You Can't Have My Planet

by James Mihaley

  “This is one school of cloudfish,” Tula said. “There are five hundred schools hiding out in the clouds above Manhattan. They’re all part of our team.”

  A goldfish cloudfish landed on Toshi’s shoulder while two starfish cloudfish balanced themselves on the bow of Nikki’s violin.

  “Think of them as a living, breathing fog machine,” Tula said.

  “Mist with an attitude,” Toshi said.

  “Bobby, you’ll be able to mobilize them from your command and control center,” explained Tula. “Let’s say Giles is removing graffiti from the corner of Second Avenue and Fourteenth Street. You can send a school of cloudfish over there. To any passerby, it will look like a patch of fog.”

  “No one will see what we’re up to.”

  “Exactly,” replied Tula.

  The cloudfish communicated by carving letters out of fog. It looked a little like skywriting.

  A message appeared out of thin air above the couch: IT IS AN HONOR TO BE PART OF THIS QUEST!

  We all cheered.

  Three dolphin cloudfish swam laps around my head at supersonic speed. I had to close my eyes to keep from getting dizzy. “Hey, Tula,” I said. “Did Dr. Sprinkles invent the cloudfish?”

  “No, they come from a planet called Effulgentoria. I represented them in a lawsuit. A neighboring star system was stealing their ozone. We won the case. This is how they’re paying me back.”

  “Now we’ve got everything we need to clean Manhattan,” Bobby said.

  “We don’t have the Eco-droid yet,” I reminded him. “Without the droid we’re in big trouble.”

  Would we all end up in hairy cages because Dr. Sprinkles let us down?

  Tula tried to soothe my agitation. She checked her watch. “Big Daddy will be here in less than five minutes. In the meantime…” Digging into her briefcase, she handed me a plastic bag full of miniature vending carts. ICE COLD LEMONADE! was printed on the side of each one.

  “What are these for?” I asked.

  “They’re real vending carts that have been shrunken down. By Sunday morning, there will be one thousand androids cleaning the streets of Manhattan. Like all organic beings, they require energy to keep going. They need water and sunlight to digest paper and turn it back into trees, but this process requires a specific kind of water not found on this planet. It’ll taste just like lemonade.”

  “What if a regular person buys the lemonade?” I asked, watching the octopus cloudfish sway its tentacles in rhythm with Nikki’s violin.

  “Yeah,” Toshi said. “There’s a heat wave going on. They can’t turn people away.”

  “They won’t have to,” Tula said. “It has no side effects for humans.”

  “Which androids will be selling lemonade?” I asked.

  “As soon as they’re born, fifty androids will automatically be programmed to serve as street vendors. Each of them will get a cart and serve lemonade to the other Eco-droids.”

  “Let’s just hope we get them,” I said.

  “You’ve got me,” Stanley said, rolling into the room. “What more do you need?”

  “What makes you think we won’t get the droids?” Bobby said.

  “You haven’t met Dr. Sprinkles,” I said. “She’s not the most reliable scientist in the world.”

  “Giles,” Tula said, “I think you’ll want to take that back.” She peered inside her briefcase. “Here comes Big Daddy.”

  We clapped madly, hooting and hollering. Cloudfish are awesome and so are flyplanes. But an android that can create an entire army of Eco-droids simply by picking up bottles and cans off the street? An android programmed with environmental-reversal software that can turn paper back into trees? Now, that’s the most awesomely awesomest thing in the history of awesomeness.

  We went berserk with excitement, jumping up and down, making the hardwood floor shake. We all fell silent when Tula rose slowly off the couch and moved into the middle of the living room.

  A red carpet spilled out of the briefcase onto the floor as my lovely blue lawyer announced, “Everyone, say hi to Big Daddy.”

  The android climbed out of the briefcase and walked into our lives. With a name like Big Daddy, I half expected a yeti. But he was a shrimp like me. And he looked completely harmless. He looked like a tiny, bald, middle-aged white guy who fixes computers.

