The crowd scene became total chaos. Some people ran left, some right, others in circles. Eddie and Brian bumped into each other and pinballed off to run suddenly in opposite directions. The picket fence was flattened as the mob surged away from the house. A crowd of people split off and ran down the street toward town, with Deputy Tisdall out in front, waving his hands in the air and screaming.
Parents grabbed small children in protective hugs. More than a few people crawled underneath their lawn chairs and put their hands over their heads as if in an elementary school hurricane drill. Screams filled the air.
Tate yelled into his bullhorn. “Stand back, citizens! Stand back!” He ran straight toward me, the bullhorn bouncing in front of his face. “I won’t let this one bring danger to Forest Grove!”
The crowd fanned out, everyone scrambling to get into the street. They encircled the yard, leaving only me and the sheriff in the middle.
Tate tossed his bullhorn on the grass and ran with both arms outstretched to grab me. I led him around the perimeter of the lawn, dodging behind obstacles—a bush or a spaceship sculpture—only to race back out a different way.
But the mob formed an impenetrable wall around us, and there was only so much zigging and zagging I could do.
When I turned to head back to the middle of the lawn, the sheriff crashed into me from behind.
I stumbled and landed facedown on the grass. Tate landed on top of me, and it felt like I’d never be able to breathe again.
“Gotcha!” Tate yelled. He pushed his way off of me and stood up. “Citizens of Forest Grove, I give you proof of the alien presence that menaces our town!”
Tate grabbed my shoulders and tried to yank me upright, but when he did, my headpiece and mask popped off.
The crowd gasped. Tate was left holding a replica of a papier-mâché Jungle Boy head high in the air. He gaped at the mask. It was painted brown and green and had a mass of thinly cut cardboard strips bobbing on top like those growths on the alien boys’ heads. Then he looked down at me. His eyes grew round and huge.
The crowd was silent for several moments. Then someone yelled, “Look, an arm fell off that thing.”
People moved closer, squinting at us. “Wait a minute, I think those are Christmas lights. You can see the cable right there.”
“Those claws on the feet look like plastic forks. I think they’re painted green.”
“The whole thing’s held together with duct tape and Band-Aids.”
Tate looked from me to the crowd, an outraged expression on his face. He started shaking his head slowly.
Everyone shouted at once.
“That’s not an alien!”
“It’s just someone in a costume.”
“It’s only a kid!”
“Wait—I think I recognize him under the face paint. It’s that new kid, the one who works here. I’ve seen him around town.”
Tate raised his hands for silence. He tossed the Jungle Boy headpiece aside and glared down at me.
“Just what do you think you’re doing, boy?”
Everyone got real quiet then. I looked out at the assembled crowd.
I was taken back for a moment to second grade and that disastrous Robin Hood play. I could actually feel the relentless glare of the audience burning into me. It had been the worst moment of my life, everyone laughing and staring and pointing, right at me.
I stared at all of those faces in the crowd and froze up. I didn’t know if I could finish the job.
But then I looked over at the window, at Grandma peering out at the front lawn. The person who trusted me to be able to end this.
I turned back to the mob, cleared my throat, and tried to speak loudly enough for everyone to hear.
“I thought it would be good for my grandma’s business,” I said. “I mean, when I hiked out to your campsite last night to spook you and the Scouts, it was just a prank. But when I got my picture in the newspaper, and everyone started making such a big deal about it, I figured it would be good advertising. Any publicity is good publicity, right?”
The crowd groaned. Tate stared at me with his mouth wide open.
“What a waste of time,” said an elderly woman with three cameras strapped around her neck.
“I knew it was a hoax all along,” said a man in denim overalls. There were grass stains on his knees from when he had cowered under a lawn chair.
Splat! I got pegged with a half-eaten apple, right in the chest, and little chunks splattered my face. Then a banana peel, a rotten pear, a half-empty Coke can, and two hot dogs still in their sloppy buns.
The humiliation was a million times worse than being in that stupid play. This was real life.
Tate’s face went as red as the ketchup smeared on my costume. He turned to address the crowd. “But—but—but this is not what I saw last night!” he yelled. This announcement was met with a hearty chorus of booing. “I promise you, all of you, it was a real alien last night!”
The people near us shook their heads, turned away, and walked off. “I knew we shouldn’t have believed him,” said a bearded man with a cane. “This is ridiculous.”
“I can understand the Cub Scouts getting fooled; they’re just kids,” his female companion grumbled. “But you’re a grown man, Sheriff.” She too walked away from the scene and down the street.
“Wait! Listen to me! Please!” Tate pleaded. “There were more of them! And—and—and they were real! They didn’t look anything like this! They were real, I tell you!” Tate spun in circles, trying to find anyone who would believe him, but the crowd grew thinner and thinner. Parents pulled their children away in wagons, others pushed bikes down the street, and the TV crews packed up their vans and rumbled off.
Well over half of the crowd had left. Tate grabbed at a couple of the armed men who had trailed him all day. “Come on, you guys. Let’s search this place.” They looked at each other uncertainly. “Listen, this place was full of guests this morning. They couldn’t’ve just disappeared. Come on!”
