Gabby Duran and the Unsittables (7 page)

“You’re acting weird, too,” Carmen said.

“Oh yeah?” Gabby countered. “Weirder than choosing a jigsaw puzzle that’s a giant math problem?”

“It’s a twenty-five thousand piece artistic exploration of pi, taken to two thousand digits,” Carmen shot back.

“If the pie was taken to two thousand
flavors
, that would be normal,” Gabby said.

“But it wouldn’t make sense,” Carmen said, scrunching her face. “Pi’s a number. It doesn’t come in flavors.”

“Pie-with-an-e does,” Alice said, “and I happen to have a lemon meringue in the fridge. Gabby, why don’t you slice some for us?”

That was Alice’s favorite way of handling it when the girls bickered: separation, ideally combined with sweets. Gabby tromped back upstairs and sliced three wedges of the pie. She made
Carmen’s extra-large as an apology. She hadn’t really meant to pick on her sister; she just panicked when Car caught her acting strange. If Gabby was going to be a top-secret associate
for a covert governmental agency, she had to get better at this lying thing. Snapping at Carmen all the time wouldn’t work, and if she kept sweating this much every time she stretched the
truth, she’d end her first week as a pile of salt and curls.

“You only have two pieces,” Alice said when Gabby went downstairs and handed her and Carmen each a plate. “Aren’t you having any?”

“Mine’s in the kitchen. I thought I’d bring it upstairs and have it while I practice.” Translation:
I can’t be around you without letting you know I’m
keeping a secret.

“Play loud,” Carmen said. “I like hearing you.”

Carmen wasn’t even looking at Gabby—her full attention was on the puzzle—but Gabby felt like her sister had just given her a huge hug. “Thanks, Car.” She kissed her
sister on top of her head, and even though Carmen wiped the kiss off like it was bird poop, Gabby swore she saw a hint of a smile.

“My turn,” Alice said, holding out her arms.

When Gabby came closer for a hug, Alice held her at arm’s length. “You look so much like your father sometimes, it’s crazy.”

“You think?”

Gabby was only two when her dad died, and he’d been deployed six months before that. She didn’t really remember him, and she couldn’t see the resemblance in pictures, but Alice
swore they had the exact same bright blue eyes and freckles; and pre-army, when her dad’s hair had been long, Alice said it had been just as curly as Gabby’s.

Alice ruffled Gabby’s curls, then pulled her in for a hug. Gabby could smell the tandoori spices still lingering on her mom’s clothes. “Don’t stay up too late practicing,
baby,” Alice said. “It’s a school night. Carmen and I are going to bed soon, too.”

Gabby promised, then bounced up to the kitchen, grabbed her slice of pie, and carried it to her room. After scarfing two huge bites, she opened her French horn case and tried to practice Friday
afternoon’s solo. She made it through once, playing extra loud for Carmen’s benefit, but she wasn’t feeling the notes. All she could think about were aliens.

They were real. They lived all around us. She had just personally met four of them. Maybe five; the jury was still out on Edwina. They were everywhere, hidden in plain sight. People Gabby knew
could be aliens. People like Ronnie, the bus driver who always shouted, even when she was right in front of you. Or the woman at Alice’s favorite bakery who hated kids but loved dogs. Maybe
she came from a planet where everyone was fluffy with a tail, so the dogs made her feel at home.

Or maybe
Madison
was an alien. Maybe that’s how she could see Gabby in the darkness earlier. Maybe she had creepy mind-tweaking powers, which forced Maestro Jenkins to love her
music but messed with her own brain and made it impossible for her to be nice to Gabby, no matter how nice Gabby was to her.

Gabby put away her horn, yanked her phone out of her purple knapsack, and leaped over a pile of dirty laundry to flop on the bed and call Zee. Zee would love this. If Gabby told her there were
aliens around, she’d dive in and analyze every detail about every person in their lives until she knew for sure who was earthling and who was intergalactic. It’d be just like the time
Gabby found the anonymous “I love you, Gabby Duran” letter in her fifth-grade locker, and Zee went full forensics, dissecting speech patterns, gestures, habits, and daily routines of
everyone who had even the remotest contact with Gabby, including some who might have sent the note as a prank. When the culprit turned out to be Wally Ramone, a fourth-grade trumpet player whose
lips were always pursed into playing position, Gabby’s disappointment was completely overshadowed by her awe of Zee’s skills. The clue that closed the case? Turkey jerky. It was
Wally’s favorite snack. He ate it constantly, and both he and the letter carried its distinctive odor.

