Alien in My Pocket (4 page)
Read Alien in My Pocket Online
Authors: Nate Ball
W
atching Amp eat a Ritz cracker was maddening.
He held each crackerâwhich was probably twice the size of his headâwith both hands and turned it in a quick circle, nibbling the edge as it went around. Cracker crumbs went everywhere, until it vanished. Then Amp licked each of his six fingers.
It was like watching a squirrel who'd had too much coffee.
Watching him eat SweetTarts was even worse. He flicked each one into the air, caught it in his mouth, and swallowed it whole.
“So let's get to it,” I said. I went to my closet, grabbed my catcher's mitt off the shelf, and pulled it on. “I gotta leave in two hours. What's first?”
Amp scratched his head and nodded, thinking. “We need a huge nail or metal rod. Thick. Preferably iron.”
“Why iron?” Olivia asked.
Amp looked at us in disbelief. He turned his back and spoke into the recorder on his wrist.
“Council Note: Earth's plentiful supply of iron is something to consider. Iron is an element whose atoms form magnetic domains that are aligned extremely easily by an outside magnetic field. The huge amplification of the field that results means it's a perfect material for building an electromagnet. This element would be useful back on Erde. Further study required.”
“Amp, it's kinda creepy when you do that, you know?” Olivia said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “You realize we can totally hear you, right?”
“Consider it a lovable quirk of mine,” he said.
Olivia picked up my textbook and stared closely at the photo of our experiment. “Looks like they just use a regular old steel nail in the book, Amp.”
“Hey, my dad has a huge bolt,” I said, remembering a gift the school board gave him for getting the city to install a streetlight at the corner near my school. “It's one of those big fat ones that hold up those streetlight poles. It's bigger than a zucchini.”
“Great!” Amp exclaimed. “Quick, go get it. Pure iron would be best, but even if it's steel, it might do what we need if it's big enough. We're not just going to build any old electromagnet.”
I paused. “Oh, I can't,” I said. “Not now.”
“Why not?” Olivia said, throwing up her arms.
“It's in his office, and he's in there. It's sort of mounted on this trophy thing.”
“Then we can't use it,” Olivia said.
“I just need to swipe it when he's not around. He won't miss it. Plus, we can return it when we're done, right?”
We both looked at Amp. He shrugged. “Sure, I don't see why not. We're also going to need wire. Thick wire. It has to have insulation on it, like a plastic or rubber casing. And we need a lot: enough to wrap tightly around your zucchini-bolt a lot of times.”
We all sat in silence, thinking.
I pulled one of the wires off the yam on my experiment. “Could we use this?”
“Totally unacceptable,” Amp said. “Too short. Too thin.”
Olivia jumped up. “Hey, if you kept the receipt you could return these wires and buy the kind we need.”
I sighed. “I'm sure my mom has it. She keeps the receipt for everything. But I'd have to explain to her that I've changed my experiment. Plus, I'd have to go to back to the hardware store. No experiment is worth that.”
“Too bad,” Olivia said. She started stuffing my experiment's wires back into the plastic bag they had come in. “We can swing by the hardware store before we drop you off at tryouts.”
“We?” I said.
Olivia patted my shoulder. “I'll tell your mom you've gotten excited about science again. Let your pal Olivia handle the details.”
“Oh, this is turning into a total nightmare,” I said, holding the mitt to my face.
“Amp and I will keep working while you're playing catch and hitting your balls.”
I couldn't even respond to that one.
With a growl, I grabbed the bag with all my baseball gear. My weekend had been hijacked. I was no longer in charge of my own science experiment. And making the baseball team suddenly seemed like a long shot.
Worst of all, I just wanted to take a nap.
“I
asked you if you realized that the Earth itself is one big magnet,” Amp said.
“What? What time is it?”
“Don't worry about the time. Worry about what I'm telling you,” Amp's voice needled from somewhere in the dark.
I groaned and peered at the glowing numbers on my alarm clock with one half-closed eye. 2:46 a.m.
I couldn't see Amp, or I would have backhanded him off my bed and through the wall.
“What is Earth's core made out of?” Amp's voice asked casually.
“Oh, c'mon, I don't know,” I moaned.
“Think about it.”
“Sugar and spice and everything nice?”
“That is a horrible guess,” he said.
Then I heard him whispering into his ridiculous recorder.
“Council Note: Human children seem unaware that their planet is primarily made out of iron. And that some of it is molten, which, of course, means it's in a heated, liquid state. All of which helps make this planet one big magnet. Not only do they not know, they don't even seem to care, which may explain their failure to achieve interplanetary travel. Amp over.”
“Stop talking into your arm, please,” I said, closing my eyes. “And we have been to the moon, wise guy.”
“Oh dear, the moon is not a planet,” Amp sighed. “It's a . . . well, it's a moon.”
I didn't care. I was exhausted. Baseball tryouts had sapped whatever interest I had in my lousy experiment. Plus, my neck hurt like crazy.
The tryouts had actually gone better than I imagined they would. I hit the ball better than ever. But toward the end of the session, I had to catch pitches thrown by Max Myers, a fellow fourth grader who looked like a truck driver with anger issues.
