Aliens in Disguise Read online

  Kanduu got his tiny fingers around it first, slipped out from under us, and ran several yards away from the blanket.

  I lifted myself up to my knees. “Kanduu, please don’t—”

  “…home of the BRAVE!”

  The biggest firework of the night went off with a circle of fire that lit up the whole town for a moment. The crowd cheered. The Forest Grove fireworks show was over.

  The Intergalactic Bed & Breakfast show, however, was not.

  Kanduu pressed a little button, which made a metallic click.

  A tiny orb of light shot from the tip, streaked toward the stars, and expanded. In an instant, the entire night sky was glowing. The light started out like a second moon, but grew stronger until it was as bright as noontime, then got so dazzling it was almost painful, like when someone shines a flashlight right in your face. In a few moments it was so intense that I wondered crazily if the sun was going to crash right into the Earth, and I threw my arms over my face to protect my eyes.

  The crowd below gasped in unison.

  When the light dimmed enough to allow me to open my eyes, I saw that the scattered clouds were all crackling with electricity, each one hosting a tiny storm surrounded by a swirl of sparks. Then a bolt of lightning shot out of each cloud and converged in the middle of the sky, melding into a huge mass of white-hot energy, a hundred times bigger than that final human firework, churning in a massive whirlpool like the lost arm of some exotic galaxy.

  It looked like the end of the world.

  I tore my eyes away from the sky and looked for Amy. Every one of her hairs was standing straight up on her head. I felt a sudden need to grab her, protect her, but what would I even be able to do?

  Zzzzzt!

  The great lightning mass contracted into a tiny silver orb with a sizzle and dropped out of the sky, right back into the little silver cylinder. The night went dark again.

  Kanduu spread out his palms and shrugged. “Our mom’s a little overprotective.”

  “She wanted Teacher to be able to see the light, wherever we were,” Kandeel squeaked. “In case we got lost.”

  Mrs. Crowzen clicked her claws together angrily. “I certainly did see it, and the beacon is not a toy. Put it away this instant.”

  I gulped. “I think my friends back in Florida could see that.” Turning to Mrs. Crowzen, I said, “Are their parents going to show up now?” I shuddered just thinking about it. The one night a year when the entire town was outside staring at the sky together would probably not be the best time for the arrival of an angry alien family.

  But the teacher just shook her head. “The beacon is only used to help me pinpoint a lost child’s location on the planet.”

  Well, it was certainly effective. Down in Forest Grove, the crowd was motionless, soundless. Every head was craned to gape at the suddenly empty sky.

  Amy grabbed my arm. She tried to say something, but panic had taken her voice. She mouthed, “What are we going to do?”

  I did not have a good answer. Or even a bad one. Our job was to keep everything at the B&B a secret, but how could we possibly explain away a sight like that?

  Just then something happened. Someone down in the park let out a great Woo-hoo! Then the clapping started. And the cheering. And lots more woo-hooing.

  Phew! The crowd must have thought it had just seen the greatest fireworks finale in the history of the town.

  The mayor’s somewhat confused voice came over the loudspeaker. “I, uh, suppose that concludes the show. Happy Fourth of July, folks.”

  The cheering intensified. The whole crowd was ecstatic. Kanduu’s little device had whipped them into a patriotic fervor. If the entire British army had marched into town just then with their red coats and cannons, the citizens of Forest Grove would have put up a heck of a fight. The Battle of Corn Dog Hill.

  Amy exhaled slowly as the color returned to her face. “That was a close one.”

  “Yeah.” I stood up, legs shaky from the relief of dodging yet another bullet. “Let’s get everyone back inside before something really noticeable happens.”

  We helped Mrs. Crowzen round up her students and march them single file back to the B&B. No one wanted to be next to the slime drippers, so those two brought up the rear.

  Amy carried Kanduu and Kandeel in the crook of each arm, gently explaining the importance of secrecy while on Earth, and reminding them to leave any off-world gadgets in their rooms. I was glad she was around for stuff like that. I seriously doubt I could have stayed so calm.

