Take Me To Your Reader: An Otherworld Anthology

by Amy A. Bartol

  I nodded. "Good thing."

  Even though things were starting to get interesting in my world, things were getting the wrong kind of interesting with the overarching Fructoid agenda. The next week, six teachers quit at school, and within a day or two, they were replaced by Fructoids. My Aunt Bonnie was a teacher at the elementary school, and I remember how long it took them to hire her into the system, go through the district paperwork, and all that. So six Fructoid teachers in a week told me their influence — mind-meld — was growing rapidly. It also seemed like their troops were mobilizing. But for what?

  All of a sudden, kids started getting in trouble and were assigned to morning detentions. We'd never really had morning detention before, so that was particularly odd. Then I started noticing: kids who got in trouble started getting quiet. And after a morning in detention, they'd be silent, just like the Fructoids.

  So they were starting with kids. Whatever the mission, they were going to infiltrate from the ground up. I thought of Travis, of his ability to fit in and sound so much more normal than Clarice. They were starting with their kids. They were starting with ours.

  One Wednesday, three weeks after, (after what?) Travis and I were in the lunchroom eating questionable tacos and Butterfingers when I first heard the rumor. People said Mr. Fence had gone missing. A day later, it was humanities-hun Ms. Matter, and biology-biatch, Mrs. Kell. In a week, each of the six teachers who were replaced by the Fructoids went missing.

  "Travis, what's going on?" I demanded.

  He shrugged his shoulders, almost naturally. "They do not tell everyone down the food chain all the plans," he said.

  "Why do they want to mess with the teachers? They already got them out of the schools and replaced them with—" I paused, "y'all. So why mess with the teachers who already left?"

  Travis seemed to legitimately think this over. "Why do you assume the new teachers are here to educate," now he paused, "y'all, and not that they need your teachers to educate us?"

  I sank back my chair. Why did I assume that?

  "Trav, did they tell you what you could and couldn't tell me?"

  He shrugged and licked chocolate off his fingers. "They just told me to be your friend."

  Looking around the lunchroom, I wondered how much longer Clarice & co. could keep making waves without anyone else finding out.

  "So does that mean you can tell me what the deal is with the house on Maple Street?"

  He thought about it and then went back to peeling pieces of fun size candy. "It's the emergency way home."

  My mind went wild. Home as in home planet? Way home as in vehicle as in . . . spaceship? I worried if I asked these questions, I'd go too far. So instead, I kept these spinning thoughts to myself and just asked the other question on my mind. "Trav?"

  "Yeah, buddy?"

  "How come no one's worried?"

  He scanned the room and then met my eye. "Jedi," he said, matter-of-factly.

  "Jedi," I said.

  They may not be worried, but I was. That night, I went to that damn giant house on Maple Street, and I knocked on the front door, prepared to demand an audience with Clarice. I was a one-man army, but I wanted to know what the hell was going on. I thought about bringing Travis with me, but I didn't want to get him in trouble. He seemed so relaxed all the time, so genuine, really, for someone who was assigned to be my friend. I didn't know if there would be trouble. I didn't know what the danger would be for him, for one of them. He answered a lot of my questions, but in the end, I didn't know the basics: Where they came from, what they wanted, or what exactly they were.

  No one answered the front door, though all the cars were there. I banged on that door for a while, and then I decided to snoop. I walked the perimeter of the house, and looked through the windows. I couldn't see much, but from what I could see, it looked like a nicely manicured home -- not so much like one that had been lived in but instead maybe like one you'd see in a magazine. I made it to the backyard gate, but it was locked. Convinced there was something I was missing, I hopped the fence. The backyard was dark, empty, and just as flawless as the house. Wooden steps with brick sides led up to a back deck.

  But there was a noise. Quiet, reverberating, it sounded like the hum of an engine, and the gurgle of water. I walked around to get closer to the source of the sound. I put my hands on the wooden steps, and I felt the vibrations. On the far side of the steps, I noticed a faint glow. Coming around to it, there was a small door, maybe waist high.