Max didn't so much pitch as catapult the ball in my direction with a whirling and wild windmill motion. He was all speed and no control. Not only did his fastballs make my hand feel like it was melting inside my mitt, many of them bounced before the plate.
Toward the end, one of Max's wild pitches caught the front edge of home plate, ricocheted off my glove, and shot straight up under my mask and off the side of my neck.
Catchers are never supposed to let a pitch get past them, no matter how badly it's thrown. The catcher's curse, my dad called it. All three coaches were watching. But I kept Max's wild pitch in front of me. That's what matters. I could tell the coaches were impressed by the way they didn't stop spitting sunflower seeds.
I started dozing off again thinking about it, but Amp was on a roll.
“See, Earth itself is one big magnet,” he declared. “It has two poles, just like a magnet. The Earth's magnetic moment is really huge, meaning its ability to exert magnetic force on things is super big.”
“I'm having a moment of my own right now,” I said. “A moment of pain.”
Amp ignored me. “I think I've found a way to provide a boost to our little experiment. My ship has a small device that can tap into a bit of Earth's magnetic field,” Amp said. “Does adding that sound okay?”
“Nothing anybody says at three in the morning sounds okay,” I said, keeping my eyes closed. “Even Mrs. Einstein told Albert to shut up at three in the morning.”
“Splendid,” he said. I could hear him clapping, which sounded like two marshmallows being thumped together. “I'll get to work right away.”
“Terrific,” I said, mostly into my pillow.
Looking back, I wish I had paid closer attention to what he was saying. Only later would I realize the mistake I had just made.
I
stood frozen in the kitchen doorway early the next morning.
“It's about time, Rip Van Winkle,” Olivia said.
She was sitting cheerfully with my family at our kitchen table.
“What are you doing here?” I blurted out, looking down at the pajamas I was wearing, the ones I had outgrown two years ago. “I'm not even dressed.”
“Oh, hush up,” Mom said. “She's here to help with your project. A girl can't do science on an empty stomach.” She smiled at Olivia.
My mom loved Olivia. She was the daughter Mom never had.
“Olivia's been telling us all about your new science project,” Dad said, looking up from his smartphone.
“She has?” I croaked.
That's the thing about Olivia. She loves to talk. And half the things she says make me cringe. I constantly worry that she'll spill the beans about Amp by accident one day. She talks so fast and says so much it seems bound to happen.
“She thinks your new experiment could go all the way to the tri-county finals this year,” said Taylor, looking up from his oozing egg yolk. “Gosh, you should have worn a robe or something, Zack.”
“Why should I have to wear a robe in my own house?” I complained.
“Where else would you wear a robe, except in your own house?” Dad asked, without looking up from an email he was reading.
I skittered to the last open chair and sat quickly, covering myself as best I could with a napkin.
Taylor looked at Olivia suspiciously. “She thinks it's even better than my robot last year.”
Taylor was not only the first kid in kindergarten to enter our school's science fair, he won it. He had built a robot that flipped pancakes. The robot's name was Flip. Get it? Anyway, he was out to prove that a robot could cook a pancake better than a person. He called his experiment “The Big Flip-Off!”
Taylor had some parents who came to the science fair face off against the robot over a big, two-foot griddle. When Taylor and Flip won first place, they both went to the Tri-County Science Fair Competition, where Taylor and his flapjack-flipping robot took second place. He was interviewed on the evening news. My mom posted a link to the interview on her Facebook page and got over three hundred likes.
“So, Zack, do you really think your magnet can top Flip?” Mom asked excitedly.
I groaned. “It's an electromagnet, and no, I'm just hoping to get an A. That's it.”
“Really?” Dad said. “Olivia here says you're going for something truly spectacular.”
I glared at Olivia. “Maybe she set the bar too high.”
“I'm pretty sure my spider is gonna beat his lame-o magnet, Dad,” Taylor boasted. “It actually weaves its own web.”
“Really? Cool!” Olivia exclaimed. “Oh, that sounds a lot better than Zack's magnet thingy.”
I glared at her again. Olivia returned my glare with a fake smile and shoved a giant piece of bacon in her mouth.
“Is there any more bacon?” I asked, looking at the empty plate in the middle of the table.
“The early bird gets the bacon,” Mom said, and laughed too hard at her own joke.
“Thanks,” I sighed. “And don't forget, today is the second day of baseball tryouts.” Nobody at the table seemed interested in my hopes and dreams. I cleared my throat. “If it's okay, I'm going to go change into something more comfortable.”
“You mean something more uncomfortable,” Taylor said.
I didn't answer. I zipped out of the kitchen, down the hallway, and into my dad's office. I walked over to the giant bolt that was resting on two wooden hooks that extended from a plaque mounted on the wall behind the desk. I lifted the bolt off the hooks. It was surprisingly heavy. I almost dropped it on my naked toes.
I tiptoed up the stairs holding the heavy bolt with both hands.
At the top step I froze. My ears had picked up on something faint.
High-pitched screaming.
Very high-pitched!
AMP! AMP WAS IN TROUBLE!
