Chapter 2

A Little Help from My Friends

Not to go all “Cat in the Hat” on you, but what would you do if your parents were held in a zoo, threatened by a slug leaving a trail of goo? 

I mean, can you go to the police and report an alien abduction? Will the S.W.A.T team agree to storm an antique store that's really a doorway to another planet? I've never tried drugs, but it struck me that I might have a tough time convincing the police of that, given how strange and bizarre  this situation was. I went looking for my friends instead. 

The most important thing to know about my two best friends, Brian and Jack, is how we met, because then you'll understand the kind of bond we have.   Andwhy I thought they would help me rescue my parents, even if the story I was about to tell them seemed crazy. 

It was two years ago and it was the bloodiest day ever at John Quincy Adams Middle School. Lunchtime is usually relatively safe as far as major injuries are concerned, but not that day. The sixth graders were lined up along the edge of the stage at one end of the cafeteria, waiting for the bell announcing the first class after lunch. As it happened that day, the sixth grade was lined up on the stage because we were in trouble, but that's not part of this story. I wasn't anywhere near Brian and Jack, but I could hear them arguing.

The two of them are about as different looking as possible. Jack is white, with shaggy blond hair that always looks uncombed, and he’s one of the taller kids in our grade. Brian is black, his hair shaved close to his scalp, and among the shorter kids.   

“Get off me,” Brian yelled. 

“I’m not on you,” Jack shot back, while at the same time poking him in the stomach.  

Brian looked around for a teacher and found one across the stage. 

“Do that again and I'm telling,” he threatened. 

“Do what again?” Jack asked, poking Brian again. 

“That! I'm telling,” Brian said, and started walking across the stage toward the teacher.  

It just so happened that at the exact time Jack caught up to Brian and grabbed his arm to stop him from leaving, I dropped my lunch box and bent over to pick it up. As Brian spun around to tell Jack to let him go, his foot stepped on my hand. I yelled out in painjerked  my head up to see who had crushed my fingers, and smashed the back of my head into Brian's nose. He screamed as blood started coming out of his nose and yanked his hand free of Jack, which pulled him off balance and directly into me, causing us both to fall off the stage. My forehead hit the edge of the stage and a large gash immediately started to bleed. Jack landed on the cafeteria floor with his arm underneath him, breaking both bones in his forearm. By the time the teacher reached us thirty seconds later, there was blood everywhere and the ambulance was on its way. 

Four hours later, Brian's nose had been reset, Jack's arm was in a cast, I had five stitches in my forehead and we were best friends. I guess we were either going to be friends or enemies after something like that happens. Oh, and students are not allowed on the stage during lunch anymore.  

July in Washington, DC is really hot, so by the time I ran the six blocks to Jack's house, I was sweating and breathing heavily. I knocked on the door like I was trying to break it down. Jack’s mom opened it quickly, looking annoyed, then concerned when she saw it was me.

“Tom, are you okay? You look like you just ran a marathon,” she said, opening the door wide and shooing me inside.  

“I’m okay, thanks, Mrs. Bishop. Is Jack home?” I asked, while thinking about how little time I had and hoping that I’d guessed correctly what her next words would be.  

Hold breath.  “Yes, he's downstairs. . .” Wait for it.  “. . .playing video games . . .” So far so good. “. . .with Brian.”  And breath.. Jack’s house is very popular. You can find just about every toy, video game, and gadget ever created there, and I was betting the hour the Prince had given me that today, like mostweekend days, I’d find Brian at Jack’s house, too.    The real surprie was Mrs. Bishop being home, since his parents are almost always at work or traveling. Sometimes one of Jack's older brothers is keeping an eye on him or, just as likely, no one is. 

I ran down the stairs skipping every other step and slammed into the back of the couch. I was greeted by two annoyed grunts. Bloody mayhem was being vividly displayed on the sixty inch high-definition television hanging on the wall like a prized painting. Jack and Brian were attempting to wipe out some alien civilization. Risking my own life, I stepped in front of the screen.

“Hey!”

“Not cool.”

     “Get down!”

     “Too late.  We're dead.” Jack put his wireless controller down, while Brian continued to frantically push buttons, refusing to be sidetracked from his path of destruction, regardless of the futility of the battle. 

