Blast Off! (4 page)

08

The Plan?

“W
hat happened to the plan?” I said into my backpack as I snuck into an empty science lab to talk to Amp before first bell.

“What plan?” Amp said innocently in his squeaky voice.

“Nice advanced civilization,” I grumbled. “You can't even stay put for ten minutes.”

“Look who's talking about civilizations,” he said, pointing at me from the pocket. “My civilization doesn't create ploogs like Max Myers.”

“‘Ploog'?” I yelped. “What's a ploog?”

“It's Erdian—and I'm not telling you what it means. You're not old enough.”

“Really? And how old are you?”

“Hmmm. If you wanted to count my age by your solar calendar—ours is totally different, of course—with each rotation of Earth around your sun being equal to one year . . . I'm about 412.”

“Seriously? Amp, you're a total geezer!”

“Don't get ploogy on me now, Zack McGee,” he said.

“Okay, I call a truce,” I said, putting my backpack down on a lab worktable. “I thought we agreed you'd stay hidden in my room until I got home this afternoon.”

“I'm a scout,” he explained simply, “so you can understand how I'd be a little bit curious to learn more about Earth.” He stepped out of the pocket and surveyed the science classroom.

“
That's
your periodic table of the elements?” he guffawed, pointing to a big chart on the wall. He studied it for a minute. “Zack, you're missing over half of the elements!”

“Amp, I don't even know what an element is,” I said simply.

Amp sighed and then turned his back and whispered into his wrist:

“Council Note: Earthlings have only identified 118 elements. They have organized them by something called an atomic number.”

Then he looked over his shoulder at me and shrugged. “I went to school for over a hundred Earth years, you know.”

“Whoa, and I thought I had it bad.”

The first bell rang then. It almost scared the blue off of Amp. He dove back into the pocket headfirst. Man, he was fast when he wanted to be.

“What on Erde was that?” he called out from somewhere in the pocket.

“Just first bell,” I groaned. I pressed the top of my head with both hands, trying to think. “You can't bring a hamster to school without three permission slips. I can't imagine what they'd think about a four-hundred-year-old alien.”

“They'd probably make an exception,” Amp said hopefully, crawling back out of the backpack.

“No!” I snapped. “Principal Luntz makes no exceptions. He has a strict no-exceptions policy. Of course, I don't think the Reed School Student Conduct Guidebook covers alien invaders.”

“I can handle the principal,” he said. “Just bring me to him and I'll have him barking like a cat in no time.”

“That's not gonna happen,” I said. “And cats don't bark; dogs bark.” His threat reminded me of the bus trip and Max Myers. “Now explain what happened with that ploog Max Myers.”

“Ploog?” Amp shouted with delight. “You learn things fast, Zack.”

“How'd you make him do those things?” I asked. “It's like the most awesome Jedi mind trick ever! Can you teach me how to do that?”

“No, I can't,” he said. “My brain is different from yours.”

“Yeah, it's probably the size of a peanut.”

“Smaller, yes, but much more dense.”

“You're dense?” I asked. “I think that means dumb.”

“No, as in density!” Amp said with disbelief. “C'mon, Zack, density is the ratio of mass to volume, a measurement of compactness. You should know that by now.”

“Oh, right. But what's that got to do with mind tricks?”

“Let's see, how can I explain this?” Amp stared at the ceiling for a second, then continued. “I can send a quick pulse, a short mental burst, similar to a sound wave, that can impact a human brain's thoughts, but just for a few seconds. It's more like an impulse.”

“An impulse?” I asked.

“You seem somewhat unfamiliar with your own language. Haven't you read your dictionaries and encyclopedias? An impulse is a strong and sudden urge to act or do something, but it doesn't last.”

“That's why Max went from being my best friend, to offering me his lunch money, to smelling flowers, to having an itch,” I said excitedly, getting it now.

“Exactly,” Amp said. “It's powerful, but it doesn't last.”

“Do me!” I exclaimed, clapping at the thought of it. “C'mon, try one on me.”

“Really? Are you sure?” Amp asked. I nodded. “Okay,” he said with a smile.

Suddenly, I could taste the worst sour milk imaginable. Not just a few days old, but a few weeks old—the kind of spoiled, curdled milk with the big, slimy, gray blobs in it. “AUGH!” I rasped, ready to puke up my half-eaten frozen waffle.

I proceeded to stumble around gagging for a few seconds and, just like Amp said, it faded as fast as it came on. Powerful, but brief. My breakfast was safe, for now.

“You couldn't make me taste cherry pie? Or pizza? You had to do sour milk?” I shouted.

“I was looking for a powerful demonstration,” he chirped with delight. “Now that I have your attention, there may be some materials here that we'll need for fixing my ship. Do they have strong magnets in a classroom like this? How about tungsten?”

“What in the world is tungsten?”

