With my belly happily full of pizza, I brought a picnic blanket out to the small area of woods behind my house. The sun had almost completely set, and a couple of stars had already begun to twinkle in the clear sky.

Charlie was already there, stacking up the oranges Willa had bought from the fruit stand. “Pyramid or square?”

I chuckled. “Does it really matter?”

“Pyramid,” he decided. “It looks cooler.”

I shook out the blanket and laid it down beneath a nearby tree. “We are going to be staring at that pile of oranges for a long time, so anything that makes it more exciting is good.”

He placed the last orange on the top. “Well, I have the most exciting job!”

I settled onto the blanket and brought my knees up. “And what’s that?”

Charlie placed a rope in my hand and explained how he’d used his engineering skills to create a booby trap system that hung above the trove of oranges. My eyes followed the rope from my hand, up to a tree branch, and around the dark brown sack of salt I’d put out there earlier.

“So when the Vegans get to the pile of fruit, you let go of the rope?” I asked.

“Yep.” Charlie beamed proudly at his contraption. “And the sack of salt will fall on them. Enough salt to knock them out immediately. Then you can carry one and I’ll grab the other.”

“Pretty cool.” I nodded, impressed. “Now let’s hope I can work my magic on the game’s code.”

Charlie sat down beside me with a let’s talk look on his face that I knew too well. “You really refused an awesome invitation to a secret group because they wouldn’t include me?”

I shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed. “Of course. You’re my best friend.”

“I appreciate that. But if you ever get a cool opportunity again, don’t let me hold you back. We don’t have to do everything together to be best friends. I mean, you’re not joining the football team.”

I laughed at that. “Very true.”

He nudged my sneaker with his. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather hang out tonight with Marcus alone?”

I gave him a look. “Just because I have a new friend that doesn’t mean I’m leaving my best one behind.”

He seemed pleased with that. “The same goes to you,” he said. “I know you were hoping this football thing was just a phase, but it’s not. I really like it. I’m having fun.”

A lump threatened to form in the back of my throat and I gulped it down. “I just don’t want you to change. I like my nerdy, science geek Charlie.”

“People don’t have to be one thing. I can be into sports and science. I can be a jock and a nerd!”

I laughed so hard that I snorted. “You can start a new clique. The jock nerds.”

“Hey.” He gave me a wry smile. “I have a science joke for you.”

“Well it’s about time,” I said.

“Did you hear about the blood cells that met and fell in love? It was all in vein. Get it? Vein? Vain?” He wiggled his eyebrows.

I didn’t want to laugh because the joke was so ridiculously terrible, but I couldn’t help it. A fit of unstoppable giggles poured out of me.

“Hey, great job being quiet,” Willa said as she poked her head around a tree. “The aliens will never know we’re here.”

Marcus came a second later, looking all cute in jeans and a gray Wolcott zippered hoodie. “I brought my laptop.”

“Sit here,” Charlie said, standing up from his spot next to me. “You two will need to work together.”

Marcus settled down beside me and our knees knocked together. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

I flashed him a smile that I hoped didn’t look as awkwardly nervous as it felt. The breeze picked up and I shivered in the cool night air. I’d been so anxious that I hadn’t thought to bring a jacket.

Marcus unzipped his hoodie and wordlessly held it out to me. He had a long-sleeve T-shirt on underneath.

“Thanks,” I said, slipping my arms into the warm sweatshirt.

He booted his laptop and pulled a USB cord out of his pocket. “Ready to get to work?”

“Sure. But you’ll need to connect to my Wi-Fi.”

“Already did. You should tell your parents that using their publicly listed phone number as their password isn’t the brightest idea.”

I snorted. “Nerd.”

“Geek,” he said back with a grin.

I giggled. “Dork.”

“I’m going to throw up if you two don’t stop,” Willa grumbled.

Marcus and I exchanged a look and stifled our laughs. Then he cracked his knuckles and began typing. We attached my phone to his PC, and his decompiler worked its magic.

While we searched the code, Charlie and Willa came up with an early-warning system that required a lookout. Willa volunteered, since she could whistle and Charlie could not. Plus, I knew he really wanted to be the one to use his rope trap.

“There,” I said pointing at a section of code. “That’s the summon functionality. That’s what I pressed when the phone fell into the machine and teleported the aliens.”

Marcus narrowed his eyes. “All the code is written in Java except this one line.”

I followed his pointing finger. “That’s weird. I don’t recognize that programming language at all. It’s not Objective C or C++ either. I’ve never seen it before.”