  But at least he made it. Dr. Sprinkles was a lady—I mean a blob—of her word.

  Nikki ran down the red carpet and gave him a hug. “Welcome, Big Daddy.”

  He wore blue overalls. “Big Daddy is pleased to be here,” he said in a squeaky nerdy voice. He made eye contact with me. “You can call me Big Daddy.” He walked over by Toshi. “You too can call me Big Daddy.” He shook hands with Bobby. “I go by the name of Big Daddy.” He gazed up at a catfish cloudfish. “Hey, you. Please refer to me at all times as Big Daddy.”

  “OK, OK,” said the parking meter. “We get it. You’re Big Daddy. Say it one more time I’m spitting a quarter at you.”

  The android marched right up to Stanley. “Let me give you some advice. Never talk like that to Big Daddy.”

  The only thing that wasn’t geeky about Big Daddy was the way he breathed, deep and long. It wasn’t scary like Darth Vadar. Just strange.

  “Boy, he sure is a heavy breather,” Toshi said.

  “He’s cleaning the air,” Tula said. “The Eco-droids are equipped with air purifiers. By the end of the day the air quality in Manhattan will improve by three hundred percent. Just as the judge requested, you will return Manhattan to its original splendor and prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that your species is capable of taking care of the planet.”

  The doorbell rang. Tula dove into her briefcase. Stanley rolled in behind her.

  Bobby answered the front door. It was Buck’s dad the building superintendent.

  “What’s up with all that racket?” he growled. “I’ve been getting complaints. You’ve been screaming like maniacs and jumping up and down. The people below you can hear everything.”

  “Sorry, sir. It won’t happen again,” Bobby assured him.

  “Why aren’t you kids in bed?” asked the super.

  “We’re having a sleepover,” Nikki said.

  “A sleepover? With who? A herd of rhinos?”

  “Have you ever had a pillow fight with a rhino, sir?” I said. “It’s a lot of fun.”

  “Don’t get smart with me. Let me talk to your grandmother.”

  “She’s sleeping,” I said.

  He rolled his eyes. “No adult supervision. Just like I thought.”

  “There’s an adult here,” Nikki said, resting her head in the android’s lap. “His name is Big Daddy.”

  “He’s our uncle,” I said.

  The nerdy android stood up and moved toward the door.

  The super towered over him. “You’re Big Daddy?”

  “I dare you to call me Little Daddy. Go ahead. I dare you.”

  In order not to be noticed, the cloudfish had turned themselves into a rainbow.

  “Why is there a rainbow in your living room?” asked the super.

  Nikki smiled. “We’re happy people.”

  “If I hear one more peep out of you I’m calling the cops.” He marched out the door.

  Toshi and I shrank everyone down with our S/Us so the super couldn’t hear us. You can scream all you want when you’re only an inch tall.

  “Even though I’m an inch tall I’m still Big Daddy,” squeaked the android.

  “Giles, what’s wrong?” Tula said, noticing the dazed look on my face.

  “First I get a talking parking meter,” I said. “Now I have to deal with this crazy droid. Will the rest of the droids blab like him?”

  “No. He’s the master droid. Dr. Sprinkles gave him a colorful personality just for the heck of it. His offspring will be much calmer.”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “Giles, you seem stressed out to me. You need to take a little break.” She led me toward the fly
plane. “Want to take a ride in DubDub?”

  Me and Tula all alone! This was the opportunity I’d been waiting for. We zoomed out the window together. Cruising through Central Park in the flyplane was more romantic than a horse-and-buggy ride under a full moon.

  I tried to think of something funny to say. When you’re alone with a cute girl it’s important not to be boring.

  “Hey, Tula, where do cloudfish keep their money?”

  “I don’t know, Giles. Where do cloudfish keep their money?”

  “In a fog bank. Get it?”

  She gave me a big stupid grin. A big stupid grin isn’t really stupid. No way. It’s the most precious kind of smile a girl can give you. It’s an “I’ve got a crush on you” kind of smile.

