The next morning, I woke up to rain. Mom insisted on driving me to school. Something about lots of sick kids in the ER lately and not wanting me to sit in wet socks all day. If you asked me, though, she was less worried about wet socks and more worried about the kidnapper. Last night’s news report had said that the kid from Mayson was still missing and that there were no clues about White Van Guy. But when I mentioned to her that Mr. Schneider drove a white van, she told me I was being ridiculous. It made no sense to me.
Since we had to take Alice to her school first and she always took forever getting ready in the morning, I barely made it to my seat before the bell rang. Frank and Nicholas were already there, and like yesterday, the other kids stared and snickered when I walked in. At least Nicholas didn’t seem miserable anymore.
We had indoor recess because of the rain, so Mrs. Greely pulled out a bunch of board games and other activities. She told us we could push our desks together as long as we kept our voices down. Frank slid his right over to mine, but Nicholas didn’t move.
“Over here,” Bobby Caldon called to him from the other side of the room.
Bobby, Joey, and Vincent all huddled around their pushed-together desks. Nicholas glanced at Frank and me but then joined them.
I was steamed. Had he forgotten yesterday and all that stuff he’d said about being sorry? I’d even given him two tomatoes!
I was just about to go over and tell him all that when Mrs. Albertini’s friend Sally popped into my head, and I realized maybe they’d had to pretend not to be friends at school too.
“You hear about the kid in Oxly?” Frank asked, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“What kid in Oxly?”
“Some girl says she was walking to her bus stop yesterday morning when a white van pulled up next to her.”
“Did the driver have really hairy hands?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” he said. “She ran away before anything happened. Nobody else saw anything.”
“That’s how it always is.” I sat back in my chair.
The voices from the boys sitting across the room grew louder.
“You take that back!” Nicholas yelled.
“So now you’re defending Matzah Boy?” Joey Simone asked.
“Maybe I am,” Nicholas said.
“You’re making a big mistake, Russo,” Joey warned.
Nicholas stood up. “You’re the one making a mistake.” Then he pushed his desk back across the room toward Frank and me.
He sat down with us as if nothing had just happened.
Mrs. Greely, who had stepped out to make copies of a math worksheet for after recess, came rushing in.
“What is going on in here?” she demanded. “I can hear shouting all the way down the hallway. Do you need something to keep you quiet?” She held up the stack of papers in her hand.
The chatter in the room went back to its normal hushed tones.
“Thanks,” I told Nicholas. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“They’re just a bunch of jerks anyway,” he said. “Hey, did you tell Frank about Mr. Schneider coming to your house yesterday?”
“What?”
I could tell Frank was shocked because the word came out half-whisper, half-squeal. Heavy on the squeal. Mrs. Greely cleared her throat toward our direction.
“Why was he at your house?” Frank asked, his voice back to a normal whisper.
I shook my head. “My mom set up a make-up piano lesson. Because I never really had one on Friday.”
“How did it go? Did he do anything suspicious?”
“No,” I answered. “It was just a stupid, boring lesson.”
“You’re wrong,” Nicholas said. “A lot happened.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I was watching,” he replied.
“You weren’t watching,” I told him. “You were doing a whole lot of talking. Mr. Schneider didn’t like it one bit. When you left, Mr. Schneider snarled, and I actually saw his fangs. They’re real, just like you said.”
“Whoa,” Frank mumbled.
“Yeah,” I continued. “He wasn’t happy about all the interruptions.”
“I was trying to get some information out of him,” Nicholas said. “And I was trying to distract him so he wouldn’t catch on to me.”
“Catch on to you doing what?” Frank asked. “Would someone please tell me what’s going on?”
Nicholas leaned across his desk, and Frank and I leaned in too. “I think Mr. Schneider was trying to send a message back to his spaceship through the piano.”
“What do you mean?” None of that made any sense to me.
“You thought I was standing there asking questions, but I wasn’t. I was paying attention, and there was a pattern in the way he played the notes,” Nicholas explained.
