When Aliens Attack

Artwork by Felicity Fenton

At the bottom of her website, it says, Go outside. Good things happen outside.

So, of course, I fell in love immediately (as I do), and I took her advice and got in my car and drove the 3,000 miles from Ossining, New York, to Portland, Oregon, just to say hi, knowing that good things would happen, as long as we were outside. Along the way, I made and sold t-shirts of her alien designs and made a handsome profit.

When I finally arrived, sunburned and delirious from too many gas station burritos, I found her sitting in a coffee shop, designing yet another impossibly cool extraterrestrial. I introduced myself, showed her the wad of cash I had made selling her art, and braced for either a lawsuit or a cosmic high-five.

She stared at me for a long time, then slowly reached into her bag, pulled out a t-shirt showing my face, captioned Go outside. Weird things happen outside.

We locked eyes, nodded in silent understanding, and stepped out into the Portland air, where the real adventure—whatever that would be—was waiting.