How to Save the Universe in Ten Easy Steps Read online

  I eye them both off. ‘Fine. Whatever. If you want to watch us play Xbox, it’s your call. But your army’s got to wait outside.’

  Ethan whips me three times at Sonic Racing. Then he goes off to make popcorn.

  ‘It’s time for you to go.’ I swivel around on my beanbag to hiss at Molly. ‘You’re putting me off.’ She’s been sitting there on the couch for ages. She hasn’t even picked up a magazine or anything. Instead, she’s been staring off into space, like a zombie. I’ve never seen her act quite so freaky.

  Suddenly, she quits with the staring thing and whips around to look at me. Her expression reads like Mum’s does when she’s had enough. ‘You want me to go? Well, let’s see. Leave now, or Xbox and certain death? Your choice.’

  I can’t help it. I lose it again. ‘Xbox and certain death! Xbox and certain death?! I hope the cameras caught that one. No, seriously. This is too good. You’ve got to tell me – which show is it? And how did you get them to come all the way out to Peregrination?’

  ‘There’s no time to—’ Molly begins. Then she stands up so fast all I see is a blur of blue T-shirt and denim shorts. ‘Oh, no. They’re here.’

  ‘Ooohhh!’ I laughed even harder now. ‘They’re here! The big bad bounty hunters. Do you think we can challenge them to a bit of Xbox? Do you … Hey!’

  In a blur of speed, Molly’s beside me. She bends down and picks me up. Literally, picks me up and tucks me under her arm. Then there’s more blurring. We’re running – she’s running, that is. And then she stops dead. She opens a door and stands me upright inside the room. Eventually, my head stops spinning. And then I see that we’re in Ethan’s mum’s study. I’m standing beside her prized aquarium. ‘What the—’ I start.

  Molly cuts me off with a simple shake of her head. She reaches out and holds on to my shoulder. Tight. Then she closes her eyes. Her head moves slowly upwards, like she’s following something. Up, and then down and then around. Almost like … there’s something outside the house.

  Suddenly, she stops moving. Her eyes flick open again. ‘They’ve sensed me,’ she whispers. ‘When they’re within twenty-five metres or so, they can usually sense me. They just can’t pinpoint exactly where I am.’

  Without looking, she reaches out and picks up a small plastic container of paper clips. She empties them out on the desk, then she dips it into the aquarium and scoops up a fish. Just one.

  My eyes widen. What does she think she’s doing? Ethan’s mum will go ballistic.

  I open my mouth, but Molly’s eyes are on me in a second. ‘He’ll act as a decoy. I’m hoping they’ll mistake the goldfish for you.’

  I can’t think of anything to say to that so I close my mouth again.

  And then the doorbell rings.

  CHAPTER 5

  I know this is just some stupid reality show. I also know I’m now officially one of those idiots you often see appearing on them. Because I’m freaking out. Yes, really freaking out now! My heart is going crazy inside my chest. Like it’s trying to climb out and run away.

  With the doorbell still ringing, Molly steers me over to a corner of the room and pushes me down into a squat. On one side of me is Ethan’s mum’s desk. On the other is a long bank of wooden venetian blinds. They cover the study windows that face the street.

  She gives me one last look that tells me everything I need to know. Like, keep quiet and stay down. Or else. And then she walks out, leaving the study door ajar. I hear footsteps on the wooden floor, the front door opening. Voices.

  My legs are starting to hurt, so as quietly as I can, I sit down on my butt. And that’s when I realise I can see outside. There’s a crack in the venetian blinds. It’s just a sliver. But it’s enough to see who has rung the doorbell.

  There are two of them. Two little girls of about six years old. They both have blonde ringlets. They both have oversized way-too-blue eyes. They both carry baskets with daisies in them. And they are both dressed exactly the same in these navy and white sailor suits, knee-high socks and shiny black shoes with a strap.

  They are the weirdest kids I’ve ever seen.

  As I stare at them, my brain tells me, ‘They’re two little girls.’ But my gut tells me something else. Something more like, ‘They’re not like any two little girls from this planet, bucko.’

