J.Lo had been sort of half hiding behind me, but now he poked out his sheet-covered head and made like he was going to shake Vicki Lightbody’s hand, too. I pushed him back.
“Hey, Halloween’s not for a few months, kid,” said Kat.
“Yeah…” I said, “but when the aliens invaded he got real scared and he put his ghost costume on, and now he refuses to take it off. Mom says he has a condition.”
“Yes,” said J.Lo. “I am conditioned.”
I could have slapped the both of us. “Plus, he talks with a funny voice,” I added. “It’s part of the condition.”
“Is not funny,” J.Lo whispered, but I kicked at him with my heel.
Vicki looked at us with a sad, oh-you-poor-things sort of look. It stinks to have people look at you like that, but it was the effect I was going for. Kat wasn’t so sympathetic.
“I’ll take it off him,” she said, and strode forward.
“No!” said J.Lo.
“No!” I said. “Don’t do it. If anyone tries, he starts screaming and…wets himself and stuff.”
That stopped Kat cold. She stepped back again.
“Well, he sounds like a Boov.”
Vicki clucked her tongue. “That’s a terrible thing to—That’s not true, JayJay. You don’t sound anything like a Boov.”
“Sounds exactly like a Boov.”
“Shut up, Kat.”
Vicki Lightbody gave her a look, a look that said the subject was closed, and Kat backed down; but not without stealing little glances at J.Lo from time to time. I casually stepped between them.
“Where are your parents?” asked one of the men.
“It’s just me—just us and our mom,” I said. “And hopefully she’s in Arizona. That’s where we’re going.”
“But why—”
“We got separated because of the aliens,” I continued. “I thought I could make it to Arizona on my own.”
“That’s a lot to handle for two children all alone,” said Vicki Lightbody.
I’m not a big fan of the word “child.” I don’t know any kid who likes it. But somehow we all grow up to be adults who say it all the time. It’s an insult when they use it to describe another adult, but they still turn around and use it to describe us. Like we’re not going to notice. Mostly adults only talk about “children” when they’re trying to make us seem precious and defenseless anyway.
“It’s a lot for anybody to handle alone,” I said. “But…luckily, we met this Boov in Pennsylvania who…wasn’t all mean and stupid like the rest of them. He fixed up our car so the trip would be easier. It might have taken a little longer without him.”
Nobody said anything for a few breaths. The rustling leaves sounded like faint applause.
“Well,” said Vicki, “one of the guys will drive your car back, and we’ll all see about some dinner.”
“Why…why don’t we just leave the car here,” I said. I couldn’t mention the brakes—we were going to have to fix that problem on our own, and do it without letting these people know how handy my so-called little brother was with Boovish machines.
“It has a sign sticking out of it,” said a man. He tried to pull it out but snapped his hand back with a yelp and a spray of blue sparks.
“Yeah, it always has that,” I said. “Should we go?”
Vicki Lightbody had a baby daughter named Andromeda They mostly lived alone. I say “mostly,” because everyone else apparently came and went through Vicki’s apartment as they pleased, as though it were the only place in Roswell with a shower.
Vicki busied herself in her kitchenette while Andromeda sat in her high chair and banged a spoon against the tray. J.Lo and I shifted our feet, not knowing where to stand.
“You said I was not mean and stupids,” J. Lo whispered.
“I know. Shut up.”
“You like me.”
“Shut up.”
I saw Vicki watching us.
“So…you all decided to stay in Roswell?” I asked.
“It’s my home,” Vicki answered. “I’ve lived here for forever. And it’s a pretty important place, don’t you know. It’s smack in the intersection of two powerful ley lines. That’s why so many spacecraft crash here.”
J.Lo and I glanced at each other.
“And the other people…” I said, “they’re your family?”
“Oh, no. No. They’re just visitors that got stuck here when the Boov closed the roads. They were in town for the big UFO festival we have every summer.”
