Game Over

Chapter 44





THEY SAY THE best way to recover from a tragedy is to throw yourself back into regular life. And since the only regular thing I know to do in this life is hunt bad aliens, that’s exactly what I did.

At 8:20 a.m. I was on my way back to school to have one last meeting with Kildare. I couldn’t shake my hunch that he was part of the solution, not the problem. And the alternative—waving the white flag and leaving Japan like my father wanted me to—just wasn’t in the cards. Especially not after I’d learned that Number 7 and Number 8 weren’t a couple steps away from having the human race destroy itself; they were one step away. And not after I’d just let the last living Pleionid get eaten by some nameless, faceless, game-obsessed alien beast.

As it turned out, though, I didn’t have to get all the way back to school to find Kildare. Three blocks away from the main entrance, I just about collided with him as he rounded a corner on his bicycle.

“Hey,” I said as he skidded to a stop. His eyes were red and puffy.

“Oh, Daniel, hey.”

“Want to give me a lift the rest of the way?” I asked. “I could sit on the rack.”

“I’m not going to school,” he blurted. “My father won’t let me go anymore.”

“Your dad is actually forbidding you to go to school? What is he—like, the Anti-Dad?”

He started to say something but clamped his mouth shut before it could get out. The pain in his eyes said it all.

“Well, small world,” I quipped, trying to cheer him up. “I’m having a crapalicious day, too.”

He nodded and tried to smile, but the poor guy was starting to shake.

“Hey,” I said, “I know just the thing.”

“You’re going to go make my father change his mind?”

“Better than that. You and I are going to take one of the most important courses of study that school offers.”

“But I told you, my dad’s not letting me go.”

“This is an off-campus course.”

He looked at me skeptically. “Oh yeah? What’s it called?”

“Introduction to…hooky.”