The Summer Experiment (12 page)

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The next day, when I got home from returning a book to the library, Marilee was sitting on my front steps. She followed me up the stairs to my bedroom and waited until I closed the door on any ears within hearing distance.

“I've been thinking,” she said. “It's time we got focused again with our science project. Those aliens aren't going to sit up there and wait forever.”

“What?” I asked. I figured my ears had filled up with wind and dust as I biked back from the library. “Is this the Gutless Wonder I see before me?”

“Henry has a new project,” Marilee said. “I heard him telling his mother on their back porch. His bandages are off now and he's back in action.”

“What's his project?” I asked, my heart wondering if it should beat calmly or wildly.

“He's crossing a hollyhock with a burdock,” said Marilee. “He's calling it ‘the Helmsby Hollydock.'”

“But what's the point in even
doing
that?” I asked.

“It's something about how the flower will then have prickly needles protecting it so that bees can't steal the pollen,” she said. I thought about this. It sounded like it might or should be important to mankind, but I still didn't see how.

“When was the last time a hollyhock filed a burglary charge on a bee?” I asked, and Marilee laughed out loud. I mean, bees need pollen to eat. But mostly, they carry pollen from one flower to another to fertilize them. Did Henry think the world had too many hollyhocks, one of our prettiest flowers? Okay, this might be the best time to tell you about Henry Helmsby and the Barbie dolls.

It all started when Henry decided he could improve upon Barbie's hair. He had put strands from his sister Pearl's doll under his microscope and saw that they were made of synthetic fibers. So Henry wondered if plant fibers such as bamboo might also work. If so, it might save the Mattel toy company something like fifty cents a year. They would get all excited and want to buy his research. As I said, Henry is a science geek. He's not an accountant. He did some figuring with a pencil and decided that he needed twenty-five Barbie dolls to conduct his work.

A Barbie doll isn't cheap, but Henry's father is. Henry's weekly allowance of three dollars meant he could buy one Barbie every two months if didn't spend a penny on anything else. He soon realized that he'd be in high school by the time he could even begin his research. Therefore, Barbie dolls started disappearing all over town.

Shawna O'Neal had left three of hers lying on a picnic blanket in the school park. When she returned from getting a soda pop, all three were gone. Lexi Desjardins had put hers in her mom's shopping cart while she inspected the potato chips at Flagg's Grocery. Same thing. Gone. Caitlin Overlock left two Barbies sitting on her porch steps discussing their wardrobes while she went inside to answer the phone. No sign of the Barbies when she returned.

Over and over again, everywhere in town, little girls were losing their Barbie dolls and calling Sheriff Mallory and bursting into loud tears. After the sheriff's ears couldn't take the crying anymore, he decided to let Deputy Harold Hopkins do a stakeout with his granddaughter's Barbie. He figured Harold would be able to handle a doll caper. The stakeout Barbie was dressed in a snappy red sweater and a blue denim skirt and was placed strategically near the drop box at the post office. Deputy Hopkins sat hidden behind the oak tree across the road and ate a box of chocolate donuts as he waited.

Sure enough, in no time Henry Helmsby was observed crawling, crab-like, out from behind the mailboxes at the side of the post office. He snatched up Barbie and ran, the deputy right behind him with the blue light swirling and the siren roaring on the police car. Sheriff Mallory wasn't happy that Harold had made the arrest of a boy over a Barbie doll so public. It wasn't really an arrest anyway, since the sheriff just drove Henry over to his house and talked quietly to his parents.

Mr. Helmsby found a box up in Henry's room with twenty bald Barbies all reaching their arms up, as if pleading for help. Henry was forced to mow lawns all that summer to pay for the dolls that Mrs. Helmsby drove to Caribou to buy and replace. When Pearl Helmsby got her new doll, she kept it under lock and key in her bedroom. The kids at school figured Barbie might just pack her suitcase one night, throw it into the trunk of her pink Corvette, and drive away from Allagash, rather than live in the same house with Henry.

“Are you even listening to me?” Marilee was asking and waving a hand in front of my face.

“Sorry,” I said, and shook the cobwebs from my mind. “I was thinking of Henry.”

“I'm really not here about Henry,” she said. “I know you've had the heart kicked out of you lately. I mean, I still have both my grandfathers. So it's time your best friend took charge for a while.”

Somebody
get
the
smelling
salts—and get a lot of them
. But I knew she was just saying this stuff to cheer me up. All I had to do was call her bluff. And once I got my heart back, that's just what I would do.

“What do you think happened to Joey Wallace?” she asked then. The whole town was humming about his disappearance. You could almost hear it too, like the noise you make when you rub a wet finger around the mouth of a glass.

“I don't think aliens would take Joey,” I told her. “If they did, they'd know in thirty seconds it was a mistake and put him back.”

“Then where is he?” Marilee asked.