  “Hey, Tula, what’s it like to walk across a Bridgeling?”

  “It feels like you’re traveling across eternity, yet you’re only taking a few steps.”

  “Do you think someday I could walk across one?”

  “I don’t know, Giles. We’d have to get the judge’s approval first.”

  “If we pass the test, do you think he’d give me the green light?”

  “Possibly,” she said.

  In the park down below, someone was blasting a boombox.

  “Do you know what would be a cool name for a band?” I said. “The Chocolate-Covered Rats.”

  “I’d buy their CD,” Tula said.

  “I think that’s what I’ll be when I grow up,” I said. “A professional rock band namer.”

  I could tell Tula was impressed that I was already starting to think about my career. The silhouette of an oak tree loomed up ahead in the moonlight. I decided to show off a little more.

  “See that oak tree?” I said. “When the wind passes through it, it makes a certain sound. And the sycamore makes a completely different sound. Every tree has a different voice. Not many people on this planet know that.”

  Passionately committed to impressing the girl with cotton candy hair, I silently commanded DubDub to zip down into a hole at the base of a poplar tree. Everything went pitch-black.

  “Where are we, Giles?” she asked.

  DubDub activated the night-vision capability. We were sitting on the nose of a baby raccoon. He was wrestling with his sister while his mama raccoon lay curled up in a ball, fast asleep. The flyplane darted back and forth from one baby’s bandit face to the other’s long fluffy tail.

  Because we were so small, the raccoon’s den seemed like a sprawling cave.

  “Giles, what was that noise?” Tula asked.

  A soft whimpering sound emanated from the back of the den.

  “Let’s go check it out,” I said.

  We found a third baby off by itself. It looked sick. It was smaller and paler, with watery eyes. It lay on its side, showing its belly, which was covered with fleas.

  “How dare they suck that poor raccoon’s blood?” said Tula.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Even I sort of wanted to blast them with a laser but I remembered that I never killed things—no matter what great gizmos I had—so I sprayed them with an insect repellant. The fleas fled for their lives, shocked that a housefly was bombarding them. DubDub translated the flea noises into English. They were screaming, “Traitor!”

  Using the flyplane, I applied an antibiotic ointment to the baby raccoon’s cuts and soared out of the cavernous den into the moonlight sky.

  Tula couldn’t take her eyes off me. “You’re so connected to nature, Giles. That’s what I love about you.”

  She just said the word love and the word Giles in the same sentence!

  She reached over and took hold of my hand. How soft they were, her lovely little sky fingers.

  We flew home and landed in the kitchen. I helped her out of the flyplane. Just as we were about to return to our normal size, a rhyme popped into my head. “I just came up with a poem about tonight. Wanna hear it?”

  “Sure.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I’m embarrassed.”

  “Giles, please.”

  “Forget I ever mentioned it.”

  “Giles…”

  “OK. OK.” I was already blushing and I hadn’t even recited it yet. If you sucked the red out of every strawberry on earth and squeezed it onto my face, that’s about how red I looked. I cleared my throat.

  “I may only be eleven

  but I’ve already been to heaven

  the night I held your hand.”

  When blue girls blush their cheeks turn orange. I had a tangerine lawyer.

  “Giles, that’s the most beautiful thing anyone’s ever said to me. But…”

  “But what?”

  “But aren’t you thirteen?”

  “Yes. But heaven doesn’t rhyme with thirteen.”

  She grinned. “I love it. Could you write it down for me? I’ll keep it for the rest of my life.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I’VE GOT A GIRLFRIEND!

  I’ve got a girlfriend!

  I’ve got a girlfriend!

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  HEY, DUDE, GUESS WHAT?

  I’ve got a girlfriend!

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I CHANGED MY RELATIONSHIP status on Facebook. No more of that single garbage. I didn’t mention that I was dating an alien, though.

  On Friday morning, my dad posted a photograph of an orangutan on my Wall, an orangutan coming out of the jungle. (Remember reader—all this time they’ve been away. They don’t know what they’ve been missing.)

