Akiko on the Planet Smoo Read online

  For my father and mother,

  Robert and Virginia Crilley

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Copyright

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book would not have been possible without Robb Horan and Larry Salamone of Sirius Entertainment, who have been publishing my Akiko comic books since 1995. A special thank-you is also due to my editor at Random House Children’s Books, Lawrence David, who has made my transition to the world of juvenile fiction a thoroughly enjoyable experience. And as always I must express deep appreciation to my wife, Miki, whose love and encouragement make every day a joy.

  My name is Akiko. This is the story of the adventure I had a few months ago when I went to the planet Smoo. I know it’s kind of hard to believe, but it really did happen. I swear.

  I’d better go back to the beginning: the day I got the letter.

  It was a warm, sunny day. There were only about five weeks left before summer vacation, and kids at school were already itching to get out. Everybody was talking about how they’d be going to camp, or some really cool amusement park, or whatever. Me, I knew I’d be staying right here in Middleton all summer, which was just fine by me. My dad works at a company where they hardly ever get long vacations, so my mom and I have kind of gotten used to it.

  Anyway, it was after school and my best friend, Melissa, and I had just walked home together as always. Most of the other kids get picked up by their parents or take the bus, but Melissa and I live close enough to walk to school every day. We both live just a few blocks away in this big apartment building that must have been built about a hundred years ago. Actually I think it used to be an office building or something, but then somebody cleaned it up and turned it into this fancy new apartment building. It’s all red bricks and tall windows, with a big black fire escape in the back. My parents say they’d rather live somewhere out in the suburbs, but my dad has to be near his office downtown.

  Melissa lives on the sixth floor but she usually comes up with me to the seventeenth floor after school. She’s got three younger brothers and has to share her bedroom with one of them, so she doesn’t get a whole lot of privacy. I’m an only child and I’ve got a pretty big bedroom all to myself, so that’s where Melissa and I spend a lot of our time.

  On that day we were in my room as usual, listening to the radio and trying our best to make some decent card houses. Melissa was telling me how cool it would be if I became the new captain of the fourth-grade safety patrol.

  “Come on, Akiko, it’ll be good for you,” she said. “I practically promised Mrs. Miller that you’d do it.”

  “Melissa, why can’t somebody else be in charge of the safety patrol?” I replied. “I’m no good at that kind of stuff. Remember what happened when Mrs. Antwerp gave me the lead role in the Christmas show?”

  Melissa usually knows how to make me feel better about things, but even she had to admit last year’s Christmas show was a big disaster.

  “That was different, Akiko,” she insisted. “Mrs. Antwerp had no idea you were going to get stage fright like that.”

  “It was worse than stage fright, Melissa,” I said. “I can’t believe I actually forgot the words to ‘Jingle Bells.’ ”

  “This isn’t the Christmas show,” she said. “You don’t have to memorize any words to be in charge of the safety patrol.” She was carefully beginning the third floor of a very ambitious card house she’d been working on for about half an hour.

  “Why can’t I just be a member of the safety patrol?” I asked her.

  “Because Mrs. Miller needs a leader,” she said. “I’d do it, but I’m already in charge of the softball team.”

  And I knew Melissa meant it, too. She’d be in charge of everything at school if she could. Me, I prefer to let someone else be the boss. Sure, there are times when I wish I could be the one who makes all the decisions and tells everybody else what to do. I just don’t want to be the one who gets in trouble when everything goes wrong.

  “Besides,” Melissa continued, “it would be a great way for you to meet Brendan Fitzpatrick. He’s in charge of the boys’ safety patrol.” One thing about Melissa: No matter what kind of conversation you have with her, one way or another you end up talking about boys.

  “What makes you so sure I want to meet Brendan Fitzpatrick?” The card house I’d been working on had completely collapsed, and I was trying to decide whether it was worth the trouble to start a new one.

  “Trust me, Akiko,” she said with a big grin, “everyone wants to meet Brendan Fitzpatrick.”

  “I don’t even like him,” I said, becoming even more anxious to change the subject.

  “How can you not like him?” she asked, genuinely puzzled. “He’s one of the top five cute guys in the fourth grade.”

  “I can’t believe you actually have a list of who’s cute and who isn’t.”

  That was when my mom knocked on my door. (I always keep the door shut when Melissa’s over. I never know when she’s going to say something I don’t want my mom to hear.)

  “Akiko, you got something in the mail,” she said, handing me a small silvery envelope.

  She stared at me with this very curious look in her eyes. I don’t get letters very often. “Are you sure you don’t want this door open?” she asked. “It’s kind of stuffy in here.”

  “Thanks, Mom. Better keep it closed.”

  It was all I could do to keep Melissa from snatching the letter from me once my mom was out of sight. She kept stretching out her hands all over the place like some kind of desperate basketball player, but I kept twisting away, holding the envelope against my chest with both my hands so she couldn’t get at it.