  I don't know if I should have been scared to be digging around like this, but I wasn't. I was just too intrigued.

  I reached out for the latch, pulled on it a few times, but nothing. I was just about to give up when the door swung open. Caramel Suave — the one who so gluttonously delighted in my mom's brownies — emerged from the tiny door and I was bathed in a pale green light from inside. He swiftly moved to his feet, his eyes a head-height above mine.

  "Why are you here?" he said. "You were not invited."

  "I came to talk to Clarice," I said. "I am helping her."

  "I am in full awareness of your compliance," he said. "But you were not invited here tonight. You must leave."

  "What the hell is going on down there?"

  "This is not your home, and you were not invited. You are beyond the bounds of your societal confines of politeness. You must go."

  "Who's down there with you?" I demanded, growing hotter.

  "Go," he repeated.

  "Not without—"

  He grabbed me by the throat and lifted me off the ground until we were eye to eye. You know how that looks badass in movies? In real life, it's just painful and terrifying and comes dangerously close to breaking your neck.

  "Go!" he said again. He dropped me to the ground, and then he went back through the tiny door.

  As I stumbled to my feet, something caught my eye on the ground by the stairs. I reached down and grabbed Fence's dog tags.

  I ran back to my house and took my mom's station wagon keys off the hook by the door without waking her. I ran back to the car and got in and then realized: I had no idea where I was going. On the one hand, I could go to Travis, but on the other I could go to Dana. But she was so pissed at me! Yet she was pissed because she thought I was stupid, and now I had proof. Fence's dog tags in my hand were just what I needed.

  I sped off toward her house. When I got there, she was in the backyard with her younger sisters, yelling at them.

  "Fenton!" Emily, the littlest one, called as she ran to me. She was five years old, and she'd been climbing on me since she could stand up.

  "What are you doing here?" Dana said.

  "I kind of need to talk to you," I said.

  "Well I'm kinda busy being a big sister here and all," she said.

  Emily grabbed a hold of my shirt and was using it as leverage to climb up my legs, which I suddenly realized was a much easier activity when she was, oh, three and not five. Squirming and trying not to let her fall, I said to Dana, "It's important. I have proof."

  "Fenton! Fenton! Fenton's here!" Emily laughed. She was koala-gripped onto my torso, reaching hands around my neck now.

  "About aliens?" Dana rolled her eyes.

  "Yes!" I said. "Exactly!"

  She pulled Emily off of me. "Go inside, Em. Fenton and I need to talk."

  "But Sissy!" Emily whined.

  "Go!" Dana barked. When they cleared the porch, she looked at me and said, "You've got to be joking. I thought when you started hanging out with what's-his-face you'd given up on the alien theory. Are you telling me that you still think that's what they are and you befriended him?"

  "It's a long story," I said, suddenly realizing I'd promised Clarice I wouldn't say anything to anyone. She'd even given me Travis to make that easier, but . . .

  What the hell was I thinking? They were ALIENS! Why did I have any loyalty to them?

  "They kidnapped the teachers!" I exclaimed, and I showed her the dog tags.

  "Where did you get the
se?" she asked.

  I told her the whole story. "And so, like I said, they've totally kidnapped the teachers!"

  She looked at them long and hard and handed them back to me. "They did?" she asked. "Or you did?"

  "What?" I blurted.

  "That's what the police would ask. Probably what they'd say. You'd only bring speculation to yourself," she said.

  I looked down at the tags. "This is bigger than the police, Dana. You see that, right?"

  "This has gotten insane in your head, Fenton. You see that, right?" she mocked me.

  "Forget it."

  I got back in the car, but I didn't know where else to go. I drove down the street so Dana couldn't see me anymore, and then I sat and stared. And got angrier. And more worried. And then angrier again.

  And then I decided to fight. I drove the long and winding road to the Piggly Wiggly — yep, those are real — aimed for a single thing. And lots of it.

  Weirdly, I noticed a trail of cars behind me pretty quickly. And by the time I got to the parking lot, it was nearly full. Of Fructoids. I got out of the car, aimed for the spice aisle, and no one stopped me. They just stared.

