Missing—One Brain!

by Bruce Coville

  FOR RYAN AND DANNY, AND THE REST OF THE CAST OF I WAS A SIXTH GRADE ALIEN: STARSHIP TROUPERS INDEED!

  CHAPTER 1 [PLESKIT]

  A LETTER HOME

  FROM: Pleskit Meenom, on the occasionally terrifying Planet Earth

  TO: Maktel Geebrit, on the longed-for Planet Hevi-Hevi

  Dear Maktel:

  I do not think I will ever understand this planet! I thought I was starting to get along in school. I thought I was learning how Earthlings think. I even thought I was starting to understand about being cool.

  Unfortunately, there has been another… incident.

  The good news: It was mostly not my fault that I lost the brain of the Grandfatherly One.

  The bad news: It was enough my fault that I still got in a lot of trouble.

  Tim was involved again. Unfortunately, during much of the trouble we were barely speaking to each other.

  I have discovered that Earthlings handle friendship differently than we do.

  Also, they can be very sensitive.

  Once again Tim and I have prepared an account of the entire appalling story. You’ll find it in the attached files. Some of them are entries from Tim’s journal, made during the time when… well, when things were difficult between us.

  Are you ever going to come to Earth to visit? The place is strange but fascinating. I can almost guarantee you a trip that will be, if nothing else… interesting.

  Write soon.

  Fremmix Bleeblom!

  Your pal,

  Pleskit

  CHAPTER 2 [TIM]

  SECURITY

  “No! We’re not interested!”

  I slammed down the phone in disgust.

  “Another reporter?” asked my mother with a sigh.

  “You got it.”

  “Offering money?”

  I paused. “Yeah.”

  Mom sighed again. I didn’t blame her. Ever since I had made friends with the first alien kid to go to school openly on Earth, we had been bombarded by reporters wanting to buy my story. But I knew Pleskit and his Fatherly One didn’t want that kind of publicity.

  I knew, too, that you don’t sell out a friendship that way. Mom completely agreed with me about not selling my story to a reporter. But it wasn’t easy to keep turning down that money—especially since Mom’s job barely paid enough to keep the two of us going.

  “Don’t worry about it, Tim,” she said when she saw my face. “We’ll be fine.”

  She was worried about me worrying about her—which worried me.

  Sometimes I wonder how long a circle like that can go on.

  * * *

  That call came on Sunday evening. (Reporters don’t seem to worry about things like regular business hours and family time and stuff.)

  On Monday morning Mom drove me and my upstairs neighbor Linnsy to school.

  “Uh-oh,” said Linnsy as my mother dropped us off in front of the building. “Looks like things have gotten weird again.”

  Since Linnsy is screamingly normal herself, she can spot weird from a mile away. But you didn’t have to be normal (something I, personally, have never managed to achieve) to realize something was cooking at school. The sight of eight black limousines—not to mention all the men and women wearing sunglasses and dressed in black—was a good clue.

  Our school has been very security conscious ever since Pleskit got here, of course. Even so, we hadn’t seen this many agents since the day he arrived.

  “I wonder what’s going on,” I said.

  Linnsy gave me a “little punchie-wunchie.” (That’s what she calls it when she socks me on the biceps because she thinks I’m being dippier than usual.) “Wake up, Einstein. Or did you already forget that our class was held hostage by a disguised alien last week?”

  “How could I forget? I was the one the alien was looking for!”

  “Don’t pat yourself on the back too hard, Tim. Mikta-makta-mookta wanted Pleskit, too. It was just that you couldn’t be found because you were only two inches high. Anyway, the point is, that’s why all the security. You can’t have an incident like that and not expect them to crank up the safety measures. I would think you’d know that from all that stupid science fiction you watch.”

  I sighed. Linnsy used to be more fun to hang out with.

  When we got to the door of the school, a tall woman wearing a security badge that said ELLEN SANCHEZ asked for our names and what class we were in. Then she checked us against a page of photos to make sure we were really who we said we were.

