“Don’t give me that look,” said Susan.
“What look?”
“You know what I mean,” she said. “Your ‘What? Who, me? What did I do?’
look. I’ve seen you use it on teachers a million times. All it means is that you’re guilty.”
Sheesh. You know you’re in trouble when you can’t even get a look on your face without people deciding you’re guilty of something.
Before I could protest, Susan shoved a newspaper in front of my face. “Look at this!” she ordered.
I looked. I groaned. It was the National Sun. Across the top, in huge letters, it said, “TEEN HERO SAYS ALIENS STILL LURK IN SMALL TOWN!”
Next to the headline was my picture.
“Listen to this,” commanded Susan. “’Duncan Dougal, the heroic teenager who foiled last spring’s attempt by aliens to take over a typical American town, says that the entire planet remains in danger of an alien invasion.’”
“It’s true!” I said.
“Oh, really?” said Susan. “You stopped the invasion? If I remember correctly, about the only thing you did was stand in front of Broxholm’s viewer and scream.”
I tried to explain that I meant it was true about the invasion. But before I could say anything Susan was quoting the newspaper again. “ ‘My friends were pretty scared last spring,’ Dougal told Sun reporter Honey Flint. ‘But I kept my cool. That’s how I was able to figure out how to drive off the alien.’ ”
She looked at me. “You figured out how to drive off the alien?”
I blushed. Susan was the one who had done that, of course.
“Duncan Dougal, boy hero,” called Stacy, her voice mocking.
“Oh, Duncan, save me!” shouted another girl.
“Shut up!” I yelled. “Just shut up, all of you!” Then I started to run.
What was I going to do? I knew one of our teachers was still an alien, but after Honey’s article, there was no chance that anyone would believe me. I didn’t mean to lie when I talked to Honey. I just tried to tell my side of things.
I guess I got carried away.
“Duncan Dougal, boy hero!” The mocking words still rang in my ears as I raced through the front door of our house.
Patrick was already there. He was reading a copy of the Sun. “Nice bunch of lies, buttface,” he said when he saw me come in. “Your friends are going to love you for this one.”
What friends? I thought miserably. I don’t have any friends.
But I wasn’t about to say that to Patrick. So I told him to shut up, and ran up the stairs into our room. I could hear him laughing downstairs.
It was even worse when my father came home and saw the paper. He was thrilled. He went out and bought twenty copies of the paper, and started calling all our relatives. It was the first time he ever acted like he was happy that I had been born, and it was all because of a bunch of lies I had told some stupid reporter.
Patrick was jealous about Dad being excited, so he spent the evening giving me noogies when no one was watching.
I had terrible dreams that night. People I knew kept turning into aliens. I woke up sweating and terrified.
I wanted to skip school the next day, but I didn’t have a chance because my father insisted on driving me.
“I want to have a little talk with your principal,” he said.
Actually, Dad’s presence saved me for a little while. As we walked down the hall I could tell that kids were laughing. But with my father there, they didn’t say anything out loud. They knew you didn’t mess around with my dad.
Our visit to the principal’s office was really embarrassing. We didn’t see the Mancatcher, since my father insisted on going straight to Dr. Wilburn, the head principal.
“Look, what are you going to do about this alien situation?” asked Dad once the secretary had shown us in.
Dr. Wilburn was a tall, elegant woman with silver-gray hair. She looked at my father and said, “To tell you the truth, Mr. Dougal, we are still trying to
decide. We had thought about suing Duncan for slander. However, since he is a minor we chose not to follow that option. I will be bringing the matter up at the Board of Education meeting later this week, where I will note your
concern. An apology from Duncan would, of course, be useful.”
My father looked like someone had smacked him in the face with a dead fish.
When he demanded that Dr. Wilburn find the alien and get rid of him or her, Dr. Wilburn replied that there was no way the school was going to pay
attention to the rantings of a disturbed seventh grader who had a long history of lying and was using last spring’s tragedy to bring attention to himself.
“What about the glove?” demanded my father, his face red with anger.
Dr. Wilburn folded her hands in front of her. “Show me the glove, and I will take action,” she said.
“Duncan,” said my father, “where’s the glove?”
“It’s gone,” I whispered. “It fell apart.”
The look on his face said it all. My father felt I had totally betrayed him.
Dr. Wilburn asked us to leave. Actually, she told us that if we didn’t go, she would consider having us arrested.
I felt like a bug on the windshield of life. I felt like dog poop. I felt like blowing up the universe.
My father went off, and I went to my first-period class, which was home ec. I was looking forward to seeing Miss Karpou, since she was usually so
cheerful, but she was all upset because the refrigerator was broken, and it had messed up her lesson plan for the day.
Plus, everyone started to laugh when I came in.
“Quiet, class!” said Miss Karpou.
No one paid any attention (which was what usually happened when poor Miss Karpou tried to get us to shut up). They just kept laughing and mocking me.
Too bad for them. Because a few hours later, when I finally got a clue as to who the alien was, I decided to keep it to myself.
Oh, I had my reasons. For one thing, I knew no one would believe me. For another, by then I didn’t give a bat’s butt about what happened to any of them anyway.
Besides, what gave me the clue was something so big, so tremendously
exciting, that I knew it might be the most important discovery in the history of the planet.
Given the way everyone was treating me, I decided it was going to stay my secret.
CHAPTER NINE