by Jeff Norton
The curtain swished open – my heart leaped into my mouth for a second – but what emerged was just a bright-eyed, normal-sized nurse. She pulled the curtain closed behind her, then beamed at us.
“So you’re the new kids I just got emailed about?”
Jessica and I nodded, glancing over her shoulder at the twitching curtain.
“I guess Meltzer’s finally taking that diversity policy seriously,” the nurse said. “So, welcome to Groom Lake! I’m Nurse Anderson. And you’re here for the dreaded—”
She stuck out her lower lip and motioned injecting herself in her arm.
We nodded again. Glanced again.
“Piece of cake, sweetie pies,” she said. “Pick a bay each and I’ll be right back with the drugs. Say, it’s too quiet in here.”
She shimmied behind the desk, tapped the computer screen and immediately the place bounced with boxy- sounding drums, a jangly guitar and Nurse Anderson belting out Motown music.
I chose the open cubicle next to the übersneezer’s, and Jessica sat in the one opposite.
“Hey, Jess,” I said as I jumped on the white-sheeted bed. “Did you see her brooch?”
“Yes, I saw it,” Jessica said, “and I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Same as Mom’s,” I said.
The silver badge was called a Caduceus. The two snakes entwined around a winged staff were the insignia of the US Medical Corps. When Mom died, the army sent a brooch just like it back from Afghanistan (along with the rest of her “personal effects”). It’s what gave me the idea.
For the rocket.
For sending Mom past the Kármán Line.
Because if you fly that high, the military gives you your astronaut badge.
Your wings.
I wanted Mom to get her wings.
“What are you in for?” asked the deepest voice I’d ever heard, rumbling from Sneeze-zilla’s cubicle. Jessica and I just stared at each other for a moment – mouths open, no doubt looking dopey – until, finally, she mouthed, Answer him.
“Vaccinations,” I said. “How about you?”
“Allergy shots,” he said in grave, bass tones. Wow, this guy sounded ill.
“Do you have bad allergies?” I asked, attempting a hey-everything-is-cool voice. But it came out more like I was taking his coffee order.
“Rained last night,” he gurgled. “Figured I’d be safe in the desert. Hah!”
Jessica’s eyes widened and she pointed at the curtain.
Graz … ? she mouthed. She smiled and smacked her fist into her palm.
My sister took an unhealthy delight in seeing her twin brother being picked on at new schools, and she was clearly looking forward to the next round.
“Quit your whining, big fella,” the nurse called from the office. “You’ll be fine once that shot kicks in.”
“Never lasts long enough,” he complained.
“That’s what the special cream is for,” she said.
“I have an acute sister allergy,” I said, hoping that some banter might make me less of a bully target. “Do they have cream for that?”
He laughed so hard it shook the floor and I figured it was safe to introduce myself.
“My name’s Sherman,” I said. “What’s yours?”
Please not Graz, please not Graz, please not Graz …
“Unless you’re from my depth of the sea,” the voice growled, “it’s impossible to pronounce. Kids round here lack imagination, so they just call me Octo.”
Octo.
Okay, so, weird voice, weird sense of humor and weird name. But at least he wasn’t the bully I’d been warned about, which pretty much made him my new best friend. I would have offered to shake his allergy- ridden hand, but Nurse Anderson swished round the corner, holding a syringe the size of a bazooka.
CHAPTER THREE
Breakfast Club
We were back in the hallway – more lockers and trophy cabinets and posters for club meetings – outside the brushed-aluminium double doors to the cafeteria.
“I can’t believe you want to eat,” Jessica said, massaging her arm, “after that.”
“I didn’t have any breakfast, and I could use a cream soda to settle my stomach,” I said. “And you passed out. So you need to eat something too.”
“Promise me you won’t do anything to get us kicked out of another school.”
“I promise,” I said, crossing my fingers behind my back. On the other side of the doors, I could hear plates being stacked and clinking cutlery and kids – a lot of kids – probably the entire Groom Lake student body.
A whole new school not to fit into.
