It turned out that my brother’s temporary obsession with genetics ended up leading to a brief interest in math. After that, he went back to questioning Fransic’s skills and I had to team up with the newcomer to turn that into a biology class.

I had to admit that this guy was quite good at leading my brother back on track. My favorite teachers were brilliant at doing that, but only with other students.

“Are you a teacher?” I asked him, while the two of us were cooking dinner on his fifth afternoon on Earth.

It was just the two of us in the kitchen, because Decklan wasn’t allowed in the kitchen when our parents were home. They kept worrying that he would cut himself or burn the house down. It was ridiculous but I couldn’t prove it.

“Who, me?” Fransic seemed confused about my question. “Why would you think that?”

I meant to explain, but he didn’t give me the time.

“Oh! Right,” he exclaimed, at the same time he mechanically turned to get a stewpot for me. “Yes, my healing abilities prevent aging too, but I’m not not older than I look. I’m just twenty one.”

I took the pot, wondering what he was talking about, but for once he didn’t react to my confused face.

A mischievous smile lit up his diamond-shaped face as he said: “You know? I’ve never thought of that. I could become a teacher after all. I don’t need to be the most skilled if I’m so old that nobody has as much experience as I have.”

“So… you are not a teacher, but you would like to be?” I asked. It made sense, he was young but had the potential. But he was in an entirely different career!

“Yes, but… not for the right reasons. Teachers travel. Even more than merchants. I mean, sure, less often, but they travel better. They actually see the places they visit.”

“It’s true that you are from another planet,” I decided.

“World.”

“Yes, but I wasn’t wrong, was I? Ogha is on a different planet than Earth, you said so. Not just a different dimension… I mean, layer.”

“Yes, but did you remember that when you said ‘planet’?”

What was that tone in his voice…? Was he arguing for fun? Cool. I needed to do that more often and Decklan took it too seriously even when the silliest of topics.

“No, but you couldn’t have known that,” I played along.

“I could, though.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No,” he admitted without a thought, “but you couldn’t have known that I didn’t.”

“Yes I did: because you asked.”

His brows knitted together  for a second, but even then he was already starting to smile. “All right,” he happily conceded. “And, yes. I am from another planet. It’s good to know that you finally believe it, but why?”

For some reason, he found it funny that I had my doubts about that.

“The only teachers I know who travel are the ones that were born somewhere else and go to visit their family at Christmas,” I explained. “In the world I live in, teachers barely have time to watch tv, let alone see places.”

“That’s… How…? How is knowledge shared in different places of your world if teachers don’t go anywhere?”

“Books? I don’t really know about other countries, but here, students travel. Decklan and I will go to college in the city.”

“How inconvenient.”

I laughed. I didn’t think my teachers would agree.

“Well, if you wanted to travel, you must be ecstatic now,” I said, because he wasn’t visiting just another city, but a different world in a different “layer” and planet than his own. It was like moving in every possible dimension, right?

Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. He tensed and looked away, suddenly deciding that he needed to pay attention to the water boiling far from where I was slicing vegetables.

I missed my brother during the rest of our extremely quiet time in the kitchen, thinking that he would fix whatever it was that my words had broken.

When dinner was ready and we all sat around the table. I was sad to discover that Decklan wasn’t brightening Fransic’s mood at all. Our parents didn’t have questions anymore, and their days didn’t have anything interesting that could help to distract us all from the taciturn air that surrounded our guest.

Later that night, Decklan couldn’t stop thinking about it. I understood his worry, and I was more or less used to the way he could obsess over things, but he was echoing my own feelings and that somehow made it… too much to handle, I guess. Before he could finish the explanation of his third theory about it I was done. 

“Why don’t you go and ask him and let me study for once?” As if I was going to be able to focus on studying!

“You are upset too!” he determined, in awe. “Did you two have a fight?”

“No,” I growled.

“Okay, okay, I’ll leave. I won’t bother you anymore. You meany.”

I rolled my eyes. Five minutes later Decklan was dragging Fransic into my room.

“He’s stuck,” my brother announced. “But he doesn’t have to be stuck, it can be learnt. Make him learn it.”

“What?” I said, before I even knew I was saying it. Because really: What?

Fransic was clearly mortified. “You don’t have to…”

“Don’t talk unless you are about to explain,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t try to make sense of anything more than what Decklan already said.”

“They are wizards too, Tala! Wizards! Can you believe it?”

“No, I can’t. And what did I just say!? Stop making it more complicated!”

“That’s the explanation! He can make magic to go from one world to another!”

“No, I can’t do that. That’s the…”

“He can’t. But he could,” my brother interrupted him, nodding so fast it was painful to witness. “It can be learned!”

“And what does that have to do with me? I can’t teach something I don’t know or even believe!”

“But you can! You taught me the rules when the basketball team wanted to get rid of me, remember?”

I sighed. “Decklan, I did know the sport’s rules, well, several. We had books about it, and the list of rules of your team. Besides, I didn’t teach you anything, you just needed to focus to learn them. And trust me, right now I really don’t feel like I can convince anyone to study.”

