WARNING
Never Call Your Mother an Alien!
2
THE SPYING GAME
THE DOORBELL GONGED. Felix was like a stone statue. Suddenly he sprang from the bed. Slinking close to the floor, he followed Lucas as far as he dared, peeking down the hallway as far as he could.
“It’s OK Felix.” Lucas bent until they were face to face. “It’s only Uncle Henry. You can just stay here and I’ll be back in a while,” he assured him.
Felix agreed. He would let Lucas go-it alone. He would hang back and wait.
Uncle Henry was Lucas’s mother’s older brother. Lucas didn’t know him very much at all. The only thing he did know for sure was that every time his mother said he was coming to visit, his father would say the same thing.
He would say, “Your Uncle Henry is a pot head, turned religious fanatic, and he fried-his-brains years ago. If you can learn anything from him Lucas, it would be that you don’t want to be anything like him.”
So here he was again for his once-a-year visit. Always coming whether Lucas’s dad wanted him to or not. His dad’s groaning and lame excuses went nowhere. He would visit and do it nicely. His mom always got her way.
“He’s really an amazing guy Alfred. You’ve got to admit there’s something special about him,” she would always say. And his dad would just roll his eyes and sigh knowing he was beat.
Today, Uncle Henry lounged in the living room easy-chair, feasting on the endless plates of cookies and fudge cake Mrs. Warbuck whipped up in her own kitchen bakery.
He was a missionary in Africa and always visited once a year when he came home to America. Whenever Lucas saw him he could hardly keep himself from staring at Uncle Henry’s enormous sideburns. He figured he must not remember to trim them, because they were the size and shape of the state of the California.
Lucas liked Uncle Henry but was sort of scared of him at the same time. He was already a big man, but for some odd reason he always seemed to be way bigger than he looked. It was like he had an invisible force around him so you didn’t get too close.
Lucas thought he was just imagining things, but actually, he was right. There really was an invisible force around Uncle Henry and he really was bigger than he looked. In fact, he was a giant… of sorts.
It wouldn’t be too much longer and Lucas would be able to understand about invisible forces and giants and such. Well, at least he would begin his adventure of understanding these things and oh so much more!
This very unlikely boy, who no one would expect anything much of, was oh so much more than an ordinary boy. And he was about to embark on an incredible quest… believing the impossible, and expecting it to happen!
Lucas could see why his dad thought Uncle Henry was weird. He was, kinda. But he loved to listen to the stories of his adventures in Africa anyway. His imagination shot-for-the-stars when he talked about his jungle treks, and especially the time he came face to face with a gorilla! He talked about how thousands of people walked for miles to come to his meetings; how some were carried in sick and then walked away well. He talked about how the people were so happy when they heard “the good news.” Lucas didn’t know what the good news was, but he figured it must be something the people in Africa wanted to hear.
Uncle Henry was getting up to leave. Lucas was scrambling around the living room, trying to hustle out of the way of the big man but he wasn’t fast enough. A giant hand landed on his head. It plunked down so hard his feet almost crumpled under him.
Suddenly Uncle Henry’s voice boomed like a loudspeaker. “Boy… there’s a call on your life!” he bellowed.
Lucas’s hair shivered. A puff of hot air hit the back of his neck and his skin bristled with goose bumps. What? What did he mean by that? What the heck is a call, he wondered. He didn’t care. His nerves were shot. He wanted out of there!
Past his spindly legs he watched his toes wriggling in his socks. For a split second he tried to think of something polite to say…. Nothin’. He only hoped the curve of his lips would pass for a smile. A speed-skating stride to the stairs made a way to escape.
Felix was still chillin’-out. His welcome back for Lucas was a slow, sluggish, “merr-ow.” Lucas’s eyes climbed the mountain of stuffed zoo animals and dinosaurs piled high on his bed. There he was. Felix rumbled out a purr as he stretched, lazing with his head resting on a tyrannosaurus rex.
It was the next morning and Lucas was lying half-awake trying to remember what day it was. If it wasn’t a school day he would bounce to the floor. He opened his eyes, stretched-long and yawned. Yup, it was a school day.
After flopping his way to the bathroom, he brushed his teeth with his dinosaur toothbrush and spit a gob of blue into the sink. Before he combed his hair and splashed water on his face and everything else, like he watched his dad do, he stretched his mouth into a straight smile to check his teeth. Picking out some-thing to wear was easy today. There was a pair of rumpled blue jeans near the top of a small pile of clothes on the floor. He shrugged and figured they would do, so he pulled them on. Somehow, a neatly folded shirt hadn’t made it into his dresser drawer. He tugged it over his head.
Dawdling was part of the morning routine. It went like this: A lean to the window… check for any falling leaves, scampering squirrels, buzzing flies or bees, fluttering birds, garbage men in the ally, or any other possible moving object; one last look around the room at the buffet of toys ripe for the picking; stop to twirl, dangle or wind at least three gadgets; and a final stop to pet cuddle-craving Felix who had excellent morning sidetracking skills.