“Time to meet the locals,” I said, placing a hand on the cool door. Jess straightened herself and put on a bright stage-smile.
I pushed open the doors and stopped dead. Had the injection reached my brain and started vandalizing it?
I was seeing things. Strange things.
And when I say things, what I really mean is creatures.
The cafeteria was crowded with creatures. The entire room, dotted with two dozen hexagonal lunch tables, was heaving with creatures – furry, slimy, bendy, floral and robotic.
Talking mushrooms clung onto the walls alongside the club posters and football pennants. These beach- ball-sized brown fungi, with beady eyes and skinny little arms, were yelling at each other in squeaky voices.
“Listen, Zero-Charisma – you can’t just be fungi, you gotta be a FUN GUY, you know?!”
They also seemed to be shouting at some shy-looking slug-things who were hunched around a hexagonal table and rolling their eyes – their eyes on stalks – and ignoring them.
“Hey, slimer! Aww, why the sad face? Ooh, wait. I get it. You ain’t a slug, you’re a snail with a housing problem – I’m right, right?!”
The obnoxious mushrooms were also teasing some weird, bendy cylinders that rippled around another table like the blow-up figures you see outside used-car dealerships.
“Hey, airhead! Body-poppin’s on its way out. Get some fresh moves, bro!”
They were even yelling at an NBA-tall, tank-wide yeti monster in the corner. A guy with burning tiger- eyes and razor-sharp fangs.
“Hey, fuzzball! You’ve only chomped seventy-eight eyeburgers, dude! How yer gonna last till lunch?!”
I heard some sniggers and looked to my left. A tableful of little gray guys, with big black eyes on bulbous heads on top of toddler-sized bodies clothed in zip- up silver jumpsuits, were giggling and pointing at us. I managed a glare, and they went back to trading food between them.
Straight ahead, a table of industrial-looking black- and-yellow robots, like bipedal diggers, took a break from blasting techno tunes from little round speakers in their chests to shake their heads at us.
To our right, black, potted flowers in ninja-warrior poses – their pots slotted into circular holes in their chairs – rolled their leafy eyes at us, then ignored us completely.
Jessica gripped my arm. My very sore arm.
“Sherman!” she yelped. “What is this?”
“You see it too?” I asked, blinking. I suppose we did get the same injections.
“Are we crazy?” she said.
At this point, I was wondering that myself. “I think maybe Nurse Anderson gave us the wrong kind of injection,” I whispered.
But just then I spotted one lone human amid the sea of creatures. I grabbed Jess and led her to the food counter. A plump, bespectacled, and most importantly, normal-looking lady stood behind the counter. She was holding a ladle and sized us up like we were going to shoplift.
“Is all this, like …” Jessica began, “um, like, some kinda theme park or something?”
The lunch lady – her red hair jammed into a net, her four-leaf-clover tattoo rippling on her forearm – winked at Jessica and laughed. “Hon, it’s not so much a theme park here, darlin’, but a circus.”
“So …” my sister hissed, grinding her teeth a little, “does that mean ‘yes’ or—”
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“How ’bout we keep it movin’ here, honey,” said the lunch lady, whose nametag read Nancy. “What’ll it be? Local … ?”
She flicked a switch on the gleaming counter, and half the lids buzzed open to show rows and rows of fried eggs, streaky bacon, bagels, waffles and even French toast.
It smelled great. My stomach rumbled in anticipation. We’d landed from our airlift just after four a.m., then had long enough to catch a low-wattage power nap before Dad woke us up and shoved us out of our new home – a very beige Air Force bungalow – to report for school. I hadn’t had time for breakfast and was yearning for the most important meal of the day.
“ … or Universal ?” she asked, and this time the rest of the lids slid open to reveal rows of gelatinous, pulsating somethings I never, ever wanted to see again.
The spread smelled like well-aged sushi. My stomach turned and I was suddenly glad that I’d skipped breakfast. There was nothing down there to bring up.
“Is that supposed to be food?” Jessica gasped, holding her nose.
