Read The Fellowship for Alien Detection Online
Authors: Kevin Emerson
The Fellowship for Alien Detection
DedicationTo Annie, for all the miles so far, and the new map yet to be discovered
Chapter 0
Juliette, AZ, April 25, 7:00 a.m.
Suza Raines was getting suspicious. As the screen door slapped shut behind her, she paused on the front porch thinking:
Mr. Davis. He'll come by in that maroon jogging suit, walking MacDougals. . . .
Sure enough, Mr. Davis promptly rounded the corner, MacDougals straining at his leash and sniffing the gutters. The big old golden retriever sounded like a broom, the way his long nose swished the piles of yellow pine needles around. Mr. Davis walked briskly, his bald head, maroon jogging suit, and pristine white sneakers gleaming in the pale dawn sun.
Suza shook her head and hopped down the stairs. There was nothing weird about that. Mr. Davis and MacDougals walked by at seven every morning, just after Mr. Davis returned from his nighttime job at the town's power station. If there was anything out of the ordinary, it was that Suza was on time enough to actually see them pass. She was always late out the door because she hated morning, wanted nothing to do with it. And she only needed ten minutes to bike to school (even if it always took fifteen).
So why was she so early? Suza felt like it had something to do with her alarm clock. It had kinda freaked out this morning. Instead of waking her up like usual, with the bubbly voice of DJ Alpine and hit country music on KJPR, it had blasted a strange old-timey song with a deep voice singing in another language. And then she hadn't been able to read the time because the numbers were incomplete, like a few of the red digital bars were on the fritz. So, instead of hitting
SNOOZE
a few times until her father, Matt, would come in to roust her, she just got up, only now here she was: early.
Or was she? She pushed up the sleeve of her denim jacket and looked at her bare wrist. Where was her black and purple watch? With that weird old cartoon character named Thundarr that she'd seen on Cartoon Remix? He was all shirtless and silly looking and had a dinosaur for a pet, and the watch was cool because behind him, the moon hung in the distance, cracked in half. Her sister had gotten it for her on Ebay. . . .
Silly
, she thought to herself,
you don't have a watch, and you don't have a sister
. That was strange. Why would she have thought otherwise?
Then, she had another weird thought:
Mr. Davis is going to stub his left toe and fall on his face
.
Suza was just picking up her bike from the pine-needle-choked lawn when Mr. Davis's left toe caught on a crack in the road and he toppled over.
Suza cocked her head. She'd known that was going to happen. . . . All the same, she needed to get going. Being early meant she had time to stop by the One Horse Diner. Her dad's friend AJ worked there and made the best breakfast sandwiches.
She coasted down to the end of the driveway and paused to button up her jacketâ
And found Mr. Davis standing right in front of her. Another one of those weird predictions crossed her mind.
He's going to give me something
.
“Have to give you this,” said Mr. Davis absently. He reached into his pocket and produced a small metal rectangle. It was the size of a stick of gum, with notches in its sides. The metal was bright silver, but it also seemed to glow with an oily rainbow pattern beneath its surface.
Suza stared at the object. For some reason, it looked familiar.
“Finally got it,” Mr. Davis said, sounding relieved. Then, he leaned in close to her. “You have to take it to the diner,” he whispered.
Suza took the object. It was cool in her hand. She saw a set of five symbols etched in a line across it, like those ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics or something:
Nervousness crept over her. This was familiar, but she wasn't sure how. “What do I do with this?” she asked.
“Not sure . . . Youâyou're supposed to take it to the diner so that we canâ” Suddenly Mr. Davis froze. He looked around like there was a bug buzzing around his head and then slapped three times at the skin right behind his left ear.
MacDougals barked fretfully.
“What are youâ” Suza began, but then a stern, deep voice spoke up in her head:
N
EVER MIND THAT
, S
UZA
. N
OW, HURRY ALONG
. I
T'S TIME TO GET TO SCHOOL
.
