Dinosaur Boy (16 page)

“I assure you, this is not what it appears to be,” Principal Mathis rushed to explain. “These little rascals are just playing a prank on us. The thirteen I selected for you are all purebred human. These are just costumes.”

“Costumes?” said a second Jupiterian. This one was the tallest of the group. His voice sounded male. And very ticked off.

“Yes, costumes. Construction paper and whatnot.” Principal Mathis waved her hand carelessly in the air and let out the fakest laugh I have ever heard. “They're a spirited bunch, aren't they?”

The two Jupiterians who had spoken exchanged uneasy looks.

“I'll prove it to you,” Principal Mathis offered. She raised a hand and stepped forward toward Sylvie.

I leaped forward and ducked underneath her hand, putting myself between her and Sylvie. Instead of hitting construction paper, her fingers fell onto my all-too-real plates. And they did not come off when she pulled.

“Purrrrrrr,” I said, smirking at her. “Purrrrrr!”

She grabbed my topmost plate and shoved me away in disgust.

The Jupiterians let out a collective gasp of shock.

“Well,
this
one
is real,” Mathis admitted, looking embarrassed. “But I swear to you that the others are all—”

“Our order was quite specific,” the first Jupiterian informed Mathis angrily. “Purebred humans.
No
hybrids. Particularly not dinosaur-human hybrids. That breed simply does not sell on our planet.”

“I think we've seen enough,” the tallest Jupiterian said. He turned to leave, and the others turned to follow him.

“Wait!” Principal Mathis exclaimed. She wrung her hands desperately. “I can explain!”

“Stop wasting our time,” the tall Jupiterian hissed. When he turned to stare down at Principal Mathis, there were spots of red pulsating at both of his temples, just above where his ears should have been.

I had never seen a furious Jupiterian before. But I was pretty sure I was looking at one now.

“I am shocked that you would try to put one over on us, Mathilda,” he said angrily. “I can promise you right here and now that we will
never
do business with you again. And we will be spreading the word that you took advantage of our diminished sight on this planet. You of all people should know how shameful it is to exploit someone's handicap!”

He strode purposefully out the door. The other Jupiterians followed him, all except for the first Jupiterian, the one I was pretty sure was a girl. She lingered at the door and looked sadly over her shoulder at us.

“You poor things,” she said. “I do hope you all find happy homes.”

Then the door slammed behind her, and the fifteen of us were left alone in the portable, facing a very,
very
angry Martian.

“You!” Principal Mathis pointed at me. “This was all your doing! Fine thanks I get for protecting you! I could have made a fortune with you on Mercury!”

Mercury?

Suddenly, I had really had enough of Principal Mathis.

I took a step backward and nearly tripped over the can of spray that Sylvie had kicked earlier. Now that the lights were on, I could see that it was labeled Good Girl in bold, pink letters.

Principal Mathis gave an angry growl and advanced on me.

I leaned down, picked up the can, and let loose four quick bursts of spray directly into her face.

Our principal fell to the ground like a stone. She hit the floor face-first, and half of her human mask stuck to the carpet and got scraped away as she rolled onto her side.

I reached down and patted her on the head.

“Good girl,
Mathilda
. Good girl.”

Sylvie and Cici both giggled.

Before anyone could say anything else, there was the same jet-enginey sound from outside and a sudden, giant whoosh of wind. The door flew open, and six people in bright yellow jumpsuits charged in.

“Do you know what is going to happen to Principal Mathis?” I asked.

My grandfather set down his salad fork and wiped a smear of dressing off his upper lip.

He nodded meaningfully toward the door of the kitchen, where my parents had just disappeared. He put a finger to his lips and waited a long minute, probably to make sure they really were, in fact, leaving us alone with our salads to talk, like they had said.

It had been over six hours since the Jupiterians left and the team from Amalgam Labs, led by my grandfather, had arrived. But it had been a crazy six hours.

First, half of the team from the lab interviewed us, while the other half ran an enormous thing that looked like a vacuum all around the portable. Then, all of the scientists exchanged their jumpsuits for civilian clothing and returned the twelve would-be pets to their parents. Each parent was presented with a (fake) certificate of completion from Camp Remorse and assured that their child would be welcomed back at school the following Monday by Principal Kline.

Who, as it turned out, had not won the lottery after all, but had instead been the victim of a vicious prank by Principal Mathis. He had been campaigning for his job back ever since. The school board had been only too happy to reinstate him, given the vacancy created by Principal Mathis's abrupt departure.

Just hours after the incident, the school board had released a statement, praising the Portland FBI for capturing one Mathilda Mathis, a criminal wanted in twelve states for child abduction. The statement went on to say that Mathis would be taken to California, where she would stand trial for her crimes.

