I smile weakly as everyone cranes their necks to look at me. The last time I was the center of attention like this was when I was a stalk of broccoli in the third grade play and forgot my one line. It was something about how broccoli is an important antioxidant or some-thing like that. The whole audience stared at me until finally the carrot stepped forward to deliver her line about carrots being good for the eyes.
“Pssst, I think you can sit down now,” whispers Pink Sweat Suit Lady, tugging gently on my sleeve.
I quickly sit. The guy in front of me slips my folder through the seats and I take it.
“I didn’t know you were such an important figure,” she says, offering me another piece of licorice. I’m too shaken up to take it. How am I supposed to be this guy’s right-hand man when I don’t know anything about anything? I’m starting to think I made a big mistake. At least at summer school all I’d have to do is sit there.
Mr. Silver is talking again. “Now everyone lean back and enjoy the countryside. We’ll stop for lunch in a few hours.”
The chatter picks up again and then eventually people either drift off to sleep or start reading. It doesn’t take long for corn and wheat fields to replace the strip malls and office buildings. I bury myself in reading the articles. All the words I had heard when I first got on the bus are explained in there. I guess it sounds interesting, but I honestly still don’t see what the big deal is. I take out my sketchpad and a thin charcoal pencil and start drawing. Mr. Silver becomes a tall, thin alien in a sun-hat. Instead of standing in front of a bus, the alien is at the front of a spaceship. A pudgy wizard in a high pointy hat stands next to him. I’m the wizard.
I thought Pink Sweat Suit Lady was sleeping, but she leans over and looks at my picture before I have time to jerk it away. “Remarkable likeness,” she jokes. “You must really be interested in outer space.”
I shake my head. “Why would you say that?”
She scrunches her brows at me. “Well, besides the fact that you’re the assistant eclipse tour leader, you’re drawing pictures of aliens.”
Okay, so she has a point. How can I explain that I never really thought of my aliens as living on other worlds, like they could possibly exist? I just think of them in some alternate reality, the same as wizards and monsters.
“My name’s Stella,” she says, extending a frail hand.
I reach out to shake it, afraid to hurt her. Her shake is surprisingly strong and firm.
“My son and his wife are up front,” she tells me. “His wife doesn’t like it when I’m in the way too much. So I try to stay out of the way. You know that old saying, ‘your daughter’s your daughter all of your life, your son is your son till he gets a wife’?”
I shake my head.
“Yeah, well, it’s true. So be good to your momma while you’re young.” Then she pulls two long knitting needles out of her bag. A skinny red scarf is attached, clearly a work in progress. Stella starts knitting so quickly I can barely see the tips of the needles darting in and out of the yarn. I close my eyes and wonder again how I got here.
I must have fallen asleep, but the clanking and hissing awakens me. Most people are sleeping, too. Stella isn’t in her seat. I see the restroom door says occupied, so she must be there. I lift up the armrest between our seats and slide out. We’re going pretty fast, and it’s hard to keep my balance, but I manage to make it to the front without too many “sorry’s” and “excuse me’s.”
I kneel next to Mr. Silver, who is going through some papers. “I think there’s something wrong with the bus,” I whisper, so as not to alarm anyone nearby.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“There’s a clanking and a hissing.”
“Can you describe the clanking and the hissing?”
“Well, the clanking sort of sounds like a clank, and the hiss is well, a hissing sound.”
“I was kidding, Jack,” Mr. Silver says, laying his papers on the empty seat next to him. “Lighten up, kid, or it’s going to be a long two weeks.”
Sometimes I’m not sure when people are joking. One of my many deficiencies.
“We’re going to pull off for lunch soon, and I’ll have the driver check it out then, okay?”
I nod. I’m starting to get a little nauseated facing backward, so I make my way down to my seat. Stella is back, her face buried in a book. As I get closer I realize with horror that it’s MY book she’s holding. Not the short story book—my sketch pad! I never, ever let anyone look through it. My first reaction is to grab it from her hands, and it takes a lot of self-control not to. I watch her expression as she turns each page slowly. She almost looks, well, pleased.
