Kell and the Giants Read online

  At lunch, everyone argued about the star globe.

  “I’ll win it,” Freddy said. “Someday, I’ll live on the moon, and I need to know about space and stars to get there.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Bree said. “The star globe is mine. I want to meet an alien someday, and I need something to talk about.”

  She grinned at me, and I glared back. That Bree. She was making me mad. She needed to stop talking about aliens all the time.

  Mary Lee said, “I need a night light.”

  “Stars. Night light,” Bree laughed. “I get it.”

  Aja and Edgar were making 5-pointed stars out of French fries.

  “You know,” Bree said, “stars don’t really have points.”Edgar nodded. “Duh. They are balls of fire.”

  Aja scooped up one French fry star—all five points—and stuffed it into his mouth. “Ow!” he joked. “It’s burning hot!”

  Aja, Edgar, Freddy, Roman and I all laughed. Bree and Mary Lee rolled their eyes.

  Edgar said, “I have a star globe already. And a telescope. I don’t need that one.”

  “Hey, can we come and look through your telescope sometime?” Bree said. “I want to see alien worlds up close.”

  Aliens! There she was talking about aliens again. Why did she do that?

  Edgar nodded. “Whenever you want.”

  “I need to win that star globe,” Roman said. “I’ve never won anything before, and it’s my turn.”

  Roman’s eyes were dark and starless. They looked sad. It made me sad, too.

  Aja swallowed the fries and took a drink. He said, “I need that star globe as a present for my Mom. In three weeks, it’s her 40th birthday, and I want her to feel like a star on her special day.”

  Quietly Bree started singing to herself.

  “What song is that?” Mary Lee asked.

  “Twinkle, Twinkle,” Bree said.

  “Oh! I like that one.” The girls picked up their food trays walked away to put them up. But I heard them singing together—a duet!

  Twinkle, twinkle, little star

  How I wonder what you are.

  Up above the world so high

  Like a diamond in the sky.

  I followed them with my food tray, just so I could listen to Bree sing. How did she always know so many words for songs? She must memorize things easily. Now this is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth: when Bree sings, the Earth sun comes out and shines in my heart. It takes away all sadness.

  I thought about that star globe. My Earthling friends all had good Earthling reasons to want the star globe. I wanted it because I’m not an Earthling. I belong to the stars.

  Would I ever see Bix again? Or would I always live on Earth? I had good Earthling friends. But did I have a real home here on Earth or not? I didn’t know.

  That night, I decided that drawing a map is hard. First you have to know landmarks, or big places. Then you have to know how far it is from one landmark to another. How are the landmarks connected? With a bicycle path or a street or a river?

  I took my drawing paper and climbed up into the biggest tree house where Dad was sitting.

  “Are you sleeping up here tonight?” I asked.

  “Not tonight,” he said. “I’m just star gazing.” On Bix, we live in tree houses, so Dad had built five tree houses in our back yard. When he gets homesick, he sleeps in one of them.

  “I need help drawing a map.” I explained about Geography Day and the star globe.

  “When we did the Friends of Police parade, you drew the parade map.” In the fading light, his eyes were a warm grey. “You don’t need help. You just need to do it.”

  Dad was right. But this time, I wanted everything to be perfect because I needed to win that star globe. But I thought about my friends and how much they wanted to win the star globe. Did I want to beat them? And if I won, would I brag to them about winning?

  I lay on my back in Dad’s tree house and watched the stars. There were bright constellations that the Earthlings called the Big Dipper, the Small Dipper and my favorite, Orion, the giant.

  Did I need a star globe to be from the stars?

  No. I was from the stars whether or not I won Geography Day.

  Maybe I should make maps for each of my friends. No way! That would be too many maps! Each map would need to be different because each friend wanted the star globe for a different reason. How would I have time to do that and help plan a Giant Party at the same time? I didn’t know, but I wanted to try.

  Lights were shining in Bree’s house next door. Would she think it was odd if I gave everyone a map? Did Earthlings ever do something nice for their friends—just because they were friends?

