The Mystery of the Frozen Brains

by Marty Chan

  “Did you find anything at church?” I asked. I expected Remi to have better news than me.

  “Tell me how you did first.”

  “No. You go.”

  “You go,” Remi said.

  “Did you make a list?”

  “Did you find anyone to help us?” Remi seemed to be stalling.

  “I asked you first.”

  “I asked you first,” Remi echoed.

  “What happened?” we said at the exact same time.

  “Jinx,” Remi yelled. He punched me in the arm.

  “Ow.”

  “Double jinx.” He punched me again.

  “Quit it.”

  He punched me a third time. I bit my lip but didn’t say a thing. We stood in the snow, silent for several minutes just looking at each other. Remi finally uncurled his fist.

  “Why did you hit me?”

  “Because we said the same thing at the same time.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a game. If we say the same thing at the same time, it’s a jinx. And we get to punch each other. First one to punch wins. Double jinx happens if you say anything right after I punch you.”

  “You’re playing games at a time like this?” My arm really hurt.

  “Sorry.”

  “Just for that, you have to tell me what happened in the church first.”

  Remi looked down at his helmet. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know.”

  Remi mumbled. “I fell asleep.”

  “What?!”

  Remi explained, “Father Sasseville was telling a really long story. I only closed my eyes for a second. But when I looked up, people were leaving the church. I wrote down some names of people who we can trust.”

  “Who?”

  “My mom and dad. And my sisters.”

  “I can’t believe you fell asleep. All you had to do was one simple thing.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You found someone who can help us, right?”

  “Um. Sort of.”

  “What do you mean sort of?”

  “Do you remember Greg from the barbershop?”

  “That loud mouth? He’s the king of monkey butts. Oh no. It’s him. Isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  Remi slammed his helmet against the wall. It bounced back and hit him in the face. “Ouch!”

  “Did it hurt?” I asked. As soon as I said it, I knew what Remi would say, and I tried to beat him to the punch.

  “Duh,” we both yelled at the same time.

  “Jinx.” I said. Then I smacked him in the arm.

  “Ow.”

  “Double jinx.” I punched him again. “Now we’re even.”

  “Who’s playing games now?”

  “Sorry.”

  “So did Greg believe you?” Remi asked as he rubbed his nose.

  I broke the bad news. Greg didn’t believe that aliens were invading Earth. In fact, no one would believe us. Remi slumped against the cement wall. We would receive no help against the invasion.

  Suddenly, Remi smacked himself in the forehead.

  “You don’t have to beat yourself up over this,” I said.

  “No. No. Don’t you get it?”

  “Is this some trick like the jinx thing?”

  “Who’s going to believe aliens are invading Earth?”

  “No one.”

  “Not in town, but there are believers. Who?”

  It took me a minute to come up with an answer. “People who think aliens are on Earth?”

  “Exactly. And who are those people?”

  “You. And Me.”

  “And . . . ?”

  I shook my head.

  “The people who wrote that U.F.O. magazine!”

  Of course, the magazine people would be thrilled to learn about the alien invasion. Why hadn’t I thought of that before?

  Remi beamed, “Let’s get that magazine of yours.”

  Inside my room, Remi and I barricaded the door with my dresser. We wrapped tin foil around our heads to prevent my mom from picking up our thoughts. Then we opened the U.F.O. magazine and looked for a way to contact the magazine people. We flipped past an ad for instant muscles, an ad for song-writing lessons, and a ton of classifieds selling movie star posters. Finally, I found what we needed in a tiny box on the third last page. A small ad read:

  “Reward for U.F.O. evidence

  Call 1-212-555-9000

  New York, New York”

  With one phone call, we could stop the alien invasion. We could save Earth just like that. It almost seemed too easy. Remi and I gave each other high fives.

  “Where’s the phone?” Remi asked.

  It hit me like a ton of bricks. I groaned, “It’s beside the cash register. Where Dad spends all his time.”

