by Zanib Mian
“OK, I’ll do it!”
The mission would go on! Even if it did mean we had to put up with Maryam for the afternoon.
I said as all four of us cycled down the street.
“GUYS! We should think of a code name for the mission,” said Daniel excitedly.
“Like what?” said Charlie with his curious eyebrows.
“Like Operation Mrs. H.”
“That’s cool,” I said. “But we should be more secrety,” I added, winking at Charlie.
Charlie grinned happily. “Yes, more secrety, for sure . . . like
—you know, because it could be an alien kidnapping!”
“Oh, that’s awesome. I love it!” I said, beaming because Charlie was on board with my idea.
“Hmmm,” said Daniel. “I’ll go along with it, because I like moondust.”
“You guys are such geeks,” said Maryam, rolling her eyes. “None of you have ever even seen moondust, and there are definitely no aliens on the moon.”
“So what?!” I said. “And anyway, yes we have.”
she said.
we all said together.
And we went in circles of “no you haven’t” and “yes we have” the whole way to our first stop, because we were all too stubborn to give up.
The first stop was the corner store near Mrs. Hutchinson’s house.
“People who come here might know something, so let’s see if they will let us put a poster up,” I said, leaning my bike against the shop window.
A bell rang as we opened the door and walked in.
“Good afternoon,” said the man behind the counter. But he said it exactly like it wasn’t a good afternoon and he hadn’t even seen who had come in. We could have been three inside-out cat-aliens and he would be none the wiser.
I walked toward him. He looked startled. I guess he was probably expecting us to wander around forever choosing which candy to spend our money on.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just that my friends and I have a question.” I pulled out one of the missing posters from my backpack.
Daniel pushed forward before I had the chance to say anything, excitedly pointing at the poster. “Can we put this up?”
The man looked as if Daniel had asked him if he had seen a walking snake or something.
“No!” he said without even looking at it.
But then Charlie said, “Please? It’s for our teacher who is missing.” And he smiled his toothy smile.
The shopkeeper finally glanced at the poster and said, “Fine. But you have to buy something.”
The three of us looked at each other, silently asking the question Got any money? None of us did, so this seemed like a big flop.
Suddenly, Maryam popped up behind us and said, “I’ve got some.” She pulled out a little yellow coin purse from her jacket, and to our serious surprise, she bought candy for each of us. Then she took the poster from my hand and said to the man, in her bossy voice,
We all made our way excitedly to the exit.
I said.
“Yeah, that was actually really cool of you,” said Charlie.
And Daniel gave her a spud, which my mom thinks is a potato, but it’s not. It’s a fist bump.
“Well, I do want to find out where Mrs. Hutchinson is, too,” she said. “It’s kind of exciting, like one of those murder-mystery books I read.”
Daniel was walking backward through the shop door, because he had spun around for the spud. As he stepped out onto the street, he fell right onto Ellie from our class.
Ellie squealed as if she had just been covered in zombie snot.
Sarah was with her. “What are you all doing here, anyway?” she said, still on her scooter.
“None of your business!” said Daniel, picking himself up and helping Ellie off the sidewalk.
“We’re just buying candy,” I said, holding mine up.
Charlie and Daniel both flashed theirs, too, with big grins.
“But this isn’t YOUR local shop—” said Ellie.
“Whatever,” Daniel interrupted.
We grabbed our bikes and sped off before they got any nosier.
“I think she heard what Maryam said about finding out where Mrs. H is,” said Daniel.
“She must have. We were talking really loudly,” said Charlie.
Hmmm, I thought. We didn’t want people at school knowing what we were up to. Because if they told the teachers, they’d either think we were silly, just like my parents did, or if they were really in on her disappearance, then we’d be in danger.
I had no idea it was also their local shop. I hoped the grumpy shopkeeper would wait until they left to put our poster up.
“Let’s put the rest of these up on lampposts and trees around the area,” I said.
We had brought lots of sticky tape with us. It was quite fun—Operation Moondust! It finally felt like we were doing something to help that could actually work. Someone had to know something, and they would email us soon. I was sure.
We tried to cover lots of roads in the area. When we were making our way to the third road, we heard a scream behind us. It was Ellie and Sarah. Ellie had fallen off her scooter again.
“Have they been following us?!” I said,
“They’re so nosy!” said Charlie.
We rode over to them quickly.
Sarah was picking an embarrassed Ellie up from the sidewalk for a second time.
“It’s not my fault I can’t balance. I’m still recovering from you!” she said, pointing at Daniel.
“Have you been following us?” I asked.
“No! We’re just going home,” said Sarah.
“Yeah, you guys don’t own the roads, do you?” said Ellie, with her hands on her hips.
“Why are you acting so strange? What exactly are you up to?” said Sarah.
