Chapter Five:

A Clue!

After checking behind dumpsters and telephone poles and storage sheds, we wind up back at Barney’s. I’m surprised to see that everything looks totally normal. The tables and chairs have all been set back up, and regular people are having nice breakfasts of bagels and steaming plates of eggs. Since no taxis can land, there aren’t any new aliens trying to blend in while they await pickup.

Pockets heads directly for the self-serve shelf and grabs a plate of tuna. Then he seems to remember that he’s supposed to be a regular cat and gets down on all four paws to lick it off the plate.

“Hiya, Mr. Morningstar,” the young woman at the counter says. I’ve never seen her here before. She has long, straight yellow hair and earrings up and down both ears.

“Good morning, Vanya,” Dad replies with a smile. “I haven’t seen you in a few months. Is Barney here?”

“Nope. Dad is exhausted from all the excitement yesterday, so I’m helping out.” She glances around to make sure no one can hear. “I heard it got pretty wild.”

Dad leans in. “That it did. Hey, did you see an alien girl about my son’s age in here earlier? She would have been inside a blue bubble.”

“So, you know, hard to miss,” I add.

She shakes her head and comes around the side of the counter. “The only alien I’ve seen this morning was a tall, white-haired man in a fancy gray suit. Didn’t even know he was an alien until he ordered some pastries and a coffee and then started to drink the coffee through his nose.”

“Okay, that’s really weird,” I say.

“Yeah,” she agrees. “I tried to make small talk with him, you know, ask him where he was staying during the storm, but before he could answer I turned away for, like, a second, and he was gone. Just slipped away without waiting for his change.”

Dad looks quizzical. “I don’t recall seeing a man like that yesterday. Do you, Archie?”

I think for a minute, then shake my head. “It was really crowded, though.”

Even though Pockets is still acting like a regular cat, I can tell from the angle of his ears that he heard the conversation. He pretends to rub against my leg as he whispers to Vanya, “Let us know if he shows up again, or if the girl in the bubble does.” He motions for me to give Vanya my walkie-talkie. I pull it off my belt loop and she slides it into her apron pocket.

“Will do,” she says. Then she bends down and pets Pockets on the head. Smiling up at me, she says, “Your cat is so cute, how can you stand it?”

Pockets growls.

“You know he’s not really my pet, right?” I ask.

She grins. “I know. But it’s fun to make him squirm.”

“It is fun to make him squirm!” I agree. I like this girl!

Vanya hands me and Dad free bagels (mine has chocolate chips in it, which makes me like her even more!) and Pockets nudges us firmly toward the door.

Once outside, we duck into the alley beside the store and Pockets drops the “I’m just a cute, innocent house pet” act and gets back to business. “Whoever that man is, he’s not supposed to be wandering around.” He pulls out his tablet and taps it angrily a few times, then tucks it away again. “I’d already know his identity by now if this was working!” He sighs. “We’ll just have to keep doing this the old-fashioned way.”

He holds up his walkie-talkie and presses the button. “Simon? You there? Any word?”

Only static comes through. Pockets tries again, with the same result.

“Do you think something could have happened to him?” Dad asks. “Maybe this goes deeper than an alien running away. Maybe she was taken! And now they’ve come back for Simon!”

Pockets shakes his head. “You’ve been watching too much television.”

“Probably,” Dad admits.

“Still, let’s get back there,” Pockets says. “Maybe the girl’s shown up and we can get back to… well, to all the stuff we have to do.”

He looks away as he says that. I get an unpleasant chill down my back but force myself not to jump to any conclusions. As my mom told me once when I used to worry a lot, “Nothing’s wrong till something’s wrong.” Right now we already have one real mystery on our hands, plus we need to get back to Toe. Who knows what Penny’s done to him by now? I pick up the pace.

A few minutes later, Pockets pounds on Simon’s door. It swings open. “Any luck?” Simon asks.

Pockets holds up the walkie-talkie. “Why didn’t you answer?”

Simon reaches over to the hall table and grabs his walkie-talkie from under a pile of outgoing mail. “Oh, this thing? I didn’t know what it was.”

“Really?” I can’t help saying. “I got my first walkie-talkie when I was five.”

Dad leans toward me. “Simon spent most of his childhood away from Earth. His father ran the taxi operations at Home Base.”

Well, that explains it.

“Sorry I missed your call,” Simon says. “But I told your ISF buddy that I didn’t have any more news. Figured he’d pass that on.”

Pockets’ ears flatten. “I didn’t send anyone.”

“No?” Simon looks surprised.

“White-haired guy in a fancy gray suit?” Pockets asks.

“Yup. You ISF agents must make a good living to afford high-quality threads like that.”

Pockets ignores that comment and asks, “Did he drink with his nose?”

“What? No—I mean, I don’t know. He wasn’t drinking anything.”

“What exactly did he say?” Pockets presses.

“He just asked to see the girl, and when I said she wasn’t here anymore, he thanked me politely and left.”

“That’s it?” Pockets asks. He sits down on the porch and begins jotting down notes on a notepad. His pencil tip breaks, and that sends him nearly over the edge. He is not handling this low-tech lifestyle very well. He angrily pulls out another pencil and continues scribbling away. After a full minute of Pockets ignoring the rest of us, Dad and Simon strike up a conversation about boring space taxi stuff like wind drag and the importance of always having a roll of duct tape to patch torn hoses. I’m curious to see the girl’s escape route. I back off the porch.

“Be right back,” I tell Dad, and then hurry over to the side of the house, where Simon pointed earlier.

I tilt my head back and can see the still-open window. It must have been a tight squeeze. And the roof is pretty steep. At some point she would have had to soar through the air in order to reach the ground. I hope that bubble can bounce!

About halfway up the house I spot something yellow—fabric? paper?—stuck behind the rusty brown drainpipe that runs down from the gutter to the ground. At this distance I can’t tell what it is. Part of Bubble Girl’s duffel that ripped off on her way down? I try to remember what color that was, but can’t. It could be nothing, or it could be a clue.

“Pockets?” I call out. “Can you climb a drainpipe?”