Suza reached up and absently slapped at the area behind her left ear, as if a bug were bothering her, too. She shook her head. . . . What had she been doing? Oh yeah, going to school. She looked up at Mr. Davis. “Did you just say something?” she asked.
Mr. Davis looked down at Suza like he didn't even know her. “Iâ Did I?” He checked his watch. “Oh my. Come on, boy,” he said to MacDougals. “Time to go!” He hurried off down the street. MacDougals looked back at Suza with big, pleading eyes.
Suza watched them go, then realized she had something in her hand. She gazed down at the metal object. What was this thing? She felt like she'd seen it before, like it was importantâ
T
HAT'S NONSENSE
, S
UZA
. I
T'S JUST A PIECE OF TRASH
. The firm voice washed across her brain like gentle surf, erasing the footprints of her strange thoughts.
Suza immediately flicked the metal piece into the nearby storm drain, where it clattered harmlessly out of sight.
V
ERY GOOD
. N
OW, GET TO SCHOOL
.
Right. Suza pushed back her sand brown hair, except for one curl that always sprang free and in front of her eyes. She strapped on her helmet, slipped on her purple-framed sunglasses, and lunged forward on her bike.
Cold, sweet air caressed her face. In the distance, a train horn echoed.
The road curved steeply along the side of a forested hill. Suza hurtled along, wind roaring in her ears. To her left, the town of Juliette lay in its perfect grid pattern, on a flat, high desert plateau surrounded by hills of amber grass. A pale sun had just risen over the distant horizon. The rays skipped across the flat brick building tops, bathing the hills and lighting the distant, snowcapped peak of Mount Randall. To her right, the white cylindrical tower of the Foster Observatory stood like a castle atop a rocky ridge. The dome of the observatory was just finishing its final rotation, its curved steel roof sliding closed like a weary eyelid.
The road flattened out and she entered waking neighborhoods, street after street of one-story ranch houses just like hers. Up ahead, a circle of orange plastic fencing had been erected in the middle of the road. A large sign beside it read: “
SLOW
.” Inside the fencing, a manhole cover was open. As Suza swerved around the construction, a head popped up out of the manhole. It was a man wearing a yellow hard hat and an orange jumpsuit.
He'll stare at me when I go by
, Suza thought.
The man stared at her as she sped past. She didn't get a clear look, but it seemed like he'd been wearing small, black sunglasses. Wasn't that an odd thing to wear down in the dark?
N
OT AT ALL
, the voice assured her. T
URN HERE TO GET TO SCHOOL
.
Suza almost did, but then she remembered her plan to go to the diner. She continued straight ahead, the houses giving way to short brick buildings, until she reached the traffic light at Main Street. Pickups and Jeeps grumbled by, their bumpers gleaming in sideways sun, tailpipes spinning clouds of exhaust.
Suza locked her bike to a parking meter and started walking down Main Street. As she did, more strange predictions arrived in her head.
It won't open for him
, she thought as she passed a man dropping a quarter in the Juliette
Chronicle
box.
“Oh, come on!” the man shouted, tugging furiously at the handle.
I'll bump into a fat lady in a yellow dress
, Suza thought as she pulled open the glass door to the One Horse Dinerâand immediately collided with a large woman who was just stepping out. Suza bounced back and looked up.
The woman glared at her over a giant travel mug. “Why don't youâ”
“I know.
âWatch where I'm going, half-pint,'
” Suza finished for her. She shook her head and stepped into the warm, bustling diner. She was greeted by the aroma of syrup, coffee, and bacon grease, and she felt a deep growl of hunger.
“Suze!” a voice called from behind the crowded counter. AJ was leaning through a narrow space between two customers. His white apron was already smudged with grease and ketchup and was currently dangling into an unsuspecting customer's eggs Benedict. “How you doing, little lady?”
“Um.” Suza looked left and right. More predictions were coming. So many at once . . . An old man was going to sip his coffee then cough sharply. And he did. A young woman was going to erupt with a gaudy laugh and accidentally spit a hunk of pancake onto the lady across from her. And she did. Woman in a cowboy hat leaving the bathroom . . . Check.