“Hey, Boov!” I shouted on my return. I could see him under the car, banging away. The car, I should mention, now sported three extra antennas. The holes in the windows were somehow not there anymore. There were tubes and hoses connecting certain parts of the car to certain other parts of the car, and a few of what I can only describe as fins. These appeared to be made from metal the Boov had salvaged from the convenience store. One of them showed a picture of a frozen drink and the word “Slushious.”
There was an open toolbox, and the tools were everywhere, all of them strange.
“This seems like an awful lot of trouble for one flat tire,” I said.
The Boov stuck out his head.
“Flat tire?”
I stared back blankly for a second, then walked around to the other side. The tire was still flat.
“The car, it should to hover much better now!” he called happily.
“Hover?” I answered. “Hover better? It didn’t hover at all before!”
“Hm,” the Boov said, looking down. “So this is why the wheels are so dirty.”
“Probably.”
“Sooo, it did to roll?”
“Yes,” I said crisply. “It rolled. On the ground.”
The Boov thought about this for a long few seconds.
“But…how did it to roll with this flat tire?”
I dropped the basket and sat down. “It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“Well,” the Boov replied. “It will to hover wicked good now. I used parts fromto my own vehicle.”
He startled me at this point, the way he said “wicked.” It was slang. Something I didn’t expect him to use. And it wasn’t even popular slang. Nobody said it anymore. Nobody but my mom, and sometimes me. I guess it made me think of Mom, and I guess it made me a little angry.
“Eat your dental floss, Boov,” I said, and kicked him the basket. He seemed to think nothing of it, and did as I said, sucking up strings of floss like spaghetti.
“You do not to say it right,” he said finally.
“Say what?”
“‘Boov.’ The way you says it, it is too short. You must to draw it out, like as a long breath. ‘Bo-o-ov.’”
After a moment I swallowed my anger and gave it a try.
“Booov.”
“No. Bo-o-ov.”
“Bo-o-o-o-ov.”
The Boov frowned. “Now you sound like sheep.”
I shook my head. “Fine. So what’s your name? I’ll call you that.”
“Ah, no,” the Boov replied. “For humansgirl to correctly be pronouncing my name, you would need two heads. But, as a human name, I have to chosen ‘J.Lo.’”
I stifled a laugh. “J.Lo? Your Earth name is J.Lo?”
“Ah-ah,” J.Lo corrected. “Not ‘Earth.’ ‘Smekland.’”
“What do you mean, ‘Smekland’?”
“That is the thing what we have named this planet. Smekland. As to tribute to our glorious leader, Captain Smek.”
“Wait.” I shook my head. “Whoa. You can’t just rename the planet.”
“Peoples who discover places gets to name it.”
“But it’s called Earth. It’s always been called Earth.”
J.Lo smiled condescendingly. I wanted to hit him.
“You humans live too much in the pasttime. We did land onto Smekland a long time ago.”
“You landed last Christmas!”
“Ah-ah. Not ‘Christmas.’ ‘Smekday.’”
“Smekday?”
“Smekday.”
So anyway, that was how I learned the true meaning of Smekday. This Boov named J.Lo told me. The Boov didn’t like us celebrating our holidays, so they replaced them all with new ones. Christmas was renamed after Captain Smek, their leader, who had discovered a New World for the Boov, which was Earth. I mean Smekland.
Whatever. The End.
Gratuity—
Interesting style overall, but I’m afraid you didn’t really fulfill the assignment. When the judges from the National Time Capsule Committee read our stories, they’ll be looking for what Smekday means to us, not to the aliens. Remember: the capsule will be dug up a hundred years from now, and the people of the future won’t know what it was like to live during the invasion. If your essay wins the contest, they’ll be reading it to find that out.
Perhaps if you began before the Boov came? There is still some time to rework your composition before the contest entries need to be sent. If you’d like to try again, I’ll consider it for extra credit.
Grade: C+
Gratuity Tucci
Daniel Landry Middle School
8th Grade
THE TRUE MEANING OF SMEKDAY
PART 2:
-or-
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boov
Okay. Starting before the Boov came.
I guess I really need to begin almost two years ago. This was when my mom got the mole on her neck. This was when she was abducted.
I didn’t see it happen, naturally. That’s how it is with these things. Nobody ever gets abducted at a football game, or at church, or right after Kevin Frompky knocks all your books out of your hands between classes and everybody’s looking and laughing and you have no choice but to sock him in the eye.
Or whatever.
No, people always get abducted while they’re driving on empty highways late at night, or from their bedrooms while they’re sleeping, and they’re returned before anyone knows they’re gone. I know this; I’ve checked.
That’s how it was for Mom. She burst into my room one morning, wild-eyed, hair a fright, and told me to look at her neck.
I blinked away sleep and stared where she pointed. I did this without question, because it had only been days since she’d woken me to say that Tom Jones was on the morning show, or that the paper had a “wicked good coupon” for dress shields.
“What am I looking at?” I said blearily.
“The mole,” Mom said. “The mole!”
I looked. There was certainly a mole, brown and wrinkly, like a bubble on a pizza. It was right in the middle of the neck, on her backbone.
“’Sfantastic,” I said, yawning. “Good mole.”
“You don’t understand,” Mom said, turning; and the look in her eye made me wake up a little. “It was put there! Last night!”
I blinked a couple of times.
“By the aliens!” she finished frantically.
I was so awake now. I looked closer. I poked it with my finger.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to touch it,” Mom said quickly, and jerked away. “I feel really veryvery strongly that you shouldn’t touch it.”