The Fellowship for Alien Detection Read Free Page A

was frustrating. Thorny Mountain was fun, and Haley was good at the flute. It made no sense! She’d been twice in previous years.
    But not only did Maddy get the thing that Haley wanted, she was also about to have the kind of summer that Haley was supposed to have, that you needed to have. Maddy was one of those kids who knew, like Haley did, that the summer after eighth grade was no time for goofing around, being a kid, and having fun. No matter what fuzzy old Mr. Kendrick, the school guidance counselor, said, you only had to do the math to know that you were on the clock: four summers—that was all that was left between now and when college applications were due. And college was the big time. You weren’t just being compared to the little bubble of Greenhaven kids; it was going to be you against the whole wide world. You had to be prepared.
    And grades weren’t enough. You had to have experiences . That’s why the Madison Blakes of the world had put together summers chock-full of high-protein college application goodness. And Haley had tried to do the same thing, only it hadn’t worked out.
    Maddy finished and Ms. DeNetto shuffled the cards again. “Jack of hearts.”
    Two down. The class was more vocal in their relief. Anders and Marco high-fived behind her.
    But no, no! Haley couldn’t believe it. As if Madison Blake wasn’t bad enough, the next reader was Bradley Hong. Of all the people . . . Haley felt a tingle of fizzy adrenaline reaching her fingertips. Her head felt spacey, like it was bobbing in the water. She cast an evil eye up at the gleeful Fates. This isn’t subtle at all, you know . Inside, the doubt demon squirmed with delight.
    â€œMy summer will probably be life changing,” Bradley began in his quiet, painfully shy way. He stood in his eternal hunch, black hair a mess, gazing at the floor as he spoke. Haley liked Bradley. He was sweet, and definitely who you wanted to be paired with for a research project, and it wasn’t his fault that what he was about to say might well make Haley barf.
    â€œFirst I’ll be at Camp Nucleus at MIT. . . .”
    Not that.
    â€œThen I’m, um, doing fencing camp.”
    Or that.
    â€œAnd then I go to New York for the Daily Times Junior Correspondent Fellowship.”
    That. That was the one.
    Above all else, it was Haley’s dream to be a journalist, and JCF was the coolest, the only summer journalism program worth attending, anywhere, ever. This was the first year that they were old enough to apply, and if you won, you got to go to New York City for two whole weeks and work at the Daily Times as an intern for a real, actual, in-no-way-not-amazing journalist. And sure, you would spend a lot of time doing grunt research or fetching coffee (which in itself sounded somehow amazing), but also, also , your famous journalist mentor was required to read and edit no less than one original article by you, which would then be published in the Times online edition at the end of the program.
    Haley had spent many moments during classes and meals, not to mention the hours orbiting the rim of sleep, imagining herself at the JCF. She could picture her first day: cresting the stairs at Fifty-third and Lexington in the hot July sun and staring up at the steel-lined, modern facade of the Daily Times Building. She would breathe in the air, and it would smell like hot dogs, and in her lungs and beneath the arches of her sweaty feet and in the beats of her heart she would feel the certainty of knowing that she was exactly where she was supposed to be, doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing.
    Each day of the fellowship, Haley would be ready, ears alert for when the quiet pearls of journalistic wisdom were dropped in her vicinity. She’d be prepared, too, just in case there was ever a murmur in the offices of a Garrett Conrad-Wayne sighting—yes, the Garrett Conrad-Wayne, he of the grizzled beard and the