Zee would love Gabby’s latest mystery even more, but Gabby realized there was no way she could tell her. She’d promised Edwina. If she spilled, she broke the rules, and she
wouldn’t be allowed to babysit for A.L.I.E.N. No sitting, no money, no helping her family, no R.A.M.A. Plus, kids like Philip would go back to being “Unsittable.”

Gabby stopped the call before she even finished dialing. She rolled onto her stomach and screamed into her comforter.

This was impossible. She needed something to distract her.

Could she call Satchel? Even though his mom and Alice had drifted apart a little since their maternity ward roommate days, years of shared playdates, shared birthday parties, and
embarrassing-to-look-at-the-videos-now shared baths had sealed their deal. Gabby and Satchel were one hundred percent brother and sister, even if they did have different houses and different
parents. Gabby knew him as well as she knew herself, and knew exactly what he’d be doing right now. It was nine at night on a Sunday, so he’d have just finished making bike deliveries
for his uncle Gio’s restaurant. He’d answer if Gabby called, and there’d be no danger of her talking about A.L.I.E.N. because, unlike Zee, he’d lose it and Gabby would never
freak him out that way. But what else could Gabby talk about? A.L.I.E.N. was the only thing on her mind.

She turned off her phone and plugged it in. Better to just go to sleep and deal with everything in the morning. She got ready for bed, crawled under the covers…

…and didn’t wake up until she felt the oozing drool of a strange alien beast dripping onto her face.

“Philip!” she cried as she bolted upright in bed.

It wasn’t Philip. It wasn’t even an alien. It was that Zee-rigged pitcher of water that doused Gabby every time she pressed the snooze button a third time. As always, she gathered
her soaking sheets for the dryer, then got dressed and ready for school and joined Alice and Carmen in the kitchen. Both of them were well into plates of chicken tikka masala, left over from
yesterday’s brunch. Gabby stared at the heap of chunky yellow-orange goo in front of her own chair and wondered, Could her own mother be an alien? It would explain her penchant for serving
decidedly un-breakfasty foods at breakfast.

“Not in the mood for leftovers?” Alice said. “I can make you something else.”

“No, it’s not that,” Gabby said quickly, shaking off the ridiculous idea. “This looks great. I was just thinking about stuff. What’s my schedule like this week,
Car?”

Between bites, Carmen opened one of her black binders. “Today the Graces, tomorrow the Hayses, Wednesday the Vitaris twins, Thursday the Hayses again,” she rattled off. “Friday
we left open for the concert.”

Interesting. All regulars. Nothing that sounded like code for Edwina.

Then again, Gabby had only been named Sitter to the Unsittables yesterday. It was crazy to think she’d be booked already.

Except John and Lisa seemed like they’d have hired Gabby immediately.

“Do we have anyone unusual coming up in the next few weeks?” Gabby asked. “Anyone…I don’t know…unique?”

Carmen flipped through the book. “Rajit Jethani plays banjo. That’s unique. The Cody sisters’ grandmother just turned a hundred and two, which is very unique. Adelia Montrose
has a dog that won the Westminster Kennel Club’s Best in Show. Renee Vel—”

“Got it, thanks.” Gabby cut her off before Carmen went through each standout quirk of every single client in the book.

Carmen’s watch beeped and she shut the binder. “Time to go,” she said. “Bus arrives in three minutes, thirty-nine seconds.”

This, Carmen had calculated, was the exact amount of time it took for her and Gabby to put on their coats, gather their bookbags and Gabby’s instrument, and get to the stop at the corner.
Madison Murray, whose sense of timing was nowhere near as impeccable as Carmen’s, was already waiting when they arrived.

“Hi, Madison!”

Gabby said it brightly, but subtly narrowed her eyes, trying to peer through Madison’s skin for signs of alien sluginess.

“What are you doing with your face?” Carmen asked. “You look like you smell something bad.”

“Carmen! Cut it out. I don’t look like that at all.” Gabby turned to Madison. “Sorry about that. Don’t know what she was talking about.”

She offered Madison a chummy laugh. Madison didn’t join in. Instead she said, “I noticed the light in your bedroom window was out by ten last night. I was up playing my flute until
midnight, then listened to the concerto on headphones, so I’d get extra practice in my sleep. You should probably just go ahead and tell Maestro Jenkins you don’t want Friday’s
solo. It’ll save you the suspense of waiting until he gives it to me.”

