My Teacher Is an Alien

by Bruce Coville

  But Mr. Bamwick was determined we would play "The Stars and Stripes Forever" that spring, or die trying. The way my lesson was going that Friday, it looked as if we were going to die.

  "Come on, Susan/' said Mr. Bamwick after I messed up for the third time. "The concert is next week! Did you practice last night?"

  I shook my head. "I didn't have time," I said.

  I knew it sounded pretty lame. But how could I tell him I hadn't practiced because I had been prowling through my teacher's house, trying to find evidence to prove he was an alien?

  I could see Mr. Bamwick trying to control himself. I have to give him credit. He knows that it doesn't do any good to make a kid feel stupid. But I could tell he really wanted to explode. By the time I left his room, I was pretty upset myself.

  That wasn't all bad. Being angry gave me the strength to do what I knew I had to do. Taking a deep breath, I marched back to my room. I paused outside the door and took another deep breath.

  Then I went through the door, staggered over to Mr. Smith's desk, and pretended to faint.

  On the way down, I grabbed for his ear.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - Parent Conference

  Failure! I had hoped to hit the floor with Mr. Smith's face in my hand and Broxholm's real mug exposed for all the world to see. Instead, I ended up with a handful of air and a bump on the head.

  The other kids in the class shouted and jumped to their feet. Smith/Broxholm waved them away. He told Mike Foran to go get the nurse. Then he knelt over me to see if I was all right. He was acting so tender and concerned that I almost felt bad about trying to pull off his face. But all I had to do was think of Ms. Schwartz trapped in that force field in his attic, and any guilt I might have felt just floated right away.

  "Susan! Susan, are you all right?" he asked, fanning my face.

  I moaned and fluttered my eyes. "What—what happened?" I asked.

  "You fainted," said Broxholm. He patted the side of his head. "Almost took my ear with you," he

  added. He gave me a cute little smile that showed the dimple in his right cheek.

  Between the two of us, the air was thick with fake innocence. Was it really possible he didn't know what I was up to?

  A minute later Mike came running back with Mrs. Glacka puffing along behind him. She checked my pulse, felt my forehead, and then helped me to her office to (surprise!) lie down.

  She also decided to call my mother. This meant that I had to go home, and then to the doctor's, and then spend the rest of the afternoon in bed with my mother fussing and worrying about whether or not I was about to get my first period.

  She even decided that I had to spend the evening in bed, too, after she brought my supper to my room.

  "Gracious, Susan," she said when she burst through the door. "This place looks like an explosion at a garage sale. Can't you keep it a little neater?"

  "I was planning to clean it today," I said. "Only I didn't feel up to it after I fainted."

  "Poor baby," she said, setting the tray on my nightstand.

  She seemed so pleased I decided not to tell her I had been kidding. She never could understand that I liked my room the way it was.

  After supper I slipped out of bed and went to see my father.

  He was sitting in his den, building a model of the Empire State Building out of toothpicks. That's his hobby—making famous buildings with toothpicks. If you ask me, it's pretty weird. But it keeps him happy, which is more than I can say for most adults I know. So I guess I shouldn't complain.

  "Hi, Pook," he said when I walked in. "Feeling better?"

  I nodded, not wanting to tell him I hadn't been feeling bad to begin with. I sat down next to him and started handing him toothpicks.

  "So, what's on your pre-pubescent mind tonight?" he said, holding up a toothpick and dabbing a bit of glue onto the end of it.

  "Dad!" I said. But that was all I could think of. I tried, but I just couldn't bring myself to explain the situation. After a full minute of silence he turned to me and said, "Are you all right, Susan?" I knew he was really concerned, because he let the glue on the end of his toothpick dry out while he was waiting for my answer.

  "I'm fine," I said at last. "Well, not exactly fine. I've got a problem."

  "What kind of problem?" he asked. He put down his toothpick and gave me his full attention.

  This was terrible! Can you imagine trying to tell your father that your teacher is an alien? He was going to think I was out of my mind.

  But I had to do something. So I took a deep breath and said, "It's about Mr. Smith."

  He nodded, inviting me to continue.

  Look, I tried. I really did. But I just couldn't bring myself to say the words, "My teacher is an alien."

  After a long, uncomfortable silence I finally said, "I don't think he likes me very much."

  Dad looked appropriately worried. "Why not?" he asked.

  "Well, he shudders whenever he sees me go to my music lesson." I hoped that might sound weird enough to get him to ask another question.

  Come on, Dad, help me! I thought. Ask the right questions.

  But he just laughed."As long as Mr. Smith doesn't actually say anything, I don't think you can complain too much," he said. "Maybe the guy just doesn't like music. Not everyone can be as cultured as we are, you know. He's probably just a philistine."

  Yeah, I thought, A Philistine—from the planet Philis!

  But all I said aloud was, "Yeah. A philistine."

