One of the most painful questions in Alien I Am isn’t about spaceships, implants, or the fate of humanity. It’s smaller. Sharper. More personal.
Do you tell your best friend the truth… if the truth could break them?
FILE 16 — Telling Amanda About Aliens — is where that question finally explodes. Emily has already been taken. She’s already been changed. She’s carrying knowledge that doesn’t fit inside a normal teenage life, and the weight of it is crushing her. But the real dilemma isn’t the aliens themselves. It’s Amanda.
Because telling a friend something impossible isn’t just about honesty. It’s about risk.
The fear of being disbelieved
For most teens, the fear of telling the truth isn’t “What if something bad happens?” It’s “What if they don’t believe me?” Emily knows exactly how this sounds. Aliens. Abduction. Voices. Drawings she can’t explain. She knows the word people will reach for first: crazy.
That’s why the scene takes place on empty bleachers, under buzzing stadium lights, long after everyone else has gone home. It’s a liminal space — not quite public, not quite private — mirroring Emily’s position. She’s halfway between normal life and something much darker. And once she says the words “I was taken,” there’s no going back.
For young readers, this hits a familiar nerve. Telling a best friend about anxiety, depression, trauma, intrusive thoughts, or anything that doesn’t sound “normal” comes with the same fear: What if this changes how they see me forever?
Protecting someone by lying to them
Another dilemma in this chapter is deeply uncomfortable: is silence a form of protection? Emily isn’t just afraid of losing Amanda. She’s afraid of hurting her. She knows — in her bones — that not everyone can survive knowing what she knows. That some minds would break under the weight of it. That her mother might not survive it at all.
So when Amanda asks, “Why you? What do they want with you?” Emily doesn’t answer. Not because she doesn’t have an answer — but because saying it out loud would make it real. And because part of growing up is realizing that love sometimes means deciding what someone can’t handle yet.
This mirrors a real teenage problem: when you’re dealing with something heavy, do you unload it onto the people you love, or do you carry it alone to spare them?
Friendship as the last safe place
What makes FILE 16 so powerful is that Amanda doesn’t react the way Emily fears — but she doesn’t react perfectly either. She doubts. She jokes. She pushes back. She gets scared. And that’s important. Alien I Am doesn’t turn friendship into instant, magical understanding. It treats it like something real.
Amanda believes Emily not because the story is neat, but because Emily wouldn’t lie about something like this. The drawings are too detailed. Emily’s fear is too raw. Something is clearly happening — even if Amanda doesn’t fully understand it yet.
For young readers, this is reassuring. It says: your best friend doesn’t have to understand everything to stand by you. Belief doesn’t always arrive fully formed. Sometimes it arrives as, “I don’t get this… but I’m still here.”
The danger of pulling someone into your world
The chapter ends with a choice that feels both loving and terrifying: Emily agrees to show Amanda proof. To bring her closer. To risk her.
This is the final dilemma of the chapter: when does sharing the truth become endangering someone you love? Emily promised herself she wouldn’t drag Amanda into this. But the thought of Amanda being left behind — uninformed, unprotected, doomed — feels worse than the risk of telling her.
That’s a question a lot of teens face in quieter ways. Do you tell your friend about the party that might get you both in trouble? Do you share the thing you’re going through if it means they’ll start carrying the weight too? Do you keep secrets to protect people — or is that just another kind of betrayal?
Why this chapter matters
FILE 16 isn’t just about aliens. It’s about trust, loyalty, fear, and the moment when childhood friendship collides with adult consequences. It shows that growing up doesn’t mean becoming fearless — it means making impossible choices with imperfect information.
Telling Amanda About Aliens asks readers to sit with a question that doesn’t have a clean answer:
If knowing the truth could hurt the person you love most… do you tell them anyway?
That emotional tension is at the heart of Alien I Am. The sci-fi raises the stakes, but the dilemma is painfully human. And once Emily tells Amanda, the story crosses a line it can never uncross — because secrets like this don’t just change one person.
They change everyone who hears them.
Alien I Am is available now.
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FILE 16 | Telling Amanda About Aliens DATE 08 MAY | SL-1
The field lights buzzed overhead, but the stands were empty. The late game ended hours ago, and now only the echo of footsteps carried across the football field. I sat on the cold metal bleachers with my sketchbook clutched to my chest. Amanda came whizzing up on a bike. She climbed the bleachers skipping every other one and plopped down leaning back on her elbows, glaring at me like she wasn’t going to leave without answers.
“Spill,” Amanda said. “And don’t give me another ‘it’s complicated.’ I’ve waited long enough.”
“Amanda, where did you get that bike?”
“I borrowed it.”
“From who? I’ve never seen it before.”
“From my neighbor.”
“Does he know you took it?”
“No,” she said self-righteously.
“That’s stealing, Amanda.”
“No it’s not, it’s borrowing. Stealing is when you don’t give it back.”
“I hope you get it back before he notices.” She shot me a look that said, I know.