  Rounding the corner of the aisle, I ran into Travis. Suspiciously. His arms were full of Butterfingers. "Hey," he said. The store was packed, fifteen minutes till close.

  "Hey," I said. "What are you doing here?"

  "Sustenance," he said, gesturing with his candy. He didn't exactly show emotion yet, and but he looked . . . nervous? "Nestle trucks come in on Thursdays. What are you doing here?"

  I deflected his gaze. I didn't really have a plan, per se, but I imagined whatever I was up to would cause some trouble. More and more Fructoids hovered near us. Listening. Watching.

  "I just . . . needed something," I said.

  "Oh, cool." He was waiting for me to say something. To tell him. To ask him something. He knew. The question was: did he only know what had happened with Caramel Suave? Or did he know what I was thinking?

  I decided to go big or go home. I walked back to the front of the store, grabbed a cart, and went to the salt. I started pulling giant containers of Morton's salt off the shelf by the arm full.

  Travis just stood there, watching, eyes wide. The crowd around us, though, pressed backward. Afraid.

  He said nothing. When the cart was full, I headed to the register, walking right past him. "Fenton, wait," he said. I stopped and looked at him, hoping he could see the apology on my face. He took a flat row package of fun size Butterfingers and handed them to me. "A snack. For the road."

  "Travis, I'm not—"

  He cut me off. "Take them. You'll want them." I looked at them again: The plastic sleeve was open.

  "Thanks," I said. I paid for the salt and candy and loaded it in the back of the wagon. Fructoids hung around the car and the parking lot like zombies. Waiting. Safely in the car, I slid the eight little pieces of candy out into my hand. Written on the white paper sleeve inside -- in what looked more like computer font than handwriting — read, They sent me to stop you, but I won't. Just be careful. And make sure you're not in the house when it happens.

  When it happens.

  I drove straight back to Maple Street, a line of cars ahead of me and behind me, people on the sides of rural roads, some walking and some running. All to the house on Maple Street.

  The street was lined in parked cars, so I pulled down the center of the street and left the station wagon in the middle of the cul-de-sac. I opened the back of the wagon and brought as many cylinders of salt as I could. I left it open so I could run back.

  The lights were on in the house this time, and I could see tons of people inside. All the zombie-walking Fructoids headed to the backyard, but I waltzed straight up to the front door. I kicked it, my arms full of salt. "Clarice!" I yelled.

  You'd think the neighbors would come outside. You'd think they'd have been watching the pilgrimage. But they weren't. They were all mind-melded.

  Clarice opened the door, looking just as unreal as she always did. She looked down at my arms. "Fenton Marsh, you were to be useful, not detrimental."

  "I don't want to be detrimental," I said. "But you have to let the teachers go."

  "They are to be useful too," she said.

  "You kidnapped them!"

  "We are preparing them. Their work will be more intensive than yours," she said, and I laughed maniacally, unable to believe I was involved with this over soft serve ice cream.

  "Let them go," I said.

  "I cannot acquiesce to your demands," she said. "You are not being useful, Fenton Marsh. I need verbal confirmation you will comply as you originally promised. The schedule of our mission has changed. I require your immediate compliance."

  "For what?"

  "For departure," she said. I thought of Travis. When it happens.

  "Let the teachers go!" I screamed. I fumbled with the salt in my arms, peeling back the spout on one canister. I flung it in her direction.

  She screamed, a high-pitched, foreign, tritone of a sound. The human skin façade burned right off, and beneath it she oozed green over what appeared to be black and purple insides. Fructoids descended upon me, but I went crazy, throwing salt all around. More screams and burns and sizzle and smoke and green and ooze. It was pandemonium.

  And just like that, I was out of ammunition. Because I was an idiot. And I thought this was a movie, apparently.

  "Restrain him!" Clarice called, and two of the burlier dudes strung me up against a wall. I began to struggle, but my resistance was futile.

  Which I would normally laugh to myself about but . . .

