Unbelievably Boring Bart

by James Patterson

  BARTHOLOMEW BEAN: MOST IMPORTANT HUMAN BEING IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

  You’ve missed a ton. In fact, you’ve missed pretty much everything.

  Let’s rewind my typical day and start from the beginning, shall we?

  When I wake up in the morning, I don’t brush my teeth and think, Gee, how boring can I possibly be today? Enough to make my classmates pound on me?

  Instead, I’m wondering if I’m going to live long enough to complete my mission.

  See, this is the part you missed. You were focused on the annoying bullies and the weird exercises and my debates with Dad. But the whole time, I had my mind on other things. The most important things you can imagine, in fact.

  Can you keep a secret? Here, put your pinky next to mine and swear.

  Okay, you’re all sworn in. Here’s the deal:

  I’m a member of a secret society dedicated to keeping order throughout the universe. No, seriously. Our solar system is my beat.

  Doesn’t sound like much, but do you realize how utterly ginormous the solar system is? If you were to drive to the sun, which is practically around the corner, it would take you 177 years. And the way my dad drives, it would probably take closer to 300 years. (It’s the pedal on the right, old man.)

  But anyway, I’m based on Earth because that’s where all the action happens. Being “boring” is only my cover. And I have to keep my real identity hidden, because I’m the only one who can see the crazy threats that appear all the time.

  If this secret were to get out, nothing would stand between Earth and utter chaos.

  You don’t believe me. I can tell. There’s a look on your face like you’ve bitten into a flavored candy and you’re not sure if it’s coconut or horseradish yet. (Hey, both are chewy.)

  That’s okay. So let’s take a little stroll. I’m supposed to be heading off to school, anyway. Keep up with me, if you can.

  Good old Rancho Verdugo looks as sunbaked as ever, right? Palm trees gently swaying. Adults heading off to work. People in uniforms delivering packages. Everybody the star of their own personal reality show.

  But take a look at the same scene through the screen on my phone. Can you see it now?

  No?

  It’s right there… on top of that traffic light!

  That monstrosity right there is a Lerkian, and it’s part of an alien race that wants to conquer the universe.

  THE SECRET INVASION

  Rancho Verdugo is positively infested with these little guys. I haven’t done a proper census, but according to my calculations, there are about a dozen Lerkians for every human being.

  (That’s if you count people like Giselle the Golem as a human being, but I digress.)

  There are so many of them because Lerkians don’t invade the usual way—you know, with faster-than-light spaceships and death rays. Instead, they sneak around and mess with all forms of human technology. And I mean everything. They attack traffic lights, electric signs, power lines… anything with electricity running through it.

  But they mess with cell phones, too. Think back to the last time your call was dropped, right in the middle of an important conversation. Or your text mysteriously showed up on some random dude’s phone. You can thank a Lerkian for that.

  Don’t even get me started on how they screw around with Wi-Fi signals. Lerkians have an uncanny knack for knocking out the internet just when the movie you’re streaming hits a really awesome part.

  Plus, they have this weird power to be totally invisible to human beings… unless you use a certain app that allows you to see them through your smartphone. As of right now, I’m the only human being in the world with that app.

  So, to recap: the Lerkians show no mercy and want to destroy the world. I’m pretty much the only one who can see them—and potentially stop them. Which is why they so badly want to uncover my secret identity.

  To do that, they’ve enlisted human slaves.

  Yep, even poor Giselle the Golem. I don’t think she means to be… um, mean. She must be remote-controlled by the Lerkians, which is why she’s always mindlessly knocking me down. It’s an attempt to make me snap and break cover.

  Fortunately, I’m able to stay hidden by using my superpower of being unbelievably boring.

  MASTER OF STEALTH MODE

  I told you that being boring was my cover, right? Fortunately, some allies—and a little bit of futuristic tech—help me maintain that cover.

  Remember Mr. Lopez, the homeroom teacher who sometimes forgets to call out my name in class? Die-hard fans of Mr. Lopez (just wait for the action figure; it’ll be rad) will be relieved to know that he’s probably not forgetting me for real. I believe he’s fake-forgetting.