I pressed my sneakers against the bleacher rung, wishing I could shrink into the steel. “You’re not going to believe me.”
Amanda groaned. “You keep saying that. But I’m still here, aren’t I? Just tell me.”
I picked at the corner of my sketchbook. It wasn’t working.
“I have a new sketch,” I said.
Amanda shifted to face me fully. “But that’s not what we’re here for. I’m not letting you change the subject.”
My throat went dry, my chest aching like I’d been punched hard. And now Amanda was staring, unblinking, waiting.
“You really want to know?” I asked.
Amanda leaned closer. “I do. All of it.”
My pulse hammered. I glanced at the dark field, the goalposts glowing pale under the lights. No one else was around. I forced the words out before I lost my nerve.
“I was taken.”
Amanda blinked. “Taken? Like detention taken?”
I shook my head. “No. Not by teachers. Not by anyone here. By something else.” I looked directly at her, and she knew what I was saying.
Amanda frowned. “Emily?” ◆ DI#09
“I’m serious.” I placed my hand on her arm. “I was outside that night, after swim practice. The sky went dark, and then—it was like the stars vanished. Something was up there. It was huge, silent, and it pulled me off the ground. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. And then, I woke up different.”
Amanda’s laugh was sharp but uncertain. “You’re telling me you were abducted? By—what, aliens?”
“Yes.” My gaze locked on hers. “I know how it sounds. But it happened. And ever since, I can’t sleep. I see things. I draw things I don’t even understand until they’re on the page. And there’s a voice in my head that isn’t mine.”
Amanda stared at me, searching for the punch line. “That’s… you realize how crazy this sounds, right?”
“I know.” My hands shook as I opened the sketchbook and flipped to the newest drawing, the bodies suspended in liquid filled sacs, the tubes like veins. I shoved it toward Amanda. “I didn’t imagine this. I’ve never seen anything like it before, but I drew it. I couldn’t stop. And it’s real. They put something inside my head too.”
Amanda hesitated, her fingers slowly rubbing over the drawing. It was too detailed, too sharp. She pulled her hand back like the paper burned.
“Emily?” She slowly looked up at me like she believed.
My voice crashed. “I’m not scared, for some reason. But I can’t tell anyone else. They’d lock me up. You’re all I have.”
Amanda bit her lip, looking between my face and the sketch. Her expression softened, but her eyes began to doubt again. “If this is true, why you? What do they want with you?”
I hugged the sketchbook to my chest again, trembling. Tears started to fall. The answer I wanted to give—because I was young enough, because older minds would break, because I could feel even now that my own mother would never survive—stayed trapped in my throat. Saying all this aloud would make it real, and she couldn’t handle it. Not yet.
Instead, I let myself cry and whispered, “I don’t know. But I think… it means something bad is coming. For me. For you. For everyone.”
Amanda stared at me for a long time, then shook her head looking down. “You really expect me to believe—”
“I don’t expect anything,” I said, my voice cracking. “I just needed you to listen to me. Even if you decide not to believe me, it’s okay.”
“So did you see them?” she asked, eyes wide.
“Yes.”
“Really, what do they look like?”
“They don’t look like the little gray men we see in the movies. They are taller, more… elegant.”
“It sounds like you’ve grown fond of them.”
“One of their names is Neur.” Disbelief crept over Amanda’s face.
“So they took you, inside their spaceship?” Skepticism creased her brow.
“Yes. Twice.”
Amanda took a breath and blew air between her lips, trying to believe me. She knew I wouldn’t lie about something like this.
“So what does the ship look like on the inside?”
“Way more advanced than you think. The walls are curved and have blue pulsing light going through them. The aliens float in fixed positions that look like digital outlines of chairs. They see through screens full of data suspended in front of them. There is a large metal sphere in the middle that has static electricity moving over it. Below is a round tank full of greenish-blue liquid. They put me in it and I could still breathe. The—.”
“Wait. You’re scaring me.”
“So you believe me?” I said.
“I know you couldn’t make all this up, and your drawings are way better than before. Something is happening to you.”
Silence stretched. The hum of the stadium lights buzzed overhead. I pressed my fists to my eyes, waiting for Amanda to laugh, to call me insane, to leave. But she didn’t move.
Finally, she said, quietly, “Meet me again late. Show me something I can’t deny. I want to meet your new star buddy and see their ship.”
I looked up, startled.
Amanda’s jaw was set. “I think you’re telling the truth, but I, I just need to see it for myself. You would ask me to do the same for you if you’d just spilled all that tea.”
I nodded slowly, heart hammering. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t drag Amanda into this. But the thought of Amanda not surviving—like my mother—settled cold in my chest. Maybe I could convince Neur to let her live.
And so, I whispered, “Okay. Three a.m. At the park.” She buzzed off on the bike yelling, “It better be good.”
I had no idea how I was going to convince Neur of this. I thought it wasn’t going to turn out well for any of us.
Copyright © 2025 David Lawrence Markham
All rights reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-0-9907587-2-3
