Amp crash-landed on planet Earth through my bedroom window. His spaceship smashed my bedroom wall and landed on my bed. I had to cover the blackened dent in my wall with a baseball poster so my mom didn't see it. I still haven't really explained the black stains on my sheets.

But those are the least of my problems. Now I have a blue alien not much bigger than my fist secretly living in my room. Imagine trying to keep that a secret! Not easy, especially since instead of bananas, my stranded traveler only eats Ritz crackers and SweeTarts. Seriously, there's only so many rolls of SweeTarts a kid can buy without people starting to get suspicious!

You might think living with your own little alien dude is fascinating and incredible and amazingâbut you'd be wrong. It's like sharing your room with an annoying little brother. A little, blue, three-fingered brother from another planet. I already have a little brother from this planet. And trust me, one little brother is more than enough.

“Did you fart?” my alien houseguest asked, interrupting my homeworkâagain.

“
Whoever smelt it dealt it,” I mumbled, not looking up from my math homework.

“How dare you?” Amp replied in his high-pitched voice. “You know my body uses energy much too efficiently to require the release of leftover gases.”

“Oh, come on,” I groaned.

“I am offended, Zack. I'm simply noting that suddenly your room smells funny.”

“You're always floating air biscuits and then pointing fingers.”

“What do you mean by âair biscuits'?”

“Oh, you know. A barking spider. A cheese squeeze. A thunder muffin. A seat tweet.”

“I can honestly say I have no idea what you are talking about.”

I put down my pencil and turned to look at him. “I am saying you release cloud monkeys all the time then act all mystified as to why it smells like burning tires in here. Face it, you fluff quite frequently because of that crummy diet of yours.”

“I am still puzzled as to why my affection for Ritz crackers and SweeTarts troubles you so much.”

“
It wouldn't be so much of a problem if you didn't walk around like a crop duster, leaving a trail of toxic alien farts behind you.”

Amp was quiet for a second. He sat down on the alarm clock next to my bed and squirmed. I think he was trying to give me some alien stinkeye, but it just made him look even more gassy. “You can't prove a thing.”

I rolled my eyes and turned back to my word problems. “Silent but deadly.” I sighed.

“I heard that.”

“Good,” I whispered. “You little fart factory.”

“I heard that, too.”

The walkie-talkie next to my math book sud
denly crackled to life. “Earth One, this is Earth
Two. Over.”

Olivia.

Olivia is my best friend and next-door neighbor, and she's the only other person on the planet who knows about my secret roommate.

I picked up the walkie-talkie and pushed the Talk button. “This is Earth One. Read you loud and clear. What's up? Over.”

I
stared at the walkie-talkie, waiting.

“I'm coming over. Over.”

“Over? Oh, roger. Over,” I said awkwardly.

“What?” Olivia responded after a few seconds.
“I've got SweeTarts. Over.”

“Oh, goodie, dinner,” Amp said from behind me.

“You mean SweetFarts? Over.”

“Funny. Over.”

Then I heard the doorbell ring downstairs.

It was time for our daily meeting about getting Amp back home. We hadn't met in three days, though, so our daily meeting might need a new name.

Listen to This

“I
t smells like the devil burped in here.”

Olivia had just shut the door of my room. She pulled two rolls of SweeTarts out of her pocket and tossed them to Amp, who was still sitting on my alarm clock.

“It smells like that because he keeps eating those fart pills,” I said, still hunched over my math homework. “Hey, did you get the one about the train leaving San Francisco at eight p.m.?” I asked, turning around in my chair.

Olivia is in my class at Reed School. Schoolwork isn't difficult for her. Olivia just sort of knows stuff. She usually finishes her math homework while everyone else is packing up to leave for the day. She'd be a real brain if she weren't so weird and didn't talk so much.

“Forty-eight miles an hour is the answer,” she said, watching Amp flip SweeTarts into his mouth.

“Forty-eight?” I croaked. “I have five hundred forty-four!”

“How is that possible?” She laughed, shaking her head at me. “What train travels that fast, Whacky Zacky?”

“Maybe those Japanese bullet trains. I saw them on TV.”

“They don't go that fast,” she corrected me. “Two hundred miles an hour, tops.”

“We have trainlike vehicles back on Erde,” Amp said, once again bragging about how great things were on his planet. “They travel about as fast as sound travels here.”

“I've told you before about talking with your mouth full,” I grumbled, turning back to my incorrect math problem. “You may have fast trains on Erde, but we have something called manners here on this planet.”

“Has he been this grumpy the whole time?” Olivia asked Amp.

“Since he got home. Surprisingly, math makes him angry.”

Honestly, all our meetings about fixing Amp's busted spaceship, getting him off this planet, and returning my life to normal went like this. What was the point of meeting if we never accomplished anything except pointing out all the things I do wrong? I was so not the problem.

There was a knock on my bedroom door. Olivia quickly moved to block the view of Amp from the doorway.

She always did this, even though Amp could easily make himself invisible to someone. He uses one of his Jedi mind tricks. He basically erases your memory of seeing him as you see him, so you instantly forget you're seeing him while you're looking at him.

I know, it sounds complicated. You get used to it. But Olivia always forgets he can do that.

The door clicked open and my little brother poked his head in.

“I heard you have SweeTarts,” he said. “I want some.”

“Go away, Taylor,” I groaned from my desk. “We're busy.”

Olivia reached into her pocket and tossed Taylor a roll of SweeTarts. He intentionally missed the catch so he could step all the way into my room. “Hey, what are you guys doing?” he asked, looking around. “It smells like burning toothpaste in here.”

Taylor knew something was up. He knew I was hiding a secret, and he'd dedicated his life to figuring out what it was. He'd even built an army of spy robots to help him. Fortunately, I'd destroyed most of them when I caught them in my room.

My parents are convinced Taylor is some kind of genius. He
is
only in the first grade and building robots. But I don't care. I think he's only a genius at annoying me.

I got up and pushed him out of my room. “Go play with your robots, you Nosy Nelly.” I closed the door on him and leaned my back against it.

“But I want to hang out with you guys,” he said from the other side of the door.

“Buzz off!” I shouted. I heard him walk down the squeaky hallway.

Olivia sat up on my bed. She had an odd look on her face. It was almost white, like she'd seen a ghost.

“What's wrong with you?” I ask. “Is Amp's gas cloud getting to you?”

“How did he know I had SweeTarts? I didn't tell him, and you didn't tell him, so how did he know?”

The three of us stared at each other.

Without looking down, Olivia unclipped the walkie-talkie from her pocket. She held it up and stared at it. “That little sneak is listening in on our walkie-talkie conversations.”

“What a clever idea,” Amp whispered.

I looked at them both. I was pretty sure steam was coming out of my ears. “A clever idea that the little worm is gonna pay for.”

BOOK: Alien in My Pocket #3

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