by Mark Gimenez
She turned to me.
"Bobby and his friends, they're jerks! They might hurt Norbert!"
"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that."
I sat down on the last step of the front sidewalk and removed my pads. Maddy sat next to me and put the pads on.
"You're not worried about Norbert?" Scarlett said.
"Nope."
"Why not?"
"Because humans can't hurt him. Not physically."
Scarlett shook her head. "The 'alien next door' gag isn't funny right now, Max. He's a little guy. They could hurt him."
She folded her arms just like Mom when I was late getting home and stared down the sidewalk in the direction Norbert had gone. After a few minutes, she said, "Here he comes."
I stood.
Norbert's hips were swiveling in a nice rhythm when he rolled up and stopped. He had a smile on his face and a finger pointing skyward.
"They want to apologize to you," he said to Scarlett.
"Who?"
"Them."
He looked up. Scarlett looked up. Her mouth fell open.
"Oh—my—gosh."
Suspended twenty feet above the ground were Bobby and his two buddies—in their car. Norbert lowered his finger, and the car slowly descended until it hovered two feet off the ground. The boys' faces showed their fright.
"Uh, Scarlett," Bobby said, "we're, uh, we're real sorry. We won't do it again. We promise."
Norbert turned to Scarlett. "Are you satisfied?"
"Very," she said.
Norbert dropped his finger, and the car dropped to the pavement with a loud thud. Norbert dismissed the boys with a quick wave.
"Off with you now."
They drove off fast. Scarlett hugged Norbert. I thought he might faint.
"Mom!" Scarlett shouted. "Aliens live next door!"
Mom had just entered the back door with a grocery bag.
"Scarlett, please, not you, too."
sixteen
"Nothing's worked so far," I said to the guys at lunch that Monday. We were at our boycott table. "Norbert thinks humans are the neatest life form he's ever encountered."
"We could try C-SPAN."
"He's already watched C-SPAN."
"Then we've got no choice," Dee said. "We've got to go to Plan C."
"Plan C? Are you crazy? That's a—"
"Will Ferrell movie. That's the only hope for the human race."
"But that could cause permanent brain damage."
"It doesn't for us."
"We're used to that level of stupidity. Norbert's not. He could lapse into another stupor—what if we couldn't revive him?"
"Earth is at stake, we have to take that chance. A Will Ferrell movie will prove to Norbert that the human race is stupid beyond all hope. His last movie grossed over a hundred million domestic!"
I sighed and nodded.
"Well, I'm not taking any chances," Eddie said as he stood. "If aliens are taking over the world, I'm getting an ice cream sandwich first."
"Bring me one, will you?" I asked.
"Me, too," Dee said.
The principal, Mrs. Stewart, walked up with a woman carrying a little notebook and a man carrying a fancy camera.
"Children, this is Ms. Garza. She's a reporter with the Austin newspaper, and she wants to do a story about your sneaker boycott."
"Really?" I said. "Cool."
Mrs. Garza sat across the table from us. She was pretty and smelled sweet.
"You're Max Dugan?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"And you started this boycott?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Why?"
"Because I learned how all the sneakers we buy here in America are made by poor people in Asia getting paid, like, twenty cents an hour. That's wrong. And because I want Kim-Ly to go to college."
"Who's Kim-Ly?"
"A Vietnamese kid who makes Legend's sneakers."
Sunny stopped the video on Kim-Ly. The cameraman took a photo of her.
"But why are you singling out the Legend Jones sneakers? Legend grew up here in Austin and was a star basketball player at UT."
"We want kids to stop wearing all sneakers made in sweatshops. But the Legends are the most popular sneakers in America. They sell for a hundred fifty bucks, but the workers who make them get paid only pennies for each shoe. Legend Jones used to be a poor kid on the streets of East Austin, so he should know better than to endorse sneakers made by poor people in Vietnam."
"But every sneaker is made in foreign countries. If kids stop wearing those sneakers, what are they supposed to wear?"
