The True Meaning of Smekday (Smek 1)

“Yeah,” I said. “Almost alive.”

“My turn,” said J.Lo. “You are hogging.”

But I didn’t give J.Lo his turn, because I saw something weird in the corner of the view. A spot on the skin of the ship was swelling.

“What’s that thing it’s doing?” I asked. “You know, where the skin starts to bubble up like that?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Beardo. “Let me have a look—”

“It is my turn. I am the next.”

“How do I move it?” I asked, while pushing the scope with my hand.

“Whoa. You don’t do it like that,” said Beardo, and he was right, of course. The view veered way, way too far to the right.

“Get it back, quick,” I said.

“You’re bossy,” said one of the boys.

“Hold on,” said Beardo, looking at a notebook. “Where was it before…um…right ascension 17 hours, 29 minutes, 16.4 seconds…declination negative 40, 47, and one second.”

The view went blurry, then I could see the swollen bit again. There was a whitish spot in its center, like a pimple.

“Move it up and to the right a little,” I said.

The sight came back into focus just in time. The fat shuddering balloon of skin suddenly doubled in size and spat the white bit out like it was popping a zit.

“Whoa!” I shouted, and backed away from the telescope. I scanned the sky to see if I could spot where the white part went.

J.Lo tried to lean into the viewfinder, but Beardo beat him to it.

“I see it,” said Beardo. “The bubble’s deflating. There’s a hole in the center.”

Just then I spotted two bright shapes over the mountains and grabbed J.Lo’s shoulder.

“Look!”

Far off, two Boovish ships were racing toward each other from different directions. When they met, their hoselegs fumbled around in the air between them. Whatever they were doing, they didn’t do it for long—the Gorg ship fired, missed, fired again, and popped one of the Boov ships like it was a glass balloon. The other ship limped away and was brought down with another blast.

Everyone on the roof was hushed for a moment, even the boys. Not for long, though.

“That was awesome!” said the loud one.

“Totally awesome,” said the other loud one. “The big ship was all, BSHOOM! An’ the little ship, one of the little ships—”

“It went, like, KSHHH!”

“I’m telling it! Dad!”

J.Lo looked miserable. You wouldn’t think you could tell that when a person’s wearing a ghost suit, but you can.

“That’s not the first time we’ve seen the ball destroy Boov ships,” said Beardo airily. “They’ve done it a couple times.”

Of course, it wasn’t the first time J.Lo and I had seen it either, but it seemed like too big a coincidence that it had happened right after I saw something launch out of the Gorg’s moon. And the Boov ships hadn’t been charging the Gorg ship; they’d only charged toward each other. Each other, or toward something else in the sky that was too small to see….

“Ricki say time for dinner,” said J.Lo.

“Vicki,” I hissed.

“Bicki.”

One of the boys heard us and shouted, “This meeting of BOOB is—”

“It’s my turn to say it—”

“—offishialy over!”

“Dad!”

“Just a minute, kiddo,” said Beardo.

“Waitaminute,” I said. “BOOB?”

“It’s the name of our club,” said boy number two.

“Are you guys from Florida or something?”

“No,” said Beardo. “Why?”

“Nothing.”

Both boys shouted over each other.

“It stands for—”

“Backyard—”

“Shut up!”

“Backyard telescope Ob…Observation of—”

“Of Occupation by Boov!”

“Farthead!”

We descended the stairs.

“I don’t know why I ask,” I said, “but shouldn’t your acronym be, like, BTOOB or something?”

“BOOB sounds better,” they said.

Boys. Honestly.

Dinner was sensational. I’m not kidding. You don’t realize what a casserole can do until you’ve spent two weeks eating from what, in honor of one of those UFO exhibits, I’m going to call the Four Foo Groups.*

“More hot dish?” asked Vicki.

“Yes. This is amazing.”

“Your brother doesn’t seem to think so.”

“Oh, don’t worry about JayJay. He’s one of those kids who never eats anything. We think he’s solar-powered,” I said, knowing that J.Lo had eaten all the little decorative soaps out of Vicki’s bathroom when he was supposed to be washing up.

“Well, I hope so,” said Beardo. “’Cause you kids might be here a while.”

I put my fork down. “What do you mean?”

“Well, that car of yours looks to be in pretty bad shape. And we could never let you just drive off on your own, anyway.”

I swallowed hard and felt a big wad of casserole stick in my throat. “I’ve gotten this far on my own. I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”

“Oh, my,” said Vicki. “Such spunk. You must’ve been a handful for your mom.”

The casserole made it the rest of the way down, but it burned my nose and made my eyes water. I thought about Mom.

“All right. So…what if someone did drive us the rest of the way? Why wait?”

Vicki and maybe a couple others chuckled.

“None of us has a car, Grace,” said Beardo.

“So we borrow one. The town is full of them.”

There was outright laughter now.

“And how do you suppose we start this mystery car?” asked Vicki.

“We’ve already been looking for a car or truck we could use,” said Kat. “You’d be surprised how many people took their keys with them when Roswell was evacuated. You can help us search, though. Eventually we’ll find keys that fit something.”

“We could hotwire a car,” I said. “Don’t you just cross some wires or something?”

There were blank stares all around the table. Beardo coughed.

“Grace, we’re paranormal researchers—”

“Which means they don’t know anything useful,” said Trey.