School Nathaniel Hardman (the best ebook reader for android txt) 📖

Suzy wasn’t sure what this was all about, and because of yesterday’s fiasco, her confidence in Ushegg was low, but when he opened the book, she had a surprise.

“Nice!” Jeff breathed out next to her. The book was full of beautifully detailed black-and-white illustrations.

The first picture was of a dragon fly, the second of a butterfly, the third of a bird like a hawk. There was one picture per page, with the facing page covered in script.

Ushegg flipped through it more quickly than Suzy would have liked. It was like running through a monster zoo – the weird animal images flashing past – monkey-ish, lizard-ish, garden gnome-ish, mouse-ish.

Once or twice Ushegg stopped to read something. They came to a picture of a stone caterpillar, and Ushegg grinned at both of them, as if they would appreciate this. Suzy scowled.

Ushegg moved on, scanning the pictures, occasionally going to the words for clarity. He kept flipping pages until they reached the end, where a dragon fly breathed fire, the image magnified to fill the whole page. It seemed awfully fierce and stylized for a little fly.

Ushegg looked up with a puzzled frown at Qush Yurwush, who had just come back in. “None of these ggor xuyuchishx. How did Tuynomosh tsherc them here?” he asked, pointing with a thumb at Jeff and Suzy.

The teacher shook his head, his expression troubled. “I don’t know. Tuynomosh joz kiars ziqunerc, siru ziqujxerc, rub.” They talked some more, and while Suzy didn’t get most of the words, she thought she got the gist:  Ushegg was asking their question – how had they come here (or how would they go back). And Yurwush’s answer was bad; he didn’t know how it could be done; this was something new.

As they walked out to meet the other kids and join in the morning kixtoy game before school, Suzy was troubled. The game was good, and it was a good day of school afterward. Suzy figured out why there was so much interest in the jade stones when Yurwush showed the class how to scoop out the black innards and knead them into the ground around their wand trees.

“That’s why there’s so much jade around the city!” Jeff whispered. “They use magic they get from these caterpillars.” Then a minute later, “Holy crap! That’s what they did to Mr. McArthur.”

Suzy just nodded and tried not to gag as she fertilized her new wand tree, chanting quietly, “Yuoshr xi zxiru,” as she had been taught. But her mind was elsewhere.

He teaches magic, she kept thinking, How can he not know how we got here?

THIRTY

Jeff was quiet, walking back to school between Ushegg and Suzy. His feet dragged.

Yet another day of alien school finished with no new clues about how to get home. He knew how his classmates would look at him when he walked in – the disappointment, the bitterness. They wouldn’t look at Suzy that way; between starting the dictionary and getting Ushegg’s dad to give them food, she had become the hero of the class – of the whole SCHOOL, from the awed looks and whispers Jeff had noticed from other classes when they met at the outhouses.

But they would glare at Jeff. Why did I have to tell everyone my wand would be our ticket back to Earth? He needed something to distract his classmates, take their mind off of his failure.

“Hey Ushegg,” Jeff said, as the boy was turning to leave them in the courtyard. “Come…with me. With Suzy…” he looked at Suzy. “What’s the word for ‘us’?”

“Az.” Suzy supplied.

Jeff turned back to Ushegg. “Come with us.”

Jeff could tell something was different when he walked into the classroom, but it took him a minute to register what. “Tanesha!” Suzy called out next to him. The girl was sitting on a desk near the back of the room. She smiled and straightened out her leg to show it was no longer broken.

“When did you get back?” Jeff asked.

“Just a few minutes ago,” Tanesha said.

“She says they gave her tons of food in the hospital,” Prithi griped.

“Yep,” Tanesha gloated. “And not just oatmeal, either.”

As the class clamored around Tanesha asking for details, Jeff became aware that Ushegg was holding back for once, keeping close to the door and avoiding looking at Tanesha.

Also ignoring the press around Tanesha, Peter was sitting at a desk picking at one of the many scabs on his face. Ushegg noticed, shook his head, and said, mostly to himself, “What gers of quirguth cuxz daeyus?”

“What was that?” Shen asked loudly. The class quieted. Shen repeated in alien, “Say again, please.”

Ushegg squirmed. Then when he finally responded, Jeff barely understood a word. He looked at Shen, who was frowning contemplatively. “Say again.” Jeff said.

It took a while to make sense of what Ushegg was saying, but Jeff finally gathered that Ushegg had assumed they would all be magically invulnerable to porcupine squirrels.

“Why would you think that?!” Suzy burst out, “I mean – byth thia…” she struggled for a second before giving up and repeating, “Byth?!”

Ushegg, squirming even more under all of their accusing looks, said, “None of you buosh tuosz.” He shook the beads around his neck on the last word for emphasis. That led to more questions, and more confusing responses, until finally Ushegg said, “I’ll wib you.”

He picked up a pencil and gave it to Jeff, then said, “Nshib it at me.” He made throwing motions, so Jeff gently lobbed it at him. A couple of inches before the pencil reached Ushegg, it rebounded and dropped to the floor. Ushegg smiled at the chorus of murmurs from the class. He was warming up now.

Next, the alien boy removed his beaded necklace and held it out to Jeff, who hesitantly put it on.