Chapter One
Where Did the Aliens Go?
The red C- on my creative writing assignment didn’t hurt nearly as much as the comment slashed beneath it in letters so sharp they gouged through the paper:
Derivative! I’m disappointed in you, Zach.
The temperature in the stuffy classroom seemed to plummet about thirty degrees. I could no longer hear Mr. Myers’ loafers squeaking on the floor as he returned stories to students. All I could hear was the chilling skitter of sleet against the windows as I stared at my desecrated title page. This simply couldn’t be happening to me.
A big question mark followed my title, “Mystery of the Alien Sand Castle.” Mr. Myers had written, “What alien? What sand castle?” I looked up to see him frowning at me. Even the tips of his sandy mustache seemed to frown in bitter disappointment.
I ripped off the paper clip with numb fingers as Mr. Myers dropped Keisha’s story on her desk. I was willing to bet that Keisha hadn’t gotten a C- .
How could I get a C-? I was the literary magazine editor! One day in the not-too-distant future I was going to be a world-famous novelist on the bestseller list. World-famous novelists do not get C’s in creative writing. And reviewers do not say that world-famous novelists’ manuscripts are derivative. Not ever.
Then I read the first sentence.
This wasn’t even the story I’d written! I’d created this cool mystery about aliens disguised as human beings. They were stealing homeless families to repopulate a workers’ planet light years away. This kid, Bryan, figured out what was happening after he made friends with a homeless kid and then the kid’s whole family just disappeared. My hero was at this hidden beach cove where he and his new friend had planned to meet, and Bryan saw this weird new guy from school who was building this bizarre sand castle. It didn’t look like anything a human would come up with, and Bryan got suspicious. That wasn’t derivative!
But the story Mr. Myers had handed back to me was about some guy named Foster who was trying to join the Baker Street Irregulars, except he came from a rich, snobby London family instead of the streets. Oh, yeah, it was derivative, all right. No wonder Mr. Myers gave it a C-.
I was about to complain that someone had substituted their story for mine, but how could I prove it? I studied the manuscript. It looked like it was printed on the magazine’s computer printer that always bent one corner of the page, on standard school paper. And my name and the keyword “Aliens” appeared as the heading on top of every page. There weren’t any distinctive misspellings or anything that could tie it to any specific student.
The bell rang and I shoved the story into my backpack. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make me look stupid, and I intended to pay him - or her - back.
“What’s wrong?” Keisha asked, flipping her long black hair over her shoulder. “Teacher’s pet didn’t get his A+?”
“None of your business!” I snapped. Keisha swung her book bag in a wide arc like a smirking grin, then turned and strolled out of the room.
Was Keisha the one who’d sabotaged me? She was assistant editor of the magazine, and she told anybody who’d listen that I was only in charge because I was a guy. She claimed she could write circles around me. As if! She wrote silly stuff - poems about dancing dinosaur bones that fell on top of museum paleontologists, and stories about hot fudge sundaes that bubbled over onto the floor, flooded through doorways and then smothered everybody in town. Only the ants were happy, swimming in oceans of sticky fudge.
You didn’t get to be a world-famous novelist by writing weird stuff like that. But when she read her stories in class, everybody laughed, including Mr. Myers. Even I smiled now and then. Okay, I admit it. There were times I wished I could write humor like she did, but when I tried my words just lay there on the page, flat and awkward and distinctly unfunny.
Anyway, world-famous novelists were serious, not humorous. Who cared if Keisha thought she should be editor instead of me? Nobody agreed with her. At least, nobody since Dave Warren. I could still see our ex-classmate - black, sad looking eyes, perpetual frown of bewildered concentration, built like a wrestler, but slow and clumsy. Clumsy with words, too, yet he wanted to be a writer. Some writer - he thought Keisha had more talent than me!
Anyway, it didn’t matter what Dave thought anymore. Slow and clumsy Dave had been ambling along one night last spring when a drunk driver ignored a stop sign. Too slow to react, Dave was DOA when the EMS units arrived at the scene. We all took an afternoon off from school to go to his funeral. Keisha even cried.
I stood up, the chair screeching. Dave was history. My C- was what mattered now. I had a pretty good idea of who else could have gotten into my files and trashed my story. Now I just had to prove it.
– End Chapter One –
