CHAPTER 4

“This is all a mistake,” I tell anyone who will listen. My mom, my dad, the TV reporters who show up at our house, Pete the mailman who always delivers letters addressed to someone named Wendell Luetkemeyer.

At least Mom seems sympathetic. “Just do your best,” she says, unpacking the junk food I filled my suitcase with and replacing it with dumb stuff like underwear and socks. “Maybe it will go better than you think.”

It literally could not go any worse, because I know for a fact that if I’m on the team, the Planet Earth Defenders will lose every game, and Earth will be turned into a giant alien fast-food restaurant with everyone I know flipping Milky Way burgers.

I consider running away before it’s too late, stealing a tuba, a rainbow-colored wig, and a unicycle, and making a living performing in front of the dollar store as Bobo, the horn-playing, unicycle-riding clown.

My performing-clown dreams are shattered when Dad punches my shoulder and hands me his playbook. “Wish I could be there with you, kid. But maybe this will help. All my best stuff is in here, including the double-reverse fake-handoff corner end-zone toss that won last year’s Super Bowl.”

I don’t understand why he’s bothering. He knows better than anyone how bad I am at sports. We spent more nights than I want to remember with him trying to teach me to throw and catch. I dropped even the simplest passes and broke the glass door and three planters with my wild throws before finally convincing him to give up.

“A fresh start isn’t going to suddenly make me a football player,” I say. “I’m not you.”

“You don’t have to be me. You just…” I don’t let him finish that sentence. We’ve been over this like a million times, and it never changes anything.

“Get me out of this,” I beg.

Dad shakes his head. “The draft is final. If you leave, the Defenders are down to thirteen players.”

If he’s already checked, that must mean he knows how bad I’m going to mess this up.

Before I can ask him about it, I’m being hustled out the door by an extremely muscular dude. EMD looks a little like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson except for a weird mole on his chin shaped like the state of Texas.

Outside the house, the street is filled with thousands of people whose faces are painted in the Planet Earth Defenders’ team colors of green, white, and blue. They scream and chant my name as EMD carries me past them.

My school band plays a really bad rendition of the theme from Rocky while Elayna Saley, the most popular girl at our school, dabs at one eye. “I wish I’d agreed to go out with him back when he was still a yearbook-reversing nobody.”

From his mail truck, Pete pumps a fist and shouts, “You’ve got this, Wendell!”

I wave at the crowd from under EMD’s armpit, thinking I could get used to being famous. Then I remember they want me to play football against bloodthirsty aliens. I’m not going to live long enough to enjoy the fame.

EMD puts me into the back of an enormous limo. Normally I’d be playing with all the gadgets and checking out the snack bar. But today I sink into my seat as we drive to the rocket that will fly me and my teammates to the practice facility where we’ll live until the end of the tournament.

To keep teams from having to travel across the universe, all the games will be played at a giant space arena called Quasar-21, and all of the teams will train on an asteroid orbiting next to it.

At the launch station, I try to make a run for it, but a bald guy who smells like foot powder and cheap aftershave throws his arms around me like I’m his long-lost grandson. “Finally, the best froodly booten-tooten player is here.”

I try to tell him he’s got the wrong kid, but he pushes me into the rocket before I can set him straight. The next thing I know, I’m dropping into the back seat as the rest of the kids turn to stare. I wait for them to laugh and ask why a loser like me is on a team with a bunch of super-studs.

Instead, they’re all like:

I’m about to tell them this is all a MASSIVE, TERRIBLE, HORRENDOUS MISTAKE when Nova, the gymnast from the TV, waves and flashes me the most amazing smile I’ve ever seen.

It’s the kind of smile that makes even a loser like me think that maybe, somehow, I can pull this off.

I try to decide whether I should smile back, nod like I actually belong here, or give her a casual wave when…

After we make it to our new asteroid home, the next twenty-four hours are a blur of team meetings (don’t stare at Coach’s eye, don’t stare at Coach’s eye), orientation (shower regularly, blah, blah, don’t interrupt other teams’ practices, blah, blah, something about flaming skeletons—or was that just my imagination?), and getting fitted for uniforms. (I might be a terrible football player, but dang I look good in shoulder pads.)

Which is how I end up on the football field the next day staring at a ginormous whiteboard covered with Xs, Os, and arrows.

I’m familiar with all the football stuff from being around my dad’s practices, but I quickly sneak a peek at the notes I made the night before on all the players to help me remember who’s who. Seeing them in person makes me realize even more just how much I don’t fit in.

Coach sends us onto the field and shouts out instructions. It’s hard to tell exactly who he’s talking to since one of his eyes is bionic due to a tragic bass-fishing accident and it constantly jiggles around. But the minute we start running drills it becomes clear that even though these kids are all super athletic, none of them have played football before.

Nitro starts kicking the ball downfield. Moustapha dribbles it between his legs while Astrid deadlifts Ajay, Prince Poodoo, and Andromeda all at the same time. Overhead, the medical android, RU-MD, is flying around the field healing scratches and scrapes.

“Maybe you could start by teaching us the basics of football?” Nova asks.

I turn to see who she’s talking to and she’s looking straight into my eyes.

“Who? M-me?” I stammer.

“Well,” she says with that smile that turns my knees into pools of buttered mashed potatoes, “you’re the only player on the team who actually knows the sport.”

“Excellent idea,” Coach says. “Everyone line up while the one with the tentacles hikes the ball to Wyatt.”

I gulp. “I think you’ve made a mistake, sir. I’m not supposed to be on the team.”

Sunny, who is seriously the nicest person I’ve ever met, puts her hand on my shoulder and smiles.

Coach’s eye does its weird jiggling thing. “There’s no mistake. Each of you is on this team because the committee fed every bit of available information into an enormous database to see which players would give us the best chance of winning the tournament. All the information was processed, and your names were spit out by—”

“A supercomputer?” Ajay asks, stretching his legs.

“Even better.” Coach looks around and whispers, “FERN.”

I get a terrible feeling in my stomach. “FERN, the houseplant?”

He puts a finger to his lips. “Shhh. That’s supposed to be a secret.”

Suddenly everything becomes clear. “Don’t you get it?” I shout as the rest of the team stare at me. “FERN is an alien. She’s on their side. She didn’t pick me because I’m the best person to help us win. She picked me because if I’m on the team we’re guaranteed to lose.”

It’s too much.

“I can’t do this!”

I grab the football and fling it at the whiteboard, but my aim is so bad that the ball bounces off Nitro’s foot, hits Cricket Bob’s helmet, spills a water cooler, ricochets off the goalpost, and slams into Coach’s head, sending his bionic eye spinning in its socket.

With his eye still spinning, Coach shakes his head. “Strongest throw I’ve seen since Ed ‘Rocket-Arm’ McGurdle.”

“But it didn’t go where I was aiming,” I say, wondering how anyone could have missed that important fact.

I’m so amazed I don’t even bother asking why we’d need flameproof uniforms. With a programmable ball, super-jumping cleats, and a talking helmet, even a kid like me, who stinks at every sport known to man could just have a chance.

Maybe we aren’t doomed after all.