Alien Superstar

by Henry Winkler

  23

  What I saw in the mirror shocked me to the core. I was neither human nor alien. I had one human hand and one spiny alien hand. My mouth was red and toothless, and my nose was covered with Zane Tracy hair sprouting all around it. At the end of one leg, I had my alien suction cups. The other leg had a combination of suction cups and three gray, crooked human toes.

  Cassidy was staring at me, a look of horror on her face.

  “Buddy, what is happening to you?”

  “My biological alteration has gone haywire,” I said. “I can’t control it.”

  “Try that necklace thing you do.”

  I reached for the amulet, held it tightly, and chanted.

  “Be Zane. Be Zane now. Pleeaase . . . be Zane now.”

  I felt a flash of current run through my body, and another human eyeball popped out, this one on the top of my bald head.

  How I wished I could talk to Grandma Wrinkle. Was this what happens when my alien self ran out of food? Or was something else going on? A sudden and terrifying thought occurred to me. Was my body being controlled by the enemy? Had the Squadron captured Grandma Wrinkle and forced her to destroy my human form?

  “Buddy, you have to concentrate,” Cassidy said.

  “I’m doing the best I . . .”

  I couldn’t even finish the sentence. I keeled over and collapsed on the carpet. There was a knock on my dressing room door. Cassidy grabbed a blanket off the couch and threw it over me.

  “Maybe that’s Luis,” I said hopefully.

  It wasn’t Luis. It was Rosa, dropping off my zippered jacket for the red carpet.

  “You’re all set, Buddy,” she said. “Slip this on and get ready for your big night. You need help getting dressed?”

  She tried to come in, but Cassidy practically threw herself in front of the door. She took the hanger with my jacket on it and said, “Thanks, Rosa. Buddy will call you if there’s a problem.”

  Rosa craned her neck and tried to get a glimpse inside. She saw me on the floor, but fortunately I was covered up.

  “Is he okay?” she asked Cassidy.

  “Sure, why do you ask?”

  “Um . . . because he’s curled up in a ball on the floor.”

  “Oh . . . that!” Cassidy said. “He’s just showing me something he’s worked out for a scene in next week’s show. You know, the part where the alien curls up into a ball on the floor.”

  “I didn’t see that in the script,” Rosa said.

  “Yeah, it was just added.”

  When Rosa left, Cassidy bent down next to me.

  “Let me see you,” she said.

  I held the blanket up to my face. The last thing I wanted was to be seen in this condition. I knew I must look grotesque. Cassidy peeled the blanket off my face.

  “How bad is it?” I asked.

  “Let me put it this way,” she said. “The only fans screaming for you tonight will be the ones that are scared out of their minds.”

  I rolled over and groaned.

  “Can you call Luis and tell him to hurry?” I whispered.

  Cassidy took out her phone, and I noticed that her hands were shaking.

  “Hello, Luis,” she said. “Where are you? Great. Can you walk faster? We really need your guacamole here. Yeah, you might call it that. A guac emergency.”

  A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Cassidy opened it a crack.

  “Special delivery from my Grandma Lupe,” I heard Luis say. “She gave me every last bit of guacamole she had. Trust me, she’s going to have a lot of angry customers tonight.”

  Cassidy reached out and tried to take four large plastic containers from his hands.

  “Thanks, Luis,” she said. “We’ll call you later.”

  “Oh no you don’t,” he said. “I’m coming in. You need to share some of that guacamole.”

  “No!” Cassidy said. “You can’t come in now. Buddy’s not feeling well.”

  “Oh, nerves, huh? Totally understandable.”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “Well, I’ve had some experience calming actors down,” Luis said. “I have a guided meditation that I do myself, and look how cool I am.”

  Without taking no for an answer, Luis walked right past Cassidy and came into my dressing room.

  “Okay, Buddy, here we go,” he said. “Imagine yourself floating on a raft in a tranquil green lake. Hear the birds chirp and the frogs croak.”

  Luis bent down and started to pull the blanket off my face.

  “Don’t look, Luis!” Cassidy shrieked.

  But Luis went right on. “Your mind is calm as you take in the sights and sounds of nature. Your body is relaxed and—” He stopped suddenly as his eyes took in the sight of me. “HO-LY GUAC-A-MOLE, Buddy!” he screamed. “W-w-what on Earth happened to you?!?!?!”

  “I told you not to look,” Cassidy said.

  Luis’s jaw dropped as he looked me up and down, taking in my half-alien, half-human freakish form.

