by Nate Ball
I so wished we could stop talking about this.
Luntz had wanted to suspend us, but instead, after a long, long, long meeting with my parents and Olivia’s grandfather, he decided to make us join his Young Volunteers club. My dad called it a plea bargain we couldn’t refuse, whatever that meant.
So now every month or so, Olivia and I have to “help” at community events. Sometimes it eats up an entire Saturday, which is pure torture. And Luntz has a mandatory attendance policy, no excuses allowed. You could be puking up a lung and he’d still make you count change at the library bake sale. It was a lot like serving a long prison sentence on your weekends.
“Luckily, we have only three weeks left,” I said, feeling like I could see the light at the end of a very long and very dark tunnel.
“You shouldn’t think of it that way,” Mom said. “It is a volunteer club, after all. You are helping out your community.”
“I agree with you, Christine,” Olivia said. “But the problem is, there’s nothing voluntary about it. We have to go. We’re like Luntz’s private army of do-gooders.”
“Well, it sounds like fun to me,” Taylor harrumphed.
“Just get in big trouble and you’re in,” Olivia advised. She looked around the table. “I’m just kidding, guys.”
I kept my eyes on the prize. Olivia and I had to work this Saturday at the big half marathon they held every year in our town. Then we were pretty much done. I could leave Principal Luntz and his lame Young Volunteers club in my rearview mirror. I could almost taste sweet freedom already.
Little did I know that development would run into a major snag.
05
Spaced-out Radio
After dinner, Olivia and I went to hang out in her garage. Her grandfather kept a cool old car in there, plus a dusty old couch, some other random furniture, and about thirty fishing poles hanging from the rafters. It was a nice place to get away from the prying eyes of my brother.
“This plan may not work,” Amp admitted as he examined Olivia’s grandfather’s tools. He found a screwdriver that was twice as tall as he was. He dragged it over to the walkie-talkie. He wanted to take off the back cover, but the screwdriver was too big for him to handle. I had to pluck it away before he hurt himself. I opened the back of the walkie-talkie while he walked in circles around it.
“I don’t see how a walkie-talkie that can only work to the end of the street can call all the way back to Erde,” Olivia said.
“Yeah, Amp, this seems like one of your dumber ideas,” I said.
“I beg your pardon,” Amp said, putting his hands on his hips and glaring at me. “I do not have ‘dumb ideas,’ young earthling.”
“Oh, so now I’m ‘young earthling’?” I said, looking at Olivia and rolling my eyes. “Get a load of Mr. Bossy Blue Pants over here.”
“Yes, as I was saying, it may not work,” Amp sighed. “But it is worth a try. I think I can connect this device to the damaged quantum radio on the Dingle.”
“On the what?” I croaked.
“What’s a dingle?” Olivia asked.
Amp stared at us, his mouth hanging open. “I never told you?”
“Told us what?” Olivia said. “About your dingle?”
He stood up as tall as he could and lifted his chin high in the air. “The Dingle, may I inform you, is my spaceship,” he said.
Olivia and I both cracked up.
“That is the worst name ever for a spaceship,” Olivia said.
“Was the Fart Rocket already taken?” I laughed.
“How about the Nerdy Erde Express?” Olivia said, cracking us up even more.
“Go ahead and laugh it up,” Amp said, clearly offended. “I’m stranded on this primitive planet and may not be able to prevent it from being invaded, but please, have a good laugh at my expense.”
“Don’t be so dang sensitive,” I said. “But seriously, a walkie-talkie? There’s got to be a better way.”
“Yeah, how about smoke signals?” Olivia said.
“Or one of those carrier pigeons with a note tied around its leg,” I said.
“Why don’t we tie a note to a rock and throw it real hard?”
“You two are ridiculous,” Amp fumed. “Always thinking small. Never considering the brains, wisdom, and creativity of my civilization.”
I groaned. “Get off your high horse, short man. Our civilization would never name a spaceship the Dingle.”
“Or visit another planet in a junky ship that can’t make the return trip.”
Amp waved at us in irritation and stared at the exposed guts of the walkie-talkie.
Amp seemed to get lost in examining the tiny parts of the device for a second time. After a few minutes, he looked up at us. “Where did you two get these walkie-talkies?”
“They’re actually not ours,” Olivia said.
“We get them for the Young Volunteers,” I said. “For when we’re working at events.”
“They give us the walkie-talkies so they can tell us where to go and where we’re needed,” Olivia said. “It’s a lot like jail, but they give you a radio.”
“You both have a curious view of community service for your fellow humans.”
I ignored his observation. “We have to return them when our prison sentence is up.”
“But they let you keep them between events?” Amp asked.
“Yep,” Olivia and I said at the same time.
Learning from experience, I leaped out of the way before Olivia could give me another charley horse. “Jinx!” she cried, but her knuckles missed their target.
I stuck my tongue out and danced a little. “Strike one, slowpoke.”
“Please, you two, you’re acting like children!”
“Last time I checked,” Olivia said, “we were children.” Then she started dancing and sticking her tongue out at me.
