“Hi, Grandpa,” said Ben on his phone as he trudged miserably to school. “I talked to them. It didn’t go well.”
“We didn’t think it would, did we?” said Grandpa.
“No,” said Ben. “Why are grown-ups so … grown up?”
“Don’t be too hard on them, Benny,” said Grandpa. “After your father’s bar mitzvah, your grandmother, oy veshoilem, and I wanted to sleep for six months. It’s very stressful.”
“I know,” said Ben. “But trying to save the world from aliens isn’t easy either.”
“You’re right,” said Grandpa. “So now what?”
“Now I need to get a few things from school,” said Ben. “Then I’ll come to your apartment at the end of the day and we’ll plan our diversion.”
“Okay, Benny,” said Grandpa. “I’ll be here.”
Ben carried on walking and spent an uneventful morning at school. Things were a little better now. He still got the odd comment and funny look, but the previous day a girl in the year above him had slipped and fallen into a trash can. Now she was the one being laughed at and called names—Daisy Dumpster and Ruby Rubbish were just two of them, even though her name was Violet. It seemed Mom had been right about something else happening and people forgetting Ben’s alien outburst.
Mr. Kersh hadn’t forgotten, though. As usual, at lunchtime he’d given Ben some math problems to do.
“I’ll be back in forty-five minutes,” he said. “And I expect them all to be done.”
Ben nodded as Mr. Kersh shut the door and left the classroom. The questions on the worksheet looked pretty hard, but Ben didn’t waste any time. He set about doing them as quickly as he could because he had something else he needed to do. Something very important.
“Finished,” said Ben after precisely twenty-eight minutes.
Ben put his pen down and stretched. He didn’t think he’d answered all the questions correctly, but he’d made an effort for each one. He hoped Mr. Kersh would be pleased with that.
He stood up and walked over to the classroom door. He opened it a little way and looked first to his left and then to his right. It was pretty quiet.
“Perfect,” thought Ben.
He shut the door and headed over to a large closet in the corner of the room. It was used to store various art materials and other bits and pieces. The last time Ben had looked in there, it had had just the things he was looking for. He hoped that they were still there.
He slowly opened the door. It was possibly the untidiest closet in the school and two rolls of paper immediately fell out on to the floor with a clonk.
Ben was worried that they might be the start of an avalanche, but thankfully, for the time being, everything else stayed where it was.
Ben spotted two of the things he needed straight away: tins of paint and some rubber tubing. Luckily for him they were at the top of the closet, resting handily on everything else. He found the two paint colors he needed and took them out, along with eight pieces of rubber tubing.
“Where are you? Where are you?” Ben said, searching the contents of the closet with his eyes. He was about to start moving things out of the way—a dangerous move which could have resulted in everything spilling out onto the floor—when he saw what he was looking for. It was a piece of sackcloth.
That was the good news. The bad news was that it was sticking out right at the bottom, underneath everything.
There were now about seven minutes until Mr. Kersh was due to come back. Ben had no choice. It was now or never.
He knelt down and very, very carefully started to lift up the huge pile of stuff that was resting on top of the sackcloth. (Ben hoped that the piece he could see was actually the corner of an entire sack, otherwise his efforts would all be in vain.) It wasn’t easy, but gradually Ben could see there were about six or seven sacks lying in the bottom of the closet. He only needed two and, as he continued to lift with his right hand, he grabbed hold of them with his left.
There was no way he could move everything completely off the sacks. He was going to have to whip them out as quickly as he could and hope he didn’t start that avalanche.
He took a deep breath and pulled as hard as he could. The two sacks came out perfectly and, it seemed, without causing anything else to fall out.
“Phew, that was close,” said Ben.
Unfortunately, he had spoken too soon. The next moment a tin of red paint toppled out from the top of the closet.
“Ow!” cried Ben, as it hit him on the head.
He then watched as the tin looped up into the air and headed for the floor.
“Please, please, please, don’t burst open,” thought Ben, squeezing his eyes shut. A large puddle of red paint would be extremely difficult to explain to Mr. Kersh.
The tin hit the floor.
Clonk.
It bounced up and hit the floor again.
Clonk.
It hit the floor for a third time.
Then there was silence.
Ben opened one eye. Then he opened the other one.
There was no red puddle. The lid had stayed on.
“Phew, that really was close,” said Ben.
He picked up the tin and put it back in the closet. Mr. Kersh was due back any minute, so he stuffed everything he’d collected into his bag and sat back down at his desk.
He had what he needed. Now he just had to hope that his plan was going to work.