Close Encounters of the Nerd Kind Read online

  Then I walked off before he could see the tears that had formed in the corners of my eyes. Maybe I should have accepted Marcus’s offer to join the Gamer Squad, after all.

  “Where’s your other half?”

  I had just entered the library when I heard the voice of Mrs. Dorsey, my favorite librarian. She was a gamer and had been hardcore helpful with our monster problem. But right now I was trying hard not to show any emotion as I turned around to face her.

  “Hey,” she said, moving closer. “What’s wrong? Is Charlie okay?”

  I guess I shouldn’t abandon my plans of becoming a programmer for a life of poker.

  “Charlie’s fine,” I said. “Just busy. And I’m a little overwhelmed with … stuff.”

  “Anything I can help with?”

  “Math textbooks.”

  She did a double take. “What now?”

  “I need a lot of math textbooks. It doesn’t matter if they’re old or not.”

  Concern fell over her features. “I know a tutor if you need—”

  “No,” I said, interrupting her. “It’s nothing like that. It’s … ” I lowered my voice and leaned in closer. “Just tell me if you notice anything odd. Like this-past-summer odd, if you get what I’m saying.”

  Her eyes widened and she nodded her head slowly. “I will, Bex. Come to me if you need anything. In the meantime, let’s get those textbooks.”

  I headed to the grocery store next. The bag of books was starting to hurt my right shoulder, and soon I had a giant bag of oranges on the left. I really could have used some help.

  The pile of oranges spilled from my hands onto the checkout belt. The cashier looked up at me from behind her wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Flu season’s coming,” I said. “We have to get ahead of the game. Build up our immune system with some vitamin C.”

  She gave me a look like sure, crazy person and rang the oranges up. Several minutes later, I realized that I should’ve just said I was making my own juice. But that’s what my brain did. It panicked, said weird stuff, and then thought up normal stuff when the conversation was long over. I was used to it by now.

  I dropped the goodies off at Grandpa Tepper’s garage and made a bunch of aliens happy. Then I headed home. By the time I reached my street, it had started to rain again. That morning shower had been brief, but by the look of the darkening sky this was going to be a long one. I was lucky I’d finished all my errands.

  My shoulders aching, I dragged myself up the driveway toward my front door. But before I reached the steps, I noticed something odd. There were footprints in the mud around my front bushes. I followed them and they went all the way around the house to the backdoor. Then they changed direction and went toward the backyard. Stranger still, the prints were not in pairs of two.

  Something three-legged had been skulking around my house. Bob.

  Monday morning, I rushed around the school halls looking for someone in particular. Charlie and Willa had such busy schedules, I’d decided last night that I would have to find someone else to help me catch the rest of the Vegans. And I found him leaning against the wall outside the computer lab.

  “Marcus?”

  He stood up straight, looking surprised to see me. “Oh, hey, Bex.”

  I could tell Marcus about the aliens. He’d believe me. And he might even have some solid ideas how to help. But first, I had to make sure he wasn’t still upset. I hated to think that Marcus was mad at me for not joining the group. Not because I had a huge, raging crush on him (though I did), but because I didn’t like anyone to be mad at me.

  “I hope you’re not still upset about—”

  He shook his head quickly before I could finish the sentence. “You have the right to join or not join whatever club you want.”

  “Okay.” I smiled sheepishly. “Is everyone else mad?”

  “Everyone else?” he repeated.

  “The rest of the Gamer Squad,” I whispered. Then, out of curiosity, I asked, “Who else is in the group, anyway?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” he said quickly, guarding their identities like it was the World’s Biggest Secret.

  “Oh, okay,” I said with a shrug, trying my best to make it look like I didn’t care. But I did. Even more so because of how secretive he’d been. I really wanted to know who else was in the group. Maybe they could help.

  But before I could even start to tell him about the alien issue, he blurted out, “Look, I really need to get to class,” and took off down the hall.

  The bell rang soon after, and then I had to try to push my problems to the back of my mind and pull schoolwork to the front. Easier said than done. Turns out it’s hard to concentrate when you’re hiding a bunch of aliens in your best friend’s grandfather’s garage.

  In science class, Mr. Durr got sidetracked talking about the possibility of wormholes in space. That guy loved science, and he tried his best to get students enthusiastic about it, too. Aside from his penchant for annoying pop quizzes and his dorky “Funny Tie Fridays,” he was my favorite teacher. And that was how, after the last school bell rang, I ended up outside his classroom.

  One of Willa’s friends was already in there, getting extra help for the test later in the week. I waited patiently for my turn. She came out, gave my outfit the once over, and wrinkled her nose. Then Mr. Durr called out, “Next!”

  I entered the classroom and closed the door behind me.

  “Bexley?” Mr. Durr said with surprise. “How can I help you?”

  I took a seat opposite his desk and fiddled with a pencil someone had left there. “Um, it’s not about science really. Or not anything we’re going over right now.”

  He looked at me over the top of his eyeglasses. “Okay … ”

  “I’m writing this short story,” I began. “And it’s about aliens. But I want to make it as realistic as possible.”

