School by Nathaniel Hardman (top reads .TXT) 📕

Ignoring the humans, the guards went back to the stones now, lifting them in their shirts. They looked like a bunch of pregnant Voldemorts, arms around their bulging middles, waddling under the weight.

There were more stones than guards, and now the aliens started pointing from the kids to the remaining six segments of jade caterpillar that lay bloodily on the ground. This time, everyone protested.

Again, Ushegg spoke up. Jeff didn’t quite grasp what his friend was trying to say, but it seemed that the stones were valuable – valuable to the humans – and they needed to be brought back.

And so, with much grumbling and protest, they loaded up. The girls unanimously refused to carry the “pieces of...body parts of...smashed up...rock bug monster,” as Paola put it. So the boys each struggled a stone up into their shirts, and the girls were left to carry Tanesha.

First, Suzy and Jada each hooked an elbow under Tanesha’s armpits and tried to help her up onto her good foot. She managed a few hops with her arms around her friends, but then she shook her head and gasped out, “No, no. It hurts too much.”

Tanesha lay down on the ground, and all the girls surrounded her, grabbed at legs, belt loops, and head, and made an awkward, lopsided, halting attempt to lift her. She let loose an alarming string of profanity and twisted her body around, and they dropped her.

More profanity, and louder.

Prithi spoke up suddenly. “Look, you just hold hands and arms like this,” she demonstrated with Zoe, clasping forearms. “That’s how you catch in cheer. Just pair up under her,” she pointed to each of Tanesha’s sides, “and we can carry her flat.”

It kind of confirmed Jeff’s feelings about cheerleaders and language skills, but he had to admit, as they lifted Tanesha with surprising grace and ease, it worked.

Rain began to fall as they made their miserable way back to the city, struggling under the burdens of the jade segments and the girl who cried out pitifully at every jostle. Jeff was hungry and tired, and they hadn’t even collected any of the fruits.

Ahead of Jeff, Peter paused as he passed one of the spiny squirrels so common in this part of the forest, apparently watching him from where it perched on the trunk of a tree. Peter, said, “What are YOU looking at?” and stamped his foot at the squirrel. With a snap of its tail, it spun and bounded up the tree. And Peter started screaming.

For a second, Jeff thought the boy was just being a dork, trying to intimidate the squirrel more. Then he saw the quills sticking out of his face, saw the way his hands were shakily trying to pull them out.

They weren’t coming out.

Peter’s screams turned to crying now and swearing worse than Tanesha’s. He pulled, but it just pulled his cheek out like a sheet of elastic.

Ushegg started yelling something, his tone incredulous, angry, and apologetic, all at once. He kept saying something about “quirguthz.”

A part of Jeff wanted to make a joke, but today had been too much. He huddled in the drizzling rain and had no joke to make as one of the guards approached Peter with a grim expression and a very sharp-looking knife.

TWENTY NINE

Ushegg’s little wooden wagon clattered along the cobbled street, and the jade stones, smeared and crusted with dry blood, rolled and clacked against each other. It seemed very loud to Suzy, especially in the quiet of the morning when the streets were mostly empty.

Ushegg had come to collect them early that day, saying he wanted to talk to Yurwush before school. For once, it had felt like there were no jealous looks from the others, no resentment. No one was eager to leave the school with the memory of Peter’s and Tanesha’s screams still fresh in their minds.

Suzy grimaced at the memory. So much blood. She hoped Tanesha was okay.

“We go... Tanesha...after school?” she asked again in halting Alien.

“Yes, yes,” Ushegg waved dismissively. “She’s keru. Don’t bishth.”

They had left the girl at a big, unusually open home with an alien Ushegg might have been calling a doctor. He had taken two of the jade stones as payment, and they had left Tanesha – abandoned her, Suzy couldn’t help thinking – in his care.

Suzy kept seeing in her mind the way Tanesha had clutched at Jada’s hand, the way she kept pleading for them to stay a little longer. Suzy hated it. And she wanted to kick Ushegg for causing it all.

To make matters worse, the word he had given them for “switch” – “zbexvu” – had done nothing when they tried it last night.

At the school, Ushegg had them wait outside the school with the wagon, and he went in to talk to the teacher. Suzy could see Yurwush through the shutters, setting up the classroom.

Suzy said, “Why do you think these things are so valuable?”

“I don’t know,” Jeff said. “Maybe they eat the stuff inside?”

“Eugh,” Suzy shuddered.

“Maybe that’ll be our lunch today,” Jeff said, grinning.

“Ew. Jeff, don’t be...”

Qush Yurwush came out then, and at the sight of the jade stones, a look of mixed delight and disbelief lit up his face. Suzy wasn’t sure she had ever seen the teacher smile before.

After a few words with Ushegg and an unusually respectful nod to each of the humans, Qush Yurwush began to wheel Ushegg’s wagon into the school.

“Qush Yurwush?” Ushegg said. The teacher turned expectantly. “Can we yig at the book of quocegg orequoyz?”

Yurwush frowned, but then he nodded. “Be ggoshukay,” he said, and took the wagon through the door into the wand courtyard.

Ushegg led the way into the classroom and over to the bookshelf where he pulled out a leather-bound volume. He set it down on