Breakfast. Of course. After a bathroom pit stop and a quick walk through the woods to get his energy out, I would find him something to—
But Snarffle wasn’t interested in waiting. His mouth gaped wide—and I mean really wide, over half of his body seemed to open up—and made a loud whistling-groaning noise that sounded kind of like a vacuum.
The alien mom gasped. I turned to see whole plates of food sliding off the picnic blanket and across the grass, headed straight for us. Snarffle was sucking them in like the Death Star’s tractor beam. I lunged for Snarffle, but not before he had inhaled a plate piled high with cinnamon rolls.
“How rude!” the mom said. “You should watch over your pet more closely.”
But I was already racing toward the edge of the forest, cradling the alien in my arms as he happily chomped away. “Sorry!” I called over my shoulder.
I didn’t set him down until we were well away from Grandma’s lawn and safely in the woods. “Man, you must be really hungry.”
Snarffle whistled at me and wriggled all over in agreement. I scanned the trees. “Hey, follow me. I think I can find something to tide you over until we get back to the kitchen.” After all, the forest provided plenty of meals for the wild animals out here. And I remembered where there was a huge patch of blackberry brambles from last summer.
We hiked through the forest for a few minutes, Snarffle literally bouncing along in his excitement to be outside. When we reached the right spot, I saw another Tourist had had the same idea; he was picking berries and filling up a big Tupperware container.
“Good morning.” I smiled and he waved back. His disguise was normal—sweatshirt, jeans, and a baseball cap—and he looked so humanoid that I would have been worried he was an earthling if I hadn’t recognized him from Grandma’s sitting room the evening before.
I plucked a handful of berries, careful not to slice myself on the thorns, and tossed them to Snarffle. He slurped them down and did a happy dance that involved chasing his tail in a circle until he became a purple blur. “I think maybe he liked those,” the Tourist said. We both laughed.
I turned to collect more berries and quickly noticed that this area had been picked pretty clean already. I got up on my tiptoes to try to grab a few fat ones above my head, but the brambles were so thick and thorny that it was hard to get access to them.
“The best ones are always just out of reach, aren’t they?” I said to the alien.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. Then he took off his baseball cap. A dozen or so snakelike growths on his head unfolded and stretched over the top of the thicket. They whirred in a frenzy of activity while the alien calmly stood there, and when the growths coiled back, I saw that each one ended in a little pincer that held a few berries each. The tendrils dropped their cargo into the Tupperware and returned to his head.
I nodded, trying to look nonchalant. “That’s one way to do it.”
The alien grinned. “So is that.” He inclined his head to indicate something behind me.
I turned. Snarffle was ripping through the brambles like a buzz saw, leaving wide swaths of bare earth in his wake. It only took him half a minute to clear out an area the size of a basketball court. He ran back, licked his lips, and dog-grinned at me.
“Um…wow.” I looked at the new clearing and then back at Snarffle. “Is that going to take care of breakfast for you?” Snarffle turned to face the remaining blackberry bushes, clearly ready for round two.
I bent down and scooped him up. “Okay, you, let’s head back to the kitchen and find something else. Probably not a good idea to throw the forest’s ecosystem too out of whack on your first full day.” I grinned sheepishly at the Tourist. “I hope you enjoy your stay.” He nodded and waved as we hustled back to Grandma’s house.
When we got back to the kitchen I grabbed a garbage sack and filled it with random food items. Sure enough, he liked everything. Back in my room he ate a huge mixing bowl full of fruit salad, four bags of potato chips, two frozen pizzas, a loaf of bread, three cans of tuna, a bag of pretzels, and a jumbo-sized box of Froot Loops. Pretty much all of the normal food that Grandma had bought for my arrival.
I couldn’t help but wonder when Snarffle’s family would show up to claim him. And what their grocery bill must be like.
After he ate everything I had brought, Snarffle curled up at the foot of my bed and fell into a nap. Only when my stomach rumbled did I realize that I had forgotten to grab anything for my own breakfast. I eased out the door, hoping Snarffle would stay asleep and let me head to the kitchen for a few minutes to grab a bite. I definitely wanted to be back by the time he woke up.
Something told me that taking care of Snarffle was going to be a full-time job.
When I pushed through the swinging kitchen door, I found Amy standing at the counter. There was an entire loaf of bread spread out before her, along with several jars of peanut butter and jelly. She looked up. “Oh. Hi, David.”
“Hey.”
We just stood there. Amy could have used her butter knife to slice through the heavy silence.
Finally she said, “It’s nice to see you,” although it sounded like an automatic response. Then she dipped the knife into a jar of peanut butter and spread it on several pieces of bread.
This was nothing at all like the easy interaction we had fallen into last summer, and that was back when I was desperately trying to hide Grandma’s secret from her. How could things be so weird between us, especially now that we were on the same team? Unless I was right about her having met someone else….
I took a deep breath and stepped into the kitchen.
“Amy?”
“Mmmm-hmmmm?” She didn’t look up from the counter.
“Are you, I don’t know, like, avoiding me or something?”
Amy shook her head, but still no eye contact. “Of course not. I’ve just been busy. You remember how it gets around here.”
