I'm an Alien and I Want to Go Home

by Jo Franklin

  “When you say ‘satellite,’ what exactly do you mean?” I asked Gordon the Geek.

  Gordon took off his glasses and cleaned them on the end of his necktie.

  When he took his glasses off, I was amazed at how small his eyes looked without them. His head was probably small too. Maybe Gordon was small because he saved his lunch money instead of buying lunch with it. He’ll never grow as tall as me if he doesn’t eat, I thought. And then I remembered, he’d never grow as tall as me, because he was human.

  “Any kind of satellite dish should work.” Gordon put his glasses back on. “I’ll have to reverse the polarity to make it transmit rather than receive. It should be able to relay back to the central satellite and then to any other communications devices up there.”

  He pointed at the ceiling light, although I think he meant the satellites up in space. “So long as someone from Kepler 22b is monitoring our communications, they should hear us.”

  “Someone?” Eddie said. “Don’t you mean something? Maybe Keplerites have a hundred tentacles and acid for blood.”

  “You’ve been watching too many movies.” I glared at Eddie. Just when things were getting serious, he had to get all silly again. “I am an alien, not the Alien.”

  “Are you sure?” Eddie grinned. “Should I look under your bed to see if you’re incubating eggs or something?”

  There are times when I want to grind Eddie’s face into the carpet.

  So how come he’s my best friend?

  The backstory is, we started at daycare on the same day. While I sat on the rug listening to a story with the other kids, Eddie ran around us in circles, pushing a toy vacuum cleaner and shouting, “To ’finity and behind!” I thought he was pretty cool. The next day, I ran in circles with him and never listened at story time again. We’ve been best friends ever since.

  Until now.

  He wasn’t interested in helping me.

  I had to show my total commitment to this project, even if it meant upsetting my human family.

  “I have a satellite,” I said.

  19

  The Trouble with Satellites

  I knew my human family would be upset when they found out I had removed their only way to watch TV. But when they realized I’d taken the satellite dish to further my mission to relocate myself to Kepler 22b, they’d have to forgive me. I’m not really one of the family, after all, and they’d be happy to see me go.

  Why My Family Would Be Glad I’d Left Earth

  Timmy could have my room. It was much bigger than his bedroom, and he’d be able to lay out all of my old wooden railway and build a Duplo city around it using every single brick, just like I used to do. He’d love it.

  Jessie has always said she wished I’d never existed, so she’d be thrilled that I was out of her life.

  Mom would no longer have to carry giant packages of single-serving boxes of Mega Flakes from the supermarket. She’d have more space on the top shelf for stuff like rice/pasta/beans. She wouldn’t be able to reach them, but she could always buy a stepladder that didn’t answer back.

  Dad would be happy to stop getting a crick in his neck from looking up at me when he told me off. He’d never have to visit the chiropractor again.

  I was pretty sure my family would agree that one measly satellite dish was a fair price to pay to be rid of me. But I hadn’t left Earth yet, and there might be a delay before my alien family came for me. I was a little worried about what my human family might do to me during that time.

  The only problem with satellite dishes is they tend to be attached to a vertical wall quite high up on the front of a house. Luckily, Eddie’s dad had a couple of fantastic window-cleaner ladders.

  Do you know how high a two-story house is? About thirty feet. That’s high.

  Eddie’s dad’s long, narrow ladder looked pretty flimsy propped up against the front wall of our house.

  “That’s high,” I said, looking up at the satellite dish.

  “That’s high,” Eddie said.

  Fully extended, the ladder reached the skinny section of wall between the satellite dish and my parents’ bedroom window. To remove the dish, I’d have to climb to the very top of the ladder and duck behind the dish to reach the screws.

  One side of our house is attached to the house next door. On the other side (the satellite side), our house isn’t attached to anything. There’s a dark alley, a fence, another dark alley, then the wall of Mrs. Fagan’s house. That dark chasm of doom between the houses made the ladder look even flimsier.

