“Thanks anyway. I’m not a loaf of home-baked bread.” Diego crumples his tinfoil square and tosses it back at Dibs. “I’m not wrapping my head in foil.”
“I don’t think you need to worry anyway,” Dibs tells him. “Martians don’t care to study any half-wits to further their cause.”
“Hey.” Diego sticks a finger in Dibs’s chest. “Martians would love to have my brain.”
Dibs laughs. “Nope,” he says. “But it’s funny that you think so.”
Diego just scoffs and pulls himself up on his saddle while the rest of us secure our Martian mind-control-prevention caps on top of our heads.
Diego gives Lupe’s belly a kick. “Let’s get this show on the road!” he hollers.
“You need to let Dibs lead,” I call after him. “He knows a shortcut so we can make it back by suppertime.”
Dibs pulls himself on top of True Belle and trots past Diego, pulling his bandanna up to his forehead to show Diego a gleaming, big, bucktoothed smile. “You hear him,” Dibs taunts. “I’m the boss, applesauce.”
* * *
We clomp across dirt and gravel.
Stumble over rock and tumbleweed.
And push past the horrid stench that hangs thick in the air.
It’s the same thing that happens when we lose a steer out in the field and find it days later. But there’s a chemical smell, too. One that stings the hairs in your nose, makes your lips itch, and makes your throat feel scratchy, like you swallowed a wool sock.
The smell is even worse than it was the day before, making my mouth water and my throat gag behind my bandanna.
Up ahead I see Dibs lift his bandanna and spit into the dirt every few seconds.
Diego wipes at his nose with his forearm, probably wishing he had taken that bandanna when he had the chance.
Spuds keeps coughing.
And Gracie stays silent and stoic.
“Gracie?” I call up to her. “You okay?”
She turns to look at me over her shoulder. “Yes,” she calls. “I came prepared. I dabbed my uncle Joe’s Aqua Velva under my nose this morning. I already heard about the fumes.”
“That was good thinking,” I tell her.
“Want some?” she asks.
“You brought it along?”
She nods and pulls back on the reins.
“Hold up!” I call out to Dibs.
“Here.” Gracie stops. “This might help with the smell.”
She digs through her purse. She pulls out the Aqua Velva bottle, opens it, and tips it over the top of her finger. “It’s my uncle’s aftershave. You can smear a little under your nose to block more of the smell.”
We all circle around Gracie’s horse for a fingertip of Aqua Velva.
“What if it’s worse than all that and we’re getting radiated?” Spuds asks, slowly smoothing the Aqua Velva under his nose. “No amount of aftershave is going to block Martian radiation rays.”
“That smell ain’t radiation,” Diego says. “It’s death.”
No one says anything.
I turn to look at each and every one of them. “Anyone want to go back?” I ask.
Diego turns to me. “Do you?”
I can tell by the look on his face that he would like for me to say yes just so he doesn’t have to be the one to do it.
But I can’t.
Someone needs my help. Me. Mylo Affinito.
I don’t know why and I don’t know who…but I know I have to find out.
July 7, 1947—11:45 a.m.
When I see the tall yucca up ahead and my guts start to wiggle inside me again, I know we’re getting close.
“What’s happening?” Diego pulls back on his reins. Lupe spits and huffs, coming to a sudden stop.
“Is that some kind of electrical current?” Spuds says.
“My insides feel weird.” Gracie places a hand flat against her middle. “Like there’s an invisible magnet trying to pull my inside parts to the outside.”
“It’s some kind of electrical force coming off the disk,” I inform them.
“Or Martian mind control,” Dibs says. “Make sure your anti-Martian-mind-control skullcaps are secured properly before we go any farther.”
“It’s there.” I point. “Crunched up against that arroyo in the distance. Let’s leave the horses in the shade and walk the rest of the way in.”
One by one we slide off our saddles, leaving the horses to graze near the yucca.
Except Diego. “Maybe someone should stay here with the horses,” he says slowly, without looking at us.
Dibs scoffs. “Chicken,” he mumbles under his breath.
I give Dibs a glare. “No one has to go any farther,” I say. “Don’t come unless you want to.”
“Gracie,” Diego starts. “You should stay here with me and—”
“I’m going,” she tells him. “I can take care of myself. I don’t need any boy to do it for me. You can stay if you want.”
I raise my eyebrows at Dibs.
Diego slips off his horse then and shoves his hands in his pockets.
“Are you sure?” I ask him.
He just nods, and we all start out in the direction of the broken ship.
Silent.
Even the desert is quieter than it should be, except for the hum of the electrical current, the scraping of our boots, and Dibs’s bare feet against the gravel.
“Can you see the edge of it?” Dibs points, shielding his eyes. “See it? There!”
The pulling on my insides gets stronger with every step.
Diego stops. “The electricity is getting worse,” he says.
“Yeah, but you get used to it,” I tell him.
He doesn’t say anything.
“You okay?” I ask.