  Slowly, I pull my head back from the blinds, my eyes zipping around the room, searching for something. I don’t know what. Something. Anything. An answer to what’s going on? A camera to wave at? I don’t know what to do. Should I go out there? Should I stay here? I’m just … I don’t know … how can I explain it? I’m not good at this kind of thing. I’m not that person. The one who knows what to do. The one who makes a plan and everyone follows it. The one people listen to. That’s not me. It reminds me of something Molly said to me once (which I’ll probably never forget, though I’d never tell her that): ‘Things happen to you, Cooper, but not because of anything you do.’ I can’t even remember why she said that to me. Just that I knew it was even more stingingly true than most things that came my way out of her mouth.

  Hearing a noise, I lean forward to take another look through the crack. It’s funny, but I’ve got this weird feeling in my gut that I’ve never had before. I can’t explain it, but it’s like I know for sure that something is about to happen. As in, right now. This very second. I hear this ticking noise and then …

  Boom!

  There’s some kind of blast. Like a shockwave. I put my hands out to steady myself.

  Flash.

  This sharp, bright, white light follows the vibration. Then …

  Nothing.

  Everything is still again.

  In the silence, I take a deep breath, the feeling in my stomach gone. I feel kind of winded from that blast, though. After I’ve taken another deep breath and feel a bit more normal again, I peek out the venetian blinds once more. But the girls are gone.

  ‘Molly?’ I say, getting up. It isn’t just my lungs that didn’t like that boom. My whole body is shaking. I start towards the door on wobbly legs. But I don’t get far, because I run straight into my sister. ‘Hey! How did you—?’ I step back. I look at what she’s carrying.

  The plastic container. With Ethan’s mum’s fish in it.

  And the fish is dead. Quite dead. Floating on top of the water.

  Right then, Ethan runs into the room. ‘Did you just drop something? I felt some kind of—’ he sees what’s in Molly’s hands. ‘Goldie?!’

  My mouth falls open. Uh oh.

  Ethan’s face turns white. ‘What happened? That’s Goldie. Mum’s favourite fish! I can’t believe it! You killed him! Mum’s favourite fish!’ Ethan looks totally panicked. He starts running around the room. He looks into the aquarium and talks to himself and stuff.

  ‘But Ethan,’ Molly says, calmly. ‘What are you talking about? The fish isn’t dead.’

  ‘But he is,’ I say. Of course he’s dead. We all saw him floating on top of the water and … I look down at the container again and my mouth really drops open. There’s Goldie, swimming around the bowl. He looks fine. Friskier and goldier and more … fishy than ever.

  Ethan bolts over. ‘Goldie! He’s okay!’ His eyes move up to look at Molly’s, as do mine. ‘How did you …?’ he asks.

  Molly doesn’t even blink. ‘I taught him a trick. You know, like you teach dogs. I simply taught Goldie to play dead.’

  CHAPTER 6

  The thing with those hidden camera shows is that they usually make sense. There’s a storyline. Things happen. And then everything is revealed. Ha ha ha. The weird little girls at the door are introduced as actors. You find out what the boom was that freaked you out. Your sister shows you how she brought the fish back to life.

  Oh, yes, ha ha ha, the joke’s on you. Cue much back-slapping and rolling of eyes from the gullible party.

  And then life goes back to normal.

  Yeah, so I’m kind of hoping life will go back to normal soon.

  We get home just as th
e third sun is setting. Mum is busy putting the finishing touches on her Zen garden for the day, raking the gravel in soothing symmetrical lines. She tells us dinner is almost ready. While I want to avoid Molly, I can’t escape her at dinner. She busies herself with her evening ritual of measuring an exact portion of everything onto her plate (over the years, we’ve all become used to this, but tonight I have to admit I watch her carefully out of the corner of my eye). She seems distracted and I catch her doing that shut-eye thing that made our parents drag her along to the optometrist a few years ago, scared that there was something wrong with her vision. As it turned out, there wasn’t and, astonished, the optometrist declared her vision to be 40/20, or something like that. And each time she closes her eyes, when she opens them again, she always manages to stare directly at me.

  I’m brushing my teeth in the bathroom when she barges in. ‘Oh, there you are,’ she says, coming to a halt.