  I would have been perfectly happy to stand around saying “That’s high” all day if it meant I didn’t have to climb that ladder.

  “Up you go, then,” Eddie said.

  “I thought you were here to help me,” I said.

  “I supplied the ladder.”

  “I’m supplying the satellite dish.”

  “Not unless you get it off the wall,” Eddie said.

  He was right, of course. Without that satellite dish, I’d remain exiled on Earth forever.

  I had no choice.

  I put my foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. It was rock solid.

  “You aren’t scared, are you?” Eddie asked.

  “If I fall, will you catch me?” I said, changing the subject.

  “No. But I’ll make sure your ashes are shipped to Russia so an astronaut can scatter them in space.”

  That’s a best friend.

  I gripped the ladder with both hands and climbed.

  Do you know what vertigo means? Look it up in the dictionary. It’s an impressive word and will earn you extra credit in English if you use it. I found out all about it on that ladder.

  A wave of fear burst from my Keplerite psyche and slammed my alien body against the ladder. My right cheek pressed so hard against the rungs that I could feel the ridged imprint of the tread being tattooed on my face. My eyes stared unblinking at the ground below me.

  The ladder and I were Super Glued together. The dark chasm of doom loomed large between my house and Mrs. Fagan’s. Any minute it was going to leap up and swallow me whole.

  “You okay, Dan?” Eddie called up to me.

  I couldn’t answer. Even my tongue was paralyzed. I gripped the sides of the ladder and willed it to crash to the ground just to get it over with.

  “Dan?” Eddie’s voice seemed small coming from way down there on the sidewalk. I pressed my cheek farther into the ladder and closed my eyes.

  “Dan!” Eddie’s voice was right by my ear now. “Let go.” A greasy, potato-chip-scented hand yanked my fingers away from the ladder.

  I couldn’t open my eyes. I didn’t want to see my best friend hanging precariously from the ladder over the chasm of doom. The same ladder that my poor, terrified Keplerite body was stuck to.

  “I’ve got you,” Eddie said. “One step down.”

  He nudged my left foot, and somehow I plucked up the courage to move it down one rung.

  “Now the other foot,” he said.

  My other foot came down.

  “Okay, two more steps.”

  I managed to move each foot twice more, and then—miraculously—I was standing on the ground. My legs felt like two rubber bands.

  “It’s high up there,” I said.

  “How would you know? You only made it to the fourth rung.”

  The downstairs window opened next door.

  “Are you doing windows now, Daniel?” Mrs. Fagan called. “I’ll give you five dollars if you clean mine, front and back.”

  Five dollars was more than we’d made from our Halloween money-making scheme, which was none, but I’d have to get farther than the fourth rung of the ladder to do a really good job. So I turned her down and tried not to think too much about the crisp green five-dollar bill that could have been mine.

  “Catch me if I fall,” Eddie said with a grin. He sprinted up the ladder like a squirrel up a tree. Two minutes later he was back on the ground with the satellite dish.

  20 />
  Hiding the Evidence

  When something is at the top of a two-story house, it looks pretty small. When it’s down on the ground, right next to you on the sidewalk, it’s much bigger.

  The satellite dish was huge.

  I had no idea how Eddie had managed to disconnect my family’s satellite TV and get the dish down the ladder so quickly. Maybe his dad had been in the satellite business before he became a store owner.

  “You stash this.” Eddie leaned the huge dish against the wall. “I’ll go get the keyboard.” And he was gone.

  I didn’t hang around, because

  If the police drove past, they’d probably arrest me, and that would be the end of my return to Kepler 22b. If those Keplerites knew I had a criminal record, they probably wouldn’t come and get me.

  If Mom came home, the mission would be over for a completely different reason. She’d kill me for removing the dish. And once she’d finished killing me, she’d hand me over to Dad for more of the same. When I’d been well and truly murdered by my human parents, Jessie would take over.

  It was essential that my family not discover who had stolen the satellite dish.

