PLOOSH!

The next thing Gabby knew, she was lying on her back in a pool of sticky goo, and everything smelled like pizza.

She turned her head, and her cheek smushed down into more goo.

It didn’t just smell like pizza, it was pizza.

“Gabby?”

The incredulous voice belonged to Alice. Gabby lifted her head and saw her mom across a sea of cheese and pepperoni. Her eyes were wide, and her hands were on her face. Arlington was right next to her, frozen in open-mouthed shock. As Gabby looked around, she saw nothing but people, standing in a wide circle, all gaping at her…while she was surrounded by pizza.

Gabby’s blood chilled as she realized where she was: smack in the middle of the world’s largest pizza, with hundreds of people gathered around her.

But was she alone?

She spun onto her knees, ignoring the sauce and cheese that seeped through her jeans. “Sharli? Sneakers? Petey?”

She frantically sloshed in a circle until she saw them. They were all there, sprawled out in different spots on the giant pizza. Sharli sat cross-legged, splashing down her hands, then giggling as she raised them up again, stretching lengths of gooey cheese; Sneakers rolled around on his back in the toppings, coating his fur in goo. Petey whooped as he leaped from pepperoni to pepperoni, as if the meat slices were stepping stones.

Gabby was so relieved, she didn’t even realize the ramifications of what was happening—that she had literally just appeared out of nowhere in the middle of a giant pizza with a dog, a toddler, and a human being the size of a box of crayons.

Then she heard the scream.

“ALIEN!!!!”

It was Madison Murray. She stood right next to Dina Parker, the reporter, and Dina’s cameraman, who looked like he was filming. It didn’t surprise Gabby that Madison had tracked down Dina and planted herself by her side. What did surprise her was the subject of Madison’s scream. It wasn’t Sneakers, Petey, or Sharli…it was the Martian. The adorably chubby white-green creature with huge black pupil-less eyes and slits for a nose bounded across the pizza. His mouth and brow were furrowed in a sneer, but the fierce gaze somehow only made him look cuter. Sauce splashed in his wake as he ran toward Gabby.

With a sweetly high-pitched samurai scream, he leaped into the air and latched on to Gabby’s sauce-stained purple puffer jacket. He pummeled her chest with his fists, which felt like getting beaten with cotton candy. In other words, she couldn’t feel a thing.

She couldn’t feel a thing…but she could see and hear everything.

The shock that had silenced the crowd had worn off. What sounded like a million voices were shouting, and what looked like a zillion cell phones were pointed at her and the most alien-looking alien Gabby had ever seen.

“This is Dina Parker, coming to you live from the fair, where we are currently witnessing a genuine alien invasion. Get a close-up, Charlie.”

“Yes!” cried Madison. She jumped onto the pizza so she could stand right in front of the cameraman. “And get a close-up of me, Madison Murray, whose very best friend, Gabby Duran, is in the pizza with the alien. I’ll tell you everything you need to know, Dina.”

Gabby’s head spun. She hadn’t just broken A.L.I.E.N.’s number one rule, she’d demolished it. Proof of alien life was right now being blasted to people’s TVs. It didn’t matter that Dina was only local news—something like this would be picked up nationally. Internationally. It would go viral. Everyone would see it, including G.E.T.O.U.T. and all the other enemies of aliens here on Earth. Every family Gabby had met, every kid she’d ever babysat, they’d be in horrible danger now, and it was all her fault.

Gabby tried to fix it. She whipped off her knapsack and pulled out her fake remote control. She feverishly pressed its buttons and wrangled its joystick. “Look at me!” she said loudly, right into the camera. “I’m remote-controlling these alien toys!”

Looking at the camera might not have been the best idea. It took her eyes off the small Martian, who yanked the remote out of her hands and hurled it behind him. Then he hopped onto Gabby’s head and furiously jumped up and down. It felt like a light drizzle.

The remote thwocked into Zee’s stomach as she and Satchel ran across the pizza toward Gabby. Zee oofed as it hit her but quickly recovered and picked up where Gabby left off.

“Oooh!” she shouted in the most stilted voice Gabby had ever heard. “Thanks, Gabs, for getting your toy to throw this to me! Now I’m totally controlling this wild, seemingly alien craziness!”

She lowered her voice as she and Satchel reached Gabby. They crouched over her, speaking over each other in soft, urgent tones.

“We’re so sorry,” Zee said. “We were gonna leave the rock where it was.”

“But we didn’t want anyone else to take it,” Satchel said. “And my aunt Toni found us.”

“They put that app on Satchel’s phone,” Zee added, “the one that always tells them where he is.”

“It’s for work!” Satchel said defensively. “For pizza deliveries. And I left it on today ’cause I didn’t know we’d be with you and the you-know-whats.”

Zee rolled her eyes. “Whatever. She found us and she made us help with the pizza.”

“You know Aunt Toni,” Satchel said. “You can’t say no to her.”

“So I put the rock in my pocket,” Zee said. “Just to keep it safe.”

“And we were gonna take it back where we found it, I swear—”

“But it got super hot—like it was burning my overalls. So I took it out, but I had to bobble it around ’cause it burned—”

“But it was blinking purple, and I didn’t want anyone to see, so I grabbed it!” Satchel snapped his fist around an imaginary rock to illustrate. Then he winced and looked down, abashed. Zee furrowed her brow sympathetically and put a hand on his arm.

“He didn’t mean it,” she said to Gabby. “The rock was seriously hot. It burned his hand.”

“I wasn’t even thinking,” Satchel said. “I just threw it…and it landed in the middle of the pizza. And then…”

“Excuse me!”