“I think they’re harvesting his brains,” Dibs says with a sly smile, adjusting his foil skullcap. “Should have listened to me when you had the chance.”
“Diego,” Gracie says. “You don’t look so good. Maybe you should head back.”
“Look at him!” Dibs exclaims. “I’ve never seen that color of green before. He looks like a Martian.”
And that’s when Diego burps real loud, and the burp turns into a gag, and then something brown and sloppy spurts straight out of his mouth.
“Holy cheese and jalapeños, Diego!” Dibs says, holding his own mouth and turning away. “What did you have for breakfast? A bad bowl of jambalaya with a side of gizzard—”
“Dibs,” I say, stealing a glance at Gracie. “Leave him be.”
Diego heaves again and a chunky mess forms a puddle at his feet. “We had leftover liver with our eggs.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Yeah, chicken liver,” Dibs mutters under his breath, smirking.
I give him a glare. “Don’t crack wise,” I hiss at him. “Just leave him be.”
“Diego, there’s nothing wrong with going back.”
“You know, Diego,” Dibs says, “they say the Martians’ Purple Death starts to eat away at your brain little by little until you lose your mind entirely and go completely mad and then you just explode into tiny bits of blood and guts. I think upchucking is the first sign. You feel the squirts coming on yet? ’Cause that’s the second.”
Diego heaves again and more meaty chunks hit the ground. He straightens up and wipes his mouth again without saying anything.
“I’ll take him back,” Spuds offers. “You guys go on without us.”
As Dibs and Gracie and I watch Diego and Spuds head back toward the tall yucca tree, Dibs calls out after them one more time. “Hey, Spuds!” he says. “What do you call a Martian who chucks up chicken liver in space?”
Dibs snorts, and I shoot him a look. “What?” he asks. “It’s not like he doesn’t ask fo
r it. You hear what he calls me, don’t you?”
“Just shush up.”
“You taking his side now?” He scowls.
“It’s not about sides,” I tell him. “It’s about taking the high road.”
He folds his arms across his front. “The Bible says an eye for an eye,” he says.
“Yeah, well, maybe that’s not right,” I tell him.
“You think God got it wrong?”
“God didn’t actually write the Bible.”
“Well, He suggested it.”
“I’m just saying that I don’t remember any stories in the Bible about an eye for an eye when someone chucks up liver on the way out to see a flying saucer for the very first time,” I say.
Dibs slaps his palms flat against his thighs and sighs an exasperated sigh at me. “It doesn’t have to be exact,” he says. “You’re supposed to read the stories of the Bible and apply them to real life.”
“There isn’t a story in the Bible that could possibly apply to this, is all I’m saying.”
“You want to make a bet?” he challenges.
“I’m pretty sure there’s no betting in there, either,” I tell him.
“Neither one of you knows what the words in the Bible really mean,” Gracie says.
Dibs turns to her. “Oh, and you do?”
She shrugs. “No one does.”
“Then what’s the point of even reading it at all?” Dibs asks, throwing his hands out.
“You know,” she says. “To decide what kind of people we want to be. Like do you want to be the hero or the villain of the story?”
“Well, I know what kind of person I want to be in my story,” Dibs tells her. “The kind that doesn’t take nothing from no one.” He bobs his head once, and then turns to me. “Especially from Diego Mean-as-a-Snake Ramos. What about you, Mylo? What would you be in your story?”
“M-me?” I stutter, shoving my hands in my pockets. “I—I’m not sure…brave, I guess.”
They don’t say anything.
“You want to know what L. Frank Baum wrote in the very first Oz book? It’s what the Wizard told the Cowardly Lion,” Gracie says.
“What?”
“He wrote, The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.”
“I don’t remember that part,” I tell her.
She smiles. “Maybe you need to read it again.”
July 7, 1947—12:14 p.m.
“It’s true,” Gracie whispers through her fingers. “It’s really true.”
We stand in a line of three gazing at the slick oval disk, crunched and broken on one side against a desert arroyo.
“It doesn’t look anything like Ming the Merciless’s spaceship in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. That one looked more like a can of Ajax with a point stuck on top,” Dibs whispers to me. “This one is flatter and smoother, more disklike with a bubble in the middle, don’t you think?”
“Why do you think they crashed out here?” Gracie wonders aloud.
“The Earth’s gravitational pull, probably,” Dibs tells her. “Or maybe the Army Air Force radar interfered with their mechanics. Last night, that electrical force was even stronger, and it almost pulled all our guts right out of us and off to the mother ship for experimentation. But we held all our insides firm in place and told them they couldn’t take ’em. We didn’t have the tin foil to protect us…,” he blabs on.
And that’s when something amazing truly happens.
Gracie slips her hand into mine.
Graciela Maria Delgado.
Her grip is tight.
It’s sweaty and scared.
And something inside me flickers. Like a light switch or the blaze of a lit match, and I close my sweaty fingers tight around hers.
A silent, slippery promise that I will protect her.
No matter what.
I feel it in me.
