Chapter 1: too many shoes

There were fifty pairs of shoes blocking the front door.

I knew this because I counted them. Twice. The first time I tripped. The second time I got mad.

“WHO LEFT A TENTACLE BOOT IN THE HALL?” I yelled, hopping on one foot while trying not to fall face-first into the shoe pile.

Silence.

Then something slithered back into the hallway, quietly pulling the glowing purple boot with it.

I sighed. “Thank you,” I said to the wall.

Living in a house with fifty siblings meant you learned to talk to walls. And ceilings. And sometimes the air, because someone was invisible again.

“Nova!” Mom’s voice echoed from the kitchen. “School in ten minutes!”

Ten minutes. That was not enough time to stop three arguments, two power malfunctions, and one baby alien trying to eat the couch.

I shoved my backpack on and stepped over a sibling who was half-asleep on the stairs. “Rule reminder!” I shouted. “No glowing. No floating. No shape-shifting before breakfast.”

Dad floated down the stairs anyway. Upside down.

“Good morning, humans!” he said cheerfully.

“Dad,” I groaned, “gravity is free. Please use it.”

He snapped his fingers and landed normally, smiling like he’d done nothing wrong. Behind him, the house hummed softly, adjusting its size again because somehow we needed more space.

This was my family.

And we were absolutely not normal.

Rule Number One: Don’t stand out.

That rule was taped to the fridge in three human languages and two alien ones.

Mom was flipping pancakes—real pancakes, not printed ones—because she said eating “human food” helped us blend in. My siblings crowded the table, arguing over who stole whose form stabilizer.

“That one’s mine!” yelled Ziv.

“No, yours is blue!” someone else yelled back.

“EVERYONE,” Mom said calmly, and the entire room froze. Even the baby stopped glowing.

Mom had that voice.

“We moved to Earth to survive,” she said. “Not to cause chaos.”

I chewed my pancake quietly. I’d heard this speech a thousand times. Our home planet, Lyra-9, was gone. Earth was our last option. And we were supposed to act like we belonged here.

Dad sat beside me, sipping coffee like he understood caffeine. “Nova’s good at being human,” he said proudly. “She sighs all the time.”

“Thanks,” I muttered.

I was good at it. School. Talking. Walking without floating. Pretending it didn’t hurt when kids stared at how many siblings I had.

But pretending got exhausting.

As I headed for the door, Mom grabbed my shoulder. “Keep an eye on them,” she whispered.

I nodded.

I always did.

⸻

School was the only place where the house noise stopped.

No hums. No arguing in alien dialects. No accidental teleporting.

Just lockers, hallways, and people who didn’t know my family could glow in the dark.

“Nova,” my friend Ellie said, walking beside me. “Are you okay? You look tired.”

I laughed a little. “I live with fifty siblings.”

She blinked. “Right. I forget.”

That was the thing. Everyone knew about the number. Nobody knew the truth.

At lunch, I spotted my younger brother Kio across the yard. He was supposed to be practicing normal walking. Instead, he was hovering three inches off the ground.

My heart dropped.

“Kio,” I hissed, sprinting over. “DOWN. NOW.”

He panicked—and glowed.

A couple kids stared.

I shoved him behind the bleachers just as a teacher walked past. “Allergies,” I said quickly. “He breaks out when he’s stressed.”

Kio’s glow faded. He looked up at me, eyes wide. “I’m sorry.”

I knelt down. “You didn’t mean to. Just… we have to be careful.”

Because if we weren’t?

Earth wouldn’t feel so safe anymore.

As the bell rang, I had a weird feeling—like we were being watched.

And for the first time, I wondered if pretending to be human was about to get a lot harder.

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