Gabby Duran and the Unsittables (10 page)

“You mean, ‘
Wutt
has such a good reason to be outside my bag?’”

“I don’t mean that at all,” Satchel said. “Are you okay? What’s your deal?”

“Yes,” Gabby said proudly. “Today she is. Very much. See you at lunch!”

She peeled off into her math classroom, giggling over the perplexed look on Satchel’s face. She felt a little bad for playing with him that way…but only a little. He’d panic if he
knew the truth. Besides, she couldn’t help feeling giddy. She had an
alien
in her arms! An alien
princess
: tenth in line to the throne, and
Gabby
got to watch over her.
Not only was it an honor, it was the easiest babysitting job she’d ever had. It was also the most fulfilling. Gabby had been dubious about watching Wutt at school, but now she understood why
Edwina wanted it this way. At school Gabby was able to both watch and educate Wutt. Already she’d taught her about Earth’s early days; now she’d get to introduce her to geometry.
The class was usually torture for Gabby, but she was so excited to share it with Wutt she practically skipped inside the classroom.

“Gabby!” Zee waved from the front row. She had her chair turned backward, so she straddled it with her arms crossed over its back.

Gabby almost didn’t sit next to her. Keeping Wutt from Satchel was one thing, but for Zee meeting an alien would be a scientific revelation. How could Gabby deny that to her best
friend?

Gabby sighed. Doing the right thing wasn’t always easy, she told herself, but that didn’t mean she should avoid it. She slipped into the seat next to Zee and gently placed the
little-girl-in-math-book-form on the desk.

Zee leaned in close. “What happened in English today? Why’d you run out?”

Gabby felt the words jump onto her tongue and rush her lips to fight their way out. She was dying to tell Zee the truth, so much that it hurt to keep it inside.

“Nothing!” Gabby said fake-cheerily through clenched teeth. “Stomach thing, that’s all.”

“Stomach thing,” Zee said appraisingly, looking her friend up and down. “You do look pale and clammy.”

Of course she did. She just told a flat-out lie to her best friend. She clamped her lips into a closed-mouth grimace and nodded.

“You sure you’re okay?” Zee asked Gabby. “You seem…”

“Alien?” Gabby blurted.

She couldn’t
tell
Zee what was going on, but if Zee
guessed
the truth, then it wouldn’t be Gabby’s fault the information got out. At least, that’s how she
looked at it.

Zee scrunched her face. “I was going to say ‘weird,’ but okay, ‘alien’ I guess.”

“Yeah,” Gabby said. “
Alien
. Good word. Alien. Very descriptive.”

Gabby glanced pointedly at Wutt-the-math-book.

“Okay, something’s up,” Zee said. “Shoot.”

“If I don’t tell you, will you feel
alien
ated?”

“Alienated?”

“You won’t think I’m violating your in
alien
able right to know?”

“What?”

“Yes, Wutt!” Gabby cried, holding up her math book. “Exactly!”

“Oh hey,” Zee noted, “you re-covered your book.” She plucked it from Gabby’s hands to check it out. “‘M.N. plus F.S.’? Who’s
that?”

“No one,” Gabby said, grabbing back the book. “I mean…I don’t know. I didn’t write that. It’s not my math book.”

“Oh. Should we take it to the lost and found?”

“No!” Gabby shouted, hugging the book close. “She’s mine! I mean,
it’s
mine. The book is mine. When I said it wasn’t, I meant the
cover
isn’t mine.”

Gabby was floundering now. She could feel the sweat bead on her face. Zee looked confused.

“You put someone else’s cover on your math book?”

In response, a voice boomed from the back of the room.

“Did someone say
math book
?”

Gabby and Zee both turned to see a man built like Humpty Dumpty stride into the room. The hair that by all rights should have been on his head had migrated down to a well-manicured soul patch.
He wore a purple cape.

“I have a theory about math books,” he said as he surged to the front of the room. “Math books are anathema to arithmetic. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Mr. Lau, and I am
not only substituting for your math teacher, I am substituting for your old ways of thought, beginning with your thoughts on math books! Today we say this to math books: farewell!”

