Planet Omar: Incredible Rescue Mission

by Zanib Mian

  Look for Omar’s other adventures!

  PLANET OMAR: Accidental Trouble Magnet

  PLANET OMAR: Unexpected Super Spy

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Text copyright © 2021 by Zanib Mian

  Illustrations copyright © 2021 by Nasaya Mafaridik

  First published in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton, 2020

  First American edition, 2021

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  Ebook ISBN 9780593109281

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  This book is dedicated to all the children who do what’s right, even when nobody is looking.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Look for Omar’s Other Adventures!

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  About the Author and Illustrator

  CHAPTER 1

  That was my annoying alarm clock, waking me up for the first day of school after winter break. I didn’t want to get up because I had been sleeping until at least nine o’clock for the last two weeks, so seven o’clock felt like practically the

  What was most annoying was that Mom had put it on the other side of the room instead of on my nightstand so I’d HAVE to get out of bed to turn off the beeps. Of course, I didn’t want to, so I threw my pillow at it. The pillow was too heavy and fat or something, so it didn’t get very far. I rummaged in my nightstand drawer for something else to throw and found a squishy ball I had kept because it smelled like

  I squinted at the clock and lifted the ball up . . .

  Yikes. Just then, my sister, Maryam, was walking into the room, saying,

  Yep, you guessed it. She got hit right in the nose. Lucky it was squishy, or I would have gotten in TONS of trouble.

  Needless to say, the rest of the morning did not go smoothly. Mom and Dad weren’t very impressed, and Maryam was super melodramatic about it, saying she wasn’t ever going to talk to me again. Then my little brother, Esa, refused to put his coat on, which made us late, and everyone got even angrier. I was the only one in a good mood, because I couldn’t wait to see my best friends, Charlie and Daniel.

  They ran up to me on the playground and both gave me a slap on the back. A slap on the back is basically code for:

  The slap is less cheesy than actually saying it,

  “Guess what,” said Daniel. “My mom and dad finally got me a new bike! It’s so cool. I can’t wait to show it to you!”

  “Ah. Lucky!” said Charlie.

  “Yeah, the chain still keeps falling off when I ride mine,” I said.

  “Isn’t your dad really good at fixing stuff?” asked Daniel.

  “Yeah, he is—I should ask him.

  I said. And we all laughed and agreed about that.

  We couldn’t stop talking as we lined up on the playground for Mrs. Hutchinson to come get us. I had brought her a

  from the stash my neighbor Mrs. Rogers had brought over for us the day before. Mrs. Hutchinson is probably the nicest teacher ever. I mean, duh, nobody on the entire planet would give one of their Mrs. Rogers’ cupcakes to somebody they didn’t like. I thought Mrs. Hutchinson deserved one, for the winks she gave us at the right moments, for always being fair when two kids got into a fight and for the

  Before winter break, we’d been doing a project about the universe, and she told us about how some scientists believe there is life on other planets. Basically, that means aliens, so Mrs. Hutchinson got us to imagine what they might look like—it wasn’t really like a lesson at all!

  “Be careful, though,” she had said. “They might be watching us. We don’t want them to know we are onto them.”

  But that morning, when a teacher came to bring us in, it wasn’t Mrs. Hutchinson.

  She had the kind of creases in her face that told me she had spent most of her life frowning and furrowing her eyebrows. Her clothes were gray and her shoes were The way less fun hair was pulled so tightly and so neatly into a bun that I imagined she’d needed the help of a high-tech laser that detected any out-of-place hairs and zapped them down.

  Daniel and Charlie looked at me with their question-mark eyebrows. Have you ever noticed that the eyebrows say the most about someone’s feelings?

  For example, Charlie’s eyebrows can say:

  Anyway, back to the strange teacher.

  Eerily, the only thing she said to us was “Follow me.” And she spun around on the sharpest heel I have ever seen and walked toward the school building.

  CHAPTER 2

  We piled into the classroom and went to our desks.

  “Who IS this?” whispered Daniel.

  “Don’t worry, it’s probably nobody. Mrs. Hutchinson’s probably just sick or something and she’ll be back tomorrow,” I said.

  But just then, the new teacher said,

  She said those words from her mouth. But it felt like each word was a heavy metal object hitting me over the head.

  I looked at Charlie. He had scared eyebrows. I wanted to put my arm around him.

