Sixth-Grade Alien

by Bruce Coville

  The Fatherly One groaned. “I must take this call, Son of My Heart. We will talk more later.”

  As I left the room of the Fatherly One I wondered two things:

  1. How could I possibly undo the horrible mess I had created?

  and

  2. Why was he talking to Senator Hargis?

  CHAPTER 13 [TIM]

  MY GREAT PLAN

  After dinner Linnsy came down to give us her mother’s gossip update. When my mother went to the kitchen to make some popcorn, I leaned over and whispered, “I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “So talk,” said Linnsy, not bothering to whisper back.

  “Privately! Let’s go to my room.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “What’s wrong with going to my room?”

  “Well, for one thing, your mother will fuss.”

  That was true. The last time Linnsy and I had gone to my room for a private conference Mom had said, “You know, you kids won’t be able to do that much longer.”

  It had taken me a minute to realize what she was talking about. When I did figure it out, I was totally disgusted. “Mom!” I cried. Later, I tried to explain to her that (a) I was about as interested in trying to kiss Linnsy as I was in having my toenails removed by a madman with a pair of red-hot pliers and (b) even if I was interested in Linnsy—which I am not, not, NOT—she is about as likely to want me for a boyfriend as Barbie is to date Barney. We may be friends from way back, but when it comes to the wider social world, Linnsy and I are from different planets.

  “Mom will fuss, but she’s not ready to go on the warpath about it yet. What’s the second problem?”

  “I forgot my Lysol and my rubber gloves.”

  Linnsy is of the opinion that my room is somewhat unsanitary.

  “I’ll give you some newspaper to sit on,” I said. “This will only take a minute.”

  She sighed and followed me to my room. I had been wrong about it taking only a minute; it took about five minutes for me to find a spot for her to sit, even with the newspapers (which I had been joking about but which she insisted on).

  “Tim, this place is worse than the county landfill,” she said while I was scrambling to clear a spot for her.

  “Are you nuts? The stuff there is all garbage. The stuff here is priceless.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure your ancient Tarbox Moon Warriors action figures are going to fetch a big price on the collector’s market. So what do you want to talk about anyway?”

  “Pleskit. I’ve got to make friends with him before he thinks we all hate him.”

  “So? I’d like to make friends with him myself.”

  “But I understand aliens,” I said desperately. “Heck, I just about am one!”

  “That’s true. But what does it have to do with me?”

  “I’ve got a plan.”

  “Tim, the last time you had a plan, I ended up grounded for a week.”

  “That was two years ago!”

  “Right. Because two years ago I was dumb enough to get involved in that idiotic papier-mâché scheme of yours. Since then I’ve known better.”

  “Just listen to this one,” I pleaded. “You won’t have to do much. I’ll be the one taking all the risk.”

  She sighed. “I know I’m going to regret this. But go ahead. Tell me what it is.”

  “I want to get into Pleskit’s private bathroom.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t see any other way I’ll get a chance to talk to him. People are always interrupting, or dragging him away.”

  “But it’s totally off-limits. Besides, it’s locked.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve got a key.”

  “You do not.”

  “Do too!”

  She narrowed her eyes. “How did you get it?”

  “Remember two years ago, when Jordan first came to our class and he used to bug me so much?”

  “He still does.”

  “Yeah, but I can cope with it better now. Anyway, Mrs. Smathers used to let me go down and work in the art storage room, just so I could get away from him.”

  Linnsy’s eyes widened. “And you never gave back the key?”

  I shrugged. “I meant to. But she left at the end of that year, and I never quite got around to it—”

  “There’s a lot you ‘never quite get around to.’ Okay, so you’ve got a key. I still don’t know what you need me for.”

  “Two things. First, you can help me find the key.”

  She looked round my room and burst into laughter. “It’s your barnyard, Tim—you dig through the manure!”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to keep from losing my temper. “I’ll find it on my own. But when I do, I’ll need your help to create a distraction so I can get out of the classroom.”

  “What kind of a distraction?”

  “Well, you could faint or something.”

  “You’d better have a talk with your mother. Something in your breakfast cereal seems to be affecting your mind.”

  “Linnsy!”

  “Tim, if you think I’m going to make myself look like an idiot in front of the whole class just so you can sneak into an alien bathroom, you’re even goofier than you look.”

  “Linnsy, I’ve got to—”

  “Forget it!”

  I sighed and followed her out of the room.

  Mom gave us a look, but didn’t say anything until Linnsy had gone.

  * * *

  After Mom’s lecture I started looking for the key. I turned up a ton of cool stuff that I hadn’t seen in a long time, which kind of slowed me down, because I kept getting distracted by it. But no key. Then Mom started telling me to go to bed. After the third time I had yelled, “Just a minute, Mom!” she came to my door and said fiercely, “Now, Buster.”

  So I sighed and went to bed—which slowed me down even more, because it meant I had to pretend to be asleep for about an hour before I could start looking again.

  It was about midnight when I finally found the key.

  It was taped to the underside of my desk drawer.

  I had put it there so I would know where it was if I ever needed it again.

