Gabby Duran and the Unsittables (18 page)

Gabby didn’t wait for Madison’s rebuttal. She hugged Wutt even closer and pushed her way out the backstage door into another throng of well-wishers. She smiled and nodded to all of
them, but craned her neck and pushed through. She was looking for Edwina, but stopped when she found Carmen and Alice.

“Why isn’t your horn in its case?” Carmen asked.

“
That’s
the first thing you say to her?” Alice chided. “Gabby, you were incredible!”

“You were incredible in the concert,” Carmen agreed. “You’re also incredibly stinky. And why do you look like you were ground up in a food processor with our
lawn?”

“Thank you,” Gabby said. “And why do
you
look like you cut your own bangs with kids’ scissors and a ruler?”

“Because I
did
cut my own bangs with kids’ scissors and a ruler.”

“Exactly,”
Gabby said, then turned to her mom. “You really think it was good?”

“It was incredible, Gabby,” Alice gushed. She wrapped her arms around both Gabby and her horn and rocked them back and forth. “Truly, truly incredible.”

“
I
heard your solo was so hot, it boiled tungsten!” Zee cried. She had been at Principal Tate’s robotics club as she’d promised, but now ran over to throw her arm
around Gabby in a congratulatory half hug. “That’s really hot,” she added. “Tungsten has a boiling point of 5,660 degrees Celsius. That’s, like, around
ten
thousand
degrees Fahrenheit.”

“Melt-a-human-body-to-ash hot, is how I put it,” Satchel noted as he joined them from the auditorium. “Which if you ask me, way easier to understand.”

“I couldn’t have done it without my fabulous French horn,” Gabby pointed out with a knowing smile to Zee.

“It’s a French horn solo,” Carmen noted. “By definition you couldn’t have played it without a French horn. You also can’t have a pastrami sandwich without
pastrami.”

“Oh snap, I would love a pastrami sandwich right now,” Satchel said.

“I was making an analogy,” Carmen said. “I wasn’t actually talking about—”

“I think I might have some pastrami in the fridge,” Alice interrupted. “How about we all go back to our house and celebrate?”

“Think you might have some cake with that pastrami?” Zee wondered.

“Cake with pastrami?” Carmen gawped. “That would taste terrible.”

“Pretty sure she meant one after the other, Car,” Gabby said, but even as she spoke, she saw something out of the corner of her eye.

A limousine. It was parked halfway around the corner, almost out of sight among the trees, but it blinked its headlights as if sending a coded signal through the dusk.

“I’ll be right back,” Gabby said. “I, um…have to grab my horn case from the main building. It feels really
alien
to carry my horn without it.”

Zee understood. She quickly engaged everyone in a conversation about the full snack lineup they should enjoy back at Gabby’s house. Once they were all distracted, Gabby slipped away. She
rounded the corner behind Brensville Middle School and saw Edwina. The old woman stood alone near the back end of the limousine.

“Edwina!” Gabby gushed. She placed her horn on the ground and threw her arms around Edwina, but the woman stood stiffly and didn’t move a muscle to respond. It was like hugging
a steel pole. Gabby quickly felt ridiculous and embarrassed. She let go and stepped back a few steps. “It’s…um…good to see you.”

“I’m sure,” Edwina said, not-so-subtly brushing any traces of Gabby’s touch from her shoulders and black suit jacket. “I have something for you.”

She opened the back seat of the limousine and pulled out an item Gabby recognized instantly.

“My purple knapsack!” she cried, slipping it onto her shoulders. “But I thought it was—”

“Far aloft in the highest room of the Tower?” a voice boomed as Mr. Lau emerged from the limo. “Indeed it was, but once I had Wutt safely back to Miss Winnie here…”

He slung an arm around Edwina’s shoulders. Edwina glared.

“I have access to Blichtencritch cringling acid that would dissolve you in two-point-one seconds,” she said.

Mr. Lau removed his arm from her shoulders.

“As I was saying,” he continued, “once Wutt was safe with
Edwina
, I retired to the place from whence I’d seen you and Ellerbee soar out the window and retrieved
your misplaced item.”

“I don’t understand,” Gabby said. She turned to Edwina. “I told you I thought Mr. Lau was from G.E.T. O.U.T. Why didn’t you tell me he’s with
A.L.I.E.N.?”

“Because I’m not
with
A.L.I.E.N., my young friend,” Lau answered. “I
am
an alien. From the planet Zeeliwhiz Five, in the Stradflarn System.”

He took a deep bow, and Edwina tamped down an impatient sigh.

