Chapter 2

Some Inconvenient Things Happen while Stopping at a Convenience Store

Nothing worth writing about happened during school, but that doesn’t mean it felt like an ordinary school day. All of the things that happened there were normal: teachers explaining things in the most boring ways possible, paper wads flying about the classrooms, a carton of milk dribbling down a girl’s back, and teachers scolding me for not paying attention. This last item points to the difference. Usually I don’t pay attention in class because the class is boring. This time, I wasn’t paying attention because I had other things to think about. I couldn’t get Merendael’s flashing eyes out of my mind. Neither could I stop wondering who Merendael was and what he wanted to give me so badly. Worst of all, I kept waiting for that tingling feeling to come back to my spine. It didn’t. That made me worry that Merendael had given up on me and was going to appear to a nicer person than me. Maybe Mel or Linda. That, in turn, made me feel rejected by Merendael. The good news about that was that Merendael wouldn’t bother me any more and I wouldn’t get in trouble with Brian for acting in a way “unbecoming of a sixth-grade boy,” a phrase he used for people like Dumbinic and Hopeless Hubert. The bad news was that I would miss out on a great adventure, an adventure much more interesting than school or anything that ever happened when I hung out with Brian and the other boys.

When school got out, everything looked normal on the outside. I came out the door with Brian and the other boys I hang out with. We were on our way to the convenience store two blocks away, the one we stop at every afternoon after school. But none of that felt normal to me. The sun had come out during the day and it’s reflection on cars and windows was driving me crazy. My eyes chased each flash of light as I feared and hoped it was Merendael. Each time I looked at the sun’s reflection on something, it turned out to be a false alarm.

 “Hey, Eddie, what’re you looking at?” Peter asked me.

“Nothing.”

“You look like you think you’re being followed by the mafia for spying on their inter-planetary intrigues,” said Brian.

Charlie suddenly grabbed me by the shoulders.

“The space aliens have caught up with you!” Charlie cried.

“Bug off, will you?” I said. “I’m only afraid that Mrs. Ford’s going to capture me and drag me into that crummy school play.”

“We’ll protect you,” Brian promised me, giving me a pat on the shoulder. “We don’t want you to miss all the bumming around we’ve got to do just because Mrs. Ford wants to drag you into her play.”

We had gotten to the convenience store by then, at which point it was every boy for himself until he’s gotten enough food and drink to feed his face and escape from the store without getting his head chopped off by the woman who runs the cash register. I’m sure she can’t live without our business, but she doesn’t seem able to live with it, either. I have a sneaking suspicion that my friends and I would give her less trouble if she didn’t expect so much of it. But then, going to that store wouldn’t be any fun if she didn’t expect trouble and get it. I threw out a silent dare to Merendael to show up in this unenchanted place as I came through the door. The woman at the cash register eyed us suspiciously the way she always does. Linda and Molly and the other girls followed us into the store, obviously so they could torment us and get us into trouble. In the crowded space, I had to battle elbows and shoulders to snatch up the treats I wanted and get them to the counter. The woman there looked at the candy bars, potato chips and soda, and threw a dozen daggers through my heart with her eyes. She took my money, but I could tell she thought I was stealing something from her just because some of the kids I hang out with do it all the time.

I pushed against the press of other kids surging at the counter to buy what stuff they hadn’t slipped into their pocket to get myself out of the store as soon as possible. The nanosecond I touched the door, I got that tingling feeling again. I might have ducked back into the store to avoid Merendael if the crowd wasn’t too thick at my back, and if I didn’t sort of want to see Merendael again. I hadn’t gotten more than a few feet out the door when a flickering light stopped me in my tracks and shook loose my bag of corn chips. Maybe Merendael hadn’t taken my dare to enter the convenience store, but invading the store’s parking lot was pretty close! At first, the flickering petered out. Maybe it was another false alarm from the sun reflecting off the parked cars. I stooped down to pick up my bag of corn chips, but I’d barely gotten my fingers on it when the flickering images of Merendael hit me full in the face. I had no more idea of what I was seeing than I had when Merendael appeared to me that morning. This time, I thought I saw a mane of long flowing hair, but it billowed like a long purple cape. The fiery eyes—if they were eyes—looked yellow and then red as they stared out at me. I got the feeling Merendael was upset with me for badmouthing him and denying his existence. There was no mistaking the sun’s reflections off of cars and windows for this vision.

