GONE IN A FLASH
Nicholas V. Landrew was not a typical seventh grader. That isn’t surprising. There is no typical seventh grader. Or eighth or ninth grader. Or teacher or parent. Or rodeo clown or oyster shucker, for that matter. But Nicholas was not far from what was considered normal by the social standards of his place and time, or the judgment of his peers. He couldn’t shoot milk from the corner of his eye, like Nikolai C. Landrew of Oxnard, MI, dousing candles at ten feet; or memorize the serial number of a dollar bill on sight and extract the square root to seventeen decimal places, like Nicole D. Landrew of Harrisburg, PA. On the other hand, neither Nikolai nor Nicole would ever rule the universe, so we will not speak of them again.
Nicholas V. Landrew lived in Yelm, Washington, with his parents. Though, at the moment, he was home alone, thanks to an enormous lie. That lie, itself, became possible thanks to a pair of terrible decisions, which we’ll get to in a moment. As for the parents, Nicholas’s father, who bore a strong resemblance to a bearded John Lennon, and his mother, who bore a startling resemblance to a young and beardless Paul McCartney, formed two fourths of a Beatles tribute/parody group called the Beegles.
They wore beagle masks and sang songs with titles like “I Wanna Shake Your Paw,” “While My Guitar Gently Barks,” and “Yellow Snow Submarine.” (If you find yourself wondering why look-alikes would wear masks, you are not alone. Mr. and Mrs. Landrew, while highly creative, fun loving, and musically talented, were not deep thinkers. They could have used a good manager.) Despite their hopes of capturing the lucrative teen market, their core base of fans were mostly not even preteens but pre-preteens in the four-to-six age range who had absolutely no idea who the Beatles were, and absolutely no clue how clever the Landrews thought they were being by intentionally misspelling their band’s name.
The Beegles were currently on tour in Australia, but Nicholas’s parents kept in touch with him through lengthy voicemails, to which he responded with brief texts. They rarely communicated directly, unless they were in the same room. And not always, even then. Mr. and Mrs. Landrew do not play a major role in what is to come. Beagle faces, on the other hand, do. As do managers. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
As for Nicholas’s face, he shared his parents’ dark hair, which he liked to keep cut fairly short. He had his father’s narrow nose and his mother’s soulful eyes, making him more attractive than he realized. He was two growth spurts away from his adult height, which would put him slightly above average. He weighed no more than ten pounds above average weight for his age, according to the height-weight chart in his doctor’s office, which seemed to be designed for assessing the health of skeletons and stick figures.
It is just as well the elder Landrews were absent. Nicholas had been slapped with a two-week suspension for bringing a light saber to school. It wasn’t a real weapon. It was made of the sort of soft plastic that could do about as much harm to a living creature as a pool noodle. He’d only brought it because he thought the battery-operated whoosh it made would sound awesome in the empty gym. But unlike the plastic light saber itself, the rules against bringing weapons to school were rigid. This was his first terrible decision.
After the gym teacher who’d snagged Nicholas brought him to the office, the principal tried to call his parents.
“They just left for Australia,” Nicholas said. “They’re in the air somewhere, right now.”
“So who’s watching you?” the principal asked.
Two of Nicholas’s relatives, who each lived about twenty miles away, took turns staying at the house when his parents were on tour. Aunt Lucy had been a Marine, now worked as a prison guard, had strict policies against everything Nicholas liked to do, and felt he would benefit from a rigorous jog each morning. Uncle Bruce was a goofball who collected and repaired pinball machines, taught juggling at his local community college, and lived in a house built into the side of a cave. The choice was easy.
Nicholas pulled up Uncle Bruce’s number on his phone and slid it across the desk to the principal.
After a brief discussion, where Nicholas’s crime and punishment were outlined, the principal said, “He wants a word with you,” and handed the phone back.
“Sorry, Uncle Bruce,” Nicholas said. He was pretty sure he wasn’t about to be told to drop to the floor and do fifty push-ups.
“Sounds like a windbag,” his uncle said.
“Yup.” Nicholas fought back a grin. His uncle would probably never mention the suspension to his parents.
“How’d the light saber sound in the gym?” his uncle asked.
“Amazing.”
“I’ll have to try that sometime,” his uncle said. “Hey, I almost forgot. It looks like I’ll be getting there pretty late tonight. Probably way after midnight. Something came up. Are you okay by yourself until then?”
“It’s Aunt Lucy’s turn,” Nicholas said, making his second terrible decision of the day. The lie came so easily, he startled himself. But it made sense. He’d been telling his parents for over a year that he didn’t need a babysitter anymore. He knew he could take care of himself. This was his chance to prove it.
“Excellent!” his uncle said. “This will work out perfectly. One of my teacher friends owns a cabin in the Catskills. He invited me to go hiking and fishing during his spring break. I thought I couldn’t, but now I can. So, I guess I’ll see you next time. Have fun.”
“Oh, I will.” Given that the suspension ended the day before the start of spring break, Nicholas was basically facing three weeks free of the classroom. That was fine with him. He didn’t mind being alone. And he was struggling a little with algebra, despite it being his favorite class of all time. Worst of all, he was flunking French, which was definitely his least favorite class of all time. He’d be happy missing two weeks of that.
While we have little interest in Nicholas’s family, or his education, Nicholas’s gerbil is another matter. Nicholas loved Henrietta. He could talk to her without being judged, and look her in the eye without feeling uncomfortable or awkward. She never made fun of his fondness for cheesy science-fiction films, or his taste in clothing. She never questioned his enthusiasm for squirting ketchup on his potato chips. And she never mocked his inability to tell even the simplest joke without messing up the punch line. This made her unique among his acquaintances and small circle of friends.
Then, during the third week of Nicholas’s solitary stretch, Henrietta vanished.
Poof! (A sound that never, in the entire history of vanishings, has ever actually been made. An authentic vanishing sound, created as air rushed in to fill the void, would be more along the lines of schwupf, fwomph, or smafbap.)
Had Nicholas not been there to see the laser-bright flash of purple light that accompanied Henrietta’s disappearance, he naturally would have assumed she’d flattened her body enough to escape beneath the door of her cage and then scrambled off in search of greener pastures. Or, at least, greener nuggets of gerbil chow. Nicholas might have searched and mourned. He even might have created a LOST GERBIL poster and papered the neighborhood with copies, enhancing the suspicion among some of the more elderly residents of his neighborhood that there was something just a little bit odd about that Landrew boy. But he never would have known Henrietta had been abducted by aliens.
His hand reflexively went to his shirt pocket, where Henrietta liked to nestle when he took her out of his room. She wasn’t there. After staring at the empty cage for a minute or so, as if an unexplained disappearance might magically become balanced, like an algebraic expression, by an unexplained appearance (along with a resounding foop), Nicholas slid the door of the cage up, reached through the opening, and explored the bedding. He noticed a warmth to the cedar shavings right at the spot where he’d last seen Henrietta, which meant she’d been there until very recently.
Copyright © 2019 by David Lubar
Reader’s guide copyright © 2019 by Tor Books
The Clone Conspiracy excerpt copyright © 2019 by David Lubar