  All that week, Mrs. Lynx and Gloria patrolled the hallways looking for aliens. Our school has three main hallways with the school office in the middle. The Kindergarten hallway is short and just has kindergarten classrooms, plus the computer lab, music room and art room. The Lower Grades Hallway has 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade classrooms. The Upper Grades Hallway has 4th, 5th and 6th grade classrooms. Starting at the office, Mrs. Lynx and Gloria walked up and down the three hallways.

  After each trip down a hallway, Mrs. Lynx stopped to study the U.S. map that hung outside the Principal’s Office. Green alien stickers marked all the places where someone had seen an alien. Our city didn’t have a sticker.

  Gloria always walked with held her head high. Her eyes were bright, and her tail often wagged. I kept wondering, did aliens really smell different from humans? Because what scared me was Gloria’s black, shiny nose.

  After I told Mom about Gloria, she decided I needed to smell better. On Monday, I wore my Dad’s cologne. On Tuesday, I smelled like the lemon juice that Mom used to wash my hair. And on Wednesday, my skin started peeling. It does that once a month at least, and I smell different when I am about to shed my skin.

  “P-yew! What is that smell?” Freddy asked at lunch on Thursday.

  Bree jerked her thumb at me. “He keeps trying different smells.”

  “This one is bad!” Aja said. “What is it?”

  “It’s a bug repellent,” I said. “Mom has beehives now, and I am keeping the honeybees away.”

  “Everyone will stay away from that smell. It is a people repellent, too,” Edgar said.

  I just wanted a dog repellent to keep Gloria away. Meanwhile, my skin was itching and itching. It would be a day or two before it all peeled away.

  I had to do something about Gloria because I didn’t want to wear new smells every day. Then I thought about how much Aja loved French fries. After school, Bree and I stopped at a pet store and bought doggie treats and zip-lock bags. I filled up bags with doggie treats and gave them to my friends. Now, whenever we could, we snuck treats to Gloria. Once Mrs. Lynx was talking to another teacher. Edgar rolled his wheelchair close and stopped next to the dog. He let his hand hang out over the wheel, and Gloria nudged his hand for the treat.

  Another time we were lined up and waiting outside the computer lab. Mrs. Lynx and Gloria came down the hall, and Aja dropped his pencil right in front of them. Mrs. Lynx stopped to pick it up and hand it to Aja. Behind her back, Bree fed Gloria a treat.

  Now, when she saw third graders coming, Gloria’s tail wagged.

  With the Gloria problem under control, it was time to work on the Giant party. On Thursday after school, Mom drove Bree and me to the party store for ideas on the Giant . We just had one week and one day before the Roman’s party.

  Mom, Bree and I walked in, and the party store was still dark and cluttered. Clothes racks held shiny costumes while masks covered every wall. A man was behind a counter with his back to us.

  Mom said, “Excuse me, sir.”

  The man turned and—a freak! The man only had one eye. It was a giant eye in the middle of his forehead.

  I yelped and rushed for the door.

  Behind me, Bree laughed. “You can’t fool me again,” she said.

  Surprised, I turned back, and
the man pulled up a one-eyed mask. It was Mr. Jasper. He said, “Smart girl.”

  Bree is a smart girl, but I am a dumb alien because that mask scared me.

  Mom said, “Mr. Jasper, we need ideas for a game for a Giant party.”

  He said, “I have just the thing.”

  Mr. Jasper led us to the back of the store and stopped in front of a tall post. At the top was a metal circle, and at the bottom was a red circle. “This is the giant striker game,” Mr. Jasper said. He handed me a long-handled hammer, waved at the red circle, and said, “Hit it.”

  I hefted the hammer and brought it down hard. CRASH!

  On the post, a red arrow soared upward.

  “Not hard enough,” Mr. Jasper said. “You didn’t ring the bell at the top. Only the strongest people can make the bell ring.”

  Mom said, “Let me try.” She pushed up her shirtsleeves and picked up the hammer. “Stand back,” she told Bree and me. Was this my Mom? Her arms had muscles!

