7

We were still in a horrified daze when our parents woke us the next morning. There was more cake and ice cream for breakfast. It was hard to eat with Mom and Dad standing behind our chairs watching.

“Now-we-go,” announced Dad.

At the same exact moment that Mom opened the front door all the other front doors on our street opened. Except for Frasier, there were no other kids our age on the block, but there were some younger ones.

The Grovers and the Costellos and the Sadlers all herded their kids down the front walk and toward the bus stop. Everyone moved at the same steady zombie-like pace and all the adults wore exactly the same expression, that is, no expression at all.

Even though it was about ninety degrees out, I felt chilled to the bone.

Only the kids looked real. Most of them seemed confused and upset and a few had swollen, red-rimmed eyes from crying. We met up with Frasier and his parents at the bus stop. Everyone arrived at the same instant and a second later the school bus pulled up.

A couple of the little kids whimpered as they got on the bus and Miss Ferris, the bus driver, frowned at them. I shivered as I saw the slithering alien flicker in her eyes.

The three of us sat together in the back. “Why do they want us back in school? Any ideas?” asked Jessie.

“Probably they just want us out of the way so they can finish helping the aliens do whatever they’re doing,” I said.

“Oh, yeah?” commented Frasier, his shoulders slumped. “What makes you so sure this is about school? How do we know this bus is even taking us to school?”

I blinked and my stomach did a slow roll. “Where else would it be taking us?”

Frasier shrugged. “Maybe this is an easy way of turning us all over to the aliens. We know the aliens wanted Jessie. Maybe they want all the kids.”

“But what for?”

“I don’t know,” Frasier admitted. “But if we’re just going to school, why do all the windows have new locks? Isn’t that against the safety regulations or something?”

Only then did I notice that every window was equipped with a shiny new lock. Unlike normal locks, however, these couldn’t be undone from the inside of the bus.

We were trapped.