CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
For Tisha Hamilton, who cared.
My Teacher
Glows in the Dark
CHAPTER ONE
I Choose the Stars
So there we were—Susan Simmons, Duncan Dougal, and me, Peter Thompson—sitting in an alien spaceship the size of New Jersey, waiting to learn how we were supposed to save the world, when Susan said, “All right, Peter, give.”
“Beg your pardon?” I asked innocently.
“Tell us what’s been going on! Five months ago you took off for outer space with Broxholm. Five minutes ago you showed up in a beam of blue light and told Duncan and me we had to help you save the world. I want to know what happened in between.”
“Me, too!” said Duncan.
Five months ago I wouldn’t have cared what Duncan Dougal thought. As far as I was concerned, he was the world’s biggest snotball, a kid whose main hobbies were drooling on his homework, farting in class, and beating me up. I thought he was as likable as a mosquito, as friendly as a rattlesnake, and as useful as a screen door in a spaceship.
But that was before I got a good look at the inside of his head—which was less frightening and more sad than I ever would have guessed.
“Well, since you asked . . .” I drawled.
“Peter,” snapped Susan, “for five months every kid in Kennituck Falls has been dying to know what happened to you after you went off with Broxholm. Stop stalling and tell the story, or you’re going to be very sorry!”
So I told them. But that wasn’t good enough. Oh, no. Now they insist I have to write it down. “We wrote about our part,” they keep saying. “Now it’s your turn.”
So here goes:
As you probably know, it all started when this alien named Broxholm wanted to kidnap five kids from our sixth grade class last spring. He started by trapping our real teacher, Ms. Schwartz, in a force field. He kept her in his attic while he disguised himself as a substitute teacher named Mr. Smith and took over our class.
One day Susan followed Mr. Smith home and saw him peel off his face. Underneath his human mask was a green-skinned, orange-eyed alien.
Susan came to me for help, mostly because she didn’t think anyone else would believe her. She thought I might because I used to read so much science fiction.
The two of us spent days trying to figure out how to stop Broxholm. One night I was sitting home alone, eating a can of cold beans and wondering where my father was, when it hit me that if we couldn’t stop Broxholm, if some kids had to go into space, I might as well be one of them. It wouldn’t be any worse than staying where I was. And it might be better.
I was frightened by the idea, of course. But I didn’t think the aliens were going to dissect my brain or anything like that. In fact, I figured I might learn as much from them as they did from me.
That was the key, I guess; I knew I could learn something. That was important to me, since learning is the one thing I really like. If that sounds strange, look at it like this: if other kids treated you like a nerd and a geek all the time, if you went for weeks feeling like books were your only friends—well, you might really be into learning, too.
Anyway, between being the school dumping ground for emotional toxic waste and having a father who didn’t give two bags of llama droppings whether I was alive or dead, I figured I didn’t have much to lose by going with Broxholm.
Besides, more than anything else in the world, I wanted to travel to the stars and explore other planets.
That’s why when Susan and the school band overpowered the alien on the night of our spring concert, I slipped around back to help him escape.
After I let Broxholm out, he turned and used something that looked like a pencil to melt the door shut.
Oh, oh, I thought. Now you’re in for it, Peter.
But then I thought, Well, wait a minute. If he has a weapon like that, he could have fried the whole crowd.
Since he hadn’t, I figured he wasn’t going to make me into sausage; at least, not right away.
So when he started to run, I began to run alongside him.
“What are you doing?” cried the alien.
“I want to come with you!”
I think Broxholm would have stopped running right then, if he had figured it was safe. It wasn’t, so he kept going. He was in good shape; I didn’t hear him pant or gasp for breath at all. (Of course, for all I knew, when people from his planet got tired it made their armpits ache.)
Three blocks from the school he stopped running.
Then he disappeared.
I felt like my heart had disappeared, too. Never mind that Broxholm was a lean, green kidnapper from outer space. He was going back to the stars, and I wanted to go with him.
“Broxholm!” I yelled. “Wait! Take me!”
“Be quiet while I adjust this!” snapped a voice beside me.
An instant later I disappeared, too. Which is to say, I became invisible because of something Broxholm did.
“Wow,” I whispered, looking down at where I used to be, “that’s awesome!”
“Shut up, or you stay here,” growled Broxholm.
I shut up. I may have saved his bacon back at the school, and I may have been the only one willing to go with him, but I figured if I got in the way of his escape, Broxholm would dump me faster than my mother had dumped my father when something better came along.
“Now, follow me,” whispered Broxholm.
“How? I can’t see you!”