Are you seeing me now? Merendael asked me. The question shivered through my body. Before I could answer, Merendael lifted his hooves to trample me for what I’d done and hadn’t done. I shrank back, but then fell forward under the weight of a body plowing into me. The corn chips crunched under my shoes. Mel caught me before I fell flat on my face and eased me back in a standing position.

“Why’d you stop like that? I almost spilled my Sprite,” Terry complained.

“Sorry,” I answered.

“Then why did you bump into me?” Terry asked.

Why did you back away? Merendael asked me. I am only trying to give you my Gift.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were mad at me,” I replied. “You can give it to me now.”

“Talking to your invisible friend again?” Brian asked me. “Or is this another invisible friend of yours?”

That shows you the effect Merendael had on me when he appeared. I’d lost all track of where I was and who was with me and what people would think if they heard me talking to him. Brian’s words made Merendael disappear. I looked at my friends, hoping they weren’t about to become ex-friends because of my suddenly crazy behavior. None of them showed any signs of having seen or heard Merendael. To judge by the looks of them, all they’d seen was me looking like a real dork. The girls, too, had stopped and bunched themselves together to watch our little drama. Molly did kind of look like maybe she’d seen something, but I could tell she wasn’t about to admit anything in front of the other girls any more than I was going to admit anything in front of the boys. Dominic was standing at the edge of the parking lot, staring at everybody. He was being his usual poker-faced self that gave nothing away as to whether he has observed anything besides the follies of his school mates. I decided the best way out of the situation was to play my zany humor card.

“Oh, I was only talking to a monster I saw passing by,” I said.

“O-o-o-oh! I’m scared!” Peter cried out in mock horror.

“How come you can see it when we can’t?” Brian asked.

“Because my eye doctor just gave me a monster lens implant,” I replied. “I’m sure you can get the same implant if you want to see monsters for yourself.”

“What does it look like?” Peter asked.

“Uh—something like a giant horse with about a hundred eyes,” I replied.

“Sounds like a space alien to me,” said Terry.

“Does the space alien want us to take him to our leader?” asked Peter

“Are you going to build a space ship in your back yard to help little E.T. get home?” Brian asked in mock sympathy voice.

“I don’t build spaceships for lost space aliens,” I said, making a point of sounding as tough as I could.

“Did you hear any weird music when you saw what you think you saw?” asked Mel.

That stopped me cold. Mel isn’t good at sarcastic joking and I could tell he wasn’t trying to joke now. It looked like Mel had heard something while I was seeing something. That could be bad news. I sharpened my ears, daring Merendael to sing to me. This time he was decent enough not to call my bluff.

“What did the music sound like to you?” I asked Mel.

“It sounds kind of sad,” said Mel, “like something bad happened.”

This was going too far. If Mel was tuning in to Merendael and getting some of the same signals from him, then I had to worry that Merendael was real. If I’d been alone with Mel at the time, I might have told him Merendael had asked me for help, and the way I could help him was to accept a Gift he wanted to give me. But with our gang of friends right there, there was no way I was going to say any of that. The good thing about this was that I could use Mel to get the heat off of me.

“I didn’t hear any music,” I said stoutly. “I think the sun reflecting off of stuff is making me see funny and the traffic noise is doing something to your ears.”

Something seemed to collapse inside of Mel. I hadn’t meant to hurt this feelings. But then we aren’t supposed to have feelings that anybody in our gang can hurt.

“You play your clarinet too much,” said Brian in his most dismissive tone.

“Yea, I practice too much,” Mel admitted, “but my mom makes me do it.”

We all knew Mel was lying about that, but we had hassled him enough to remind him what’s cool in our group and what isn’t.

“Hey! You guys!” the counter clerk of the convenience store called out from the door. “This isn’t the place for school assemblies!”

“All right, we get the message,” said Terry.

I took the lead in moving our group away from the convenience store.

“Is the alien following us?” Charlie asked.

“He’s gone,” I replied.

“Is your invisible friend really gone, or is he hiding?” asked Brian.

“I can’t see him,” I said. “Satisfied?”

“Are you hearing any more of that music?” Brian asked Mel.

“No.”

“Do you really think it’s a space alien?” asked Peter.

“Or are you just going crazy for the fun of it?” asked Brian.

“It’s nothing,” I said, hoping that was the truth but fearing that it wasn’t.