  I figured that would be enough. But when she waved us inside, we found another checkpoint. Here we had to step into a metallic-looking blue box about the size of a porta potty.

  “What does this thing do?” I asked.

  “Complete body scan,” replied the guy who was operating it. “Checks to make sure you’re not really an alien in disguise. Also makes a record of your DNA so we can identify you in the future if necessary.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked that.

  Linnsy went into the box first. The thing hummed and whined for a minute. Then the door popped open. When Linnsy stepped out her eyes were wide, and she was staring straight ahead like some kind of zombie.

  “Did it hurt?” I asked anxiously.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Linnsy! Did it hurt?”

  She turned to me slowly, moving almost like a robot. “Ninoo zannet dorko plink plink,” she said in a weird, high voice.

  I felt a surge of horror. “Linnsy! Linnsy, talk to me!”

  She burst out laughing. “Glory begonias, Tim, you are such a dweeb!”

  I heard a couple of kids who had come in behind us start laughing, too. Even the guy operating the scanner was smirking.

  Blushing furiously, I stepped into the scanner myself, half hoping it would send me into another dimension or something.

  It didn’t.

  In fact, it didn’t do anything very interesting. A flash of light, a tiny hum—so soft you could barely hear it—and then the door opened again.

  “That’s it?” I asked, feeling disappointed.

  “Neener bixbat rigrum dibbles,” said the guy operating the machine. “Translation: Welcome to the weird zone.”

  I rolled my eyes in disgust. Like I was going to fall for that kind of thing twice. Without even looking to see where Linnsy was, I headed for the classroom.

  Pleskit was there already—which meant his bodyguard, Robert McNally, was there, too. McNally was sitting in the back of the room, wearing his sunglasses and looking totally cool.

  I would like to be like McNally when I grow up.

  “Greetings, Earthling!” said Pleskit when he saw me.

  “Greetings, O Mighty Purple One,” I replied.

  We both smiled.

  “Oh, look,” said Jordan Lynch, who was sitting nearby. “The Dork Society has decided to hold its annual convention in our classroom!”

  Brad Kent snickered. Brad laughs at whatever Jordan says, no matter how stupid it is. I don’t want to say that Brad is a suck-up, so let’s just say that if Jordan were a ship, Brad would be a barnacle.

  Jordan is very good looking and very cool. He’s also, in my opinion, a total booger. He’s been on my case ever since he transferred into our class a couple of years ago, after the fancy private school he used to go to kicked him out for some reason. Some kids have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what he did to get booted like that. My own theory is simple: The teachers got tired of throwing up every time they had to spend a day with him in their rooms. Linnsy gave me a little punchie-wunchie the first time I told her this theory, but personally I think it makes a lot of sense.

  * * *

  The day started with two announcements from our teacher, Ms. Weintraub
; one was sad, the other surprising.

  The sad news was that we had lost two more kids—Robert Devine and Cissy Jupe—because their parents decided to pull them out of the class after what had happened the week before.

  The surprising news was that we were getting two new kids—a boy named Larrabe Hicks, and a girl named Brianna Sawyer.

  Larrabe seemed nice, but dorky—which meant I might get along with him.

  Brianna, on the other hand, seemed like she was from another world altogether—and I don’t mean from another planet. She was sophisticated, and, well… developed.

  That’s this weird thing that happens in sixth grade. A few kids start to grow really fast. It’s like the hormone fairy comes and taps them on the head one night, and all of a sudden—sproing!—they shoot up about six inches in two weeks. The thing is, you never know when it’s going to happen. Or where.

  Also, I think it happens to more girls than boys. At least, it hasn’t happened to me yet. And we have several girls in our class who are taller than most of us guys. Which is not, believe me, the way things used to be.

  Jordan is one of the tall guys, of course.