  “It’s from a boy, isn’t it? I knew it, I knew it!” she squealed, almost chasing me across the room.

  “Melissa, this is not from a boy,” I said, turning my back to get a closer look at the thing. My name was printed on the front in shiny black lettering, like it had been stamped there by a machine. The envelope was made out of a thick, glossy kind of paper I’d never seen before. There was no stamp and no return address. Whoever sent the thing must have just walked up and dropped it in our mailbox.

  “Go on! Open it up!” Melissa exclaimed, losing patience.

  I was just about to, when I noticed something printed on the back of the envelope:

  TO BE READ BY AKIKO AND NO ONE ELSE

  “Um, Melissa, I think this is kind of private,” I said, bracing myself. I knew she wasn’t going to take this very well.

  “What?” She tried again to get the envelope out of my hands. “Akiko, I can’t believe you. We’re best friends!”

  I thought it over for a second and realized that it wasn’t worth the weeks of badgering I’d get if I didn’t let her see the thing.

  “All right, all right. But you have to promise not to tell anyone else. I could get in trouble for this.”

  I carefully tore the envelope open. Inside was a single sheet of paper with that same shiny bl
ack lettering:

  And that’s all it said. It wasn’t signed, and there was nothing else written on the other side.

  “Outside my window? On the seventeenth floor?”

  “It’s got to be a joke.” Melissa had taken the paper out of my hands and was inspecting it closely. “I think it is from someone at school. Probably Jimmy Hampton. His parents have a printing press in their basement or something.”

  “Why would he go to so much trouble to play a joke on me?” I said. “He doesn’t even know me.” I had this strange feeling in my stomach. I went over to the window and made sure it was locked.

  “Boys are weird,” Melissa replied calmly. “They do all kinds of things to get your attention.”

  Later that night, after Melissa had gone home, my dad sat at the little table in our kitchen reading the newspaper while my mom and I made dinner. Dad was still wearing the necktie he’d worn to the office that day, and every once in a while he’d reach up and loosen it a little.

  Mom was telling me about these women she’d had tea with that afternoon. She described in great detail what everyone had been wearing and which stores she thought they’d got the clothes from. Even though I’m not very interested in that kind of stuff, I usually try to pay attention. But that night all I could think about was the letter and what it had said. I looked at the clock on the stove. It was just a little after seven o’clock.

  Dinner that night was pretty ordinary. Ordinary for me, I should say. See, my parents were both born in Japan, so we eat a lot of things that most Americans wouldn’t go anywhere near: seaweed, raw fish, all kinds of weird stuff. Of course, I’ve been eating Japanese food since I was a baby, so I’m used to it. I don’t even bother inviting Melissa to eat with us anymore, though. We tried that once and I don’t think there was a single thing on the whole table that she liked. She probably made her mom cook her a whole new meal once she got back down to the sixth floor.

  So it was just me and my parents that night, as usual, eating a dinner of baked salmon and white rice. Of course, I didn’t know then that it would be the last meal I’d have on Earth for about two weeks. Otherwise I think I’d have eaten more. As it was, I sort of picked at my food and did my best to look like I was eating. The more I thought about the letter the more nervous I got, and it kind of made me lose my appetite. I looked at the clock on the wall to see what time it was. It was already seven-thirty.

  I almost got through the whole meal without my mom asking me any questions. Almost.

  “So who was that letter from, Akiko?” she asked, heading into the kitchen for more rice.

  “Letter?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

  I glanced at my dad. He had the sports section of the newspaper folded up small enough to hold with one hand and was reading it while he slowly chewed and swallowed his food.

  “Yes,” my mother said, “that letter I gave you today. It looked like something pretty important.”

  “Oh, that letter. Um, that was from a kid at school named Jimmy Hampton. He was inviting me to his, uh, birthday party or something. . . .” I probably shouldn’t have lied about the letter, but I’d already broken the rule about not letting anyone else read it. Somehow it seemed like I was supposed to keep this whole thing a secret. The fact is I still had no idea where that letter came from or what it was all about, and I didn’t feel like trying to explain it to my parents.

  “That’s marvelous!” my mother said, beaming, as she came back from the kitchen. “It’s been a long time since you got invited to someone’s birthday. We’ll have to get you something nice to wear.”

  “Actually I . . . I don’t really want to go,” I explained. “Jimmy Hampton’s kind of a strange kid, and Melissa didn’t get invited, so I wouldn’t have anyone to talk to anyway.” That’s the problem with telling a lie: You have to make up all these other lies just to get people to believe you.

  My dad handed his empty rice bowl to my mom, making her get up and go to the kitchen all over again.

  “There’s nothing wrong with going to a party by yourself, Akiko,” she called back to me. “You need to get out more.” My mom’s always trying to get me to make more friends. She knows that Melissa is the only friend I have, and I think she’s worried that I’m not very popular at school. Which I’m not. But there are advantages to not being popular. For one thing, you hardly ever have to be in charge of anything.