And one other thing. I’m not ever scrubbing this hand to Z again.
“Dibs.” I elbow him. “Don’t scare her.”
“I’m not scared,” Gracie insists.
I turn to face her. “You’re not?”
Her lips curl up at the edges, and her fingers tighten around mine. “Maybe a little,” she says.
“I think you’re brave,” I tell her.
Her eyes meet mine again. Those Hershey’s Kisses eyes with specks of Bit-O-Honey mixed in.
“You do?” she asks.
I nod.
“I don’t see myself that way,” she says. “Seems like no one does.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s why I come to Corona for the summer,” she tells me. “At home, all that’s expected of me is to keep my dress clean. But there’s a lot more I want to do than keep clean. Out here I get to wear jeans and ride Betsy Bobbin and get dirt on my shoes. I think I’m meant to do something more in the world.”
“Like what?”
I can see her cheeks flush as she focuses on her sneakers.
“I write stories,” she tells me.
“I write comic books.” I point to my front.
She smiles at me and I smile back.
That’s when Dibs pokes his head in between us. “I think you’re brave, too.” He smiles with his big beaver teeth. “Way braver than those girls in the movies who are always screaming and carrying on. You aren’t screaming or carrying on or nothing and those Martians could zap us with their ray pistols and probe our brains with their mind-control mechanisms at any minute. That says brave to me. No doubt about it.”
“Ready?” I say.
Dibs nods and pulls his Atomic Disintegrator Pistol from his back pocket.
“Roger that!” he says.
We move forward, the three of us still in our tinfoil caps and Dibs with his stupid toy gun. We keep stepping forward until we’re so close we can reach out and touch the cells on the underbelly of the ship.
“The energy field isn’t as strong this time,” I say. “You think?”
“Must be running out of gas.” Dibs slips his pistol back into his pocket and wipes at sweat on his forehead.
“I doubt they fill up at the Sinclair,” I suggest. “It’s probably another energy source than gas.”
Gracie reaches out toward the underbelly cells.
“Wait!” I say.
“What?”
“Don’t touch it,” Dibs says. “It might be radiating.”
One thing I’m learning about Gracie Delgado is that she doesn’t like boys telling her what to do, because she reaches out to touch it anyway. Which makes me think that Gracie is a lot like Obie.
Brave.
When her fingers first make contact she pulls away and then reaches out again, this time placing her palm flat against its smooth, shiny surface.
“It’s warm,” she calls out. “And…is it…it feels like it’s moving. Almost like…it’s breathing in and out. Real slow, though.”
“You mean…like it’s alive?” I ask.
She nods. “There’s an opening, too.” She points underneath. “Either it’s a door or maybe it’s just a hole where there shouldn’t be one. See there?”
“They’re probably watching us right now.” Dibs adjusts his foil hat underneath his Yankees cap. “You aren’t harvesting my brains today.” He points up to the sky. “Not Dibson Tiberius Butte. No, sir!”
Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath, searching inside me for something. Anything that will give me the courage to do what I came here to do. To do what I know Obie would do.
And then I hear it again.
Help.
That same light switch flickers on inside me again. The lit match, blazing even brighter this time.
Hotter.
Stronger.
Rushing through m
y veins.
Burning up all the fear inside me as it goes.
I drop down to my hands and knees and crawl toward the opening underneath the disk. “I’m going in,” I call over my shoulder.
“Hold your horses!” Dibs hollers after me. “Are you sure you should do that? What if they’re in there waiting for you? What if they’re in there ready to harvest all your Earthling guts for experimentation?”
“I don’t think that’s why they’ve come,” I tell him, reaching out to the edge of the jagged opening and peeking inside.
Dibs and Gracie scramble on all fours behind me.
“How do you know what their purpose is here on Earth?” Dibs hisses behind me. “It’s way too far to come all the way down here for a Sunday drive. They’re here for a big reason.”
“I can’t say how I know. I just do.”
Dibs puts his cheek right close to me and peers inside the disk, too. “I sure hope you’re right about that,” he whispers.
“What do you see in there?” Gracie asks.
“It’s dark,” I say. “It’s hard to see anything. But it looks like a chamber up to another level.”
Dibs coughs. “It stinks even worse inside than it does out here.” He adjusts his bandanna higher up over his nose.
I look him square in the eye. “I’m going in,” I say again.
“Are they telling you to? Is that what this is?” Dibs asks me. “Is that why you’re doing it? On account of you think they’re talking to you again? Because it could all be just a trick, you know. To nab your brains.”
“What are you talking about?” Gracie asks.
“Don’t—” I start.
“Didn’t he tell you?” Dibs points a thumb in my direction. “This one hears ’em.”
I sigh and drop my head.
“Hears…who?” she asks.
I look up at her as she stands there blinking at me. “It’s not like with my ears,” I tell her with a nervous laugh. “More like pictures behind my eyelids. Or a silent word bubble like in the Superman comic book that only I can see. I know that sounds kind of weird, right?”
The Truth About Martians Page 9
