The kids all turned toward me and stared, blinking their middle eyes the way they do when they are really examining something. I stared back, which is what I had been taught to do on the trip here. After a moment one of them dug a finger into his nose, pulled out an enormous booger, then popped it into his mouth and began to chew. The sight made my stomach lurch, but I tried not to let my disgust show on my face. Fior Langis, the Kwarkissian diplomat who had been in charge of preparing me for this day, had taught me that Kwarkissians feel very differently about bodily functions than we do.

“Greetings,” I said in Kwarkissian, which I had learned through sleep-tapes on my way here. “I am glad to be part of the class. I hope we will have good times together.”

Everyone smiled in delight, surprised that I knew their language. Then they all farted in unison. The sound was incredible—a rumbling so massive that for a moment I thought a small bomb had gone off. I jumped, even though Fior Langis had warned me that this was the way Kwarkissians show their approval. What she hadn’t told me about, prepared me for, was the tremendous odor.

My eyes began to water.

I had a hard time breathing.

I fell over in a dead faint.

When I woke, I was in the hospital.

Since then the kids have referred to me as Kilu-gwan, which means “The Delicate One.” I find this pretty embarrassing, since I was one of the toughest kids in class back on Earth. It doesn’t really make that much difference here on Kwarkis, where no one fights. But I don’t plan to live here forever, and I’ll need to be tough when I get home to Earth. Back there you have to be tough to survive.

The only one who doesn’t call me Kilu-gwan is Fifka Dworkis, who is the closest thing I have to a friend here. Fifka was the first one who talked to me after my embarrassing introduction to the class.

“Do not worry about it, Jay-cobe,” he said, pronouncing my Earth name as well as he could with his strange oval mouth and snakelike green tongue. “The others will not hold your oversensitive olfactory organ against you.”

He put his arm around my shoulder. Then he put another arm around my ribs, and another one around my waist!

I tried not to squirm, because I knew he was just being friendly. But it sure felt weird.

To tell the truth, it wasn’t just the weirdness that bothered me. It was also that I felt pretty inadequate having only one arm to offer back. Kwarkissian friends are always walking down the street arm in arm in arm in arm in arm in arm, and I wondered if Fifka felt cheated, only getting one arm back.