  It was hard just to be civil to all these kids sometimes, especially in the evening. They basically messed around all day—just like Earth kids—and when it was almost time to write their reports they swarmed around me, firing off a million questions like miniature investigative journalists at the world’s weirdest press conference. Kanduu’s were always the worst, because they set off such wild speculation among his classmates.

  “Don’t you think it’s weird that everyone on this planet wears clothes all the time?”

  “Yeah, what kind of strange custom is that?”

  “It’s totally confusing!”

  “How can you even tell who is a boy and who is a girl?”

  I mean, how was I supposed to answer something like that?

  This was the second summer I had worked at Grandma’s inn for space aliens—the only place of its kind in the whole world—but I still didn’t feel like humanity’s best choice for ambassador to the rest of the universe. Grandma and Amy were better at all that interspecies-relations stuff. I just wanted to help keep the business running, which meant that my most important job was usually preventing anyone from Forest Grove (or anywhere else) from learning about the biggest secret on the planet.

  And right now, that meant getting everybody safely back inside after the incident with the beacon. We came upon other space Tourists on the way back, adult guests who had spread out their blankets a good distance away from all the noisy kids. Amy set Kanduu and his sister down to rejoin the class, and then we both lagged behind to help the older Tourists pack up and to make sure that everyone was headed to Grandma’s.

  “I always get nervous when they’re outside without their full earthling disguises,” I said.

  “I know. But it’s dark, and this is a pretty secluded spot.” Amy gestured all around us at the grassy hilltop, surrounded on three sides by dense forest. “And we’ve always got our emergency alibi.”

  “I hope that works.” If anyone from town caught a glimpse of an undisguised alien, our story would be that the Intergalactic Bed & Breakfast was hosting a sci-fi costume party and some of the guests had gotten lost. Every once in a while we even put up posters around town advertising an “Alien Masquerade Ball” for added authenticity. They never included a time or date for the event, of course.

  It was as good an excuse as any, and actually pretty believable. Amy’s dad—he used to be sheriff and was now in charge of security at Grandma’s—had come up with that one. “It’ll work because the townsfolk already think a space-themed inn is half bonkers, anyway,” Tate often said. Then, under his breath, he’d add something like, “They’re almost right. This place is certified one thousand percent bonkers.”

  Tate was usually pretty grumpy like that. If it were up to him, the vacationing aliens would never leave the premises after showing up in the guest room closets (which were actually interstellar transporters). As much as I hated to admit it, though, he was probably a good person to have around to counterbalance Grandma. She had been hanging out with the aliens for so long, she tended to forget that anyone else might find them strange.

  And speaking of strange… “Amy, look over there.” I swept my flashlight along the path. “Does that look like what I think it looks like?”

  A group of adult aliens was being herded into formation, four of them crouching down in front and three standing tall in back, almost as if they were…

  “They’re not seriously trying to take some kind of group picture,”
Amy said. “Are they?”

  Not good. The rules were clear at the B&B: no off-world tech, and definitely no pictures.

  We hurried down the path. A pair of aliens was organizing the crowd—the male was lanky and made loose-limbed movements as he waved the other aliens into position, while the female was short and stout, bustling around the edges of the group. The moonlight revealed that they both had pointy ears of a deep blue that didn’t quite match the more aqua tone of the rest of their skin. Maybe their species stored extra water in the earlobes or something.

  “You look fantastic,” the male said. “Everybody smile big!”

  Amy and I reached the group just as all the aliens flashed their best smiles. Yikes. That could get a little strange. Like the frog-faced dude in the back—with his wide, wet lips and double rows of sharp teeth, his “smile” made him look capable of biting someone’s arm off.

  The gangly blue-skinned male with the mismatched ears pulled something out of his pocket and pointed it at the group.

  “Wait!” I reached out and grabbed his shoulder. “What is that thing?”

