Watch the Skies

I nervously pulled the silver elephant necklace from my pocket and hung it around my neck. Maybe it would bring me some luck. Then I cautiously approached the front door and rang the bell.

I heard footsteps and swallowed hard as the curtain on a window parted, revealing a brilliant blue eye.

I stood back, wondering if this was all a big mistake. The lock turned, and the door started to creak open. I threw out my right hand, firmly grasping the strange item I’d just materialized.

“What beautiful daisies!”

“You must be Judy’s mom,” I said, handing the woman the bouquet. “She has your eyes.”

“Judy said you were sweet. Come on in. She’ll be right down.”

Chapter 49

JUDY’S PARENTS INVITED me to sit on the couch, and it was just like what you see in all the sitcoms and movies when the parents are meeting their daughter’s date for the first time.

They seemed to be very nice, and I made sure to be polite and honest-well, without going into too much detail about my background-so I think I managed to make a pretty good impression. Judy’s dad was an electrical engineer, so we definitely hit it off on that score.

We discussed computer chips, the latest developments in carbon-matrix superconductors, and a bunch of other supergeek stuff until Judy came downstairs. At that point-when I saw her in her summer dress with her hair down-I confess, I lost some of the thread of what Mr. McG was talking about.

“Look what Daniel brought you,” said Mrs. McG, coming out of the kitchen with my flowers in a vase. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

“And he’s quite the budding electrical engineer, I can tell you,” Mr. McG spoke up. “Really knows his stuff. I keep telling you, Judy, it’s a real growth field.”

“Such a well-ma

“Look, guys, he’s my date, not yours. Come on, Daniel, let’s go.”

“I’ll put your flowers in your room, dear.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“And I’ll find that copy of Popular Wiring I was talking about-the issue about lightning-proofing.”

“That’d be great, sir.”

“Okay, Mom and Dad. I’ll be back by midnight.”

“Have a good time,” they said in one voice, holding hands as they beamed at us.

“Creepy, huh?” remarked Judy as we stepped out the door.

“They seem nice. And, um, healthy. Say, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you and your mom didn’t get any caviar in the mail the other week.”

“Oh, no, we got it all right. Can you believe it? Russian sturgeon are on the endangered species list, and our local news station decides it’s a good idea to send the entire town tins filled with eggs that they ripped out of the bellies of pregnant fish. I totally e-mailed Al Gore about it.”

“Actually, they weren’t Russian sturgeon.”

“Really? That’s what it said on the label, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, but you can’t believe everything you read.”

“Well, anyhow, I think fish eggs are a gross concept. I’m still glad I threw them away before Mom saw them. They can’t be good for you anyhow.”

“That’s a safe assumption,” I said, taking her hand.

Chapter 50

I MATERIALIZED AN extra helmet and helped Judy onto the back of my motorcycle.

“Where’s a good place to eat in this town?” I asked through the intercom as we sped down her street. “Besides the diner, I mean.”

“There’s not a lot. There’s one of those all-you-can-eat Lobster Hut places that my parents like, but I’m not really into seafood.”

“That’s understandable,” I said, quickly logging onto the Internet. Another little perk of being an Alien Hunter is that I have wireless broadband co

There really wasn’t much in the way of five-star restaurants in Holliswood. I took a few seconds to scroll through the customer comments on cityguide.aol.com and found that the At-Least-It’s-Not-Monday franchise across from OfficeMax had the best reviews.

It wasn’t exactly the sort of place in which you’d expect to bump into a New York Times food critic, but the HELP WANTED sign in the window gave me an idea, and I quickly summoned two characters from my imagination-Wolfgang, a chef trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and Jean-Luc, a headwaiter with the skill set of an employee of Le Cirque in New York.

They rushed in ahead of us, and the stu

“I knew Thursday was ‘Chicken Finger Night,’ ” she said as our third course, Canard à l’Orange, arrived at the table. “So I guess tonight must be ‘Haute Cuisine Night.’ ”

“You should tell your friends.”

“Are you sure you didn’t have anything to do with this, Daniel?”

“Hey, if I had the kind of money to make something like this happen, would I be in Holliswood?”

“I guess not,” she said, and laughed. “But I’m glad you are.”

Whereupon I once again blushed as only an alien can.

Chapter 51

WE’D BEEN LOOKING forward to dessert but had eaten so much we couldn’t possibly squeeze in another bite. So I gave Jean-Luc a handsome tip, and I took Judy for a ride in the country.

Judy wrapped her arms around my waist as we sped down back roads, losing ourselves in the confident drone of the engine and the buffeting, summer-perfect air. We drove for miles and miles, eventually stopping to look at some constellations from a distant field-I helpfully illuminated the lines between the stars so Judy could see the shapes more easily-and then, at her suggestion, we looped our way back to the King Kone drive-through near the high school.

“It’s weird,” said Judy, as she dismounted and took off her helmet. “This place is usually mobbed with kids. It’s like the hangout. Jocks, stoners, goths, skate kids, sometimes even the World of Warcraft shut-ins.”

“Maybe they heard homeschooled kids were starting to show up and decided it wasn’t cool anymore,” I said, earning myself a jab to the ribs I could have easily dodged but didn’t.

The ice-cream stand itself was a tiny affair, more awning than building. It was basically just a counter area where the employees served the ice cream; a walk-in freezer; and the men’s and women’s rooms, which were accessible from outside.

We ordered a couple of soft-serve cups from the bored-looking counter boy and claimed a picnic table in the back, as far from the noisy road as we could get.

“Oh, darn,” said Judy as we sat down. We’d failed to notice some chocolate sauce on the side of the table, and her dress brushed against it. “I’m going to get some soap and water on it so the stain doesn’t set. Don’t eat my ice cream while I’m gone.”

I was pretty close to being done with my own already and shrugged.

She wagged her finger at me and headed inside, leaving me to find a cleaner table where I could contemplate my empty dish-and why her ice cream looked so much better than mine had.

I was just lifting a tiny spoonful to my mouth-pretty sure she’d never notice-when a blue flash lit up the ice-cream stand, and I heard the telltale blast of an alien firearm.

So I never did find out if her ice cream was any better than mine.