Uncle Frank leaned forward in his chair. He started to reply—but suddenly swung around and stared at the doorway to the kitchen.
“What’s wrong?” Nathan asked.
Uncle Frank turned back to them. “Did you hear something? Probably just Jenny.” He shook his head. “Funny. I’ve had the strangest feeling that I’m being watched.”
“Weird,” Lindy muttered, glancing to the doorway. She didn’t see anything unusual there.
Uncle Frank shrugged. “I guess all scientists have that feeling when they’re working on something top secret.” He tugged down the sleeves of his white sweatshirt. He seemed to be thinking hard about something.
“So … do you really think you can help us?” Lindy asked eagerly.
“Yes. Yes, I do,” her uncle replied after a long moment.
Nathan slapped the arms of the chair excitedly. “You mean it? Something to make us smarter?” he asked.
Uncle Frank nodded. “Yes. I have been working on something. But …” He glanced to the doorway again. “It’s very top secret. And very dangerous.”
Nathan gasped. Lindy swallowed hard.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s too dangerous,” Uncle Frank said softly.
“But—if it will work …” Nathan urged.
“Oh, it will work,” the scientist replied. “It will definitely work. I’ve tested it out. I wouldn’t even try it on you if I hadn’t tested it out.”
“So … can we try it?” Lindy asked.
“Can we?” Nathan cried.
Uncle Frank frowned. Once again, he seemed lost in thought.
Then he startled the kids by jumping quickly to his feet. “Okay!” he declared enthusiastically. “Okay. Okay. Let’s try it.”
The scientist left the kids in the living room. Humming to himself, he disappeared into his lab. A few minutes later, still humming, he made his way into the kitchen.
Jenny looked up from the kitchen table where she was writing a grocery list on a long pad. She was a pretty, blond-haired woman, with soft brown eyes and a warm smile. “What’s up, Frank? Did you and the kids finish your top secret, private talk? Can I go out and see them now?”
He motioned for her to sit still. “Poor kids,” he muttered. He opened a food cabinet and began rummaging through bottles and jars.
Jenny came up beside him at the kitchen counter. “What’s wrong? Why did they come to see you?”
Frank grunted as he found what he was searching for. He pulled out a small bottle of purple grape juice.
Then he turned to his wife. “Nathan and Lindy somehow got it into their heads that they’re not smart.”
Jenny raised her eyes from the grape juice to her husband. “Excuse me? Not smart?”
Dr. King nodded. He examined the purple bottle. “The two of them are really upset. They came to ask me if I had anything to make them smarter.”
Jenny’s mouth dropped open. “And what did you tell them? I hope you told them that they are both very smart. That they shouldn’t worry about—”
He raised a finger to his lips. “I’m going to do something to build up their confidence,” he whispered. “That’s their whole problem. They have no confidence. They don’t believe in themselves.”
“What are you going to do?” his wife asked suspiciously.
“I think this will do the trick,” the scientist replied. “I went into the lab and made a label of my own on the computer.”
Dr. King set the grape juice bottle on its side on the counter. Then he held up the label he had printed:
BRAIN JUICE.
Jenny frowned at the label. “What on earth is Brain Juice?”
Dr. King chuckled. “I’m going to tell them it’s a secret formula that will make them smarter. You’ll see. It’s only grape juice, of course. But it really will help them. If they believe they are smart, they really will be smart.”
Jenny sighed. “Worth a try, I guess.” She hurried to the living room to talk to the kids.
Dr. King turned back to the bottle. He
carefully stuck the BRAIN JUICE label over the grape juice label. Then he turned the bottle in his hand, making sure that the grape juice label didn’t show through.
Perfect, he declared to himself. Perfect. You can’t see the old label at all. It’s now a bottle of Brain Juice.
Pleased with his clever idea, Dr. King smiled to himself. Still admiring the bottle, he started to the living room with it.
The phone rang. The phone in his lab down the hall.
He set the bottle down on the counter beside the pantry door and hurried to the lab to answer it.
As soon as the kitchen stood empty, the two aliens squeezed out of their hiding place. They bounced out of the pantry, leaving a wet stain on the floor behind them.