“It’s almost like it’s a new language entirely,” Marcus said with awe in his voice.

“That’s it, then. That’s the line we need to reverse.” My heart pounded wildly in my chest.

Charlie moved closer and looked at the screen over my shoulder. “How are you supposed to reverse the code if you don’t know the language?”

I chewed on my lip. “All programming languages have fundamental concepts like variables, functions, data input.”

“And this looks to be object oriented,” Marcus added.

“It’s a surprisingly simple line of code,” I said. “So what if we just switch the variables?”

Marcus looked at me. “Change from a = c to c = a?”

I took a deep breath. “It’s the best guess I have.”

“Me, too,” Marcus agreed.

He made the change and then spent the next several minutes recompiling the code and reinstalling it on to my phone. Next he unplugged my phone from his PC and gingerly handed it back to me.

The phone felt like it weighed a thousand pounds in my hand. We’d done it, but we didn’t know if it would work. The only way to test it was to try it, and we’d only get one shot. The pressure felt like a giant weight on my chest.

“Nothing to do now but wait,” Charlie said.

Darkness had fallen over the woods. We fell into an easy quiet. It was almost relaxing with the moonlight filtering through the leaves. I leaned my back against a tree and listened to the night sounds—crickets, frogs, Willa whistling …

I shot up. Willa was whistling! She’d seen something!

“Everyone on alert,” Charlie whispered.

Marcus and I sat still as statues. Charlie gripped the rope tightly in his hands. A breeze rustled the branches. I squinted at the shadows, wishing I had night vision. We couldn’t exactly bounce a flashlight beam around. We had to stay hidden, wait, and pounce.

A twig cracked behind me. I had to force myself to stay still and not turn around.

The dim glow of the Vegans’ translucent blue skin flashed between two trees on the right side of my vision. That was strange. If the Vegans were coming from the right, what was coming from behind? Goosebumps rose up and down my arms. I slowly risked a glance over my shoulder. Nothing but darkness looked back.

“Bex,” Charlie whispered. “Ready?”

“Yeah, sure.” I forced myself to focus on the job at hand. As soon as the salt knocked the aliens out, I had to grab one of them. “Is Jason all set?”

“Yep. Just waiting for our text,” Charlie said.

The Vegans moved in closer. They were kind of cute, glowing in the night. They made sniffing noises at the air. I could tell they realized the oranges were near because they were making excited clicking noises. They reached the little clearing between the trees and gasped when they saw the orange pyramid. They must have thought they just won the fruit lottery.

A little closer, I thought, watching the intense look on Charlie’s face. The trap had to be timed perfectly or the salt could miss. If the aliens ran away, they’d never fall for a trap like this again.

They stepped cautiously, their neck eyes focused on the yummy-looking fruit and not at our shadows in the distance. We stayed completely still. I even held my breath.

Finally they were in perfect position. They each grabbed an orange and began devouring it with glee. Charlie let go of the rope. It slipped through his hands and rose up the tree. The open sack of salt fell down. By the time the aliens even sensed that something was happening, it was too late. They were covered in salt.

The two little Vegans exchanged shocked looks with each other and then smiled blissfully as they slipped to the ground, sleep taking over.

“It worked!” Marcus cried.

“Woo-hoo!” Charlie yelled.

I ran over to the Vegans, mentally trying to figure out which would be the lighter one to carry. I pushed some of the oranges out of the way, made sure my phone was in my front pocket, and then leaned over to scoop one up.

I couldn’t believe the whole plan worked. I’d found the line of code—hopefully fixed it—and Charlie’s pulley system went without a hitch. I was grinning and feeling so happy, even the alien in my arms felt light.

“Um, Bex?” Charlie said from behind me, his voice trembling.

My smile dissolved as I slowly turned around. Bob stood between the boys and me, his muscles tensed, hands clenched into claws. Now I knew what had made the sounds behind me when the little Vegans were to the right. It was Bob stalking us.

“Do you have any more salt?” I asked Marcus from the side of my mouth.

“No. It’s all on the ground there.”

A raspy, threatening noise came from Bob’s throat. He bared his pointy teeth, saliva dripping from his mouth. Again he seemed focused on me. But not on my face. And not on the alien in my arms either.

Realization struck me like a lightning bolt, and for the first time, I understood everything. I knew why Bob had been hanging around my property. I knew why he seemed to be focused on getting me. I knew exactly what he wanted.

And it wasn’t me after all.