  Figuring he had solved my problem, Dad turned back to his toothpicks. "I wouldn't let it get to you, honey/' he said. "The school year's almost over. You can tough it out till then. Now, you better scoot back to bed before your mother catches you out here."

  I gave him a hug and trudged back to my room.

  Now what? If I was going to do anything about this mess, I had to get some proof, and fast.

  I was still trying to figure that all out when Peter called.

  "Nice try today," he said. "You're really brave. I just hope Broxholm didn't figure out what you were up to."

  Great! That was the last thing in the world I wanted to think about.

  "I wasn't brave," I said. "Just desperate. What I want to know is what are we going to do next? We've got to find some way to prove the truth about Broxholm."

  "Actually, that's why I'm calling," said Peter. "I wanted to know if you had a camera."

  "Sure. Why?"

  He hesitated, then said, "Well, are you game for another expedition into Broxholm's lair?"

  I smiled for the first time that day."So we can take a picture of Ms. Schwartz! Peter, you're brilliant. Only when can we be sure he won't be there?"

  "How about during school?"

  "Peter, I can't skip school! My mother would kill me!"

  "Would you rather get kidnapped by aliens?" he asked

  I sighed. "All right. I'll bring my camera to school on Monday. We'll talk about it then."

  I hung up and tried not to think about the fact that in two days, I was going to go back into the alien's den.

  In fact, I spent most of that whole long, sleepless night trying not to think about it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE - Things Get Weirder

  I didn't think it was all that weird when Stacy Benoit called me Saturday morning to see how I was doing. After all, she's my friend, and she did think I had fainted in school the day before. I didn't realize when I laughed and told her there wasn't anything wrong with me that I was only confirming her worst fears.

  I didn't figure that out until Monday morning, when our class turned into something from the Twilight Zone.

  Until that point, I had other things to worry about—like what to do about Ms. Schwartz.

  Since my mother still wouldn't let me out of the house, I spent a long time discussing this force field thing with Peter over the phone. He told me he was pretty sure Ms. Schwartz was actually safer inside that thing than she would be walking the streets.

  "She probably doesn't like it i
n there," he said. "I know I wouldn't. But nothing's going to hurt her."

  "Well, doesn't she have to eat or go to the bathroom, or something?" I asked nervously.

  I could almost see Peter's shrug over the telephone line. "I don't think so," he said. "I have a feeling time is pretty much holding still inside that thing. So unless she had to go to the bathroom when he put her in there, she's probably fine." He paused, then added, "Come to think of it, that force field could be a woman's dream—she won't age a bit!"

  "Don't be a male chauvinist piglet," I said angrily. "This is serious."

  "I know it's serious," snapped Peter. "But we can't do anything about it this weekend—unless you know of a time when we can be sure that Broxholm won't be there."

  "I suppose you're right," I said.

  But the thought of Ms. Schwartz trapped in that force field gnawed away at me for all the rest of the day and all of Sunday, too. I had to get her out of there!

  I was still stewing about that on Monday, until things got so weird that I forgot about Ms. Schwartz for a while.

  It started with Duncan Dougal, who walked into class carrying the biggest apple I had ever seen in my life.

  "Good morning, Mr. Smith," he said. "How are you today?" His voice was so syrupy-sweet it made me want to throw up.

  I looked away, then looked back again so iast it put a crick in my neck. DuncanI I thought in astonishment.

  The class bully put his apple 011 Mr. Smith s desk, then went to his own desk, sat down, and folded his hands neatly in front of him.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and then opened them again to see if anything would change. But the apple was still there, and Duncan was still sitting at his desk, smiling like a little angel.

  What was going on here?

  When I opened my desk, I found a note that said,"! think you are the bravest person I have ever met." It was signed, "A friend."

  Who had it come from? And why?

  I looked around the room, but the others were all bent over their desks, working busily away.

  I turned back to my work, trying to figure out what was going on. But even the weird stuff that had happened so far hadn't prepared me for what came next.

  "You pig-faced baboon!" yelled a familiar voice.

  Stacy? Stacy Benoit? The girl most likely to be declared a saint while still living?

  I turned around and saw Stacy standing beside her desk, shouting at Mike Foran—the only kid I had ever heard of who had never, I mean NEVER, gotten in trouble with a teacher.

  "Shut up!" yelled Mike. "Shut up, you creep!"

  When Stacy slapped him across the face I almost fell out of my chair. Of course, Stacy couldn't slap that well, having never done it before. So it was kind of a wimpy little slap. But this was Stacy Benoit, for heaven's sakes.

  "Stacy!" yelled Mr. Smith, who was sitting at the back of the room with a reading group. "Michael! What is going on up there?"

  He started for the front of the room. But he was too late. When Stacy slapped Mike, he jumped up so fast he knocked his desk over. His face was red. I didn't realize until later it was from stage fright.