My stomach fought a civil war between hunger and disgust. As long as I looked away from the “Universal” offerings, hunger was winning. “I’d like some French toast please, Nancy,” I said, determined to take this chance to fill up. “Medium-well done.”
“Sherman, are you deranged?” Jessica snapped. “We’re going back to the nurse. We need medical attention.”
“But if I don’t eat something first,” I said, “I’m gonna keel over.”
“Where’s your tray?” Nancy snapped.
“Oh,” I said, “er—”
She grabbed a clear plastic tray from under the counter, then passed me an amateurishly-charred but otherwise tasty-looking plateful of French toast.
“And for you?” she asked Jessica. “You look like you could do with some fattening up.”
“Why? So those things out there can eat me?”
“Come on, Jess,” I urged. “You can’t survive on sarcasm alone.”
“Fine, keep it moving,” Nancy said, and then looked up – and up. “What do you want, young man? Haven’t you had enough already?”
I could swear she was talking to the ceiling tiles.
“YOU, TINY NEW KID,” boomed a voice behind me. “YOU GONNA EAT THAT?”
So Octo the Allergy Boy didn’t have the deepest voice in the universe after all. It was actually kind of shrill compared to the dinosaur-chewing-boulders voice coming from above and behind me.
“I SAID, ‘ARE YOU GONNA EAT THAT?’”
There didn’t seem much else to do except – very, very slowly – turn around. So we did. And it was something about the stink of the grayish-black wall of fur we came face-to-knee with that told me that this was really happening; that this whole cafeteria wasn’t a figment of my imagination. I couldn’t dream up a smell this bad. He smelled like my dead dog’s butt.
We had to put Goose down a few years ago because of an intestinal thing. I still miss him, but, man, I don’t miss those farts.
The mushrooms started chanting in our direction.
“Gimme a ‘G’ …”
I suppose the sensible thing would’ve been to run, but instead I just froze, gazing up at the shaggy face with the tiger eyes and the obscenely fanged, drooling mouth.
“Gimme an ‘R’ …”
I grabbed my toast from its plate and clutched it to my chest.
“Gimme an ‘A’ …”
“This?” I said, holding up the nearly-burned bread, its toasty fragrance overpowered by the fart stink.
“NO, TINY, DEFENSELESS, HUMAN NEW KID – I WANT YOUR TRAY!”
“There’s a whole stack of them—”
“Gimme a ‘Z’ …”
“Just give him the tray, you idiot,” Jessica hissed.
“Ohhhhh, you’re Graz,” I said. “Well, in that case, I’m not really hungry for that tray – be my guest.”
The six-hundred-pound beast with T-Rex teeth snatched my breakfast tray away and took a massive bite. As the plastic splinters showered down into my hair, I realized conspiracy theorists might actually be right about something.
I knew what Groom Lake was rumored to be – Google it and you get Area 51, the secret air base that was supposedly home to alien cover-ups. But up until now I’d dismissed it as a made-up myth like the Loch Ness monster, the tooth fairy, or Justin Bieber’s talent.
But that morning I learned there was a big difference between conspiracy theory and conspiracy reality.
Aliens were real. And they lived among us. Or rather, we now lived among them.
CHAPTER FOUR
Close Encounters
From their stations on the wall, the fungi kids described my alien encounter like commentators on a prize fight.
“The Big Fuzz is gonna pulverize the cumin beans!” called one of the wall-mounted mushrooms.
“You mean Human Beings, genius,” snapped its neighbor.
I tried to tune out their cackles and was left with Graz’s raspy breathing. I could feel every bulging eye and antenna in the cafeteria flit from Jessica to me, Jessica to me, Jessica to me …
… to something else.
Something I couldn’t see yet. Something that was apparently approaching from behind the tray-eating monster. Something all the creature-kids suddenly couldn’t take their eyes off.
“Oh my Me …” the something sneered in a snooty voice. “It appears that Meltzer is letting anyone into this place now.”
From behind Graz, a glowing white, human-ish figure stepped into view and folded his arms. Clad in a shimmery, iridescent cloak, he stood cool-as-ice casual beside the furry monster’s thigh. He looked like a living mannequin, and the first word that came to me was:
Expensive.
