I felt all funny inside.

  And I talked.

  This makes me think I would probably not make a very good spy, or do well on one of those missions where you have to keep your mouth shut because the fate of the world depends on your silence.

  “Pleskit’s been feeding them some alien mega-vitamins,” I said.

  Rafaella nodded. “I thought it must be something like that.” She paused, then added, “Most people wouldn’t guess it, but I probably know more about hamsters than anyone else in the class.”

  “You do?” I said in surprise.

  “I love hamsters. I raised them for three years, starting when I was in first grade.” She got a funny look on her face, then said, “Don’t tell anyone, but when I was little, my mother used to raise these Russian dwarf hamsters.” She looked around to make sure there was no one near us, then got a weird smile on her face. “The babies were so cute, I used to put them in my mouth and carry them around!”

  “Eeeuw!” I cried. “Didn’t they suffocate or anything?”

  She looked at me as if I were some kind of moron. “I didn’t leave them in there that long! And I’d open my mouth to let air in. I just wanted them close to me.”

  “Did you ever swallow one?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be such a dork, Tim.”

  “I can’t help it. It seems to be my natural state.”

  She smiled, which did something funny to my insides. “There’s more hope for you than you realize, Tim. Come on, we’d better go talk to Pleskit about this hamster thing.”

  Now this created an interesting situation. I had already been planning to do just that. But I hadn’t been planning on taking Rafaella with me.

  What would Pleskit think if we showed up together?

  What would Rafaella think if I told her she couldn’t go?

  And why does life have to be so stinking complicated?

  (My mother assures me it only gets more so as time goes on. This fact, let me tell you, does not thrill me.)

  Finally I said, “Sure, let’s go.”

  Do you think I made a bold decision?

  Hah!

  I didn’t make a choice at all. It was just that, since Rafaella was the one I was talking to right then, it was easier to take her along, and worry about what Pleskit might think later.

  Plus I had this thing in my pocket that I had to show him, and I hoped that when I did, he would be so concerned about it that he would forget any questions he might have about me showing up with Rafaella.

  They let us into the embassy with no problem.

  Pleskit seemed surprised, but not upset, to see that Rafaella was with me.

  Shhh-foop provided a weird but tasty snack called Gadroobian tongue-ticklers. Then the three of us went into a private room to talk.

  “Rafaella raises hamsters,” I said, partly by way of explaining why she was with me.

  “Well, not anymore,” she said.

  “But I thought you said—”

  “I used to raise hamsters. Then I got interested in snakes instead.”

  “You raise snakes?” I yelped.

  “Snakes and lizards.”

  “How come I never knew this?”

  She made a little snort, then said, “There’s a lot about me you don’t know, Tim.”

  Well, that was obviously true.

  Pleskit intervened. “You said you had something to show me.”

  “Yeah. I found this next to the hamster cage this afternoon.”

  I reached into my pocket and took out the thing I had picked up off the counter.

  “Uh-oh,” Pleskit said.

  CHAPTER 8 [PLESKIT]

  THE TRAP

  Lying in the palm of Tim’s hand was a tiny glove, just the right size for a hamster.

  “Are you sure that’s not just a doll’s glove that someone left there by accident?” said Rafaella.

  Tim looked at her in surprise. “None of the girls in our class play with dolls, do they?”

  Rafaella shook her head. “Tim, don’t even try to imagine you know anything about the lives of women.”

  “We can check easily enough,” I said. “Let’s do a molecular analysis.”

  “That’s one reason I like coming here,” said Tim. “Some problems do get solved more easily when you have technology on your side.”

  Unfortunately, this problem just got more complicated. The analysis showed that the tiny glove, which was virtually indestructible, was definitely not of Earthly origin.

  “Where the heck could it have come from?” asked Tim when I reported the results.

  But for that, I had no answer.

  “The more important question,” said Rafaella, “is, What are we going to do about it?”

  “Perhaps we should set a trap,” I suggested.

  “A trap?” asked Tim.

  “Sure!” said Rafaella. “We set something up so that if anyone goes near the cage, it will sound an alarm, or take his photo, or something like that.”

  “But people go near the cage all day,” said Tim.

  “So we’ll set it up so that it only works at night.”

  “Or,” I said, “so that it only detects someone of non-Earthly origin.”

  “Perfect!” cried Tim.

  They left it to me to design the trap. It was fairly simple: as soon as the trap detected a nonhuman presence approaching the hamster cage, it would sound an alarm, take a photograph, and spray the intruder with Feldroonian peasquat, a thick purple substance with a truly unfortunate smell.

  “So, how are we going to install this thing?” asked Rafaella, after we had decided on what to do.

  “That should be my job,” said Tim. “I have to stay after school every day anyway, so I’ll have the best chance.”

  * * *

  All through the next day I watched the hamster cage for signs of unusual behavior.

  The little beasts just stared back at me, blinking stupidly.

  That night I called Tim to find out how he had made out with installing the trap.

  “I think it was okay,” he said, sounding a little nervous. “I was just finishing up when Mr. Grand walked into the room, and I had to do some fast talking to explain why I was up on the counter. But it should be all right.”