  He rubbed his hands together. “I’d love to help. What question do you have?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but then a strange bumping sound came from the ceiling over my head. I looked up and saw nothing—just ceiling tiles.

  “It’s the air ducts,” Mr. Durr said. “They really need to get the HVAC system tuned up before we need to turn on the heat.” He shook his head in judgment. “Anyway, continue.”

  I cleared my throat. “In my story, some aliens land on Earth. Not to, like, invade us or anything. They didn’t even mean to come here. But now they’re kind of stuck. My main character is a human who is trying to help them. What should she do?”

  He snorted. “She should run for the hills!”

  “What?” I blurted. “Why?”

  “Aliens could be carrying viruses or bacteria that our immune systems are not prepared to handle, and they could infect—”

  I interrupted. “Okay, but let’s say it’s been a couple days and everything seems cool. Then, what would you do to help the aliens get back home?”

  “It would be best to turn any alien over to the appropriate government agency.”

  “Would they find a way to get her home? Or, um, it, home?”

  He shook his head. “Definitely not.”

  Dread formed in the center of my belly. “What would they do?”

  “Perform experiments. Try to find out as much as they could about the alien’s biology and psychology. And then, eventually, an autopsy. It would be a great learning opportunity.”

  I pictured Vera tied down to some stretcher. Surgical-masked men leaning over her with instruments of torture. Needles. Pain. The little Vegans held in cages, crying for their beloved teacher.

  “Did you hear me?” Mr. Durr said, breaking into my horrifying vision.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “I asked if you needed to know anything else.”

  “Oh, no. Thank you. That’s everything I need to know.”

  I had to keep Vera and the others a secret. Accident or not, I brought them here. I was responsible. I would find a way to safely get them back home. I couldn’t
risk some agency grabbing them. Well, they could have Bob. But Bob would give up the others in a second. The Vegans were mischievous little jerks, but I didn’t want them cut up and experimented on. Just the thought of it made my breath go ragged. I had to save them all.

  I wandered back into the hall, lost in my own thoughts, when a hand clamped down on my arm.

  “Bex,” Marcus said, his hazel eyes flaring with intensity. “There’s something you need to see.”

  Marcus led me down the hallway, moving so fast I had to almost jog to keep up with his long strides.

  “Where are we going?” I asked between ragged breaths.

  “The boys’ locker room.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You’ll see.”

  We careened around the corner and found various members of the middle school football team hanging in the hall. They should have been in the locker room getting dressed for practice. Actually, by now they should have been done in the locker room. They should have been out on the field.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, just as the door to the locker room opened and one more student came out, his face twisted in anger. Before the door closed shut, I was able to see inside the room. It was a disaster—benches flipped over, clothing strewn about, toilet paper from the bathroom draped around like ugly birthday streamers.

  “The locker room got wrecked,” Marcus said. “I asked around. It was fine during gym class in fifth period, but when the football team came after the last bell, it looked like that.”

  “So it happened sometime in the last two periods of the school day,” I said, thinking out loud.

  Robbie had been pacing back and forth but now stopped beside me. “My locker door was ripped right off its hinges.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Just yours?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know why whoever did it targeted me. Maybe because I’m the QB. But how would they even know which locker was mine?”

  “Was anything stolen?” I asked.

  Robbie shook his head. “Nothing important, just the bag of orange slices my mom packs for me every day.”

  I swallowed hard. “Did you find anything, um, I mean anyone in there?”

  “No,” Robbie said. “And they couldn’t have been hiding because we checked every locker, every stall, every corner. They came in, wrecked the place, and got out.”

  Robbie wandered off to talk with other team members. I found Charlie’s eyes in the crowd. He looked concerned, but I could tell he had an idea about what was going on. With the information about the orange slices, I was pretty sure myself.

  “We’re going to make them pay,” Robbie yelled suddenly.

  The rest of the team cried, “Yeah!”

  “They’re going to be sorry that they messed with us!” Robbie held his arm up. “Wolcott on three. One, two, three.”

  “Wolcott!” The team screamed, arms raised in the air.

  “They think the Runswick Martians did it for a school rivalry prank,” Marcus explained, “to kind of freak them out before the big game.”

  I bet I knew who suggested that theory. I glanced at Charlie, who shrugged in response.

  “But I don’t think it’s true,” Marcus said.

  My head whipped back toward him. “Why?”

  “Things don’t add up. The school day in Runswick ends at the same time as ours. They wouldn’t have had enough time to get here and wreck the locker room before our bell rang and the team went inside. Plus, pulling a locker door off its hinge?” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “That smells like monster trouble to me.”

  The football coach came out of the locker room and led the team outside. Charlie gave me one last look over his shoulder. I knew he wished he could help. But he couldn’t walk out of practice.

  Marcus, however, was close enough to the truth. Time to bring him into the circle.

  I let out a deep breath. “Come with me.”

  The halls were eerily empty, as most of the other students had left. The school buses had come and gone. A couple teachers remained in their classrooms, grading papers. The Debate Club argued in the library about how much time to give a response.

  “Where are we going?” Marcus asked.

  “The cafeteria,” I said. “I’ll explain when we get there.”