I held up my feet to show my red flip-flops.
"Flip-flops … or clogs."
"They can't wear flip-flops or clogs playing sports."
"Well …"
"Max, isn't this an illegal boycott?"
"Lady, we're ten-year-old kids. We don't know anything about the law. But we know about right and wrong, and it's wrong to buy sneakers made in sweatshops. So we're asking all kids in America to stop wearing Legend Jones sneakers. Kids can make a difference. We can change the world. We can save the world."
"Okay, now that is stupid."
Norbert had watched Seinfeld episodes all day.
"There is no plot."
We walked over to my house. Mom had just pulled into the driveway with Scarlett and Maddy. Mom got out and said, "Boys, help me with the groceries."
"Humans consume enormous quantities of food."
"Like I said, we're eating machines."
Norbert and I each grabbed two bags and carried them inside.
"Norbert, what would you like for dinner tonight?" Mom said.
"Mrs. Dugan, may my father join us this evening?"
Mom's face lit up. "Yes, of course. That's wonderful. I'll fix something special."
"Hot dogs?" Norbert asked.
"Maybe something a little more special than hot dogs."
"Oh."
He seemed disappointed.
"But we'll have ice cream for dessert."
"That would be excellent."
He wasn't disappointed anymore.
"What time should we arrive?"
"Seven."
At seven sharp, Norbert and a slightly taller version of Norbert were standing on our front porch when Mom opened the door. His father had the same skin, the same hair, the same eyes, and the same clothes. They must have hit a sale at L.L. Bean.
"I am Nils Nordstrom," his father said.
"I'm Kate Dugan."
They shook hands like grownups do.
"Please, come in, Nils."
Mom introduced us to Mr. Nordstrom, then we went into the kitchen. Mr. Nordstrom recoiled slightly at the walls.
"Oh, my. That is bright yellow."
"The owners before us did that," Mom said.
We sat at the table, and Mom and Scarlett served everyone. Spaghetti and bison meatballs. Mr. Nordstrom didn't know how to eat spaghetti either, but Norbert showed him how to suck up long strands the way I did, so he picked it up pretty fast.
"Excellent food," he said.
"Mr. Nordstrom," I said, "do you like to play Scrabble?"
"My father has never before played," Norbert said, "but I have explained the game to him."
Norbert had become a Scrabble genius. We all took our seven letters.
"Mr. Nordstrom," Scarlett said, "you go first."
He smiled big and placed six letters on the board: D-P-F-W-T-C.
"How many points, Norbert?" he asked.
"Uh, Father, this game is played in the English language."
Mr. Nordstrom glanced from Norbert to his letters and then to us. He seemed embarrassed.
"Ah. Yes. English. Of course. I was thinking in Russian again. Many consonants, that language."
He put down W-E-T.
"Twelve points, with the double word," Norbert said.
"So, Nils," Mom said, "Norbert said you work for the federal government. National security."
"Yes.
That is correct."
"Were you a spy in Russia?"
Mom was real suspicious of anyone who worked for the federal government, except the post office workers, who just made her nervous.
"Oh, no, Kate. I am just a researcher."
"And now you're working here on a top-secret assignment?"
"Yes."
"Anything we should know?"
Mr. Nordstrom's eyes dropped.
"Nothing to worry about," he said.
Scarlett put down her word: S-L-A-V-E-S.
At three the next morning, Kate Dugan lay sleeping in the big bed she had shared with John Dugan. She still slept on her side. She reached out for him in her sleep.
"John …"
In the bedroom directly above her, Scarlett Dugan lay awake, fighting the tears. She was her father's big girl, and she was determined to be just that. She would not cry. She would hold it all inside her. For Max and Maddy. For Mother. For him.
Even if she did want to scream.
Next door to her, Max Dugan lay in his bed, sleeping fitfully, suffering the nightmare again. The black car came slowly down Drake Avenue, then stopped in front of their house, and two men in uniforms got out.