I clear my throat. Or I try to. It comes out more like a gargle.
She looks up, then hoists herself out of her seat so I can squeeze by. “Well, my young friend. You are quite talented.”
I don’t answer, I just take the pad from her hands and sit. She picks up her needles again.
A few minutes later, the bus pulls off the highway and into a McDonald’s restaurant that says WE WELCOME BUSES on a big sign out front. The bus clanks and hisses to a stop. Everyone files out, and I’m the last one off. I linger to watch the bus driver unscrew a panel in the back, right under my seat. He tinkers in there for a few minutes and then goes back into the bus. He returns with a full toolkit. I want to watch, but the smell of hamburgers wafts through the air, and my stomach growls in response. I’m no match for the pull of the burger.
When I get inside the restaurant I immediately flash back to the middle school cafeteria. I always hated walking in and not knowing where I should sit. Last year I wound up sitting with a few other kids who didn’t have a place to sit. It was better than sitting alone, but it’s tiring pretending I wouldn’t rather be asked to sit somewhere. I get in line behind the young family with the little boy. The father recognizes me from the bus and puts out his hand.
“Hi, Jack,” he says warmly. “I’m David. This is my wife Hayley and our son, Pete. It’s our first eclipse.”
“Mine too,” I say, shaking all their hands, even Pete’s.
“How did you wind up here?” he asks as Hayley orders their meal.
I almost tell him it was this or summer school, but instead I just say, “Mr. Silver is my science teacher. He invited me.”
“Wow,” David says. “I can’t imagine having someone like him as a teacher. What’s he like in the classroom?”
I shrug. “Just like a teacher I guess. Talks a lot . . . gives tests . . . chalk on his pants.”
David glances admiringly over toward where Mr. Silver is eating with a group of eclipse chasers. “Really? He’s so famous and all, I would have thought he’d be really amazing.”
“Huh? Famous?”
“Well, he leads these eclipse tours all over the world. They always fill up years ahead of time. Plus he’s written a book on backyard astronomy that many people believe is the best around. So I’d say he’s pretty famous.” He picks up the tray and says, “See you later.”
I’m speechless.
“Welcome to McDonald’s, may I take your order?”
“Huh?”
The teenage girl pops her gum and says, “Welcome to Mc —”
“I got it,” I reply, and order the first thing my eyes land on, a double cheeseburger Mighty Kids Meal. While I wait for the food I stare across the restaurant at Mr. Silver. I might not listen much in class, but I’m pretty sure he never told us he wrote books. The people at his table are hanging onto his every word. I’m still staring as the bus driver hurries in and whispers something in Mr. Silver’s ear. He stands and follows him out. I ask the girl to make my order to-go, and she puts it in a bag.
I hurry out after them. The driver is now under the bus, with only his legs sticking out. Mr. Silver sees me and says, “There he is, the hero of the day.”
“Me?”
“I knew bringing you along would pay off. I just didn’t realize how soon! The driver has to replace a faulty
crankshaft. If he had driven on it much longer, the whole engine could have gone. We would have broken down in the middle of the highway.”
I’m filled with an unfamiliar feeling. Something like pride?
Of course later Mr. Silver embarrasses me by announcing to the bus that I single-handedly saved us from certain doom. Everyone claps for me, and Stella gives me her whole container of licorice. Except for peeking in my sketchbook, she’s turned out to be a pretty good traveling companion.
After two brief breaks at rest stops, and endless miles of cornfields, we pull into a motel. It has two floors and is so nondescript that it blends into the gray twilight. I’ve never stayed in a hotel or motel before. Whenever we go on a family trip, which isn’t very often, we always stay with relatives or friends of Mom’s. Mr. Silver waves for me to join him and asks everyone else to wait in their seats. I can’t say I’m getting used to everyone looking at me as I walk down the long aisle, but at least my face has stopped burning.
