by David Lubar
“It’s nice, but I want something warmer.” I couldn’t tell her I wanted something that could survive bullies and bus tires. If she knew how much I got picked on, she’d get all worried and go talk to the principal. She doesn’t understand bullies, and how things work in school. But she understands staying warm. I kept looking, hoping I could find the perfect hat. And there it was, sticking out from under a pile of felt hats on a discount table.
I grabbed it and gave it a tug. It was leather. Real leather. I could tell by the smell. It looked sort of like the helmets you see in pictures of ancient college football games, back when the players wore short pants and funny shirts. I tried it on. It was really tight. Great. Between the slick surface and the tight fit, kids would have a hard time snatching it from my head.
“I like this one,” I told Mom.
“Are you sure?” She picked up a red plaid cap with earflaps. “This looks warmer.”
It looked like a red flag, with the words PUNCH ME on it. “Nah. I really like this one.” I pulled it down even tighter. It was wonderfully smooth, with nothing to grab on to. “It’s exactly what I need.”
So she bought it for me. The next day, I put on my new hat, along with my coat and gloves, and headed out for the bus stop, which was two blocks from my house.
They were there. The bullies. Frankie, Stan, Ivan, and the others.
“Look at the dork!” Frankie shouted. He wasn’t wearing anything on his head. I was pretty sure there wasn’t anything inside his head, either, but I kept that thought to myself.
Stan barked out a laugh and tried to grab my hat. His fingers slipped off the leather. I hoped that would convince him to stop trying, but it just made him angry. “Come here!” he shouted.
I backed away. Right up against a tree. All of them moved toward me, their eyes glowing in anticipation. I had a feeling they would be just as happy to remove my hat by ripping off my head. Stan grabbed the collar of my jacket in one meaty fist.
That’s when the shadow fell over us.
I looked up.
Something large and flat and round was hovering right over our heads. It was a flying saucer.
We all scattered as it moved toward the ground.
The saucer touched down in the middle of the road. I wasn’t under it anymore—I was ten or fifteen feet away—but I was too amazed to move any farther. So was everyone else.
A hatch opened beneath the saucer, making a ramp.
An alien came down. He had two arms and two legs, just like us. But he had gigantic eyes, and a round head. The top of his head was smooth and brown, like leather.
Three more aliens came out behind him. They each carried some sort of device that looked like a trumpet made of glass and silver.
They pointed the flared ends at us. Before we could move, Frankie and the others vanished in puffs of smoke.
It smelled like when something gets burned in the bottom of the toaster oven.
The aliens looked at me. I hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much when they zapped me. But instead of shooting me, they lowered their weapons. And then they knelt. They bowed until their heads touched the ground—their smooth, brown, leatherlike heads.
Then they led me onto their ship, making high-pitched sounds that I later learned were songs of joy. They were thrilled to discover me. Now, they spend all their time finding ways to please and entertain me. They’ve taken me all around the galaxy in their amazing ship. I’ve visited hundreds of incredible planets. The spacemen do whatever I tell them. And they give me whatever I ask for. Somehow, they understand me when I talk. I’m their ruler now. That’s pretty cool. Except I have a feeling I’d better never take off my hat. But that’s okay. I really do like it.
FABRICATIONS
Wellington Portsmith III had more money than anyone else in our class. I knew this because he pretty much shoved it in our faces every day. I’m not poor. I have nice clothes and several pairs of shoes. And if I were poor, I’d be okay with that. There’s more to life than stuff. Sunshine is free. So are books, if you have a library card.
But it wasn’t fun getting constant Wellington-is-wealthy reports throughout the day. He’d make a big deal out of pulling his expensive gold pen out of the pocket of his shirt and opening his leather-covered notebook.
It was bad enough when he mostly showed off to the boys in our class. But then he started trying to impress all of us girls. Yesterday, as we were taking our seats at the start of the day, he tapped the cuff of Holly Milborn’s blouse and said, “Polyester?”
She ignored him, but he didn’t stop. He patted his chest. “Silk. Pure silk. I never wear anything synthetic.”
He babbled a bit more about his linen pants and leather shoes. I tuned him out. After he took his seat, I told Holly, “I like your clothes.”
“Thanks,” she said. But I could tell she was upset.
After school, I went to see Dad at work. I can visit him anytime I want, because he’s the boss. He has his own company. But he just started it last year, so there’s not a lot of money coming in. As I said, that’s okay. Dad isn’t trying to get rich. He’s trying to help people by coming up with new kinds of medicine. He does that by splicing genes. In some ways, it’s pretty complicated. But in other ways, it’s amazingly simple.
Consider this. Some people have a problem with high blood sugar. We all have bacteria in our stomachs. But not the kind of bacteria that eat sugar. So, what if you could take the gene in a sugar-eating bacteria that gives it a sweet tooth, and put that craving into the DNA of the bacteria in our stomachs. Now they’d eat sugar.
As Dad would say, that’s an oversimplification. A lot of things could go wrong. And you have to be incredibly careful when you’re making medicine or modifying genes.
But I was going to splice up something that wouldn’t be a danger to anyone. At least, not a physical danger. Though, if my plan worked, it would produce some serious psychological damage. First, I had to get permission.