  “I hate to get weird, here,” he said, his voice shaking. “But something tells me this is not another costume.”

  “It isn’t,” I told him. “Can you please pass the guacamole?”

  Cassidy took one of the plastic containers, ripped off the lid, and with what strength I had remaining, I grabbed it from her hands. With a splat, I practically buried my face in it and wolfed it down. Luis was too stunned to speak.

  “More,” I croaked.

  Luis gave me container number two and I tried to wolf that down too, but I had competition. My sensory enhancer got a whiff of the guacamole and dove for the container, inhaling the spicy green mush with great enthusiasm.

  “Give that back,” I said, reaching for its snout. “I really need this.”

  I grabbed hold of my enhancer, trying to wrestle the container away from it. I must have squeezed too hard, because all of a sudden it spit a blob of guacamole directly into my face. I was so desperate, I stuck out both my tongues and wiped my face clean, licking up every last bit. I couldn’t afford to miss a drop.

  My transformation began almost immediately.

  “Be Zane,” I chanted, grabbing hold of my amulet. “Be Zane now.”

  I could feel the human eyeball on the top of my head slide down my forehead and land in the proper spot on my face. Then the second human eyeball rotated from the back of my head and took its place next to its partner. The hair covering my nose receded and reappeared on the top of my head.

  Luis recoiled like he had seen a monster come alive right in front of him.

  “What am I seeing here?” he muttered. “I can’t wrap my brain around this.”

  “I need more guacamole,” I said, grabbing the third and fourth containers from his hands. “Do me a favor and hold down my sensory enhancer while I eat this. It’s the appendage coming out of my back.”

  “Dude, are you seriously asking me to touch that thing?” Luis said in horror.

  “It’s harmless,” I said. “It just gets a little carried away around food.”

  Luis backed away from me and pressed himself against the wall. I continued to struggle with my sensory enhancer and finally managed to subdue it by rolling on my back and pressing hard on the floor to hold it down. Quickly, I gobbled up the rest of the guacamole from containers three and four.

  As my body digested the guacamole, it continued to transform. I could feel the human skin as it surrounded me, calming and containing my sensory enhancer. Creeping down my body, the skin covered my legs until my suction cups were completely replaced by my human feet and stubby toes.

  “You got some serious explaining to do here, Buddy,” Luis said.

  I looked over at Cassidy. “I think we have to tell him,” she said softly. “It’s only fair.”

  I sighed.

  “I really am an alien,” I said to Luis. “I come from a red dwarf planet millions of miles from here. I can take a human form, but underneath, I am alien through and through.”

  Luis
was quiet for a long minute. I could see his face twitching, trying to absorb the information I had just laid on him.

  “This is all starting to make sense,” he said at last. “The costume that you never took off. That’s the real you, right?”

  I nodded.

  “And when you thought pretzels were bracelets? You really didn’t know what a pretzel was, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “And Buddy Cheese Burger, that’s not your real name?”

  “I saw it on the hamburger stand. My birth name is XR 23 Zeta 5466.”

  “Wow. Maybe I’ll just stick with Buddy.”

  “Does that mean you’ll still be my friend?” I asked him.

  I could see that Luis was confused. I couldn’t blame him.

  What he just witnessed was a lot to digest. He took a long time to answer. “Tell you the truth,” he finally said, “it makes me angry that you didn’t trust me.”

  “He couldn’t tell you,” Cassidy said. “He can’t tell anyone. I found out by accident. The bad guys on his planet might be tracking him even at this very moment.”

  “I do like a good secret,” Luis said. “And this one is a secret on steroids.”

  “I tried to tell you!” I said.

  “You were weird from the first moment I met you,” Luis said, “but my instinct always told me that you were a cool dude. That hasn’t changed.”

  “Do you have any questions for me?” I asked. “I’ll answer anything.”

  He grinned. “Just one,” he said. “Is the limo still coming at six?”

  24

  I’m happy to tell you that by the time six o’clock came around, all my Zane Tracy parts were arranged in their proper order, and I was feeling strong and fantastically human.

  And speaking of fantastic, my first experience on the red carpet was fantastic times a million. Luis, Cassidy, and I rode in a stretch limousine, with neon lights inside that changed color every ten seconds. Delores and Duane and Eloise rode in the limo behind us. I don’t mean to brag, but ours was longer.

  Our driver opened the sunroof and we stuck our heads out as we drove onto the back lot and passed my spaceship. I’m not sure how many people were on the red carpet because I couldn’t see well. Not because my human eyes weren’t working—they were in tip-top shape—but because all the cameras were flashing at once.