Tate lumbered up the steps, followed by three of the men. Some of the remaining members of the crowd stayed and watched them; others trickled away, still shaking their heads.
Grandma opened the door wide. She was smiling. “Be my guest, Sheriff.”
I followed. Tate staggered through the house, opening doors that led to empty rooms and transporters that looked like closets.
When he had blown through the entire house, he mounted the steps for another tour. But the three guys with him shooed him off and headed for the front door. One of them even touched his cap and nodded once at Grandma on his way out. “Sorry to disturb you, ma’am.”
Tate followed them onto the porch, where a small crowd still watched from the lawn. “But—but what about him?” The sheriff pointed at Mr. Harnox, sitting calmly in his suit on one of Grandma’s deck chairs. He waved to the people on the lawn.
“Leave him alone, Tate,” someone called.
“You’ve wasted enough time and taxpayer money for one night,” someone else said. “You should be down at the school trying to catch the kids that’ve been spray-painting their crazy pictures on the brick walls down there.”
The men who had followed Tate into the bed-and-breakfast collected their wives and kids and took off down the street toward town.
In a matter of minutes, the crowd was gone. Even though my face still burned from the embarrassment I had suffered, the rest of me swelled with triumph. My plan had actually worked! And there was nothing the sheriff could do about it now.
Tate stood alone on the grass, surrounded by a sea of food wrappers and discarded newspapers. I thought he would be furious, that he might even try to climb the steps to the porch to attack me. But after one glance at him, I knew I didn’t have to worry about that.
The first heavy drops of rain fell then, spattering Tate’s hat and uniform. His shoulders drooped and his head hung loosely on his neck as he stared at the ground. It looked like he had shrunk half a foot. He didn’t m
ove. If he’d had a shred of decency I might have even felt a little bit sorry for him.
I turned to the front door. Grandma held it open for me. “They’re all gone,” I said.
“I know. That was very brave, David.”
“David?”
She put her hand on my shoulder. “Do you mind if I call you that? ‘Scrub’ is endearing, but anyone brave and resourceful enough to do all of that deserves a better name.”
I thought for a moment, then nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
She stepped aside to let me enter. I turned to take a last look at Tate.
Amy now stood in the middle of the yard, staring up at me. I couldn’t read her facial expression through the gloom and rain. She took her father by the hand and silently led him to his car.
ALIEN SIGHTING REVEALED AS HOAX
SHERIFF, PRANKSTER TO FACE DISCIPLINARY ACTION
FOREST GROVE—An alleged alien sighting reported by Whatcom County Sheriff Robert Tate was debunked when the prankster attempted to strike a second time last week.
The practical joker, costumed minor David “Scrub” Elliott of Tampa, Florida, crashed a rally led by Tate in the late evening. Hundreds of local citizens had gathered to hear Tate’s theories on the “alien” that he believed was connected with a colorful local inn, the Intergalactic Bed and Breakfast.
Many members of the assembled crowd later claimed they had attended the rally as a joke, but the County Council sees this as no laughing matter.
“The sheriff’s actions were irresponsible, inexcusable, and, quite frankly, embarrassing,” said County Council president, Dale Mount. Tate has been suspended indefinitely pending an investigation into the matter and runs the risk of losing his job permanently.
Elliott, in town for the summer to work at the inn, will have to answer for his actions as well. He has been cited for disorderly conduct and faces up to 100 hours of community service and (story continued on page B4)
My little stunt with the alien costume was captured by plenty of video cameras, and the footage has been watched over three million times and counting on YouTube. Also, I was the top News of the Weird segment on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and pretty much every regional TV newscast in America.
Even though I spent my fifteen minutes of fame as a nationwide laughingstock, it was still kind of cool. I walked down to the library one day to use the Internet, and when I typed my name into the major search engines I got hundreds of posts.
But any hope I might’ve had for leaving my public humiliation behind in Forest Grove when I traveled home disappeared when Tyler Sandusky sent me a postcard. I think it’s the first time that guy has ever actually snail-mailed anything in his life. On the front was a typical touristy picture of a family playing on the beach in Florida. But Tyler had taken a green Sharpie and drawn Vulcan ears on the kids, antennae popping out of the parents’ heads, things like that. On the back, the message read: I sent the link to your video to everyone in my e-mail address book. The Sci-Fi/Fantasy Club just held elections for president-and-supreme-ruler-for-life and you won in a landslide. Congratulations!
At least there was a chance that Tyler was kidding. The e-mail from my mom—which accused me of bringing public disgrace to the family name and threatened punishments of epic proportions upon my return home—sounded a little more serious.
But I didn’t really let either one of them get to me. Sure, it was going to take some time to live down this embarrassment (and to convince my mom to ever let me leave the house again), but it had all been worth it to see that look on Tate’s face when he knew he’d been beaten.
There wasn’t time to dwell on my personal problems anyway. I spent four hours a day cleaning up litter around Forest Grove to fulfill my community-service duties. It was lonely work; people actually crossed to the other side of the street to avoid me. They shook their heads and muttered from the opposite sidewalk as they walked past.