  "You mother wears—uh, uh—your mother wears—"

  I wanted to prompt him. It was pathetic to see the nicest kid in the class try to come up with a withering insult, and even more pathetic when he finally finished up with, "your mother wears polyester!"

  But it seemed to do the trick. Stacy began to shriek in outrage.

  Mr. Smith reached them just in time to keep them from going for each other's throats.

  "The rest of you stay in your seats," he ordered. "I'll be back in a minute."

  Then he walked out the door, dragging the two best-behaved kids in sixth grade along with him. They were kicking and screaming every step of the way.

  I closed my eyes and shook my head. I was sure I was awake. So what was going on? Was this the same planet I had gone to sleep on?

  I couldn't wait for recess so I could talk to Peter.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Rumors

  "Stacy and Mike did a good job, didn't they?" said Peter, when we got together on the playground at recess.

  "What are you talking about?" I asked.

  "Stacy and Mike. Didn't you think that fight they put on was pretty good?"

  "The fight they put onl" I echoed.

  Peter sounded impatient. "Stacy and Mike are afraid Broxholm will decide one of them is the best kid in the class and then try to kidnap whichever one he chooses. So they decided to fake a fight— you know, mess up their reputations a little."

  All of a sudden everything came clear. "That's why Duncan brought Mr. Smith an apple this morning!" I said.

  Peter giggled. "Pathetic, isn't it? But it might work. Right now Duncan is a sure pick for worst

  kid in the class. But if he works really hard, he might actually manage to pull himself off the bottom of the list. Since he knows that no matter what he does, he's never going to push himself into the most average category, if he can improve at all, he's probably safe. The problem is, he's been so bad all year that it's going to take a major effort to get out of the bottom spot."

  Peter paused, then added, "I intend to have some fun with him over the next three days."

  Three days! That was all the time we had before Broxholm was scheduled to kidnap five of us into space.

  "That's not very nice," I started to say.

  But then I remembered the way Duncan had tormented Peter for the last six years. I decided I couldn't blame .Peter if he wanted to get a little of his own back while he could. Any decision to be a nice guy about this was going to have to come from inside himself.

  I decided to change the subject. "Tell me," I said. "Just how did they know about all this?"

  "I told them," said Peter.

  "And they believed you?"

  Actually, it made sense. If they were going to believe anyone, it would be Peter. He had a reputation as being the most honest kid in the class, which was one of his problems. He didn't know

  how to tell the kind of "little white lies" that keep people from getting mad at you.

  But I doubted that even his reputation for honesty would convince people this story was true.

  Peter smiled. "Actually, you're the reason anyone believed me. It started with Stacy. She just didn't believe you had really fainted—or that if you had, you would have tried to grab the teacher's ear on the way down. So she knew something was going on. Later she cornered me on the playground and demanded to know what you were up to."

  "Why you?" I asked.

  Peter blushed. "You're going to hate this," he said. "There's a rumor going around that you're my girlfriend because we've been spending so much time talking on the playground."

  "Yuck!" I yelled. "Yuck! Yuck! Yuck!"

  Suddenly I realized what I had just done. "Don't take that personally," I said.

  "I won't," said Peter. "Since I feel the same way."

  Hey! I thought. What do you mean, you feel the same wayl

  But we didn't have time to work that out right then.

  "Anyway," said Peter, "Stacy was convinced I must know what was going on. And since I did, I told her."

  "The whole story?" I gasped.

  Peter nodded. "She didn't believe me at first, of course. But when she talked to you on Saturday and you told her there was nothing actually wrong with you, she figured it must be true." He laughed. "That was all it took. By Saturday afternoon, the phone lines were humming all over Kennituck Falls."

  "How come you know all this?" I asked. "How come no one asked me?"

  Peter shrugged. "That's not the way rumors work. People never check with the source. They always ask someone else. Don't ask me why, but it's true. Lots of stupid things are true. Anyway, Stacy told Mike, and Mike told someone else, and that was it. It's the kind of story that travels fast."

  "And they all believe it?" I asked.

  Peter shook his head. "I don't think so—at least not yet. Except for Duncan. He's so
dim he'll believe anything—especially if Stacy and Mike believe it. He thinks they know everything. That's why he hates them so much."

  "I see," I said, though some of this was coming a little too fast for me. "Well, do you suppose if enough of us start to believe it, the adults will pay any attention to us?"

  Peter looked as if I had just suggested Mickey Mouse was likely to be the next president of the United States. "Get real, Susan," he said. "They'll

  say it's just another crazy kid rumor. Do you remember last year, when half the people in this school were convinced that the president was coming to Kennituck Falls to make a speech?"

  I nodded. I had almost believed it myself—half because so many of my friends did, half because I wanted it to be true. I also remember how my father had laughed when he heard about it. "Just because a thousand idiots believe something, that doesn't make it true," he had said.

  Which was true, I guess. But it certainly didn't help us now.