Ruby Finley vs. the Interstellar Invasion Read online

  And, after all that, the G-men were careful to stay on the sidewalk when they scanned the edges of the old woman’s property.

  Even the government was scared of Witchypoo.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  Since the G-men weren’t letting anyone down their street, Ruby’s parents both arrived home late and at the same time, which didn’t happen often. They were complaining about the delay as they walked in the door and both of them were big mad.

  “He kept my ID for over half an hour, like the address was gonna magically change to something else the longer he held on to it,” Mama said to Gramma.

  “They were running background checks, I bet.” Daddy’s voice was calm, but with a tone Ruby recognized as held-back anger. It was the way he talked when people on the City Council were trying to pull “some shady stuff” on him or other community organizers.

  “Mama, are you sure this is just about finding an insect?” she said to Gramma.

  “That’s what they told us when they first got here. They had a picture of it, asked where it was.”

  “They asked you? Why? Where’d they get a picture?” Daddy asked.

  “Ruby put it on Twitter.”

  As soon as her gramma said that all eyes turned to Ruby and all hope of not getting in trouble over this vanished.

  Gramma did look apologetic. She probably hadn’t planned to mention Ruby’s Twitter account since so much else was going on.

  “Ruby. Again?” was all Mama said.

  Now the anger was on Daddy’s face as well as in his voice. “What did we say the last time you made a Twitter account?”

  “You are too young to be on Twitter and, when you are old enough, you can only have an account that we monitor,” Ruby recited in a monotone mumble.

  “And why is that?”

  “Because social media is unsafe for young kids and it’s our job to help you stay safe.”

  “How is it that you can remember what we say word for word and still do exactly what we told you not to do?” Mama asked.

  The real answer was: Because I didn’t think you’d find out this time. But Ruby was sure that wouldn’t be a good thing to say. “I want to talk to other people in the Bug Club and no one is on the forums anymore!”

  All the adults groaned in exasperation. This was an old fight. Ever since they let Ruby join the Midwestern Amateur Entomologist Society she’d been begging her parents to let her on social media. The forums got a few posts a month, but all the really interesting stuff was on Twitter and Instagram. Despite this fact, Mama and Daddy were adamant that she would have to wait. How else was Ruby supposed to react to this unfairness but to create secret accounts?

  “Baby girl, I don’t like this habit you’ve developed of lying and going behind our backs,” Mama said. “How are we supposed to trust you when you keep doing things like this?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said in her best I’m-an-innocent-little-girl-aren’t-I-cute? voice.

  “Your apology is accepted, but it won’t—” Daddy stopped at the sound of several loud voices in the yard behind theirs. They all rushed to the window to see what was going on.

  One of the G-men was holding a metal box that looked built to contain nuclear waste, not a small insect. “Got it!” he kept calling out to the others, who converged on him with their scanning instruments.

  “Thank goodness that’s over. Now they can leave,” Gramma said.

  Mama leaned closer to the glass. “Why did they bring such a big box? How big is this bug?”

  “Not that big,” Ruby said.

  “Yeah, I don’t trust this at all,” Daddy said, and she agreed.

  A few minutes later someone knocked on the door. It was Agent Gerrold again.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Finley. Mrs. Larkin. Wanted you to know we found the insect before it could do any more damage,” he said.

  None of the adults looked impressed or relieved. That didn’t seem to upset him.

  “It’s a good thing Ruby here found it when she did. This could have been a much worse situation without her help.”

  Then why did you delete my pictures and tweet? Ruby wanted to ask. She didn’t think he would answer her honestly, so she only said: “Thanks.”

  “Does this mean we’re allowed to leave the house now?” Daddy asked.

  “Yes sir,” Agent Gerrold said, and Daddy raised his eyebrows, surprised. “You folks take care. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

  They watched all the men get into their black cars and drive away before going back in.

  “That … was strange,” Mama announced.

  “At least it’s done,” Gramma said, heading into the kitchen. She’d been keeping dinner warm for them.

  Daddy didn’t look convinced. He had his I’m-gonna-take-this-up-with-my-councilwoman expression on. That is, until Mama kissed his beard and smoothed it away. “Think about it tomorrow.”

  Ruby wrapped her arms around his belly and squeezed. “Yeah, don’t worry, Daddy.”

  He leaned over and kissed the top of her head, his long dreds falling down to tickle her face. “You know I love you, right?”

  “Yep!”

  “More than anything in the whole world.”

  “Even more than ribs,” she said.

  “That’s right.” He kissed her again. “But you’re still grounded.”

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  After much discussion, Ruby’s parents and Gramma decided on her punishment. No spanking this time (Mama didn’t approve of it, though she made it clear a third strike would put spanking back on the table). Instead, Ruby was sentenced to a month of no unsupervised computer or tablet time, a week without TV, and two weeks without her xCUBE.

  “But how am I supposed to chat with my friends?” she whined when that announcement came down.

  “There’s this amazing invention called the telephone,” Mama said. “You can use it to speak to people up the street or all the way across town.”

  Ruby held back from rolling her eyes. Only old people used the phone to talk to each other.