  “Over here, Buddy,” the photographers called when I climbed out of the limousine. “Give me a smile.”

  Cassidy and I walked over to the red carpet, where photographers were lined up behind a rope to get our picture. I was happy to see Ulysses and Martha there, posing and clowning around for the press. The two of them looked really happy. The one who didn’t look happy was Tyler. None of the photographers seemed to be calling his name.

  I noticed that the reporter Page Robinson was standing next to Tyler, talking on her phone. When she saw me, she dropped her phone in her purse and came running over.

  “Buddy!” she said with a grin. “When you’re done with the photographers, Teens Today is waiting to talk to you live on camera.”

  Tyler had followed behind her. “What about me?” he asked. “I thought they were supposed to be doing the lead story on me.”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Page said. “They delayed your story until next week. Seems like our Buddy here has become an overnight Alien Superstar.”

  “It won’t last,” Tyler said, giving me a sneer. As he walked away, he added, “Keep your antennas up, doof, because you never know when I’m coming for you.”

  Past the red carpet in the party area, Luis and Cassidy were having the best time. Cassidy was on the dance floor in her little black dress. At one point, she went to the dessert table, but Delores cut her off before she got there. When Delores wasn’t looking, I piled a plate high with chocolaty desserts and brought them to Cassidy. She giggled and ate every single one of them.

  “Sorry you can’t have these, Buddy,” she whispered. “But let’s stick with guacamole for the time being. Chocolate makes me break out, but who knows what it would do to you. Maybe you’d turn into a frog and give yourself warts.”

  On the other side of the dance floor, where buffet tables with silver platters were lined up, Luis was trolling for food. He must have eaten an entire ocean of shrimp, which were being displayed on a table that had a sculpture of a fish chiseled out of a huge block of ice . . .

  “This is amazing,” he said to me. “Limousines. Live deejays. All the shrimp you can eat. I’m sticking with you, Buddy boy.”

  Page came to fetch me and brought me to the reporter from Celebrity Beat. They had their camera set up next to my spaceship and a bunch of fans were gathered around it.

  “We thought this would be a really cute location for your interview,” the reporter said. “You know, as if you’re a real alien who just flew in on this spaceship.”

  “That’s funny,” I said, laughing a little too hard.

  The reporter held her mic up to my face.

  “Tell me, Buddy, how does it feel going from being a nobody to being a star? Your head must be spinning.”

  “It’s always been a dream of mine,” I said.

  As I looked into the sky at the stars shining down on us, I realized how true those words were. I had everything I wanted here in front of me. Stardom. Friendships. Fame. Fans. And a TV show right here on Earth. The only thing missing was Grandma Wrinkle. I looked up, half hoping to see a sign from her. And then I saw it, a shooting star traveling across the Hollywood night sky.

  No—could it be?

  Science told me that it was just a shooting star, but my heart wanted more.

  I turned back to the reporter, but as I listened to her next question, something new caught my eye. It was a glowing blue light, pulsating inside my spaceship. Was there someone at the controls? I squinted hard, but I saw no one. Then the light dimmed and disappeared.

  I rubbed my eyes. Was that blue glow real or was I just imagining it?

  Science told me it was my imagination, but my instincts told me it was a warning sign. But of what?

  I turned to my fans and smiled with my best human teeth, but deep inside me, my alien heart was pounding.

  THE END

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  We are grateful to everyone at Abrams Kids, especially our leader, Andrew Smith, our editor, Maggie Lehrman, and the entire Abrams team for helping us bring Alien Superstar to life. And of course, we send much respect to our talented illustrator, Ethan Nicolle, who brought Buddy C. Burger and his two worlds into dramatic focus. We are both thankful for our careers in television, especially all the creative talented people who populated our lives on the sound stage. This book is an homage to them.

  To our agents, Esther Newberg, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, and Eddie Gamarra, thank you for being champions of this book, and of all the books we’ve written together since we started our collaboration. A special thank-you to Theo Baker, our advisor in all things alien. Finally, we thank all of our readers who, since 2003, have supported our vision and shown us their hearts.

  Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver

  Hollywood, 2019

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Henry Winkler is an Emmy Award–winning actor, writer, director, and producer who has created some of the most iconic TV roles, including the Fonz in Happy Days and Gene Cousineau in Barry.

  Lin Oliver is a children’s book writer and a writer and producer for both TV and film. She is currently the executive director of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI).

  They both live in Los Angeles, California.

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  Henry Winkler, Alien Superstar