  He flinched and whipped his head around. His eyes went wide for a moment, then he calmed down, shrugged, and showed me what he had.

  I was expecting another piece of advanced alien technology, but I got a surprise. “That’s just a phone,” I said. “A regular Earth phone.”

  The male raised his blue eyebrows and exchanged some sort of meaningful glance with his little round mate. Were they communicating telepathically? Nothing much about aliens would surprise me anymore.

  “Where did you get that?” Amy said.

  “Oh, I bought it here,” the male said. “In town.”

  “As a souvenir, of course,” the female quickly added, sidling up to the male. “An earthling souvenir, right, dear?” (And did she elbow him in the ribs? Kinda hard? Alien ways of communicating were sometimes a bit odd.) Her blue cheeks were pretty big, and when she smiled they bunched up and squeezed her eyes into slits. “We always like to shop native on vacation and bring a little something home with us.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to put it away,” I said.

  “We’re sorry, it’s just that we don’t allow photography of any kind,” Amy said. “There has been…well, a little trouble with pictures in the past.”

  I snorted. A little trouble was putting it mildly, but Amy was trying to spare my feelings. Last summer a photo of three alien guests had wound up on the front page of the Forest Grove Gazette, and it had been my fault.

  The blue male’s face fell, and he just sort of stared at the phone in his hand. He looked pretty devastated, actually. Part of me felt bad, but this was one rule that I definitely had to enforce. And come on, it was just a picture. He’d get over it.

  I was about to say something when the little round female grabbed the phone and tucked it into her purse. “We must do what the young man says, dear,” she said, emphasizing the last word the way you do when you’re trying to send an unspoken message.

  Whatever. As long as the camera was put away and we were all headed back inside for the night, I was good.

  “Do we have to keep smiling?” Frog Face said. All of the aliens’ strange expressions were frozen hideously in place.

  Amy giggled. “No, it’s okay. You can relax.”

  The Tourists’ faces went back to “normal” as the group let out a collective sigh of relief. Apparently aliens don’t like holding that fakey smile-grimace for the camera any more than humans do.

  “You all must be tired,” I said. I always got a little messed up by the three-hour time difference after my flight from Florida; I couldn’t imagine what jet lag must feel like when you’ve traveled three million light-years. “Let’s get everyone inside.”

  “Inside? That’s a great idea!” the blue male said, clapping his hands in excitement like a little kid. The female gave him another shot to the ribs and he toned it down some. Man, aliens can be weird.

  Amy and I led the way down the path. It was one of those rare balmy nights in the Pacific Northwest when it actually felt good to be outside. It wasn’t quite like being back home in Tampa, where the night breeze feels almost like warm silk against your skin, but it would do.

  An owl hooted at us from his perch on a tree limb, setting off a hearty chorus of answering hoo-hoos from the aliens. Sometimes they weren’t one hundred percent sure which Earth creatures had the power of sophisticated language and which didn’t.

  The path emptied out on the road, a couple of blocks from the bed-and-breakfast. Grandma’s place was pretty isolated from town—the road dead-ended into the forest just past her house—so I wasn’t too worried about anyone seeing us.

  Amy turned to face the aliens. “Okay, everybody, time to get out your day passes.” She shot me a quick Can-you-believe-my-dad? expression and then looked back at the Tourists. “Remember, the Head of Security will be checking them at the door when we get back.”

  It was Tate’s latest security measure. In the main room he had set up a bulletin board where he pinned an ID card for every guest. Whenever aliens left the house, they had to take their cards. Upon their return Tate collected the cards and put them back on the board. That way he could tell at a glance who was inside and who was still out.

  The aliens rummaged through pockets of the thrift-store clothing they had picked up from Grandma’s trunks. Blue Pointy Ears cleared his throat. When he leaned over to Frog Face I heard him ask, “Hey…so what’s that card look like again?”

