The Fellowship for Alien Detection (6 page)

“Fine,” Liam sulked.

Haley moved to the dresser. She wondered if boys just got progressively less mature as they aged. Haley remembered her parents promising her, back when Liam was an irrational baby and constantly following her around and whining for every toy she had, that he would get less annoying. Now he was eight and Haley had seen little evidence.

“I would not have to be doing this if you were a cat,” Haley muttered as she started tossing clothes into Liam's suitcase. She knew the four things that he always wore. “You do the underwear and socks,” she ordered, and left the room.

“Hhhcchhh!” Haley turned to see Liam swiping claws at her and making a menacing cat face. She smiled. Maybe she loved him more than a cat.

“You're all packed?” Jill called as Haley headed back downstairs.

“Packed and ready to go two hours ago,” she said.

“What about . . .” Haley turned to see Jill emerging from their room with a three-page, stapled list. The packing list. Jill's masterwork. But Haley was sure she'd thought of everything.

“Sunscreen?” Jill asked.

“Yes.”

“The fifty and the thirty?”

“Yes.”

“The face ninety? The sun is stronger down south.”

Haley sighed and headed back upstairs. “And just in case we take a rocket to the sun,” she muttered.

“Haley . . .”

“I'm getting it, but then we need to
leeeave
.”

Haley returned to the bathroom then back outside to the car. She tossed the additional bottle of lotion in her bag and stood still, fists clenched, eyelids clamped, as a wave of anxious energy washed over her. Here it was, the first day of a two-week calendar, and it was slipping through her fingers.

“Let's GO!” Haley shouted toward the house. More slamming upstairs. More clanging downstairs.

In order to keep from losing her mind completely, Haley ducked back into the fleeting cool of the backseat and double-checked her supplies. Laid out neatly on the left backseat were the following items:

• Homemade fold-out tracking map with cardboard backing

• The pocket road atlas with the unbent spine

• Pocket-sized spiral-bound tracking notebook with green-tinted graph paper

• New pack of the best gel pens

• Pair of actual bona fide binoculars

• The family's tablet computer

The computer was the big score, because it had been deemed strictly for fellowship business for the duration of the trip, which meant it was
not
to be commandeered by Liam for whatever game he was currently playing that involved the grisly death of level after level of cutely animated creatures. That this would drive Liam insane with envy was maybe a small consolation for having him along in the first place.

Haley picked up the pad, flicked it on, and reread the email on the screen, which she'd gotten the night before:

Dear Haley,

Congratulations again on winning the Fellowship for Alien Detection! I'm thrilled to hear that you are heading out on your field study tomorrow morning. How exciting!

As was stated in your acceptance letter, you are required to email us the latest updates on your trip and research at least once a day. I have reviewed your itinerary and see that your first stop is Amber, PA, followed by Brownsville, KY. I can't wait to hear what you find out!

Also, please remember to use the debit card you received with your acceptance letter for all your family's purchases.

Again, I am so glad that you are going to have this exciting opportunity. Don't forget to keep your eyes wide-open, and go for it!

Fond regards,

Alex

A
LEXANDRA
K
ELLER

E
XECUTIVE
D
IRECTOR

T
HE
G
AVIN
K
ELLER
F
OUNDATION

The letter reinflated Haley's excitement for the whole experience. Alex sounded cool, pro. Haley couldn't wait to start sending reports. No:
dispatches
.

Now she heard a commotion behind her. Finally. She turned, only to find Allan rounding the corner of the garage with, not his bags and final items in his hand, but instead a shiny colander of lettuce from the garden.

“Perfectly good . . .” he stammered as Haley glared at him. “What? You can't just leave lettuce of this quality lying around to go bad . . . you . . .” His face cracked into a smile. “I'm so sorry,” he said. “Five minutes, I swear. I wouldn't even be doing this if your mom was packed.”

“Liar.” Haley folded her arms.

“Just don't leave without us.” He disappeared into the garage, and she heard him chuckle.

“This isn't funny.”

“Nope,” he called over his shoulder.

Haley huffed loud enough for him to hear.

Forty-five minutes later, they were finally on the road.

Altoona, PA, July 2, 9:15 p.m.

Twelve hours, three hundred and fifty miles, plus one stop to see a giant zucchini, three attempts to steal the computer pad by Liam, one fruitless search over three consecutive exits for what Dad called “a real coffee shop,” one incident of Liam insisting that the sun through his window was burning him
to death
and he
had
to switch seats with Haley, and another time where Liam produced an inconceivably noxious gas and thought it was
hilarious
, they were finally out of the car and stuffed into a tiny cream-colored Relaxation Depot hotel room, just one exit away from Amber.

Haley sat on the bed, eating a trail mix bar and trying to get just the right angle with her computer pad to get the Wi-Fi to actually work, while feeling a mix of relief and frustration. Relief because they'd actually made it to where they needed to be, but also frustration, as her family continued what seemed to be their subtle daylong strategy of sabotage:

“I read that there's an entire mural made out of sunflowers just a few hours south of here,” said Allan from the nearby sink, where he was using a small pair of scissors to snip the hairs in his ears. One time, Haley had told him that was gross. Dad had shrugged and said, “Ear hair happens.” He hadn't sounded happy about it.

“Dad,” Haley groaned. “I don't know if we'll have time. We have a lot to do tomorrow. Besides, wasn't the zucchini enough?”