  “We could use the phone at my place,” Remi suggested.

  Remi was on a roll. He had two good ideas in one day.

  “Then I can teach you how to play hockey,” he said.

  “You bet,” I said.

  Remi and I shoved the dresser out of the way. I threw open the door. Mom stood in the hallway, waiting for us.

  “Aiya! Take off that tin foil,” she barked in alienese.

  I suspected Mom couldn’t read our minds, which made her furious.

  “This is part of our homework,” I lied. “We can’t take off the tin foil.”

  “Yes,” Remi backed me up. “We have to find out how long tin foil can sit on a person’s head.”

  Remi’s streak of good ideas officially came to a grinding halt. I tried to recover. “Uh, Mom, I have to go to Remi’s place to study.”

  She shook her head. “We have to work in store. Tell your friend to go home.”

  “I won’t be long,” I said. “I’ll be right back. I promise.

  Then Mom said in alienese, “You’re spending too much time with that boy.”

  “He’s my friend.”

  “You don’t need that kind of friend.”

  “What’s so wrong about him?” I asked.

  Instead of answering me, she turned on Remi. “You go home now.”

  “Sure. You coming, Marty?”

  “He stay here,” she said.

  “Marty?” Remi’s eyes seemed to ask if my mom had used her mind control powers on me.

  I think she did, because I couldn’t disobey my mom.

  Instead, I told Remi, “I’m staying here to study.”

  “Oh?” he said, worried.

  I struggled against her mind control and won a small point. “You’re going to have to study with me here in the store,”

  Mom sighed, “One hour. And then he goes home. Understand.”

  I nodded. Then I closed my bedroom door. I tapped my tin foil helmet, to make sure Remi kept his hat on. I put my ear against the door and listened.

  Mom’s footsteps retreated into the distance.

  Sure that she had left, I turned to Remi. “We can’t let her know that we might be on to her and the alien invasion. If she figures out what we know, we’ll be in real big trouble.”

  Remi nodded. “I bet the cows knew what the aliens were up to. And that’s why they got cut up.”

  I shook my head. When Remi’s train went off the tracks, it really went off the tracks.

  “We have to get to a phone,” I said.

  “I could go home and make the call from there,” Remi suggested.

  “If you leave now, my mom might suspect something’s up.”

  Remi agreed. “Then we have to use the phone here.”

  We waited until Mom started to make supper to make our move. Once we were sure of her location, Remi and I headed into the store to execute our plan. When I first proposed the idea, it sounded good. But now that I had to go through with it, I wasn’t so sure. Remi slapped the back of my head and told me to get some courage. I slapped his head in retaliation.

  He smiled, “That’s better. Let’s do it.”

  I headed to the cash register, where Dad re
ad his newspaper. I coughed to get his attention. “Um, Dad. Can we talk?”

  He grunted, but didn’t look up from his paper.

  “There’s a problem in the back.”

  “What?”

  “I think something’s leaking.”

  “Get a mop and clean it up.”

  “It smells funny.”

  “Don’t smell it.”

  “The leak is coming from the diapers. Should I tell Mom?”

  “Where is the leak?”

  “The diaper shelf,” I said. “So should I get Mom?”

  Dad threw his newspaper down. “No. You stay here and watch the front. I’ll get it.”

  He bolted off. I knew he’d be worried about the bottle he had hidden behind the diapers. I also knew he would freak out when he saw the opened bottle on its side. I didn’t like Dad drinking anyway, so pouring the booze out didn’t bother me. The important thing was that I had bought us a few minutes.

  I stuck my fingers in my mouth and tried to whistle, but only air came out. I tried again. I had seen the boys in my class whistle like this. I assumed all I had to do was stick my fingers between my lips and blow. Maybe my alien lips made a whistle so high-pitched that only other aliens or dogs could hear it. I took my fingers out of my mouth and called out to Remi.

  He poked his head out from behind the meat counter. “Is the coast clear?”

  “Yes. Move.”

