by Disney Books
“Bad news,” said Wes before Gabby could even squeeze in a hello. “So the Crybaby Duran thing that was definitely gonna blow over? It’s kind of a dance now.”
Wes angled his phone so Gabby could see a group of giggling girls performing the Crybaby Duran dance. The dance seamlessly married flossing with a brand-new move: pantomiming waa-waa eyes. Gabby had to admit the choreography was annoyingly catchy.
She put the phone down and turned to Sky. “You see what I’m dealing with here?” Middle school was supposed to be about Gabby blowing the minds of her fellow students with her hip dance moves and ultracool vibes. Instead, she was battling a widespread rumor about her being a sobbing Sally. The situation was out of control.
“So what are you going to do?” asked Sky. Having never attended a human school or been the subject of hurtful teen ridicule, Sky was unclear if a solution existed for such a problem.
“I don’t know what I can do,” said Gabby, shaking her head in frustration. “It’s not like I can just find out who started the rumor and make them take it back. I’m not a mind reader.”
Hold up! Gabby shot Sky a mischievous look. Sky nodded in total agreement. “I don’t even have to touch you to know what you’re thinking. And yes, I’m in.” Sky couldn’t wait to be part of a real-life teenage adventure.
“Good. ’Cuz tomorrow, you and I have some minds to read.” Gabby grinned.
The next morning, Gabby was up before her alarm even went off. She planned to put a stop to that crybaby rumor with one fun-filled day of alien telepathy.
Gabby climbed through Sky’s bedroom window, fired up to get the party started. “All right, who’s ready for schooooool?” cried Gabby, tripping over the Sir Francis Drake cardboard cutout.
“Sorry, fake Drake,” Gabby said, standing the explorer back up. That was when she noticed Sky, in the exact same outfit she had worn the day before.
“Okay, first things first,” said Gabby. “I love this look, but I don’t think junior high is ready for it yet. Maybe we can add a hat? Burn that robe?” Floor-length robes might fly with Supreme Court justices and college graduates, but the style had yet to trickle down to middle schoolers.
“I collect teen memorabilia. Will that help?” asked Sky, opening the doors to her closet.
Gabby eyed the racks of hip clothes and cool accessories with a smile. A makeover session, like one of those montages from a classic teen film, was definitely in order. Sky was about to live her teen-girl dream, and she needed to look the part.
Since Sky’s glowing scalp would stick out in the school hallway, Gabby started by grabbing a stack of hats from the shelves. She tried a metallic silver cap, a pale pink beret, and a multicolored bucket hat, none of which worked with Sky’s bald head. Gabby suggested a green cowboy hat and a sequined painter’s cap before reaching for a shoulder-length blond wig.
“That’ll work,” confirmed Gabby. The light color looked natural against Sky’s pale skin. This alien could really rock the long-layers look.
Sky stared at her reflection in the mirror, stunned. “I look like a cool teen!”
Next Gabby swiped tinted lip gloss across Sky’s mouth, then grabbed a tube of mascara. “I’ve actually never put mascara on another person before,” she said. “How poke-resistant are your eyes?” From Sky’s expression, Gabby could tell the answer was “not very.”
Then Sky stepped into her closet and came out modeling a black jumper, a beige turtleneck, and a pair of oversized glasses. “You look like my aunt Harriet,” said Gabby, frowning. Not that there was anything wrong with her favorite tia, but Aunt Harriet was pushing seventy-eight.
Next Sky selected a striped sweater and a pair of pink overalls, with only one shoulder fastened. “I like it,” cheered Sky, a fan of that look.
“Me too,” said Gabby, staring down at her own striped-sweater-and-one-shouldered-overall combo. “But I don’t do twins.”
For her final first-day-of-school look, Sky paired gray skinny jeans with an ocean-blue sweater and a dark denim jacket.
“Bingo! The perfect middle school look,” declared Gabby. “A little bit geek and a little bit chic.”
“I feel dope to the max,” gushed Sky.
Gabby laughed. “We’ll work on the lingo,” she said. It wasn’t even nine a.m. and she was already having a fun day.
Just then, Wesley appeared in Sky’s window. Like Gabby, he crashed into the cardboard cutout as he climbed through. “Sorry, Sir Francis Drake,” said Wesley. “I love that guy!”