  Mom swung the hammer down hard. BANG! The red arrow shot upward. But not as high as mine.

  Really? Mom couldn’t ring the bell? This was odd.

  The store man whistled. “Good try.”

  Mom frowned and pulled down her shirtsleeves. “That was harder than I thought.”

  Bree said, “May I try?”

  Mr. Jasper handed the hammer to her and stepped back out of her way.

  It was a giant hammer, and Bree is small. She struggled to get the hammer to her shoulder. Then, she shoved it off her shoulder and let it fall onto the red circle. “Bang!”

  The red arrow shot up. And up and up and—DING! The bell at the top rang!

  Odd, odd, odd, I thought.

  Mom glared at the man. “How did you do that?”

  “You are making it easier or harder to make the bell ring,” Mom accused.

  “Do what?” The man was grinning.

  “Of course,” he said. “I wanted you to understand how the tall striker works.” He showed how to adjust the striker by stepping on a lever at the bottom of the game. It was easy to work without people seeing you do it.

  “You cheated,” Mom said.

  Now Mr. Jasper frowned. “Oh no, Ma’am. If adults rent the game, they want it hard to ring the bell. When you rent the game for a kid’s birthday party, you want it easy to ring the bell.”

  Bree said, “Oh.” She bounced on her toes and told Mom, “We don’t have to tell everyone that we can make it hard or easy.”

  “What do you mean?” Mom asked.

  Bounce, bounce. Bree said, “Well, maybe my Dad doesn't have to know.” Bounce, bounce.

  I understood what Bree was thinking. The game would be easy for the kids. But we could trick our fathers and make it really hard for them to ring the bell. They would try harder and harder.

  Mom grinned and said, “Kids, this is our secret.”

  And we grinned back.

  That Bree. Earthling girls sure know how to plan a joke on Dads.

  I had decided to make five maps. One to turn in and one for each of my Earthling friends.

  Freddy wants to live on the Earthling moon. I don’t know why anyone would want to live on that cold rock, but if that’s what he wanted I would help him. I drew him a map of the craters of the moon.

  Bree wants to talk to aliens—like me. For that, she needs to know more about my home planet. On the left leg of the giant constellation of Orion is a bright star called Rigel. In fact, Rigel is three stars, Rigel A, Rigel B, and Rigel C. But from Earth, it looks like one bright star. That is my star system. Earthling scientists have only found about a thousand planets outside of their own solar system. So, they don’t know about my planet yet. Bix is a planet that orbits around Rigel C. Mr. Martinez might think this was an imaginary solar system map, but he would be wrong. I am from Bix. It is there.

  Aja and his mom were a big problem.

  Mom was walking through the kitchen with her bee clothes on.

  I asked her, “What do you get someone’s Mom for her 40th birthday?”

  She mumbled, “Something pretty.”

  She pulled on the white bee gloves and went out to look at her honeybees.

  I found black paper and drew on it with gold ink. I drew a beautiful map of our city and marked Aja’s house on it.

  Mary Lee was easy. I drew the Big Dipper and Little Dipper constellations. But I used glow-in-the-dark paint. If she hung the map on her bedroom ceiling, it would be a night-light.

  Edgar didn’t need a special star map because he already had a star globe and a telescope.

  Roman was the hardest because he had never won anything before, and he really wanted to win. But that meant he had to have the best map of all. So, I had to help him draw his map.

  I called Roman on the phone. “Will you help me with my map?”

  “OK,” Roman said.

  That night at his house, I met his mom, and she is a giant, too. She popped corn for a snack while we worked. We spread out a huge paper on the floor, and Roman got out his markers.

  “I will help you with your map first,” I said. “Then we can do my map.”

  His map was like the U.S. map on the tennis courts. But Roman was sloppy. He drew crooked lines.

  I said, “You draw the lines in pencil. I will draw on top of your lines with a big marker.” That way, I could make the lines look better.