  ‘Yes.’ I look at her in the mirror as she stands behind me. ‘Here I am. Brushing my teeth. Crazy, fun guy that I am.’ I spit in the sink noisily to show her what a great time I’m having. But when I stand upright again and check the mirror, she’s doing it again – the closed eyes thing. This time, when she opens her eyes once more, I stare at her in the mirror and I can see she knows she’s been caught out.

  ‘I …’ she begins, looking flustered, which is so unlike Molly it isn’t funny. ‘I … needed to move us again. It was my fault, you see. Today. I didn’t move us – you, I mean – enough. Fast enough. Or enough times. And the goldfish thing. Ugh, what a mess …’

  I turn around now, frowning. ‘Move us? What do you mean?’

  Molly looks even more flustered, her cheeks colouring. She raises her palms to cover the blush, as if surprised. ‘Nothing, nothing …’

  ‘No, tell me.’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand.’ And, with this, she reverts to the Molly I know, hard and cool. ‘After all, you think we live on Morillius. Who am I to tell you otherwise? Oh, this is all too hard. Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing.’ She mumbles this last bit.

  I frown harder now. ‘Um, what? And we do live on Morillius.’

  Molly only looks away.

  ‘What? You’re the one being weird. Where else would we live but Morillius? That’s where everyone lives, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Molly replies, her voice quite neutral. ‘That’s where everyone lives, Cooper. Everyone in the entire universe. Anyway, what I was trying to say was that I messed up. I shouldn’t have, but I messed up. Okay?’

  She really does look a bit freaked out. ‘Um, okay,’ I tell her.

  ‘Now, go to sleep. You need your rest.’

  I pause, thinking over our interaction. Our afternoon. Then, slowly, I put my toothbrush back in the cup on the sink. Molly is really beginning to scare me. I so want to keep my cool for the cameras (those ones that still haven’t shown up), but things keep getting weirder by the minute. I mean, all the stuff that went on this afternoon – not being able to come up with any decent explanations for that strange light, those two freaky little girls or the goldfish. I’m already starting to half believe some of the out-there things she’s told me. Now she’s suggesting we don’t even live on Morillius (I mean, come on) and apologising as well! I can’t remember the last time Molly apologised for something.

  As I push past her, leaving the room, I avoid her gaze. There’s no doubt about it. That girl is really beginning to get to me. I have to work this thing out. And fast. Before I make an idiot of myself on national television.

  CHAPTER 7

  I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I was wrong. I must have been too exhausted, because one moment I was staring at the ceiling, wondering about that whole Morillius thing and how Molly had managed to get us involved in the most elaborate gotcha show ever, and the next … well, I wasn’t staring at the ceiling anymore, but the back of my eyelids or something.

  When I wake up again, I feel that it’s three fifty-three am and I suddenly remember everything that’s going on. And that’s when I roll over, spot the person in my room, standing at the foot of my bed, and completely lose the plot.

  I sit bolt upright, my heart beating a million miles a minute. ‘What are you doing in here?’ I yell at Molly (at least it’s Molly – for a moment I was worried it was one of those sailor-suited trolls from Ethan’s house). ‘Why aren’t you in bed?’

  Molly takes a seat on the end of my bed now I’m awake. ‘Please. I don’t sleep.’

  I give her a look. ‘Um, yeah, you do. I’ve seen you.’

  ‘No, you’ve seen me pretending to sleep. I’ve been pretending to sleep for ten years now.’

  I go to open my mouth to tell her she’s being ridiculous, when I remember something. Mum has always gone on about Molly’s sleeping. ‘She’s been an amazing sleeper all her life,’ she likes to tell anyone who’ll listen. ‘Right from birth. At least ten hours a night. Every night. Not at all like Cooper! He kept me up all hours as a baby! Which is lucky, I guess, considering I got two for the price of one.’ That’s the thing – Mum didn’t know she was having twins until the last minute.

  Maybe Molly sees the look on my face, or guesses what I’m thinking about, because she raises an eyebrow now. She’s lost all trace of that flustered look she’d had in the bathroom just hours before. ‘So you are starting to believe me.’

  ‘Don’t bet on it,’ I say, quickly. ‘I was just … remembering something. Anyway, you still haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘Yes, I did. You asked me why I wasn’t in bed and I told you.’

