Mr. Bradley wiped his glasses with his tie and put them back on. “I’m not going to call your mother.”
“Whew.”
“That would be redundant. We spoke just before you came into my office. A preemptive strike, they call it.”
“What?!”
“She’ll be here in two minutes.”
CHAPTER 3
Jacob stepped carefully into his mom’s hybrid SUV and shut the door. He could tell that she had been in a meeting because she was driving without a shoe on her right foot, which meant she had been wearing high heels, which meant an especially important meeting.
Jacob wasn’t exactly sure what his mom did at work. It had something to do with people trading gasoline, only it wasn’t gasoline you could buy at a gas station, it was sort of like gasoline you could buy in the future. They didn’t have a bunch of barrels of oil in their garage or anything like that; it was all done on computers. When people asked his mom what she did for a living, she said “commodity futures trading,” but Jacob could tell that most adults didn’t really know what that meant either.
It was silent in the car, and Jacob couldn’t bear it. He said quickly, “I know. You don’t want to say anything you’ll regret later. I understand.”
Jacob’s mom didn’t say anything, and he wondered what unspeakable thoughts were running through her mind. He knew from past experience that he had a fifteen-minute reprieve until they arrived home and she had calmed herself down enough to lecture him with a reasonably level head. He started mentally outlining his opening statement.
“Then why am I here picking you up at school?” she said. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t drop everything at work every time you act up in class.”
Jacob froze. It was a surprise attack. He had no choice but to opt for complete denial. “Mom! This one wasn’t my fault!”
Based on the skeptical look on her face, Jacob knew that his mom was remembering the last time Jacob had insisted that a visit with Mr. Bradley wasn’t his fault. That incident had involved a great deal of glue, a handful of feathers, and a teacher’s bottom, and had been, in fact, 100 percent completely Jacob’s fault.
“Okay,” Jacob said, “that time with the feathers was me. But this time I’m innocent!”
“Jacob . . .” his mom began.
“No, I’m serious! This time it was Sarah and Dexter. I promise.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Mom!”
“How am I supposed to believe you, Jacob? Honestly. After the last two years of you acting up and getting into trouble at least once a week, tell me, why would I believe you when you say an incident at school isn’t your fault? I’ve had to replace three sprinklers in the backyard because you ‘accidentally’ hit them with your baseball. Are you also going to try and tell me you weren’t using them for target practice?”
Jacob leaned back in his seat. She had played her hand well. It was wildly improbable that anyone but him could have destroyed a fire sprinkler with a well-aimed baseball in order to douse an evil substitute.
“Did you or did you not promise that you would stop getting into trouble?”
He nodded solemnly. “That is a fair question.”
Jacob’s mom pursed her lips together, but then she smiled despite herself. “Listen to you. You know, sometimes you take after your father a little too much for your own good.”
Jacob turned away and looked out the window. He picked at the plastic on the door handle. “I don’t want to talk about that person.”
Jacob’s mom stopped the car, reached over, and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Jacob, I’m sorry. That was a loaded thing to say.”
He kept staring out the window and wondered if his mom knew how much he thought about his dad since he had moved to Milwaukee. “I don’t want to be anything like him.”
“Well, the good thing about the world is that you can be whoever you want to be. You don’t have to be like your father. But until you’re eighteen years old you will follow my rules.”
Jacob’s mom suddenly clenched his shoulder and made him look her in the eye. “Listen to me carefully,” she said. “This is the last time you will get into trouble and I mean that very sincerely. You are officially not allowed to have any fun until I say you can have fun again, which will most likely be around the time you have forgotten what having fun even feels like. Do you understand me?”
Jacob thought about protesting further, but he accepted his punishment with a nod.
CHAPTER 4
Jacob and his mom lived in a subdivision where all of the houses were constructed from one of three designs that everyone chose from a brochure when the subdivision was still a scrubby field, but when the houses were built they all ended up looking pretty much the same. Jacob’s house had a garage facing the street, a brown door set back a little bit from that, and a second story with shutters around the windows and a flat roof. The only way you could tell Jacob’s house from Sarah’s and Dexter’s houses down the street was that Dexter’s shutters were red and Sarah’s shutters were dark green. Jacob’s were also dark green, but his house had a faded wreath with fake flowers on the door. Sometimes when Jacob was at Dexter’s house he would try to put his trash under the sink without remembering that Dexter’s parents kept the trash in a bin next to the counter. Other than that, the inside of their houses were basically the same too.
He took the garbage out to the curb and saw the first firefly of the year. He watched it flicker off and on and he sat down on the grass for a moment to see where it would fly. Summer was coming, the night had just a hint of mugginess to it, and the moon was a brilliant orange, which Jacob knew was probably because of pollution in the atmosphere, but at that moment he didn’t mind because it looked amazing. He thought about his dad and wondered what he was doing that night, and if he might be outside looking at the moon as well, maybe even thinking about Jacob.