But I knew that wasn't really what was going to happen.

“Is it her?” my grandfather had asked one of the other scientists, as they both stood over Principal Mathis's unconscious body.

The other scientist, who actually looked a lot like Dr. Dana (from the movie), bent down and unfastened a clip from Principal Mathis's poofy hair.

One pink antennae sprang up from the top of her head.

The Dr. Dana look-alike felt around on the top of Mathis's head, searching for another clip. When she didn't find one, she sat back on her heels and nodded up at my grandfather.

“She has the birth defect, all right. The rarest on Mars. Yeah, this must be her.”

Principal Mathis had only one antenna?

Maybe she
did
know a little something about being teased for looking different after all.

When the only sound from the kitchen was the washing of dishes and my parents talking, my grandfather finally sat forward in his chair to answer my question.

“Amalgam Labs will turn Principal Mathis over to the Martian authorities,” he told me. “They'll have to decide what planet will put her on trial. It'll be a tough decision. She is wanted on at least seven of them, for one crime or another. Why do you ask?”

I shrugged and speared a forkful of lettuce sprinkled with my favorite vinaigrette.

“Just curious, I guess,” I said, stuffing the lettuce into my mouth. With my mouth full, I had a moment to think before my next question.

Thanks to the Good Boy/Girl spray, most of the kids who had been in the portable had only hazy memories of any alien involvement in their kidnapping. And any wild stories they might tell later about Martian principals or Jupiterian pet dealers would be chalked up to post-traumatic stress disorder, overactive imaginations, or (as Principal Mathis had been counting on) simply being a kid.

This, according to my grandfather, was the way things had always been done.

Over dinner, he had explained things to my parents. He hadn't told them everything, of course. Just enough so I wouldn't be grounded for skipping out on school that day.

But now that it was just me and my grandfather, sitting alone in my living room, I could finally get real answers to my questions. And I had
a
lot
of them.

“I thought Amalgam Labs was closed in the United States,” I began. “They said so in the movie we watched on the first day of school.”

My grandfather rolled his eyes. He was still pretty young looking, as far as grandfathers go. And he didn't look anything like Dr. Cook, the only other scientist I knew. My grandfather looked like more of an Indiana Jones type of scientist, kind of rugged and windswept. He still had almost all his hair, and there were large patches of gray above his ears.

But not a single plate. Or even a hint of a tail.

“Oh, that movie,” he said, shaking his head. “The lawyers made us put that together. You're right that we no longer have a facility in the U.S. But the United States government is actually one of our biggest supporters. A lot of the work we do involves alien technology. We employ more extraterrestrials than any other company on Earth.”

“And are there, um, a lot of aliens on Earth?”

My grandfather gave me a secretive smile.

“The existence of extraterrestrials is the worst kept secret on Earth,” he explained. “The United States, like every other country, officially denies that they have proof of alien life, even though they now have treaties with every planet in our solar system. A large number of aliens immigrate to Earth, even though they must live here in secret. Most of them work in places like Amalgam Labs, to improve human technology.”

“Is that how they created the dinosaur gene?” I asked.

My grandfather nodded.

“Actually, it takes more than one gene for a human to develop dinosaur traits. Several thousand, in fact. We got them from the Saturians.”

“Saturians?” I repeated. “You mean, like, from Saturn?”

“Yes. Dinosaurs still exist in the wild there,” he said with a totally straight face. I marveled at this for a moment, but then I realized that he probably talked about this kind of stuff every day. It was no big deal to him.

“If there are so many aliens here, why do they stay a secret?”

“Almost every human has met an alien at one time or another,” he informed me. “Most aliens don't try very hard to hide what they are. But most humans don't even notice. They're too busy, or they pretend that it didn't happen so that other people don't think they're crazy. Most humans are not ready to admit, even to themselves, that aliens exist.”

“I can see why, if the aliens are all like Mathis,” I said with a shiver.

My grandfather shook his head.

“No, most of them are like your friend Sylvie,” he explained. “Very much like us, just trying to get by.”

Sylvie.

A half hour after the Jupiterians left, while Elliot and I were watching the Amalgam Labs folks vacuum up every speck of dirt around the portable, we had found Sylvie sitting by herself. She had her knees pulled up to her chest and her hooded head buried in her arms.

“He didn't come,” she said, rocking back and forth slightly.

“Who?” I asked. Even though I was pretty sure I knew.

“My dad,” Sylvie confirmed, still rocking. “I thought he would. But he didn't even respond to my messages.”

“Is he someone important?” I asked, remembering suddenly that Mathis had mentioned Sylvie's father. If Mathis had known who he was, he must be someone prominent.

