My father waved him off. “It’s not safe for any of us, Terrance. People will take pictures of this—they’re taking pictures right now—and if we stay on this beach any longer, we are all going to be in them. They’ll figure out what you are, what Samuel and Lyric are, and they’ll come for them. They’ll come for all of us.”
“What did you say?” I cried. “What am I?”
“I’m sorry, Lyric. We didn’t know how to tell you,” my mother said, and as she took my face in her hands I saw faint pink- and rose-colored patches appear on her neck and forearms. They were scales, like those on a fish or a snake, both beautiful and terribly wrong.
I shrieked and fell backward. “What are you?” I cried.
“We can explain later, Lyric,” my father cried. “Right now we have to get out of here. Summer, come with us.”
My mother stared at him for a long moment, perhaps weighing every day of their life together against the responsibility she felt to the strange visitors, and then she turned to the ocean and her scales turned fire-engine red and blistering white.
“Tell them I’m sorry, Terrance,” she said without even looking at him. “Try to make them understand.”
“Summer, you cannot turn your back on our people,” Mr. Lir shouted. “They’ll call you a traitor. You’ll be an untouchable!”
“We have to run,” she said as she took my hand. My father took the other, and we fled through the crowd while her odd friends called out to us with their bizarre, angry words.
NEW YORK POST
SCHOOL OF FISH: ALPHA KIDS CAUSE
CHAOS ON FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
by Naomi Rifkin
Today the President got his way. Six Alpha kids went to school in Coney Island, soaking the city for millions to keep them safe, and turning Hylan High School upside down. Before it had even opened its doors, these nonhuman students had started a riot predicted by this columnist and everyone else with a brain. Two thousand police from all over New York, as well as thousands of National Guard soldiers, tried to keep order as thousands more came out to protest this bogus plan. One hundred and four people were arrested, and there were scores of injuries.
The cost to taxpayers for the beefed-up security promises to be mind-boggling.
“No one’s sure how much it will cost, but it’s going to be a pretty penny,” said an insider in the mayor’s accounting office who wished to remain anonymous. I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to be held accountable for the money we’re wasting on kids who don’t even want to learn. The man-hours that went into planning this, the overtime—it’s going to shock people when it all comes out. And this is just the first day.
But the real costs come at the expense of the people living in Fish City. Bloody brawls between police and the activist group the Coney Island Nine are almost a daily occurrence. I say the cops need to back off. The Niners are the real locals in lower Brooklyn, a group of community organizers memorializing the nine U.S. soldiers who were butchered in a confrontation with the Alpha. We should put our trust in a group that is trying to make sure that never happens again.
“These creatures may walk around like people, but they aren’t people,” said Mitchell Parker, a lieutenant in the CI9. “They’re animals. We don’t put wild dogs in school. They’re dangerous.”
Governor Bachman, who in my humble opinion is the only elected official who hasn’t lost her mind, was on hand to give a voice to the thousands who want the Alpha to swim back to sea, and what did it get her? A trip downtown in handcuffs.
“We’re going to keep working to stop this plan, and if I have to be arrested every single day, then so be it,” she says. Good for her.
In the meantime, New Yorkers should plan to pull out their checkbooks. This little experiment is going to break the bank.
DAILYBEAST.COM
CHEAT SHEET | MUST-READS FROM ALL OVER
NYC MAYOR HEDGES OVER SECRET MEETINGS WITH THE ALPHA
Spokespeople for both the mayor and Brooklyn borough president were tightlipped when pressed about secret meetings between city officials and members of the Alpha. Accusations continue to mount that the mayor’s administration strong-armed the city school district into opening the schools to the Alpha children. Despite last week’s release of phone records revealing lengthy conversations between the mayor’s chief of staff and the Red Cross, no one wants to admit they happened. Speculation continues that the Alpha were threatened with police and military action if they did not agree to assimilate into our society. The mayor was elected largely on a campaign promise to get the Alpha off the beaches of Coney Island.
Mother Jones
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Activists Sue for Information About Missing Alpha
by Molly Belden