I accompany him to the front desk, where they hand us a list of restaurants that deliver food, and a whole batch of envelopes, each with a last name or two on it. He assigns me the job of reading out the names and distributing the envelopes. Of course I mangle half the names, but eventually all the envelopes are gone except for Mr. Silver’s and one marked adams. I guess that was the kid I replaced. I slide a plastic card out of the envelope and turn it over in my hand a few times.
“What’s this for?” I ask Mr. Silver, risking sounding stupid.
“It’s your room key. You slide it in and the door clicks open. I’m right down the hall, so if you need anything, come get me. We should exchange cell numbers, too.”
“Um, I don’t have a cell.”
“Oh. Well, we won’t get any reception once we’re at the Moon Shadow anyway.”
“The Moon Shadow? Isn’t that a Cat Stevens song?” SD3 used to play Cat Stevens all the time.
“Indeed it is. But it’s also the name of the campground,” he says, reaching under the bus for the only other bag besides mine. “Hey, tonight if you’re not too tired, I’d like to go over the project I’ll be needing your help with.”
“There’s more than just the eclipse?”
He nods. “Yes. This is unrelated. I’m on a team to find exoplanets, and we need to coordinate our efforts perfectly with the other members of the team, stationed at various coordinates around the world. We’ll only have a small window of time to do the experiment, a few days before the eclipse.”
I stare at him blankly.
He sighs. “I’ll explain on the bus tomorrow instead.”
I make my way up to my room, which is on the second floor all the way at the end. By the time I get there I’m dripping with sweat. I think Mom must have tossed some of those cans of food in my bag even though I told her not to. David from the McDonalds walks by with an empty ice bucket. I ask him if he knows what an exoplanet is.
“Sure,” he says. “It’s what they call a planet around a star other than the sun. You know, like in other solar systems.”
“Oh, right,” I say, as though I’d known but for-gotten.
“See ya,” he says, and heads off to the ice machine, whistling. He seems so at ease with himself. So not like me, sweaty and unable to get the door open. I turn the card every different way until finally a little green light comes on and I hear a click.
My room is just like I’ve seen in the movies. Worn-out blue carpet, stained orange bedspread, faded painting of a boat riding a wave. It smells like cigar smoke and feet.
It’s actually pretty cool.
I snack until midnight on pretzel rods and orange soda from the vending machines and watch an Outer Limits marathon on the Sci-Fi channel. The marathon might have been a bad idea, because as soon as I turn off the lamp, I hear all sorts of creepy noises. I try pulling the blanket over my head, but the sheet and blanket are tucked in so tight on the bottom that they don’t budge. When the digital clock displays 1:00 am, I finally push the battered armchair in front of the door and play with my Game Boy until my fingers start to cramp up. At three am I tune the television to something less likely to give me nightmares—the all-night shopping channel. All I want to do is fall asleep so I can fly, but sleep just won’t come.
I wake up a few hours later unsure if I actually purchased a Super Fantastic Egg Blaster for two monthly payments of $14.95 or if I dreamt it. I’m pretty sure I dreamt it, since the last time I looked, I don’t own a credit card. We don’t have to be back on the bus till nine, but I want to make sure I get the muffins and juice that come with the room. I’m about to go down to the lobby to get it when there’s a knock on my door. I open it to find a guy in his fifties who I’d seen a few times during the trip.
Skipping any pleasantries, he says, “You were sitting next to my mother, Stella? On the bus?”
“Yes, Stella,” I repeat. I knew I shouldn’t have accepted that whole container of licorice. I ate half of it when I couldn’t sleep, but there’s still a decent amount left. I grab it off the dresser and hand it to him. “Here you go,” I say. “Sorry about that.”
He looks down at the container in his hands and pushes it back at me. “No, you don’t understand.” He takes a step back, looks around, and says, “She’s missing.”
ALLY
4
When I get down to the kitchen, Kenny is alone at the table, one of his bug books open in front of him. He is munching on a Pop-Tart while turning the pages.