“Uncle Horace says Joey has a girlfriend down in Caribou. He says that's who abducted him. He's probably hoping this will get big enough for the story to go viral.”

“Girls?” Mom was shouting up the stairs, a habit of hers lately. “You should come down and hear this.”

***

In the living room, Mom had the TV on. I could see Stanley Mallory's face. They had interrupted the local news, Mom said, for an important message.

“I had hoped this UFO thing would quiet down so we could live in peace,” said Mom. “I don't think the White House has this many press conferences in a month.”

After a few blasts of feedback from the microphone, Stanley Mallory cleared his throat and looked directly into the camera.

“Folks, I've had a lot of sleepless nights in the past month,” he said. “I've been tossing and turning over what is right and what is wrong. Yesterday, I paid a visit to someone I haven't talked to in a long time, someone who always gave me good advice along with the cold, hard truth.”

“‘Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary?'” I recited. “‘Who may live on your holy hill?'”

“What?” asked Mom.

“What?” asked Marilee.

“Nothing,” I said, my eyes still glued to the television.

“Now I stand here before you today,” Mr. Mallory continued, “ashamed to admit that I lied to you all. I also want to thank a young citizen of this town for helping me make this decision I'm about to announce.”

When Mom glanced suspiciously at me, I shrugged my shoulders. But I could feel my heart coming back to me. I could feel my old self rising up and wanting to enjoy my life again as Grandpa would want me to, just as Stanley Mallory had said.

“I saw something that night on Highway 42 that I couldn't identify or explain,” he was saying now. “That means it was a UFO. More than that, I doubt it's a craft of the planet Earth. It was eons ahead of any technology we have here. I should have stuck to my story, since it was the truth. Now, someone from this town is missing.

“I'm not saying Joey Wallace was abducted. You all know Joey and how he loves a good joke. But I should have done my job to protect him and all of you. I didn't. Now, I don't care if this makes the mayor unhappy and the entire Chamber of Commerce. The truth is the truth.”

Tons of questions flew at him, but he refused them. He held up a hand for silence.

“And what's more, I am withdrawing my resignation as sheriff. I have a missing person report to deal with. If you folks no longer want me in this job, then you can vote me out at the next town meeting.”

Cheers flooded the room. Faces were smiling and hands clapping, everyone but poor Harold Hopkins, who would be just a deputy again. Even the journalists stopped writing to applaud. Mom turned off the television.

“Where did you go yesterday on your bike?” she asked.

I would have answered her, but I was already out the door, Marilee behind me. We stopped on the front porch and looked at each other.

“Oh, my gosh,” Marilee said. “They really exist, don't they?”

“Marilee,” I said. “We have less than a month before school starts again.” It was true. It felt as if the summer had rolled up like a caterpillar and just disappeared on us. “We can think up a new project, but why switch horses in midstream?”

“I guess you're right,” Marilee said.

“Of course, I'm right,” I said. “Otherwise, we're spitting into the wind.”

“I suppose.”

“We can't let Henry Helmsby win,” I said. I was on a roll. My heart felt good to be talking again and now it wouldn't shut up. “If we do, that's like giving the devil a ride and letting him drive.”

“Hmmm,” said Marilee, and I knew she was thinking about the devil driving a car.

“And remember,” I said, “a whistling girl and a crowing hen always come to a bad end.”

“Huh?”

“I've got a plan,” I said. “I worked on it the whole time you were grounded, and also while you had your head in the sand. I put it aside when Grandpa died. But now I'm taking it off the back burner and putting it right on that big burner at the front of the stove. It makes anything I ever planned before in my life look like kindergarten.”

“No!” said Marilee, shaking her head. You could understand her hesitation about ingenious plans, I suppose. After all,
she
was the one living next door to the Helmsbys when their greenhouse blew up.

“Just hear me out before you say no,” I pleaded. “Let's go lie on our rocks by the river and discuss it.”

“Didn't you just hear me say no, Robbie?”

“It's gonna be big, Marilee. Humongous. Right up there alongside the discovery of fire and the invention of the wheel. Trust me.”

“
No!
”

But she crawled on behind me as I put the four-wheeler in gear.

The Grand Scheme

“Just listen to it, okay?” We were lying on our rocks, watching the clouds float by. Hearing Sheriff Mallory admit what I knew to be true had fueled me. “I'm not talking
state
science fair now. I may not even be talking national. This would be so big, Marilee, that it could very well be international.”

“Okay, let's hear it,” she said. “But I know I won't like it and that my answer will be no. After falling into that well on Peterson's Mountain, we're lucky to be alive.”

“
We
go after
them
,” I said. “We contact them and we become the second generation of Allagash Abductions. There will probably be a movie made. Katy Perry could play you, and Taylor Swift could play me.”

“Are you insane? Besides, they're too old.”

