Invaders From Mars Read Free Page A

.” Dad paused, looking at David from the corner of his eye. “. . . if you want, you can steer until we get to the main road.”
    “Okay!”
    They scooted the bench seat back a notch and David squirmed onto his dad’s lap. He put a hand on each side of the wheel.
    “Eyes on the road,” Dad said, his voice soft.
    “Eyes on the road,” David echoed.
    Dad wrapped his arms around David’s waist and gave him a warm squeeze.

C H A P T E R

Two
    T he halls were deserted when David got to school. The door to every classroom was shut tight and all the classes were in progress.
    Mrs. McKeltch is gonna be pissed, David thought as he began to run. Mrs. McKeltch was always pissed, it seemed, and usually at something David had done—sometimes even if he hadn’t done anything.
    Mrs. McKeltch was his homeroom teacher this year. Last year she’d just been a matronly woman with tightly curled and wavy gray hair. He’d seen her walking very fast through the halls in her stuffy old-lady dresses that always smelled like mothballs. They were always black or gray or brown with lots of busy swirls and curly-cues and stripes, and they always came below her knees. Her stockings were usually wrinkled slightly from her knees all the way to her thick ankles where they seemed to be stuffed into the flat, black shoes she always wore. Her shoes were almost totally silent as she stormed through the halls, her big hands curled into fists that weren’t quite clenched at her sides, looking as if she were on her way to the principal’s office, anxious to have some poor student expelled from school. She’d never smiled at David nor spoken to him—she hadn’t even seemed to notice him, in fact.
    She noticed him this year, though, and, as far as David could tell, she didn’t like him. Didn’t like him at all. Now when he saw her storming down the hall, it seemed she was hurrying to the principal’s office to expel him.
    The thought of Mrs. McKeltch—the way her jaw always jutted and her eyes narrowed to little cuts in her puffy face when she was angry, the way she always seemed to be thinking silently, This is the last straw! —made David run faster. His backpack jostled at his side and he clutched his pouch of pennies in his right hand. His feet made thunderous echoes in the empty halls as he rounded a corner and smacked into somebody hurrying in the other direction. David fell on his behind and his pennies spilled from the felt bag, jingling over the hall floor in a shower of copper. He locked his elbows and propped himself up on both hands, his legs splayed before him.
    It was the nurse.
    She was getting to her feet when David looked up, brushing off her burgundy skirt and running a hand through her blond hair.
    “Are you all right?” she asked with a breathy laugh.
    “Yeah, I’m okay.” He didn’t know what to do first—stand or start picking up pennies.
    “Let me help you,” she said, reaching out her hand.
    David took it and pulled himself up. Her hand was smooth and cool. He smelled her perfume then, that cinnamony holiday smell. The blue name tag on her coat read: LINDA MAGNUSON, R.N.
    She bent down and quickly began picking up pennies. “You sure have a lot of pennies,” she said.
    “Yeah. I have over 760.” David started picking them up, too, noticing that some had rolled way down the hall. He would just have to let them go; he had to get to class.
    “Looks like you’re a little late,” Linda said, getting down on her knees to make the job a little easier.
    “Yeah.”
    “Me, too.” She laughed again; she had a pretty laugh. “I got lost this morning jogging in the hills by my house. I took a different path today and it took me nearly forty minutes to find my way back home!” She shook her head, embarrassed at herself.
    David stopped a smile at her. “Yeah, I saw you,” he said, instantly regretting his words. That was stupid, he thought. Now she’ll think I’m some kinda perv! A peeping tom!
    She cocked a