  ‘I also asked you what you were doing in my room.’

  Molly nods slightly at this. ‘I didn’t think your feeble brain would recall asking two questions but, now you mention it, you’re right. I’m in your room because they’ve been hanging around. The Ecens, I mean. They’re going to come back – and then I’ll have to sort this out. Properly this time.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Of course. The Ecens. I’m sure that—’

  Molly holds up a hand, closing her eyes yet again.

  ‘Can you stop doing that?’ I tell her. ‘It’s really annoying.’

  But she doesn’t stop. And her eyes stay closed for quite a while this time. When she finally opens them once more, she shakes her head slightly. ‘They’re getting closer. You’ve got to hand it to them. They’re good trackers. Not bright. But good trackers. And, like me, they don’t sleep either.’

  I go to open my mouth once more, but find I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say, or do, or think anymore. So, I grab my pillow and stick my head under it. ‘Just go,’ I tell Molly, in a muffled voice. ‘Go, or stay, or move us, or whatever. I’m going back to sleep.’

  As it turns out, Molly goes. And what’s even more worrying is she really just goes. As in, she leaves the room without giving me a lecture. There’s no, ‘Did you know that …’ or, ‘Just remember that …’. Nothing.

  Now that’s truly scary.

  CHAPTER 8

  I manage to get a bit more sleep despite Molly’s banging on about the Ecens coming back. Seriously, I feel like I should be running around screaming, ‘The Ecens are coming! The Ecens are coming!’

  When I next open my eyes, I do so slowly. And, amazingly, everything seems … normal. There is no one else in my room. It’s light outside. I can hear normal Saturday-morning-type noises outside my bedroom door.

  I get up and the normal continues. I touch the lucky crack as I head down the hallway. When I get to the kitchen, I discover Dad has gone to open up the pool for the day and will pick up the hotdog stuff and make-your-own-mucus ingredients on the way home. Mum is starting in on the pond slime. ‘Where’s Molly?’ I ask, cautiously, as I grab some cereal from the pantry.

  ‘Oh, outside. Somewhere. She’s been outside all morning,’ Mum answers.

  This makes me pause slightly as my hand reaches for a bowl. Molly isn’t generally a fan of the great outdoors. It’s not like she’s actually scared
of going outside. More like she finds it kind of distasteful. She tends to wrinkle her nose as she gets dirt on her shoes and so on. Like nature is all a big inconvenience to her. So, yeah, Molly being outside all morning is again kind of odd. Still, better outside than inside and anywhere near me, I think, starting to shake some cereal into my bowl.

  I can see Molly outside the kitchen window. I watch as she waves one hand in a large arc in the air in front of her, and then the other. She does this a couple of times, then takes a step to the left and does the same thing again. Another step, and again. Step, wave, wave, step, wave, wave … she continues around the backyard, dodging Mum’s Zen garden with its beautifully raked gravel, her little rock garden and her treasured cherry tree.

  That’s it. I’m over this freak show.

  I stomp outside, down the back steps and across the yard towards my sister. She doesn’t turn around, even though she can surely hear me. When I’m a few steps away from her, I start in on my rant. ‘Can you just quit with the …’ but I soon trail off. Because now I’m close, I can see more of what’s going on. And what’s going on is that something is actually coming out of the palms of Molly’s hands as she waves them. Something clear and shiny that is shooting upwards towards … who knows what?

  Before I can ask, Molly speaks, still not turning around. ‘It’s a sort of reflective insulation. For the protective dome. Oh, wait. I haven’t told you about that yet, have I?’

  Behind me, Jack barks, making me jump. I didn’t even know he was there.

  Molly does turn around now. ‘Yes, Jack, okay. Soon! It’s just … everything all at once would be a bit much.’

  ‘Cooper!’ Mum yells, from inside.

  I stand still for a moment, not knowing what to think, or do. My eyes dart from Molly to Jack, back to Molly again. My mouth opens and shuts involuntarily.

  ‘Cooper!’ Mum yells again.

  I turn and race back towards the house and am back inside in a flash. ‘What?’ I look over at her in the kitchen.