by Jeff Norton
First published in 2018 by Awesome Reads
Copyright © Awesome Media & Entertainment Ltd., 2018
With special thanks to Matt Knight
The moral right of Jeff Norton to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording
or any information storage or retrieval system, without
prior permission in writing from the publishers.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names,
characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the
author’s imagination.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events
or localities is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-911195-96-2
Also available as an ebook
ISBN 978-1-911195-97-9
Designed & typeset by K.DESIGN, Winscombe, Somerset
Cover design by Margaret Hope
Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
“This is Sherman’s story, and it’s printed in American
spelling and grammar to most accurately reflect his voice.
If you’re reading this outside of the United States, we hope
you don’t mind the funny spelling.”
For Caden – shoot for the stars.
Check out these other Awesome books
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If you want a rock’n’roll whodunit …
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All this and more at www.jeffnorton.com
Contents
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE Arrival
CHAPTER TWO Bully Allergies
CHAPTER THREE Breakfast Club
CHAPTER FOUR Close Encounters
CHAPTER FIVE Better Late Than NED
CHAPTER SIX Saved by a Tentacle
CHAPTER SEVEN Drama King
CHAPTER EIGHT Volunteerism
CHAPTER NINE Homework Bound
CHAPTER TEN That Lunchtime Feeling
CHAPTER ELEVEN Pizza Night
CHAPTER TWELVE Holy Flying Easter Egg
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Houston, We Have Lift-Off
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Close Encounters of the Magma Kind
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Outrunning the Air Force
CHAPTER SIXTEEN NEDageddon
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Pastry High
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Field of Pains
CHAPTER NINETEEN If You Build It
CHAPTER TWENTY School Days and Rocket Nights
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Meet the Octos
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO The War of the Worlds
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Stranded at the Drive-In
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Test Drive
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE The Balcony Scene
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Mentor Interruptus
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Second Chance at a Second Chance
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT The Vortex of the Friend Zone
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Trial by Rocket
CHAPTER THIRTY Dressing the Part
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Places Please
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Star-Crossed
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE Race for Your Life
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Unmasked
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE The Groom Lake Redemption
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Escape from Planet Earth
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN Invading the NED World
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT Pairing Crashers
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE Escape Plan
CHAPTER FORTY Sacrifice
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE NED or Alive
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO Egg on his Face
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE Hero’s Welcome
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Prologue
I placed the urn gently into the rocket, holding Mom’s remains for the very last time. “You’re finally going to get your wings,” I whispered as I closed the metal hatch.
The rocket was twice as tall as me, assembled from spare parts I’d scrounged from around the base. I’d spent the last eight months planning this launch and calculated that the rocket would hit sixty thousand feet, the edge of space, in four minutes and thirty- two seconds. I was determined to grant Mom the one thing in death she always dreamed of in life, but never achieved: her astronaut wings.
I’d considered inviting Dad and Jessica to the launch, but I knew they just wouldn’t understand. This was between Mom and me.
You see, rockets were our thing; our shared love. She always encouraged me to pursue rocketeering, no doubt channeling her own unfulfilled space dreams. So, while most of the people at the US Air Force base in Geilenkirchen were watching my twin sister Jess belt out musical numbers in the school play, I kneeled down in the base’s scrapyard beside my most ambitious rocket yet and lit the fuse.
Ten … nine … eight … seven … six … five … four … three … two …
“Goodbye, Mom.”
… one.
The rocket lit up the night sky, taking my mother to the heavens. It was a perfect launch and a perfect tribute – exactly one year since her death.
And that’s when I heard the sirens.
CHAPTER ONE
Arrival
You’d think that, after ten years of institutional education, at seven different schools in seven different countries, I’d be used to the first day of school by now. But no matter what base Dad got stationed to, I was always the outsider: getting picked last in gym class, living in the shadow of Jess’s overactive social life and eating whatever passed for food in the host country, by myself, in a cafeteria filled with people who just weren’t as smart as Sherman Capote.
On our first Nevada morning, Jess and I walked in silence along the perfectly paved asphalt, past beige office buildings and beige Air Force standard-issue bungalows with manicured lawns, minutes away from joining another mid-term Newcomers’ Club. I looked up and noticed wispy clouds hanging in the dawn sky over the Groom Lake desert, our newest home. Noctilucent clouds – the highest kind of clouds you could get.
Right at the edge of space.
Well, there’s no actual edge - of space – the molecules of air just get further and further apart – but that’s where a man called Theodore von Kármán drew a line between Earth’s atmosphere and the rest of the solar system. Up there, where there’s hardly any air and barely any gravity, a rocket has what’s called Six Degrees of Freedom.
6DoF.
Six degrees of freedom.