Kat and one of the men entered the apartment and said they were using her bathroom because “David” was “stinking up the one in the museum.” J.Lo went to get a better took at Andromeda. I thought about what Vicki said.
“So…this UFO festival was when?”
“Last month, just like it always is. Right before the Boov announced Moving Day, as it turned out.”
“So you still had your UFO festival? I mean, the Boov had already been here for five months.”
“Ha!” said the man. “You catch on fast, kid.”
I didn’t know what he meant.
“What better time to hold the U-Fest-O than after the invasion?” asked Vicki. “It’s a meeting of the greatest minds in paranormal research from all over the world! We know more about the Boov than anybody.”
“Like about the Boov crashes in ’47 and ’63,” said Kat as she emerged from the bathroom. “And all the hundreds of sightings, and how the Boov want to impregnate us women to save their dying race.”
The man snorted. I mouthed “You do?” at J.Lo, but he quickly shook his head.
“Don’t forget the crash in ’85,” said Vicki. “That’s what alerted us to the link between the aliens and the Agarthans. The Agarthans are an ancient race of people who live inside the earth, Grace.”
I’d forgotten my name was Grace, so Kat spoke before I did.
“I didn’t ‘forget’ the crash of ’85,” she said. “You know how I feel about it. The evidence points to a government thought-control dirigible, not to—”
“The evidence,” said Vicki, “to anyone who isn’t too blind to see it, is that the indwells and outwells of energy from the earth’s hollow core create—”
“Whoa, hey. I know. I know what you’re saying, but you fail to—”
They went back and forth about it. Andromeda shrieked and started hitting her spoon against J.Lo’s round ghost head. The man knelt down beside me.
“You believe any of this, kid?”
I got the impression he didn’t.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I believe in aliens now.”
“Who doesn’t?”
Kat noticed us talking.
“Don’t you go poisoning her young mind, Trey,” she said. “You people want proof about the alien conspiracy? Have you tried looking south recently?”
“I’ve never said there weren’t any aliens!” Trey said. “I only said they haven’t been visiting, abducting, and impregnating us since 1947! And I still say it! If you claimed that elephants have been visiting Roswell for sixty-five years, and then the next day the circus came to town, that wouldn’t prove anything, now would it!”
Vicki approached while the two shouted.
“Grace, could you be a dear an’ go across the street to the museum and tell the rest that dinner is ready?”
“Sure,” I said. “Come on, JayJay.”
“So,” I said to J.Lo as we crossed the street, “if you’re gonna impregnate me, I think we should get married first.”
“That lady is crazy,” said J.Lo. “You know already howto the humans and Boov babies are made differently. I may as well impreganate the car.”
We were approaching the International UFO Museum. It looked like an old movie theater.
“Speaking of Slushious,” I said, “what are we going to do about that? We’ll have to sneak away to fix it.”
“I am afraid the problem might be being bigger than this. That roads sign has stuck into the Snark’s Adjust
able Manifold.”
“Important?”
“Ff. Is your heart important? Should you be okay with only three livers?”
“But you can fix it.”
“I do not know. It was a part from my scooter. If I cannot fix it, there is no other.”
We’d have to go back for Pig and J.Lo’s tools, but otherwise we could leave the car if we had to. We could borrow another—Roswell was full of cars. Even now I could just barely see a turquoise pickup truck driving past a saucer-shaped burger restaurant at the end of a row of streetlamps painted to have alien eyes.
The important thing was getting to Arizona. But the truth was, I wanted to do it in MY car. Slushious. We wouldn’t be borrowing another car, I thought as I pushed open the door of the museum. We’d be stealing.
We walked into the lobby, to have all our senses assaulted at once: rumpled threadbare sleeping bags like snakeskins all over the floor, empty bags of potato chips and pork rinds, a model flying saucer, the smell of chocolate and feet, a diorama of the 1947 crash site labeled “Foo Fighter,” an almost untastable taste of eggs in the air, scraps of plastic wrap and paper, a dead rubber alien on a gurney overseen by a human mannequin in surgical scrubs, a paperback book called Life, the Universe, and Everything, and enough pairs of underwear for thirty guys. I mean, really, it was a lot of underwear, like these guys were just wearing each pair once and then cracking open a pack of new ones.