Gabby helped Wesley and the famed explorer back to their feet. “And sorry I’m late,” Wes said. “My dad wasn’t buying my usual sick routine. I had to actually throw up.”
Gabby and Sky exchanged awkward looks, unsure what to say about Wes’s extra effort. Gabby decided it was a statement for which there was no appropriate comeback, so she skipped straight to the introductions. “Wesley, this is Sky. Sky, Wesley.”
Wesley reached out and shook Sky’s hand, thrilled to be in the presence of a certified extraterrestrial. “Super excited to meet you. So, what am I thinking?”
“You’re super excited to meet me,” said Sky, reading his mind. “And you miss your dog, Brisket?”
Wesley’s mouth turned down at the corners, and his eyes filled with tears. “That dog was a brother to me.”
“Okay, people,” Gabby said, seamlessly taking on the leadership role, “Sky told her very gullible parents she was gonna sleep all day. Wes, that’s where you come in. You’ll stay here and pretend to be her. We’re counting on you. If Sky’s dad finds out Sky’s missing, we’re toast.”
Wesley nodded. Lucky for Sky, he took his alien interactions very seriously. He’d practically spent his whole life training for this moment. Besides, how dangerous could her dad really be?
“If my dad does catch you, and the lights on his head turn red, you should run. Like, ruuuuuuun,” said Sky.
“Okay, then!” said Gabby, patting Wes on the back. “No backing out now! See ya!”
“Yeah!” chimed in Sky, waving cheerfully.
Gabby grabbed Sky and led her out the window. They had a rumor to stop.
Earthling teen life was everything Sky had imagined and more. Walking down the Havensburg Junior High hall, Sky wasn’t sure where to look first. Everything was so cool: kids with backpacks, sporting sneakers and carrying reusable water bottles. “So this is junior high,” she said, gawking. “Look! Lockers!” Her mouth fell open as she gaped at the red lockers that lined every wall.
Gabby was amused by Sky’s amazement. There was something charming and refreshing about it.
“Is that a jock?” asked Sky, having read all about them in her teen romance novels. She was positive the boy at his locker a few feet away was one of them.
“I’ll school you on school later,” said Gabby, pretty sure the bookish boy in the fleece hadn’t kicked or thrown a ball around in his life. “Let’s find out who started this rumor before Swift spots us, since I’m not supposed to bring aliens to school.”
Sky sprinted up to the maybe jock and placed both her hands on his cheeks. She couldn’t wait to read his thoughts.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Gabby, pulling Sky away from the startled boy. “We don’t touch other kids’ faces like that in middle school. Or anywhere else, really.”
“Oh, sorry,” Sky said.
Gabby threw her arm around Sky and leaned in conspiratorially. “What you want to do is accidentally bump into someone on purpose, like this.” Gabby gently shoved Sky right into a girl wearing glasses.
The girl brushed it off, assuming Sky was just some kind of klutz. But the brief encounter was enough to allow Sky to read her mind.
“Get anything?” asked Gabby, eager to discover who had started the rumor about her.
“She picked her nose twenty minutes ago and is trying to figure out where to put it.”
Gabby made a gagging face. “Good to know. She sits behind me in math class.” She made a mental note to scoo
t her chair forward a bit in fourth period.
Sky buzzed down the hall in glee, the silver mini backpack Gabby had picked out for her bouncing with every step. As Sky walked by the bathroom, she noticed a handmade sign taped to the door. “‘Crybaby Duran’s House,’” read Sky. “That’s bad, right?” Beneath the words, someone had drawn a sad face.
“Yeah, it’s bad,” said Gabby, ripping the sign down and crumpling it into a ball. “For whoever started this rumor.” Nobody called Gabby Duran a crybaby and got away with it. “Now, let’s—”
Gabby lost her train of thought as she saw Principal Swift walking down the hall straight toward them. If he caught Sky at school, Gabby’s alien babysitting days were over. And Gabby was not about to let that happen. There was only one solution: Gabby shoved Sky into the janitor’s closet.
“Wha—” Sky yelped in protest. But Gabby slammed the door before Sky could finish her thought.
As she did, Swift, all gangly legs and awkward arms, strode up to her. “So, Gabby. I trust everything went well at Sky’s house yesterday.”