  Mr. Lopez must know that Lerkians sometimes hide out inside the classroom. They’re especially fond of squeezing themselves behind the Smart Board in front of the room. (Which may explain why Mr. Lopez has so much trouble getting the Smart Board to work.)

  But anyway, Mr. Lopez isn’t skipping my name because he doesn’t care. He’s probably just helping me stay hidden, making sure that nobody pays much attention to me. Which is the kindest thing anyone could do for me.

  Real heroes stay in stealth mode. Deep, deep stealth mode.

  Oh, and that thing about nobody noticing me when I raise my hand in class? It’s no optical illusion. It’s actually a special feature of the Lerkian-hunting app on my phone.

  It activates whenever it detects Lerkians in the area. From time to time I’ll raise my hand to test it out. If the teacher doesn’t call on me, then I know that it’s working! I’m invisible, too!

  Speaking of allies, remember Nick the Mimic?

  I suspect he’s not really picking on me. Instead, Nick is most likely giving me top-secret intel in those hints that (supposedly) threaten my life. I listen to every alleged threat and process the real message.

  For instance, when he says: “Hey, Bart! Guess what? You’re about to go extinct, along with the rest of the world’s boring people!”

  What he really means is: “Hey, Bart, buddy… the Lerkians have picked up your scent. Extinct, stinked… get it? Anyway, watch your six.”

  Granted, the message doesn’t always make sense. But Nick’s probably been an undercover operative here in Rancho Verdugo for a long, long time. And there’s always a good chance the Lerkians have already scrambled his brains.…

  BENT OUT OF SHAPE

  The sky is suddenly green. And crinkly. Sharp blades press into my palms. I’m dizzy. My feet seem to be floating in the air. It’s like the whole world has turned upside down.

  Then I remember: Oh, yeah, I’m in gym, doing an upside-down jumping jack.

  “Keep ’em straight!” Coach Pluck yells. “I want to see those legs doing perfect elevens! Elbows locked! Face forward! Now start banging those feet together!”

  Elbows? Feet? When you’re doing a handstand, your sense of self goes all out of whack. I don’t even know if I have real limbs anymore.

  But as the blood rushes to my head, I realize that maybe Coach Pluck knows about the alien threat, too. And even his crazy exercises make sense when considering humanity’s war with the Lerkians. They don’t seem to have real limbs, either.

  “Come on, you little buzzards. Push yourself out of your safe little comfort zones! Lemme see some real effort!”

  Comfort zones? For once, Coach “Stubborn as a Mack Truck” Pluck is making sense. I think that my gym teacher and all his sideways, backward, and just plain goofy exercises are meant to train my classmates and me for our eventual hand-to-hand combat with the Lerkians.

  Or hand-to-creepy-wire-tentacle combat. Whatever, you get the idea.

  Despite Coach Pluck’s best intentions, we’re not going to win the war against the Lerkians in a massive video game–style brawl. (Though that would be seriously cool.)

  I mean, look at them. Duking it out with them would be like getting into a fistfight with a bowl of spaghetti. You have to train your body in an entirely different way if you’
re hoping to land a punch.

  No, humanity has to outsmart the wiry little guys. Which means I have to use that top-secret Lerkian-busting app every chance I get.

  Sorry I can’t tell you more details about this secret app, or how I found it. The thing is, you—yes, you, holding this book in your hands—might be a Lerkian spy.

  Don’t try to deny it; human double agents are everywhere. Why they—or you!—would want the Lerkians to win is beyond me. Some people just like to watch things spin out of control, I guess.

  Is that right? Do you enjoy watching civilization crumble?

  (Okay, okay… I’ll ease off. But I’m keeping my eye on you.)

  There’s no doubt that Tigran the Tyrant is one of those double agents. You’ve seen the way he swipes my food and supplies. Clearly, this is a tactic meant to slow me down. It’s annoying, but I keep a careful eye on him, too.