“I wonder where the rest are,” I said.
J.Lo had his face pressed up against the alien autopsy exhibit.
“What is this?” he asked.
“That’s a fake dead alien. The fake doctor is going to cut it up.”
“Not very neighborlike.”
“Do you recognize the alien? Is it a real kind of people?”
“Hm. No. Looks unlike any race I know. Lookses a little like a M’Plaah. They are a sort of octopus for milking.”
“Right. I was just going to say the same thingWHERE IS everyone? HELLO?”
“Hello?” came a faint reply.
“Where are you?”
“On the roof…the stairs are by the restrooms,” said someone.
We found the bathrooms, which were labeled “Aliens” and “Femaliens.”
“Finally,” I said to J.Lo. “Here’s a bathroom you’re allowed to use.”
“I do not have to go.”
We opened a STAFF ONLY door and climbed the stairs to the roof. A man with the worst beard in America and the two little boys were up there with about ten telescopes of different sizes and shapes. The man hunched over a short fat telescope pointed south while the boys ran around.
“What’s all this?” I asked, to which one of the boys shouted, “Boob!” Then they both cracked up and shouted “boob” some more.
“Hey!” the man said. “The new kids! Come look at this!”
He had a thick, soft face that just flowed downhill into a thick, soft neck. A pencil-thin beard and mustache traced a line between the two, like an imaginary border on a map. There should have been a mountain range of jawbone to separate head from neck, but there wasn’t, so he’d done what he could.
“Look at what?” I said. “The big purple ball? We’ve seen it.”
“You haven’t seen it this close,” said beard-guy. “Look in here.”
I knew what I was going to see, and I didn’t want to see it. But J.Lo and I walked over anyway, and I squinted into the eyepiece.
“Isn’t that weird?” asked Beardo. “Doesn’t it look almost alive?”
With the telescope you could see the texture of the Gorg skin—its pores, blemishes, scabs, and freckles.
“Yeah,” I said. “Almost alive.”
“My turn,” said J.Lo. “You are hogging.”
But I didn’t give J.Lo his turn, because I saw something weird in the corner of the view. A spot on the skin of the ship was swelling.
“What’s that thing it’s doing?” I asked. “You know, where the skin starts to bubble up like that?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Beardo. “Let me have a look—”
“It is my turn. I am the next.”
“How do I move it?” I asked, while pushing the scope with my hand.
“Whoa. You don’t do it like that,” said Beardo, and he was right, of course. The view veered way, way too far to the right.
“Get it back, quick,” I said.
“You’re bossy,” said one of the boys.
“Hold on,” said Beardo, looking at a notebook. “Where was it before…um…right ascension 17 hours, 29 minutes, 16.4 seconds…declination negative 40, 47, and one second.”
The view went blurry, then I could see the swollen bit again. There was a whitish spot in its center, like a pimple.
“Move it up and to the right a little,” I said.
The sight came back into focus just in time. The fat shuddering balloon of skin suddenly doubled in size and spat the white bit out like it was popping a zit.
“Whoa!” I shouted, and backed away from the telescope. I scanned the sky to see if I could spot where the white part went.
J.Lo tried to lean into the viewfinder, but Beardo beat him to it.
“I see it,” said Beardo. “The bubble’s deflating. There’s a hole in the center.”
Just then I spotted two bright shapes over the mountains and grabbed J.Lo’s shoulder.
“Look!”
Far off, two Boovish ships were racing toward each other from different directions. When they met, their hoselegs fumbled around in the air between them. Whatever they were doing, they didn’t do it for long—the Gorg ship fired, missed, fired again, and popped one of the Boov ships like it was a glass balloon. The other ship limped away and was brought down with another blast.