He stared at his hands, a soft brown color that was lighter than his mom’s dark skin and darker than his dad’s light skin. It was proof that he was half of his mom and half of his dad, but since he didn’t look like either of them, it also made him something else entirely. Ever since his dad had left he felt like he only knew half of himself. The only tangible reminder that he’d once had a dad was his lighter skin.
He saw some kids approaching down the street and recognized the forms of Dexter and Sarah. When Jacob saw Sarah outside he remembered that it was the second Tuesday of the month, since Mondays she had ballet rehearsal and Wednesdays she had piano practice and Thursdays she had study hall, where her parents assigned extra non-school essays on things like the Gadsden Purchase and the Brandenburg Concertos and other things Jacob knew nothing about. Friday night was family movie night with her parents and her little sister, weekends were reserved for soccer, and during summer vacation her parents took her all around the country to visit colleges and museums. She had Mandarin lessons every other Tuesday, and since it was an odd-numbered month that meant she had the evenings of the second and fourth Tuesdays set aside as friend time, assuming she had finished her homework and any possible extra credit, only this month she had a big piano recital on the fourth Tuesday, which meant it was definitely the second Tuesday, and the only day Jacob, Dexter, and Sarah would be able to spend time together after school all month.
Their tradition of hanging out whenever Sarah had a free night had begun after Jacob’s dad had left a few years back. After a week cooped up in his house alone Jacob had asked them to go into the forest down the street to make a pact. When they reached their favorite clearing, Jacob had raised the stick he was carrying and proposed that they be blood friends. Dexter had looked at his hand and said, “No offense, but I’m not cutting myself. I’d probably get gangrene or something.”
Jacob traced a circle in the dirt with his stick and agreed he wasn’t very interested in cutting himself either, and in the end they decided to swear on the stars that they would always be there for one another no matter what
, with a bond that was stronger than best friends. Then they high-fived and threw some rocks around the clearing before hearing a noise that made them run out of the forest laughing because they were scared raccoons were after them.
Since that time, Sarah’s parents forced her to join more and more extracurriculars, and their nights together had dwindled down to maybe once or twice a month depending on Sarah’s schedule.
“Nice work, Jake,” Sarah called out as they approached Jacob’s lawn. Sarah was the only person Jacob let call him Jake. “We got to spend the rest of the day in the gym playing dodgeball. It was like we were in third grade all over again.”
“Really?” Jacob imagined the backslaps and congratulations he would receive when he returned to school. Usually when he forced a substitute to flee, the class would have to read silently for the rest of the day with Principal Bradley, which was almost worse than having a sub. Giving his class the gift of dodgeball nearly made up for the fact that he was grounded.
“Yeah, it was great. Oh, also, Dexter almost got beat up by the MacKenzie twins on the way home.”
Jacob’s jaw clenched. The MacKenzies must have known that he would be stuck at home, unable to extend his customary Dexter protection. “What happened?”
“They had him cornered by the basketball hoop, but I jumped in front of them and said that I would eat their eyeballs for breakfast if they so much as laid a finger on him. I think they believed me.”
Jacob smiled at Dexter. “She saved you?”
Dexter shifted on his feet and looked away. “It wasn’t a proud moment.”
“So what about you, Jake? What’s the punishment?”
“Ugh. My mom was so mad, she said—”
Suddenly the street lit up and there was a flash in the forest, almost like an explosion without a sound. A green laser shot up into the sky and then disappeared just as quickly. A moment later there was a faint whirring noise and a hiss. Then the street was silent again.
“Whoa,” Dexter said.
Jacob’s heart raced. Strange things did not tend to happen on their street. They always happened on other, more exciting streets that he saw on the news.
“What in the heck was that?” Sarah asked.
They watched and listened to see if any more strange lights or noises came from the forest, but nothing more happened.
“Maybe someone should check it out?” Dexter asked. He sat down on the curb.
Jacob pondered whether investigating a strange light in the forest fell under his mom’s general prohibition against having fun. While he would certainly find the experience exhilarating, he didn’t know if it could be considered “fun” per se, since danger should be confronted only with the utmost seriousness, and serious was the opposite of fun. He concluded that the activity fell under the category “protecting the neighborhood.”
“I’ll check it out,” Jacob said.
“I’m coming with you,” Sarah said.
Jacob held up his hand. “No, I’ve got this.”
“Jake . . .”
“Keep Dexter company,” he said.
Dexter nodded eagerly. “I actually wouldn’t mind some company.”
Sarah kicked the ground and said, “Fine.” She sat down next to Dexter in a huff.
Jacob walked slowly toward the end of the block, turned to give one last wave to Sarah and Dexter, and stepped into the forest. The bright moon cast strange shadows all around him. He hadn’t ever ventured into the woods alone after dark. He swallowed, steadied his nerves, and walked farther in.
He pushed past the thorny bushes and ducked under low branches, listening carefully for strange noises. When he had nearly reached the clearing, he heard a twig snap. He stopped.
He saw a tall man. Jacob crouched behind a bush and watched him as his heart pounded in his chest. The man had silver hair and was dressed head to toe in . . . silver. Jacob pieced together more details. Shoes? Silver boots. Pants? Silver. Skin? Very light, but essentially silver. The moon seemed to reflect off every part of him. Jacob wondered if he could take on an old silver man if it came down to a fight.