His cloak floated like it was underwater; strangely mesmerizing, but also menacing. His face, hair and skin all looked like pale china and his emerald-green eyes glowed with contempt.
Every school had one – this guy must be Groom Lake’s resident rich kid.
I could imagine a gang of space-slaves ironing his cape every morning, and a hovering space-limo dropping him off at the front steps each day.
“Grazzat,” he said. “I’d like a closer look at these mortals.”
Before I could protest, Graz’s claws closed around my ankles and the horizon turned upside down. For a couple of seconds I just hung there, gazing wistfully at my French toast which had fallen to the floor.
“Put him down or no lunch for you!” Nancy hollered from behind her counter. “Ms Teg! Ms Teg, where are you? There are shenanigans here! Shenanigans like you wouldn’t believe!”
The shimmer-kid took a couple of steps towards me, looked me up and down, or from my point of view, down and up, and scowled.
“Do they have names?” he said. “These indigenous … life forms?”
“Put me down, you Goose smell-a-like,” I said, thrashing around in Graz’s grip, trying to wriggle free, but to absolutely no effect.
“Sherman, just stay still and ride it out,” snapped Jessica in a bored voice – she’d been witness to several similar first-day rituals. It wasn’t exactly an alien experience for me, except that this time … it was.
“Sher-man,” the shimmer-kid said. “I’d hardly call you a man.”
“Then what are you?”
“I am a deity, a god of the galaxy,” he boasted. “Ruler of the Aristox quadrant and rightful occupier of the cool seniors’ table. You look like a freshman nobody, who needs to be reminded of his place in the universal pecking order.”
He turned to the fuzz-monster and said, “Grazzat, since this Sher-man is new here, I think perhaps we should show this Sher-man where he belongs.”
Graz hoisted me higher as he strode over to three aluminum barrels full of leftover “food” that were in the front corner of the cafeteria, perfectly positioned for everyone to witness my debut humiliation.
“If you’re going to toss him in,” Jess said, “at least drop him in the squishy
stuff and not in the … are those rocks?”
“You’re not helping, Jess!” I said.
“Eeee-oww,” she squealed as Graz reached down with his other hairy arm and scooped her up too.
“I’m going to murder you, Sherman Capote,” she threatened. “Twice!”
And there we hung, the new Capote kids, the only two human pupils at Groom Lake High. We hovered helplessly over a garbage can of discarded alien foodstuffs and waited to plummet. Nobody came to our aid, not one single species. I guessed none of the other aliens dared to stand up to Graz and the shimmer-kid.
Not the fungal hyenas.
Not the bendy cylinder kids.
Not the slugs.
Not even the ninja flowers.
Nobody.
The technical term for this is “bystander nonintervention”. I looked it up later. But right then, hanging upside down from a stinking, hairy claw, I simply knew it as “another first day of school”.
CHAPTER FIVE
Better Late Than NED
Groom Lake may have been a new school, but getting bullied was an old ritual. Graz shook us like upside- down maracas and I had braced myself for trash impact when suddenly, the shaking stopped.
“You’ve filled your bully quota, fuzzface,” called a female voice from behind me.
“Move it, pinky,” Graz growled, “or I’ll dunk you too.”
I twisted around to try to catch a glimpse of who he was growling at, and spotted a five-foot pink lizard in glossy black overalls. She was glaring, hands on hips. And she was actually kind of cute; you know, in a rose- hued-iguana kind of way.
“The name’s Sonya,” she said to the monster. “Or is that too many syllables for you?”
“Who you callin’ silly?” he spat.
Sonya suddenly slammed all three lids closed, leaped on top of the center one and folded her arms like she meant business. Three green tongues flicked from between her lips.
“Not a good move, Aristox,” said the shimmer-kid.
“Don’t mind NED,” Sonya said to me. “He just acts like he owns the place.”
“He owns your planet’s Ballet-thingy,” Graz grunted.
“It’s Balleropera,” Sonya said. “I know that’s too many syllables for you.”