“He wasn’t in our database,” Edwina admitted. “Many still aren’t.”

“By choice!” Mr. Lau crowed. “Large registry systems rarely bode well in my experience. I fly under the radar as I ply my trade as a humble substitute teacher, but I pride
myself on sussing out and befriending those secretly like me. You might say I have excellent
A
-dar.”

“I might not,” Edwina sniffed, then turned back to Gabby. “Though I will say that unbeknownst to myself, your Mr. Lau substituted last year for a second grade class that
included a certain sluglike friend of ours.”

Gabby thought about it, then lit up as she realized,  “Philip? You know Philip?”

“Quite well, yes,” Mr. Lau said. “And John and Lisa, who had been monumentally troubled over their inability to find a sitter. So when they met a young whelp named Gabby Duran,
they told me. And when I saw that selfsame Gabby Duran would be in my math class at Brensville Middle School, I kept an eye on her. Then lo! You came into my class, and what to my wondering eyes
did appear—”

“It’s not
War and Peace
,” Edwina snapped, then returned her focus to Gabby. “The man figured out Wutt’s true nature, he’d heard the rumors about
Houghton—”

“It’s all the buzz on Spacebook,” Lau interjected before Edwina silenced him with another glare.

“—and being on the inside at the school, he was able to peg Mr. Ellerbee as Houghton’s man on the take.”

“Indeed! But I played it up around Mr. Ellerbee like I was working for Houghton as well,” Mr. Lau admitted. “That way he couldn’t reveal my true identity to G.E.T.
O.U.T.”

The pieces were all falling into place now as Gabby played back her and Wutt’s day in her mind. All except one.

“Okay,” Gabby said. “So, Edwina, when you called me and said we had a bad connection, were you already in touch with Mr. Lau? And was that just your way of getting him some
kind of GPS location on me?”

“Oh no, we truly did have a satellite out at the time and you were in terribly grave danger,” Edwina said. “But you handled it beautifully, so thank you for that.”

The French horn Gabby had placed next to her started bouncing up and down and tootling its valves.

“No, of course I didn’t forget about you, Wutt,” Edwina said. “And neither did they.”

As she spoke, she peeled a pair of white silk gloves from her hands, then set them on the ground. Just as Gabby remembered that Edwina was bare-handed during the ovation, the gloves changed
form. They sprouted into two small creatures, each one no higher than Edwina’s knee. Both had giant liquidy-black eyes, paper cut nose slits, blue skin, and blue toothless mouths. The one on
Edwina’s right had long, flowing purple curls. The one on her left had short hair that was bright red.

“Wutt’s mom and dad,” Gabby breathed.

Wutt immediately popped back to her true form with a shriek so high and shrill it hurt Gabby’s ears. The little girl raced to her parents, who sandwiched her in a huge hug. When she pulled
away, the three of them spoke in rapid currents that sounded to Gabby like a buzzing hive of bees.

“Indeed,” Edwina agreed, gesturing to one and then the other. “Her mother, Hoo, and her father, Ayedunno.”

The two parents turned their massive eyes on Gabby, and she suddenly felt a chill. Would they be angry with her that Wutt had come so close to getting hurt on her watch? In unison the two moved
closer, flanking her, their eyes unreadable. Together they nodded solemnly, and Gabby understood what they wanted. Nervously, she crouched low to the ground.

Both Hoo and Ayedunno threw their arms around Gabby for a tight hug, on which Wutt pounced, so she could join in. Gabby laughed and hugged them back.

“Wutt told them she had the most wonderful day of her life,” Edwina said. “This is their way of thanking you.”

“I got that.” Gabby giggled. When they pulled back from the hug she added, “And I want to thank you, too. Wutt’s very special. I’m really happy I got to know her
and be her friend.”

The three started buzz-talking again, but Edwina quickly cut them off. “Time for that on the way home. Let’s go now.” She unhooked a straight pin brooch stacked with simple
beads from her lapel and held it out. “All right, Hoo’s on first, Wutt’s on second, Ayedunno on third.”

The three aliens transformed into beads and strung themselves onto the brooch, which Edwina then hooked back onto her lapel.

“That’ll do then,” she said to Gabby. “Mr. Lau?”

Mr. Lau climbed into the limousine and Edwina was poised to do the same, but Gabby wasn’t ready to let her go. Her mind was still reeling with questions. “Wait!” she said.
“What about Mr. Lau? What happens to him? And what about Ellerbee? He’s really not a bad man, he just—”

“Mr. Ellerbee has agreed to tell us everything he learned about Houghton,” Edwina said, “and in return we’ll settle him in a job he’ll find much more satisfactory.
Mr. Lau will go back to his regular life as a substitute.”