“Our chance, but we must hurry,” Gobbul whispered, eyeing the doorway.
“Did you see those humans in the other room?” Morggul replied excitedly. “They look young and strong. If we can make them smart enough, they could be the slaves we have come for.”
“Perhaps,” Gobbul replied. He wrapped a green tentacle around the grape juice bottle. “We shall see. We shall see. …”
He unscrewed the top of the bottle.
Morggul’s body made a wet slapping sound on the floor as he moved closer to his leader. “If we take the children as slaves, I want to eat the scientist. And his mate. I want to eat them alive, while they’re still fresh. Food tastes so much better when it’s screaming.”
Gobbul pushed his partner back. “Stop thinking only of your stomachs,” he scolded. “We have work to do.”
Morggul made a spitting sound through the purple pods up and down his arms.
Gobbul raised the Brain Juice bottle and poured the grape juice down the sink. Then he pulled another bottle of purple liquid from a pouch in his upper stomach.
Carefully, he poured his own purple liquid into the Brain Juice bottle. “Our only supply of Brain Energizer Fluid,” he muttered. “Let’s hope it works.” He capped the bottle and placed it back on the counter.
“Hurry, Morggul.” He gave his fat partner a push with all four tentacles. “Back into the pantry. Before the scientist King returns.”
Morggul gazed at the purple bottle. His lower mouth frowned. His upper mouth said, “No human has ever drunk this formula. How do we know what side effects it will have? Maybe it will kill them!”
Gobbul gave his partner another shove. “Maybe,” he replied. “We’ll see. …”
Dr. King returned to the kitchen. He picked up the purple bottle and started to take it to Nathan and Lindy in the living room.
“Hey—” he muttered in surprise when his shoe slid on something on the floor. He glanced down at several small puddles.
With a groan, he bent down and wiped two fingers through it. “Sticky,” he muttered. “Kind of slimy. Jenny must have spilled something.”
He heard his wife and the two kids laughing about something in the other room. With another groan, he stood and lumbered out of the kitchen.
“Here,” he said, rejoining the kids. He held up the bottle. “I think this will help you two.” He handed the bottle to Lindy.
She examined the label. “Brain Juice?” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously at her uncle.
Uncle Frank nodded. “My own formula. I’ve been working on it for many years.”
Nathan took the bottle from Lindy. “This stuff will make us smarter?” he asked. “How does it work?”
Uncle Frank dropped beside his wife on the couch. “Much too complicated to explain,” he told them. “It has to do with neurons and protons. And the electrical impulses in the brain.”
“It—it’s going to change our brains?” Nathan asked, staring down at the bottle in his hand.
“No. It won’t change you,” Uncle Frank replied. He and Aunt Jenny exchanged glances. The kids didn’t see him wink at her.
“To put it very simply, the chemicals in my Brain Juice formula knock down the roadblock
s in your brain. We want to open up the highways to your memory. The Brain Juice makes the electrical impulses flow more freely.”
Nathan and Lindy both gazed at the purple liquid in the bottle. “So what do we do?” Lindy asked. “How much do we drink?”
“You have to drink it all,” Uncle Frank replied. “Do it tonight when you get home. Divide the liquid in half. Each of you should drink half a bottle.”
“And then?” Lindy demanded.
“And then, forget about it,” Uncle Frank instructed. “Don’t think about it again. And don’t worry about getting smarter. Just study as hard as you can. Work harder than ever at your schoolwork.”
A smile spread over his round, pink cheeks. “And then you’ll see what happens. And I think you’ll be very happy.”
“We … we’ll be really smart?” Nathan stammered.
A horn honked outside. Two short honks, then a long one.
“That must be your parents,” Aunt Jenny said. “They’ve come to pick you up.” She crossed to the window and waved to them.
Uncle Frank held the Brain Juice bottle as Nathan and Lindy pulled on their coats. Then he handed it to Nathan as they made their way out the door. “Report back to me with the results,” he said solemnly. “And remember, this is a top-secret experiment. Don’t tell anyone.”
