by Elise Allen
“There is an alien in that picture,” a woman’s voice said icily.
“Where?” Edwina asked. “Can you point to the Boingle? Can you see even the slightest outline of him?”
Gabby leaned forward in her seat, and not just because the recliner’s massaging roller was now boring into her skull. She squinted, but even though she knew exactly where Bob was in the shot, and even though the picture itself was blown up to the size of a massive billboard, she couldn’t see him at all.
“You cannot,” Edwina finished, “in part because of the angle of the shot, and in part because his skin blends in perfectly with the tree’s leaves. This is nothing but a ridiculous tabloid article, and it never once even hints at an alien child’s presence.”
“It doesn’t have to!” The loud man’s voice was shrill now. “It labels Associate 4118-25125A as a F lying Girl ! You know what kind of girls f ly on Earth? Alien girls, or girls with access to alien technology. And it’s no help calling this a ‘ridiculous tabloid.’ You know as well as I do that our enemies monitor tabloids, and if they suspect Associate 4118-25125A is working with us, or worse—is an alien herself—she can’t possibly do her job. The life of every alien child in her care will be in jeopardy. And, not that it matters, but her life will be in jeopardy!”
“Not that it matters?” Gabby echoed.
“Gabby’s life is in jeopardy all the time,” Edwina said. “That’s immaterial.”
“Wait—all the time?” Gabby asked.
“It’s hardly the first mistake Associate 4118-25125A has made,” the icy female voice noted. “Need we remind you of this spectacle?”
The picture on the giant screen switched to an image of a cafeteria in chaos. Food trays f lew in every direction, and students and teachers gaped in shock as a two-foot tall, hot-pink fuzzy hat swung on a hanging light fixture.
The hat was actually an alien named Wutt—Gabby’s very first babysitting job from A.L.I.E.N.
“It looks bad,” Gabby admitted, “but Wutt was fine. No one knew she was an alien. She even—”
“Or this?” the woman asked, and the screen switched again, this time to a troll child standing horizontally like a f lagpole on the side of a building, leering down at Gabby’s friend Satchel, who stood pale and open-mouthed, and looked like he was about to pass out.
“Okay,” Gabby said, “but you have to understand—”
“Or this,” the woman continued. And the image changed again, this time to the suburban cul-de-sac where Gabby, Satchel, Madison, and Zee had landed with the Tridecalleon babies when they’d zapped off a spaceship and back down to Earth. The entire cul-de-sac was roped off with caution tape, several black vans sat at the entrance, and Gabby saw Edwina holding out a small bunny to Madison—the bunny that would erase all her memories of alien activity.
“The blonde girl wasn’t the only one whose memory we had to adjust that day,” the woman said. “We were
only lucky that more people weren’t at home. And these are only the beginning.”
The giant screen began to strobe now, image after image f lickering by, one immediately after the other. There was Gabby in science class, her eyebrows still smoking from an encounter with a fire-breathing Dragornian; there were Satchel and Zee clinging to Gabby’s legs as she soared away on a six-year-old Blimperwill she’d tried to pass off as a parade balloon; there was the crowd of people at the beach pointing and staring at Gabby’s astounding “surfing” skills when she had actually just leaped on to a Mermoid girl to stop her from swimming away.
There were so many images that by the time Gabby recognized one, twelve more had f lipped past, but the idea was clear: an endless parade of Gabby’s Greatest Mistakes. When the screen froze back on the Third Eye article, the loud man’s voice returned.
“And now this,” he railed, “which is the final straw and leaves us no choice but to shut down the Unsittables program for good!”
Everything went silent. Gabby didn’t dare breathe. Was this really it? Was A.L.I.E.N. actually firing her?
“I’m afraid I have to agree,” said a new voice. This one was also female but younger, and it seemed to resonate from all over. “My ruling is that the Unsittables program is—”
“Wait, Your Honor,” Edwina said. “I will be the first to admit that Gabby Duran is far from an ideal Associate. She has shown herself to be careless, overly trusting, and often takes risks that are nothing less than absurdly shortsighted.”