If Felix would only quit rolling on his back play- boxing heavy paws to get him to stay, he would be on his way.
“I can’t stay Felix,” Lucas whined at him. I need to go to school now,” he said. After finger-pressing the star on his head once, and scratching Felix’s out-puckered chin twice, he finally shuffled out of the room.
Without Lucas there to distract him, Felix suddenly remembered his bowl in the kitchen. He decided to go downstairs and make himself cotton-candy sweet to Mrs. Warbuck. About now she should be buttering toast and creaming coffee. He sniffed the air; he liked both butter and cream.
For Lucas, the climb down the tall oak staircase was a rocky-mountain trek. It was early and he was still tired. Still, it should have been easy to notice that there was something lying on the bottom step.
It would have been easy if he hadn’t just spotted his missing target dart surf-riding a crystal wave on top of the hallway chandelier. It had been holidaying there for three days now, ever since it launched out of sight.
It was too late. Suddenly, the step beneath him was a skating rink. For a split second he was mid-air, then… bam-boom!
“Yeow-ow-ow!” Arms… legs… everything, were stockpiled on the floor.
Felix instantly arrived on the scene. Even if he wasn’t already trotting towards the kitchen he would have flashed to the rescue. The commotion was startling but right now he was brave. Lucas was moaning on the floor. Felix stood over him and gently sniff-checked him, meowed sweetly, and waited. Finally he was rewarded with a nudge. Lucas was flailing to sit up.
“What? What happened? What’d I slip on? he asked himself.
Mrs. Warbuck was sergeant-marching down the hallway toward him. “What are you doing Lucas,” she asked. “Quit your fooling around and get ready for school. You’re going to be late!”
If it wasn’t so normal to hear Lucas thumping and bumping around she might have been worried. But it was normal and she wasn’t worried. She figured he was up to his usual shenanigans and pranks.
Lucas picked himself up and looked around. What the heck? A book? Not just any book. A prehistoric dinosaur-age, battered book had tripped him airborne. A bent scrap of paper, also worthy of snubbing, poked out from under the cover.
“What is this?” He asked his mother. “It just about killed me,” he cried.
Before she could even open up her mouth his thoughts were roaring like a
747. He was looking up at her and she was looking down at him. The weird thing about it was that she had her hair all tightly pinned-up in hot-pink curlers. Are you joking? He thought. Do you even know how ridiculous you look in those things? He zipped his mouth tight, just in case anything slipped out!
She looked like an alien when she wore curlers in her hair, but he decided he should never tell her that. Today one of them was loose and it wobbled as she talked. He totally missed what she just said.
“You look like an alien!” he blurted… he couldn’t help it, it just came out! Oh, no! What did I just say? He panicked. I can’t believe it! I think I just called my mother an alien…. He scrambled to find a word that rhymed with alien for a fast take-back.
“What did you say?” she asked. They both looked at each other blankly.
Really? Lucas thought. You didn’t hear that? Whew! That was close!
“What’d you say?” Lucas asked her.
She rested her hands on her hips and looked at him like he had just called her an alien. “What’s going on in that head of yours?” She was a bit edgy. “I said you must have tripped on that old book that Uncle Henry left here; he said it was for you anyway. Before he left yesterday, he scribbled something down on a piece of paper and stuck it inside. He said you’d be need-in it.”
Now she was starting into a rant, “It looks really old, and it doesn’t look like a kid’s book either. I don’t know what business he had in mind leaving it here for you. He’s an odd one that’s for sure… a prophet is it they’re callin’ him now? Whatever that’s supposed to mean….”
She mumbled to herself, “Sometimes I wonder if your dad is right about him…,” then snapping back at Lucas, “…but don’t you go telling him that either!” she said. “There’s no time for foolin’ around now, so go on and put it upstairs in your room and get down here again, and hurry up. You should be leaving about now!”
His mother was running through her usual pacing and clock-watching routine. She always said, you should be leaving about now, about ten minutes before he really needed to go.
He didn’t know why she got so worried about him getting to school on time. He could honestly say that getting to school on time was the very last thing he thought about. Maybe if it weren’t for her nagging every morning he would be late, but as far as he was concerned without even trying he could make it to his desk before the bell stopped ringing.
He swooped up the heavy old book, shoved the note further under the cover, and tromped back up the stairs, swinging on every-other post of the bannister. The purple dart caught his attention again on the way up. It was calling out to be rescued. It would have to stay put, stranded on chandelier-island for now. He would come up with a plan to save it later.