“And Wutt? Will I get to babysit her again? Because I’d really like to. And G.E.T. O.U.T.—are they watching me now? Should I be looking over my shoulder? Like…I mean…should
I be worried? Or could I be doing spy work for you between jobs? Because I would! I mean…assuming there will be another job…Will there be another job?”

“We’ll be in touch,” Edwina said.

She slipped inside the limousine, pulling the door shut behind her. The engine started, and Gabby was sure it was about to drive away, but then the window lowered.

“It was a fine beginning, Associate 4118-25125A,” Edwina said as the hint of a smile curled her thin lips. “You should be very proud. I am.”

The window closed and the limousine rode away.

Gabby smiled.

A good beginning. That meant there’d be more. More aliens, more secrets, more danger.

Gabby couldn’t wait.

We are beyond thrilled to present Gabby Duran to the world, and we know it never could have happened without the amazing efforts of so many people. First and foremost, we’d like to thank
the amazing Jane Startz, for being the ultimate matchmaker and bringing the two of us together. Jane’s vision is unparalleled, and we’re honored to have her in our corner. Equal thanks
to Kane Lee, for his always-insightful notes and excellent story sense. Together, Jane and Kane are a formidable team and Gabby’s world would never have become what it is without them.

Next, we’d like to thank our incredible team at Hyperion. Our editor Emily Meehan had the vision to see everything Gabby could become, and we’re so grateful she brought us under her
wing. Together, Emily and Jessica Harriton are an editorial dream team. Their story notes were dead-on, and inspired us to dive eagerly and excitedly into each rewrite. Thanks also to copyeditor
Jody Corbett, who ran through the manuscript with a fine-toothed comb. She made sure we never contradicted ourselves in the details, and called us on all our verbal tics. Thanks to publicist Jamie
Baker, for working so hard to tell the world about Gabby, and get her story onto everyone’s radar. Finally, thanks to Marci Senders, whose eye-popping cover design made us squeal with glee in
dolphin frequencies, then jump up and down and do a giant happy dance.

On a personal note, Elise would like to thank and hug and get all gushy over her husband Randy, daughter Madeline, and dog Jack for their unending love and support. She sends a huge thanks to
Annette van Duren, her longtime and wonderful agent. She’d also love to thank all the rest of her friends and family individually…but that would take up way too much space. Instead
she’ll single out one: Sylvia Allen. Mom-Mom Sylvia, you make 98-years-old look GREAT!

Daryle would like to profusely thank Liz Lehmans and Jeannie Hayden for their long-term support of Gabby Duran in all of her many incarnations, and Jack Brummet and Keelin Curran for their help
in making the Gabby project happen. She’d also like to thank Dan Elenbaas for the opportunity to create Gabby in the first place, and Farai Chideya for putting Gabby in Jane Startz’
able hands. To Cynthia True, Erik Wiese and Marya Sea Kaminski, thanks for always helping with the tough decisions and giving your advice so generously.

Most of all, we want to thank YOU, our fabulous readers! We do the writing, but Gabby comes to life in your imaginations. Thanks for hanging with her, and we hope you’ll join us for Book
Two!

Much love,

Elise and Daryle

Emmy-nominated writer and
New York Times
best-selling author
ELISE ALLEN
made a name for herself with her acclaimed young adult novel
Populazzi
, and the Jim
Henson’s Enchanted Sisters chapter books. She also co-wrote Hilary Duff’s best-selling Elixir series and Bella Thorne’s new series, Autumn Falls. In television, she has written
for talent ranging from Madeline Kahn to Kermit the Frog, and is currently writing for the new Disney Junior show
The Lion Guard
. Her dog may or may not secretly be from another planet. You
can find her online at
www.eliseallen.com
or on Twitter
@EliseLAllen
.

DARYLE CONNERS
is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, and video game designer. She writes joke and riddle books and has designed many game titles for the PC and
iPhone/iPad, including
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
;
Scene It? Harry Potter
;
Hot Wheels Slot Car Racers
; and
Scene It? Twilight Saga
. Her nonfiction books
include
Lunchtime LOLZ
;
Nintendo DS Hot Tips
;
ROFLs
;
Video Game Secrets
; and
Monster High Howlers
, all for Scholastic. Daryle lives in Seattle, where she still
babysits from time to time. You can follow her on Twitter
@Darylec
.