  I should have known then to be more nervous.

  * * *

  I was sitting in reading group the next morning, discussing a book by Natalie Babbitt called Tuck Everlasting, when our trap suddenly began to screech.

  And who was it that set the thing off?

  Jordan Lynch.

  “I knew it!” cried Tim. “I knew you were an alien! Come on, take off your mask and show us your real face.”

  Jordan, who was now coated with horrible-smelling purple goo, was furious. “What are you talking about, you maniac?” he cried. He was about to lunge for Tim when Ms. Weintraub stepped between them. She was none too happy either.

  “Just exactly what is going on here?” she asked.

  The explanation was painful. It was even more painful when a simple experiment—namely, having each kid in the class go up to the cage (after I had disarmed the trap, of course)—proved that everyone in the room was capable of setting the thing off. Which meant that, unless the entire class was composed of aliens, our trap had misfired.

  “I must have messed it up when Mr. Grand interrupted me,” said Tim miserably.

  “I’ll mess you up,” said Jordan in a low, menacing voice, just before he went off to the nurse’s room to be cleaned up. “I was going to skip that stupid sleepover. Now I’ve changed my mind. It could be a lot of fun… for me!”

  This obvious threat made me feel very bad. While it was possible Jordan might strike out at me, it was far more likely he would take his anger out on Tim, who does not have the luxury of having a bodyguard.

  I must say that, although the idea of needing a bodyguard horrified me when I first arrived on Earth, I have gotten used to having McNally around, and have come to rely on him a great deal.

  What I have not gotten used to is the fact that other kids don’t receive the same kind of protection. I can’t understand bullies, or the people who let them do their bullying. The fact that some kids on this planet have to go to school fearing for their safety every day is something I will never understand.

  Of course, Jordan’s bullying was often psychological rather than physical. He would rather crush your spirit than your body. As the Grandfatherly One has said more than once, Jordan has the potential to do great evil when he matures.

  In any event, his threat was something to be taken seriously. I decided to ask McNally if he would teach Tim some ways of defending himself.

  My bodyguard sighed. “I’d rather try to teach him some common sense. But, yeah, I suppose it’s a good idea. Have him come over to the embassy tonight and we’ll get started.”

  CHAPTER 9 [TIM]

  PERCY

  I was plenty happy when Pleskit told me that McNally had invited me to the embassy for some special training in Koo Muk Dwan, the martial art form of which he is a master. I had always wanted to learn one of those cool Asian fighting techniques, but we could never afford to pay for lessons.

  Since I was hoping to learn a way to send Jordan to the moon with a single blow, I was kind of disappointed when we spent the first three nights of my training with McNally telling me why it was considered a failure if I actually had to use the technique, since the goal was to avoid violence, and then having me do things like hold my arms straight out in front of me for as long as I could to build up my endurance and my strength of mind.

  (If you think that sounds easy, try it-just put your arms out in front of you and see how long you last!)

  By the fourth night things started to get a little more interesting, and soon we were deep into the good stuff, all the cool holds and throws. I thought the faces and sounds you were supposed to make while you were doing all this were sort of odd, but McNally said they were part of the Koo Muk Dwan tradition, so I copied him as carefully as I could. The first time I practiced in my room at home, my mother came to the door to ask if I had a stomachache.

  * * *

  Despite McNally’s training, I was pretty nervous by the night of the sleepover, since I wasn’t sure what Jordan might be planning in terms of revenge. For this reason, I came to school more prepared than usual. I’m not talking about alien high-tech warning devices. What I had was some useful stuff to put around my sleeping bag to alert me if Jordan should come creeping up on me. (“Creep” being an appropriate word to use for any situation in which Jordan is involved.)

  My security devices included: three bags of jacks, which I figured if Jordan stepped on in his bare feet would send him jumping and hollering; a pair of mousetraps I’d snitched from my kitchen; several squeaky pet toys that would alert me if anyone stepped on them; and a roll of Bubble Wrap.

  We hadn’t been ignoring the hamsters all this week, of course. We just hadn’t seen them doing anything suspicious. The question was, Did that mean it really had been the vitamins, and their effect was wearing off? Or did it mean the hamsters had gotten so smart, they were able to operate without tipping us off?

  Pleskit and I had made a plan to slip away during the sleepover to check on them, thinking that at night was when they probably did… whatever they were doing.

  * * *

  I was choosing my spot on the gym floor—against a wall, so I would have only three sides to defend—when Pleskit and McNally showed up.

  “Glad to see you,” I said happily. “I was starting to worry that your Fatherly One wasn’t going to let you come after all.”

  Pleskit smiled. “He’s going to come himself later, for the midnight storytelling. And he said that as long as McNally was willing to accompany me now, it was all right with him.”

  I glanced at McNally. From the way he lifted his eyebrows, I got the feeling he was rolling his eyes. I couldn’t see his eyes themselves, of course-they were hidden behind his dark glasses. I wondered if one reason he’d agreed to come was that Ms. Weintraub was going to be there.