  The new kids seemed nice enough, but they were both really interested in Pleskit. That wasn’t really a surprise—who wouldn’t be interested in an alien? But when I watched them talking to him that day, trying to make friends, I got a strange, unpleasant feeling in my stomach.

  I wouldn’t have known what was going on inside me if Linnsy hadn’t explained it at recess that afternoon.

  “You’re jealous, Tim.”

  “Jealous?” I asked in surprise. “Of what? It’s not like Pleskit’s my girlfriend.”

  Linnsy gave me a little punchie-wunchie. “If we hadn’t been such good friends back in kindergarten, I would just abandon you to the savage forces of natural selection. Let’s think this through for a minute. First, you don’t have a lot of close friends.”

  I started to object, but she cut me off.

  “It’s not like anyone dislikes you, except Jordan, who doesn’t count, since he’s barely a member of the human race. But there’s no one you’re really close to, either, since you’re basically too weird for real life.”

  “Thanks, pal.”

  “I’m not trying to insult you. I’m just here to cash your reality check. Most of the time I actually like the fact that you’re kind of weird, except when you act so dorky that you embarrass me. The point is, when Pleskit got here, two things happened. One, we finally had someone in class weirder than you. Two, you guys got to be friends pretty quickly—which was logical, since you were the closest thing we had to an alien already. So it’s no surprise that when you see someone like Larrabe or Brianna trying to be friends with Pleskit, it makes you nervous.”

  “Why nervous?”

  “Because, genius, you don’t want him to be better friends with someone else than he is with you!”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard!” I said. But I only said it because I realized that what Linnsy was talking about was true.

  Emotions.

  What a stupid idea.

  I bet they were invented by a girl.

  CHAPTER 3 [PLESKIT]

  INSECURITIES

  My classmates grumbled about the new security measures several times throughout the morning.

  “It’s like going to school in prison,” said Michael Wu.

  “Yeah, well, you know whose fault it is, don’t you?” asked Jordan. “You can blame it all on our purple pal, Pleskit.”

  “Hey, it’s not Pleskit’s fault,” said Tim loyally.

  “That’s true,” said Jordan. “Half the blame goes to you.”

  Tim started to do his trick of turning red, which is called blushing.

  “Why does he get the blame?” asked Brianna.

  We were sitting at our desks, doing the morning assignments while Ms. Weintraub worked with a reading group.

  Jordan glanced at Ms. Weintraub. She appeared to be totally focused on the group. Lowering his voice, he leaned toward Brianna and started to tell her about what had happened when Tim and I decided to shrink him, and accidentally shrank Ms. Weintraub and Tim instead. Before he could get very far into the story, Ms. Weintraub looked up and said calmly, “Jordan, I think you still have work to do.”

  Jordan rolled his eyes and settled back in his seat.

  When we went outside for recess, the conversation picked up again. I pointed out that one reason the security measures were needed was that Earthlings live in a violent and unstable society.

  “Nice try, Plesk-o,” said Jordan. “But it wasn’t an Earthling who tried to take over the class last week.”

  This was a distressing observation, mostly because it was true.

  The new kids, Larrabe and Brianna, were standing with us. Larrabe was short, one of the shortest kids in the class. He had brown hair and a very serious expression. “Boy, I’m glad I got moved to this class,” he said after Jordan had finished telling his version of what happened last week. “I had to plead like crazy with my mother to put my name on the list to get in here if any other kids left.” He looked at me shyly and said, “I told her it was a great educational opportunity.”

  Another distressing observation. I do not wish to be thought of as an “educational opportunity.”

  “My mother was totally the opposite,” said Brianna. She was very pretty, by Earthling standards, with thick black hair, large eyes, and a turned-up nose. “When she found out Dad’s company was moving us to the town where Pleskit goes to school, she immediately called the principal and started insisting that I be put in this class. She was the one who thought it was a great opportunity.” She glanced at me and smiled. “I just thought it was cool.”