“Can I use the sequencer?” I asked.
Dad looked up from the eyepiece of his optical microscope. “What for?”
Here was the moment of truth. I could try to hide my plan from Dad. I’d feel guilty if I did that. Or I could tell him the truth and hope he didn’t stop me.
I explained everything.
Dad listened until I was finished. He’s good at that. He always lets me speak. He never interrupts. When I was done, he said, “We absolutely have to run safety tests before anything leaves this building.”
It took me a second to realize the full meaning of this. “So you’re saying yes?”
“It seems like a good learning experience—for both of you.”
“Yay!” I’ll admit, I leaped up a bit and clapped my hands like a schoolgirl. Of course, I was a schoolgirl, so I guess it was okay to act like one once in a while. But then I grabbed a lab coat and switched to young-scientist mode. Though this young scientist will admit to letting out a giggle or two while she worked.
It took a week to overcome all the snags that popped up. But it was worthwhile. When I was finished, everything tested perfectly.
Next Monday, I brought a small piece of cotton to school, inside a corked test tube.
I had a tiny moment of doubt as I walked toward our classroom. It is kind of mean, I thought. But then, right ahead of me, I saw Wellington standing by his locker.
As Holly and two other girls walked past him, he sneered and said, “What’d you do—sew that yourself from plastic bags?”
They sped down the hall.
“Egyptian cotton,” he said, tapping his shirt. “And linen,” he added, pointing to his pants.
I pulled the cork from the test tube, grabbed the damp piece of cotton, and rubbed my fingers over it. Then I walked up to Wellington, touched his sleeve, and said, “Nice.”
“How would you know?” he said, pulling his arm away. “You’re dressed like you made your clothes from tossed-out candy wrappers.”
“I guess I don’t know mu
ch of anything,” I said as I fought back my grin and walked away from him.
I’d done all the calculations earlier, but I couldn’t help running the figures in my head as I took my seat in homeroom. Happily, the school routine is pretty much the same every day.
Five minutes after the late bell, the morning announcements started. It was hard to keep from staring at Wellington. But I knew there’d be nothing to see yet.
There’d be a lot to see real soon.
After greeting us over the speaker, the principal asked us to stand for the pledge of allegiance.
Be patient, I told myself. Even if it happened after we sat, it would be good. But it would be awesome if it happened before that.
“… with liberty and justice for all.”
As the last words rose from the class, I heard a startled shout from behind me.
“Hey!”
I turned toward the screamer, like the rest of the class. Unlike the rest of the class, I knew who was screaming and, even better, why he was screaming.
“What—?” Wellington was staring at his sleeve. It hung from his arm in shreds, as if he’d been mauled by a couple wild dogs.
“It worked!” I was excited enough to speak out loud, but smart enough to keep my voice to a whisper.
Nobody noticed that I’d spoken. They were all watching Wellington’s shirt fall apart. The bacteria I had created had a hunger for natural fabrics. They reproduced rapidly, and traveled only by physical contact. They also had a very short life span.
Wellington’s shirt was gone. His pants had started to disintegrate.
“Ahhhg!” He spun around, apparently unsure what to do.
Spinning is a bad idea when your clothes are barely held together. Centrifugal force is pretty interesting. Stopping quickly after a spin is another bad idea, especially when one takes inertia into account. Wellington pretty much pantsed himself.
At this point, he came to his senses enough to realize it would be a good idea to flee the room.
As he shot through the door, I noticed that his underwear must also be made of a natural fabric. But the less said about that, the better.
By the time his mom brought him a change of clothes, all the bacteria would have died off.
I’ll admit, I almost felt bad for him. Especially when he transferred to another school. But I felt good for the rest of us. Until the new girl came, who put everyone else down because she had the nicest hair.
Hair would be tougher. Especially since I had to come up with something that targeted just one person. That’s not a problem. I loved a challenge.
PLAGUE YOUR EYES
Gilroy headed for the library. He had a book report due the next day. But he had no plans to read the book. Books were stupid. There was no way Gilroy was going to waste his free time reading one. Not when he could play games.
But the last time he’d skipped a book report, his parents got angry enough to threaten to take away his games and movies. That wouldn’t do. A month ago, at the same time Gilroy had skipped his report, his friend Gordon Larmuller had found a book report on the Internet. Gordon cut-and-pasted it into Word, put his name on it, printed out a copy, and handed it in. That wasn’t a good idea. It turned out teachers have a way to check for copied stuff.
But they can only check for things that are on the Internet, Gilroy realized. That’s where Gordon had gone wrong. So Gilroy figured he just had to find a book report that wasn’t anywhere online. He lived three blocks away from the community college. There had to be something in the library. Something he could take for his own.
“I have to do a book report,” he told the librarian.
“When is it due?” she asked.
“To—” Gilroy caught himself before he said tomorrow. “Two weeks.” He smiled at the clever way he’d kept from revealing the truth. “I need a good book.”
“There are a lot of them to choose from,” the librarian said. “Anyone who lives in the county can check out books from here. What do you like to read?”
