Blast Off! (3 page)

05

Morning

S
unlight woke me up. It was that kind of extra-bright sunrise light that digs under your eyelids and kicks your eyeballs around in their sockets.

And the chilly morning air in my room wrapped itself around me.

I had forgotten to close my window. And my curtains.

I hadn't even gotten under the covers.

As my mind slowly became aware of these things, I thought of the alien. Amp.

What a dream! It was all so real.

The details danced through my sleepy mind. Amp had told me all about his planet. He told me he was a scout, sent to study humans and Earth and to confirm that this would be a good planet for his people to invade. He told me about learning our language from studying TV show signals they'd found in space. He even described his broken spaceship and its ability to skip through enormous stretches of space in an instant—like a stone skipping over water.

The backyard sprinklers popped to life then. It was an hour earlier than I needed to be up. I closed my eyes, wishing for a few more minutes of sleep, when a bumping sound caught my attention. Then a bigger, louder bump. And then: Olivia.

“Nice boxers, Zack,” she said, though her voice sounded far away.

I sat up wearily and croaked when I saw the giant burn mark on the wall above my bed—the one made by Amp's spaceship!

IT WAS ALL TRUE?

IT ALL REALLY HAPPENED!

My brain locked up.

“Baseballs, bats, and gloves,” I heard Olivia say again. “Such a cute pattern for your unmentionables.”

Unmentionables? That's what Olivia called underwear. Unmentionables! But where was her voice coming from?

Just outside my window bobbed a cardboard tube. A cardboard tube? I shook my head and croaked for the second time. Olivia was in my backyard, looking through my window with a periscope she made last summer. And she could see me in my boxers!

Agh!

“Is that a Smurf?” her voice called up from below.

I gasped. Amp was standing absolutely still in front of my alarm clock. Without moving his head, his eyes darted over at me. “What is that talking tube?” he said, barely moving his lips. “What do I do?”

I'd like to say I think quickly in an emergency, like one of those slick spy guys in the movies. But apparently I don't. I just kept looking back and forth from Amp to the periscope, waiting for something to happen.

“You know your window's screen is down here?” Olivia said from the backyard below. “I accidentally stepped on it. It's a little bent. . . . Sorry.”

The periscope tilted and floated at an odd angle. Olivia was clearly looking at my screen. I took the opportunity to jump off my bed and pull my curtains closed.

Poking my head through the curtains, I looked down at Olivia. “Do you mind, Olivia? Total invasion of privacy!”

“Oh, sorry,” she said, clearly surprised by the emotion in my voice. “I saw your window was open and figured you were awake. Sorry I saw your unmentionables. I won't tell anyone, I swear.”

“They're not unmentionables. They're boxers!”

“I was just kidding,” she said.

Now I felt bad. “It's just . . .”

“Where'd you get that blue doll? That's new, right?”

“Blue doll?”

“The blue elf thing?” she asked. “Is that what you were playing with last night?”

“Oh, that,” I said, poking my head farther out of my curtain like some kind of weird, one-headed puppet show. “It's . . . uh . . . it's kind of a long story.”

“Okay,” she said lowering her periscope. “This was a bad idea.”

“It's okay,” I said. “We'll talk later,” I said, needing to end this conversation and deal with the mess in my room.

I closed the curtains and looked at Amp. “We have some work to do.”

“You're right, Zack,” he nodded crisply. “We need to fix my spaceship right away, starting with the launch system”

“Fix your spaceship? I have to go to school! I was talking about cleaning up my room before my parents see it. “

“Oh,” he said, looking around my room. “Good luck.”

“‘Good luck'?” I yelped, narrowing my eyes at him. “Oh, great, the alien who destroyed my room with a bad parking job doesn't like cleaning up after himself.”

He shrugged and smiled weakly. “That's not really my thing.”

It occurred to me then that having a wise guy alien around was going to be a lot harder than I thought.

06

Frozen Waffles (Again)

I
plopped down for my breakfast with Amp hiding in my room upstairs. I felt sick, scared, tired, excited, smart, stupid, thrilled, horrified, hungry, stuffed, happy, sad, grumpy, dizzy, and halfway crazy—all at the same time.

My mom kept feeling my forehead and neck as I nibbled at the edges of my frozen waffle. I had forgotten to toast it. She was pretty sure I was coming down with something.

“Zack, you look like you didn't sleep a wink,” she said, taking the frozen waffle from me and dropping it into the toaster. “Somebody was snooping around last night, leaving footprints everywhere.” She gave me “the look.”

“It was Zack,” my dad said, giving me a glance over his coffee cup. “I caught him wandering around the house in his boxers last night.”

“Maybe he's in love,” my little brother Taylor said, stabbing his Pop-Tart with an annoying electric fork he had invented. “With Olivia.”

My dad shook his bacon at me. “Remember, Zack, you promised to change your tune this year. Hit the books.”

“He hit the books, all right,” my brother said. “I peeked in his room last night and he was using his science book for a pillow. He's a drooler.”

“And you're a snooper,” I growled.

Dad cleared his throat. “Zack, fourth grade is going to be the year you turn things around, right? We talked about this.”

“Dancing around in his underwear doesn't sound very focused to me,” Taylor said, staring at his stupid fork.

“Enough,” Dad said to Taylor, who could never take a hint.

“I can tutor Zack in science,” he offered sweetly. “Free of charge.”

“And I can tutor your face. Free of charge,” I said. Taylor is a science geek and a show-off. He brags about liking science more than PE, which is clearly abnormal.

Dad gave us his glare. “Can it,” he said.

