The Brain Invaders

Chapter 9

The entire bus ride to the mall, Cassie talked about the dance. What she should wear. If she should wear her hair up or down. If she should go with Sean or hold out for Josh. Again, I told her I thought Sean was the better choice. He's nicer; I didn’t lie about that. He’s always been nicer, even before Josh changed.

 I envied Cassie in a way. She was oblivious to everything going on around her. I wasn’t. She lived in a fantasy. I lived in a horrible reality. The most important thing in her world, besides dealing with her jerk of a dad, was the last dance of the year. Seemed really lame to me considering there were sea slugs taking over people’s brains. I tried to sound excited for her but she knows me too well.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked as we got off the bus. “Did you even hear a word I said?”

“Of course. I heard everything.”

“Well, you didn’t say much,” Cassie said.

“It was hard to get a word in.” I watched the boy in the Nike sweats get off the bus and head for the arcade.

I looked at Cassie and she gave me her puppy pout. The one where her bottom lip covers half of her upper lip and she tilts her head slightly and huffs softly.

“Look, Cass. I get that the dance is important to you. I get that you want Josh to ask you. But he hasn’t and it’s only a few days away. Go with Sean. You can go with Josh the next time.”

“What if there’s no next time?”

“There will be.”

“Think so?”

“Yeah. Now, pizza.”

The food court was crowded. There must have been something special at the mall because there were tons of little kids running around with red balloons that said “Healthy Kids.”  There was irony in that because most of them were eating chicken nuggets and fries.

We grabbed one of the round tables next to a family of four eating Chinese. Cassie got a slice of pepperoni and I got my favorite, vegetable pizza.

I didn’t have much of an appetite, though. I couldn’t stop thinking about the young girl they caught spying. That could have been me. I could have one of those disgusting, hideous things in my head, controlling my brain. 

“Are you sure you’re all right,” Cassie asked.

“Guess I’m not very hungry.”

“You! Not hungry for vegetable pizza! You must not be feeling well.”

Cassie was right. I usually inhale vegetable pizza.

“Yeah. Guess I’m still not feeling 100 percent yet.”

I knew I had to get my mind off the sea slugs. “So, what are you going to do your report on?”

Cassie was on the ocean unit in science class and had to pick a form of marine life to write about.   

Cassie took the last bite of her crust and a sip of soda. “Well, I was going to do the crab because I like how they shed their shells. It’s kind of neat and all. Thing is, Wei got to pick before me and he also wanted the crab, so he got it.”

“Everyone had to do something different?” I asked.

“Yeah. There wasn’t much left to choose from by the time it was my turn.”

 “So what’d you end up with?”

“Stupid sea snakes.”

For the second time that night I coughed and spewed a mouthful. Thank God Cassie was finished eating because my spit went everywhere.

Cassie backed her chair away from the table. “Alex! That’s twice tonight.”

I stood up. “Sorry, Cass.”

“What’s so odd about me doing my report on sea snakes anyway?”

“Ugh, nothing really. Other than you hate snakes. Even rubber ones. Remember in fourth grade when Jack put one in your desk? You went berserk in the middle of math class.”

“How could I forget? It was an April Fool’s joke.”

“But you got him back and good.”

Cassie smiled. “True.”

Jack lived beside Cassie and when he was out sick one day, his mom called the school to have his homework sent home with Cassie. Cassie told him he had to do five more math problems than the teacher had assigned. He did them and was so mad the next day in class when he learned he did all of that extra work for nothing.

We cleaned off our table and headed to the movie theater, which is next to the mall in a separate building. I tried to sound perkier. “What are we going to see anyway?”

 We had talked about two different movies and I didn’t care either way.

 “How about, ‘I thought I Knew You?’”

The romantic comedy did get some good reviews. It was about guy and girl who were best friends and end up together after a series of other relationships.

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

 We got in line to buy our tickets. By the time I got to the window, my stomach was killing me. The clerk was one of them.