Alien in My Pocket #5: Ohm vs. Amp (8 page)

Good-bye Forever

L
uckily, the ladder was still under my window.

Unluckily, I fell off the ladder about halfway down.

I don't know how.

My foot just slipped and gravity did its thing.

I hit the ground like a basket of bricks and landed on my back on our wound-up garden hose, which helped cushion my fall, but the drop from that high up still knocked the wind out of me.

The beeping on my watch sounded louder.

I struggled like a turtle on its back to free myself from the hose and get to my feet.

The world seemed to spin under me.

My eyes were blurring with tears of emotion.

“Olivia,” I whisper-yelled into the silence, into the darkness.

I stumbled my way across our dark backyard patio.

I caught sight of Olivia in the moonlight on the roof of her garage. She was waving her arms at me.

I heard a familiar voice in my head. “We are running out of time, earthling!”

“I'm coming! I'm coming!” I gulped, stumbling across the lawn. I struggled to keep my balance, heading for the spot I saw the spaceship land in the ivy.

“OUR LAUNCH WINDOW CLOSES IN SECONDS!” Ohm roared in my head, as if reading my mind.

“Wait! Wait!” Amp hollered in my head.

“Don't worry, guys. I'm ready. Prepare for liftoff!” I said. I plucked the spaceship from the ivy and snapped it into place on the ball thrower. Perfect fit.

Then I saw Amp running at me from the opposite direction, across the dimly lit grass, his arms held up like he wanted a hug.

That's when I knew he was going to miss me as much as I was going to miss him.

In one smooth, quick motion, I scooped him
up, gave him a trembling smile, and dropped him through the open hatch on Ohm's steaming and clicking spaceship.

This was not how I imagined our good-bye moment.

“ZACK, WAIT!” Olivia seemed to shout from a million miles away.

“NO TIME!” I croaked.

I adjusted my grip just as Amp's little head came poking up out of the still-open hatch. I gently pushed him back down with my index finger and closed the hatch with my palm. It clicked tightly into place.

The watch's alarm would surely stop at any moment.

“NO! WAIT!” Amp's voice shouted inside my head.

“Sorry, pal,” I said. “We're out of time. I'll never forget you!”

The spaceship began to vibrate and hum.

Like a great hunter from mankind's distant past, I took three giant leaps forward across our dark backyard lawn, and executed the best throw of my life.

The dimly glowing spaceship shot high in the night sky and kept rising over the roof of our garage.

The beeping on my wrist stopped suddenly.

“We made it,” I gurgled.

The flung spaceship seemed to rise impossibly high and fast. Just as I thought it might hit the top of its flight path, it expelled a huge blast of yellow fire—the secondary launch boosters!—which knocked me back a few steps like a punch to the chest.

The loud boom seemed to echo through the entire town. Every car alarm for three miles seemed to jump to life. Every dog in our neighborhood began barking and howling.

I felt Olivia step next to me. She put a hand on my shoulder. I didn't look over, as the hot tears that had been building up in my eyes now ran freely down my face.

We stood in silence and watched the spaceship rocket through the night sky, like a falling star that seemed to be falling up. The moon, which looked like a giant bowl of milk, seemed to be waiting for it.

I couldn't help it. The tears continued. I couldn't
stop the sobbing. I didn't care if Olivia saw me. I felt like I had just lost a family member.

Olivia, obviously feeling bad for me, wrapped an arm around my bouncing shoulders.

“Don't take it so hard, Zack. You had to do it. Besides, it wasn't your fault.”

I sniffed. “My fault? What do you mean?”

“We still have time.”

I blinked through tears. “Huh? Time for what?”

“To launch Amp, of course,” she said, looking back.

And there sitting on the fence behind me was a bug-eyed Amp, peering up into the night sky with his mouth hanging open in shock.

And that's when, for the first time in my life, I fainted.

Grounded for Good?

I
woke up on the dusty couch in Olivia's garage.

“Good. You're not dead,” Olivia said softly.

I groaned. “What—?”

“You weigh more than two beached whales,” Olivia said, sitting on a tall stool directly across from me. “I almost broke my back dragging you in here.”

I sat upright, the crazy series of events coming back to me in an instant.

“Amp?!” I shouted, now seeing Amp sitting just like Olivia on a stool of his own.

“Honestly, I can't believe your ball thrower idea worked,” Amp said, smiling.

“But I thought that was you I put in the spaceship!” I said, still trying to make sense of what had just happened in my backyard. “I thought you were trying to hug me.”

Amp laughed. “Ohm is not a hugger.”

“That was Ohm? I could have sworn that was you,” I said.

Amp shook his head. “He was trying to stop you. After Olivia's mechanism failed, we were going to wait for the next launch opportunity twenty-eight days from now.”

Olivia shook her head. “Then, like a crazy zombie, you have to show up and take things into your own hands. That was amazing, Zack.”

“You may have saved your fellow earthlings a lot of problems,” Amp agreed.

I fell back into the couch cushion behind me. I winced at the pain in my back, probably from my fall from the ladder. “I did it,” I said, staring blankly into the garage rafters above us. “And Ohm should be able to call off the invasion, too. I sort of just saved the world.”

“Hopefully,” Amp said. He sighed to explain. “Space travel is an inexact science. He might make it home in time—or he might not. I'd put the odds at about a million to one.”

“Seriously?” I said, throwing up my arms. “How you guys have ever successfully invaded a planet is beyond me.”

“Who says we have?” Amp said, confused.

“Well, look on the bright side, Zacky. At least you get to see Amp again,” Olivia said with a shrug. “It was really sad when you didn't show up to say good-bye.”

“Ohm tied me to my mattress with kite string and bungee cords. I had to escape like Houdini!”

“You did?” they both said at the same time.

Olivia shook her head in disbelief. “Wait, Ohm did say that you were tied up at the moment, but I didn't think he meant literally. I assumed you were in trouble again.”

“He didn't want me getting in the way,” I said. “He said Amp liked me too much.”

“Really? I can't believe he said that,” Amp said with a sly smile.

“Why weren't you on that ship?” I asked, still confused. “What if we can't fix your spaceship? You'll be stuck here.”

“Neither of us were on that ship,” Amp said. “Like I said, once Olivia's launcher failed, we called the launch off. We tried to tell you, but—”

“We'll fix your ship, Ampy,” Olivia said firmly. “Especially now that we have an initial launch system that we know works. It's been field tested.”

“What happened to your launcher?” I asked.

Olivia blew out a big breath. “It sort of fell apart. I ran out of time. My glue gun got clogged. I broke
three springs. It actually fired off before I was ready.”

“Fired off?” Amp complained. “It basically just snapped. I bit my tongue when Ohm's ship hit that tree.” This made us all laugh, as Amp pulled on his tongue to show us the damage.

“Well, guys, that's enough fun for me for one night,” Olivia said, standing up and yawning. “I don't want Grandpa to find my bed empty at this hour of the night. Plus, we're both going fishing in a couple of hours.” She groaned and stretched.

“There is one great thing about all this,” Amp said. “Zack and I can finish watching
The Mummy
. C'mon, let's go!”

I smiled, reached out, and held up my hand up for a high five. He gave me a high three, which was the best he could manage.

“You love that movie,” I said.

“We can worry about getting me home tomorrow.”

And with that, we headed back to my house.

His broken spaceship and everything else would have to wait till the morning.

We had a movie to finish.