Alien in My Pocket #3 by Nate Ball Page A

need a new name.

02
    Listen to This
    â€œI t smells like the devil burped in here.”
    Olivia had just shut the door of my room. She pulled two rolls of SweeTarts out of her pocket and tossed them to Amp, who was still sitting on my alarm clock.
    â€œIt smells like that because he keeps eating those fart pills,” I said, still hunched over my math homework. “Hey, did you get the one about the train leaving San Francisco at eight p.m.?” I asked, turning around in my chair.
    Olivia is in my class at Reed School. Schoolwork isn’t difficult for her. Olivia just sort of knows stuff. She usually finishes her math homework while everyone else is packing up to leave for the day. She’d be a real brain if she weren’t so weird and didn’t talk so much.
    â€œForty-eight miles an hour is the answer,” she said, watching Amp flip SweeTarts into his mouth.
    â€œForty-eight?” I croaked. “I have five hundred forty-four!”
    â€œHow is that possible?” She laughed, shaking her head at me. “What train travels that fast, Whacky Zacky?”
    â€œMaybe those Japanese bullet trains. I saw them on TV.”
    â€œThey don’t go that fast,” she corrected me. “Two hundred miles an hour, tops.”
    â€œWe have trainlike vehicles back on Erde,” Amp said, once again bragging about how great things were on his planet. “They travel about as fast as sound travels here.”
    â€œI’ve told you before about talking with your mouth full,” I grumbled, turning back to my incorrect math problem. “You may have fast trains on Erde, but we have something called manners here on this planet.”
    â€œHas he been this grumpy the whole time?” Olivia asked Amp.
    â€œSince he got home. Surprisingly, math makes him angry.”
    Honestly, all our meetings about fixing Amp’s busted spaceship, getting him off this planet, and returning my life to normal went like this. What was the point of meeting if we never accomplished anything except pointing out all the things I do wrong? I was so not the problem.
    There was a knock on my bedroom door. Olivia quickly moved to block the view of Amp from the doorway.
    She always did this, even though Amp could easily make himself invisible to someone. He uses one of his Jedi mind tricks. He basically erases your memory of seeing him as you see him, so you instantly forget you’re seeing him while you’re looking at him.
    I know, it sounds complicated. You get used to it. But Olivia always forgets he can do that.
    The door clicked open and my little brother poked his head in.
    â€œI heard you have SweeTarts,” he said. “I want some.”
    â€œGo away, Taylor,” I groaned from my desk. “We’re busy.”
    Olivia reached into her pocket and tossed Taylor a roll of SweeTarts. He intentionally missed the catch so he could step all the way into my room. “Hey, what are you guys doing?” he asked, looking around. “It smells like burning toothpaste in here.”
    Taylor knew something was up. He knew I was hiding a secret, and he’d dedicated his life to figuring out what it was. He’d even built an army of spy robots to help him. Fortunately, I’d destroyed most of them when I caught them in my room.
    My parents are convinced Taylor is some kind of genius. He is only in the first grade and building robots. But I don’t care. I think he’s only a genius at annoying me.
    I got up and pushed him out of my room. “Go play with your robots, you Nosy Nelly.” I closed the door on him and leaned my back against it.
    â€œBut I want to hang out with you guys,” he said from the other side of the door.
    â€œBuzz off!” I shouted. I heard him walk down the squeaky hallway.
    Olivia sat up on my bed. She had an odd look on her face. It was almost white, like she’d seen a ghost.

    â€œWhat’s wrong with you?” I ask.