“Um, Edwina? Maybe I should be representing myself. Your Honor—”
Gabby tried to sit up, but the massage chair changed to squeeze mode—its sides squished around her so tightly she could barely breathe.
“She also cares deeply for alien children,” Edwina continued, “and every single mishap in that poorly edited montage—”
“Hey, I went to film school!” interjected the meek-
voiced man.
“—was a direct result of Gabby going out of her way to try to accommodate these children, and make them happy while keeping them safe. You will also note that despite every lapse of professionalism, none of these children have been harmed or exposed.”
“We’ve been lucky,” replied the icy-toned woman.
“No,” Edwina said. “We’ve been in good hands. Which is more than I can say for Gabby herself, who appears to be turning blue. Can we get rid of the chair?”
“I thought it would make her more comfortable,” the meek-voiced man said, but an instant later the chair was gone, and Gabby was instead f loating in the complete darkness. Her body tilted backward, so she was stuck upside down, her knees tucked in and her arms f loating out at her sides, like she was submerged in deep water.
“The chair actually was more comfortable,” she said as she struggled to right herself. “Do you think maybe you could—”
“Besides,” Edwina said, continuing her thought, “we can’t make any decisions right now. The P.T.A. meeting is tomorrow. The fate of the entire universe rests on Blinzarra, and she can’t attend without a proper babysitter.”
The meek man, the blowhard, and the icy woman all started talking at once, but the voice of the judge sliced through them all.
“Enough! Edwina is correct. Our Unsittables program is still new and has exactly one sitter: Associate 4118-25125A. We need her.”
“You do?” Gabby’s body had started uncontrollably rolling in midair. If she hadn’t been so nauseous, she would have felt proud. “I’m really the only one?”
“We’ll see how she does,” the judge continued, ignoring Gabby’s question, “and we’ll judge her competency afterward. That is all.”
Gabby heard the BOOM! of a gavel pounding on wood, over and over. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Then Edwina’s voice whispered right in her ear. “It’s settled. The future of the Unsittables program rests on you successfully babysitting during tomorrow’s P.T.A. meeting. I suggest you don’t screw it up.”
“Wait, what P.T.A. meeting? I’m not scheduled to work tomorrow. I’m supposed to help my mom at the fair. Edwina?”
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The booming wouldn’t stop. It kept going and going until Gabby bolted upright in her own bed, and it turned into the equally loud BOOM of a boxing glove, ferociously pounding the side of her bed.
abby rolled over the pile of laundry rumpled up with her comforter and leaned off the bed to smack a big
red button on top of a heavy metal cube, which was Zee’s latest attempt to make Gabby a successful alarm clock. The cube held a timer and a boxing glove, and when it was time to get up, the glove shot out like a cuckoo and slammed into Gabby’s bed until she woke up.
Gabby’s phone dinged with a text, and she dove back under the covers to find it. The text was from Zee.
Got an alert ur alarm went off. Did it work?
Gabby wrote back: Yes. And thx. You saved me from bizarro dreams.
Gabby tossed her phone back on the bed and trod over more dirty clothes. She f lung open her d
oor and zipped to the bathroom, but it was already occupied by her little sister. Carmen sat cross-legged on the bath rug in the middle of the room. She was fully dressed in plain brown pants, soft with no tag; an equally soft and tagless shirt with no collar or buttons of any kind; and slip-on moccasins. Her hair hung perfectly straight, with the bangs cut as she preferred them: in a precise horizontal line across the very top of her forehead. Carmen was the most organized member of the family, so she kept track of their household finances, as well as all the appointments for Gabby’s babysitting and Alice’s catering business. One of those big leather ledgers sat open in Carmen’s lap; the others were splayed on the f loor around her.
“Car?” Gabby said. “How come you’re sitting on the bathroom f loor?”
“Someone’s downstairs with Mom,” she said dully, never taking her eyes off the ledger in her lap. “And I’m already dressed, so I can’t go back to my room.”
Carmen had very specific ideas about things. Gabby pushed back about them sometimes—it was her job as big sister to periodically give Carmen a hard time—but only when she thought Carmen could take it. Right now her sister looked too put out to handle anything more. Gabby didn’t even ask her to move. She just stepped around her while she did what she needed to do.