I tried to read her eyebrows, but I couldn’t. Did she already know? Had they seen the posters? Or were they question-mark eyebrows? She wouldn’t keep them still. She was moving her eyebrows up and down and then one up and one down. It was driving me crazy!
Ellie was staring at us, waiting for an answer, which she wasn’t going to get.
said Maryam.
“Is your knee OK, Ellie?” asked Charlie, blushing. “Did you hurt yourself when you fell down?”
Charlie is always super nice to everyone; it’s why we became best friends in the first place. But I suddenly realized we had to get him away before he spilled the beans. If Ellie started sniffling about her sore knee, he would definitely tell her whatever she asked!
“Come on, guys, let’s go!” I said, and we pedaled home again. It was time to wrap up Operation Moondust for the day.
CHAPTER 13
For a couple of weeks, we didn’t really know what else we could do for Operation Moondust. I had filled Mrs. Rogers in, and she said we had done but now we just had to wait and see what happened. I didn’t tell her about the alien clues, though, just about our posters and Daniel’s close encounter with getting caught with his phone in his hand in class.
Until somebody reached out to us with another clue, we had no choice but to carry on our boring lessons with
That was the new name everyone in the class was using for her. Even Sarah, who had been compared to an angel by more than one of the teachers at school, had started calling her by her new name on the playground (away from Mrs. C’s pointy ears).
I tried to butter up Mrs. Crankshaw so she’d be nicer to us all by giving her a scone that Mrs. Rogers had made. Mrs. Rogers had winked at me when she brought them over, saying, “These scones have been known to turn hearts. Try offering one to your new teacher. You never know, she might be transformed.”
“Wow, thank you!” I had said hopefully.
Esa said, “Shukriya,” because he was practicing his Ur
du words. Of course, Mom was super impressed with that.
But Mrs. Crankshaw was not impressed at all with the scone. She said, “You know you shouldn’t bring people food, because you don’t know what food allergies they might have!”
“Oh . . . sorry,” I said with a lump in my throat.
Charlie had to give me a hug to make me feel better after that. And my stomach wouldn’t stop feeling weird all through Language Arts. I felt like I was going to throw up my morning porridge. I have done that before, and it’s not very pretty. Porridge isn’t the prettiest food in the first place, and after having been in a stomach, it doesn’t get any better looking!
Remembering the time I vomited porridge made me feel even worse, so I stood up quickly and asked if I could go to the bathroom. I must have looked kind of green, because Mrs. Crankshaw said yes immediately, and she looked scared when she said it.
When I left the classroom, I felt better straightaway. As if it was the toxic rays from Mrs. C in there that were making me sick. Then a voice popped into my head out of nowhere. And it sounded a lot like Maryam.
it said.
And just like that, my feet turned me toward the staff room, with my heart thumping.
There were no teachers going in and out of the staff room. The hallway was abandoned. But I could hear voices inside. I looked around quickly to make sure no one was coming and put my ear to the door. I had to work hard to make out the words:
“More grading! I wish long break instead!” said one voice.
Hazel?” replied a second voice.
My ears perked up even more, because Hazel is Mrs. Hutchinson’s name!
“Ha! Not like she had a choice She was throwing up left, right and take her in for tons of tests.”
“Just imagine, living inside you all that chaos!”
Something living inside her?
“Haha, I guess she’ll be that way until it comes out
“Will you visit
“Gosh no, I’m not person, they’re so weird looking at not even human haha.”
What I was hearing seemed to confirm everything I had seen and imagined! I quickly walked away with my head in my hands, trying to make sense of it all.
Until it comes out? Something inside her? Making her throw up? Weird looking? Not even human? They took her for tests?
It all fell into place. Of course!
But it was worse than we had thought: Mrs. Hutchinson had swallowed an alien, so the aliens had taken her away to poke at her until it came out! I couldn’t believe our teachers were secretly cooperating with a bunch of aliens—or maybe even were aliens themselves!
When I got back into the classroom, I didn’t care about getting in trouble with Mrs. Crankshaw anymore. I couldn’t do any work and just stared at my books until recess, when I could talk to my friends.
Mrs. Hutchinson had been taken by aliens! I knew it sounded out of this world, but I was absolutely convinced.
We found a quiet spot, and I spilled everything I’d heard. Charlie was in shock and just opened and closed his mouth loads of times. Daniel said,
It was the same sentence he had been saying ever since we saw the clues at Mrs. Hutchinson’s, but now he said it as a question, as if he wasn’t sure what to believe anymore.
“Think about it. Mrs. Hutchinson herself said that aliens are out there and they might be watching us!” I said.
“Yeah, and scientists wouldn’t be bothering to look for aliens in outer space if they didn’t think they existed,” added Charlie, recovering from his fish impression.
“Come to think of it, I did see her rubbing her tummy one day . . .” said Daniel. “But how could she have swallowed an alien? Like, why would she?”