Dina Parker’s strident voice cut through everything else. She edged next to Gabby, pushing Zee and Satchel aside. Then she turned to the camera and f lashed a megawatt smile. “Dina Parker here, back with the alien from another planet. Tell us, alien…tell the people of Earth, why are you here? Would you like us to take you to our leader?”

While Satchel and Zee were talking, the Martian had stopped jumping on Gabby’s head. He now braced his feet against Gabby’s chest, held the edges of her unzipped jacket, and head-butted her in the throat. It was like getting pounded by dandelion f luff.

Yet when the Martian heard Dina’s question, he froze. He looked at Dina…looked at her microphone…looked at the camera…then his eyes rounded and pooled with tears. Somehow he managed to look even smaller and cuter than before.

“It was terrible,” he said in his tiny, high voice. He looked right into the lens. His little lips quivered. “The Esquagonians…they kidnapped me! They kidnapped all of us! Me, the human, the Miravlad…all of us! It was terrible!”

He burst into adorable tears and buried his face in Gabby’s jacket.

“Awwww,” Zee and Satchel chorused.

“No!” Gabby objected. “No ‘aw’! That’s not what happened at all! This alien is from Mars—not that Mars, and—”

Gabby was cut off by the roar of an engine. A black limousine was racing across the pizza. With a scree of brakes, it fishtailed to a stop mere inches from Gabby, spraying cheese, pepperoni, and sauce all over her, the Martian, Zee, Satchel, and Dina.

“My pantsuit!” Dina wailed.

The back door of the limousine opened. Edwina’s voice rang out. “Get in.”

“Sweet! Our ride’s here,” Zee said, tromping through cheese to get to the door.

“With the touch of a button, I can send four thousand volts of current through the frame of this car,” Edwina said. “That’s twice as much as the electric chair. I suggest you back away and let Gabby get in. Only Gabby.”

Zee held up her hands and took a giant step back. “You know what, Gabs? I’m just gonna let you get in.”

“I don’t know who you are,” Dina shouted toward the car, “but you’re getting a dry-cleaning bill for this pantsuit!”

Gabby stood. The Martian was still clinging to her jacket.

“I’ll take him.”

The voice belonged to a stone-faced, firm-jawed man in a dark suit and sunglasses. Gabby hadn’t even seen him approach; he was just suddenly there, right next to Satchel. He bent down to take the Martian, and the doughy little alien clung to him gratefully. “Thank F luguin you came! You have no idea what I’ve been through!”

As the firm-jawed man stood back to full height, Dina smiled and f lipped her hair, spraying sauce in Gabby’s face.

“You, sir,” she said. “You seem to understand what’s happening here. Do you mind if I interview you on camera about the alien situation?”

“That would be fine,” the man said with a nod. “Perhaps I could even show you my bunny collection.”

Dina cocked her head, confused, but she still beckoned to her cameraman, and they followed the man across the pizza.

“Get in,” Edwina said from the car. “Now, Gabby.”

Gabby leaned into the car. “I will. Let me just get Sneakers and Sharli and Petey.”

“They’re going in another car. I assure you they’re quite safe. You might have noticed we’re handling this situation.”

Gabby turned and looked around. Another limo was on the pizza, and Gabby saw Sneakers’s tail disappear as the dog jumped in and the door slammed shut. Gabby looked out at the crowd to see how they were reacting, but most of them—including her own mother and Arlington—weren’t even looking her way. Massive stage lights had appeared and snapped on around the perimeter of the picnic area, and there was now a tall platform stage with a giant screen behind it that Gabby was sure hadn’t been there when she visited her mom before. The stage was far and high enough from Gabby that she couldn’t see it clearly, but on the screen it was huge. A good-looking middle-aged man in a suit stood on it. He held a microphone and called down to the crowd.

“Whaddaya think, people, are you impressed? ’Cause you’ve all just been a part of illusionist Jack Marvel’s latest special: Mindtrip! Let’s give him a big hand!”

A dark-haired man wearing black jeans and an open black vest that showed off his insanely cut abs strolled onto the stage, arms spread wide to gather in the ecstatic cheers and applause from the crowd. He put his palms together and bowed, then took the microphone from the man in the suit.

“Thank you, everyone,” he said in the low purr Gabby had seen a million times on TV. “And a big thanks to Gabby Duran, who won the online contest to be my volunteer helper. Let’s give her a round of applause.”

The lights moved, blinding Gabby with their glare. She put up an arm to shield her eyes. The crowd screamed and clapped, and Madison squealed, “That’s my bestie! Me, Madison Murray!” but somehow under it all Gabby heard Edwina sigh and groan from the car.

“Oh, for the love of Zinqual…”

“And just so you know,” Jack Marvel continued as the lights pivoted back to him, “the pizza did get measured before the illusion, and it was one hundred thirty-two feet across. This is officially the world’s largest pizza! Give it up!”

Now the crowd really lost their minds.

“I didn’t know you entered a contest to help Jack Marvel,” Satchel said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Zee smacked him in the arm.

“There are ways I can make the car get you,” Edwina said, “and I assure you, you won’t like them.”

“Gotta go,” Gabby said. She crawled halfway into the car, then stopped. She turned and looked back at her friends—Zee with her hands in her already-full overall pockets, Satchel with his shoulders slightly hunched and his hair hanging in his face. Gabby’s heart swelled. They’d been her two best friends forever and she’d always loved them, but for some reason she’d never felt how much until right now.

She ran and threw her arms around Zee, then Satchel.

“I love you guys,” she said. “Thanks for helping me.”

Without looking back, she climbed into the limousine and slammed the door.