  His little mate stepped up to Amy. “I’m afraid we may have misplaced our cards. I’m terribly sorry.” She got up on her tiptoes to look over Amy’s shoulder, as if trying to get a look at the bed-and-breakfast, but it was around the corner and still out of sight. “I’m sure we’ll be allowed back inside anyway, yes?”

  “Oh, I’m sure it won’t be that big a problem,” Amy said. “But you’ll definitely have to talk to the Head of Security first.”

  “Have fun with that,” I muttered. “He’s not exactly the most approachable guy in the galaxy.” Amy whacked me in the arm again, but not too hard. After all, she knew it was true.

  I meant it as a harmless joke for Amy, but the female must have heard too—I should have known those pointy ears would have special powers—because her blue face looked really worried all of a sudden. “Hey, I was just kidd—” I started to say, but she was already working her way back through the little crowd, toward her mate.

  Amy turned back to the road. “Let’s go,” she said. “He won’t be that hard on them.”

  We walked along for half a block, but I was feeling guilty. “I shouldn’t have freaked her out like that,” I told Amy. After a few more steps I said, “I’m going back there to tell her not to worry.”

  “That’s very sweet of you.” Amy patted me on the shoulder. “But don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone that you have a sensitive side. You’ll be able to keep your Middle School Boy Membership Card.”

  “Very funny.” I turned and walked to the back of the group…but the blue aliens were not there. What the—?

  I whipped my head around, scanning the street and the surrounding forest. Having unaccounted-for aliens on the loose was not good.

  I retraced our steps, sweeping the flashlight back and forth. Maybe they had stopped to check out an Earth flower, or hoot at some more owls, or whatever. I couldn’t imagine why they…

  Then I saw something on the ground. It was a few feet off the path, under a fern, right where the underbrush started to get dense.

  I bent down and picked it up. It was a rubbery ear, pointy, the kind of thing that you would buy at a Star Trek convention to play Vulcan dress-up.

  And it had been spray-painted blue.

  I looked up again, but the flashlight didn’t penetrate more than a few feet into the black forest. They could be anywhere.

  I jogged back through the aliens to catch up with Amy. “That blue couple—did you greet them when they arrived?” Amy, Grandma, a
nd I split the duties of welcoming the aliens and checking out their earthling disguises.

  “No, I thought you did. Or maybe your grandma,” she said. “They didn’t look familiar, but I figured they had just arrived this evening.”

  I shook my head and held up the ear. Amy’s eyes got wide. She took it from me and ran her fingers along its rubbery edge. Then she held up her hand and showed me the faint smudges of blue paint.

  “What’s going on?” she said. “Why would aliens want to disguise themselves as other aliens?”

  “No idea.”

  Amy chewed on her lower lip. “Unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “They aren’t aliens. Could they have been people from town? Maybe trying to join in on the big ‘alien masquerade party’?”

  “Man, I hope not.” I felt sick just thinking about it. “I wouldn’t want a human to get too close a look at that ‘costume’ for the alien with that froggy-looking face. It’s kind of hard to make a Halloween mask that slobbers and blinks, you know?”

  Amy frowned and turned the ear over in her hands. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Like anything around here ever does?”

  “Good point.” Amy handed the ear back and I shoved it into my pocket. “We’ll have to tell my dad, of course. And keep our eyes open for anything strange.”

  I sighed. “What else is new?”

  I saw the lights before I heard the music.

  Grandma’s place is a strange enough sight to begin with, especially at night. Sure, maybe its jet-black exterior blended in with the forest, but that only emphasized the glow-in-the-dark murals of comets and stars and planets splashed across the entire house. And the silver spaceship structures on the front lawn shone eerily in the moonlight. After dark, the bed-and-breakfast almost looked like outer space itself.

  I had gotten used to its appearance by now. But these lights were something new.

  Amy and I lurched to a stop at the same time, the crowd of aliens bumping into us from behind. She made a surprised sound. Or maybe it was me. Our mouths dropped into fly-catching mode as we stared at the house.