  He tiptoed over with the magazine. I picked up the phone and peeked past the register. Dad kneeled at the spill. He opened a package of diapers and soaked up the mess.

  “The coast is clear,” I whispered to Remi. “Start dialling.”

  He dialled as quietly as he could. The rotary dial clacked off the numbers, thundering. Remi and I looked around to see if anyone heard. No one came running. Remi dialled the rest of the numbers. The numbers clacked off like firecrackers. He covered the phone with his shirt. I checked on Dad. He was still cleaning his spilled booze from the floor. Finally, Remi finished dialling.

  He shoved the receiver at me. “You talk to them.”

  “Get some courage,” I said, shoving the receiver back at him.

  He stuck his hands behind his back and shook his head. I sighed and put the receiver to my ear.

  “U.F.O. hotline,” a woman answered, bored.

  “I have an alien to report,” I said.

  “Alien invasion,” Remi corrected.

  “How old are you?”

  “Nine.”

  “Look, kid. I’ve heard all the jokes in the book. Is your fridge running? Well, you’d better go catch it. I’m wise to it all.”

  “This isn’t a joke,” I said. “I want to report an alien.”

  “We only take serious reports. If you don’t have a photo of a U.F.O., then you’re wasting my time.”

  “But my parents are aliens.”

  “Yeah, when I was your age I thought my dad was from Mars. It turned out that he was from Jersey. You’ll get over it, kid.

  “Is Jersey by Saturn?”

  “Don’t call again,” she barked and hung up.

  I put the phone back on its cradle.

  “She wants proof,” I told Remi.

  “We’ve got the book with the alien writing.”

  “Not enough. She said she wanted proof of a flying saucer. Like a photo.”

  “We don’t have that,” Remi said.

  “So they won’t help us?”

  “No. We’re on our own.”

  “Why couldn’t you be green with big ears or antenna or something alien like? You just look normal.”

  This was the first time anyone ever called me normal. Usually, I heard words like “Chinaman,” “Slanty Eyes,” or “Chink.” These words made me feel as far away from normal as possible.

  Remi rapped my forehead. “Hello? Earth to alien boy. What are you thinking about?”

  “Uh nothing.”

  “There’s got to be some way we can get proof.”

  “Yeah, but how?”

  Suddenly, Remi slapped me in the arm. “I got it.”

  “Ow.”

  “Wimp.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are too.”

  “Shut up.” I liked arguing with Remi.

  Remi pulled me away from the register and whispered. “We don’t have a photo of a flying saucer. But we have the real thing.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “The real thing,” he repeated.

  “Sorry. I don’t get it.”

  Remi sighed, “How did you get here?”

  “I walked.”

  “Stop being a monkey butt. How did your family get here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How did they get all the way to Earth from Saturn? Think, Marty. Think.”

  “I guess they must have flown in a . . . in . . . a . . . ”

  “Flying saucer,” Remi completed my sentence.

  This was our first big break. All we had to do was find where my parents parked their U.F.O.

  TWELVE

  At first, I assumed locating the flying saucer would be easy. Dad stunk at hiding things — like his bottle of rye — and if he had a say in where to park the flying saucer, I expected to find the space craft by dinner time. However, as the day wore on, I started to lose confidence.

  Remi and I paced around the parking lot beside my parents’ store. He believed that the asphalt was actually the top of the space ship, but his theory hit a bump when he tripped on a pothole.

  “It might be a dent from an asteroid,” Remi pleaded his case.

  “There’s nothing but dirt in the hole,” I pointed out.

  “The ship has to be close in case your parents have to make a quick getaway.”

  “But the flying saucer is probably as big as a house.”

  I suggested, “Maybe it’s in the church. I’ll bet the steeple is the top part of the ship.”

  Remi shook his head, “Duh! They’re called flying saucers for a reason. The space ships in the magazine looked more like dinner plates.”

  “Well, the church is the only place big enough to hide the U.F.O.”