Back downstairs, Maddy Dugan woke with a fright. Again. She didn't know why she got scared every night now, but she did. She rolled out of bed and ran down the hall to her mommy and daddy's bedroom and climbed up into bed. Mommy was awake. She held her arms out to Maddy. She snuggled in next to her mother.
In the house next door, Norbert Nordstrom stood at the second-floor window facing the Dugan house. He heard their thoughts. He lived their dreams. He felt their fears. In the year that he and his father had been on Earth, they had lived in France and Russia and India and Los Angeles. He had met humans and studied humans and gotten to know humans; but he had never been befriended by humans or felt an attachment to humans. They had always just been life forms to study.
Until now.
He felt a presence and knew it was his father.
"I care for these humans," Norbert said. "They are not like the ones we have met before, like in L.A., pushing and shoving and trampling each other."
"You mean those paparazzi when we happened upon the human named Britney Spears on Rodeo Drive?"
"No. I mean those shoppers at the Wal-Mart on Black Friday."
"Ah."
"Father, I want to help these humans," Norbert said.
"I wish we could," his father said. "But we cannot. That is not our mission here on Earth."
seventeen
"There's got to be sneakers made in America," I said.
The newspaper reporter was right: If everyone stopped wearing the Legend Jones sneakers for sports, what were they supposed to wear? Sunny said we had to give them an answer. So after school the next day, we all walked over to the sporting goods store on South Congress—after we picked up Norbert at his house. It was my dad's favorite store. He loved sports. Not watching, but playing. He worked out with the weights in the garage every day then ran the streets with all the other runners in Austin. He loved to hike the Barton Creek Greenbelt and swim in the Barton Springs Pool even though the spring water was really cold. He had been a good athlete, but he didn't expect me to be like him. He wasn't living his dreams through me. "I have my own life and my own dreams," he said, "and you have yours. You live your dreams, Max, not mine."
I liked that about him.
Famous athletes' smiling faces greeted shoppers from posters hanging from the high ceiling. Equipment, apparel, and shoes for baseball, basketball, soccer, tennis, and golf, dumbbells and barbells and weight machines, treadmills, punching bags, bicycles, kayaks—you name the sport, and this store had the gear.
"A shrine to sports," Sunny said.
"Isn't it great?" Dee said.
We went straight to the shoe department that stretched along one entire side of the store. Every shoe for every sport. We started at the first row. Dee held up a shoe and said, "Made in China."
Eddie grabbed another shoe. "Made in China."
We went down the rows checking the labels on the shoes.
"China."
"China."
"Mexico."
"China."
"Vietnam."
"China."
"China."
"Vietnam."
"Nothing's made in America," Dee said. "So what are we supposed to wear?"
"We've got a bigger problem, guys," Dee said. He lowered his voice. "Nothing's worked so far with Norbert. We're running out of stupid human things."
"That doesn't seem possible."
I looked around for Norbert and spotted him in the women's apparel department. He was holding up some kind of undergarment. I called to him.
"Norbert—you don't want to go there!"
The St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store on South Congress did not feature big posters of famous athletes and the sports brands they endorsed. None of the shoppers were decked out in the latest styles of sports gear. Here, the walls were bare and the racks filled with used clothes being bought by poor people.
And Scarlett Dugan.
When we walked inside, I immediately spotted my sister and almost fell over. Miss Fashion Plate was shopping for secondhand clothes.
"What are you doing here?" I said.
"Oh, I just thought it was kind of stupid to wear trendy clothes when they're made in sweatshops," she said.
See? She is perfect. We exchanged a fist-bump.
"Only thing is," Eddie said, "none of these clothes were made in America either."
Scarlett held up a pair of Barney underwear—with her thumb and index finger like she used to hold up Maddy's dirty diapers.
"Max, are these yours?"
Before I could come up with a witty reply, Norbert reached up and grabbed the underwear from Scarlett. He held them out and admired them.