  After an hour of work, we stopped, and Dr. East came in to take a look at the map. He folded his tall legs and sat on the floor and let us tell about the map.

  “It only needs color now,” Roman said.

  Dr. East pulled him into a hug. “You’ve done a great job. Kell, thank you for helping.”

  Dr. East was pretty nice for a Dad, I thought.

  The next afternoon at school, we were coming back from Music Class when we saw Mrs. Lynx and Gloria ahead of us. Mrs. Lynx knocked on a 2nd grade classroom door. She looked down at Gloria and said, “Let’s find that alien.”

  The door opened, and she went inside. As we passed, I saw Gloria walking up and down the aisles between desks. She was sniffing at each student.

  Oh no! I thought. Our classroom would be next.

  “What can I do?” I asked Bree.

  “Leave the room,” she said.

  “But Mrs. Lynx will catch me in the hallway.”

  “Then you have to time it right,” Bree said.

  She pulled me to the back of the homeroom. We pretended to be reading a book. Roman came to the back of the room, too.

  “What’s happening on my party?” he asked.

  “It will be in my back yard,” I said.

  Roman frowned. “What if it rains?”

  Bree said, “It won’t. Aliens will make sure there is no rain that day.”

  “You’re always talking about aliens,” Roman said. “Are you in that Society of Alien Chasers club with Mrs. Lynx?”

  “No!” Bree was shocked. “I like aliens.”

  I glared at Bree. She talked about aliens all the time, and she was going to get my family and me in trouble. Sometimes, my bligfa hurt from worrying about getting caught.

  Roman said, “We still need to decide what kind of cake to have.”

  Just then, the door at the front of the room opened.

  “Now!” Bree whispered to me.

  I raced to the classroom’s back door, squeezed out, and quietly shut it behind me. In the hallway, I trotted to the boy’s bathroom.

  I stayed in there a long time.

  But finally, I had to come out. I looked toward our classroom. The hallway was empty. I looked toward the office. There was Gloria. She was standing beside Mrs. Lynx, who was looking the U.S. map outside the principal’s office. But Gloria was looking straight at me.

  She took a step toward me. Her nose lifted, and she sniffed.

  I turned and fled back to my class.

  At the last second, I looked back. Gloria was tugging at Mrs. Lynx, and she was just starting to turn.

  I popped into m
y classroom. And waited.

  And waited.

  Nothing. I peeked out again. Mrs. Lynx and Gloria were gone.

  But now, Mrs. Tarries, the homeroom teacher put a hand on my shoulder. “Kell, where have you been?”

  Oh, I groaned. I would have to lie again. I didn’t like lying, but when you are an alien on Earth, sometimes you have to.

  “I was sick, so I went to the bathroom,” I said. “But I am better now.”

  “OK,” Mrs. Tarries said. “Next time tell me when you leave the room. And if you feel bad again, tell me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  That night, I helped Roman with his map again. And we worked on it all weekend, too. On Sunday afternoon, we finished. Roman’s map was pretty with all the different colored states. The map’s key marked three symbols: black for the borders between each state, blue for water like rivers, lakes and the ocean, and a star for the capital city of each state.

  Roman stared and stared at his map. And his smile got bigger and bigger.

  I was glad that Roman was ready for Geography Day, which was on Thursday. On Friday, it would be Roman’s Giant party at my house, and we still had details to finish.

  Roman said, “What about your map? Do you need help?”

  “I already did it at home,” I told him.

  “I’ve never won anything.” Roman ran his hand across his name at the bottom of the map. “But this might be the day.”

  “You worked hard on it,” I said.

  “Hey. Thanks for your help,” Roman said. “You’re a good friend. If you ever need anything, just call me.”

  Roman was a good Earthling friend. But what if he knew I was an alien? Would he still be my friend? Did I have a real home here on Earth or not?

  Bang, bang! Ouch!

  Dad hit his thumb with a hammer. It was Sunday night and we were building stilts. For the Giant party, each kid would get a pair of stilts to take home. That meant Dad had to make 30 pairs of stilts before next Friday night.