Nathan and Lindy agreed. They thanked their uncle, then hurried to the car.
Nathan hid the bottle deep in his coat pocket. He and Lindy were dying to tell their parents about it. But top secret meant top secret.
As soon as they got home, Lindy brought two drinking glasses into Nathan’s room. They carefully poured out the purple liquid, dividing it in two.
Nathan gulped. “I can’t believe it,” he said. The bedroom door was shut and locked, but he whispered anyway. “Do you think this stuff will really make us geniuses?”
Lindy stared down at the glass in her hand. “Uncle Frank is a genius,” she whispered. “He wouldn’t lie to us.”
Nathan burst out laughing. “It … it’s going to be so awesome!” he cried. “I mean, we’ll be the smart kids! Everyone in school will start thinking of us as the smart kids. How cool is that?”
“Cool,” Lindy agreed.
They raised their glasses. They clinked them together the way their parents always toasted each other.
The purple liquid shimmered thickly in the glow of the desk lamp.
“I hope it tastes okay,” Nathan said, hesitating.
“Just drink,” Lindy instructed.
They tilted the glasses to their mouths and drank.
Nathan lowered the glass with about an inch of liquid still in it. “It’s so thick,” he murmured, making a face.
“Drink it all,” Lindy urged. She pushed his glass back up to his face. “Drink it all, Nathan. You want to be as smart as you can, don’t you?”
He held his breath and swallowed the rest.
They set the glasses down. Lindy licked some purple liquid off her lips. “Tastes a little like licorice,” she said.
“Tastes like medicine,” Nathan grumbled. “Yuck.” He swallowed several times, trying to get rid of the taste. “I have to get some gum or something.”
“Do you feel any smarter?” Lindy asked.
“Duhhh … yeah,” he replied.
“Spell licorice,” she demanded.
“Huh?”
“Spell licorice, Nathan. Go ahead.”
They both knew that Nathan was the world’s worst speller.
He hesitated, thinking hard. “Uh … like-i-knowledge—No. Like-i-can-knowledge—”
“Stop,” Lindy said, shaking her head. “The Brain Juice isn’t working yet.”
“It isn’t supposed to be instant!” Nathan declared.
“I just hope it works by Wednesday.” Lindy sighed.
“Huh? Why Wednesday?”
“That’s the next math test.”
Nathan yawned loudly. “Wow. I suddenly feel so sleepy.”
“Me too,” Lindy admitted. “So sleepy I can’t keep my eyes open.”
Yawning, she said good night. Then she shuffled to her room across the hall, the strange licorice taste lingering in her mouth.
The two aliens bobbed up the stairs, leaving puddles of dampness on the carpet behind them. By the time they reached the second floor of the Nichols’s house, they were gasping for breath, the pods on their tentacles opening and closing like fish mouths.
“It’s the atmosphere on this awful planet,” Gobbul whispered. “It makes us five times as heavy.”
Morggul’s tentacles writhed and wriggled. Waves of thick perspiration rolled off his fat body. “Maybe we shouldn’t have landed in New Jersey. Maybe there are nicer places.”
“Too late for that now,” Gobbul replied with his upper mouth. His bottom mouth was turned down in a tight sneer.
“It took so long to get to this house,” Morggul complained. “Keeping in total darkness. Hiding every time one of their vehicles rolled by. It’s nearly morning, Gobbul.”
“Sssshh. Do not wake anyone.” Gobbul ran his tongues over his tusks. “We had to come to their house. We have to make sure they drank the formula.”
Their bodies slapping the carpet wetly, the two aliens made their way down the dark hall. They stopped outside Nathan’s bedroom and peered inside.
“The boy,” Gobbul whispered. He motioned with all four tentacles for Morggul to follow him.
They stopped beside Nathan’s desk. Gobbul gazed at the two empty drinking glasses on the desktop. He lowered a tentacle and sniffed the glasses with his pods.
“Yes,” he whispered. Smiles spread over his two mouths. “Yes. Two empty glasses.”