Before Gabby knew what was happening, Mr. Lau grabbed her book—grabbed
Wutt
—and hurled her to the ground. She smacked down with a loud
thwack
!

“No!” Gabby cried.

She tried to jump up, but Mister Lau leaned heavily on her desk, blocking her path.

“I know, intrepid student, it’s hard to bid adieu to the box in which you’ve always lived. But today, in this class, we free our minds! Everyone, come to the front of the room
and throw your book on the pile!”

“NO!”
Gabby wailed. She did jump up this time, but Mr. Lau placed a hand on her shoulder and eased her back down in her chair.

“Stay strong, young scholar,” he said. “Change can be hard, I know.”

Already, the rest of the class was on their feet, books in hand. Gabby could only sit and watch helplessly as student after student—even her own best friend—slammed their books onto
the floor, right on top of Wutt.

Gabby cringed. She bit her knuckles. She pounded her fists on the desk. She yanked on chunks of her hair. She curled into a small ball and whimpered. She suffered through a lecture that had the
rest of the class enraptured, while the image of Wutt’s huge black eyes and toothless smile danced before her eyes.

The second the bell rang, Gabby raced to the stack of textbooks. She dug through them like a dog, pawing through the pile and hurling the discards behind her as she burrowed down. She vaguely
heard the
bangs
,
thwacks
, and
ows
of books hitting desks, chairs, and shins, but none of that mattered. All she wanted was
her
book, and when she found it she snatched
it and ran to a corner where she frantically inspected it for scratches or dents.

There were none.

Near tears, Gabby slid down the wall, hugging the book to her chest.

“So, um…we need to talk.”

It was Zee. She stood in front of Gabby. Behind her, the entire math class spread in a tableau of flabbergasted bewilderment, every jaw on the floor.

G
abby looked at the sea of her concerned—or just seriously freaked-out—classmates.

“We totally need to talk,” she told Zee. “Later.”

Gabby grabbed her purple knapsack, threw it over her shoulder, and raced out of the classroom at a full run, still clutching Wutt to her chest. She knew Zee wouldn’t follow. Zee had Art,
but Gabby had fourth period free, and unlike Madison Murray, her free periods weren’t spent busting other people in the halls.

Gabby tore down the two flights of stairs to the music department. As she ran her phone rang.

Which was strange because she always turned it off before she left for school.

And it wasn’t so much ringing as it was honking. This hideous
a-WOO-ga
sound that she would never in a million years assign to anything, and that would bring every faculty member
running with detention slips if she didn’t shut it up immediately.

Desperate as she was to make sure Wutt was okay, she had to stop the racket. She slowed to a walk and dug in her knapsack for the phone.

It was on and making that horrible sound, but nothing was on the screen except a little swirling wheel. That usually only happened when the phone had to shut itself down and restart. Was her
phone broken? Even if it was, why was it making that noise?

Suddenly the sound stopped.

Edwina’s face replaced the swirling wheel on the screen.

“Well hello, Ms. Duran,” she said.

Gabby screamed and dropped the phone.

Edwina tsked. The phone had landed upside-down, so Gabby couldn’t see her, but she could imagine the lowered lids, the thin-pressed lips, the head shaking almost imperceptibly in
disapproval.

“Really, Gabby?” Edwina said once Gabby picked up the phone again. “Phone dropping? I honestly thought we’d moved beyond that kind of melodrama.”

“What are you…” Gabby stammered. “How are you…How did you get in my phone?”

“The same way the tiny people got into your television set to act out your favorite shows,” Edwina said drily.

“I didn’t mean that,” Gabby blushed. “I meant—”

“I’d love to answer all your questions, but unfortunately I have no desire to do so. I do, however, have news that’s rather urgent and can only be delivered to you while
you’re alone, which is now.”

Gabby looked around. It was true. Despite the way the phone had screamed, the stairwell was still empty.

“Can you hurry?” Gabby whispered. “I really need to do something.”

