Danny Flash and the Alien Crash

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It's an odd thing to find yourself in a grocery store, shopping for all kinds of fruit, after just being chased by government drones that want to hurt you. But that is exactly what we were doing and where we were. I had taken the bags of coins and loose dollar bills and put them into a shopping cart that we rolled around, with its one loose, squeaky wheel, occasionally shooting the cart off in the wrong direction. We made circles around the few stands where the fruit stood, looking and examining each item and checking things off the list as we found them. Three different types of apples, two different types of oranges. Grapes. Strawberries with their seeds on the outside. Blueberries. Raspberries. Boysenberries. Huckleberries. Marion berries. Pears. Peaches. Nectarines. Avocados. Tomatoes.

As we piled the fruit up in the cart, it appeared to be far too much for the little alien's spaceship. However, I tried to imagine just the seeds of each of the fruits. The tiny berries with their even tinier seeds would be the easiest to stow away. The avocados and peaches, those with pits in the middle instead of seeds, would be the hardest, and there would be only a precious few of those that the alien could bring along.

I pulled my pocketknife out and cut off tiny bits of some of the flesh of the fruit for my little alien friend to taste. He seemed to especially like the mango and star fruit. The mango, of course, posed the problem of having a large flat seed, which you'd have to strap inside the ship, against the wall. The mango seed itself must have been at least one-fourth the size of the ship. But he really liked it, and so I bought two. As we made our way to the counter and placed the abundance of fruit on the conveyor belt, the clerk gave us a sideways glance.

"Having a party," she asked, without any enthusiasm.

"Yeah," I stammered back, "We're having a tasting party... a fruit tasting party."

"Uh-huh," the clerk responded, checking one item out at a time, stopping at the star fruit, holding it in her hand, almost as if she was weighing it with her palm.

"You guys really got one of everything, didn't you?" She asked.

"Well, it's a party!" I said, trying to sound humorous, but coming across more sarcastic, than I would have liked. She sensed that we were up to something. I'm not sure what she thought we were up to, as I'm sure she couldn't possibly guess that we were buying every seed variety that we could get our hands on, in order for our little alien friend to have enough seeds to bring back to planet "what-ever it's called." I'm sure she was nowhere near guessing that. She bagged all of our fruit up. Andrew and I each grabbed a large paper bag with our best "have-a-nice-day," smiles, and brought it outside. We walked around to the back of the store and sat down on the curb.

"Alright," I said. "I guess now we gotta' eat this to get the seeds out."

"I want to try the star fruit," Annabelle said.

"In a second," I shot back. I tried to pluck the seeds off the strawberries, but I had no luck. They were stuck on there good, and every one I tried to pull off, bits of strawberry flesh came off with it, and turned into an ooey-gooey mess. I cut open a blueberry and tried to remove the seeds as well, but the inside mush was so great, that I just ended up with globs of stickiness. I couldn't tell where the seed ended and the mush began. I plopped the destroyed blueberry in my mouth and licked my fingers.

"This is harder than I though it would be," I said. I ate a peach. I cut the star fruit open and gave some to my sister. The seeds of the star fruit are a bit easier to extract. I cut open the avocado and spooned out the seed. I cut open a pineapple and realized I couldn't find any seeds at all. Turns out those seeds are located just under the skin of the fruit, but usually cannot be found in the store bought varieties. So much for that lost money.

By the end of it we were completely stuffed with fruit and had a mess of seeds. They were very difficult to tell apart. I wasn't feeling that our plan was off to a great start. I looked at the sticky mess we had created.

"What if we went about this all wrong?" I asked, between bites of mango. "What if we should have gone to a seed store, instead of a grocery store?"

"That's probably a good idea," Andrew said. "But do we have any money left to go to a seed store?"

"Not really," I said. "Unless..."

"Unless, what?" Annabelle asked.

"I might have an idea," I said, wiping the dripping juice from my chin. "But you're not going to like it. Come to my house tomorrow morning."

"But it's Saturday." Andrew started to protest.

"Exactly," I shot back. I knew Andew loved staying in on Saturday mornings and watching cartoons, but this was far more important, and we all knew it.