Freedom. That’s what I wanted as I marched towards another new school I wouldn’t fit into. What I’d got, however, was a military arrest, a midnight airlift and a forced relocation back to the States for the fractured Capote family.
“Do you hear that, Sherman?” Jessica asked, breaking the silence.
“What, you talking?”
“Ha ha,” she said. “Very not funny. No, insects.”
Now that she mentioned it, I could hear rhythmic chirruping like in the background of movie campfire scenes.
“I think they’re called cicadas,” I said.
“And do you know why we can hear sick-addas?” Jessica droned on.
I did, actually. “It’s an integral part of their mating ritual – the male makes the song to attract the female across the desert and—”
She punched me on the arm. Hard. Now don’t be fooled. Jess might look like a malnourished goth queen, but she punches like a heavyweight. And before you worry, she eats just fine.
“We can hear them because we live in the desert now,” she said. “With the insects!”
“Can’t you just drop it?”
“Are you ever gonna tell me why you did it, Sherm? I mean, you sneak off and fire a missile—”
“It was a rocket,” I corrected her.
“From an Air Force base,” she continued. “Where rockets go by their maiden name: missiles.”
“I’m sorry,” I lied. “I’ve said I’m sorry a thousand times. I said it to Dad. I said it to the Joint Chiefs. I said it to the Russian President on the phone, Mne zhal, which is actually really hard to say, but if you want it one more time, okay, Jess – I’m … sorry.”
But I wasn’t. And I never would be.
“You almost completed the World War trilogy, Sherman!”
Of course, I’d had no intention of starting a war.
I’m actually a pacifist at heart – more of a lover than a fighter. Okay, I’m not really a lover or a fighter, but on the fourth of March, one year after Mom’s death, I had reasons for my space-bound tribute. Reasons it had to be a rocket. Reasons it had to fly that high. But they were my reasons. And the one good thing – the only good thing – about finally arriving at our new school, was that it got Jessica off the subject.
Our mom, Carol Capote, always wanted to go into space. She was only three years old when Neil Armstrong took one small step for man. Unfortunately, Neil didn’t say anything about man and woman. As she watched the black and white moonwalk from Grandpa’s lap, Mom declared that she was going to be an astronaut too. But in those days, the closest a girl could ever get to outer space was serving drinks at twenty-five thousand feet on a 707. Gran and Grandpa discouraged Mom from anything astronautical and nudged her into nursing.
But she stayed adventurous.
She chose nursing in the US Army Medical Service Corps, and then during Desert Storm she met Dad, and one thing led to another, and that another, I suppose, led to Jess and me. So, had she done what she’d really wanted to do with her life, neither of us would exist.
That was the thought knocking around in my head as Jess and I arrived at the beige, three-storey concrete block soon to be known as our new school. Its darkly tinted, rectangular windows glinted in the morning sun, and the immaculate front lawn soaked up the water from a row of tiny, twirling sprinklers. The schoolyard was empty. Not a single student or teacher in sight.
“It’s freakily quiet around here,” Jessica said. “Kinda like a Sherman Capote birthday party.”
“It’s nice and quiet when you’re not talking,” I said.
We headed up the concrete steps to the glass doors under the silver letters that spelled out: GROOM LAKE HIGH SCHOOL.
* * *
The long central hallway was empty, populated only by trophy cabinets and plaques, and the shiny, checkered floor smelled of polish and disinfectant.
“You must be the new … ” called a voice. We turned round to see a hairless man with bleach-white skin in a dark suit. His bald head was dominated by thick, black- rimmed glasses and his eyes – devoid of color, like two fried eggs with black yolks – widened when he saw our faces. “Kids?” he finished.
If you look closely at school principals all over the world, in the corner of their mouths they’re quietly counting. Counting the hours until the school day finishes, counting the days until summer vacation, and counting the years until retirement will save them from schoolyard skirmishes, breakdown-inducing field trips, and confrontational parent-teacher nights. Having experienced seven schools in ten years, I had a finely-tuned radar for mouth-counting. And this albino administrator was counting the seconds.
“I’m Sherman Capote and this is Jessica. And sadly, we are related.”
“This is most unusual,” he said. “Where did you come from?”
“I know, right?” Jess sighed. “How can we come from the same gene pool?”
“We landed last night,” I said. “Our dad, General Frank Capote, told us to show up for school early.”
“I see. Well, I’m Principal Meltzer,” he said. I took another long look. He really was hairless. Nothing at all – no eyebrows, no eyelashes, not even a patch of protruding nasal hair. “Come into my office, I think there’s been a mix-up. This isn’t really a school for your, um, type.”
“Geeks?” asked Jessica, tilting her head towards me.