But even though I was a social outcast in town, I was a hero inside the Intergalactic Bed and Breakfast. Grandma was always making a big fuss over me and telling me how proud she was. Now that it was just the three of us, she cooked my favorite foods—or at least the organic, non-processed equivalent. We spent a lot of time cleaning and repairing the inn, but we also had time to just hang out. Me, Grandma, and Mr. Harnox played cards or board games every night. It was actually more fun than it sounds, kind of a real summer vacation after all.
The Intergalactic Police Force never did show up, but the transporters had been shut down remotely, just as Grandma had feared. This meant there was no way to contact them to let them know the crisis was over. I was starting to get worried that Grandma would never be able to start up her business again.
Her real business, that is. One of the unexpected side effects from all of the press coverage was that her phone had been ringing off the hook with people calling from every state and even other countries. Everyone wanted to stay the night at the quirky space place made famous on TV.
But Grandma didn’t accept a single offer for a human customer; she even had the phone changed to an unlisted number. She seemed perfectly happy and said she was glad to finally have some downtime to fix up the place. Whenever I asked her whether she was worried about ever being able to reopen her business, she would just smile and say, “The universe will provide. It always has, and I imagine it always will.”
One day, we were sitting on the floor of a bare guest room, stirring up a gluey mixture to spread on the back of wallpaper before we put it up. Grandma was humming happily to herself.
“So…Grandma?”
“Hmmmm?”
“Have you given any more thought to letting in some of the people—you know, the humans—who want to stay here now?”
“Not really, no.” She didn’t look up from where she was laying out the wallpaper in flat sheets.
“Because you could probably fill every room here, every night, for the next decade or so. You know, with all of the people that have been calling.”
“I suppose.”
I kept pressing. “And you could probably charge a lot more, with the demand so high.”
“Mmmm-mmmm.”
“In fact, you could probably make enough money in about six months to retire. Do you ever think about that, about retiring? I mean, you’ve done this for over forty years. And I’ve seen how much energy it takes to run this place. Maybe having the transporters shut down could finally give you an excuse to start relaxing.”
Grandma gave me a strange look and stood up. “Follow me,” she said.
We walked downstairs, out the back door and onto the lawn, where Grandma opened up a pair of rough exterior doors. I followed her out of the sunshine and down a staircase into the cool, dim cellar below.
“What are we doing down here?” I said.
“Here—help me move these boxes out of the way.”
We scooted a tower of cardboard boxes around until there was an aisle to walk through. Grandma led me to where two trunks sat against the back wall. “Open them,” she said.
I popped the latch on the first one and lifted the lid. It was crammed full with yellowish chunks of rock. There must have been, I don’t know, maybe a hundred pounds of it. My mouth fell open. “Gold?” I asked when my brain started working again.
Grandma nodded. “Now the other one.”
I lifted the lid. This one held diamonds. They were rough and uncut, but still diamonds. And they were huge. One chunk on top was almost as big as a basketball. I wasn’t sure exactly how many dollars something like that would be worth, but it had to be a number with a whole lot of commas between a whole lot of zeroes.
“But this…this is…how did you…?”
Grandma laughed. “Come on. Let’s talk out in the sunshine.” After I was able to pry my eyes away from all that loot, I closed the trunks. We shuffled the boxes back into place and then walked up the stairs to the backyard. Grandma sat on a rocking chair on the back porch, and I flopped down on one of the steps.
Grandma raised one eyebrow at me. “A pretty good retirement plan, don’t you think, David?”
“Yeah, I think that should cover it,” I said. “How did you get all of that?”
“An interplanetary trader transports in every year or so. He swaps goods all over the cosmos. He might swing by a planet where gold or diamonds are so common that they have no monetary value whatsoever. They’re just rocks. So he’ll scoop them up and bring a load here to trade.”
“What do you give him?”
Grandma smiled. “You know that alien money you’ve been getting as tips all summer? I have barrels full of it. The trader can exchange it on other planets. So I hand over a chest full of alien currency and get a pile of diamonds or gold in return. We both shake hands and part happily.”
“Wow. What a great racket. You’re rich!”
“I suppose. But having a lot of Earth money doesn’t really help in my business.” She sighed. “All the gold in that cellar can’t entice a single transporter repairman to spend a few weeks on a primitive planet to help me out.”
“But it can help you when you want to retire,” I said.
Grandma didn’t answer.
“I guess you don’t really feel like retiring yet, huh?”
“I don’t think so, David.” She rocked back and forth in her chair. “It’s always been such a delight, having the Tourists here. And this has been much more than a job for me all of these years. You could say it’s been my life’s purpose.”
“Oh yeah?”
“If I can offer a place where species of all kinds can mingle in peace, then that’s the greatest gift I can offer the cosmos. It fills me with such hope for all of us.”
I thought back to the day the angry mob almost rushed the inn, and I sighed. “Too bad other people don’t see it the same way.”
She looked at me with sad eyes. “You miss the girl, don’t you? Amy?”
Aliens on Vacation Page 17