  The Vegans were clearly responsible for the locker room fiasco and while they weren’t in there anymore, they couldn’t have gone far. Robbie’s locker made a couple things clear—the little aliens were surprisingly strong, and they were hunting for vitamin C. If they could follow their alien senses to the slices in Robbie’s locker, it made sense that they’d head for the cafeteria next. It would be cleared out now, all the employees gone home.

  Mrs. Kemmerer, a social studies teacher, was leaving her classroom, arms piled high with overstuffed folders. She had a confused look on her face, and when she saw Marcus and me, she asked, “Did you see that?”

  I stopped in mid-stride. “See what?”

  “A small child just went tearing down the hall in a very realistic alien costume.” She shook her head. “I’m sure the parents paid a lot of money for a costume that high end. That child shouldn’t be playing around in it now, with Halloween still a month away.”

  Marcus pointed toward the cafeteria. “Did the, uh, child go that way?”

  “Yes.” She frowned. “But I haven’t seen a parent. That child is definitely too young to be a student here.”

  “We’ll keep an eye out,” I said, tugging Marcus away by his sleeve. We had to get to the Vegans before they attracted any more attention.

  I pushed the heavy swinging door to the cafeteria. I’d never been in there after school. I was used to the bright fluorescent bulbs and the chaotic sounds of a hundred conversations at once. I squinted through the dim light as my sneakers echoed in the silence.

  “Bex, what is going on?” Marcus asked in hushed tone.

  I led us around the freezer of ice cream treats and behind the counters where we lined up for hot lunch. “Where do you think they keep the fruit?”

  Marcus scratched his head. “Huh?”

  “Fresh fruit, like oranges and stuff.”

  He pointed to the far corner of the room. “Maybe in that giant steel fridge that should be closed but isn’t?”

  I spun around. Yep, that fridge looked like somewhere they’d store fruit. And the door was left open. So either the Vegans stole and ran. Or … they were still inside.

  “Stay behind me,” I said.

  I advanced slowly, trying to keep my sneakers from squeaking on the waxed floor. If the aliens were in that fridge, I had no idea what to do with them. I didn’t have Willa’s stroller. I didn’t have Vera with me to convince them to behave. All I had was my phone to translate. I glanced down and made sure the app was open. The fridge was closer now. So close, I could almost see around the open door.

  “What are we doing?” Marcus asked, too loudly. “Will you please tell me what’s going on?”

  Two Vegans jumped out of the giant fridge, and piles of fruit and food came with them, toppling to the floor. They must have been deep in there, gorging themselves. They both smelled like citrus and one of them even had mushy remnants of an orange all over his little mouth.

  I reached out to grab the closest alien before it could run past me. I got a good hold on its arm, and strangely enough it didn’t struggle. Its face looked weird, though, like something else was about to happen. And then its mouth opened widely in the center of its head, and it projectile-vomited mushy, half-digested oranges all over my shirt.

  “Yuck!” I cried, automatically releasing its arm. It scurried away with the other alien, who’d backed up into a corner of the room.

  I spoke as clearly as I could into my phone. “We mean you no harm. Your teacher sent us to save you.”

  Marcus jumped in front of me. “I’ve got this!” he yelled, pulling out his phone and opening the Alien Invasion game.

  “That won’t work,” I said.

  He
stabbed at the screen with his finger. “Nothing’s happening to them. It’s not working!”

  “Am I talking to myself here?” I rolled my eyes. “It’s different this time. They’re not the same as the monsters.”

  While Marcus and I were distracted for a couple seconds, the Vegans climbed up on top of a storage unit.

  “What are you doing up there?” I called. “Get down! We need to bring you to safety.”

  They blinked their neck eyes at me, understanding but not trusting. The one who’d puked on me simply said, “No.” Then it kicked out the vent cover and one after the other, they jumped up into the air ducts.

  Now I knew what that noise had been in Mr. Durr’s classroom. The HVAC system had a bigger problem than he thought.

  This was not good. I dragged my fingers through my hair. “We can’t fit into the air duct. And we’re going to attract attention if we stay here any longer. We’ll have to come back later with a plan.” I groaned. “They’ll never come to me without Vera. But I can’t bring Vera into school. Oh, what should I do?”

  “I actually think you are talking to yourself,” Marcus said.

  My shoulders sagged. “Sorry. I’m a little overwhelmed at the moment.” I risked a glance at him. Strangely, he was looking at me the way boys normally looked at Willa. I couldn’t understand why. Sweat was rolling down my forehead and my shirt was covered in alien barf. Not ideal for when you’re hanging with your crush.

  He pointed up at the ceiling. “Are there really aliens hiding in our school air ducts right now? Is that what I just saw?”

  “Yes. I have a lot to tell you. But it’s actually easier to show you. Do you have any plans this afternoon?”

  He smiled widely. “I do now.”

  As we walked to Grandpa Tepper’s garage, I brought Marcus up to speed with Wolcott’s real life alien invasion. From the night at the observatory to evil Bob, I told him every detail.

  “How is this happening again?” he asked, eyes wide.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I must be some sort of jinx or bad luck charm.”

  He gave me a look. “I don’t believe that.”