“Zucchini attack!” Liam shouted. He was bouncing up and down on the other bed, beside Mom, and now started deploying some of his orange belt karate moves to fend off imaginary produce. At least he knew better than to do that on Haley's bed.

“I also read about this sawmill that's from the seventeen hundreds and still works and everyone there is dressed in costume,” Allan continued. “And they have a roller coaster!”

“Ooh,” said Jill. She'd spent most of the car ride doing her notes, but now she was lounging on the bed, reading
Us Weekly
, also apparently under the impression that this trip was some big vacation.

“Guys,” Haley pleaded.

“Haley.” Mom smiled in that way that made Haley know something belittling was coming. “Dad's not trying to sabotage your fellowship, just squeeze in a little family time. It's not often we get to be together like this, nowadays.”

“We were together for twelve
hours
today,” Haley grumbled.

She pulled the wrapper down on her bar. Something moved in the corner of her eye: a little hand reaching carefully up over the side of the bed, fingers flapping until they hit the edge of the tablet computer.

“Ugh, Liam!” Haley snatched the tablet away.

“Come on, I want to play
MegaDuck
!” Liam jumped up and grabbed at it again.

“Get off!” Haley scooted away and shoved Liam off the bed.

“Ow, Mom, did you even
see
that?” Liam whined.

Haley yanked her headphones out of her sweatshirt pocket and slipped them on. She couldn't take much more of this. She was supposed to be on a serious mission, on the trail of a story, forging onto new map, her very future at stake! And yet instead she was fighting for breath, suffocated by family.

A pleasant ding announced that she was finally online, and she logged into
Macabre Kingdom
. On the screen, her little vampire avatar, Fang the Merciless, made her way through the Forest of Fugues. Haley was proud of her design, though Fang's spiky pink hair still needed some work. She stopped to help a trio of zombies do battle with an ancient ice demon, as Fang was lethal with a broadsword, then continued her search for Abby's avatar, Vane du Rose Noir.

Vane, u out ther?
she typed.

Any aliens yet?
Abby replied as Vane appeared, spiraling around a waterfall of diamonds.

Only my parents
, said Haley.

LOL.

They're trying to sabotage trip with roller coasters
.

Fun!
said Abby.

NO TIME 4 FUN!
Haley felt a little bad typing it because roller coasters
did
sound kinda fun, but there was no time for intentionally going around in circles. Lines needed to be straight!
Wish I was an orphan
, she added.

A life of adventure!
Abby replied. This was a running joke of theirs, about how when you were an orphan, or at the very least had your parents mysteriously lost or imprisoned, you'd end up living with some aunt or grandparent who didn't keep such a close eye on you, and adventure would practically crash through your door. But nothing ever happened with parents around.

That said, Haley knew she was lucky in the parent department. Were they perfect? No, but Mom and Dad were pretty cool considering they were in their forties, and they encouraged her without pushing,
most
of the time. That made her wonder once again: What if she just told them the truth about the missing persons stuff?

She'd heard them talking a couple nights after she'd gotten her winning letter, as she was heading down to the kitchen for a snack:

“You don't think it's too odd?” Jill had said to Allan as they both sat on the couch.

“Well,” Allan had answered, “yeah, I think it's odd, but . . . I've scoped out this Gavin Keller Foundation. It's legitimate. Eccentric, sure, but if somebody wants to give money out to hardworking kids to research
aliens
, so what?” Haley could hear Allan getting fired up, as he often did when making a point. “I think it's great that this fellowship is so out there, so creative. It's a break from all the serious business that Haley has going on all the time.”

Haley would have disagreed with that, but again, it was a fine conclusion based on the information they had.

“Look,” Allan had continued. “She really wants to do this, and she didn't get those other opportunities. But that's not even the point, either, at least to me. If Haley had gotten the JCF and Thorny Mountain, she would have been gone half the summer. With this, we get an all-expense-paid two-week trip together! I wouldn't care if we were researching fairies and goblins. No summer camps, no late work nights, no distractions. Just us and a car, hanging out as a family.”

“You've been practicing this speech, haven't you?” Jill had said.

“Every day driving home.”

Then they had started kissing all gross the way adults do with the loud smacking sounds, and Haley had stopped listening.

In the end, she had parents who were willing to drive her around, and so maybe some silly daily attraction, like a sunflower mural, or a sawmill with a roller coaster, wasn't too high a price to pay.

How's Thorny Mountain?
she typed to Abby.

Met a cute trumpet player.

Uh-oh
, said Haley.
A brass boy, eh? No sad cello?

Not yet.
☺

Ha. Good luck, time for bed. Big day tomorrow!
Haley logged out. She turned off the tablet and got her spiral-bound tracking notebook from her shoulder bag. She flipped to a note she'd jotted down a few days before:

Blair County Fairgrounds, Livestock Barn 5, Stall #42.

This was the spot where she was supposed to meet up with Stephanie Raines, whom she'd found out when she talked to over Facebook, preferred to be called “Steph.”

Haley felt a rush. Her first contact. No: her first
source
.

“Okay, bedtime!” she announced.

“Aye aye,” said Mom.

“Yar!” shouted Liam. He came hopping up onto the bed they were sharing holding an open bag of Cheesy Fingers, which he proceeded to spill all over the sheets. “Oops!” he said.

Haley looked at the orange flecks all over the spot where she was about to sleep.
Fine
, whatever. She lay down, back to Liam, and pulled the cheese-smelling covers up over her head.
You can endure it
, she told herself, and tried to return to the possibilities awaiting her the next morning.