After a moment of silence, I felt strong hands grab me by the waist. “Stay quiet!” hissed Broxholm as he tossed me over his shoulder. It reminded me of the first day I had met him, when he picked up Duncan and me to stop us from fighting.
He started to run. He was amazingly fast.
When we reached the little house where Broxholm had been living, he made us both visible again. Turning to me, he said, “I have some things to do before we can go. I also owe you a favor. Here it is: you have three minutes to change your mind. Otherwise, you’re coming with me.”
Before I could say a thing, he walked away—leaving me alone to make the biggest decision of my life.
Back at school that decision had been easy. Lying in my bed, in my empty house, I had known for sure what I would do. But this wasn’t just some wishing game anymore. It was real.
I thought about my father. Would he miss me? Probably. At least, for a little while. Then he’d probably be just as glad I was gone; one less nuisance for him to cope with.
I thought about school, where I spent most of my time trying not to get beat up by Duncan and other jerks who thought being smart was a crime.
My life would have been a lot different if it was okay to be smart in school. But it’s not. It’s okay to be pretty smart. But not real smart—which is kind of stupid when you think about it. I mean, all these guys picking on smart kids and calling them geeks and dweebs are going to grow up and want to know why they don’t do something about the terrible state the world is in.
I can tell you why. By the time they grow up, most of the kids who really could have change
d things are wrecked.
I’ll bet you this very minute, even while you’re reading these words, some kid who’s bright enough to cure cancer when he or she grows up is getting hassled for being an “egghead.”
Any takers?
Anyway, I had plenty of reasons to run away. But that wasn’t what made up my mind. I didn’t just want to run away; I wanted to run to something. And that something was space.
I thought about my father again, and wondered if he had ever loved me.
I thought about the stars, and the secrets they held.
Broxholm walked into the kitchen, carrying a large wooden box and two flat pieces of plastic. I recognized the pieces of plastic: they were part of his communication system. Later I found out that the box was his dressing table, all folded up.
“Well?” he asked.
My hands were trembling like a pair of gerbils that had just been dropped into a snake pit. Some of that was terror; some of it was pure excitement. Looking straight into his huge orange eyes, I whispered, “I’m coming with you.”
CHAPTER TWO
The Cellar Beneath the Cellar
Broxholm didn’t congratulate me, or thank me, or say he was glad to have me along. He just nodded, said, “Follow me,” and started toward the cellar door.
The cellar was pretty much as I remembered it from the times I had snuck in with Susan. But Broxholm surprised me. When we reached the far wall, he pressed his hand against a concrete block. A section of the floor tilted back. Blue-gray light streamed up through the opening.
“You first,” he said, nodding toward the hole.
Swallowing hard, I approached the light. Then I looked down, and my fear was washed away in wonder. The trapdoor led to an enormous chamber; in the chamber was a spaceship.
A stairway curved along the side of the chamber. I scrambled down the steps. Broxholm was close behind me.
This second cellar was as polished as the first had been rough. The soft light that filled it came from the wall itself. I say wall because that’s all the room had—a single gently curving wall with no edges and no corners. When I put my hand against it, it felt smooth, and slightly warm.
I felt like I was inside an egg.
Still, it was the ship that took most of my attention. Staring at it, I felt such a wave of joy that I thought I might float right off the floor. This was more than my ticket off a planet where I’d never been very happy; it was the key to the stars, and everything I’d dreamed of.
The top of the ship was a half sphere. This rested on a base that looked like a fifty-foot-wide soup bowl surrounded by a ring of lights. The base tapered down in layers, a little like a kid’s toy top.
Broxholm whistled three harsh notes and an opening appeared in the side of the ship. A long strip of silvery metal stretched down to where we stood. Turning to me, Broxholm said: “Enter.”
I stepped onto the silvery plank. It started to move. Feeling as if the ship was about to swallow me, I jumped back.
“Hurry!” snapped Broxholm.
I ran up the plank.
Once inside, I was aching to look around. But Broxholm hustled me to a platform that floated us up to the next level.
“Sit,” he said, pointing toward one of four large chairs.
I sat. The padding on the chair was comfortable.
Taking a seat near me, Broxholm pushed a couple of buttons. Part of the curved wall slid aside. He laid his hand on a glowing pad. The ship began to slide forward, into a dark area. Suddenly we started to float. I was afraid we were going to hit the ceiling. But at the last possible moment, Broxholm’s entire back yard flipped up, like a giant trap door.
As we lifted away I saw cop cars racing toward the house. One stopped. The door flew open and a blond kid scrambled out.
“Susan!” I cried.