  I needed to find the perfect hiding place.

  Luckily, there was a dark chasm of doom handy. I hid the dish in the alley between Mrs. Fagan’s house and ours.

  That left the ladder.

  When Eddie brought the ladder over, it was a lot shorter. Somehow it had been collapsed down and stacked in more manageable lengths. Fully extended, a thirty-foot ladder is a tricky customer. I didn’t know how to unextend it, and I was running out of time. Mom was due back from work any minute.

  I figured the chasm of doom was big enough to swallow the ladder whole. I grabbed the ladder away from the house, meaning to lower it smoothly to the ground.

  But the ladder had other ideas. First it tottered left. Then it swung around to the right. Thirty feet of untamed ladder reared above me like a giant cobra, its head bobbing here and there, looking for a place to strike.

  Then it found the perfect target: Mrs. Fagan’s brand-new car. The ladder twirled around on one leg and went into free fall. I shut my eyes and waited for the crash.

  Silence.

  I opened my eyes, thinking maybe the cobra had decided to take me out instead and I was now unconscious.

  But no. My hands were still holding the ladder. It was stuck at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground.

  The head of the ladder had entwined itself in a wire running between our house and a telegraph pole farther down the street.

  The snake was tamed.

  I studied the angle between the ladder and the ground and gave the ladder a yank. At last the ladder crashed down into the chasm of doom. Right where I needed it.

  Success!

  I had no idea why there had been a wire leading to the corner of our house, but it wasn’t there now. One end was still connected to the telegraph pole, and the other end lay dead on the pavement. It wasn’t spitting sparks or anything, so I figured it wasn’t important.

  What is a telegraph pole, anyway? I wondered. Some­thing to do with Morse code and telegrams. The members of my human family were more sophisticated than that. They used the telephone and email to keep in touch. Dad would most likely be delighted to be rid of that random wire.

  The mission now owned a satellite dish. With Eddie’s keyboard and Gordon’s communications device, I was about to be reunited with my real family on Kepler 22b. I couldn’t wait.

  I had just gone back into the house when Jessie came home from school, Random Mood Generator on Obnoxious.

  “Don’t mess with me, Beanpole,” she said as she pushed past me. “I’m getting together with my friends in a mega virtual hangout. We’re going to annihilate Serena Blake!”

  She rushed into the family room and turned on the computer. Then she poked her head out and said, “Do not disturb. Get it?”

  She slammed the family room door.

  Every evening it’s the same old Do Not Disturb routine. I’ve never disturbed her boring virtual hangout, and I didn’t care what she did to Serena Blake. I had much more important communications to tackle before bedtime. I went up to my room to wait for Eddie and Gordon.

  “Arghh!” Jessie screamed, so loudly I could hear it through my tightly closed bedroom door. I wondered if she was being murdered, but I figured it was none of my business.

  My door flew open, and Jessie burst into my room, Random Mood Generator stuck on Murderous.

  “Have you been messing with the computer?” she said.

  “No,” I said.

  “There’s no Internet service.”

  “Nothing to do with me.”

  “Arghhh!” she screamed.

  Then I heard the key in the front door.

  “Mom’s home,” I said.

  “You are the most annoying brother ever, and I wish you’d never been born!” Jessie yelled. She slammed my door and charged downstairs.

  “I wasn’t born, I was dumped, remember?” I shouted after her, but she didn’t answer.

  I suppose I was born on Kepler 22b. Or maybe on the journey to Earth.

  There was a whole lot about life in the Kepler 22b world that I knew nothing about. But I did know a whole lot about life on Earth. And Jessie the Random Mood Queen was one thing I wouldn’t miss when I was back with my alien family.

  21

  The Weird Case of the Hypnotic Laptop

  Jessie was still screaming. I didn’t know why humans had to be so loud. My alien ears were very sensitive.

  I plugged in my headphones and buried my head under my pillow. I might have suffocated if Eddie hadn’t pulled the pillow off my face. Gordon was already in the corner tapping away on his laptop.