  Daniel was pinching my leg under the desk.

  “Daniel! Stop it. Ouch! What are you doing?”

  “I’m pinching you to make sure I’m not dreaming.”

  “You two at the back. Stop your nonsense,” said Mrs. Crankshaw. “That brings me to my first task—assigning you all to your new seats. From now on, you will not sit next to your chatty little friends, you will sit where I say.”

  “She’s not a nobody,” said Daniel.

  “No,” I said. I looked down at the cupcake. It looked sad, too.

  We had to hold in all of our questions and emotions until break time. None of us dared to put our hand up and ask what had happened to Mrs. Hutchinson. Especially after my new seat neighbor, Ellie, asked if she could do something as innocent as get up and throw her pencil shavings in the garbage, and

  When we were rel
eased for recess, Charlie, Daniel and I did some super-fast speed walking toward the exit, because we aren’t allowed to run.

  All of us buttoned up our lips until the fresh, cold outside air hit our faces, and then Daniel practically exploded.

  “Where’s Mrs. Hutchinson?” he wailed.

  Charlie just stood there looking at us, not saying anything. He seemed to be in shock.

  “So it’s not just for a day. She said she was our teacher for the rest of the year!” I said.

  “But what happened to Mrs. Hutchinson? Why would she just leave us?!” asked Daniel.

  I put my arm around Charlie, who still hadn’t said anything. We couldn’t lose Mrs. Hutchinson and Charlie both in the same day!

  Finally, Charlie spoke. “Should we ask one of the other teachers?”

  “Good idea,” I said, already running toward the teacher on duty in the playground. Charlie and Daniel followed close behind.

  Mr. Henry already had several children around him. He was scolding one of them while another stood there crying and others watched.

  We waited for him to finish shouting, and then I said, “Mr. Henry,

  The teacher looked in all four directions to figure out where the question was coming from. He didn’t realize it was from me, because about six other kids were still staring at him.

  “I don’t know! In the bathroom probably! Really, how should I know?” he said, rubbing his forehead as if it would make everyone go away.

  Charlie tugged at my sleeve. “Come on, this isn’t working.”

  We walked around the playground, not really saying much, which was fine by me, because my mind was busy imagining all the things that could have happened.

  Maybe Mrs. Hutchinson had too many of those very light cheese puffs she eats every lunchtime, and they made her weightless, so she floated off into the clouds. Then I imagined that she somehow became invisible and was trying to get everyone’s attention to help her come back down, but we just couldn’t see her anymore.

  “What?” said Charlie.

  “Have you gone nuts?” said Daniel.

  I giggled.

  CHAPTER 3

  On the way home, I told Mom all about the terrible disappearance of Mrs. Hutchinson.

  “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation,” Mom said. “They’ll probably send us a letter about it.”

  She was being very grown-up, obviously because she is a grown-up, but it was unhelpful and

  I said, “But, Mom! What if something has happened to her and we need to launch a rescue mission?”

  Mom rolled her eyes at me and said, “Hey, Siri, when do children stop overreacting to everything?”

  Siri said, “I found this on the web.”

  Siri was Mom’s best friend these days.

  and figured Maryam might be more helpful.

  * * *

  Maryam was lying on her bed when I got home, tapping away on her phone.

  “Sort of. Mrs. Hutchinson is gone, and we have a horrible teacher called Mrs. Crankshaw, and Mom won’t listen to me about it.”

  “Oh. Where has she gone?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. Nobody knows.”

  “Not right, Omar. You just have to find the somebody.”

  “Where do I find the somebody?”

  “Probably the staff room. The staff room is full of

  That’s why kids aren’t allowed in there.”

  “Wow. Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “OK, thanks!”

  I walked away, trying to smell my own breath, just to make sure.

  I imagined what the staff room looked like. None of my friends had ever seen it. But I guessed it would be dark and lined with dusty files, all containing terrible secrets. I imagined the teachers taking their masks off when they went in, and all of them were except Mrs. Hutchinson . . . Maybe that’s why they got rid of her?!

  I ran downstairs to see if I could get Mom to listen to me again, but I got distracted by the bananas and chips she’d put on the table for a snack. She said I could only have the chips if I had a banana first, which is the only reason I had a banana, because I don’t really like them unless they have the brown freckles all over, which means they are

  It turned out the snacks were a trap—like honey for a bear . . .