I chewed on my lip. “I guess.” I just stood there for a while. Finally I said, “I’ve got a little time now. Wanna hang out?”
“I’d love that, David, but I’m actually in the middle of something really important.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Really? It looks like you’re just making a bunch of PB and J sandwiches.” No response from Amy. “Seriously? That’s more important than talking to me?”
“David, please don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad. I just…I’d like you to tell me if anything is going on.” Why couldn’t I just ask what I wanted to know? “So…is anything going on?”
Amy lifted her head. I’m no good at reading people, especially girls, but even I could tell there was something off about her expression. The wrinkled brow, the distant look in her eyes. Finally something cleared and she really looked at me, maybe for the first time since I had arrived. “David…can I trust you?”
What??? Okay, now I was maybe getting a little mad. “Can you trust me?” I spread my hands out to indicate the entire bed-and-breakfast. “We’re sharing the biggest secret on Earth. What do you think?”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“How else could you mean it?”
“I just…” She studied the knife in her hands. “If I show you something, do you promise not to tell anyone?”
Who was I supposed to tell? It’s not like I had a regular lunch meeting with the mayor of Forest Grove. I opened my mouth to say just that when she looked up at me again. She was genuinely worried, I could tell. So I just nodded. “Sure. Of course.”
Amy moved to the kitchen table, where there was a platter stacked with cheese and crackers and a pitcher of lemonade. There was also a little pot with some fake flowers poking out. She grabbed the silk petals, lifted the flowers, and set them on the table. Then she reached back into the pot and slowly pulled out something that looked like a—
“Is that a baby monitor?”
Amy put a finger to her lips and nodded. “But not just any baby monitor,” she whispered. S
he carefully pried the plastic casing from the back and held up the device to show me its exposed electrical innards. I stepped closer for a better look and she pointed to something inside. “See that little metallic square? It’s tiny. Right there, by the circuit board.”
I leaned forward and squinted. “I think so.”
Amy nodded and snapped the plastic casing back in place. “It’s a translator.”
My eyes opened wide. “You mean…?”
“Yep. Just like the ones that the aliens use to understand good old earthling English.”
“But aren’t those—”
This time Amy put her finger to my lips. “Yes, David,” she whispered. “You can skip the lecture. I know that it’s illegal—highly illegal—to bring any advanced off-world technology to a primitive planet like Earth. And especially to use it here.”
“So how did you get your hands on something like this? And what are you doing with it?”
Amy wrapped the monitor in a dish towel and stuck it in a drawer. “It has a recorder function. You know, like a bug? I’m not taking any chances.” She shut the drawer and motioned me back to the counter and continued making her sandwiches. “Let’s talk and work at the same time. I want to get out there right away.”
We made sandwiches and arranged them in wedges on the platter. “Getting the translator was the easy part. A lot of aliens our age come here on vacation with their parents. I’ve been able to make some friends. They’re way more interesting than anybody at school, obviously.” She got sort of a faraway look in her eye. “It’s definitely been one of the best parts about working here.”
Oh, great. Here I had been worried about Amy meeting someone she liked while I was gone all year. My one comfort was that I figured at least the odds were in my favor—I mean, how many cool guys could there really be in a place as small as Forest Grove Middle School?
But now I guess I would have to compete with every teenage life form in the universe. Perfect.
“David? Are you okay?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah.”
“Looked like I lost you there for a second.” Amy wiped her hands on a paper towel. “Anyway, I met this one Tourist who was really into gadgets. Just like teens on Earth, I suppose, but alien toys are way cooler. So one day he showed me—”
“He?”
“Yes, he. Are you sure you’re okay, David? You’re giving me kind of a weird look.”
“No, I’m not. I mean, no, I’m fine. Whatever. Keep telling your story.” I shuffled the sandwich wedges around on the platter to give me somewhere else to look.
“Anyway, the aliens have the translator chips inserted right into their brains, you know? We had this long conversation once about how they worked, and I think he could tell that I was really interested, so the second time this teen alien visited, he brought me—”
“The second time he visited? How many times has he been here?”
“I don’t know, maybe three or four. His parents are botanists. They travel all over to study plant life on different planets. But would you stop interrupting? I need to get out to the backyard soon.”
“Fine. Go ahead.”
Amy grabbed a stack of plastic cups from the cupboard and placed them on the platter. “So he brought me an external chip—I guess it was an older model or something—and helped me rig it up to the baby monitor. Now, whenever someone speaks an alien language and it’s picked up here”—Amy retrieved the monitor from the drawer and dropped it back into the flowerpot—“then I can listen to the translated English version here.” She pulled the thin baby monitor speaker from the front pocket of her cutoff denim jeans and held it up. “Isn’t that cool?”
“Okay.” I shrugged. “But what do you need to listen to?”
“Grab that extra pitcher of lemonade and follow me.”
Amy picked up the platter with both hands and walked through the swinging kitchen door. I got the lemonade and followed her down the hall and onto the back porch.