     “Brian, it's over, man. Mr. Knight, here, has doomed the Mars colonists. Way to go, Tom. I can only hope whatever reason you have for interrupting is as important as saving that brave band of explorers. Did J.P. punch you again or something?” Jack said. 

     “No, well, yes, but it’s not that.” I hesitated, suddenly realizing that I had no idea how to begin. 

     “Well, what is it then?” Brian sighed, finally putting the controller down. 

     “Wait, what happened?  Have you been crying?” Jack asked, his tone suddenly very serious. Understand something about Jack: he's spoiled, but empathy and loyalty are two of his strongest traits. Not only does he believe he deserves the best treatment—and to Hell with anyone who doesn’t give it to him--he's convinced his friends deserve the same. This philosophy has benefited Brian and me quite nicely, but also resulted in Jack hating J.P. almost as much as I do.  

“Um, okay. I know this sounds a little weird, but a crazy alien kidnapped my parents and took them to another planet and they are going to get eaten by some giant slug-like thing if I don't go steal something, but he said I can get my friends to help me. So, will you help me?" I asked. 

  “Did J.P. knock you in the head or something?” Jack demanded, completely ignoring everything I'd said. 

     “No, you're not listening. J.P.'s not the problem. It’s the alien. I need your help. Just come on,” I pleaded, and started toward the door, hoping they'd follow without asking more questions. 

     They didn’t move. From the couch, Brian said, “Tom, come on, man, what are you talking about?  Sit down and grab a controller. We'll take care of some aliens right here. We’ve been trying to find that secret passageway you scoped out last week that annihilated the hive. You’re the only one that can get us back there. Jack’s been walking around in circles for an hour.” Trying to divert Brian from whatever he was doing, or whatever he believed, was nearly impossible. Brian embraced change about as willingly as teenagers embrace their moms in front of school in the morning. 

     “Look,” I said, “My parents have been abducted by aliens.  Real ones. There isn't any time to explain, and I don't really know how to explain it anyway. Just trust me. Help me. Something really weird and scary is going on.”

     “You really think aliens have taken your parents?” Jack asked, the skepticism clear in his voice. 

     “You would not believe what I've seen this morning,” I said. 

     “But another planet?” Brian asked, and I caught him looking at Jack as if to say, ‘I think Tom has lost his mind.’ 

     “Maybe you should try calling them, you know, just to be sure,” Jack suggested. 

     “We can't call other planets. That's stupid.” 

     “Uh, I'm not sure that's the stupidest thing I've heard this morning,” Jack said. “But, let's just try. It can't hurt, right?” 

     “Fine,” I said. I took my cellphone out of my pocket and dialed my Dad’s number. Jack shook his head and snickered. 

     “What?”

     “Are you still stuck with that pathetic sign-up-for-year-of-service-get-a-free-phone phone? 

     “It works fine,” I said defensively, looking down at the four year old technology that that enabled me to make phone calls, but not much else. 

     “No answer. Phone not in service area,” I said, after listening to the recording. 

     “Try your mom,” Jack said. 

     “There’s no point.”

     “Why not?” 

     “Because she’s in a cage somewhere in outer space.” I stared at him, daring him to accuse me of suffering from a punch to the head again. 

     Instead he said, “I’ll try my phone.”  He took his brand new smart phone out of his pocket and began talking to it like it was a personal secretary. The thing could probably cook breakfast if he asked it to. Sometimes I hate Jack. 

     “Same message,” he said after a moment. 

     “Weird.” Brian shook his head. 

     I looked at my watch.  Half of the  hour the Prince had given me was gone. If my friends turned me down, I wasn’t sure I’d even have time to find anyone else to help.  

     “Please,” I pleaded. “I don’t understand this any better than you do.  All I know is  I need your help. Now.”

     “Of course. Let's go,” said Jack. 

     “Really?” Brian asked him. 

     “Tom needs help. We help.”  

     That was all I needed to hear. “Thank you. Really. Now, let’s go. We don’t have much time!”  I took off up the stairs, but not fast enough to avoid hearing part of the conversation Brian and Jack were having as they got ready to follow me. 