“Who’s with Mom?” Gabby asked as she reached for her toothbrush.
“Someone peppy,” Carmen said with as much disdain as she could muster in her voice. “Dad called earlier. You missed him.”
“Carmen! Why didn’t you wake me up?”
Not waking Gabby for a call from Dad was as close to familial treason as Carmen could get. Their father, Steven Bruce Duran, had served in the army, and for most of Gabby’s life had been missing in action and presumed dead. Gabby hadn’t wanted to believe it. For a while she even thought maybe her dad had been involved with A.L.I.E.N., too, since Gabby had randomly received his dog tags from an alien she once babysat. Yet even though she held out hope that somewhere in the universe he might still be alive, her heart had always known he was gone.
That’s why she was gobsmacked when he rang their doorbell on Carmen’s birthday.
He’d shown up right when she was opening her presents. Gabby was so little when he left that she wasn’t even sure it was him; Carmen hadn’t even been born at the time, so she didn’t recognize him at all. To her he was just some stranger infiltrating the very specific present-opening ritual she insisted on following every year. But when their mom burst into tears and wrapped her arms around him, Gabby understood that her greatest wish had come true. She ran over and threw her arms around them both, and in that moment she knew they’d be a family again, and this time nothing would tear them apart.
She wasn’t right about that. Not exactly. Her dad had been away a long time, and both he and Alice had changed a lot over the years. Plus Alice had a boyfriend—the dreaded Silver Fox—but to Gabby’s delight Alice dumped him so she and Gabby’s dad could give it a real shot.
It didn’t work out. They tried, and they both swore they still loved each other…just not in the same way. They might have been each other’s soulmates once, but now they weren’t a match. So when Dad got a job opportunity in Miami, he took it with Alice’s full understanding and support. And when Mom got back together with the Silver Fox, Dad was just as supportive…even if Gabby wasn’t.
The whole thing was a roller coaster when it happened, but in the end it was good. Alice and Steven weren’t like those divorced parents on TV who hated each other; they ended things really well. And Steven wasn’t one of those dads who disappeared on his kids. The day he moved, he gave his word that he’d be involved in Gabby’s and Carmen’s lives. He said they’d see each other as much as they could, and to make sure they stayed close in between visits, he asked them to promise to tell him everything that happened in their lives. Gabby agreed, but she knew she was lying. She wasn’t allowed to tell him one of the biggest things in her life—that she babysat for aliens on Earth.
She wished she could, though. Especially since there were all kinds of things he couldn’t remember about the time he was away. He knew he’d been captured, he knew he’d been rescued, he knew there was time he spent undercover when he couldn’t contact them…but some of the details were fuzzy, in the same way Madison would have been fuzzy about the details around the time she went into space. Gabby’s dad also didn’t react to his dog tags the way Gabby thought he might. When she showed them to him, she’d said she couldn’t remember where she’d gotten them. He just shrugged and said he must have lost them overseas and the army must have sent them back. It definitely didn’t seem like he was trying to hide some alien connection, but maybe there was one he had forgotten.
Zee agreed—she for sure thought Steven’s disappearance had something to do with aliens. Satchel took the other side; he thought Gabby was just automatically seeing aliens everywhere. Edwina wouldn’t give her any information whatsoever; she encouraged Gabby to just be happy her father was back in her life.
She was happy he was back. Really happy. Which is why Carmen not waking Gabby to tell her he was on the phone was such a cardinal sin.
“Carmen!” Gabby said—or tried to say around the toothbrush she now had in her mouth. “I asked you—why didn’t you wake me up?”
“Not my job. I’m not an alarm clock,” Carmen said.
Gabby rolled her eyes. She held her toothbrush in her teeth and tilted back her head so the spit wouldn’t drip out of her mouth, then pulled out her phone and held it up so she could text her dad. Sorry I missed your call!!!!! C didn’t wake me!
He texted back almost immediately. Because she’s not an alarm clock?