“Where are Mom and Dad?” I ask, sitting down across from him. I align the Golden Grahams box so that it blocks my view of the book.
“Dad had to go into town,” he answers, his mouth full of crumbs. “Mom’s down at the RV park. One came in really early this morning.”
“So much for our family meeting,” I say, making a bowl of cereal. “Did they say anything to you about it?”
Kenny shakes his head. “Here,” he says, handing me an orange plastic spoon. “This was in the cereal box. It’s supposed to change colors in milk.”
I dip the spoon into my bowl. It instantly turns green. “Cool.”
The screen door bangs open and Ryan walks in. I like that he doesn’t feel he has to knock.
“Ready to search for aliens?” he asks.
I hurriedly finish off my cereal and place the bowl in the sink. I expect Kenny to jump up, too, but he reaches for his third Pop-Tart instead. “You’re not coming?”
“Gotta help Ralph in the kitchen. I’m behind from yesterday.”
I’ll take dirt-smoothing over kitchen duty any day. Kenny doesn’t seem to mind though. Over the last few months he’s even learned how to cook. Wait till he has to make eggs for five hundred hungry campers!
“I just need to grab my sneakers. Come up with me.”
Ryan takes a swig of orange juice directly from the carton and then follows me to my room. We used to have sleepovers up here when we were little. Ryan sits backward on my desk chair and smiles. “One great thing about coming here,” he says, “is that nothing ever changes. It’s like whenever I come back here, no time has passed at all.”
I look around. True, I don’t change my room much. The blue blanket with the sun on it is the same one I’ve had my whole life. Same stuffed panda. Same lamp with the torn yellow shade. Same small wooden desk with my school notebooks on it. The books on my shelves change, though. And the poster on the back of my door is new. I point it out to Ryan, who leans forward for a closer look. If you didn’t know better, the big poster would look like a chart of fuzzy dots with little red check marks next to some of them.
“The Messier objects,” he says, impressed. “You’re looking for them?”
“Yup. I haven’t found too many yet though. Some cool galaxies and globular clusters will be in view over the next few weeks. You can help look, if you want.” I grab my sneakers from the closet. “Isn’t it amazing how we could never travel to other galaxies in a hundred lifetimes, but with a telescope we can be there instantly?” He nods
, takes a last glance at the chart, and follows me out.
“The Moon Shadow is hosting a Messier Marathon next March,” I tell him as we head outside. “So I just wanted to get a head start. Plus, I need to know all of them eventually. You know, for the whole comet thing.”
“What do the Messier objects have to do with finding a comet?”
“They have a lot to do with it,” I explain. “The Messier objects started as a list of faint objects in the sky that AREN’T comets, so if you find them, you won’t mistake them for one.”
“Right,” he says. “I forgot about that.”
“Maybe you and your grandparents can come up for it. It’s the only night of the year when all the objects are visible. We’ll get to stay up all night. It’ll be really fun.”
“I don’t think I can,” Ryan says. “We have this school talent show thing at the end of March. Me and my buddies are in a band.”
First his grandmother is going to miss the eclipse, then Ryan skips the Messier Marathon for a talent show? People have strange priorities.
The steady hum of the old computer greets us as we walk into Alien Central. We pull the two wooden chairs closer to the desk to examine the screen. The upper left corner shows us that the current batch of data, called a work unit, is 82 percent analyzed so far. The upper right corner lists all the information about where in space the signal originated, and also shows how many work units our computer has analyzed so far. The coolest thing is that it also shows the constellation it’s currently searching. Right now it’s working on a section of Libra.
The part I like the best is in the lower half of the screen where a big grid shows blocks of vibrant colors spiking up and dropping. The different colors stand for the different frequencies coming through. Usually the patterns just reflect the sounds of cosmic noise given off by different stars and satellites and space itself. But any unusual change in the pattern could possibly mean the computer is receiving a signal from an intelligent life form.
“Wouldn’t it be great,” Ryan says, leaning forward in his chair, “if this was the year we actually found something?”