by Nate Ball
CHAPTER 01: BRAIN DUMP
CHAPTER 02: MELTDOWN
CHAPTER 03: SCOPE IT OUT
CHAPTER 04: ANSWERING THE CALL
CHAPTER 05: THE CAT GETS OUT
CHAPTER 06: SEEING THE LIGHT
CHAPTER 07: GIVING CHASE
CHAPTER 08: FIRST AID
CHAPTER 09: LIVE WITH TAYLOR MCGEE
CHAPTER 10: BUSTED
CHAPTER 11: FLOATER
CHAPTER 12: SHOCK AND AWE
CHAPTER 13: CAMP SUTTER
CHAPTER 14: LIFT-OFF
CHAPTER 15: ESCAPE
TRY IT YOURSELF: HOVER-SHIP
BACK AD
An EXCERPT FROM ALIEN IN MY POCKET #8: SPACE INVADERS Chapter 01: The Mess I Made
Chapter 02: Face-Plant
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CREDITS
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Brain Dump
Okay, I’m just going admit something right from the start: I’ve had an alien no bigger than a soda can secretly hiding in my bedroom for the last few months.
You might think that it’d be an amazing thrill—but you’d be mistaken.
I’ve seen and done things that nobody in human history ever has. I started a citywide panic and successfully launched a spaceship into orbit out of my own backyard, and I created an electromagnet strong enough to nearly destroy a city building—all to prevent an alien invasion of planet Earth.
It’s been a pretty hectic and stressful few months.
And to be perfectly honest, it’s been a lot for a fourth-grader to handle.
I’ve had trouble sleeping. My grades have suffered. I dislocated my shoulder. It still clicks when I raise my hand. I had to erase my little brother’s short-term memory, and now he seems weirder than ever. I almost got eaten alive by a pack of bears. Oh, and I’ve had to smuggle about four hundred tons of Ritz Crackers and SweeTarts into my room. Amp, my houseguest from the planet Erde, has some odd ideas about food and nutrition.
My parents are convinced I have mental issues, because they often catch me talking, laughing, and arguing in my room—and they think I’m alone! Mom’s even taken me to Dr. Bell’s office twice now for “a chat,” but he just told her that I was sleepy and slightly confused, but an otherwise perfectly ordinary kid.
If he only knew . . .
There have also been a few more unexpected side effects caused by playing host to an alien. For example, actually knowing a real-life alien totally ruins every movie you see about aliens! And it changes the way you think about Earth: we are so not the center of the universe. Most important, it answers the age-old question about whether life exists on other planets—it does, and I have the roommate to prove it.
All this makes evenings like tonight extra special.
See, tonight is my night off. Amp is hanging out with Olivia, my next-door neighbor, classmate, best friend, and the only other person on the planet who knows about the alien hiding out in the McGees’ house.
Twice a week Olivia babysits Amp. Or, more accurately, she prevents him from starting a worldwide panic while I get some quality alone time.
What do I do while he’s away? These blissful few hours of peace and quiet are often spent cleaning my room—Amp makes a serious mess. Ritz Cracker crumbs are everywhere. He eats them like a termite eats wood. Sometimes I nap. Sometimes I just stare at the wall and let my brain relax. Like I said, hiding an alien from your parents and little brother can be pretty mentally exhausting.
As the sun dips below the garage roof outside my second-story bedroom window, I fall into a herky-jerky sleep, dreaming about eating a salami-and-worm sandwich in front of my class—it’s my brain’s favorite weird dream and one I’ve actually grown to enjoy.
Of course, that nap was the beginning of the end of Amp’s time here on Earth.
This is the story of how I let my guard down and how my nosy little brother stepped in and the world as we know it nearly ended.
Meltdown
Apparently, I didn’t feel the first few Milk Duds bounce off my face.
It wasn’t my fault. I was sound asleep.
Then one of the chocolate candies hit me square on the front tooth with a loud click. I sat up like startled cat.
I blinked in the dim light, trying to make sense of what had hit me.
I picked up the Milk Dud in question and stared at it like it was a bullet from another universe. I put a finger to my tooth and gave it a wiggle to see if the flying candy had knocked it loose.
My sheets, blankets, and pillow were covered with about forty Milk Duds. I popped one in my mouth and started chewing slowly.
Another candy zipped through the dim light out of nowhere. I was slow to duck—and blink. It beaned me square in the open eye.
“Ouch!” I shouted, pressing a palm to my stinging, watering eye.
I scrambled to the window. The flying candies were coming through the big hole in my window screen. I could see Olivia down in my backyard, eating from and holding the biggest box of Milk Duds I had ever seen.
“Why are you throwing Milk Duds at my face?” I hissed. “You almost blinded me!”
“I called, but your mom told me your doctor says you need to sleep more. She said you might have a sleeping disorder.”
“I do,” I said. “His name is Amp!”
The night sky was sparkling with stars. The little bulb by our back door was on, so I could see Olivia well enough to know something was on her mind.
“What do you want?” I asked. “You’re supposed to be babysitting till eleven thirty. Is it eleven thirty already?”
