My Teacher Is an Alien (10 page)

The other kids had left. I was alone with the alien.

At
least Stacy had lingered at the door for a few minutes—until Mr. Smith turned to her and said, "It's time for you to go, Miss Benoit. I want to speak to Miss Simmons in private."

Stacy looked at me with an expression that said, "I
tried."
Then she hurried away.

Broxholm/Smith walked over and straddled the chair in front of my desk. He leaned toward me. "I know what you did today," he said.

"Oh" was all I could manage. I felt as if someone had dropped an ice cube into my heart. The worst thing was, I couldn't even be sure what he meant. Did he know I had skipped my piccolo lesson? Or did he know I had been inside his house?

I looked at the door and wondered if I would ever go through it as a living person again.

"Well?" said Broxholm.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. It was about all my voice was good for at that point. It was also just as vague as his first statement. I wasn't about to say what I was sorry for.

Broxholm looked at me. "I don't understand why you dislike me so much, Susan," he said. "I'm just trying to do what is right for this class. Yet you've been hostile to me from the moment I walked through the door."

What an actor! I wondered if I would ever be that good. It was amazing how he was still pretending to be just a teacher who was having trouble with one of his students.

Suddenly he rose and crossed the room to close the door. "Now," he said, sitting down in front of me again, "let's be honest with each other, shall we, Miss Simmons?"

Should I say something? Should I tell him I knew his secret?

"Why are you here, anyway?" I said at last, still playing his game of not saying anything that couldn't be taken at least two ways.

"I'm here to learn," he said smoothly. "After all, isn't that what school is for?"

Creep!
I thought. But out loud I said, "I thought you were supposed to be the teacher." I tried to keep my voice from cracking. But it did, anyway.

Broxholm shifted in his chair. "A good teacher is always learning," he said. "Education is a process of give and take. I have to
take
certain things in order to learn. Look at all I've taken from this class already. I've taken a lot of nonsense. I've taken a lot of snottiness."

Suddenly he turned and looked directly at me. "And I'll have to take a few
more
things in order to learn all I can—if you
take
my meaning, Miss Simmons."

I shrank back in terror.

I don't know how he did it, but I could actually see his alien eyes beneath his mask, as if they were burning with a light of their own.

"And I won't
take
kindly to any interference with my educational mission," he said in a voice without any emotion.

He had picked up a copy of
Rockets and Flags
as he talked. Now he began to squeeze it. I watched his fingers sink right into the cover, compressing the paper with the power of his grip.

I heard a horrible thumping sound. I glanced around to see where it was coming from, then realized it was the beating of my own heart.

"The universe is a very big place, Susan," said Broxholm gently.

He dropped the book. His fingers had left dents half an inch deep in the cover. If only I could get the book out of there, I would finally have proof of what he was. But, of course, he had no intention of letting me have the book. He picked it up and carried it to his briefcase.

"A very big place indeed," he said. "And there are more things going on in it than you can possibly imagine. It's important to learn all we can. Otherwise, terrible things can happen. Terrible things. That's my job—to prevent terrible things. Can you understand that, Miss Simmons?"

I shook my head. Maybe I should say I shook my head
harder,
since I was already shaking all over.

He sighed. "Well, perhaps someday you will," he said. "For now, I simply want you to know that it is wisest—and safest—not to interfere with your elders."

He closed his briefcase. "I will see you tomorrow, Miss Simmons," he said. "I trust that you will spend the entire day here in the classroom— and not enter my home again!"

I almost fell off my chair. He knew. He had known all along! Before I could say anything, he went out the door, leaving me alone.

It took me almost twenty minutes to get home. I cycled along the sidewalk slowly, watching every corner. I kept expecting aliens to leap out of the bushes and grab me.

When something
did
jump out of the bushes, I screamed so high and so loud, I was surprised I didn't break the glass in the street lamp overhead.

But it was only Peter.

"Are you trying to give me a heart attack?" I asked, straddling my bike and glaring at him.

"It would serve you right for bringing Duncan along today," he said.

I wasn't up for a fight, and I said so. Peter was mad enough that he might have kept it going, anyway, but when I started to tell him what had happened after school he got so interested he forgot about being angry. He insisted that I try to remember every word Broxholm had said.

That afternoon I finally began to understand Peter's "alternate plan."

Actually, it took me a little while to figure it out. I knew there was something strange going on when Peter—the kid who always knew the answer but never bothered to give it—started raising his hand for every question that came along.

And suddenly it all came clear to me. Peter
wanted,
to be picked by Broxholm. He had decided that this was his big chance to live the kind of science fiction adventure he had been dreaming about. He figured if he really tried, he might just be able to make it from "bright, but unmotivated" to being, without question, the best student in the class.

You could almost see the gleam in Broxholm's alien eyes when Peter unleashed his mighty brain.

105

We were having a history lesson at the time, and Peter started to answer every question perfectly.

Broxholm started asking harder questions, but Peter never blinked; he just kept reeling off the answers. Even I had no idea how smart that kid was. (And as for Broxholm, I swear, that alien must have memorized an encyclopedia; or maybe he had one transplanted into his head. Who knows what these people could do?)

When school was over I dragged Peter off to the side of the playground. "Are you crazy?" I hissed. "What are you doing?"

"Plan B," said Peter. "If we can't unmask Broxholm, I want to be one of the ones to go on the ship."

"Forget Plan B!" I yelled. "You don't know what they're going to do to you up there. They're bad!"

"You don't know that," said Peter.

"They kidnapped Ms. Schwartz!"

He shrugged. "That still doesn't mean they're bad. They may be so far above us they think of us like we think of ants or something."

I didn't say a word. But he could tell by my expression that I thought that was stupid.

"Maybe they're scared of us," he continued.

That made me laugh.

"I'm serious," said Peter. "Think of that conversation you had with him yesterday."

"I can't," I said. "It still scares me."

"No,
think
about it," said Peter again. "Maybe these people are really peaceful. Maybe they've seen how much we fight, and they're afraid if we get much farther into space, we'll cause some huge war."

"You don't know that," I said stubbornly. "Anyway, maybe we won't have to worry about it. Let's go to the drugstore to get our pictures."

It took all our money for the pictures. I thought about explaining to the girl behind the counter that we were trying to stop an alien invasion, but I figured she probably wouldn't buy it.

We forced ourselves not to open the envelope until we were in th,e park.

"You open it," I said, handing the envelope to Peter.

He hesitated for a moment, then tore the envelope open and pulled out the pictures.

His face fell.

"What is it?" I asked.

Without saying a word, he handed me the photos.

My heart sank as I flipped through them. Peter had done a good job. The beams and timbers of the attic showed up perfectly. The focus and exposure were fine. But the force field with Ms. Schwartz in it had come out as nothing but a blue streak—