  The next morning she walked down the block to her cousin Hollie’s house. It was Saturday, so Ruby knew she’d be playing xCUBE with the others. Hollie’s mom, Aunt Peggy, answered the door and gave her a big hug.

  “Just so you know, your mama told me about your punishment,” she said. Ruby groaned. Did everyone have to know? “No tryna sneak on the game box while you’re here.”

  “Yes ma’am,” she said, resigned.

  “They found out, huh,” Hollie said when Ruby walked into the TV room.

  “Gramma told on me.”

  “They always find out eventually.”

  “They wouldn’t have if those stupid G-men hadn’t shown up.”

  “G-men?”

  Ruby shrugged. “That’s what Gramma called them.”

  “Yeah, she’s here. Hold on,” Hollie said into her headset, then she paused the game. “How long will you be on punishment?”

  “No xCUBE for two weeks, no unsupervised tablet for a month.”

  Brandon laughed so loud she could hear it from the headphones.

  “Shut UP!” she leaned into the mic to shout. Hollie pushed her away playfully. “Ask them if they’ll come out. We could go to the playground or something.”

  “Fiiiine,” Hollie said. “Jackie says yes, too. Brandon says no and, guess what, no one cares. Alberto says he’ll meet us there. He’s going to the store first. And now Brandon is coming anyway.”

  “Okay. We should go by Mayson’s and see if she wants to come.”

  “I suppose.” Hollie rolled her eyes. She didn’t like Mayson as much as Ruby did but, because she was a good cousin and best friend, she didn’t complain about it. Too often.

  Ruby felt bad for Mayson. Unlike her, Hollie, Jackie, Alberto, and Brandon, she hadn’t grown up in the neighborhood. She and her folks moved in two years back, and that combined with her being the youngest and half white and going to a different school than most of them made her an outsider. Ruby knew what that felt like. Over the summer between fourth and fifth grades, two of her best school friends had decided they didn’t like her anymore for some reason and shut her out. If she hadn’t had her friends on the block, she would have been alone and sad the whole summer. She made sure to include Mayson whenever they were all doing something together so she wouldn’t feel that way.

  They met up at the playground at the old elementary school in the middle of the neighborhood. It had been decommissioned after Ruby’s third-grade year and replaced by a new building up Reading Road. The old building hadn’t been torn down yet and the playground was still intact, so their parents let them play there.

  Brandon and Jackie were already on the swings when they rolled up.

  “I’m gonna beat your record!” Brandon said to Jackie, kicking the swing high and jumping off, landing just shy of the grass at the edge of the gravel.

  “Not even close!” Jackie was the oldest of them and the tallest and had jumped the farthest off the swing—all the way into the grass. No way were any of them going to match her anytime soon. A point she proved by landing almost two feet past Brandon when she jumped.

  “Woo! Go Jackie!” Mayson cheered.

  Brandon rolled his eyes and started saying something about how he could still jump farther than any of the rest of them.

  “You got your hair cut,” Jackie said over him, talking to Mayson. “It looks cute!”

  “Thanks,” she said, fluffing up the loose curls into a halo around her head. “I finally convinced my mom this would be the easiest to maintain.”

  Ruby went to get on the swing Brandon had abandoned and watched Mayson preen. Since Jackie was the oldest as well as the tallest, she was kind of the leader of their crew.
No one minded since she looked out for them, kept the older kids from messing with them, and kept the peace between them. Ruby thought Mayson idolized her a little and maybe that was the reason she wanted her hair short. Jackie’s was, too, and she kept it in cornrows most of the time so it seemed even shorter.

  Hollie passed the swings up to inspect the new chain and padlock someone had put on the school doors. No one was supposed to go inside, so of course a bunch of people tried. Usually older kids, and usually to do stuff they weren’t supposed to do. Hollie’s older brother, Frankie Lee, had been caught there twice, the second time because she told on him.

  “You checking to make sure it’s secure, Officer?” Brandon yelled out. “Always lookin’ to tattle on somebody.”

  Hollie flipped her long braids and made a point of ignoring him.

  “Who did she tell on this time?” Alberto said, riding up with a bag full of candy. “Is she why Ruby is on punishment?”

  “No!” Hollie and Ruby said together.

  “The reason I’m in trouble is those government men.” Ruby was still resentful. “They told Gramma about my Twitter account.”

  “Which you were forbidden to have.” It was like Hollie couldn’t help herself.

  Alberto rolled his eyes and handed Ruby a chocolate bar. “To tide you over in these hard times.” Then he whispered, “Sometimes she can be an absolute toenail.”

  Ruby giggled. “At least someone feels sorry for me.”

  Out of all the boys in her grade, Ruby liked Alberto the best. He was nice to everyone and didn’t act any different around girls than he did around other guys. She also appreciated that, like her, he was shorter than most of the other sixth graders. She still had half an inch on him, though.

  “My papi is so mad at those government goons,” he said. “They messed up the fence around our garden searching for that bug and last night the cats got in.”

  “They didn’t eat the collards, did they?” Brandon asked, seriously upset.

  “They peed on them, man.”

  Brandon growled in frustration. “Your papi was gonna let me use them for that spring roll recipe!”