“Actually, I was hoping I could read what other people thought about a book,” he said. “That would be a good idea, wouldn’t it?”
“That would be an excellent idea.” The librarian seemed thrilled by this. “Come over here.” She walked toward a shelf near the far corner of the library. “This has literary criticism. You’re welcome to browse. But if you want some suggestions—”
“I’ll browse,” Gilroy said. “Thanks.”
She left him there, with a towering shelf of already-written assignments.
“Score!” Gilroy whispered as soon as the librarian had returned to her desk. He might never have to do homework again. At least not for book reports. Maybe not for history, either.
It took him almost an hour to find what he needed, but it was worth it. He took the book to the photocopier. A big sign on top of the machine warned that it wasn’t okay to make copies of whole books. Gilroy had no plans to do that. He just needed the one essay.
After he’d finished making the copy, he found the actual book the essay discussed and went to check it out. He didn’t need it, but he didn’t want the librarian to get suspicious. He figured he’d need her help again, now that he’d discovered this treasure trove of ready-made papers.
As soon as he got home, he went on the computer and checked to see if the essay existed anywhere online. He put in the author’s name and the title. No hits. The author’s name came up for some other stuff, including several books. He was an old guy with frizzy white hair and a tiny mustache, who wasn’t even around anymore. No surprise. The essay had been written about fifty years ago.
“Perfect. Nobody will know.” Gilroy typed the paper into his computer. He even changed a couple big words, like ostentatious and predetermined because he knew his teacher wouldn’t believe he’d ever use them. And she’d be right.
The next morning, he handed in his paper. The next night, he awoke from a deep sleep to find a man with frizzy white hair and a small mustache standing in his room.
Gilroy let out a scream.
“You stole my words,” the man said.
“No, I didn’t!” Gilroy shouted, though he had no idea how to back up the lie. “Go away!” He heard his parents running down the hall toward his bedroom.
“Now, I’ll steal yours,” the man said. He reached out and touched Gilroy’s throat with fingers as cold as wet snow and as dry as the pages of ancient books.
Gilroy’s door flew open. His parents raced into the room just as the man faded from sight.
“What’s wrong?” his mother asked.
I’ll tell them it was a bad dream, Gilroy thought. Even when terrified, he was a genius at lies. Gilroy tried to speak, but no words came out. He tried again. Nothing. His words had been stolen. Nobody other than Gilroy would really care about that. While stealing from a book was a serious violation, taking Gilroy’s words was really little more than petty theft.
CONTROL ISSUES
If you don’t have a lot of cash, Game Pit is the best store on the planet. They sell used stuff cheap. That’s especially great for me, because I have an old system—a PS2—and it’s hard to find games. They don’t sell new PS2 games many places, and I don’t think anybody even makes them anymore, but Game Pit keeps a good stock of the old ones.
I was at the store with my friend Chase, looking through a bin of used hardware when I found the coolest thing of all. It was a wireless controller. I know that’s not a big deal now. Every system comes with wireless controllers. But back when the PS2 came out, the regular controllers had cords, so you had to sit pretty close to the TV. I don’t mind being close, but our couch is on the other side of the room from the TV. It would be nice to really be a couch potato, and not a rug potato.
“Check it out!” I said, holding up the plastic bag that had the controller and the receiver. “Wireless.”
“Sweet,” Chase said. “We should see if there’s another.” He started rooting through the bin. We play games at my place a
lot. I figured it would have been awesome to find a second one.
We didn’t find another controller, so I took the one I had up to the register and paid for it.
“You need batteries?” Chase asked.
“I don’t know.” I took the controller out of the bag and popped open the battery compartment. “Nope. It has some. I wonder if they’re dead?” Just to make sure they worked, I pressed the power switch. The little red light between the START and SELECT buttons came on. I was all set. We headed to my place. I figured Chase and I could take turns using the wireless controller.
We’d just reached my front door when I looked down at the bag. “Oh no!”
“What’s wrong?” Chase asked.
I held up the bag. “The receiver isn’t there. I think it fell out.” I’d torn a pretty big hole in the side of the bag when I took out the controller.
“That’s not good.”
“We have to go back and look for it.” Without the receiver, which plugged into a joystick port on the PS2, the controller was worthless.
Chase and I walked back toward the store, scanning the sidewalk for the receiver. We’d only gone two blocks when I spotted trouble ahead of us. Donald Blotzman and a couple of his thug friends were heading our way.
“Uh-oh,” Chase said.
“Let’s cross the street. We can get back to searching after he’s gone.”
Before I could move, I heard one of Donald’s friends say, “Hey—what’s this?”
He bent down and picked up something from the edge of the sidewalk. Even from a block away, I could tell it was the receiver.
“It’s mine. That’s what it is,” Donald said. He snatched it from the other kid’s hand, stared at it for a minute, then shoved it in the back pocket of his jeans.
“Oh, this is just wonderful,” I said. “It’s gone for sure. I can’t ask him for it. If he knows I want it, he’ll never let it go.” I looked at the controller in my hand. It was worthless now.
“It’s no use to him,” Chase said. “You never know. Maybe he’ll give it to you.”