  McNally was about ten feet away, keeping a close eye on us. I like McNally, and value his protection. Even so, I sometimes wish I could get a little time away from him. To my surprise, he looked unhappy. I slipped away from the group and went to speak with him.

  “You are wearing your cranky face, McNally,” I said, looking up at him.

  A corner of his mouth twitched—not a smile, exactly, but something that looked like it might turn into one, given a lot of work. “Yeah, I probably am.”

  “Is there a reason for this displeasure?”

  He glanced toward the corner of the building, where one of the new security team was standing. “Professional matter,” he muttered.

  “You do not like the new guards?”

  His scowl grew deeper. “I just wish they weren’t considered necessary,” he said, not speaking much above a whisper.

  “Ah,” I said, for now I understood the problem. He was taking their presence personally, as if it meant that he had not done his job adequately. I wanted to say something to him but could not think of what it should be—especially since I had dragged him into the crazy shrinking plan to begin with. Then Tim came running over and pulled me off to talk.

  When we went back inside, it was time for us to write in our journals, which I enjoy doing. I was reflecting that the day had been acceptable. Not great. Jordan had been annoying, and the aftereffects of last week’s events were a little embarrassing. On the other hand, nothing really terrible had happened, which put it ahead of most days since I had arrived on Earth.

  Then the principal, Mr. Grand, got on the loudspeaker. With just a few words he changed the day from “acceptable” to “horrifying.”

  CHAPTER 4 [PLESKIT]

  ALIEN ASSEMBLY

  Mr. Grand seems to have an affection for saying what is obvious. For example, this is how he started his announcement:

  “Attention, students! As most of you know, we have the honor of hosting the world’s first alien student in one of our sixth-grade classes.”

  Since everyone in the world knew I was going to school here, this struck me as being unnecessary. Anyway, that wasn’t the horrifying part of his announcement. This was:

  “What you may not have known is that ever since he arrived we hav
e been hoping to have an assembly where you could learn about the customs of the world from which Pleskit comes. His parental unit, Meenom Ventrah, is an extraordinarily busy person. But he has managed to find time in his schedule to speak to us this very afternoon. Pleskit will be joining him on the stage, so this will be a good chance for all of you to see our new student and ask questions of both him and his Fatherly One.”

  I glanced at Tim. He seemed to think this was a wonderful idea. I did not feel the same way. It did not help matters any when Jordan turned to Brad Kent and said in a whisper loud enough for everyone to hear: “Whoa! Dork City!”

  “I think it sounds wonderful,” said the new girl, Brianna, brushing a strand of her dark hair back from her face.

  Jordan looked startled and sat back in his chair. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I actually saw him do that trick Tim sometimes does of turning red. This made me feel slightly better.

  * * *

  About half an hour later I got a call from the office to go down and meet the Fatherly One so I could get ready for the assembly. McNally went, too, of course.

  My clinkus tightened when I saw that Ms. Buttsman had accompanied the Fatherly One. Ms. Buttsman is the protocol officer that our host government assigned to the embassy after the horrifying experiences of my first week in school. She has all the personal warmth of a Zarkaflian shlnutberg. Tim calls her “the Butt.” I think of her as “The Dreaded Ms. Buttsman.”

  She stood beside the Fatherly One holding a formal ceremonial robe, an item of clothing that Jordan refers to as my “official galactic dweeb uniform.”

  “Greetings, Pleskit,” she said with a stiff, icy smile. “I knew you would want to dress appropriately for the occasion, so I brought this along.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Buttsman.” I spoke politely. But with my sphen-gnut-ksher I emitted the smell of seventh-level crankiness. I was pleased to see her wrinkle her nose in displeasure.

  “I’m so glad you’ve agreed to do this, Ambassador,” said Principal Grand to the Fatherly One. “Learning about life on another planet from genuine aliens will be the ultimate in multiculturalism.”