“Oh,” my sibling muttered, and for a whole millisecond he had the decency to look apologetic. Then his face lit up like he had just discovered the meaning of life. “Oh! You are trying to make me feel bad.” He smiled innocently and went back to his imitation of a hyperactive puppy. “But now I will study! I promise! I’ll finish the thing you are doing there while you help him! Deal?”

“Tempting, but I can’t do that,” I looked at the alien that observed us from the doorway. “I’m sorry that you can’t go back, really, but I wouldn’t know how to help you.”

“I know, it’s okay. Not everyone can learn every spell. And… Earth is good, really. I would gladly stay, but there are issues that…” He trailed off, and out of nowhere, he smiled that contagious smile of his. “Issues that don’t need me to be fixed! Of course. I should have guessed that. You know what? Forget all about today. I was worrying about nothing.”

“What’s just changed?” I asked, more curious than confused.

“You’ll find this hilarious, I think: nothing “just” changed. Before I left my home, a dangerous person was lurking there. I was afraid that my colleagues didn’t even know about the threat, and there was even someone in the team who…” he swallowed and brought his hand to his chest. For a second, the sadness came back to his eyes, but he took a deep breath and smiled again. “Anyways, remember how I know things out of nowhere sometimes? Well, that’s what happened now. I learnt that I’ve been worrying about something that was fixed four days ago. And, now…” his voice suddenly took on an announcing tone. “Now I’m in a different world, with no possibilities to go back to the place where all my life was built.”

“Sorry, pal,” my brother muttered.

“Don’t,” Fransic happily said. “I can do anything now. Whatever I want. I’m not avoiding my responsibilities, because the truth is that I can’t do those things anymore. I can… well, I can’t be a teacher, but they don’t travel in this world, right? And I can’t be a law enforcer because I don’t really know your laws… and the enforcers are different. But I could do something else. Do your merchants travel?”

“Yes. But you could actually be a…” my brother started.

“Don’t say superhero,” I warned, just to see his sour face.

“I wasn’t…!”

“And there aren’t any circuses in our country,” I added.

“He doesn’t have to stay in the country,” Decklan retorted, triumphantly. But he put on a serious face when he turned to Fransic to say: “I wish you did though. I don’t have many friends. Well, I do, from the basketball team, those guys love me. And Tala lends me her friends quite often too, but it’s not the same. You are like us.”

“I told you before, Decklan, every skill matters, not only the odd ones,” Fransic said. “And my skills are not as odd as yours anyway. Telekinesis could be the rarest skill in the universe. Which doesn’t mean that you are alone.”

“I know, I know. But they can’t keep up. You can keep up.”

It took me a moment to notice that I was nodding.

“But I get it if you leave,” Decklan added. “This country is so small. Everything here is small. But you can start as a driver here, right? Can you drive?”

“I can drive some vehicles, now that you mention it. That sounds like fun!”

The next two days, my brother was fully invested in the search for a job for Fransic. When they weren’t out there visiting factories and bus stations, he was talking about it.

“Please, Dad, you can talk to your boss, can’t you? Put in a good word for Frank? Please? He’ll trust you.”

“He would, but that’s the very reason why it wouldn’t be right to vouch for someone I barely know. No offense, young man.”

“I understand sir,” Fransic said. It seemed that he was confused by the apology.

“But I heard they are looking for someone to unload cargo in several stations for the salary of one. They say it is impractical to hire different people in each town, so they hire someone for the train and don’t pay accordingly.” Dad shrugged. “It’s basically a scam, insulting, if you ask me. But you could do that to start with or if what you really want is only to continue your journey. Since they pay under the table, you could easily quit wherever it suits you.”

My brother had struggled to explain the concept of salary to Fransic, who thought that money sounded like an unnecessary complication. Now, after he asked why this job was a scam, and listening to my father's brief answer about how that money was too little for the amount of time it would take from his life, the alien suddenly understood. Later he would explain to us that, a long time ago, Ogha had something that worked like money. It had been a source of conflict more often than not, he said.

It was funny, the tone he used to say ‘conflict’, as if it was the highest of crimes, the most feared of calamities.

“I’m going to need more time to get used to this world before I can properly travel. But, like your dad said, that job could be a good start.”

And that was that. Our alien got a job, and life went back to normal. Fransic promised to tell us everything about the places he visited, and I promised we could go to camp when he was back. That was enough excitement to keep my brother’s good mood, and the rest was a matter of getting him interested in the topics we needed to learn for the admission test.

Fransic sent us a book  when he got his first payment. A book that would definitely help in what he called the Admissions Quest. Who would have thought that my brother would be so much more focused just because of a name! Well, two names, because our friend had convinced him that if we succeeded in enough study Quests like this one, we would become superheroes trained to fight death itself. Which was true, I guess. And childish as it sounded, it was working.

That was quite a productive month. We were back on schedule. And, once again, I made the mistake of thinking that things had fallen into place. In my defense, this time I had been misguided by a half truth: Fransic’s problem was supposed to be solved.