The Secret Life of Owen Skye by Alan Cumyn Read Free Book Online Page A

Now that he was brave enough to talk in front of Sylvia, it seemed he couldn’t shut up.
    â€œI’m sure she’ll treasure it,” Sylvia’s mother said.
    â€œAs long as she dreams of true love and stays away from switchback roads in moonlight,” he said, “it will provide extra-terrestrial protection!”
    â€œWhat?”
    It seemed the only thing left for him to do was to propose marriage, but he had no ring. So instead he stepped backwards and fell down on some ice. He didn’t look back, but ran the full mile home, as if the hunchback in the canyon was after him, with the Emperor of Bolivia not too far behind.

Winter Nights
    ANDY HAD A CRYSTAL radio that he kept in the closet in the boys’ bedroom and took out late at night. It was plastic with a lot of dials in front and wires in the back. When he stretched the antenna to its full height and wired it to the curtain rod, he could usually pick up alien spaceships transmitting from other galaxies. They used whiny buzzing noises to communicate with Earth. Andy would sit by the window listening, hoping to learn the secret of their codes.
    Sometimes Owen sat with him and listened, wondering what
Bzzzzz — wheee! — eeeeooo — zzzrrbb!
could possibly mean, while Leonard slept alone in the big bed. The two older brothers would look out the window and speculate as to which star the radio signals were coming from, and whether a total invasion of Earth was imminent.
    One night the radio noises changed suddenly, and the whiny buzzes turned into rapid bursts of electric noise:
Blat! Zappa-zappa! Scud! Krakka-takka! Glurk!
Andy got a pencil from his desk and, using a table of weights and measures found at the back of his arithmetic book, deciphered the following message: “Hilltop! Knock! Zurge!”
    â€œWhat does it mean?” Owen asked.
    â€œWe have to go to the fort,” Andy said breathlessly. “They’re contacting us!”
    â€œBut why the fort?”
    â€œBecause it’s on Dead Man’s Hill,” Andy said. The boys called it that because it overlooked the graveyard. That’s where they had built a snowfort the weekend before.
    â€œWhat about Leonard?” Owen asked.
    â€œHe’d be too scared,” Andy said.
    â€œMaybe not,” Owen said. “Remember how he spoke to the Bog Man’s wife on Halloween.”
    So they woke up Leonard and the three of them snuck downstairs and pulled on their snowsuits and heavy boots. Their parents and Uncle Lorne were sleeping, so the boys had to be quiet.
    It was bitterly cold, the air so frozen it was still and heavy, and the snow on the path to Dead Man’s Hill was packed so tight it squeaked beneath their boots. Andy carried his radio and a big new battery he’d bought with five months’ worth of allowance. It had meant missing many issues of his favorite comics, but now that they were about to meet aliens it would be worth it.
    The boys knew what flying saucers looked like from watching television and reading the newspaper. But the picture on their television set was often blurry, and it skipped up and down. Most of the stories in newspapers said the spaceships had bright lights, and the aliens used ray guns and wore silvery spacesuits.
    â€œWhat if they don’t like us?” Leonard asked, halfway up the path to Dead Man’s Hill. “If they’re invading the Earth then maybe they don’t mean to be our friends.”
    â€œAliens are superior beings,” Andy said. “It’s not a question of like or don’t like. They just want to meet with some typical Earthlings. It’s better that they meet us instead of generals or something.” They had seen one movie in which the aliens who were invading were actually very nice but the generals had exploded hydrogen bombs at them, which made them angry.
    The top of Dead Man’s Hill was perfect for snowforts because the wind swept big