It was a rare hot day around here. The sun lit up Grandma’s huge backyard, which was surrounded on all sides by the dense wilderness that extended all the way up the foothills to Mount Baker. Sports and game equipment was scattered across the lawn, as usual, but it was rarely used in a way you could recognize. As we made our way across the backyard, a group of aliens was using the materials for croquet, badminton, and lawn darts to play something that looked like it might be capture the flag, except for the fact that hovering in midair and using your tentacles as a lasso were both legal in this version.
Some Tourists ate out of picnic baskets while their little alien offspring climbed trees. A few guests were sprawled out on beach towels, and I think they might have actually been sunbathing. Man, if they traveled to the Pacific Northwest for the sunshine, they must be from an ice-encrusted planet with no discernible heat source.
I followed Amy toward the back of the yard. A dozen or so aliens sat in a circle in lawn chairs, having an animated conversation. Their varied shapes, sizes, and colors indicated that they were from different planets, but they all wore similar clothing: a silvery one-piece jumpsuit thingy that had the look of some kind of uniform.
As we got closer it became apparent that they were all speaking in their different native tongues, creating a wall of unintelligible sounds all jumbled up on top of each other.
When Amy and I reached the gathering, the noise stopped as suddenly as if she had flipped a switch. A skinny alien with a long, yellowish face turned toward Amy. “Thank you, dear,” he said. “You can just leave those here, if you don’t mind.” He indicated the middle of the circle with elongated fingers.
Spread out on the aliens’ laps and on the surrounding grass were a variety of magazines and newspapers—Time, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal. Some were in languages that I didn’t understand, but they all looked to be Earth publications.
Amy stepped in between the chairs and set the platter on the lawn. The flowerpot wobbled and nearly fell over. My breath caught in my throat, but Amy grabbed the pot and set it upright. I put the pitcher of lemonade beside the platter. The aliens were all silent, watching us.
Amy gave them a little wave, and we stepped back out of the circle of lawn chairs. As soon as we got a few steps away, the buzz of conversation started up again. I didn’t understand any of it, of course, but the tone suggested this wasn’t idle vacation chatter. There was something urgent about it, with a not-quite-friendly edge.
“Just keep walking. Don’t look back,” Amy whispered out of the side of her mouth. “Pretend like everything’s normal.” I cocked one eyebrow and stared at her. “You know what I mean—as normal as a house full of aliens ever gets.” She smiled broadly and waved to the Tourists we passed as we made our way back to the house.
Amy led me through the back door, down the hall, and into the room she used for the kids’ movie night. She closed the door and pushed a big reclining chair firmly up against it.
“All right, secret agent, are you going to explain what’s going on?” I said.
“I first saw them a little bit after you left last summer. I asked your grandma and she said they’ve been meeting here about every five years ever since she opened the place up.” Amy knelt in front of a window and pulled a corner of the curtain aside, giving us a view of the backyard. “But lately it’s been way more often than that. Every month or so. I could tell they weren’t here just for a vacation.”
I knelt beside her, my shoulder brushing against hers while we watched the circle of aliens. “So, who are they?”
“From what I can tell, they’re all xenoplanetologists. They’re trying to—”
“Zee-no-what’s?”
“Xenoplanetologists. They’re scientists from all over. Apparently they’ve been doing research on the Earth.”
“Okay. So these are, like, some of the best and brightest minds in the universe?”
Amy nodded.
“And you’re doing undercover wiretap surveillance on them…with a modified ba
by monitor?”
Amy bit her lip and studied my facial expression. She nodded again, slowly.
“I knew there was a reason I liked you so much, Amy.”
She broke into a grin, a big one that crinkled up the freckle patch on her nose, and I returned it. For a moment, it was just like last summer again.
Amy fished the listening device out of her pocket and set it on the windowsill. “Based on what I’ve gathered so far, they’re trying to decide whether or not to allow Earth to join the Collective. But some of them think—”
“Whoa, slow down. What exactly is the Collective, again? Some of us haven’t spent all year spying on the interstellar scientific community, you know.”
“I’m not spying.”
“Right. Of course not.”
“I’m…doing research. Besides, most of the stuff I’ve learned about the Collective I heard from the alien who helped me build this.” She tapped the speaker for the baby monitor.
I sighed. Him again? Great.
“So what is it?”
“The Collective is a group of affiliated planets from all over the universe. One of the requirements for joining is that a native population has to figure out how to reach another planet on its own, with no outside help.” She indicated the group of aliens on the lawn with a nod. “One of the things they argue about is whether our moon should count.”
I rested my arms on the windowsill and placed my forehead on the cool glass, studying the aliens. “What would Earth get out of that arrangement? You know, if they let us into their big Collective?”
“Oh, it would be the best!” I glanced over at Amy, and her eyes were flashing with excitement. “We could share philosophy and art and technology with millions of advanced civilizations. It would be the next great leap in our social evolution.”
“I suppose that would be—”
“And we’d be so much better protected,” Amy rushed on. “Members of the Collective offer aid to each other in a planetary crisis—a worldwide epidemic of disease, maybe, or some catastrophic natural disaster like a huge meteor headed right for the planet’s orbital path.”
Alien on a Rampage Page 6