“Something as in make sure you didn’t bend, fold, spindle, or mutilate the tenth in line to the Flarknartian throne?”

Gabby’s stomach sank to her feet. How did Edwina know? “Something like that,” she admitted.

“Once a Flaknartian has assumed the shape of another object,” Edwina said, “he or she can only be damaged if that object is rent into pieces or punctured clean through. Was
Wutt torn apart or impaled?”

“No!” The very idea made Gabby nauseous.

“Then you have bigger things to worry about,” Edwina noted. “It seems our anonymity was compromised. Somewhere at your school is a member of the underground Group Eradicating
Totally Objectionable Uninvited Trespassers, a.k.a. G.E.T. O.U.T.”

“G.E.T. O.U.T?” Gabby scrunched her brows. “They’re G.E.T. O.U.T. and you’re A.L.I.E.N.? No offense, but for secret organizations you guys come up with really
obvious names.”

“It’s not like we carry business cards,” Edwina huffed. “At least, not anymore. But you’re missing the point. G.E.T. O.U.T. is a rogue association helmed by an
alien-obsessed paranoid named Hubert Houghton.”

The image on the phone changed to one of a shadowy silhouette behind a closed window shade. That was replaced by a picture of a man walking outside in a large city. Gabby guessed it was the same
man in the silhouette, but she couldn’t tell. All she could see were thick-soled shoes, long pants, and a trench coat that covered his entire body. The man’s face was hidden by a dark
scarf, surgical mask, giant bug-eye sunglasses, and a wide-brimmed fedora. He walked hunched over, hands deep in his pockets. A final picture seemed plucked from a newscast. The name H
UBERT
H
OUGHTON
was written under an image so pixelated it was just scrambled color swirls.

“Are these pictures supposed to help me in any way?” Gabby asked.

“They prove a point,” Edwina said as her face popped back onto Gabby’s screen. “Hubert Houghton is a paranoid germaphobe, agoraphobe, and claustrophobe. To our knowledge,
no one has ever seen his adult face. He rarely leaves his house, which is actually a skyscraper covering an entire city block of Manhattan. Houghton is convinced the world’s problems stem
from pollution. Not ecological pollution, but pollution of the human species by alien invaders. The man has fewer brain cells than a Jilkstarbriak Flusherflom, but billions of dollars in family
money to fund what he feels is his moral imperative: the ejection and/or destruction of all extraterrestrials on Earth, as well as those who help them.”

“Like you?”

“Like
you
. Our sources tell us G.E.T. O.U.T. suspects you’re involved with us, and you’re with an alien child. Should they become certain of this information, they will
undoubtedly try to capture you, and quite likely kill you both.”

“WHAT?!”
Gabby wailed.

With a ta-da sounding flourish, the math book in Gabby’s arms splayed back into a wild-haired little girl. She smiled wide and gave Gabby a huge hug.

“Ah, you see?” Edwina smiled. “I told you she was fine.”

Gabby’s head was spinning, and she was way too visible holding an alien in the middle of the stairwell. Keeping Wutt clutched close, she scampered down the rest of the stairs and raced
through the halls until she got to the practice rooms: eight square rooms, each of which was outfitted with a piano, a music stand, posters illustrating all the instruments in a proper
orchestra…and nothing else. They were the most private spots in all Brensville Middle School.

Gabby raced into the farthest practice room on the left, slammed herself and Wutt inside, then peered through the tiny door in the window to make sure no one was coming.

“Wutt?” Wutt asked, her giant eyes blinking curiously.

“It’s cool,” Gabby said. “We’re alone. Let me just talk to Edwina a second. You can play with whatever you can find in the bag.”

She set down both Wutt and her purple knapsack, then settled onto the piano bench and stared back into the phone.

The screen was blank.

“Edwina!” Gabby cried. She shook the phone. She pressed the button below the screen. She tapped madly at the glass, harder and harder….

“Stop! Stop! You’re giving me a headache!” Edwina grimaced as her face crackled back into view.