Maybe Felix was freaked-out too by Mrs. Warbucks outrageous hair curlers; it seemed that he had cancelled his breakfast plans. When Lucas got back to his room again he was already there warming up for gymnastics. He was stretching tall on his hind legs, reaching, sharpening his claws against the corner of the mattress. Later he would be doing balance beam routines across the back fence, vaults over the sofa and a very entertaining floor exercise routine. The comforter heaped at the end of the bed slipped and flipped to an even rhythm with his paws burrowing underneath. He was so fixed on digging his claws deep and pulling hard that he didn’t pay any attention to Lucas. He would have gone crazy if he only knew how close he came to having his tail stepped on.
The book landed with a thud. Who knew how long it would be ignored… and why shouldn’t it be? Judging the book by its cover it was duller than most books. It couldn’t have looked any more boring if it tried. It wouldn’t have appealed much to… well anyone really.
Lucas didn’t know why Uncle Henry left it there for him and he didn’t wonder about it either. He carelessly dropped it on top of his wooden toy chest next to one of the large windows; a window unstoppable at keeping a close snoop on everything going on, inside and out.
Besides being caught up with the bustling ant farm on the window ledge in the middle of a full-blown barn-raising-bee, he was already thinking about walking to school today. Well actually, he was worrying about it already.
Now if he hadn’t hurried off right then and there, he would have had something to wonder about. Besides the mysterious book, what happened next was puzzling. If you didn’t know any better you might think that what happened was just normal.
There might be a simple explanation if Lucas was still in the room, or if a big rush of wind blew in through an open window, or if Felix got frisky and pounced up onto the toy box, or even if Mrs. Warbuck caused a vacuuming kerfuffle while she tidied the room.
But none of those things happened. No one was there except of course Felix, but he was already catnapping with his mitten-paw sleeping mask, so he didn’t see a thing.
Here’s how the thing went down: Lucas’s toy dragons were clinging together in a muddled, chaotic, mix-up in a box on top of the toy chest. He saw them when he dropped off the book. At that time they all looked calm. Suddenly, in a surprise move, the box tipped over and the dragons spilled out and scattered. But it wasn’t just that… the largest one, the red dragon… he fell face down over top of the book! It looked like the big dragon was worshipping the old book. Well… maybe it was!
The leaves on the trees outside rustled hard. A gusty wind blast rattled the oversized bedroom windows. Nothing went unnoticed today. Someone was watching. A black-as-night raven with puffed feathers bounced on a wild tree branch. The snoop’s glassy, beady eyes were darting.
He had seen the big red dragon wobble then fall on his face. He thought he had given in much too easily. It really was embarrassing. But it didn’t matter; his job was only to report what he saw.
His name was Radger. He was a spy. His cover was a clever one. Who would suspect the ravens of being spies? Would you?
So the rumours turned out to be true. The dreadful book was there in the boy’s room, but he wasn’t interested anyway and with any luck he never would be. It was no wonder; he would have to agree with the boy. The book did look dismal, and it was a good thing that it did.
Radger hovered close so the video-thermal imaging technology in his eyes could scan a clear copy of the room. In a series of quick-clicks, he had coded the room, zoomed in on the boy’s darling baby picture hanging like a jewel on the wall, and of course snapped the collapsed, yellow-bellied dragon slumped over the nasty book.
He decided to film the feline too, just in case. After all, cats could not be trusted. His feathers ruffled. His mother had been taken out by one when he was just a chick. He hated them fiercely.
As a well-trained machine, he would keep his cool. Steady… just a few more …click, click, click. Done. On a mission like this one there was no way to know if it was a huge waste of time or if this was the big one; the story you could chirp about to your grand-chicks one day.
It was a wrap. Radger retracted his photo-optic lenses and relayed the film footage and the sound-bites to the crew standing-by at the other end. There would be another assignment waiting for him. With a flap, a squawk, and a whirl, he was gone!
Lucas trudged his way to school under a flurry of angry clouds rushing across the sky. He hoped it wouldn’t be an inside recess today.
Indoor recess never went well. The teacher left a student in charge of the class while she was out, usually one of the brainy kids. Maybe flunking the last English test would come in handy after all. It settled the fear in his mind about being asked. He had nothing to worry about. Besides, whiz-kids craved being asked. You could just tell.
He didn’t know why anyone would want the job. Trouble was the word of the day when the teacher left. He figured if it came down to it, today wouldn’t be any different. But he was wrong. Well… only partly wrong. Yes there would be trouble that was for sure, but it was going to be very different today.
Up until now it always went the same. The bullies would take charge, tease the weak
ones, make them do things they shouldn’t, and no one would tell. They would just get away with it every time.
Lucas expected the worst again. Well… he was partly right. He was expecting the worst but not the kind of worst that it would turn out to be. This kind of worst was the worst of worst, even if no one was able to see that it was.
What would happen today would be the start of something that might be called terrible. The kind of terrible like if you fell through a trap door. And maybe you’d never get out again. Well, maybe you would and maybe you wouldn’t. Yes… a trap… that’s it. But that would only be part of it.