CHAPTER 15

letter man

I go inside and it’s almost dinnertime. My mom is telling Eriqa how proud she is of her. Apparently, Ericcca got an A+ on her test, scored two goals in soccer, and cured every disease known to mankind. Not really, but that’s what it feels like.

When my mom runs out of awesome things to say to Errika, she shifts her attention to me. In her lecturing voice, she tells me I need to do my assignments “correctly.” She says I’m “underachieving” and I’m really “smart.”

This makes Errickaa snort food out her nose.

A lot of things seem to be going in and out of noses lately.

“Are you listening to me, Marty?”

Oh yeah, my mom’s still talking.

“Avidly,” I say. As I listen, there’s one thing I don’t hear. There’s no talk of me snooping on McPhee’s computer and opening that file named DO NOT OPEN! Apparently, McPhee didn’t bring up any of that when he called the house.

He’s definitely hiding something.

My dad says he liked my report and Mr. McPhee’s a rube.

Then my mom and dad get into a discussion. My mom seems to be winning this discussion.

I leave the table unnoticed and take a handful of crackers to my room. Time to skim the words for tomorrow’s vocabulary test.

Annihilate

Protagonist

Imminent

Absurd

Feeble

Assumption

Deprive

Terminate

Exasperate

Industrious

Wisdom

As I go over the definitions, I notice something. These words may seem innocent to the average mind, but I notice things others don’t. I’m a noticer. It can be a curse to be a noticer. It would be easier to be blissfully ignorant like everyone else and not notice things, but there it is, plain to my noticer eyes.

These are the words a dangerous alien would use! Just look how they flow together.

“We will annihilate Earth, and any protagonist who senses the imminent danger will instead decide the idea is absurd and that feeble assumption will allow us to deprive humans of their world as we terminate the planet and no one will exasperate us, not even an industrious student with wisdom.”

Coincidence? I think not. That’s probably the alien motto.

The alien manifesto.

It may even be the lullaby they sing to their alien babies.

I try something else. I take the first letter of each vocabulary word: A, P, I, A, F, A, D, T, E, I, W, and this happens.

Wow. And when I read it out loud, it reminds me of the way Yoda speaks. And what is Yoda? Exactly.

An alien, Yoda is.