Penny Hooper is a high school marching band saxophonist who desperately wants to escape her depressing hometown and her crazy family. But one late September night she rescues a mysterious stranger from drowning in Lake Springfield, and he turns her whole world upside down. There are also villains.

SYNOPSIS:

Penny Hooper is a high school marching band saxophonist who desperately wants to escape her depressing hometown and her crazy family, until the night she rescues a mysterious stranger from drowning in Lake Springfield. When he regains consciousness, no one can understand him, except the Latin prof at school. Penny's mom thinks he a literal angel. Her kid brother Tony is totally convinced he's an alien. Her dad thinks he might be a spy.

But Penny just wants him gone. He's totally disrupting her life. But after a few weeks, she begins to realize he's not who she thought he was. But is that a good thing? Or a bad thing? Is he a con artist? Or just insane, in an intriguing sort of way? So many things don't fit. The Latin. The weird personal history. Could Tony be right? Could he be an alien?

But whoever he really was, one thing was becoming clear. He was the main problem in her life, and she had to figure him out before he hurt someone.

Then it happened. Something impossible. That picture of the old statue. It was definitely him. But it couldn't be, because that statue was almost two thousand years old.

But he clearly didn't know. He was still planning to go back home, to the family he loved, in a place that was now an archeological site, an ancient ruins. He was actually a pretty nice guy once you got to know him. Special. How would he take it if she told him the truth? The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him, even if he was mildly crazy.

Enter the villains. A man shows up at her door one day, demanding information. He's convinced she's hiding someone, and something, of great value. She won't betray him, but he realizes by being there he is putting her in danger. One day a swat team comes to her house, her new friend turns up missing, and her mom ends up collapsing from the stress.

In the weeks that follow, Penny struggles to process what happened. Where did he go? Is this really all her fault, like Dad said? How did her life seem to go from having so much focus and purpose to this chaos mess?

Then one day, walking down by the lake, hoping he might return there, she sees something glittering in the shallows near the shore. I looks like a pearl. But on close inspection, not like anything she's ever seen. It looks ... almost alive. Could this be the 'space bubble' Tony saw? But it was impossible. It was too small.

But the word 'impossible' was losing meaning to her. This had to be what everyone was looking for, and she realized immediately what she had to do. She had to get it back to him somehow, whatever it took. It might be his only way back home, to the people and the world of his past.