an Alien's Nose?

The face on the screen smiled-at least, I think it smiled. It's hard to tell with someone who looks like that. Let's just say that all its teeth were showing. Then it made a long speech in that awful language. I felt like someone was grinding metal next to my ear.

I don't know what he said. But it made Broxholm/Smith laugh. Well, I suppose it was a laugh. His shoulders shook as if he was laughing. The sound made my stomach turn.

When Broxholm stopped laughing, or whatever, he reached down and turned off the screen. The other alien faded from view.

Time for me to get out of there! I slithered backward on my belly along the hall and then down the stairs. When I heard the alien music come on again, I relaxed a little.

On the porch I hesitated for a moment. Should I try to recover my note? A noise in the house made up my mind. Compared to what was behind me, any trouble I might get in because of that note was nothing. I jumped off the porch and ran all the way home, praying that Broxholm hadn't seen me.

Did you ever have something awful happen to you, and not really react to it until later? Like, you might almost get hit by a car on your way home from school, but not start shaking until after supper. It was like that with me that afternoon. It wasn't until I got home that what I had seen really began to sink in.

I ran up to my room, plowed my way through the mess, and collapsed on my bed. I lay there until supper, staring at the ceiling and shaking with fear. What was I going to do? What would you do, if you found out your teacher was an alien? Go to the princ.i.p.al? Tell your parents?

Think about it for a minute.

Imagine the conversation.

Not a pretty thought, is it?

The only person who might believe me was weird Peter Thompson. I decided to tell him what I had seen. If I couldn't convince him, I knew I didn't have a chance of convincing anyone.

I must have looked pretty bad when I went down to dinner because my mother asked me three times what was bothering me. But then, she tends to be a bit of a fusser. I try never to let her hear me sneeze, because if she does she decides I've got pneumonia and tries to pack me into bed for a week. All right, that's a slight exaggeration-but not much. She and my dad are always battling about how much freedom they should give me.

"Come on, Margaret," my dad will say. "She's in sixth grade now. You can't treat her like a baby anymore."

"Oh, Edward," my mother will reply, "you seem to think you can treat Susan the same way you would a boy."

Can you believe she actually says that?

Anyway, that night at supper she put her hand on my forehead and clucked about how pale I looked. I think she was actually disappointed that I didn't have a fever. At least then she would have known what to do.

"Are you still upset about Ms. Schwartz, Susan?" she asked, shoveling a load of broccoli onto my plate.

Actually, at the moment I was upset about the broccoli. But Ms. Schwartz was a close second. I nodded weakly.

"Well, I can tell you it wasn't Dr. Bleekman's fault," she said. "In fact, he's very upset that Ms. Schwartz didn't give him more notice. I talked to Helen. She told me Ms. Schwartz didn't even have the courtesy to tell Dr. Bleekman face to face that she was leaving. He got a letter the first day of vacation, saying she wouldn't be back. That left him six days to find someone to take her place. I think he did very well to find that handsome Mr. Smith in such a short period of time."

"Mr. Smith is ruining our cla.s.s," I said bleakly.

"Oh, don't be so dramatic, Susan," said Mom.

I'm planning to be an actress when I grow up. What should I be? Athletic? Besides, this so-called teacher was going to kidnap some of my cla.s.smates and drag them off to outer s.p.a.ce. Suddenly I realized that I had been putting off the truth. He wasn't going to kidnap some of my cla.s.smates. If he was going to pick someone from my cla.s.s, I might well be on his list. In fact, after he read that note, I might be his number-one prospect.

I swallowed hard. I was dying to tell my folks what I had learned, but I knew they wouldn't believe me.

That night I tried to call Peter. But I couldn't get any answer at his house. "Come on, Peter," I hissed at the phone. "Where are you? I need you!"

I let it ring fifteen times.

No answer.

I tried again an hour later.

No answer.

I was as nervous as a marshmallow at a bonfire. It was even worse when I had to go to school the next morning. I didn't think Broxholm knew I had been in his house. But what if I had left behind some kind of clue? Or what if he had some kind of alien super-senses that would let him know I had been there? What about that weird, muscular nose? Just how powerful was his sense of smell? Would he know I had been snooping by my odor? I watched his nose carefully when I walked through the cla.s.sroom door that morning. It didn't twitch or anything. But that didn't mean much. Maybe underneath that mask his real nose had sniffed me out. Maybe it was sending him a message even now. There she is. That's the one who was in the house yesterday!.

I sat down. I was so tense I felt as if I would explode if anyone so much as touched me. I wanted to pa.s.s Peter a note asking him to meet me on the playground at recess. But I was in enough trouble because of notes already.

We stood up and said the Pledge of Allegiance. Then Smith/Broxholm motioned me to his desk.

"I think you lost something yesterday," he said.

And then he handed me my note.

CHAPTER SIX.

Drafting Peter I sat at my desk and stared at the note. What was going on here? Was Broxholm playing with me?

For a moment the thought that he was actually being a nice guy crossed my mind. I brushed it away. Nice guys don't kidnap sixth graders and drag them into outer s.p.a.ce. I decided it was more likely he was just sending me a message. I've got your number, kid. Don't mess with me.