“I'm not insane, I'm brilliant. We contact the aliens by signaling from the mouth of Peterson's Cave. They tend to show up in the same places. I read all about this while you were hiding out, avoiding the subject.”

“How would this qualify for a science fair?”

“The whole idea of the competition is that we explore the wonders of science and open up our possibilities. I'd say going aboard a spacecraft is that times a million.”

“
No
, and it's a ‘no' the size of that spaceship we saw. Double the size.”

“We'll be more than famous, Marilee,” I said. “We'll be the first kids to stage and then record an actual abduction. We'll be like space detectives.”

“Sure. And how many space detectives do you know?”

“None.”

“Right. That's 'cause they're all dead.”

“Or better yet, Marilee,” I said, “what would you think of becoming a UFO chaser? We'd be the only two girls in history. I'll build us a website. I can go to Photoshop and make us some cool badges, shiny ones like Harold Hopkins has.”

“And how do we record an abduction?”

“We take a camera with us. I'll hide it in my jacket pocket.”

“Oh, please. They fly across galaxies, Robbie. You think they wouldn't find a camera?”

“Okay, but we get taken aboard,” I said. “
Again
, may I add, since there's no doubt they've already taken us once.”

“Then why would they want us again? They put us back, remember?”

“You got it backward.
We
want
them
.” I smiled. Sometimes, Marilee can actually seem less bright than she really is.

“And how do we tell them that?”

“We send them alphabet letters that spell words,” I said. “They are advanced beyond our imaginations or they wouldn't be able to visit Earth. They wouldn't have those amazing spacecraft. English words or words in any language would be nothing for them to translate. They can pick up the words we send, and in a nanosecond they'll understand our message.”

“And how do we send them a message? E-mail or snail mail?”

“Very funny,” I said. “This is what we'll use.” I pulled my mom's iPhone 4 from my pocket. Mom uses it when she goes shopping to Fort Kent or to visit her sister in Caribou, places lucky enough to have reception. I put the phone in Marilee's hand. She looked at it and laughed out loud. She even kicked her feet up and down on her rock. Two merganser ducks floating down the river flapped their wings and flew, leaving a trail of water droplets.

“That's the funniest thing I've ever heard!” Marilee squealed, finally able to speak. “We just telephone them! Or do we text message? And then, even on Peterson's Mountain there is no cell phone reception in Allagash! Oh, I'm going to die from laughing! My life is over!”

I had expected this. I really had. I waited patiently until she was sane again.

“This iPhone is also a camera, as you know,” I said. “All we need is a Light-O-Matic application for its camera flash and we can use Morse code.”

“You don't
know
Morse code, Einstein.”

“Maybe not, but the application does.” I unfolded the instructions I'd downloaded and printed for the Light-O-Matic app. I had bought it from the iTunes store just after our famous night on the mountain. For the whole week that no one would talk to me about our experience, I had been planning. Thanks to trusty Google—
how
to
send
Morse
code
signals
—I found out about the Light-O-Matic application for iPhone 4's camera flash. Marilee was reading the instructions. She wasn't laughing now.

“Wow,” she said.

“The application gives you a choice of a strobe light, flashlight, or a Morse code translator. I've already installed the translator. All I do is key in my words and the flash will send out the message.”

“
Wow!
” said Marilee. She handed the instructions back to me. “But it's getting scary again, Roberta McKinnon. I don't like it one bit.”

“If we're abducted
again
, they will put us back
again
. We have nothing to worry about.”

“But if we remember nothing, how can we do our project?” Marilee was biting at her fingernail so I knew she was nervous. Nervous, but hooked.

“Maybe we find the same man who hypnotized the Vermont Four,” I said. “The man who wrote
The
Allagash
Abductions
. Did you know he lives in southern Maine?”

“What message will you send them?”

“I don't know,” I admitted. I had been playing around with ideas until we lost Grandpa. But I knew I could come up with something perfect. I pulled up a blade of the wild hay that grows near my river rock. “I'm still working on it. It has to be exactly right.” I bit down on the hay, tasting its sweetness.

“Oh, I don't like this, I don't like this, I don't like this,” Marilee was saying. She got up from the rock and grabbed her towel. “This is one of your genius plans we might not get out of.”

I twirled the blade of hay between two fingers.

“I don't think international is too big as far as science fairs go,” I said. “But we might have to consider intergalactic.”

“Robbie, this is insane.”

“I can always do the project alone,” I said. “You know, receive all the glory and attention and money for myself. Rather than sharing it with my best friend.”

“I have to think about this,” said Marilee.

That was all I needed to hear. I knew I had her. I threw the blade of hay and watched it hit the water. It swirled around and around in a fast current. Helpless, it was soon carried off downstream. I guess you could say it was caught up in circumstances it had no control over. You might say it
imploded.
I sometimes wondered if that's how Marilee Evans felt, just being my friend.