  On all of you.

  THE ALIEN FIGHTER NEXT DOOR

  I didn’t know it at the time, but one random day in late October would prove to be super-important in my war against the Lerkians.

  It ended like most school days: a long walk through the blasting, soul-withering heat (or, as my dad would say: “all of this nice weather”). I made my way to the apartment complex and waved to my only friend—CyberGirl03. She waved back, then held up her smartphone.

  Which was her way of saying, “SlapTalk me, okay?”

  By the way, there’s an important SlapTalk feature I haven’t mentioned yet:

  Anyway, for those of you who don’t keep up with your social media (like my dad, whose idea of “social media” is two soup cans tied together with string), SlapTalk erases your messages sixty seconds after they’ve been read. Which is super-useful if you happen to be, say, an undercover alien fighter who doesn’t want his transmissions falling into the wrong hands. Or claws. Or wire fingers. Or whatever the heck the Lerkians have at the ends of their arms.

  The dude who came up with this app is either brilliant or a former spy or both.

  He (or she) is, like, my hero. If I could invent something as awesome as SlapTalk, it would make life in Rancho El Verdoo-doo much more tolerable.

  Anyway, I opened the SlapTalk app. There was already a message from CyberGirl03 waiting for me.

  CyberGirl03: What took you so long? Boy, you move slow.

  BoringBart: LOL. What did I miss at the apartment today?

  CyberGirl03: Oh, it was terribly thrilling. I counted 17 delivery trucks. And the guy with the leaf blower spent a LOT of time in our courtyard.

  BoringBart: LOL.

  Yeah, I “laughed out loud.” But part of me felt bad for CyberGirl03. Since she does cyberschool at home in her apartment, she doesn’t seem to get out very much. She must be bored a lot. I mean, my school days are awful, too—but at least I have bullies to keep things lively.

  CyberGirl03: How was your day?

  BoringBart: Oh, the usual. Giselle the Golem knocked me over a half dozen times. Nick the Mimic came up with new and interesting threats against my life. On the plus side, I only lost half of my lunch to Tigran the Tyrant.

  CyberGirl03: Huh. I didn’t know you could have “the Golem” as a last name.

  BoringBart: Well, those are sort of my personal nicknames for them.

  CyberGirl03: You should fight back. Let them know you can’t be pushed around.

  BoringBart: But that’s the thing. I can literally be pushed around. Especially by Giselle.

  CyberGirl03: Well, if I were there, I’d have your back.

  The thought of that made me happy and sad at the same time. Happy because it was nice to know I’d have a defender—it’d be nice to have another member of Team Bart. (Pickleback doesn’t quite count.)

  But sad because CyberGirl03 clearly wanted to be in school. (No idea why she’d want such a thing, but I digress.) I didn’t know if she did cyberschool by choice, or if her parents insisted. And I felt weird about bringing it up. So I didn’t.

  BoringBart: Pretty sure you could take Giselle in hand-to-hand combat.

  CyberGirl03: I don’t know about that. So what are your big plans tonight, Boring Guy?

  I wondered: Could I trust CyberGirl03 enough to tip her off to the Lerkian threat? Would she make fun of me, or recommend that I have a good long chat with someone in a white lab coat?

  It would be nice to have another ally in this desperate struggle against the alien hordes.…

  BoringBart: I actually have a pretty exciting night planned.

  CyberGirl03: Let me guess. You have papers to write for both history AND literature!

  BoringBart: HAH. But no. I’m talking about something actually cool.

  CyberGirl03: Well then consider me actually intrigued.

  BoringBart: Promise you won’t share this with anybody else.

  CyberGirl03: How can I promise before I know what it is? Maybe it’s a cure for some horrible disease. How could I not share something like that?

  BoringBart: No, seriously.

  CyberGirl03: Okay, okay. I seriously promise.

  Not that I didn’t trust CyberGirl03, but this was kind of a big deal, letting her into my secret (weird) world.