She pushed a wad of half-chewed Milk Duds to the side of her mouth with her tongue. She now looked like a distracted squirrel. “Something happened,” she said from the other side of her mouth.
I stared down at her. “Something? Can you be more specific?”
“Something bad.”
“How bad?” I said, shaking my head.
She paused, swallowed the gob of chocolate with some effort, and then looked around as if she were trying to figure out how to tell me the news. She sighed. “Amp kinda had a meltdown.”
“What kind of meltdown? I didn’t think aliens could even have meltdowns.”
“I didn’t think so either.”
“Then what do you mean he had a meltdown?”
“It’s like his spirit was broken.”
I grabbed a fistful of my hair in frustration. “What does that mean?” I growled. “Olivia, what’s wrong with you? First you almost knock my tooth out, then you nearly blind me, then you get all mysterious.”
“Sorry,” she said, blinking. Now she really did seem upset. She held up the box of candy. “I’m an emotional eater.”
“Okay,” I said. “Take it easy. Just relax. He drives me crazy, too. Where is Amp now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he nearby?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he come back to my house?”
“I don’t know.”
“Which direction did he go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was he going to get something?”
“I. Don’t. Know.”
“You’re some babysitter! I hope you’re not expecting a tip!”
Olivia looked down at her shoes. I thought she might start to cry.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll figure this out. He gets touchy sometimes. When did this all happen?”
“About two hours ago.”
“What? He’s got a two-hour lead? He can’t be out on his own! He can’t be seen. He’ll get eaten by a cat or a badger.”
“I know that!” she shouted.
“Shhh! My parents . . . Why didn’t you come get me ear
lier?”
“I told you, I tried! Your mom has you in sleepy-time lockdown. I was trying to find him on my own so you could get your beauty rest.”
I thought for a moment. “Okay, go get your grandpa’s ladder. My mom is not going to let me out, not at this hour. We’ll find him together.”
Olivia nodded and walked off, looking relieved to have the beginnings of a plan, any plan, taking shape.
“And save some Milk Duds for me,” I said, trying to make the situation less tense. I’m not sure if it worked. Olivia didn’t look back. She disappeared into the hole in the fence between our two backyards.
I popped my screen out and dropped it into the bushes below. I looked around my room. An uneasy feeling overtook me. I quietly closed my door all the way. I could hear my parents talking excitedly down in the kitchen.
I turned back to my empty room. “Somebody remind me to strangle that alien when I get my hands on him.” And then I heard the ladder rattle against the side of the house and I climbed out to go save Amp—again.
Scope It Out
“Whoa, this telescope is almost as big as a canoe.”
Olivia nodded. “Amp said exactly the same thing. I happened to mention that my grandpa used to be into astronomy when my grandma was alive. They used to stand out here at night and look at stars and stuff. It was their hobby.”
If Amp were here, he’d so say:
“Council Note: Astronomy is the study of celestial objects such as stars, planets, moons, and galaxies. Earthlings have primitive equipment for their study. They call them telescopes and they use them to stare at the sky.”
Amp had been recording messages for his home planet since the day he came to Earth. Usually it annoyed me, but at that moment, I actually really missed the little guy.
It was nearing midnight now, and the surrounding homes were dark and quiet. The air was filled with the noise of crickets and the hoot of an owl that lived somewhere nearby. Apparently, Olivia’s grandpa was upstairs in bed. We had to be careful and quiet—though her grandfather snored like a bear, so we’d have plenty of warning if we woke him.
I poked my eye into the eyehole thingy, but I couldn’t really see anything. I started to turn nobs, move a slider back and forth, and pull some levers. “This is right up Amp’s alley.”
“Tell me about it.” Olivia sighed. “When he heard it was stored in the garage, he insisted we haul it out and set it up.”
“Sounds like him. How does this thing even work?”
“I have no idea,” Olivia said quietly.
I walked around the impressive-looking piece of equipment and whistled. “This must be worth a lot of money.”
“Maybe,” Olivia said with a shrug. “Grandpa never takes it out anymore. I wish I hadn’t mentioned it to Amp.”
Olivia had set up the telescope in the center of her backyard and had pointed it up toward the heavens. The grass under my bare feet felt damp and cold. I looked around the perfectly still backyard.
“Amp?” I said louder than I should have. “Knock it off. Let’s go. I have to sleep and so does Olivia.”
Olivia shook her head. “It won’t work. He’s gone. I can feel it in my bones. He freaked out.”
“What do you mean he’s gone? Where would he go?”
She didn’t answer, but I could see her shrug again.
“Okay, so tell me again exactly what happened.”
“It was so weird. He was doing calculations in his head. Charting the stars. He was totally excited. He was sure he was going to find his home planet, Erde. Or not exactly his planet—his sun, the one Erde goes around. He said it would look like the tiniest blue star from here. I thought he was going to pass out from excitement.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That sounds like him.”
“But it was taking him forever. After, like, an hour of nothing, I got bored and zonked out on the couch in the garage. I kept hearing him talking to himself. Clapping his little hands. Jumping up and down on this stepladder I gave him to stand on.”
“Yeah . . .”
