Blast Off! Read Free Page A

asked.
    â€œNot a single thing. Breaking things is more my specialty.”
    â€œNot anymore,” he said with a nod. “If we don’t fix my ship, the entire Erdian army is going to invade Earth.”
    I knew he was right. I had to help. If one of him could cause this much trouble, a whole army of Amps would probably get me grounded for life.

05
    Morning
    S unlight woke me up. It was that kind of extra-bright sunrise light that digs under your eyelids and kicks your eyeballs around in their sockets.
    And the chilly morning air in my room wrapped itself around me.
    I had forgotten to close my window. And my curtains.
    I hadn’t even gotten under the covers.
    As my mind slowly became aware of these things, I thought of the alien. Amp.
    What a dream! It was all so real.
    The details danced through my sleepy mind. Amp had told me all about his planet. He told me he was a scout, sent to study humans and Earth and to confirm that this would be a good planet for his people to invade. He told me about learning our language from studying TV show signals they’d found in space. He even described his broken spaceship and its ability to skip through enormous stretches of space in an instant—like a stone skipping over water.

    The backyard sprinklers popped to life then. It was an hour earlier than I needed to be up. I closed my eyes, wishing for a few more minutes of sleep, when a bumping sound caught my attention. Then a bigger, louder bump. And then: Olivia.
    â€œNice boxers, Zack,” she said, though her voice sounded far away.
    I sat up wearily and croaked when I saw the giant burn mark on the wall above my bed—the one made by Amp’s spaceship!
    IT WAS ALL TRUE?
    IT ALL REALLY HAPPENED!
    My brain locked up.
    â€œBaseballs, bats, and gloves,” I heard Olivia say again. “Such a cute pattern for your unmentionables.”
    Unmentionables? That’s what Olivia called underwear. Unmentionables! But where was her voice coming from?
    Just outside my window bobbed a cardboard tube. A cardboard tube? I shook my head and croaked for the second time. Olivia was in my backyard, looking through my window with a periscope she made last summer. And she could see me in my boxers!
    Agh!
    â€œIs that a Smurf?” her voice called up from below.
    I gasped. Amp was standing absolutely still in front of my alarm clock. Without moving his head, his eyes darted over at me. “What is that talking tube?” he said, barely moving his lips. “What do I do?”
    I’d like to say I think quickly in an emergency, like one of those slick spy guys in the movies. But apparently I don’t. I just kept looking back and forth from Amp to the periscope, waiting for something to happen.
    â€œYou know your window’s screen is down here?” Olivia said from the backyard below. “I accidentally stepped on it. It’s a little bent. . . . Sorry.”

    The periscope tilted and floated at an odd angle. Olivia was clearly looking at my screen. I took the opportunity to jump off my bed and pull my curtains closed.
    Poking my head through the curtains, I looked down at Olivia. “Do you mind, Olivia? Total invasion of privacy!”
    â€œOh, sorry,” she said, clearly surprised by the emotion in my voice. “I saw your window was open and figured you were awake. Sorry I saw your unmentionables. I won’t tell anyone, I swear.”
    â€œThey’re not unmentionables. They’re boxers!”
    â€œI was just kidding,” she said.
    Now I felt bad. “It’s just . . .”
    â€œWhere’d you get that blue doll? That’s new, right?”
    â€œBlue doll?”
    â€œThe blue elf thing?” she asked. “Is that what you were playing with last night?”
    â€œOh, that,” I said, poking my head farther out of my curtain like some kind of weird, one-headed puppet show. “It’s . . . uh . . . it’s