  I called him in Malaysia. He answered on the third ring.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Hello, Giles. How’s it going?”

  “Just another boring summer vacation. How’s it going with you?”

  “It’s great. Did you check your Facebook?”

  “Heck, yeah. How close was the orangutan, Dad?”

  “Real close, son.”

  “How big was it?”

  “A lot bigger than I thought.”

  “Did it say anything?”

  “As a matter of fact it did. It asked me if I had any cookie dough.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I had a bunch, but my son Giles ate it all.”

  “So now the orangutan hates my guts. Thanks, Dad.”

  “Not at all. I told him you’re a nature boy. He decided to cut you some slack.”

  “I love it when orangutans cut me slack.”

  My dad and I could banter like this for hours. People say I inherited his wacky imagination.

  “Where’s Mom?” I asked.

  “Up in a tree picking coconuts. You know your mom. She loves coconuts.”

  My mom grabbed the phone from my dad and said, “I do love coconuts, Giles. But I love throwing them at your father even more.”

  My parents loved teasing each other almost as much as they loved teasing me. How would they feel about me dating a blue girl? I guess they didn’t notice my relationship status on Facebook. Hopefully it wouldn’t freak them out. Blue was my mom’s favorite color. That had to count for something, didn’t it?

  “How’s Grandma?” my mother asked. Grandma was my mom’s mom.

  “She’s sleeping,” I said.

  My mother was stunned. “You mean she actually fell asleep?”

  “Yeah, Mom. Grandma’s in a deep sleep.”

  “Oh, I’m so happy to hear that,” my mother said. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all week.”

  Then Nikki and Bobby got to talk to Mom and Dad, too.

  Later that afternoon, Toshi and I flew our flyplanes down into the subways to become acclimated to subterranean conditions. (Hey reader, how do you like the words acclimated and subterranean? Get out your dictionary, dude!) I didn’t tell Toshi about my date with Tula. I tried to stay focused. After all, this was boot camp, not the latest episode of The Bachelor.

  When we got back around four, I broke down and told Stanley all about my date with Tula. I had to t
ell someone.

  He was happy for me but a moment later his voice turned glum.

  “I’ll never have a girlfriend,” he said.

  “Yes, you will.”

  “Who would want to go out with a parking meter?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “A steak knife maybe.”

  “I’m not attractive to steak knives.”

  “What about a cell phone?” I said. “I’ll introduce you to mine.”

  “I hate your ring tone.”

  “I’ll change it.”

  “What’s the point? No one could ever be attracted to me.”

  Stanley’s sadness must’ve been contagious because a miserable thought rattled around inside my brain. If we failed the test and got evicted, would Tula be allowed to visit me on Desoleen? I had a horrible feeling the answer was no. Would I be allowed to see my parents on Desoleen? Maybe not. Maybe all families would be separated, all the kids herded into one camp and all the adults in another. The two camps would be separated by a towering barbed-wire fence and guarded over by Kundabons.

  With no adult supervision, we kids would never have to go to school again. But even that wouldn’t be any fun. Not on Desoleen it wouldn’t.

  I couldn’t allow that to happen. We had to prove to the judge that we were capable of stewarding the planet.

  Wait a minute. I still didn’t know what stewarding really meant.

  Even with Big Daddy and the cloudfish and the flyplanes, could we possibly clean Manhattan in one day? I had a hard time believing we could.

  Stanley and I stood side by side in the kitchen, equally depressed. I pretended to sweep the floor around us.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m sweeping with my gloom broom, Stanley.”

  “What’s a gloom broom?”

  “It sweeps away sadness. Grandpa invented it. Whenever anyone was sad, he’d pull out an imaginary broom and start sweeping with it.”

  “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” Stanley said.

  “If it’s so stupid then why are you laughing?” I asked.

  He wasn’t the only one cracking up. So was I. That’s how the gloom broom worked. People thought it was so stupid they couldn’t help laughing. Then their sadness disappeared. That was the secret of the gloom broom.