“Maybe they’re so tiny you can’t even see them, and they had come to spy on her for teaching us that alien lesson,” I said.
“So she ate it by accident?” said Charlie.
“Yes, or she ate it on purpose, to save us, because the aliens were threatening to hurt her class?” I said.
“Wow, she’s so brave!” said Charlie.
“But this is CRAZY!” said Daniel, unable to accept it just yet. “There has to be another explanation.”
“Sometimes, Daniel, the craziest explanations are the correct ones! Dad told me that happens a lot in science.”
“So what are we going to do now?” said Charlie.
We decided it was best to try to speak to some space scientists and do some research on Google on extra-terrestrial visitors to Earth to start with.
Operation Moondust really was going to outer space!
CHAPTER 14
Over the next few days, we spent lunchtimes in the school library, researching everything we could about aliens, mostly for Daniel, who still wasn’t convinced that Mrs. Hutchinson had been sucked up into space by them. And man, did we find some weird stuff that absolutely confirmed that aliens were out there and were even found on Earth. Well, the online articles didn’t actually call them aliens (they called them but they said that these weird tiny squiggly things proved there was life on other planets. One writer said the organisms look like dragons, but they obviously have no idea what dragons look like. They should see my H2O—
There was a whole universe of stuff to read on Google. We didn’t understand a lot of the words, and I wished we could ask my parents to explain them. They’d know about things like what on earth the is, but then they’d know we were still convinced that aliens had abducted our teacher.
Mrs. Hutchinson always said that when we do research, we should look at “sources we can trust,” which basically means, if it is written by a famous organization that is known for being right about things, we can usually believe them. But if it’s a blog written by people like Maryam and her friends, we should be careful. We found a CNN article, by a NASA chief scientist, saying that they were definitely about to find life on other planets in the coming years. That’s two sources we could trust.
“Do you see, Daniel?” said Charlie excitedly. “Do you belieeeeeeeve?” And he spun Daniel’s whirly chair around to look him in the eyes for extra-dramatic effect.
Just then, Ellie and Sarah walked into the library with extra-nosy expressions painted all over their faces.
“Does he believe what?” pressed Ellie.
They tried to look at our computer screen, but I quickly closed the window AND stood in front of it, just in case.
Charlie frantically gathered the few books on space that we had found on the shelves and sat on them.
We wouldn’t share our secret, no matter how much they bugged us to, so they went to sit down and pretended to read some books on history. Sarah and Ellie hated history lessons,
We had to leave then, but we felt super proud of ourselves for doing all that research, and even being able to convince Daniel (sort of). The next time we were able to get into the library, we found an email contact for NASA and sent them all the details from our [email protected] address. Perhaps they would send out a special search mission in space for her? We kept a close eye on our inbox, but they didn’t reply to us, no matter how much we checked.
While we waited for something to happen, we tried to get on with our lives as if every-thing was normal. Even though Maryam had been nice about helping us put the miss-ing posters up, we didn’t share our alien abduction idea with her, because she would
and tell all her friends, who would also join in with the laughing. I had to keep it to myself at home, which was HARD.
Maybe because of all the keeping it to myself inside my head, I saw aliens everywhere. Instead of seeing regular old fruit flies, I would see tiny flying aliens and imagine them growing into something much bigger and slimier when they landed on a surface. And instead of seeing Esa’s green snot as regular green snot, I would see it as alien slime.
One day, when we were in a mall and I was de
sperate for the bathroom, I could have sworn I saw an alien peek his head out of one of the toilets, to see if anyone was around.
CHAPTER 15
At home, things were very busy as Mom and Dad prepared for our trip to Pakistan.
My friends were
about me being allowed to take time off school and go on vacation while they had to have boring lessons with Mrs. CrankyForSure.
“We will probably literally die of boredom without you, Omar,” said Charlie. “Can you clone yourself and leave one of you here?”
“Yeah, do that! You’re good at science, you can figure it out,” Daniel added.
I giggled, imagining myself as a clone.
Would my clone have all of my memories? Would he be good at science, too?
“What’s Pakistan like, anyway?” Charlie asked.
“I have The only thing I’ve heard was from my cousin, who said the pizza is yuck,” I said.
I soon found out another thing about the food in Pakistan, because one Tuesday, Dad came home with three bags full of chocolate.
Three bags of my favorite food?
Obviously, Esa, Maryam and I pounced on him right away, attempting to wrestle him to the ground to steal all the bags.
Dad laughed and then roared and said, “Hulk angry,” pretending to be angry, which we knew he wasn’t.
Then he said, “Actually . . . Hulk hungry! What’s for dinner, O mother of mischievous children?”
Mom laughed and said that we were his children when we were mischievous, and we were only hers when we were little angels like she is.