“Stop doing that!” Amp said. “You are making it hard to concentrate. I need to borrow one of these,” Amp continued, putting the cover back on the walkie-talkie. He left it to me to put the screws in. “If my calculations are correct, I can connect it to the quantum radio on my ship and bypass the parts that aren’t working. When is your next community activity?”
“Three days,” Olivia said. “We’re working at a half marathon race downtown.”
“I’m in charge of all the portable toilets,” I admitted.
“How exciting,” Amp said flatly. “I should know before then if it’s working or not. I’ll return your walkie-talkie at the event.”
“Okay, just don’t start quite yet,” I said. “Olivia and I need to have a chat tonight about a spider.”
“Okay,” he said in a strange, faraway voice. “I’ll start first thing tomorrow morning, while you two are in school.”
I should have known then that Amp had no intention of keeping his word. How do you know when a blue alien is lying to you? His lips are moving.
06
Attack of the Amp!
“Oh my gosh, Olivia, something terrible has happened,” I said in my best fake-frightened voice. “Over,” I added, pushing the Talk button again. I waited.
I was in bed with the lights off. I assumed Olivia was, too.
“Really? I cannot imagine what could have happened. Over,” she said in a very fake-sounding voice. Boy, she was a terrible actress.
It was late, and my mom had just barged in, snapped off my light, pushed me into bed, and given me a peck on the forehead. “Sleep,” she commanded as she shut my door.
Sleep was the last thing on my mind.
“You will not believe me,” I said. “This is just terrible.” I almost started laughing, but I let go of the button and covered my mouth with my free hand. I knew that my little brother was down the hall in his room listening in on this conversation. He’d pay for his snooping.
“I am freaking out over whatever has happened,” Olivia’s voice crackled suddenly. “But you haven’t told me yet what it is that has happened,” she added.
Could she be a worse actress?
“You know Amp?” I said, and released the button.
“Oh, Amp?” her voice asked over the speaker. “You mean your spider? Your gigantic, goliath South American bird-eating tarantula that you keep in your room and that you bought off the internet with six months of your allowance money? That Amp?”
I rolled my eyes. Too much information! She was trying too hard.
“Yes, my giant tarantula named Amp.”
“It is as big as your catcher’s mitt.”
I growled. “I know how big it is, Olivia, it is my pet that I love so much.”
“Sorry,” her voice answered. “I do not love your tarantula. It scares me. It is so big that I can hear it breathe.”
“No, you can’t,” I said. “That’s ridiculous. I’m not even sure spiders breathe.”
“Of course they breathe,” she said in a snotty, sassy voice.
“Whatever!” I said, squeezing the Talk button so hard I thought it might crack. “It doesn’t matter if he can breathe or not, Olivia! The point is that I have a huge, enormous spider named Amp, one I spent all my allowance money to get, and I don’t know where he is. Got it?”
I gave her almost fifteen seconds to reply. “Listen up, Cranky Pants. I’ve heard of waking up on the wrong side of the bed, but I never heard of going to sleep on the wrong side of the bed.”
“Oh, just shut up. Earth Two, over!”
I dropped the walkie-talkie on my blanket and grabbed my head. We should have rehearsed. This sounded totally dumb. Olivia could not act her way out of a paper bag! And she was getting me all tangled up in spider trivia. Who cares if a spider breathes or not?
I snatched up the walkie-talkie again. “Amp could be anywhere,” I said, trying to sound scared. “I don’t know what to do.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Olivia asked.
I thought about that one. What was the right answer? “Yesterday,” I said, finally deciding. “He may have left my room. He could be in Taylor’s room for all I know.”
“I may have seen him in there yesterday,” Olivia said in a whisper.
“You did?” I croaked, forgetting we were making this up.
Her response came quickly. “Yes. Over.”
I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Then Olivia spoke again. “I said ‘over,’ you know.”
“I know. Over.”
“Should we tell him?” she asked. She sounded like she was getting bored.
“Tell who?”
“Who do you think? Your brother!”
“Oh,” I said, getting it now. “Oh, no. We cannot tell him. He will be upset. He does not like spiders. Plus, he’ll tell my mom and dad, and I will get in big trouble.” I dropped the walkie-talkie and nodded. I was good at this.
“But your spider named Amp may eat your brother,” Olivia’s voice crackled back through the tiny speaker. It sounded like she was holding back a laugh.
“There’s nothing funny about this.”
“Oh, I know,” she said back.
“Good night, Olivia,” I said. “See you tomorrow morning. We will look for my spider tomorrow after school when Taylor is not around. It is probably in his room.”
“Okay! Over!” Olivia sounded bored again.
I put the walkie-talkie on my nightstand and got cozy.
“That was ridiculous,” Amp’s voice said from the dark.
“That, my alien friend, was not ridiculous. That was revenge.”
Before long, I drifted off to sleep, not knowing what disastrous events I had just put into motion.
07
Spider Fallout
Aside from the fact that I found Taylor asleep on the living room couch, Thursday morning proceeded like a normal day.
I grabbed some breakfast and was just gathering up my homework from my desk, when I heard Erdian bad words coming from my closet. I opened the door to find Amp at work inside his ship. And it obviously wasn’t going so great.