“It's right there in the table of elements, the box with the big W,” he said, pointing at the poster on the wall. “Its atomic number is seventy-four, which tells us how many protons are in its nucleus. Tungsten is a very dense metal with an extremely high melting point—the second highest of your elements, after carbon, of course. We'll need some of that if we are going to repair my ship.”

“Man, you're a total nerd, Amp,” I sighed.

“And you're more dense than I thought,” he said with a shake of his head. “So do they have any here?”

“Amp, this is the science lab, and this year is the first year I'll get to come in here, but I haven't had a science lab yet. So I don't know if they have your tongue stuff.”

“Tungsten,” he corrected.

“Whatever,” I replied. “Plus, I've got to go to class.”

“Then I'll just stay here,” he waved at me. “Go on and learn, I'll stay here and survey the inventory.”

“Oh no, you won't,” I said forcefully. “I'm not leaving you anywhere. You'll get caught.”

“Nobody will catch me, Zack, we need to gather these materials now to—”

The second bell rang. Amp yelped and bolted back inside his pocket with the pens and pencils. “How often does that floofy noise happen?” he called out with irritation.

“‘Floofy?' Speak English, please,” I said, snatching up my backpack, zipping Amp's pocket closed, and heading for the door. “That's the second bell. It means I have less than a minute to be in my seat.”

09

Classroom Commotion

R
ule #1: If you ever have an alien, do not bring it to school.

Ever.

Aliens and school do not mix.

This became clear within a few minutes after collapsing in my chair at the front of my classroom.

“Oh dear, does anyone smell vanilla?” Miss Martin was asking by the time I stuffed my backpack under my chair. She laughed nervously. “It's like a vanilla extract truck has tipped over,” she said, looking out the window. “It's so strong.”

“Oh, no,” I whispered to myself. “Not again.”

The entire class was silent, looking puzzled and giving each other mystified looks and shrugs.

“Class, please open up your social studies workbooks to chapter seventeen,” Miss Martin commanded as she returned to her senses. Before I could pull my workbook out she made another odd announcement. “First, class, I'd like everyone to know that I think Zack McGee is this school's most handsome young man,” she said with oddly questioning eyes.

After a moment of stunned silence, everybody erupted in laughter. I sank lower in my chair. My face got warm.

“Amp,” I thought with all my might. “Please stop! Please don't do this!”

Suddenly, Emily Binkbarton stood up next to her desk and exclaimed, “Oh, I agree, Miss Martin. He's as cute as peaches.”

Peaches?

The class erupted with more laughter.

“Zack's face makes me feel safe and relaxed,” shouted Davey Swope, apparently horrified by his own mouth.

Safe and relaxed? What the—

“I want to run my fingers through his hair!” Lexie Evans suddenly blurted out, as if she just won the big prize at bingo.

Now the laughter was so out of control it seemed to fill my head.

I must have blushed bright red. My face felt like it was about burst into flames.

Amid all this laughing, commotion, and confusion, I whipped my backpack out from under my desk, dropped it roughly on my desk, and yanked open the zipper of the pen-and-pencil pocket.

“Amp, you cannot just—” I began.

The pocket was empty.

Huh?

Amp was gone.

“Amp!” I yelped, searching desperately around my desk.

My alien had gone rogue!

“What is going on?” Olivia said in my ear, her voice piercing through the roar around us. Olivia sits a few desks behind me, in my row, but she was now standing next to me, shaking my shoulder. “Is this a prank? It's great. Why didn't you tell me?”

“I can't talk right now,” I said, pushing past her. With my backpack clutched in my hand, I proceeded to squat down and duckwalk down the aisle, searching furiously around everyone's feet. “Amp!” I growled. “You're in big trouble, mister. I'm gonna wring that tiny blue neck of yours! Get back in your pocket!”

He was nowhere.

“Zack McGee, please take your seat,” Miss Martin ordered from behind me with a loud clap. Her impulse about my handsomeness had apparently faded. In fact, everyone else seemed back to normal, too. Amp probably was no longer in the room. Then it occurred to me: all this crazy talk was just a distraction. Amp used his Jedi mind trick so he could escape! He was probably running wild through the hallways right now looking for the science lab and his tongue stuff.

“Can I go to the bathroom?” I asked abruptly, jumping to my feet.

She must have seen the absolute panic in my eye. “By all means, Zack,” Miss Martin said with an understanding nod, waving me toward the door.

I stumbled out into the deserted hallway. Where was he? “I'm getting you a cage!” I whispered as loudly as I could.

I figured he was headed for the lab, so I bolted around the corner and ran right into Principal Luntz. His big belly stopped me like a wall of cheese.

“McGee, this is not good,” he said, staring down at me. He took a firm hold of my arm. With his other hand he poked his glasses back up his nose. He shook his head with disappointment. “Why are you running through the halls during class? What's going on?”

Never before had telling the truth seemed like less of an option.

“Let's see if a call to your parents loosens your tongue,” he huffed in frustration, walking me toward the school office.