  But now that I’d brought it up, I couldn’t back out. I copied the URL to the site where she could download the Lerkian-hunting app, then SlapTalked it to her.

  She had sixty seconds to click on it and download the app; otherwise it would disappear forever.

  So I hit Send, then waited.

  And waited.

  And even though it was only thirty seconds, it felt like thirty months had gone by before I saw this reply.…

  CyberGirl03: Oh, wow! This is an augme nted reality game? This is SO COOL! Thank you for sharing with me, Boring Guy!

  BoringBart: Sure. :)

  CyberGirl03: Where did you find this?

  Well, that was the interesting part.…

  THE BILL BEAN FACTOR

  Most of my vital Lerkian-fighting work is done in the evening. Which, of course, is exactly when my dad thinks I should be putting down my “electronic devices” and doing something else with my time.

  Parents just love that phrase, don’t they? Is it too difficult to say “phone” or “laptop”?

  And as far as doing something else with my time—something “productive” (which is another one of his favorite words)—what exactly might that be? Throwing an inflated chunk of pigskin back and forth? I’ve never understood that. Nothing new ever comes out of that. It’s just throwing an inflated chunk of pigskin back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.…

  So I was forced to go underground to continue my work. Or make that under covers, since that’s the best place to hide my laptop. The only problem is Pickleback, who thinks I’m playing a game and tries to crawl under there with me.

  But Pickleback isn’t the only problem; it’s Dad. He tries to catch me on my laptop at odd times. He thinks he’s clever. Fortunately, Dad’s version of clever dates to the 1800s. He’s not anticipating modern technology.

  A few weeks ago I bought a device online (with my allowance money, mind you… nothing shady going on here). This device looks like a tiny plastic square. It’s tan, and coincidentally, the same shade of tan as the walls in our apartment. (Note: this is not a coincidence.) One side is flat and plain. The other has a little peel-off sticker that allows you to put it anywhere. Like, say, six inches from the floor, where Dad won’t see it.

  Especially when he walks down the hallway to come check on me.

  The instant he walks by that tiny plastic square, an alert is sent to my laptop. A message appears on my screen:

  DAD APPROACHING.

  DAD APPROACHING.

  DAD APPROACHING.

  (It’s not a red alert until it is displayed three times.)

  Immediately, I save my work and spring into action.

  By the time Dad is in my doorway, I’m looking like I’ve been diligently catching up on some fascinating math problems. A second later, I notice that the
textbook in my hands is, um, upside down.

  “Hey, Bart. Why don’t you give homework a rest and come walk with me. I want to take the dog out for a while.”

  “Seriously?” I reply. “It’s eleven billion degrees outside!”

  “No, the sun’s going down. It’s a lot cooler. C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

  Now “fun” is not the word I’d use to describe a walk up and down Verdugo Boulevard with Pickleback stopping every 3.7 seconds to see if any of the other dogs in the neighborhood have left him any messages. If Pickleback were human and had email, he’d be one of those people who hit Refresh on his browser every two seconds.

  “Sorry, Dad, I really should get back to these math problems.” I hope Dad hasn’t noticed that I’ve used a little sleight of hand to flip the textbook right side up.

  “What if I say we can stop for some Frosty’s Freeze at the end of the walk?”

  Ooooh—Dad’s breaking out the big guns now. He knows the one thing I can’t resist is a cone full of dairy-based frozen bliss. But resist, I must. My work on our ultimate defense against the invading Lerkians must continue, no matter what.

  So I force myself to spit out the words: “I’m really… not that hungry.”

  “Okay, buddy. Just thought I’d ask.” The disappointment in his voice hurts me just as much as missing out on that ice cream.

  But I can’t stop my work—especially now that CyberGirl03 has joined the hunt for the Lerkian invaders!

  THE MOST IMPORTANT WORK IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM, AND POSSIBLY BEYOND

  So, what, exactly, is all of this important work? What could possibly compel me to pass up a cone of Frosty’s Freeze, complete with hot fudge and sprinkles? (Still regretting that, by the way…)