“I’m off to school, Amp,” I said, smiling.
“Floofy bolt!” I heard him squeak in frustration. “Flab dabbler!”
“Hey, watch your language in there,” I said, holding back a giggle. Erde may be an uppity, advanced civilization in a galaxy far, far away, but they still have way more bad words than we do.
“I cannot work under these conditions,” he growled. “If I only had brought that dabsnapping molder flincher with me.”
“Oh, hey, I think I might have a molder flincher around here somewhere,” I said, unable to hold back my laughter any longer.
“Don’t be such a doozle, Zack,” he snapped, poking his head out of a hatch near the ship’s front that I hadn’t even noticed was open.
He looked like a blue gopher.
“Just so you know, our prank worked like a charm,” I told him. “Taylor was so freaked he slept on the couch.”
“All because of a spider?” he asked.
“All because of a spider,” I agreed.
“Fascinating,” he said, turning his back to me. He whispered into the contraption he wore on his wrist:
“Note to Erdian Council: Humans are afraid of spiders. Spiders are web-spinning, eight-legged arthropods. An arthropod’s body is in sections. A spider’s body has two sections. Most spiders also have four eyes. Some have more. Weird. They are also smaller than the smallest Erdian. Perhaps we can use this information in planning our invasion.”
“You know that not all humans are afraid of spiders,” I interrupted.
“Agggh, you were listening?” Amp screamed.
“You weren’t exactly being quiet.”
“Stop being a doozle, Zack, and get to school. I have work to do.”
“I’d play hooky and help you, buddy, but I can only fit about three fingers in there.”
He glared at me. “Blagh,” he said, waving a little tool at me and returning to his secret tinkering.
Once on the school bus, I almost felt bad for Taylor. He was sitting up front in his usual spot, but he was staring out the window instead of showing off some new gizmo he was working on. His head seemed to bob with sleepiness.
Then I remembered his meddling and snooping and spying. “Serves him right,” I mumbled.
Olivia was trying to get me to watch her do coin tricks.
“Where’d it go?” she asked for the third time. “See? It’s gone. Can you believe it? That’s magic.”
I just rolled my eyes.
“Don’t be a hater, Zack.”
I couldn’t wait for her magic phase to end.
Olivia was curious about practically everything. Last week it was French. The week before that she was obsessed with an animal I had never heard of called a pangolin. Before that it was hypnosis, kite building, juggling, and a few long weeks when all she could talk about was how they built the pyramids. She never stuck with anything for very long. That made her kind of fascinating—but exhausting.
“Oh my gosh, there’s a coin in your ear,” she said, pretending to pull a quarter out of my ear. “How did your empty head become a piggy bank?”
I stared at her with dull eyes. “Bleh,” I said.
After slogging through math, social studies, and reading, my teacher, Miss Martin, announced that it was time for a mandatory Young Volunteers meeting. It was a prerace run-through. We reviewed schedules and responsibilities for tomorrow’s race. About ten kids who had been caught in some misdeed or another squeezed into Principal Luntz’s tiny conference room. The room smelled like bologna, apple juice, and boredom.
I counted Max Myers yawning seven times in one minute.
After reviewing who was doing what at the race, Principal Luntz asked us if everyone had tested their walkie-talkies as he had suggested in our last meeting.
Olivia and I looked at each other and smiled. We nodded.
Principal Luntz passed out our official volunteer badges and dismissed us, but he asked me to stay behind. He waved Olivia away when she tr
ied to stay at my side.
“Remember, you have the right to a lawyer, Zack,” she said, not helping me feel any better. “You have the right to remain silent, too.” With a nod and a firm slap on my back, she exited.
I turned back to Principal Luntz, who had me fixed in an odd stare.
Did he know about Amp tearing apart my walkie-talkie?
Did he know I had blacked out one of Ben Franklin’s front teeth in my history book?
Had he heard about the thunderous Cheerio-smelling burp I launched the day before during reading time?
My heart tap-danced. My stomach shrank. My armpits got moist.
“Zack, can you tell me anything about this note?” he asked, handing me a note written on a torn piece of binder paper.
It was written in Taylor’s straight, overly neat writing.
Dear everybody,
I have decided to run away. I’ll be fine.
My brother Zack knows why.
I’ll send for my robots and tools. Mail them carefully.
Thank you,
Taylor S. McGee, 1st grader
Principal Luntz peered down at me.
I stared at the note and tried not to look guilty.
“I do not like when my students run away from home, but when they run away from school, it causes me great difficulty. He indicates you know why he ran away. Can you shed some light on that?”
I twisted up my mouth and looked at the ceiling, trying to look like I was thinking of a reason Taylor might run away. “Not a clue,” I concluded.
“Okay,” he sighed, focusing on me with intense interest. “Have a seat. Your parents will be here in a minute or two.”
That was grim news. As my mind raced, one thing remained clear: my brother could not take a joke.
08
The Drive
“You’re not getting the gravity of this situation,” Mom said, turning around in the front seat to check on how upset I looked.
I’ve found that there’s nothing worse than getting the third degree in the car. There’s no escape, no distractions, and you can’t even hope to get sent to your room.