I was so wrapped up in trying to figure out what was going on that I could barely concentrate on my work. Most of the time I just sat and stared at Broxholm's face, trying to figure out how the mask was attached.

When I started to wonder if there was any way I could pull it off, my imagination began cooking up a horrifying scene. In this daydream, I saw myself grab Broxholm's ears and begin pulling on them, trying to unmask him. Only the mask wouldn't come off. So I pulled harder. Suddenly his face began to stretch and twist all out of shape. But still the mask wouldn't come off.

It was gross.

Stop it! I told my brain firmly.

But the vision kept coming back.

Sometimes I wonder about my brain; I mean, it seems to have a mind of its own. If it was really my brain, you'd think I would have a little more control over it, wouldn't you?

When you get right down to it, brains are pretty weird.

But not as weird as having an alien for a teacher.

By the middle of the morning, I was beginning to wonder if this whole alien business had been a bad dream. It seemed too impossible to believe.

But I knew I hadn't been dreaming. It was real.

My teacher was an alien.

I couldn't wait to get Peter aside so I could talk to him.

When recess came, I tried to act calm as I wandered over to the wall where Peter usually sat to read. He was sitting on the ground, cross-legged, clutching a book called A Princess of Mars in his skinny hands.

I slid down the wall and sat beside him.

He acted as if he didn't notice me. Or maybe he really didn't. He was one of those kids who could get so wrapped up in a book it would take a bomb to break his attention.

I hated to interrupt him. Peter always seemed a little unhappy to me, like he understood that he just didn't fit in with the rest of us. The only thing I knew that made him happy was reading science fiction. He always had a book hidden behind his school book. The neat thing was, it didn't make any difference, because he was so bright that whenever the teacher asked him a question, he always knew the answer. I could never figure out why they wouldn't just leave him alone and let him read. But that's the way school is, I guess.

"So, what's going on?" I said.

What a stupid line! I'm glad I'm a girl, because when I get older the guys are going to have to come up with lines when they want to start a conversation. Now there's one job I'll be glad to let them have!

Peter lifted his nose out of the book and looked at me as if I were the alien. He blinked, and I realized he was trying to come back to the real world. I felt bad for interrupting him. In cla.s.s he had to read with one eye on the teacher. Out here he probably planned on shutting everything out for a while.

I hesitated for a minute. How was I going to say this?

Finally I just decided to jump right in. "I need your help," I said.

Peter looked surprised. "For what?" he asked.

I realized I hadn't jumped in after all. The biggie was still to come.

"Promise you won't laugh at me?" I asked.

Peter shrugged. "Sure, I promise."

"All right, listen. I know you're not going to believe this, but I found out something awful yesterday. Mr. Smith is an alien. He's come here to kidnap a bunch of kids and take them back to outer s.p.a.ce."

I held my breath to see what Peter would say. I thought he might laugh, or tell me to get lost, or-and this thought really scared me-shout it out to everyone else. To my astonishment, he didn't do any of those things. He just looked as if he was going to cry.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"You should know," he said. He sniffed and wiped the back of his hand across his nose.

What was going on here? I had a sudden thought that maybe he was an alien, too. That was stupid, of course. But I had aliens on the brain, and I couldn't figure out what else it might be.

"I don't know," I said. "Honest I don't."

He looked at me, and his eyes were so sad they made me want to cry, too.

"I always thought you were the one kid in this cla.s.s who was on my side," he said. "Like that time you tried to stop Duncan when he was beating me up. I expect everyone else to tease me. I just never thought you would do it."

Now it was my turn to be mad. "I'm not teasing!" I yelled. Then I lowered my voice. "I'm not teasing!" I hissed. "I'm serious."

Peter stared at me. "Is this some kind of game?" he asked.

I hesitated. If I told him the truth, he probably wouldn't believe me. If I told him it was a game, he might at least help me think things through.

What a fix! The only way I could get him to believe me was to lie to him.

"Yeah," I said. "I thought you were the one guy in this cla.s.s with enough imagination to play. But now you've ruined it."

"No!" said Peter. "No, we can still play. Just pretend you had to tell me it was a game to get me to believe you."

My head was starting to spin. Peter was using my reason for lying as a reason to pretend that what he believed was a game was for real. Or something like that. This was getting too complicated for me.

This is going to be one of those weeks, I thought. The only person I can count on for help stopping an alien invasion thinks the whole thing is a game!

Well, as my grandmother always says, you make do with what you've got.

And Peter was what I had. I decided to stop worrying about who was believing what and just tell him what had happened.

"Well?" I said when I was done. "What do you think we should do?"

Peter stared at the sky for a minute. He rubbed his chin as if he was thinking really hard.

Then he gave me his answer.

"We've got no choice," he said. "We'll have to break into Broxholm's house to look for evidence."

CHAPTER SEVEN.

Night Expedition Peter was right, of course. That was the worst thing about it.

And what did I say? Now that I had someone who was willing to help me and had actually given me some good advice, did I say, "Thank you very much?"

Are you kidding? I looked at him and said, "You have got to be out of your mind!"

"I am not!" said Peter indignantly. "If we're going to do anything about Broxholm we have to have proof. And the only way to get proof is to get into his house and find some."

I thought about that. I couldn't come up with any way around it. How else could we find proof that we were telling the truth?