Danny Flash and the Alien Crash

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

My house was eerily quiet when we walked up into the front yard, the soft grass squishing beneath our feet. I surveyed the windows, peeked around the edges of the home, looking for any signs that some of the men might have stayed behind, lingering, waiting to catch us. There were no such signs. The house looked like an ordinary quiet house on an ordinary quiet day. Although I knew this was not the case. This was no ordinary day. What was ordinary about having your sister and your little alien friend -- which I admit already to begin with it wasn't ordinary to have a little alien friend, but let's say that it was -- what would be so ordinary about having both of those two people-- or person and thing-- taken from you by a man with a mole, who's really not nice? Nothing is ordinary about that! Nothing; that's what!

I motioned with my hand for Penny and Andrew to follow me, though they probably didn't need instructions. I turned the handle. The front door was unlocked. I opened it gently, as if I was unlocking an ancient tomb. Everything appeared perfectly normal. Things were right where we had left them. The table with the runner along the middle. The hooks to hang the backpacks. The paintings on the wall. Everything seemed perfect. In fact, if anything was different, it was just that the house was a little too perfect, as if no one had even lived in it before, like a showroom house.

"Mom? Dad?" I let my voice ring out through the home, trying to convey confidence in the situation. I could feel Penny's eyes on me. I looked over at her. She gave me a half smile. Penny walked past me and started to go up the stairs.

"Where are you going?" I asked. I took a few steps to chase her, but ended up knocking over one of my father's prized 1930's wooden figurines.

"I'm searching the house," Penny shot back, without turning around. She was determined, focused, moved up the stairs with purpose. I looked down at the wooden figurine, and scooped it up to return it to it's place on the side table.

"Ahhh..." I said, suddenly fearful that she was going to waltz right into my room and see what a slob I was, and at how my father would react once he saw this, now broken, figurine.

"Andrew?" I shot out as a question, hoping he could pick up the subtle meaning, which was, "can you please stop her from going into my room, so that she doesn't discover that I'm a slob?"

"On it," Andrew shot back. For a moment I was relieved as I thought, "Wow, he really is my best friend if he could get all that from one simple--" Andrew took off running in the opposite direction, searching the living room.

"Oh goodness," I said to myself. I followed Penny up the stairs. By the time I made it to the top of the stairs Penny was halfway down the hallway, having shot open doors and searched rooms.

She opened up the bathroom door, just one door away from my own.

"Ah, I'll check that last one," I said. I ran up past her, and opened up the door to my bedroom. Penny poked her head in behind me.

"All clear," she said.

"That's just my-- This is just my... my, ah... It's my room." I said.

"I can see that," she answered back.

"How can you see that?" I asked.

"It's the messiest," she answered back, as if that wasn't the most embarrassing thing anyone had ever said to me, in my whole entire life!

"I, um..."

"Guys!" Andrew's voice shot up the stairs, like my mother's had just the morning before. Penny turned and ran down the stairs. I struggled to keep up. We ran into the back of the dining room, which had a sliding glass door into the backyard. Andrew stood staring out under the patio, and there, sitting calmly, drinking iced tea, were my mother and father, completely unaware of the mess we were currently in.