     “Do you actually believe what he's saying?” Brian was saying. 

     “About aliens? Please. But, aren't you kind of curious to see what game he's playing?”

     “I was kinda curious about the game we were playing until crazy boy interrupted.”

     I bolted out the front door and hit the street at a full run.  I should probably take a moment now to introduce Mr. Fisher before I run into him, which is going to happen in about a minute. Mr. Fisher is by far the best teacher at JQA, even though he’s a math teacher. He loves brain teasers, a lot. Some kids think that's why he got divorced, because he loved puzzles more than his wife. That's probably not true, but I can tell you it makes math class a lot more interesting—the puzzles, not the divorce. 

But anyway, he's always walking around with some gadget or cube or something that changes shape or has a secret key and that's why he has a reputation for walking into things. It's not that he's clumsy or anything, he's just always thinking about something else. He looks like an absent-minded professor too, with round glasses that never seem to stay on the bridge of his nose and always wearing a sweater that has a hole or two in it.

“Tom.” But on this day, I was the one who was distracted. “TOM!”

     “What?”

     “You just ran into me.”

     “Oh, yeah, sorry. Can’t talk now, Mr. Fisher. Have a good day.” My desire to not talk about what was going on was apparently not shared by Brian and Jack, who stopped and told Mr. Fisher everything. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. I wasn’t even a hundred percent sure they  were behind me at all until they arrived at the side door of Boo Boo’s Bargains a few seconds later, with Mr. Fisher jogging right behind them. And my math teacher wasn’t even the biggest surprise.

    “Hi, Tommy,” J.P. said, as he stepped from behind a nearby tree.

    “It’s Tom,” I said reflexively. “What are you doing here?”

    “Where are you and your loser friends running off to?” he asked, making his way menacingly toward us and the door. “Oh, hi, Mr. Fisher.”

    “Hello, Justin,” Mr. Fisher responded.

    “No one calls me Justin.”

    “Ah, yes. I forgot.” That seemed unlikely, given that Mr. Fisher has known J.P. since first grade.

    “So,” J.P. said, “What are you doing here and why is everyone running?”

    “It's none of your business,” Jack said.

    “That's right, back off,” Brian added from behind Jack’s shoulder. 

     J.P. turned toward Brian. “Or what?” he said. “You’ll go cry to your grandma? See if maybe she’ll come hobbling over here and whack me with her cane. Not that she probably even knows where you are. Does she, orphan-boy?”

     Brian's face turned bright red, which was impressive given how dark his skin is. While he’s not actually an orphan—his father lives in the same city, but is never around, and his mother lives with Brian, but works two jobs—his grandmother is the one who does the day-to-day parenting as best she can. Some days are better than others. Brian loves her dearly, but hates the situation just as much. And he especially hates kids with two parents making a big deal out of it—even a kid like J.P., who probably wouldn't mind seeing significantly less of his own parents. 

     Brian started toward J.P., unconcerned that his age (one year younger), his weight (thirty pounds lighter) and his height (one foot shorter) put him at a huge disadvantage. Jack grabbed him before he’d gone two steps. 

“Not worth it, Brian,” he said. 

    “Let me go!” 

   “Yeah, let him go,” J.P. smirked, pleased with all the attention he was getting. 

  “Boys!” Mr. Fisher said, stepping between them. It was a sign of the respect he commanded that a single word could diffuse the situation. Brian turned his back on J.P.  

“Fine,” J.P. said, “I’ll just stand here minding my own business. You guys go ahead with whatever lameness you're doing.”

    “That's great J.P.  Very wise decision.” Mr. Fisher said turned to me, “If I might ask, what are we doing here?  I must confess I couldn’t quite make sense of the story Jack and Brian were trying to tell me.”

    “So, you are up to something,” said J.P. pushing his way past Jack and Brian to stand in front of me, poking his finger in my chest.

    “I don't have time to explain. Not that I would to you anyway,” I told him. My patience was gone. My parents were about to be eaten. Without even thinking I took a step towards J.P. and grabbed him by his collar, spun him around, and shoved him through the closed door. He disappeared as though the door wasn’t even there.

    “Holy--”