“Then . . . I don’t know. He found it—his sun or whatever. I heard him shouting about it. He woke me up. I came out here. And then he got real quiet.”
“Why?”
“He said something about a flash. Some mysterious light. I don’t know. He said something had happened to his planet.”
“Really?” I whispered, and sat down on the small stepladder.
“He said it had blown up. Or exploded. Or something.”
“Oh.”
“Then he got mad at the telescope because it wasn’t powerful enough. He got crazy. He was ranting and raving. He said his planet was gone. All was lost. He was the only Erdian left in the universe. Blah, blah, blah.”
“Man.”
“He said he was giving himself up. There was no point to anything anymore. No point in hiding. ‘It’s all over,’ he kept repeating.”
“Wow. What a freak-out. I wouldn’t worry too much. He’s just overreacting—again. He’s always pushy and bossy and acts like a know-it-all, but most of the time he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“Well, now he’s overreacting to the point that he’s run off and given up.”
“Whatever,” I said.
“No, he was serious. That’s what I meant when I said his spirit was broken. He was like a different person. He even said good-bye.”
“He said good-bye? Good grief.”
“I never thought it would end like this,” Olivia said with a sniff.
I could tell Olivia had really started to cry, but I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. I was more irritated than anything else. Amp could be an emotional wrecking ball. He could mess up your life in ways that you never thought possible.
“Go to bed,” I said. “Don’t worry. He’ll come around. Don’t take anything he says too seriously. He’ll drive you crazy. I’ll go back my room, see if I can contact him with brain waves, or whatever we call it. I’m sure everything will be all right.”
“I’m glad you think so,” Olivia whispered. She gave me a little wave in the dark, then turned and went into her house without looking back.
I was left alone, surrounded by the noises of the night, feeling the damp grass quickly making my feet feel cold.
“You’re in big trouble, mister,” I said to the surrounding darkness.
Answering the Call
I climbed up the ladder still leaning against my house and crawled back into my room like a thief in the night.
I quietly opened my bedroom door and listened, but there was no sound coming from downstairs. The lights were all out. I looked down the hall, and the only light I could see was leaking out from under Taylor’s bedroom door. This was late for him. I considered seeing what he was up to, but I had my own problems to deal with.
I collapsed onto my bed with a moan.
I thought of Olivia crying in the darkness but pushed it out of my mind. I had never seen her cry before.
Amp could make a mess as easily as most people could make toast.
I balled my hands into fists. I wondered if I was the first fourth-grader in the history of Reed School to suffer from high blood pressure.
I was tired and grumpy and sleepy and frustrated. It was the middle of the night. And I realized I’d felt this way pretty much since Amp flew through my window screen and crash-landed his football-size spaceship onto my bed.
Talk about turning a kid’s life inside out.
Yes, it was fun to hear about life on other planets and to learn about space travel. We’d had some pretty interesting adventures. And I’ll admit, there was something exciting about hiding the greatest secret ever from the rest of the world—except for Olivia, of course.
But that was the thing. I couldn’t discuss Amp with anyone but Olivia. Even my parents were clueless. I had to keep this incredible secret all bottled up inside, and sometimes the pressure of it made me feel like a human volcano.
The sad truth was th
at I knew Amp would be taken away from me the instant that word got out I was hiding an alien in my pocket. The police or the government or the army would swoop in, put him in cage, and rush him away to some top secret laboratory to poke and probe and experiment on him like a frog in a middle-school biology class.
The news would cause a freak-out on a global scale.
And the fact that he was a military scout from the planet Erde visiting Earth to scope out a future Erdian invasion would not have sat well with the army types.
The thought of millions of pint-size Smurf-looking aliens trying to take over was hard to imagine, even for me, but it wasn’t hard to imagine it would be a big mess for both sides.
Luckily we had put a stop to the whole invasion-of-Earth business.
Amp’s boss—his name was Ohm—had shown up one day, and then had returned to Erde to report that Earth was not suitable for a takeover. For one, humans—and everything else on Earth—turned out to be much bigger than the Erdians had thought. Their estimates were way off. And experience had taught the Erdians that it was better to pick on someone their own size. Plus, humans were clever, bossy, and very unpredictable, and we owned cats—all bad traits for an Erdian enemy.
My Amp memories now fluttered through my mind like a thousand little blue headaches.
“Amp?” I called out silently with my mind as I stared up at my ceiling. “Can you hear me? Come back, and we’ll figure this out together.”
Amp and I could communicate using our minds. But it really wasn’t a very pleasant experience—Olivia said it gave her the willies. To me it was sort of like pouring cold butterscotch pudding through both your earholes at the same time.
I lay on my bed, nagging at him with my mind for ten minutes straight. Finally I must have worn him down, because he answered in the saddest, most defeated voice I had ever heard.
“It’s over, Zack. I give up. All is lost. I’m the last Erdian.”
I gasped and sat up on the edge of my bed. I closed my eyes, pressed a finger to each of my temples, and focused my mind. “Relax, little man. Snap out of it. You don’t know anything for sure. Like I said, come back, and we’ll figure this out.”