The bus pulled up before Gabby could respond. When Madison turned around to board, Gabby studied her back for any signs of a hidden tail.

“Good morning, girls!” Ronnie the bus driver screamed unnecessarily as they climbed inside. Were her alien ears unable to gauge how loud she was?

Gabby turned down the aisle and stopped in her tracks. The seats were filled with elementary and middle schoolers laughing, shouting, throwing things, zoning out to headphones, bent over
homework, or staring out the window. Were they all human? Had she been riding the bus with aliens all her life? How would she know?

“Butts in seats, or I can’t move the bus!” Ronnie cried in her earsplitting bellow.

Gabby quickly slipped into an empty bench a short walk down the aisle, leaving Carmen the only bench she’d accept, the one right behind Ronnie’s chair. Gabby took a deep breath and
let it out slowly. She had to stop thinking about what happened last night. She couldn’t function like this.

Music would help. Gabby pulled out her phone and earbuds, scrolled to her recording of Friday afternoon’s concerto, hunkered down in her seat, closed her eyes, and let the notes fill her
head and take her away from everything.

Everything except a sharp pain in her shin. An alien attack?

“Wake up, Gabby,” Carmen said. She stood in the aisle next to Gabby’s bench. “You fell asleep. We’re at your school.”

“Oh,” Gabby said, rubbing the spot on her leg Carmen had kicked. “Thanks. I think.”

Carmen smirked slightly as she went back to her own bench, and Gabby limped herself, her purple knapsack, and her French horn case off the bus.

The minute she hit the curb, a streak of blue and yellow whizzed by, shouting her name.

“Zee!” Gabby happily replied. She raced after her, the knapsack and French horn galumphing against her body with each step.

Stephanie Ziebeck, a.k.a. Zee, rode to school on a motorized skateboard she’d tricked out herself. Hence the super-streak speeds. The super-streak colors came from her blue overalls, every
pair of which had a multitude of pockets for gadgets and devices, and her yellow-blond hair, with the almost-equally-multitudinous braids that whipped behind her as she rode.

Gabby caught up with Zee as Zee toe-flipped her skateboard and caught it under her arm.

“Did it finally work?” Zee asked. She was referring, as she did every morning, to the pitcher of water she’d rigged to Gabby’s alarm.

“Pavlov totally would have had me put to sleep,” Gabby admitted.

“You’re killing me,” Zee said. She threw her non-skateboard-holding arm around Gabby’s shoulders, and they walked into Brensville Middle School. “Come with me,
Gabs,” she said. “I worked up something new for the L-Man over the weekend.”

The L-Man was Ellerbee, the school janitor. His office was right across from the office of the principal. In the first week of school, Zee had rigged some pencils, rubber bands, and a tiny
engine into a flying drone that she let loose in the middle of English. She got sent to Tate’s, but while she was waiting she saw Ellerbee struggling with a broken vacuum cleaner. Zee fixed
it, and the two became friendly. Apparently, Ellerbee’s son, who now lived pretty far away and never visited, had been into robotics when he was Zee’s age, so Ellerbee understood
Zee’s dreams of building a bot worthy of a national championship. He also understood why Zee wanted nothing to do with the school’s official robotics team, which was manned by Principal
Tate. Principal Tate was a man who believed in following rules no matter what, even when those rules sucked the creative life out of something. Ellerbee’s son had been more like Zee, and
Ellerbee loved sharing his son’s old tricks and ideas with her. In return, Zee tried to use her skills to make his job a little easier.

“ZZ Top! Gabby MacGregor!” Ellerbee cried in his thick Scottish accent as he rolled back in his chair. Unlike the principal’s palace across the way, Ellerbee’s office was
little more than a glorified walk-in closet. Shelves crammed with squeeze bottles of cleanser, rags, and buckets lined the walls, while large vacuums, mops, brooms, and buffers crowded the floor.
Ellerbee’s desk was actually a repurposed lower shelf. His roller chair barely fit beneath it.

“Good to see ya, L-Man!” Zee said.

“Hi, Ellerbee,” Gabby added with a smile. She looked at Ellerbee’s framed picture of his hometown—the one he always kept on his desk. He’d told Zee he hadn’t
been back to Ayr in forty-five years, but he still missed it. Gabby wondered if Philip’s family and Vondlejax felt the same way about their home planets.

“Totally hooked you up,” Zee said. Her backpack was already on the ground, and she dug inside until she pulled out what looked like foot clips for skis. “Still got the Roombas
I juiced for you?”