  “Your sister’s going crazy downstairs,” Eddie said.

  “She is crazy. Have you got the keyboard?”

  Eddie plunked a cardboard box on my bed.

  It wasn’t any old box—it was the original packaging for a brand-new laptop. And the brand-new laptop was still in the box.

  Normally, Gordon doesn’t say much. He sits in the background stupefied by his own brainpower. Except when there’s a brand-new laptop in the room.

  Gordon fell on the box, ripped it open, and started sniffing the foam packing material as if it was infused with perfume.

  “It’s a Microcron Airweight 587X.SDR.” Gordon’s voice had slipped into a weird monotone as if someone had hypnotized him. I didn’t know what was in that foam, but it was having a bizarre effect on him.

  “Dad got a job lot. He’s selling them cheap,” Eddie said. “Something about the case not being quite up to standard.”

  As you know, I’m not very technically minded, but even I was impressed with that laptop. It was no thicker than a thin-crust pizza, and the cool midnight-blue case looked perfect to me.

  Gordon stroked the thin-crust laptop and sighed as he lifted the lid to reveal the keyboard. A silly smile spread across his face.

  Did I mention that I always wanted a computer of my own? I was already thinking that maybe the thin-crust laptop was too nice to use for a communications device. Maybe it would be more suitable for going back to Kepler 22b with me. It was small enough to fit in my backpack, and I’d probably be able to persuade Eddie to give it to me as a goodbye present. But Gordon had his own agenda. He whispered nonsense syllables and giggled as he tiptoed his fingers over the keys. He was flirting with the laptop. My laptop.

  I reached out and placed my palm firmly on the midnight-blue lid.

  Gordon snatched the laptop away and snapped it shut.

  “It isn’t suitable for my device,” he said. His voice had gone all high and wobbly. I had heard him speak like that once before, when Mr. Pitdown accused him of using the Internet to do research about the Egyptians instead of using a book like we were supposed to. Gordon had been lying then, and I suspected he was lying now.

  “What do you mean?” I said. “It’s a keyboard, isn’t it?”

/>   “The wrong type of keyboard.” Gordon fixed his eyes on me. Magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses, his eyeballs bulged out of their sockets.

  I’d never had a staring contest with Gordon before. Normally his eyes are focused on his laptop screen, not staring me down like a demon. It was terrifying. I didn’t want to be ripped to shreds by Gordon the Demon, but I still needed to phone my relatives on Kepler 22b and ask them to come and get me.

  “What about the communications device?” I whispered without blinking.

  “We’ll use my laptop.” Gordon pushed his glasses back up his nose but didn’t take his demon eyes off me.

  “You mean the laptop you said we couldn’t use?”

  “I’m prepared to make the sacrifice. I just need to transfer my stuff to this one.”

  The Geek’s eyelids must have been Super Glued open. He didn’t blink once. During this mission I’d had my doubts about the level of commitment of my two best friends, but suddenly Gordon was serious. Deadly serious. I knew the mission was at an end if Gordon didn’t get to keep the thin-crust laptop.

  But it was Eddie’s dad’s laptop. What if Eddie said no?

  Do you know what tension looks like? Me neither. But I felt it in the room right then. It was an invisible seething mass of darkness with crackles of electricity at the edges.

  Gordon wanted the thin-crust laptop.

  I wanted to get to Kepler 22b.

  I stared into those demon eyes for what felt like an hour. I didn’t know which I was more afraid of, being stranded here on Earth or being stranded here on Earth with Gordon. In the end I decided Gordon could have the stupid laptop. I blinked and the staring match was over.

  Gordon turned his bulbous eyes on Eddie.

  Eddie’s lousy at staring contests. He tends to get bored and smash his opponent right between the eyes. That’s cheating, of course, but his opponent is normally too busy nursing a bruised face to argue. But normally there isn’t a laptop at stake.