I sat back up straight and rolled my eyes. “He was playing Beethoven. Unless . . .” I leaned back in. “That’s it! Beethoven must be their leader.” I cracked up laughing. But then I stopped ’cause Nicholas wasn’t laughing—and ’cause he’d just stood up for me with those other boys. “Sorry,” I murmured. “Keep going.”
“I’m not talking about Beethoven,” Nicholas said.
“What are you talking about?” Frank asked.
“I’m talking about what he did in between playing the song. You didn’t notice, Danny, but I did. In between playing Beethoven, he kept hitting notes that weren’t part of the piece. It was definitely a code.”
“Okay, so let’s say it was a code,” I said. “What does it all mean?”
“That’s the part we need to figure out,” Nicholas said.
“Maybe he was trying to tell the spaceship he didn’t get the girl in Oxly,” Frank offered.
“What girl in Oxly?” Nicholas asked.
“You didn’t hear about it either?”
“No.”
Frank spent the next few minutes filling Nicholas in. After that, Joey and Vincent started getting loud again, and Mrs. Greely decided recess was over.
By the time our second recess rolled around, the rain had stopped. We ran outside, but when Nicholas tried to take his place next to Bobby as kickball team captain, Joey pushed him out of the way.
“Hey,” Nicholas yelled. “What do you think you’re doing? I’m team captain.”
“Not anymore,” Joey said. “I want to be captain now.”
“But it’s still my turn,” Nicholas said. He shoved Joey away and tried to step into the captain’s spot, but Joey was too quick and pushed him back.
Mrs. Greely rushed over. “Boys!” she yelled. “Stop this right now!”
“But I’m team captain, and then Joey comes along and says he’s team captain!”
“Why does he always get to be captain?” Joey asked.
“Because I won Rock, Paper, Scissors, remember? I get to be captain for the whole month.”
“But you won last month too. Why can’t someone else have a turn?” Joey complained.
Mrs. Greely sighed. “Neither of you will be captain today.” She pointed to Vincent. “Here’s your new captain. Now both of you behave.”
She walked back over to her spot on the stairs.
Joey mumbled something not nice under his breath and walked away, while Nicholas, Frank, and I waited to be picked on a team. We weren’t.
“It’s just a stupid game anyway,” Nicholas said, but I could tell he was pretty upset.
“Sorry,” I told him, ’cause I knew the whole thing was because of me.
We walked over to the swings.
“You know, I was thinking.” I took the swing in the middle. “Yesterday, Mr. Schneider kept looking out the window, but not toward the street. He was looking up at the sky.”
“Because of the message he was sending,” Nicholas said.
“So what’s our next step?” Frank asked. “Do you think we should tell someone?”
“Not yet,” Nicholas said. “First, we have to know what he’s saying to . . .” He stopped talking and checked to make sure no one was nearby. “The Martians.”
“And how are we going to do that?” Frank asked. “You speak Martian?”
“I do,” I said.
Frank and Nicholas both raised their eyebrows at me.
“I mean, I bet I could learn. My Super-Secret Spy Notebook came with a book that teaches you how to break codes. In the back, there’s a whole section with a bunch of cryptic messages to solve. I’m pretty good at figuring them out.” I twisted my swing toward Nicholas. “Do you remember what Mr. Schneider’s message sounded like?”
“It was too complicated to memorize,” he said. “What we need to do is record it on tape. That way, we can listen to it over and over until we solve it. That’s how they do it in the spy shows my dad watches.”
I sighed. “So Mr. Schneider has to come back?”
“He has to come anyway for your lesson, doesn’t he?” Frank asked.
I nodded, trying not to think about those razor-sharp fangs.
“Of course, that’s not until Friday,” Nicholas said. He tapped the swing’s metal chain with his fingers. “Is there any way you can get him to come over sooner?”
I didn’t really want him to come over sooner—or at all. But I knew I needed to try.
“I guess I can ask my mom.”
Nicholas nodded. “Good. And when he shows up, we’ll be ready.”