The man turned to Jacob and they locked eyes. His eyes were not actually silver, but rather a more normal brown.
Jacob tensed.
“There you are,” the man said. “Do you know where I can get a corndog?”
CHAPTER 5
The silver man stood patiently on the sidewalk while Jacob, Sarah, and Dexter considered his offer.
“A corndog for a spaceship?” Sarah asked. “You’re crazy.”
“Glad to be rid of it,” the man said. “That thing has a serious attitude problem.”
Sarah narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Jacob had to admit that he had some major doubts that the man in silver would trade them a spaceship for a corndog, which, while obviously quite delicious, could be obtained easily on Earth. He wondered if it was a trap.
“Prove to us that you’re not from Earth,” Jacob said.
The man said in a high-pitched voice, “Hi! I’m a bird! How are you?”
“What does that prove?” Sarah asked.
The man looked at Sarah like she was crazy. “That’s what the birds sound like on my planet.”
“Ugh,” Sarah said. “He probably painted a box and left it in the forest or something.”
“I’ve got it!” Dexter shouted, suddenly excited. “You have chosen us out of all of the people in the entire universe to take your spaceship! It’s our destiny!”
The silver man shook his head. “No. I picked this town at random.”
“Oh,” Dexter said. “Wait. I know. The galaxy is in trouble and we’re the only ones who can save it!”
“The galaxy is fine.”
“Do we have secret powers?”
“Not that I know of.”
Everyone stood there for a few more seconds in silence.
“About that corndog ...” the silver man said.
He took out a set of jagged keys and dangled them. Sarah reached for them, but the man snatched them away again and put them in his pocket.
Jacob shrugged. “I’m pretty sure we have some corndogs in the freezer. What do you guys think?”
Sarah leaned forward and gave the silver man a fierce scowl. “I guess it wouldn’t cost us much if he’s lying.”
Jacob went inside to microwave a corndog while Dexter and Sarah stood on the sidewalk with the silver man.
“So . . . What planet are you from exactly?” Dexter asked.
“You wouldn’t have heard of it.”
“Oh. Do you know someone from your planet named Mr. Bradley?” Dexter asked. “He’s bald.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
After a couple of minutes of awkward silence, Jacob came back out with a corndog on a paper plate with some ketchup. “Sorry it took so long. I had to explain to my mom why I needed more food after eating a whole plate of tuna surprise, then she accused me of throwing away my dinner when she wasn’t watching. But she went upstairs to go look at what the Asian stock markets are doing, so I think I’m safe for a few minutes. Anyway, here’s your corndog.”
The silver man tossed the keys to Jacob, grabbed the plate, and started walking down the street. “See ya.”
“Wait,” Sarah said, “how do we—”
“You’ll figure it out.”
The trio watched the silver man walk down the sidewalk and disappear around the corner.
CHAPTER 6
They found the spaceship sitting peacefully in a clearing in the forest, reflecting the orange moonlight. It was majestic, a giant antique contraption made out of old copper steam pipes and stainless steel plating with tubes twisting and turning around the outside. It was shaped like a big piece of pie, with a slightly tarnished mirrored cockpit bumping out on top and an entryway with steps lowering down to the ground at the back where the crust would have been. The spaceship looked like it was resting on some crushed shrubs and saplings, but Jacob realized instead it was somehow
hovering above the forest floor and was barely bending some of the larger trees, which couldn’t have appreciated the sudden appearance of an otherworldly, hovering, shiny, triangle-shaped vessel from another planet.
After staring at it with their jaws in various states of slackness, it wasn’t very long before Jacob, Dexter, and Sarah began arguing about what they should do with it.
“What good is a spaceship if you don’t fly around in it?” Jacob asked.
“There is no way I’m getting inside that thing,” Dexter said.
“Jake, do you have any idea what my parents would do to me if they found out I was cavorting around in outer space?” Sarah asked.
“My parents would probably say they were disappointed in me, in that voice they use when they’re disappointed in me,” Dexter said, shaking his head. “I really hate the disappointed voice.”
“Forget having any time to hang out with you guys,” Sarah said. “My parents would probably make me take oboe lessons or something.”
Jacob raised his hands and appealed for calm. “Guys. We’re arguing about a spaceship. A spaceship. I mean, just look at it.”
They turned and looked at the spaceship. Its metal gleamed and its hatch beckoned with soft yellow light.
“It is kind of amazing,” Sarah said, stepping toward it.
“I can’t wait any longer,” Jacob said. He started running for the entrance.
“Guys, I really shouldn’t,” Dexter said with a slight tremor in his voice.
Jacob stopped in his tracks. He had heard Dexter say “Guys, I really shouldn’t” many times. It was inevitably followed by him muttering, “Yeah, I should probably be going now” and running off toward home before anyone could stop him. Jacob knew that if there was anything that Dexter needed, it was a little more fun in his life. The Goldsteins’ idea of a good time was eating organic granola bars and rearranging their closets.
Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow Page 2