  CHAPTER 14 [PLESKIT]

  GUYS IN SUITS

  “This may be my last day with you,” said Robert McNally as we got into the limousine to go to school on Thursday.

  “How can that be?” I cried.

  McNally’s shoulders seemed to sag. “Look, kid—I failed you. I didn’t protect you from that Jordan twit. My boss is probably going to pull me off the job.” He smiled, in a sad sort of way. “The weird thing is, I didn’t want the job to begin with. I figured it was just sort of babysitting, you know. But I was getting to kind of like you.” He sighed. “Maybe you’ll be better off with someone else.”

  “But I don’t want anyone else! You are my bodyguard. I want you to take care of me.”

  To tell you the truth—which I have been doing all along in these pages—I was surprised to hear myself say this. I did not realize how much I had come to depend on McNally until it looked as if I might lose him. Not in any specific way; I didn’t look to him for answers, or information, or ideas. I just felt safer with him around. And not so lonely, somehow.

  We rode to school in deep gloom.

  When we entered the classroom, I was shocked to see that half the desks were empty. Even worse, most of the kids who were there wouldn’t look at me.

  Ms. Weintraub had the appearance of one who had not slept at all the night before.

  I felt as if I had come from another planet or something.

  Of course, I had come from another planet. But this was the first school where the kids had made me feel that way.

  I didn’t like it.

  * * *

  We started with reading group. I liked this part of class. I had picked up the basic ability to read this language from the training modules, but I had much to learn about the way people lived here, and stories are the best way to do that.

 
The kids who sat next to me in group looked very nervous. They edged away from me, as if I smelled bad.

  I felt cold and small inside.

  Halfway through the morning Ms. Weintraub gave us a short break. Kids got up and started to move around, getting drinks, talking to each other, things like that. At first no one came anywhere near me. Then the dark-haired boy that Jordan had called “Nerdbutt” the day before started in my direction.

  Was he going to talk to me? I felt that was all I needed—just one person to come over and say I was all right.

  Before he could reach my desk, someone knocked at the door.

  “Come in,” called Ms. Weintraub.

  The door swung open. Mr. Grand entered, followed by four men in dark suits.

  “We want to talk to Pleskit,” said one of them.

  McNally stood up. “You’ll have to clear that with me, first.”

  “Got the clearance right here,” said the guy, taking some papers out of his jacket pocket.

  McNally went to look at the papers. “They’re signed by Mikta-makta-mookta,” he said, glancing at me.

  “The secretary of the Fatherly One has power to grant such permission,” I said, making the smell of reluctant acceptance.

  Three kids pinched their noses.

  McNally looked back at the men. “No offense, fellas, but I want to double-check this.” He reached into his own pocket and pulled out a scanner. I recognized it as having come from the embassy. He ran it over the paper, which began to glow.

  He sighed. “It’s genuine. Better go with them, Pleskit.”

  “Will you come, too?”

  “Of course!” said McNally.

  “No,” said the lead guy. “Just the boy.”

  McNally shook his head. “You take Pleskit, you get me, too. We come as a package.”

  “You’re not authorized for this, McNally,” growled the lead guy.

  “I’m not authorized to let the boy out of my sight.”

  “You should have remembered that yesterday!”

  McNally’s eyes flashed. But he didn’t respond to the insult. He just said, “Take Pleskit, take me. Don’t want me, leave the kid here.”

  “This could cost you your job.”

  “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I let him go without me.”

  “It’s your head,” said the guy, making a shrug.

  McNally nodded to me, and I came to stand beside him.

  Together, we followed the four men out of the room.

  CHAPTER 15 [TIM]

  PERSONAL NEEDS CHAMBER

  When Mrs. Vanderhof drove Linnsy and me to school on Thursday morning, things were even worse than they had been the first day. A huge crowd of people lined the street, almost all of them carrying anti-alien signs. I recognized several parents among the crowd—and even a handful of kids.

  The protesters had put up a podium, where Senator Hargis was making a raving, totally nasty speech. He was giving the crowd a good dose of Vitamin Hate, and they were eating it up.

  Since it took even longer to get through the police barricade than it had the first day, we got to hear some of Hargis’s pep rally of hate.

  “These aliens are anti-American!” he was bellowing when we first pulled up. “Who do they think they are, coming here with their strange ideas, their interplanetary germs, their pulsating head knobs? We have to root them out, send them back to where they came from! They’re a danger, a menace! They’re monsters, I tell you. Monsters! Why, poor Jordan here was almost killed by one of them yesterday.”

  That was when I realized he had Jordan on the platform with him! He even asked the little creep to make a speech about what had happened to him.

  “I was just talking to Pleskit,” said Jordan, “trying to make friends, you know? Then all of a sudden that purple knob on the top of his head blasted out a ray of power and knocked me unconscious!”

  “Just talking!” I muttered to Linnsy. “What a liar!”

  “It was the most terrifying thing that ever happened to me,” continued Jordan. He sounded like he was about to cry.

  “He is a pretty good actor, though,” said Linnsy.