She couldn’t hear me, of course. That didn’t stop me from making a fool of myself. Seeing her made me remember that not everything down there was rotten. “Wait!” I cried, turning to Broxholm. “Wait. I want to go back!”
Broxholm didn’t even look at me as he moved his hands over the control panel. “There’s no turning back now,” he snapped.
The ship began to move faster. I watched the earth drop away beneath us. Within seconds I had lost sight of Susan, the house, even the town.
I felt hollow inside.
“Stop that,” said Broxholm. He shook his head. “You earthlings! You never know what you want. If you’d stop trying to hold on to everything, you’d be a lot happier.”
It wasn’t until he spoke that I realized I was crying. “Sorry,” I whispered, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.
Broxholm touched my shoulder. “Don’t look back,” he said softly. “Look up!”
When I did, I started to cry again—this time out of sheer joy. We were heading for the moon. Beyond it lay the void of outer space, a deep black sprinkled with stars.
The moon continued to grow in the viewing space.
“We’re going awfully fast, aren’t we?” I asked after a moment.
“Compared to what?”
“Well, compared to earth rockets.”
“Yes.”
The guy was not much of a conversationalist. I was about to ask why the acceleration hadn’t pushed me into my seat when we began to make a curve around the moon. When we got to the other side, I was astonished into silence myself.
One problem with writing about aliens is that sometimes it gets hard to describe things. For example, if I say that what I saw now was the biggest thing I had ever seen in my life, that wouldn’t be true. A lot of things in nature—like the sun, the moon, and the stars—are bigger.
But if I say it was the biggest man-made thing I ever saw, that wouldn’t be true either, because this wasn’t made by men—or women, for that matter. It was made by aliens. And it was enormous—a huge lavender sphere that made Broxholm’s ship look like an ant on the face of Mount Rushmore.
“What is that?” I finally managed to whisper.
“The good ship New Jersey,” replied Broxholm.
I blinked. “The New Jersey?”
Broxholm pulled on his nose, which stretched out to about twice its normal length, then snapped back into place. I learned later that this is what people on his planet do instead of sighing.
“One of the senior members of our ship’s crew has a rather bizarre sense of humor,” said Broxholm. “This crew member has also spent a lot of time studying your planet. When the ship was built, it decided that since the ship’s surface area was equal to that of New Jersey, that should be the name of the ship. Not everyone was amused.”
“The ship decided?” I asked in puzzlement.
“No, the crew member,” said Broxholm.
“But you said ‘it’ decided.”
“That’s because I’m wearing an implant that translates everything I say into English, and no pronoun in your language properly describes this crew member, who is neither a he nor a she, but something else all together.”
“What else is there?”
Broxholm pulled on his nose again. “This crewperson comes from a planet where it takes five different genders just to get an egg—and three more to hatch it.”
My mind was starting to spin. But before I could ask more questions, a hole opened in the side of the great sphere and a multicolored beam of light extended to our little vessel.
“Docking beam,” said Broxholm, pointing to the light. “Soon we’ll be inside. Then the fun begins.”
“Fun?”
“Sarcasm,” said Broxholm softly. “I will have to explain why you are with me. That will not be fun. Not at all.”
CHAPTER THREE
The Naked Stranger
Sarcasm? Did that mean Broxholm had a sense of humor? The idea fascinated me. But this didn’t seem like the time to ask about it, since I had more important questions in mind—such as, “Why won’t it be fun?”
“I will tell you later,” replied Broxholm. “If I am able.
Right now I have business to attend to.”
His hands moved swiftly across the control board, which looked like a lot of marbles embedded in a sheet of black concrete. Sometimes he pushed the marbles (or whatever they were), sometimes he rolled them, sometimes he tapped them.
Suddenly a face appeared at the right of the panel. To my surprise, it didn’t look like Broxholm. The forehead was low, the skull wide, the skin a strange shade of yellow.
“Oorbis tiktum?” asked the face.
“Broxholm, requesting emergency landing status. I have one young earthling with me.”
I wondered why he spoke in English, until I remembered that his implant forced him to.
Clearly, the alien understood him anyway. “Coopla daktum!” cried the face. Its skin turned orange, and the screen went blank.
“He’s not happy, is he?” I said.
“That was a she. And as I was supposed to arrive six hours later, with a total of five children, all of whom were supposed to be asleep, she is naturally somewhat disturbed.”
By this time the docking beam had pulled us most of the way in. Imagine you’re a flea. Now imagine you’re walking through the door of the Empire State Building. That’s what it was like for me going into the ship. For a while all I could think was, This thing is so BIG! Then my mind did a little flip, and I started thinking, I’m so SMALL!
Then I got sort of confused between being afraid and being excited.