Never great at lying, Gabby began to ramble. “Yep, sure did. She’s definitely not here. She’s at home. Not here at school, because that would be against the rules.” She glanced sideways at the janitor’s closet. “She’s not here.”
“Carry on, then.” Swift nodded, oblivious.
Gabby realized one good thing about having an alien for a principal was that he was slow to sense when something was amiss. Everything Earthling teens did seemed strange to him, so why would Gabby’s odd behavior stand out? With Swift out of sight, Gabby pulled Sky from the closet, hoping she wasn’t too traumatized.
She wasn’t. “I found a new wig!” she announced, wearing a mop on her head. She parted the strings to frame her face, then tucked a few ropes behind her ears.
“Cool!” Gabby smiled, immediately removing the mop from Sky’s head and tossing it back in the closet. She so badly wanted to teach Sky what was and wasn’t considered cool in junior high, but first they had a crybaby quest to complete.
Deep in the basement of Principal Swift’s house, the floating Orb continued to lecture Jeremy on the finer points of Gor-Monite geology. As it spoke, its pentagon-shaped panels moved in and out, in sync with its speech pattern. “To understand the intricacies of the pressure-release matrix, we must—”
“Buuuuuurrrrrrp.” Jeremy belched. He was beyond bored with the tedious lesson.
The Orb clicked and chirped, then extended its laser scalpel toward Jeremy’s head. “Enough is enough. You will learn,” demanded the Orb.
Jeremy stared at the Orb, unfazed and unintimidated. “Sorry, Orb. No one makes me learn.” He morphed into his green blob form, opened his mouth wide, and roared at the Orb through his gaping maw. The Orb backpedaled. Perhaps it would try a new approach to its lesson plan.
Meanwhile, Wesley was spending his sick day checking out Sky’s teen paraphernalia collection. As president of the Mysteries of Havensburg Club, Wes found it fascinating to see life on Earth through an alien’s eyes. Plus, he was wigging out just thinking about the fact that he was sitting in an actual extraterrestrial’s room.
“Sky,” called Sky’s dad, knocking on the door.
Wes tried not to panic, but on the other side of that knock was a full-grown adult alien whom he’d been warned not to anger. He’d read enough sci-fi books to know that good things never came from angering aliens. Thinking quickly, he jumped into the bed and hid under the fuzzy pink covers. Sky’s dad opened the door and moved toward the bed. The lights on his head flashed as he leaned down to speak to his daughter telepathically.
“Wait!” cried Wes, speaking in a terrible high-pitched imitation of a girl’s voice. He had to stop Sky’s dad from pulling back the covers. “I mean . . . may we practice speaking human?” For some reason, Wesley’s awful girl voice also involved a cockney accent. He really hoped Sky’s dad was buying it.
Sky’s dad leaned back from the bed, puzzled. Sky sounded strange. “Your talking voice is odd to me—I hear it not much, I suppose. Very well.” He stood back up and walked toward the door. “I brought the man’s best friend for keeping company.” He let a fluffy chocolate Labrador into the room, then left and closed the door.
Wesley pulled the covers off his head. He sat up, stunned at the sight before him. There, in Sky’s room, was . . . could it be? “No way! Brisket?” asked Wes tentatively.
The dog wagged his tail and tilted his head as if he recognized his name. Then he sat obediently and stared up at Wesley with his irresistible giant puppy-dog eyes.
Gabby and Sky were laughing as they rounded the corner. Sky had an openness and enthusiasm about her that Gabby enjoyed. As they made their way down the hall, Gabby spotted a curly-haired girl scrolling through her phone in front of her locker. “Okay, there’s Molly,” Gabby told Sky. “She’s the biggest gossip in school. I guarantee you she knows something. Go get her.”
Gabby hung back and waited expectantly as Sky walked toward Molly. She accidentally-on-purpose brushed up against Molly’s gray sweater sleeve, just as Gabby had demonstrated. She returned to Gabby with a giant grin.
“So? What’d you discover?” asked Gabby, waiting for the big reveal.
Sky took a deep breath, then dove in at rapid-fire speed. “Molly heard the rumor from Ted, who likes her, but she totes has a crush on Isaac, but he likes Jenna, so she can’t even! Crazy, right? Oh, snap, we should go find Isaac!”