  “Yeah. If they give an Academy Award for best performance as a butthead, he’ll be sure to win.”

  Then, to my astonishment, Jordan actually said something that made me happy.

  “I won’t be able to go back to school until that menace is gone,” he whined, his voice quivering. “I won’t feel safe in my own classroom!”

  I haven’t felt safe in my own classroom since you came here, Jordan, I thought. Why should you be any different?

  “Let’s have a big hand for this young hero!” shouted Senator Hargis. “We owe him a vote of thanks for showing what a menace the aliens truly are!”

  The audience burst into applause.

  I groaned. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  “Not in the car!” said Linnsy’s mother.

  * * *

  I tried three times to talk to Pleskit that morning. The first two times I struck out because he got up to go to his Personal Needs Chamber.

  McNally went with him both times. Suddenly I wondered if the bodyguard waited outside or actually went in with Pleskit. That would certainly mess up my plan—not that I had figured out how to get out of the classroom anyway.

  The third time I was getting ready to try to talk to Pleskit, Mr. Grand showed up with a bunch of guys in black suits. When they took Pleskit out of the room, I almost screamed. It was like proof that there was no way I was ever going to get a chance to talk to him.

  Then some worse thoughts occurred to me. What if things had gone so badly here they were planning to take him to some other school? Or, even worse, what if the aliens had just decided to leave the planet in disgust? Or—worst of all—what if our government had thrown them out?

  I collapsed at my desk. In the distance Senator Hargis was still bellowing his message of fear.

  As I sat there, wrapped in despair, someone slid a piece of paper under my arm.

  Unfolding it, I tried not to let out a yelp of delight.

  Linnsy had come through after all!

  * * *

  “Dear Ms. Weintraub,” said the paper. “Please excuse Tim at 10:45 A.M., because I have to take him to the dentist.”

  It was signed, “Sincerely, Julie Tompkins.”

  The handwriting was clear and looked almost exactly like my mom’s. That was because Linnsy and I had spent weeks trying to learn to sign her name a few years back, when we wanted to take out some video that the store wouldn’t let us have without a permission slip. I was hopeless at it; my handwriting looks sort of like you rolled skinny worms in ink and let them thrash around on the page. But Linnsy had gotten really good at it.

  I looked up at the clock. It was 10:40.

  Time to get moving.

  I had to interrupt a reading group to show the note to Ms. Weintraub, which is something she Does Not Like. She was also annoyed that I hadn’t mentioned the dentist appointment earlier. But she was already used to the way I forget things, so she wasn’t really suspicious.

  I hurried out of the room, realized I had forgotten the key, and went back to my desk to get it.

  Once I was back in the hall, I glanced both ways.

  No one was coming. I hurried to Pleskit’s Personal Needs Chamber and slipped the key into the lock—hoping they hadn’t changed it when they redid the room.

  Holding my breath, I turned it.

  Bingo! The door opened, and I slipped inside.

  I couldn’t have gone to the bathroom in that place if I had had to pee so bad my hair was getting fertilized! I couldn’t even figure out what most of the stuff was for—though I did like the black-and-pink wall that had water constantly running down its surface. In front of that was a strange device that looked like a metallic lizard; thick tubes that expanded into soft, blossom-like objects sprouted from its back. I had no idea what it was for, but I thought it was fascinating. On the other hand, the gu
rgling hole in the center of the floor kind of scared me.

  Despite all my reading, despite how sure I had been that I could understand the aliens, this was the first time I understood how different they are from us.

  I stationed myself against one of the dry walls and settled in to wait. Only I don’t do so well at waiting, so my mind started to fuss about things. Like: What if Pleskit isn’t coming back? Or What if he does come back, but McNally comes in the room with him? Would the bodyguard think I was a dangerous intruder? If so, what would he do to me?

  I wished I had worn my watch. I had planned to, only I hadn’t been able to find it for the last week.

  I started to wonder if the room was soundproof. What if hours had gone by, and everyone had left? What if I was alone in the school?

  What happens in a place like this at night?

  Maybe my mother was already in a state of major fuss, wondering what had happened to me.

  Pretty soon I had myself in such a dither that when I heard the door open, it was all I could do to keep from screaming.

  CHAPTER 16 [PLESKIT]

  A GLIMMER OF LIGHT

  The men took me to an office near where Principal Grand works. We all sat at a long table, except for McNally, who stood a few feet behind me.

  “So, Plastic, what do you call that thing on top of your head?” asked the man who seemed to be in charge of the group.

  I decided to give him the full name. “It is called a sphen--gnut-[small, non-smelly fart]-ksher.”

  The man gave me a funny look. “How do you use it?”

  “What is this all about?” asked McNally before I could answer.

  “Shut up, McNally,” said one of the other men. “We’ve got authorization to question the boy.”

  McNally made a kind of growling sound but didn’t say anything else.

  The man repeated his question. “How do you use it?”

  “I do not know how to answer that. I do not think about using it, any more than I think about how I use my breathing sac, or my food-masher, or my clinkus. It just does its job.”