  “Lo siento,” Alberto said sympathetically.

  “They didn’t get all the way down to our house. I bet my mother would have lost it if they’d come into our yard and messed stuff up like that,” Jackie said.

  “She could have sicced Ruby’s bees on them,” Mayson said. “My mom said they deserved it when they got stung.”

  “They didn’t mess with the hive in your backyard, did they?” Ruby hadn’t thought of that until now. She needed those bees for her science fair project. Mayson’s and Jackie’s parents had both allowed the Cincinnati Urban Beekeepers Alliance to set up hives in their yards and let Ruby help care for them so she could run her big experiment. She wanted the first hive in her yard, but Gramma was scared of getting stung. The other one had to be far enough down the block so the hives wouldn’t compete for the same food sources.

  “No, they were careful, my mom had eyes on them the whole time.”

  “I heard Witchypoo sicced her dogs on ’em,” Jackie said.

  “She tried to,” Ruby said. “Gramma got her to take them inside.”

  “The one time those stupid mutts could be useful…” Brandon muttered.

  “Two dogs versus men with guns? I don’t think so,” Hollie said.

  “Wait, I thought you said they were looking for a bug,” Jackie said. “Why did they have guns?”

  “The FBI always carries guns.”

  Alberto shook his head. “They weren’t the FBI, they were from Homeland Security. They told my dad when they came in the yard.”

  “They told my brothers they were from the Department of Fish and Wildlife,” Brandon said.

  “What’d they tell you?” Jackie asked Ruby.

  “They didn’t. The man who came to our door just said he was an agent.”

  “They were probably from the CIA,” Mayson said in a way that sounded like she was repeating something her mom told her. Miz Trish was always going on about stuff like that.

  “FBI, CIA, NCIS, whoever they were, it’s still Ruby’s fault they showed up,” Brandon said.

  “It is not!” Ruby play-punched him in the arm. “Besides, it’s a good thing they came, isn’t it? What if that bug had been dangerous?”

  “Then it would be a terrible idea to bring it in the house…” Hollie pointed out.

  Ruby stuck out her tongue.

  “Wait, you took that bug into your house?” Alberto asked. “Why?”

  Hollie pulled a face. “Hello, have you met her?”

  “Why not keep it in the garage or something?”

  “I can’t take my books or my tablet out to the garage, it’s gross in there,” Ruby said.

  “But it’s not gross to store bugs in jars under your bed.” Jackie was teasing, she knew. Still, why didn’t anyone get it? The best way to learn was to observe and experiment. Sometimes that meant bringing specimens into the lab. She didn’t have a lab yet, so her bedroom would have to do.

  “How long are you on punishment?” Mayson asked.

  “No xCUBE for two weeks. Will y’all do stuff with me IRL until it’s over?”

  They all said yes, though Ruby wasn’t sure if they would. Even though they lived within two blocks of each other they’d spent most of their time together online and in games since the xCUBE came out three Christmases ago. What if they forgot about their promise and she had to spend the next two weeks alone?

  * * *

  What happened after church the next day didn’t make Ruby feel any better. She tried to convince the others to come over to her house, but they all wanted to watch Alberto stream his speedrun through the most difficult level in Tyger Bright 3. Hollie promised to come over after, but that didn’t take the sting out of it. And even though it wasn’t technically on TV and Ruby wasn’t technically playing herself, her parents said that she couldn’t watch and no amount of begging made them change their minds. With nothing fun to do and no one to do it with, Ruby ended up sitting on the porch listening to her gramma gossip with the other church ladies.

  Miz Connor, Miz Ella, Jackie’s mom, Miz Pam, and Gramma all went to different churches, so they got together after service to trade stories about who in the congregation was doing what and why. Mayson’s mom, Miz Trish, also joined them, though she didn’t go to church. Ruby’s mama said she just liked talking.

  That day the five of them weren’t gossiping about their friends but about the G-men. And when Miz Ella went to show them a post she had made about it on Facebook, it was gone.

  “Gone?” Gramma said, taking her phone out. “I just saw it yesterday!”

  “It says the post violated community guidelines and they removed it,” Miz Ella read off the screen.

  “That don’t make no kind of sense!” Miz Connor grabbed the phone from Ella, who gave her an annoyed look. “What guideline did the post violate?”

  “It won’t say. It never says. I’m so tired of Facebook,” Miz Pam said, checking her own.

  “They took mine down, too!” Gramma said.

  Just like my Twitter post, Ruby thought, though she didn’t say so out loud. No point in getting a talking-to from everyone. Still, this was weird. All the Facebook posts the ladies had made about the neighborhood lockdown were gone.

  “This is government overreach!” Miz Trish said when she saw hers had been deleted, too.

  Miz Pam sucked her teeth at that. All the adults side-eyed Trish’s conspiracy talk. “Why do they care if we post about them? Not like it was a secret, they had the street closed off forever.”

  “Maybe because they don’t want people to know what they were really looking for,” Miz Trish said. Gramma threw her hand dismissively, but Miz Trish wasn’t dissuaded. “You said it ate through a window screen!”