, hello, Arizona. Has the storm passed?”

Arizona huffed. That wasn’t what she wanted. “Yes, it was bad. I do not want to talk about it. Where is the John Doe?”

“Brownville, about 7 miles south of here. A local recognized him from the Wanted posters.”

Arizona was relieved. He was further away than she thought. “Thank you many, Agent Henry.”

“No problem, Arizona. Talk to you soon.”

Later, she was back up her favorite tree in Yelsnag Park, thinking. This John Doe, as Agent Henry and Agent O’Connor called him, was very scary. Back home they called him Nightwatcher; he worked in the secret police by day and ran a violent smugglers gang by night. He hated Arizona with a passion. She had beat him in everything at school, despite spending half her time in the reform room, and ended up with a better job, despite being an opponent of government policies. He was the only one could have possible brought the death metal box to Earth. The AETA was taking too long to catch him, she decided. Might as well do it herself.

These thoughts surprised her. For months, it seemed like Earth had taken away all her fearlessness; her homesickness manifested as reluctance and negativity. Thankfully, her courage returned with the storm. Now, all she needed was a plan.

"Stay calm. Believe it or not, this is normal."

Arizona watched a trash can hit a telephone pole from her booth at Grandma's Grits. Agent Henry's face peered up from the screen of her laptop, her eyes smiling, like nothing was wrong. Arizona was pretty sure something was wrong.

"This does not seem normal. Everyone is freaking out." In the background, a car windshield smashed. Arizona jumped. "See, things are breaking. Things do not break when it's normal."

Agent Henry shrugged. "It's just a tornado. It'll be over soon. Trust me, I grew up in Kansas. We had them all the time."

Arizona did not know what a tornado was, but she did not really want to ask. It seemed violent, possibly deadly, and not something she ever wanted to see again. Suddenly the lights flickered, then went out completely. The only sources of illumination were her computer, another customer's telephone, and the dim, gray light from outside. The image on her screen began to glitch.

"The electricity is gone," she told Agent Henry. "Human systems are so breakable. My little sister could do better."

Agent Henry chuckled. "Isn't you power generated from dragons? It doesn't matter. Call me when this blows over."

As she said goodbye to Agent Henry and closed her computer, she thought about last time she had seen wind like this. Her city, with its 50-mile wide protective dome, never had anything more extreme than a drizzle. The only ones who ventured outside were freighters and social outcasts living in settlements in the surrounding cliffs. Arizona, however, was a diplomat's chauffeur and personal technician, second best in her school but supposedly too rebellious to work inside the dome.

One day, when she had dropped the diplomat off in another city and was heading home, she ran out of fuel in the middle of nowhere. She had landed and radioed for help, but before it could arrive, the wind came. Boulders the size of her speeder were flying around her. Then, suddenly, a hole had opened up in the sky. She blacked out as she was sucked upwards. Next thing she knew, she had crashed in the Arizona desert.

Arizona had never wanted to see wind again. But here she was, in a diner on Earth, trillions of miles from home, stuck in the middle of a wind storm. She had never felt more alone.

Arizona’s morning had started with a rather loud whack. Then another. Then frustrated grumbling.

“Arizona, I know you can hear me. Come down from there.” It was Agent O’Connor, Agent Henry’s boss, and neither he nor his slap-happy clipboard sounded excited to be here. She figured it was best to get this over with, so she jumped down from the tree. She’d been up there since 2 am, when her apartment had become too cramped and too boring to stand.

“Hello, Agent O’Connor. What can I help you?” That didn’t sound right.

“Why were you in a tree?”

“I was bored, so I came here. It is a very nice place to watch from.”

Agent O’Connor sighed and rubbed his eyes exasperatedly. “You can’t just leave at night. It’s too dangerous.”

“Why?” Arizona did not like Agent O’Connor. He was always telling her what to do.

“Well, first of all, you are blue.” She looked down at her hands. Her palms were human-colored, but her arms were covered in shiny turquoise scales. She immediately panicked, causing her palms to turn blue, too. She took a deep breath to prevent her head combusting, and turned her arms back to human.

“Second of all,” Agent O’Connor continued, “your friend from back home escaped from a containment facility 5 miles down the road sometime in the last week. You have to be careful.” Oh no. Very, very oh no. Arizona could feel herself panicking again, but she successfully pulled herself together before she turned blue.

“He is not my friend, dumb human, he is a government watchman who is trying to either brainwash me or kill me. You do not understand, so you cannot tell me what to do. Goodbye.” She burst into flames for a split second then stomped off back to Pointe Place.

Agent O’Connor stood grumbling for a moment before walking quickly in the other direction. Little did they know they’d had a witness: Ollie Henderson was slumped against the base of a playground structure, stunned into open-mouthed silence.

Arizona was frustrated. Very, very frustrated. It was everything she could do to keep her head from
catching on fire again. Last time she had lost her cool (literally) she had almost singed the ceiling.
She groaned at the thought of having to explain the seared ceiling to the building manager. Potential
unnecessary human interaction was the only thing keeping her hair from bursting into flames.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like the humans. She'd crashed in the southwestern desert six months ago
after falling through a wormhole, and in that time she had learned of both humanity's relative stupidity and
kindness. Agent Henry, the government worker she reported to, was one of the best. She helped Arizona
pick a human name and made her macaroni and cheese when she was homesick. Most of the residents
of this town, though, were nosy at best and downright hostile at worst. It was a huge contrast with her
own planet, where everyone ignored strangers and rarely went outside.

The source of her frustration was the stupid cold box where she was supposed to keep her food.
It was not working and getting warmer by the minute. She had tried everything she could think of:
attempting to interface it with the command module she’d pulled from the wreckage of her spacecraft,
fishing a wire through the weird plastic pipes in the back, even unplugging it from the wall and plugging it
back in. That’s what Mr. Evans had done when her little wireless connection box had stopped working.
Mr. Evans! Maybe she could ask him.

She ran down the stairs to the lobby. “George Mendoza, where is Mr. Evans?”

George the doorman looked up from his newspaper. "Ah, hello, Arizona. Mr. Evans isn't here anymore."

Arizona frowned. "Where did he go?"

He smiled at her sadly. "He passed away this morning. Coco found him in the parking deck."

"That is very unfortunate. I am sorry." She paused for a second. George kept looking at her sadly. "Well,
goodbye, George Mendoza." He waved halfheartedly at her, but she was already gone.

Back at her apartment, Arizona's frustration had been partially replaced by sadness. She grumbled and
kicked the stupid cold box as she passed it. The machine clunked to life, stopping her in her tracks.
Earth was such a weird place. But maybe, just maybe, she could get used to it.