Okay, that was way too much information. “I think you’re getting a little too into the teen drama,” said Gabby. “I don’t need to know everything that’s going on with everyone in school. I just need to know who started the rumor about me. Focus.”
Sky took a step back. “Focus? Focus on what? On this Jenna girl everyone’s thinking about? What’s so special about her? I know, right?”
Gabby looked at Sky, who was clearly overwhelmed. She gently put her hand on Sky’s arm. “Yeah, maybe it wasn’t such a great idea bringing you here,” she said. “I think I should take you home.”
“What?” roared Sky. “Home? No way! I wanna find out more!” Sky was finally living her dream. She was interacting with other beings her age, and she was not about to give that up. Not even for her new friend, Gabby. Sky bolted down the hall, sprinting away from Gabby as quickly as she could. “I love teen stuff! Whoooooo!” she shouted, brushing up against as many students as possible and reading their gossip-filled minds.
Back at Sky’s house, Wesley sat on the corner of the bed, comparing his dog-eared picture of Brisket to the panting dog before him. They looked exactly the same. Wesley knew he had to test his hypothesis.
“Speak,” he instructed. The dog barked.
“High-five,” he commanded. The dog placed his adorable paw atop Wesley’s hand.
“Fetch,” directed Wesley, picking up Sky’s pink beret and tossing it across the room. The dog didn’t move. Wesley nodded in appreciation. “Brisket was always too proud to fetch.”
The dog thumped his tail in agreement.
All signs pointed to yes, this had to be Brisket. Wes reasoned that if aliens could be living down the street in Havensburg, it wasn’t too far-fetched that his old dog could be living under one of their roofs. “There’s only one sure way to know if you’re my dog, though,” said Wes. “We need broccoli.”
When Wes was eight years old, he hated broccoli. Every night, his mom would make it for dinner. And every night at dinner, Wes would feed it to Brisket under the table. Wes couldn’t understand why, but his dog loved the vegetable. He couldn’t get enough of it. So Wes reasoned that if Sky’s dog was also a huge fan of broccoli, he had to be Brisket.
Wes opened the bedroom door and silently snuck down the hall. He passed the den, where Sky’s dad was meditating in a podlike recliner with his eyes closed. Careful not to disturb him, Wes tiptoed the rest of the way to the kitchen.
The kitchen was modern and sparse, like the rest of the house. Wes opened the stainless stee
l refrigerator to discover a definitive lack of broccoli. In fact, shelf after shelf was filled with stacked cans of green beans. He shut the fridge and opened the cabinets only to see the same. Wes tried another cabinet, but it was no different. “Green beans! So close!” muttered Wes in frustration.
Wes heard the den door close; Sky’s dad was on the move. No sooner had Wes slid down behind the kitchen counter than Sky’s dad walked into the room. The alien picked up a lone white mug from the counter and placed it in the sink. He noticed a cabinet door was open. He looked around suspiciously, then closed it before walking out. Wes remained crouched behind the counter for a few more minutes, frozen in fear.
Meanwhile, Gabby was dealing with her own alien crisis. She’d searched all over the school but hadn’t located Sky. She turned a corner near the science wing and finally spotted her. “Sky, there you are!”
Sky was fired up. “Gabby, I just heard the coolest thing! Do you know there’s also a rapper named Drake?”
“We gotta get you home,” suggested Gabby.
“I told you, I can’t go home! Not when there’s so much teen knowledge to absorb!” Sky spread her arms out wide and spun.
Just then, the school bell rang and throngs of students flooded out of the classrooms and into the hall. Tall kids, short kids, punk kids, emo kids—all jostling Sky as they passed her on the way to their next classes. Gabby got separated from Sky and watched helplessly as Sky bounced from student to student like a blond pinball. Bumping into kids from every angle, Sky absorbed an astronomical barrage of brain waves. “Test next period. I have to go to the library. Where is Lisa? She said she’d meet me.…” Sky started to tremble as she repeated the semi-coherent thought fragments she’d picked up from the students. “I love Manny. Dancing. School dance. Class. Teacher. Gym. Headbands. Should I grow a mustache?” Sky’s head lolled as she glitched and sputtered nonsense.