  “This sleepover is a great idea!” continued Pleskit enthusiastically. “It’s totally… cool!” He looked at me anxiously. “Is that a proper use of the term?”

  “Absolutely,” I assured him.

  “I even brought my air mattress,” he said.

  “What’s the big deal?” asked Rafaella, who had come wandering over to talk with us. “Everyone has air mattresses.”

  “Not like Pleskit’s,” I replied. “He’s got a mattress made out of air! That’s all-just air! It’s the best thing for bouncing on ever. But I didn’t know they were portable,” I said, turning to him.

  “This was a gift from the Fatherly One. He’s trying to make up for how much he’s ignored me over the last several months.”

  Later, when we had a minute alone, Pleskit took me aside and whispered, “Even though the Fatherly One has promised to come for the late-night storytelling, I still fear he will not actually show up.”

  I understood. Pleskit’s Fatherly One had let him down on this kind of thing more than once. On the other hand, at least Pleskit has a male parental unit, which is more than I can say. “I bet he’ll be here,” I said.

  With McNally’s help we set up the air mattress and started bouncing on it. Well, of course everyone wanted to try, until finally Ms. Weintraub and some of the other teachers put a stop to it because Percy the Mad Poet had arrived and it was time for the poetry jam.

  He was already standing at the microphone that was set up on the stage at the front of the room.

  “You guys ready to jam?” asked Percy.

  “Let’s go!” we cried.

  This was a call-and-response he had taught us years earlier.

  “Okay,” he said. “First poem.”

  Then he read us something called “The Rage of the Duck.” It was weird but funny. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I really understood it. That’s a problem I have with poetry sometimes, especially Percy’s.

  He did a couple more poems, then said, “All right, now it’s your turn!”

  Several people read poems, including Rafaella and Misty. Misty’s was pretty gooey-all about love and rainbows and her aching heart. I thought Rafaella’s, which was about snakes, was a lot better. For me the highlight of the whole thing was when Pleskit performed a traditional Hevi-Hevian poem, complete with farts and other bodily sounds.

  He had learned enough about Earthlings by now to choose a poem that was supposed to be funny-which was a good thing, because people got hysterical. “It’s too bad,” he said sadly when I was congratulating him. “I would have preferred to do a tragic poem. I have a truly moving fart of great sorrow.”

  So far the evening was a big success.

  The only problem was, Pleskit’s Fatherly One still hadn’t showed up, and I could tell Pleskit was starting to get pretty upset about it.

  After the poetry jam, as things were settling down a bit and the school was sealed for the night so that McNally was feeling fairly calm and therefore not keeping as close an eye on us as he had earlier, I went to get Pleskit. Just as we had planned, we sneaked off down the hall to check on the hamsters, to see if we could catch them being weird. We had a theory that they acted even stranger at night than they did in the daytime.

  * * *

  It was pretty spooky tiptoeing down those dark hallways, especially since we didn’t want to get caught by anyone.

  Pressing ourselves against the walls, moving in almost perfect silence, we made it safely to the room.

  Then, just as we were about to go through the door, a hand came down on my shoulder.

  “Just what are you two doing?” asked a voice that filled me with terror.

  CHAPTER 10 [PLESKIT]

  SOMETHING CHANGES

  When Tim shouted and jumped, I did the same thing, and barely restrained myself from going into kleptra.

  Before the squawk was even out of my mouth, I realized who had accosted us.

  It was Jordan, as I could tell from the sound of his laugh.

  We turned to face him.

  He shook his head in disgust. “What a pair of wusses,” he sneered. Then he narrowed his eyes and added, “Sneaky wusses at that. What are you two up to this time?”

  “We’re checking on the hamsters,” I said. “And please let go of my friend.”

  Jordan was still gripping Tim’s shoulder, and I could tell by the look on Tim’s face that the grip was painful. The reason I could see Tim’s face, even though Jordan’s flashlight was not pointing directly at it, was that my sphen-gnut-ksher had started to spark, which cast a flickering purple glow over all three of us.

  I think that may be why Jordan actually let go of Tim. He knows from personal experience that my sphen-gnut-ksher can emit a powerful surge of energy.

  “You two are such wackoids,” he said, dropping his hand. “What is it with you and these hamsters?”

  I decided to take a radical step and tell Jordan the truth.

  “Jordan,” I said, “you know a fair amount of what has happened in the last year. If you thought about it for even a moment, you would realize that I have a powerful reason to fear hamsters. However, I do recognize that our class pets, even though they resemble my enemy Mikta-makta-mookta, are not really a menace. In order to deal with my trauma, I began feeding Doris, Ronald, and Hubert a vitamin supplement I created. It was a kind of therapy.”

  “Aliens must have weird psychiatrists,” muttered Jordan.

  Ignoring his rudeness, I continued my story. “The frightening thing is, even after I stopped giving the hamsters the supplement, they continued to change, almost as if they were mutating. I did not think the vitamins could have done that, though I am not certain. Then Tim found something strange beside their cage.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7