“Drama queens?” I suggested, nodding at her.
Meltzer led us into his office, which was ridiculously tidy and exactly the kind of place you’d expect – filing cabinets, desk, computer, window overlooking the front lawn – except, for some reason, it was all just a little bit slicker than any other school office I’d been in. The cabinets were reflective chrome with flashy digital locks. The desk seemed to hover in the air and the computer was insanely thin, thinner than anything I’d ever seen. And I never miss an Apple keynote.
Meltzer got busy adjusting his thick glasses, checking his email and calling his secretary. It seemed we were just one issue of hundreds that needed sorting before the morning bell even rang.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said to us, “I’m prodiversity, but to start this school without a security overview or an induction briefing—”
“But, sir,” I said, “apparently we’re under orders to report here.”
“If you were under orders,” Meltzer said, “you’d have had your security overview and your induction briefing.”
“We just landed,” I said.
“Under armed guard,” Jessica moaned. “But we could just go home if you—”
“Capote, you say?” Meltzer asked, squinting his white eyes at his computer screen. “Here it is. Holy permission slip, you minnows are already enrolled by the highest level.” He turned back to us with a disappointed look. “Why do the military have to be so, so … militarized about everything?”
“So we’re in the right place?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Meltzer replied. “But you’re my problem now. So go have your vaccinations – and welcome to the next chapter in your academic career.”
Outside, way overhead, a jet flew by. The distant roar of it filled the office while Meltzer’s words sank in.
“Why do we need vaccinations?” I asked.
“This place is an overflowing Petri dish of foreign bugs. Everyone gets the injection. Nurse Anderson’s office is around the corner,” he said, waving us away. “Oh, and try not to get eaten. That just means more paperwork.”
“Eaten?” asked Jess.
“Figure of speech,” I said, hopefully. “Little minnows, big pond?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” said Meltzer. “But steer clear of a pupil named Graz.”
“Who?” asked Jess.
“Huge hairy fella, doesn’t take well to newcomers. I’d call him a bully, but that’s giving bullies a bad name.”
The phone beep-beeped and Meltzer waggled his hand at us towards the door as he grabbed the receiver.
“Oh …” Jessica groaned, swinging her black hair over her shoulder, “how I hate you, Sherman Capote.”
* * *
We left the office and walked through a set of glass doors in the hallway. I took a moment to look at myself in the reflection: my disheveled bedhead hair (well, technically airplane-head hair), peach-fuzz face and red hoodie; the displaced Capote kid. The guy who almost started World War Three. I tried to smile, to stay on the bright side (war had been averted!), but a crooked, resigned grimace was all that smirked back at me.
I thought back to my last first day of school, in Germany, almost two years ago. Mom made her perfectly burned French toast (our first-day-of-school ritual) and served it with freshly-squeezed orange juice and side of pep-talk.
“Sherman, I know it’s hard starting new schools,” she’d said, eve
n though I’m not sure that she did know, “but you are a special, smart, sensitive boy and you’re going to be spectacular.”
She always used “s” words with me. Jessica got complimentary adjectives too, but never beginning with “j”. Alliteration, like rockets, was just for me and Mom.
This was the first first day I’d have without her – the first of many firsts I’d have without her. I was in the middle of the desert with my twin sister who hated me, my dad who would barely talk to me and a school that clearly didn’t want me.
I felt unimaginably alone in the universe.
CHAPTER TWO
Bully Allergies
If my math is right – and it usually is – I’ve spent ninety-nine-point-four per cent of my fourteen years on Planet Earth away from the US, following Dad from one Air Force base to another: South Korea (it’s not all Gangnam style; they care about your kibun there, very cool), France (strange food, population no ruder than anywhere else), England (can’t go wrong with fish and chips, but cars driving on the wrong side of the road made crossing the street dangerous) and most recently Germany (weird toilets and scene of my rocketry “incident”).
And so far, it’s true. Everything is bigger back in the States.
The Groom Lake High nurse’s office wasn’t an office. It was a basketball-court-sized, gleaming-white sick bay; all dazzling strip-lights and funky hydraulic gurneys and rows of (really tall) curtained cubicles.
“This place is immense,” I said.
“To treat bully victims,” teased Jessica. “You heard what Meltzer said!”
We wandered towards the office space at the back (more chrome cabinets and slick computers), eyeballing each cubicle as we went. Every curtain was open and every cubicle empty except the last one, which had its curtain drawn. I was wondering who was in there when suddenly the world shook.
“AAAAAAACHOO. ”
It wasn’t a sneeze.
It was Sneeze-zilla.
Sneeze-point-eight on the Richter scale.
The kind of sneeze that could burst only from someone so staggeringly, alarmingly huge that it had to be Graz.