  “Please help Esa with his homework before you run off and disappear into your room, Omar,” Mom said while I had my mouth full of banana.

  I tried to wriggle out of it by saying, “He never listens to me anyway.”

  “Yes he does.”

  “No he doesn’t.”

  “Yes he does,” said Esa, which made me laugh.

  I was only complaining because I wanted to get back to thinking about what we could do about Mrs. Hutchinson. But how long could a three-year-old’s baby homework take? Plus, last time I helped Esa, Dad let me choose what he would cook for dinner, which was cool. I chose spaghetti Bolognese because, like I always say,

  “Come on, Esa,” I said. “Let’s do it in the living room.”

  The homework was to color in two shapes that were the same in each row on a worksheet. I could have done it in exactly thirty-eight seconds, and believe me, I was tempted to do it in a scribbly way and just pretend that Esa did it, but I was worried he would tell Mom, and even if he didn’t,

  So I sat with Esa for thirty minutes to help him finish it, which is almost fifty times slower than I would have been.

  In my head, I was imagining a new scientific breakthrough in medicine that would make toddlers faster at everything. Everyone would want to buy that. I would make millions. I decided I might have to pay more attention to what my scientist parents say all the time so I can get super good at it and make the medicine when I grow up a bit.

  As we were finishing, Dad came home with his motorcycle helmet still on his head, which I always think makes him look a bit like an alien.

  Esa ran up and jumped into his arms. I gave him a kiss on his helmet, and he said,

  what a welcome is this! Take me to your leader,

  We giggled at that, but it reminded me of Mrs. Hutchinson’s alien lesson again, and my tummy turned over thinking about going back to school with Mrs. Crankshaw.

  CHAPTER 4

  The next day at school, we all sat in the seats Mrs. Crankshaw had chosen for us. Charlie was near me, but Daniel was across the room. My seat was next to Ellie’s. She was OK, but

  Charlie was close enough to try to talk to, but that got me lots of angry from Mrs. Crankshaw.

  She was teaching us about how people lived in medieval times. She wasn’t making history fun, like Mrs. Hutchinson would. It was as if she was trying to make it boring. Maybe she had a

  I bet she could even make Ferraris sound boring.

  I wanted desperately to tell Charlie so we could both laugh about it, but Mrs. Crankshaw had her eyes on me. Ellie suggested that if I wanted to say something to Charlie, I could whisper it to her, and she would whisper it to Sarah, who would whisper it to Jason, who would whisper it to Charlie.

  I agreed that was a good plan and whispered,

  I watched as the girls passed my words along. Charlie understood what was going on and was grinning his toothy grin in anticipation.

  When it finally got to him, he said, “What?

  No he isn’t!”

  I face-palmed at the complete flop. If I was going to stop myself from falling asleep, I needed to think more drastically . . .

  I shot my hand up to ask if I could go to the bathroom.

  Surprisingly, Mrs. Crankshaw let me go.

  I winked at Daniel on my way out.

  I made my way down the hall in the opposite direction from the bathroom, looking over my shoulder in case Mrs. Crankshaw was following me. I wondered what I would have done if I had turned around a
nd seen her.

  (Hey, why not? It works for spiders!)

  I arrived at my destination. You guessed it—the staff room. I was hoping to bump into the somebodies who knew what was going on with Mrs. Hutchinson. I was in luck, because one of the second-grade teachers was coming toward me. She was walking the way Maryam does when she tries on a pair of Mom’s heels for fun. It must have been the first time this teacher had worn heels, too.

  I held my breath in case she yelled at me for being there, but to my relief, she smiled and asked, “How can I help you?”

  “I, erm, wanted to ask if you know where Mrs. Hutchinson is?”

  Her smile vanished. Don’t worry, if the school wants you to know, you will know,” she said. And then she walked into the staff room and closed the door behind her without even looking at me.

  Wow, that was secretive, I thought. Maybe a bit too secretive. Something suspicious is going on.

  I started running back toward my classroom and then saw the “no running” sign, so I switched to speed-walking instead. Then I realized nobody was around to get me in trouble, so I switched to running again. Then I heard Dad’s voice in my head, saying, so I sighed and switched back to speed-walking. It’s hard work being good sometimes.

  I sat back down at my desk and quickly scribbled a note to pass to Charlie: