Aliens on Vacation

by Clete Barrett Smith

  “Okay,” I said, but I don’t know if they heard. I was sort of talking to my chest. I was pretty mad, but way more at myself for wussing out than at them for making fun of Grandma. I started down the street toward town.

  I looked at my watch. Two months, two days, and eighteen hours to go.

  Leave it to me to get lost in a town as small as Forest Grove. First I passed through the residential part, every lawn perfectly manicured and not a scrap of litter in sight. While I walked through town I was still thinking of lines I should have said to those guys, and I must have missed a turn, because I didn’t see a grocery store anywhere. I started to backtrack, when a girl about my age skipped out of a nearby bookstore, swinging a cloth bag. She fell into step right next to me. I only had time to notice that she had long brown hair and a group of freckles spattered across her nose before she started talking; no hello or anything, but talking like we were in the middle of a conversation.

  “Did you know the National UFO Reporting Center documents hundreds of sightings every month?” she said.

  Huh? I glanced at her, but she was looking straight ahead.

  “The National what?” I said. Pretty smooth, I know.

  “UFO Reporting Center. It’s right here in Washington State.”

  Oh, there’s a group around here that’s a little weird? What a surprise.

  “Yep, hundreds of reports. Every month,” she said. “And that’s after the center throws out all of the sightings they consider to be hoaxes.”

  “That’s…um, that’s pretty interesting?” I said.

  “I’ll tell you what’s interesting,” she said. “First off, it’s not like everyone who sees a UFO makes a report. And second, it’s not like everyone making reports is seeing the same UFO, right? And third, not every UFO that flies by actually gets seen by somebody.” She turned to look at me. Her eyes were so serious that shrugging her off and continuing my walk down the street was not an option. “So you know what that means?”

  “No?” I said.

  “It means there must be thousands and thousands of UFOs overhead. Tens of thousands. It must be worse than rush hour in Los Angeles up there.” She started walking again. With me following, for some reason. “So what’s interesting to me about it? I’m surprised there hasn’t been a midair collision yet. I mean, doesn’t that seem inevitable?”

  She was talking like one of the sci-fi/fantasy club types.

  Normally I wouldn’t be interested in the conversation…but none of those sci-fi/fantasy people was ever a girl who looked this good.

  The problem was, I never knew what to say to girls. But Tyler Sandusky was always going off on nonsense arguments like this—one time we debated for a whole weekend about who would win a fight between a man with no arms and a man with no legs—and he expected me to keep up.

  So I tried a new tactic with this girl. I said something exactly like I would say it to Tyler. “Well, maybe there are intergalactic traffic laws regulating the buzzing of planets.”

  The girl smiled. It was sort of a lopsided smile, but it looked nice. It kind of bunched up the freckles across her nose. “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Good point. Like maybe…Yield the right of way to any UFO traveling over the speed of light.”

  I smiled back. And even thought of something else to say. “Right. Or Merge with other space vehicles in the same direction that the planet is spinning on its axis.” Even though we were talking about weird stuff, at least when she laughed, it was with me and not at me.

  “Good one,” she said. “Very practical. Also The area above the equator is for multi-passenger UFOs only during peak-flow hours.”

  We reached the edge of town and were heading back into the residential section, and I still hadn’t found the store. I stopped at the corner and looked around.

  “Looking for something?” the girl asked.

  “The grocery store.”

  “Follow me.” She turned and marched down a side street. I jogged a few paces to catch up. She reached into her bag.

  “I just bought some good stuff.” She held out two books: Cosmos and Alien Agenda: Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence Among Us.

  Oh, boy. I was surrounded by this kind of thing at Grandma’s—was there nowhere in this town to take a break from it? “Why are you so into all that?”

  It must have come out a little rude, because she gave me an annoyed look. “I don’t know, just kind of a lifelong interest. My dad got me hooked on it when I was little. We watched all kinds of alien movies together.”

  “Whatever floats your spaceship, I guess.”

  I smiled and tried to make it sound light, but her forehead creased, and she looked genuinely hurt.

  “I thought you’d like these,” she said.

  “Really? We met five minutes ago.”

  “Well, aren’t you staying at the Intergalactic Bed and Breakfast?”

  “How did you know that?”

  She shrugged. “Small town.”

  I looked up and we were there, at the Forest Grove General Store. “Well, thanks for helping me out,” I said.

  She leaned toward me and dropped her voice a notch. “There’s something very interesting going on at that bed-and-breakfast, you know.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Did the owner herself send you to the store?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Then I bet you’re getting some pretty weird stuff.”

  “I am not. It’s just a normal grocery list.” I pulled Grandma’s paper out of my pocket.

  Tinfoil: 50 boxes

  Sunblock SPF 50: 25 bottles

  Bleach: As much as you can fit in the cart

  Oh no. Not exactly your average trip to the grocery store. I reluctantly looked back at the girl.

  Her arms were crossed over her chest and she tilted her head to look at me. “So…do you want me to come along and help you find all that ‘normal’ stuff?”

  I glanced at the list. “Um, no thanks. I got it.”

  “That’s what I thought.” She raised one eyebrow. “And do you really think you’ll be able to find your way back to the bed-and-breakfast all by yourself when you’re done?”

  “Hmmmm…downtown Forest Grove is a pretty huge metropolis, but I think I can manage. A left turn after the third skyscraper, right?”

  She laughed. “All right, I’ll see you later. My name’s Amy, by the way.”

  “I’m Scrub.”

  “Nice to meet you, Scrub.” She turned, yanked her hair back into a ponytail, then pulled a yellow baseball cap out of her bag and put it on her head. “See ya!” she called, and skipped away. I’m not sure how long I stood in front of the store, mouth hanging open, watching that yellow baseball cap bounce down the road and out of sight—just like yesterday, after she took my picture from the bushes.

  I found out what somebody looks like when they’re struggling to push a grocery cart overflowing with Reynolds Wrap, Coppertone, and Clorox. They look like a crazy person. At least I did. Especially when the cart got so heavy I lost control as I tried to round a corner. I smashed into a row of shelves and scattered my bottles of suntan lotion all over the floor. When I dropped to my knees to pick them up, someone placed a big black boot in front of my face. I looked up to see the wide face of Sheriff Tate staring at me through his sunglasses, over the rim of his belly. He was chewing on a toothpick so wet and ragged it could’ve been the same one he had been gnawing when I saw him yesterday.

  “Doing a little shopping today, boy?”

  I stood and tried to cram the bottles of lotion back into the cart with at least a little dignity, but it was hard to find room. I nodded.

  The sheriff studied the mountain of tinfoil spilling out of the grocery cart. “Just picking up the absolute essentials today, huh?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “My name’s Tate. Been the law in this town for over twenty years. This here’s Deputy Tisdall.” He nodded to a short skinny guy in uniform standing
with his back against the candy-bar shelves. His face was tight and pinched, like a rodent. He avoided eye contact and lazily touched one finger to the brim of his hat in greeting.

  “And you would be…?”

  “My name’s Scrub.”

  “Scrub, huh?” Tate took the toothpick out of his mouth and rolled it around in his fingers. “So, Scrub, I guess you’re working at the Space Place now?”

  “Um, not really. I mean, I’m staying there. The owner is my grandma.”

  “Is that right?” he said. Then he just stared at me, but I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, so it was pretty creepy. “Well, tell me, Scrub, you ever notice anything strange around your grandma’s place? Anything weird or unusual?”

  About every five minutes. “No,” I lied.

  The sheriff took another lingering look at the contents of my shopping cart. “Hmmmm, is that right, now?” He stuck the toothpick back in his mouth and used both hands to readjust his belt higher up on Mount Belly. He pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket and thrust it at me. “If you do see anything strange, give me a call.”

  I took the card. “Sure.” Another lie. Grandma’s place might be weird, but the people there had every right to waste their vacation dollars on that stuff.

  We stood there looking at each other. Finally Deputy Tisdall said, “I guess you better start hauling that cart full of goodies back to your grandma’s. We wouldn’t want her esteemed guests to go without their precious supplies, would we?”

  I pushed past them, steering the cart toward the cashier. I could feel their stares crawling all over my back until I walked out the front door. I was sure glad to get out of there, but when I stepped into the sunshine, my stomach was suddenly full of dread. I didn’t want to run into those teenagers again while I was hauling this weird cargo around. And as much as I hated to admit it, Tate and his deputy had raised an interesting point. I had no idea what Grandma and her customers were going to do with all of this stuff. And I really didn’t want to find out.

  When I finally made it back to Grandma’s, drenched in sweat, I realized there was no possible way I could drag the grocery cart up the stairs to the front porch. I slumped against the cart, panting, and dried my forehead on my sleeve.

  Mr. Harnox walked out the door and down the steps, that ghastly smile stretched across his entire face. “Oh, so many thanks and thanks again for the little man,” he said, and sniffed the grocery cart all over. Then he grabbed a box of Reynolds Wrap. Before I could answer, he pulled out the roll of aluminum foil, tore off a huge chunk, wadded it into a ball, and crammed it into his mouth.

  He smacked loudly, silver-colored drool trickling down his cheeks. Little sparks shot out of his mouth as those sharp teeth hit the foil. He threw his head back to look at the sky while he swallowed, shaking his throat and bobbing his head like a pelican choking down a big fish.

  Then he withdrew a thin metal tube from the pocket inside his vest, punctured the side of a tub of bleach, and started sucking on the thing like a juice box. I just stared. He set the Clorox down and was tearing off another chunk of foil when Grandma appeared on the porch.

  She raced down the steps, scanning the street warily. She placed her hand on the tall man’s arm. “Let’s take your snacks and go into the house, shall we?”

  Mr. Harnox grinned. He wrapped his long arms around the entire grocery cart, hoisted it into the air as if it weighed nothing, and bounded up the steps. He slipped into the house, angling sideways to fit the cart through the door.

  I looked after the tall gray man in disbelief. Grandma studied my face. “The time has arrived for you and me to have a talk, Scrub.”

  “Can we start with why that guy is chowing down on tinfoil?”

  Grandma put her arm around me and led me up the steps. “Yes, that does look a bit unpleasant, doesn’t it? But I guess it helps. Apparently the aluminum oxide slows down the corrosive effect of Earth’s atmosphere on poor Mr. Harnox’s body. It helps him enjoy his time here, but he needs to eat quite a bit of it every day.” We reached the door, and Grandma glanced back to check the street again. “And the bleach. I can’t tell if that’s to clean out his system, or if he just likes the taste.” She sighed. “It has put a strain on the grocery bill. After two years he’s eating me out of house and home with the tinfoil bill alone.”

  Right…

  I looked at Grandma. She wasn’t kidding.

  We walked into the front room and sat on the couch. We were alone, but I could hear Mr. Harnox chomping and slurping away behind the kitchen door.

  “Scrub, did your father tell you why he sent you here this summer?”

  Good question. For the last couple of weeks, whenever I asked him the same thing, he had tried to change the subject or said that he had work to do. I figured that Grandma’s place was a last-resort destination when those summer business trips popped up for him and Mom. I thought that maybe he just didn’t want to argue with me about it.

  But when he’d pulled the car up to the curb under the big departures sign at the airport yesterday, he had started talking real fast. Said that my seeing where he grew up might help the two of us get closer, and he’d always wanted that. Told me that I was growing up so fast, and there were some things I had to learn on my own. Claimed that if I paid attention, my experiences this summer could change my life.

  At the time, I had thought it was just parent-speak. I mean, that had all seemed like a lot to ask for a couple of months at a weird little rustic inn. But Dad doesn’t really ever talk about touchy-feely stuff, so I knew enough to keep my mouth shut. Not that there was time for a Q&A session anyway. Dad had just kind of looked through the windshield during his little speech; then when it was over, he’d hopped out of the car and helped me grab my suitcase, and a few minutes later I was getting in line at security and saying good-bye.

  I looked up at Grandma. I didn’t really know how to say all of that to her, so I just shrugged.

  She reached out and patted my hand. “He didn’t give me the clearest instructions, either.” She winked at me. “My only child has many fine talents, but I’m afraid that having conversations of a personal nature is not one of them.”

  I snorted. That was an understatement. Then I noticed how uncomfortable I was having this conversation with Grandma and realized that I was probably just like him.

  Grandma smoothed out her tunic on her lap. “But I suppose the fact that he sent you here alone, for the whole summer, gives me at least tacit permission to share a few things with you.”

  I glanced at the kitchen door. I was having a hard time figuring out the role that Mr. Harnox and his strange eating habits were supposed to play in this little family drama.

  “For starters, I believe in serendipity, Scrub, well and truly, and your arrival has been very serendipitous indeed.”

  “Oh. Yeah?” I said. I didn’t really know what that word meant.

  “Yes. First and foremost, I’ve always wanted the chance to get to know my only grandchild.” She reached over to the table beside the couch, picked up a picture of my dad when he was a kid, and sighed. “The wheel of the cosmos spins and spins, and the best we can do is hope to hold on,” she said, studying the old photo. She was quiet for a while, then she brushed away a tear at the corner of one eye. “It was just me and your father when he was growing up here. I’m afraid that I made some mistakes, and I don’t want to make them twice.” She placed the picture back on the table and looked at me again.

  “But there is another reason I am so thankful for your arrival, Scrub. A very important reason.” She was really studying me through those big pink lenses, looking me right in the eye. “You see, I have come to require more and more help around here. But it’s impossible for me to just hire anyone from around town.” She put her hand on top of mine. “I needed to be able to observe how someone from the outside would interact with my guests. And you’ve acted very natural and friendly with everyone since you arrived. You’ve been very helpful
already, even in such a short amount of time. Something tells me you would be a fine ambassador for us.”

  “Ambassador? For us? Us who?”

  Grandma spread her arms out. “Our species. Here on Earth. Humanity.”

  Oh, no. I knew right where this was headed. I could see it perfectly: an intergalactic picnic in the backyard, with each of the guests dressed up as their favorite alien, and me playing the part of welcoming leader of the human race. I’m sure she had a costume for that around here somewhere. Is that the kind of stuff she had done with Dad when he was a kid? Is that why he irons his bathrobe and wears pleated slacks around the house on weekends—a desperate attempt to be normal after such a strange childhood?

  Well, Grandma would have to see if the costume fit Amy, that UFO-obsessed girl I met in town, because there was no way I was putting it on.

  I opened my mouth to say this when Grandma put up her hand to stop me. Then she dropped her hands to her lap and fidgeted with them. She took a deep breath. “I was going to wait a week or two to decide whether we would have this talk, Scrub. But everything has been so busy lately.” She looked up at me and smiled. “And you’ve done so well thus far. Plus, I’ve always trusted my intuition. And I can tell you will do a great job just by seeing your aura. Your aura glows almost turquoise with your positivity and good nature.”

  Right. I didn’t really know what the word aura meant, either, but I wasn’t about to ask.

  We looked at each other for a moment. I tried to steer her toward some of the more normal things that I might be able to do this summer. “So…you want me to help you out around here?” I said. “Like going to the store this morning? Or mowing the lawn or whatever? Because I could do that stuff if you want.”

  “Well, yes, I have more and more errands that need doing. But it’s more than that.” She put both hands on my shoulders. “My instincts tell me that I can trust you. Can I truly trust you, Scrub?”

  “Of course.” She was acting like the sole keeper of a national defense secret. But what secret could be that important when you ran a tourist trap in the middle of nowhere?