  “Fine, fine, let’s go check out the church, but I’ll bet you’re wrong. And we’ll find out that the flying saucer was under our noses all along.” Remi made a point of looking down at the parking lot pavement.

  I ignored him and walked to the church. He followed me up to the locked cathedral doors. I yanked at both door handles several times, hoping that one fast pull would spring a lock. No luck. I trudged through the snow to find another entrance. About half-way around the building, I sunk into a deep snow drift.

  Remi pulled me out. “If your parents need to get a quick getaway, this would be terrible place to put the U.F.O. The door’s always locked except on Sundays and during weddings and funerals. They’d need Father Sasseville to let them in.”

  “Maybe they have their own set of keys.”

  “Yeah. But it’d look pretty mysterious if your parents were sneaking into the church, wouldn’t it? Not very secret if you ask me.”

  “Maybe we have a transporter beam that can instantly send us from the store to the ship.”

  Remi chuckled, “Don’t be stupid, Marty. If they had something like that, then why would they need a flying saucer in the first place? I think the ship has to be near the store. We just haven’t looked hard enough.”

  “I’m not going to dig up the parking lot, Remi.”

  “But I know where we can get shovels.”

  “I think we’re looking in the wrong place. The ship isn’t in town.”

  “You’re crazy. The space ship has to be close. It can’t be out of town limits.”

  “My parents could jump in the car and drive to the space ship in minutes.”

  “But then the flying saucer could be anywhere.”

  “I think it’s parked underwater in Man Made Lake,” I proposed. “No one would ever look for an alien craft in Man Made Lake.”

 
“The water’s frozen.”

  “The ice hides the flying saucer.”

  “Then how would your parents get to the ship? They’d have to chop through the ice. That would take hours.”

  Remi had me there. “Yeah, and now that I think of it, my mom can’t swim.”

  “So do we get to dig up the parking lot?” Remi beamed.

  Then it hit me.

  “No. Wait. Remi. What is the one thing that you know about the prairies?”

  “It’s cold.”

  “What else?”

  “My dad says the sky goes on forever.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Oh yeah. My uncle Louis says the prairies are flatter than my mom’s pancakes.”

  “Exactly. It’s all flat. Except for where?”

  Remi scrunched his face like he had just sucked on a lemon. I think that was his thinking look.

  His eyes popped wide open. “The snow hill in the Boissonault’s field!”

  “Exactly.”

  “The flying saucer is under the hill.”

  We had just cracked the case of the missing U.F.O.

  Remi pointed out, “Mr. Boissonault hates it when we go sledding on his field. He says he gets too many calls from Moms wanting their kids to go home. Now he doesn’t let anyone on the hill.”

  “But we have to get to the flying saucer. It’s the only way we can prove there’s an alien invasion.”

  “It’s not going to be easy,” he said. “He’s a mean old man.”

  I disagreed with Remi. Mr. Boissonault was nice to our family, even though his sons, Jean and Jacques, were jerks to me. He was one of the few people who still shopped at my parents’ store after the IGA opened. During hunting season, he always brought in a deer for my dad to butcher. And every Christmas, Mr. Boissonault sent us a nice card.

  However, when new houses popped up all around his farm land, he became grumpy to everyone. I think he hated how fast the town grew, and he fenced off his land to make sure the town didn’t spill over onto his land. Mr. Boissonault had put up “No Trespassing” signs all along his barbed-wire fence. He didn’t want anyone setting foot on his property.

  Remi and I walked on the other side of his fence toward the big hill. We had to be very careful if we were going to sneak on to the Boissonault field, because the hill stood in plain sight of the farmhouse.

  Remi guessed the distance from the fence to the hill to be fifty feet. I estimated the time to run that far would be at least a minute. We glanced back at the farmhouse and the black truck parked in front. Smoke billowed out of the chimney. The lights in the living room burned bright. Someone was definitely home. If we squinted, we probably could see Mr. Boissonault sitting in his easy chair on the lookout for trespassers.