“He
is
a restaurateur. I didn't lie,” Sylvie said, raising her head slightly to look at me. “But he's also the Chancellor in Charge of Martian-Human Affairs. It's his job to investigate and arrest people like Mathis.”

“Oh,” I said. “So that's why you were so interested in the whole thing…”

Sylvie shook her head.

“At first, I thought Mathis was after you. Hybrids are big business in the illegal pet trade. They just weren't
Mathis's
business. I didn't know that until the night we broke into her office.”

“And when you knew she wasn't after me…” I encouraged her.

Sylvie shrugged.

“She was still a smuggler. I thought if I told my dad, he would come to Earth and arrest her. And I could see him. I haven't, you know. Seen him. Since my parents separated.”

Sylvie's lower lip quivered, and my heart went out to my alien friend.

“I wrote and told him about Mathis, but he didn't respond. So then I thought, what if
I
captured her
for
him? Then he'd
really
have to come here. And maybe…”

Her voice faltered, and she drew in a ragged sigh.

“Maybe he'd be proud of you?” I suggested, finishing her thought.

Sylvie nodded and angrily swatted away a tear.

“It's stupid. He doesn't care. He just let my mom take me to Earth. Now he wants nothing to do with me. He didn't write me back. I don't think he ever will.”

My grandfather, who had been walking up behind us, paused at Sylvie's words.

“You haven't heard from your father since you came to Earth?” he asked.

Sylvie shook her head.

My grandfather frowned.

“Curious,” he said, and continued walking.

“It doesn't matter,” Sylvie said, sniffing once and holding her head up high. “I don't need him.”

“Yeah!” Elliot said, slapping her encouragingly on the back. “That's the spirit! Good riddance!”

Sylvie doubled over from the strength of Elliot's slap. When she sat up straight again, she had a watery smile on her face.

“Yeah,” she repeated. “Good riddance.”

I was pretty sure Sylvie would be OK. I, for one, was glad she had come to Earth. And even gladder that she was going to stay.

Back in my living room, my grandfather put down his salad and fixed me with a serious look.

“I'm sorry I didn't get here sooner,” he said. “I have been in mandatory post-mission decontamination for the past two months. I came the moment I got your emails this morning.”

“That's OK,” I assured him. “Thanks for coming today, though. We wouldn't have known what to do with Mathis, once we sprayed her.”

“We have Ms. Helen to thank for that,” he told me. “I went to look for you at school, but it was Ms. Helen who led me to the portables. I gather she's been helping you all along?”

I nodded. “But I still don't understand why. I never got the feeling she liked me, or any of us, very much. She never talks.” And I suspected that, no matter what Sylvie said, there had to be more to it than Ms. Helen just really, really liking Mrs. Juarez's flan.

My grandfather smiled.

“I'm sure Ms. Helen likes you fine. But I think she is also hoping that by helping you, word of her good deeds will get back to the Martian High Council. Ms. Helen is in politics, you know. She's from Pluto. And the Plutonians have a lot to prove these days. Ever since they lost their planetary status and all.”

Pluto?
Well, I guess that explained why the front office was always so cold…

My grandfather sat forward.

“Before I forget, I have something for you.”

He reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a vial. He held it up to the light, so I could see that it was three-quarters full of blue liquid.

“Is that…” I trailed off.

“A cure, yes.”

“But—” I squeaked. “Mom said you were five years away from human testing…”

“We are,” my grandfather said. “At least when it comes to
formal
human testing.
Informal
human tests have been going on for years at Amalgam Labs. As you might have guessed, from the change in my appearance since the last time we met.”

I couldn't take my eyes off the blue vial. A cure. A
real
cure. Exactly what I'd been looking for since the first day of school.

My grandfather tapped the vial, making the blue liquid slosh around.

“This is what I took, five years ago,” he told me. “It is one hundred percent effective. But it is also irreversible. Once you take it—
if
you take it—you will never be able to turn your dinosaur genes on again. So you must be sure.”

He took my hand and placed the vial in it.

“Think about it for a while,” my grandfather suggested, as he sat back in his chair to finish his salad.

I took the rubber top off the vial and sniffed, curiously.

It had no scent. Not even to my ultrasensitive dino nose.

What would happen if I drank it? What if, when the dinosaur parts were gone, I went right back to being who I used to be? The Sawyer who never spoke up, never stood up for himself? Who hoped nobody would ever notice him? That Sawyer wouldn't have tried to save a portable full of kids from aliens.

And what else would be different? I thought about that day on the soccer field, when I had turned into the wind. I thought about the feel of the sun on my plates, the icy chill of the breeze. About the mouthwatering scent of freshly cut greens. And how the smell changed to a spicy nuttiness when they had molé sauce poured on them.

Would any of those things be the same, once I was just plain old Sawyer again?