He turned to find that Morggul had stepped up to the bed. He was rocking on his short legs, studying the boy.
The boy slept soundly, silently on his back on top of the covers. He wore only pajama bottoms. One pajama leg had rolled up. His arms were crossed over his bare chest.
“Morggul—come away,” Gobbul called in a loud whisper. “Don’t wake him. Come away from there. We’ve seen all we need to see. We know that he drank the formula.”
“But, Gobbul—” Morggul protested. “Something is wrong! Something is terribly wrong!” He waved frantically for Gobbul to join him.
“Ssssshhh,” Gobbul hissed. “What is the matter?”
“The boy—” Morggul gasped, his face creased in horror. “He … isn’t breathing!”
Gobbul’s mouths opened in alarm. He pulled his body quickly over to the bed.
Did the formula kill the boy?
Morggul bent over the bed, staring at Nathan’s bare arms. “Do you see?” he whispered. “Not breathing!”
Gobbul leaned closer. He studied the boy for a long moment. Then he shut his eyes.
When he opened them, his expression was angry. “Morggul, you fool!” he rasped. “Humans do not breathe through their tentacles as we do.”
Morggul raised himself and turned to his leader. He made a wet, swallowing sound. “Huh? They don’t?”
“Humans breathe through those two holes on their faces,” Gobbul explained. “Look carefully. The boy is breathing steadily.”
The fat alien turned back to the bed, leaned close to the boy’s face, and watched him breathe. “Gross,” he murmured.
He raised his tentacles and sucked in large amounts of air through his purple pods. “Humans are so gross and disgusting.”
Gobbul nodded in agreement. “But if we can smarten up the boy and his sister,” he whispered, “then they will be what we came looking for—young and strong and smart. They will make excellent slaves for our leader.”
“And if the formula doesn’t work?” Morggul asked. “If it doesn’t make them smarter?”
Two smiles played over Gobbul’s face. “Then, Morggul, you can kill them and eat their hearts,” he whispered. “My treat.”
A thick gob of yellow drool ran down Morggul’s chins and spattered on the carpet at his feet. “How long do the
y have to get smart enough?” he asked hungrily. “How long will we give them?”
“Not long,” Gobbul whispered. “Let’s give them a week. Maybe two. Then … they are dinner.”
“Nathan! Lindy! Rise and shine! Rise and shine!”
Mrs. Nichols’s voice rang through the house as it did every school morning.
Nathan yawned and stretched his bare arms over his head. He shivered. “Cold in here,” he murmured, his mouth dry from sleep.
He opened his eyes and remembered he couldn’t find his pajama shirt the night before. It wasn’t in the pile of clothes he had tossed into the closet. So he had slept without it.
“Rise and shine! Rise and shine, you two!”
How can Mom sound so cheerful every morning? Nathan wondered. He stretched his arms again and lowered his feet to the floor.
“Yuck!”
What did I step in?
He squinted down at the yellow gob under his right foot. It was warm and wet. Nathan gazed up at the ceiling. Had something dripped down from the attic?
No.
He raised his foot and examined it. The thick yellow liquid stuck to his foot.
“Guess I squashed some kind of bug,” he murmured. A bug in the middle of winter? He hopped on one foot over to his dresser and grabbed a hunk of tissues to wipe the gunk off.
“How’s it going?” Lindy called in to him on her way to the bathroom.
“Not a good start,” he replied.
The day didn’t get any better on the school bus. Nathan took a seat by himself near the front. Lindy headed to the back to join Gail Matthews and Erika Jones and some other friends.
Nathan swung his backpack onto his lap and stared out the bus window. It was a gray winter day. Wisps of fog clung to the trees and hedges. Gathering clouds threatened snow.
Nathan turned and saw Ellen and Wardell in the seat across from him. He groaned to himself. They were showing off, as usual. Doing The New York Times crossword puzzle.
They asked each other every clue as loudly as possible so that everyone on the bus would see they were doing the puzzle.
No one else in our class can do that puzzle, Nathan thought bitterly. It’s way too hard. So Ellen and Wardell have to do it every morning on the bus to make us all feel like morons.