“Zack, you look like a zombie,” Mom said. She handed me my toasted waffle and shoved her entire arm down the back of my shirt, searching desperately for any sign of a fever.

“I just had some weird dreams,” I mumbled.

“Which explains why you were sleepwalking in your underwear,” Taylor teased.

Normally, I would have threatened to pound him so hard his grandchildren would walk with a limp. But now, I just stared at him.

My parents exchanged another look.

I stuck a finger into my mango-orange-pineapple juice and stuck it in my mouth. I couldn't taste a thing. It was becoming clear to me that keeping Amp a secret was going to be near impossible.

I already felt strangely protective of Amp. I didn't want him taken away forever by grown-ups. If the government swooped in, they'd take him away to some secret lab somewhere to do tests. I knew how things worked—my parents are scientists, after all—and what some goofy ten-year-old kid wanted to do with his alien visitor wouldn't be worth doodley-squat.

I needed to stick with my plan for now. I'd get through the school day, return here immediately after, and then figure out how best to deal with the alien babysitting my goldfish. Maybe I could introduce him to Olivia, or my parents. I'd have to hash this out with Amp, but it was clear that I alone couldn't fix his spaceship. I was going to need help, and I'd have to explain this to Amp.

“Maybe you should stay home, dear,” Mom said, hands fluttering on her hips.

“He's fine,” Dad said, not looking up from his smartphone.

“He always looks like that,” Taylor said. “Snap out of it, boxer boy. The bus is coming in four minutes.”

As we gathered up our things for our final inspection at the door, Mom gave me a worried once-over. “If you don't feel well, go to the office and have Miss Sturney call me on my cell phone.”

“I will,” I said with a weak smile.

As Taylor and I crossed the front lawn I looked back at the house, feeling like I was making a big mistake by leaving Amp alone.

07

Bus Breakdown

O
livia tried to get in all sorts of questions before the bus arrived. But the great thing about always running late is that I barely had time to tell her I was feeling “a bit off” before the bus pulled up.

The best seats were already taken when we got on. I had to squeeze into a seat way in the back of the bus. I didn't see Max Myers get on at the next stop until it was too late—which is pretty startling, considering Max is as big as the bus driver and I think he's already started shaving.

Max pitches on the travel baseball team, the one I want to earn a spot on. But I'm a catcher, and just the thought of catching fastballs thrown by Max Myers makes me want to forget baseball and take up lawn darts.

“McGee, you're forgetting the Max Factor,” he said.

“Really?” I said, wishing that the bus driver would tell Max to sit down, but nobody tells Max to do much of anything.

“Don't be smart, McGeek,” he said.

Usually Olivia can outthink Max and send him on his way, but she had to sit up front. Taylor was up there somewhere, too, with the first graders. I was all on my own. “Sorry, Max, I'm not sure what you're talking about.”

“It's Mr. Max to you, McGeek,” he bellowed.

The bus went quiet. Everybody turned around to see what the commotion was. My guts went cold.

“Max Factor,” he repeated. “You know I get the rear seat all to myself. You're cruising for a bruising,” he said, grabbing me by the shirt collar.

“Oh,” I said weakly, looking for an empty seat nearby. Of course, there were none.

That's when something unexpected happened.

“I love you like a brother, McGee,” Max roared with real emotion in his eyes. He let me go and seemed puzzled, like he couldn't remember why he said this. “I want you to be, like, my BFF, Zack!”

This comment drew gasps from the stunned crowd. Max doesn't have friends. He has minions.

I smiled weakly. “That's cool, Mr. Max,” I managed to say.

“Here, take my lunch money,” he said, suddenly pulling two dollars out of his pocket and thrusting them at my face.

All I could think was that this must be some kind of a trick. “That's okay, Mr. Max. You need to eat.”

That's when movement in my backpack caught my eye. I looked down and saw Amp poking his head out of the zipper in my backpack's small pen-and-pencil pocket.

My mouth dropped open. My mind spun. He must have snuck in this morning when I wasn't looking. I had an alien stowaway in my backpack!

Amp was holding both hands over his mouth, like he was holding back a laugh. I was too stunned to think.

“Oh my gosh, I smell roses!” Max hollered. “Can anybody smell that? I love the smell of flowers in the morning!” Max was almost crying with excitement, but all I could smell was a stale, dirty bus. If I thought the bus was quiet before, it was now pin-drop silent.

My eyes darted back down at Amp, who seemed to be having the time of his life.

That's when I realized that Amp was doing all this to Max! He was making Max say these things, which is why Max seemed so utterly shocked by his own words. I shook my head at Amp. “No,” I whispered, “you'll get caught.”

“I NEED TO ITCH MY BACK!” Max hooted at the top of his lungs. “AGH!” He dropped his backpack and bent his body every which way, trying to scratch his itch. “I can't reach it,” he squealed.

To everyone's utter amazement, Max dropped to all fours in the aisle of the bus. “SCRATCH!” he thundered and several kids snapped out of their trance and scratched Max's big, bulky back. Max moaned with delight. “So good,” he sang over and over.

It was one of the weirdest scenes any of us had ever witnessed. It was so odd that it was even more troubling than being threatened by Max Myers himself. I had never understood what the word “unsettling” meant until that moment. It was unsettling to see someone like Max act so odd and crazy.

But it was kind of funny, too.

Amp knew how to make people do stuff. How cool was that?

The possibilities raced through my mind: I could get straight A's now. Make the travel baseball team. Ask my mom to raise my allowance . . . and she'd have to say yes.

Fourth grade was going to be more interesting than I ever imagined.