  “Dad, can I be excused?”

  I don’t think my dad had really been listening to the conversation. He looked at me, then looked at my plate. My mom handed him his newly refilled bowl of rice, and he immediately popped some of it into his mouth with his chopsticks.

  “All right,” he mumbled. “But no TV tonight. You’ve got a geology test tomorrow, right?”

  “Geography.”

  “Hm. That’s too bad. I think a geology test would be a lot more interesting.” My dad’s kind of weird. He’s pretty quiet most of the time, but when he does talk, he’s always making some kind of weird joke. He’s a really cool dad, though. He doesn’t make me do a lot of things I don’t want to do, like play sports or take piano lessons.

  “Don’t worry, Dad. I’m going straight to my room.” It was around seven-forty-five. I didn’t see how anyone was actually going to come to my window at eight, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Just before I closed my bedroom door, though, I overheard my parents talking in the kitchen.

  “When I was her age I practically lived with my friends.” That’s something my mom says a lot.

  “Your daughter’s just not a socialite, dear. We can’t force her to have a big circle of friends. Besides, she seems pretty happy to me.”

  “I know. I just think she’d be a lot happier if she got out of her room once in a while.”

  Pacing back and forth in my bedroom, I had one more look at the letter. It was a little scary that there weren’t any stamps on the envelope. That meant that the person who wrote it knew exactly where I lived and had actually been here earlier in the day to deliver the letter in person.

  “ ‘Outside your bedroom window . . .’ ” I kept repeating the words to myself. “ ‘At eight o’clock.’ ” It just didn’t make any sense.

  I sat down on my bed and looked at the clock on my nightstand. It said 7:59. I found myself watching the second hand slowly go around until it reached the top. When it did, and kept moving past without anything strange or miraculous happening, I felt a strange mixture of relief and disappointment. Mainly because it meant I’d finally have to start studying for that stupid geography test.

  I couldn’t help it, though. I got up and went over to the window and looked outside. The sun had already gone down, and the streetlights were just coming on. There was nothing but the same old building across from me and the slightly scary view down to the alleyway seventeen floors below. A flock of birds flew slowly overhead and a car horn beeped somewhere off in the distance. I looked up into the dark blue sky and saw one or two stars just beginning to appear.

  Finally I gave up and pulled out my books. I had just turned to the chapter I was supposed to be studying, something about the world’s most important rivers, when something happened that nearly made me fall out of my chair.

  TAK TAK TAK

  There were three loud taps on the window, the sound of someone knocking on the glass. That in itself was bizarre, since I’d never in my life heard the sound of someone knocking on my window from the outside. What was much stranger was that two lights were suddenly shining through my window, bright yellow lights that lit up the curtains and made big crazy shadows all over my bedroom. They were headlights.

  “Akiko! We’re here!” came a voice from just outside the window. It was a funny voice, high-pitched and squeaky like a voice you might hear on a cartoon show. It was a man’s voice, though, that was for sure.

  I was pretty scared. For a second I considered ducking down and waiting for them to go away.

  “Come on, Akiko. Open the window,” came a second voice, e
ven squeakier than the first. “We’re already behind schedule as it is.”

  I was on the verge of running out to get my parents when I suddenly had this feeling, one that I’d have over and over again in the coming weeks. It was the feeling that it was too late to run away from all this, and that if I’d just go along and try to make the best of it, everything would be okay.

  I swallowed hard and went over to the window. Even before I opened it, I could see past the glare of the headlights to the vehicle they were attached to. It was gently bobbing up and down in midair without anything to hold it up. It was bright blue with red and yellow trim, the kind of thing you’d put a quarter in for a three-year-old to ride outside a supermarket. The whole ship was round and smooth, with fins in the back that could have come from a big, fancy car about fifty years ago. And the weirdest thing was that it had no roof. It was a convertible, I swear!

  There in the front seat were the two people who belonged to those voices. They were small guys with big, pudgy noses, and they were exactly alike in every way, including what they were wearing. They had round yellow helmets that covered the tops and sides of their heads, and oversized yellow gloves on their hands. They were covered from head to toe in bright yellow space suits that matched their helmets, with shiny metallic bands all along their arms. In fact, the only thing about them that wasn’t metallic or yellow was their cheeks, which were round and pink as peaches.

  “Um . . .” I struggled for the right thing to say and settled on the obvious. “Who are you guys?”

  “I’m Bip,” squeaked one.

  “And I’m Bop,” squeaked the other. “We’re here to take you to the planet Smoo.” This last thing he said as naturally as if they were a couple of taxi drivers and I’d been the one who’d asked them to meet me here.

  “Th-The planet Smoo?” I asked, not sure I really wanted to hear the answer.

  “It’s pretty far from here, Akiko . . . ,” began one.