  The house filled quickly with them, wall-to-wall, shoulder to shoulder. And then a loud, reverberating sound came from underneath us, and the house shook. The lights in the house went off, and outlines of green came on. People stumbled down basement steps, cramming into what I was sure was a small space. But it was like a friggin' Mary Poppins bag.

  Then I realized: the ship was underground. The house was merely on top of it.

  They started talking to each other in another language. Weird sounds of hissing and electrical whines and that obnoxious high-pitched noise that a TV on mute makes.

  Clarice, oozing and smoking and disgusting, made some clicking hissing noise that made people scatter to specific places. As if she'd called for places before a curtain rise.

  Just then, Travis appeared in the doorway. "Fenton!" he called. He spoke to the burly men in a native tongue, but they ignored him. Finally, he just started beating their arms. "Let him go! Let him go!"

  "There's more salt in the car," I said to Travis, not having the faintest clue whether he'd help me. He looked at me and then he looked all around the room, and then he bolted back out the front door. The house shook and groaned, and it felt like we were lifting. Travis tumbled into the doorway with more salt than I could have carried in ten trips, and flung it at the burly dudes first. They dropped to the ground, and so did I.

  "You're helping me," I said to Travis in disbelief.

  "We're friends," he said, like it was the most natural thing in the world that he was helping me rebel against his own kind. "We have to get you out of here."

  "The teachers!"

  Travis hesitated, and then said, "Come on." He bolted down the basement steps into the green room I'd presumably broken into earlier. There were eight tubes lining the room, each about three feet wide, spanning floor to ceiling, and filled with a green liquid. And inside them, each of the six missing teachers were floating, unconscious. Their names were inscribed on the bottom of the tubes. I looked back at the empty tubes next to me. At the bottom of the one closest to me read the words, Fenton Marsh: Sustenance.

  Travis looked back at me. "There's no way. I don't know how to get them out. We can only save you."

  "But . . ."

  Travis grabbed me, dragging me away. "We can still save you."

  We were fighting our way through Fructoids once we got back to the living room. They didn't care that
I'd gone deeper into the ship. They cared that I wanted out.

  Salt canisters littered the floor, and I grabbed them, threw them so they'd break open, spewed it everywhere. I made it to the front door, opened it, and hung out over the edge when Clarice grabbed me by the throat, pinning me against the floor, my body half in and half out of the doorframe. The burn on her body was spreading quickly, and I could see pearlescent white jawbone in her face. "Fenton Marsh!" she screamed angrily. The air around me burned cold on my face. We had climbed faster than I'd realized, the house literally moving on top of the ship. We were up in the clouds. There was no way out.

  She saw the peril on my face. "Comply, and you will survive."

  "Fenton, don't!" Travis cried. He barreled toward Clarice and me at full speed, and he threw us both onto the front stoop of the house, which was unbelievably still attached. I rolled down it, hanging off the edge. Clarice did the same, but she quickly flung herself back up on the steps. She made another terrible noise, and more Fructoids came out of the house, lunging at me. Only, as if uncoordinated little lemmings, many of them went falling onto the ground. The most injured went first, as if on a kamikaze mission.

  Travis made it to me, and he said, "You must trust me, friend." Then he ripped back the hands of the Fructoids grabbing me, and he peeled my own hands off the steps I had barely been clinging to.

  And then? I was falling through the air. Falling and falling.

  Travis's body sailed by me, and then I hit it, full force, in mid-air, and we were tumbling together. Screaming. I was probably crying. Dizzy, with the damn sounds of salt-burned Fructoids ringing in my ears.

  Clarice's voice carried, "Fenton Marsh! Noncompliant!"

  And many more seconds than you'd expect later, we hit the ground. And I was alive.

  Travis maneuvered his body under mine, and took the force of the impact. Like Wyle E. Coyote, there was a Travis-shaped hole in the ground, and I had landed on top of him and hardly felt a thing, save for the wind being knocked out of me.

  Who knows how long I lay there awkwardly on top of Travis's body, unable to process what had happened.