"I like them!"
"Dude, that is wrong in so many ways."
eighteen
I hit a home run in my baseball game the next morning. All the guys were there. Norbert, too, of course. How else could I have hit a home run? We had returned home and were now swinging in Norbert's backyard. The gravity of the decision weighed on me. Dee gave me a palms-up "Well?" gesture behind Norbert's back. I nodded back. It was dangerous, but we had no choice.
To save Earth, we would show Norbert a Will Ferrell movie.
"Say, Norbert," I said, "you want to watch a great movie?"
"Lord of the Rings?"
"Uh, no. Something even better."
"Excellent. I very much enjoy human movies."
We went inside his house to the room with the big TV screen. Sunny had gotten the movie through her mother's Netflix account. She handed the DVD to Norbert; he read the title.
"Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Is Ricky Bobby a human legend?"
"Uh, yeah, something like that."
"So this movie is about his life?"
"Yeah. It won all kinds of awards."
"It must be excellent. Let us watch this movie."
Norbert inserted the DVD and started the movie. Sunny turned away and flashed crossed fingers. We all sat on the couch. Norbert started laughing at the scene of Ricky Bobby saying grace at the dinner table—"Those two youngsters, they are quite precocious"—and he didn't stop laughing until the final credits had run. He had tears in his eyes. But not for the reason we had hoped.
"Will Ferrell is a genius," Norbert said. "That hospital scene in which he thinks he is paralyzed, that was brilliant acting. Absolutely brilliant." He paused. "Although I must say that I would have preferred to continue my existence without the image in my mind of him running around the race track in his underwear. But still, that is the funniest movie by a human I have ever seen."
"Sounds like an award," Eddie said. "Best Comedy by a Human."
"And his portrayal of Ricky Bobby's personal struggle from star race car driver to pizza delivery boy and back—how could any human summon the intestinal fo
rtitude to recover from such a downfall?"
"It's in the script," Sunny said.
"I love humans! You are so much fun!"
"Stupid but fun," I said.
"Humans are the most creative life forms I have ever encountered. That is a sign of higher intelligence."
"Great," I said with a groan.
Norbert glanced around at us. We were all frowning. Our plan to save the world had failed miserably.
"What is wrong, Max?" Norbert asked.
"We haven't been honest with you, Norbert."
"You have lied to me?"
"Sort of. All the stuff this week—the football game, the reality TV shows, Kim Kardashian, this Will Ferrell movie—that was to show you how stupid humans are."
Norbert nodded. "I know."
"You knew?"
He nodded. "You hoped to convince me that humans lack the necessary intelligence so my government should not take over Earth and then I would convince my father."
I nodded.
"But, Max, humans are intelligent creatures—not like us, of course, but almost as intelligent as Martians."
"No, we're not. We're really stupid. Humans eat fast food, smoke cigarettes, use drugs, drive gas-guzzling cars, take steroids to hit home runs, pollute the air we breathe—how stupid is that?"
"Okay, that is stupid. But humans enjoy their existence. You have fun. We are like the Russians—we do not know how to have fun. We work so hard to achieve success that we have forgotten what we are trying to achieve as we conquer one planet after another. My father says he thinks it is just to keep us busy."
I nodded. "Our grownups do the same thing. But kids don't. We have fun."
"We should have fun before our existence is terminated."
"But you're going to terminate our existence before we've had all our fun."
Norbert put his hand on my shoulder.
"Max, you are my friend. I do not want my government to take over Earth."
"Really? That's great! So you'll stop your dad?"
Norbert shook his head. "I cannot do that. He must do what is best for our planet."
"What about our planet?" Sunny said.
"Perhaps he will recommend against taking over Earth," Norbert said.
"You really think so?" I said.
"No."
"Anyway you can find out?"
"Yes."
He led us into the room with the computers. He spoke static and gibberish soon filled the screen. Norbert studied the screen for a long moment, then shook his head slowly.