Everyone on the roof was hushed for a moment, even the boys. Not for long, though.
“That was awesome!” said the loud one.
“Totally awesome,” said the other loud one. “The big ship was all, BSHOOM! An’ the little ship, one of the little ships—”
“It went, like, KSHHH!”
“I’m telling it! Dad!”
J.Lo looked miserable. You wouldn’t think you could tell that when a person’s wearing a ghost suit, but you can.
“That’s not the first time we’ve seen the ball destroy Boov ships,” said Beardo airily. “They’ve done it a couple times.”
Of course, it wasn’t the first time J.Lo and I had seen it either, but it seemed like too big a coincidence that it had happened right after I saw something launch out of the Gorg’s moon. And the Boov ships hadn’t been charging the Gorg ship; they’d only charged toward each other. Each other, or toward something else in the sky that was too small to see….
“Ricki say time for dinner,” said J.Lo.
“Vicki,” I hissed.
“Bicki.”
One of the boys heard us and shouted, “This meeting of BOOB is—”
“It’s my turn to say it—”
“—offishialy over!”
“Dad!”
“Just a minute, kiddo,” said Beardo.
“Waitaminute,” I said. “BOOB?”
“It’s the name of our club,” said boy number two.
“Are you guys from Florida or something?”
“No,” said Beardo. “Why?”
“Nothing.”
Both boys shouted over each other.
“It stands for—”
“Backyard—”
“Shut up!”
“Backyard telescope Ob…Observation of—”
“Of Occupation by Boov!”
“Farthead!”
We descended the stairs.
“I don’t know why I ask,” I said, “but shouldn’t your acronym be, like, BTOOB or something?”
“BOOB sounds better,” they said.
Boys. Honestly.
Dinner was sensational. I’m not kidding. You don’t realize what a casserole can do until you’ve spent two wee
ks eating from what, in honor of one of those UFO exhibits, I’m going to call the Four Foo Groups.*
“More hot dish?” asked Vicki.
“Yes. This is amazing.”
“Your brother doesn’t seem to think so.”
“Oh, don’t worry about JayJay. He’s one of those kids who never eats anything. We think he’s solar-powered,” I said, knowing that J.Lo had eaten all the little decorative soaps out of Vicki’s bathroom when he was supposed to be washing up.
“Well, I hope so,” said Beardo. “’Cause you kids might be here a while.”
I put my fork down. “What do you mean?”
“Well, that car of yours looks to be in pretty bad shape. And we could never let you just drive off on your own, anyway.”
I swallowed hard and felt a big wad of casserole stick in my throat. “I’ve gotten this far on my own. I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”
“Oh, my,” said Vicki. “Such spunk. You must’ve been a handful for your mom.”
The casserole made it the rest of the way down, but it burned my nose and made my eyes water. I thought about Mom.
“All right. So…what if someone did drive us the rest of the way? Why wait?”
Vicki and maybe a couple others chuckled.
“None of us has a car, Grace,” said Beardo.
“So we borrow one. The town is full of them.”
There was outright laughter now.
“And how do you suppose we start this mystery car?” asked Vicki.
“We’ve already been looking for a car or truck we could use,” said Kat. “You’d be surprised how many people took their keys with them when Roswell was evacuated. You can help us search, though. Eventually we’ll find keys that fit something.”
“We could hotwire a car,” I said. “Don’t you just cross some wires or something?”
There were blank stares all around the table. Beardo coughed.
“Grace, we’re paranormal researchers—”
“Which means they don’t know anything useful,” said Trey.
“Which means… that we don’t know about that kind of cop show stuff. Why don’t you tell us how to hotwire a car, huh, Trey? Break it down for us.”
I listened as they argued, my head in my hands. I’d already forgotten that things like missing keys could cause problems. J.Lo probably had perfume that could hotwire a car by smell, or some kind of car-starting hat or something.