*********

There were lots of reasons why I couldn’t concentrate on my homework that evening. Most of them were the usual reasons. One is that my sister Beth and I have to do it at what we call the dining room table although we never dine there. We eat at the kitchen table where my elbow always gets jabbed by whoever sits next to me because I’m the only lefty in the family. The reason we have to do our homework at the so-called dining room table is because Mon and Dad think we’ll goof off if we do our homework upstairs. That’s true, but working downstairs means that the television is always blaring in our ears from the living room, and we keep looking over there to see what the noise is all about. Usually it’s a lot of noise about nothing. My brothers, Tom and Wally, are allowed to do their homework upstairs in their room because they’re hulking teenagers. That means they get away with goofing off until report cards come out. Part of goofing off is sitting in front of the TV and arguing about which baseball team is the best all time. Dad always has papers from the city council spread out at one end of the table. Mom is constantly going back and forth between Beth and me, checking our homework so many times that it takes all the longer to get it done. Beth has her books spread out so far that I’m lucky if I have enough room to open my notebook. I don’t bother saying anything because, for some reason, I’m not supposed to need any space for anything because I’m the youngest in the family. Cute little Beth with her golden hair must have been overjoyed the day she learned she had a baby brother to torment. Those are the usual reasons I can’t concentrate on my homework.

Besides all these usual distractions, there was Merendael. Every time I tried to focus on the dates I was supposed to learn for history, I felt like a homeless wanderer from a strange planet that is gone forever who is desperately looking for somebody who will accept the Gift he needs to give before it was too late. I kept fearing and hoping I would get that tingling feeling again, but I didn’t. I hadn’t felt a thing since coming inside the house. I was beginning to wonder if creatures like Merendael are like vampires in that they can’t enter somebody’s else unless they are given an invitation. With my bratty sister next to me at the table and my father working away at the end and mom hovering over me, I was certainly was not about to invite Merendael into the house to see what would happen. Besides, how did I know that inviting Merendael in wouldn’t lead to my family being the first to be devoured by a space alien who was starving after traveling all that distance, or that our house wouldn’t be the epicenter of a nuclear bomb that he was offering me?

“Eddie,” said Mom, “you look like you’re dreaming about twenty different planets between each history question.”

I wanted to tell her that all twenty planets are more interesting than earth history, but with dad right there, I’d get into a more trouble for sassing mom than it was worth.

“Sorry,” is all I said.

“Or is there something on your mind?”

“No.”

“He’s thinking about the extraterrestrial creature he saw today,” said Beth with that look she gets every time she has a chance to give me trouble.

“Who told you that?” I asked.

“That’s a very good question,” said Mom, purposely slowing the pace of the conversation like she always does. “Who told you that Eddie is talking to creatures from outer space?”

That got Beth flustered. Few things make me feel better about life than seeing her get flustered.

“I’d rather not say,” said Beth.

“And why not?”

I knew Beth wanted to say she shouldn’t have to have a reason for not saying who had said I was talking to space aliens, but she couldn’t risk the wrath of our father any more than I could.

“It was Mary Jones,” Beth admitted.

That made sense. Sally Jones is in my class and I’d seen her hanging around with the other girls when over half my class surrounded me on the way to school that morning. Mary is in Beth’s class. Girls talk. Mystery solved.

“What did I tell you about gossip?” mother asked.

This was the good part. Every time Beth got caught out by Mom for gossiping, she had to repeat back what Mom told her at least two years ago. Beth hates having to do it, but Dad was already looking up at her from his papers. Not a good time to get him ticked off any more than he was already.

“You said that gossip is like a wildfire. A tiny match with a tiny flame can burn down a forest. A tiny word can burn up a city.”

“That’s right,” said mom.

“And you should especially put out the fire of gossip when it is said against your own brother,” said dad.

“Uh-huh. But Dad, if an army of space aliens attack the town, do you have to defend the rest of us?”

“Actually, it’s the police and fire department that would do that,” said dad wearily.

“But aren’t you like the generals who order the army around?”

“We don’t order the police around,” Dad explained. “If there should be an emergency, the city council would work closely with the police and firemen to coordinate the protection of everybody in the town.”

“You could form a citizen’s army,” Wally suggested. “With soldiers like me, no space alien would have a chance.”

“I really don’t think that we have to worry about having to organize a citizen’s army to defend the town against an invasion from Outer Space,” said Dad.

If Dad had much of a sense of humor, I might have asked him if the town council had inside information that assured them that no extraterrestrials were on the way to our town. But with his short gray hair and serious look in his eyes, he looks like he would make a good military sergeant if he wanted to be one, but not like the kind of person who would joke about absurd possibilities before they happened. And this time, what you see is what you get. I should know.

“I’ll bet you’d be real good at driving space aliens away if they did come to attack us,” said Beth.

“Thanks for the compliment,” dad grumbled as he dropped his nose back into his papers.