Gabby smiled as best she could without dribbling. She loved that he already understood. Zactly. Call u later?
Yes, he replied. Love you.
“I hope you didn’t say you’d call him later, because you’re busy,” Carmen said. “You have a job today.”
“No I don’t,” Gabby said as she went back to brushing. “I’m taking the day off to help Mom at the fair, remember?”
“I remember that’s what you said,” Carmen replied, her eyes and pen still on the family’s budget ledger. “But you told this client that you’d babysit so she could go to a P.T.A. meeting.”
Gabby frowned as she filled her bathroom cup with water and started to rinse. A P.T.A. meeting…That sounded familiar….
Then she did a spit take, hitting the mirror instead of the sink, and splattering toothpaste-water everywhere.
“Disgusting,” Carmen said, again without raising her eyes.
Gabby held the edge of the sink and took deep breaths.
A P.T.A. meeting. That’s what Edwina had said in Gabby’s dream—that she’d be babysitting so someone important—Blinzarra?—could go to a P.T.A. meeting.
She’d also said the future of the Unsittables program depended on how Gabby did.
“What’s the client’s name?” Gabby asked.
Carmen looked up at her and raised an eyebrow. Gabby sighed and rolled her eyes, then grabbed a towel and wiped up the mess she’d made. “Better?”
“Still streaky,” Carmen said. “There’s Windex and paper towels downstairs in the kitchen under the—”
“Carmen!”
Gabby lunged for the giant tome with all her appointments in it, but Carmen slapped her hand on top of the book.
“Mine,” she said firmly.
Gabby acquiesced and took her hand away. She tried not to smile as Carmen opened the book, because of course that’s exactly what Gabby had wanted her to do. Sometimes Carmen was amazingly easy to play.
“‘Ms. Jackson,’” Carmen read. “Says ‘Gabby promised she’d babysit during P.T.A. meeting.’”
Gabby thought it over. “Jackson” didn’t sound much like “Blinzarra,” but if it was an A.L.I.E.N. appointment, Edwina would have changed the name to something that sounded human and not at all suspicious.
“I’ll text you the address,” Carmen continued. �
��The appointment’s at eleven thirty, and it’s approximately forty minutes away on your bike, assuming you ride at a moderate speed.”
“Eleven thirty?” Gabby pulled her phone back out and looked at the screen. “It’s ten o’clock now. You should have woken me up!”
Carmen opened her mouth, but Gabby cut her off before she could say it. “You’re not an alarm clock. I know. Move over. I need space.”
Carmen didn’t budge, so Gabby went ahead and washed up as quickly as she could, torqueing her body every which way so she wouldn’t step on her sister or get her ledgers wet. Then she ran back to her room and sniffed clothes from the f loor pile to sort the waiting-to-be-put-aways from the waiting-to-get-tossed-in-the-washes and pulled on the first clean clothes she found. Throwing her purple knapsack over her shoulder, she ran downstairs and into the kitchen to grab some breakfast…and slammed into a tripod with a camera mounted on top of it. The tripod tipped, but a large, bearded man lunged and saved it.
Gabby, on the other hand, smacked into the f loor.
“Gabby!” cried her mom. “You’re just in time! We’re going to be on TV!”
Gabby got to her feet and looked toward the sound of the voice…but what she saw didn’t look like her mother at all. Alice Duran was the definition of low maintenance. She always wore her hair naturally curly, let it stick up in Einstein-like spikes, barely put on makeup, and dressed for pure comfort in yoga pants and oversized shirts. When she was cooking for her catering company, she usually wore an apron so loved and used, it was covered with ancient stains that wouldn’t come out even after several washes.
Today, however, Alice’s hair was long and silky, f lowing in gentle waves down to just below her shoulders. She wore form-fitting jeans that tapered at the ankle, with fashionably ripped patches on the knees. Her blouse—it was definitely a “blouse”—was turquoise and fitted: a short-sleeved button-down with the top few buttons open in a way that was tasteful but clearly meant to be attractive. Even her face looked different. She wore red lipstick that brought out her ultra-white teeth, her eyes were perfectly lined and shadowed, and…
