Bubba’s collar and leash had not been left behind. They had disappeared with her.
“Over here, Logan,” a voice called out.
His mom sat at the end of one of the several long wooden benches in front of the store, petting Bubba.
“Mom!” Logan said, stomping to her. “What are you doing here? I thought the aliens got Bubba!”
“Nope,” his mom said. “No aliens. Just Mom. By any chance did you climb out your window again and leave without getting permission from, or even notifying, your parental unit?”
“I
had
to, Mom. Someone has to do something. Someone has to stop the aliens from stealing our dogs.”
“Maybe it isn’t aliens. Maybe it’s moms. Maybe their sons keep leaving their dogs all alone outside grocery stores and the moms have to come and rescue them.” She smiled wide and blinked. She had amused herself.
“Excuse me,” a voice said. “Here’s your stuff.”
It was the girl who had been with Burke and Wyndham. She handed Logan his clipboard and his binoculars and camera, which she had also scooped up. Logan took them without a word.
“Thank you, considerate young lady,” his mom said. “I’m sure my son is grateful, too, but he’s too tongue-tied by your beauty to say so.”
Logan kicked her.
“Ow!” she howled exaggeratedly. “Now that’s parent abuse!”
“I’m sorry Burke was so mean to you,” the girl said with a tiny shrug. Then she walked away.
“Who’s Burke?” Logan’s mom asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Logan said. “I was using Bubba to attract the aliens, Mom. That’s why I left her alone. I was across the street watching.”
“Not very well, I guess, since you thought aliens took her instead of your dear, sweet mother.”
“I got … distracted.”
“By Burke?”
“It doesn’t matter!” Logan said, then stomped away.
He didn’t like being deterred from his duties by either bored, malicious teenagers or his meddlesome mother. He also hated it when his mom joked around when things were deadly serious.
He stopped stomping when he reached the end of the building. An old man with a humped back was sitting in a wheelchair, reading a newspaper. The wheelchair had a motor under the seat, white rubber tires, padded seat and armrests, and a joystick for steering. Logan wished he had one like it.
Then he remembered the
MISSING WHEELCHAIR
flyer he saw on the telephone pole across the street from Patrice’s house. This old guy’s chair looked a lot like the one in the flyer. Had he stolen it?
No, he was an old guy who needed a wheel-chair. How could he steal one?
The man peeked out from behind his paper, as if sensing someone staring at him. Though he immediately ducked back behind it when he saw Logan standing there, Logan noted some details: the man wore a dark blue stocking cap pulled down low, a pair of huge, dark, old-people sun-glasses, and stubbly gray whiskers on his chin and cheeks. Logan pulled out his clipboard and jotted all this down.
“Logan,” his mom called. “Come back and sit with me.”
Logan continued writing.
“Logan?” his mom said.
He turned. “What?”
“Come here,” she said.
He stomped back toward her, stopping a couple of yards away.
“What?” he said again.
“Sit down, please,” she said, patting the seat beside her.
“I don’t want to.”
“You’re having a hard time doing what I ask lately, aren’t you, bud?”
He wrinkled his nose at her like an annoyed cat.
“I’ll let you return to your surveillance. I’ll even let you use Bubba as alien bait. But I don’t want you running away without permission, from me or from others I’ve asked to care for you. Buck, for example.”
“Buck!” Logan said, rolling his eyes.
His mom stood.
“I’ll leave you to your work, Crewman Lonergan.”
“Crew
captain
,” he said, and grinned at the thought of it.
“But if you climb out your window again, I will ground you for a week. Let’s see you foil a full-scale alien invasion from your bedroom.”
“Deal,” Logan said, and stepped forward to shake on it.
“Okay then,” his mom said, taking his hand. “Back to your post.”
After his mom had gone, Logan retied Bubba to the bike rack and returned to the dogwood tree on the library’s lawn. His sunglasses were on the branch, blanketed in a film of mist. He wiped them on his jeans, slipped them into his backpack, and, to prevent his forgetting them again, decided he would leave them there. He rehung his binoculars and camera around his neck, then, clipboard poised, turned his attention to Bubba.
Sandwiches always bustled after school let out. Logan had a full-time job recording all the activity: the two gray-haired, power-walking ladies who stopped and petted Bubba; the trio of boys who parked their bikes by her, then waved away the hovering odor; swarms of teenagers, some of whom paid attention to Bubba, some who were too into their own world to notice her; the men (many of them bearded) and sometimes women wearing dirty work clothes who pulled up in trucks, went into the store, and came out with a beverage of some kind; the ruddy-faced sailors, male and female, young and old, striding in knee-high rubber waders; the moms, and sometimes dads, pushing strollers, or toting their child in carriers on their backs, chests, or hips; the old guy in the wheelchair parked at the end of the bench, his face hidden behind his newspaper; and, of course, plenty of people walking dogs. Some walked two, some three. One walker had a large, a medium, and a small: a Newfie, a spaniel, and a wiener dog. The walkers tied their dogs up, or just left them, untied, and went into the store. Some of the dogs growled at Bubba, but she never growled back, or even budged, so they eventually left her alone.
Logan paid special attention to keeping track of the dogs, making sure the ones left outside got picked up, and by their rightful owners, not by someone else.
No dogs vanished. The hairy man with the accent did not appear. Nothing unusual or suspicious happened, which Logan found almost disappointing. He didn’t want anyone’s dog abducted, especially not Bubba, but he had been hoping
something
would happen—a dognapping attempt, maybe, that he would sweep in and foil. The alien would then be unveiled, apprehended, arrested, and everyone would learn he had been right all along.
No such luck.
After nearly an hour of surveillance, Logan began to get hungry. His eyes hurt from squinting through his binoculars. The cords of the binoculars and the camera had dug a trench into the back of his neck. He decided to pack up and call it a day.
As he walked over the lawn, he saw Aggy appear across the street with her dog, Festus, a fat, sausage-shaped beagle/dachshund mix with a black-and-white coat and stubby legs. From a distance, he looked like a miniature cow.
“Aggy!” Logan called, but she didn’t hear him over a noisy delivery truck coming up the street. She bent over and petted Bubba, then stood up, her face puckered, and waved her hand in front of her nose.
The truck pulled up to the curb, obscuring her and the dogs. Logan ran across the street and around the front of the truck. He nearly collided with the old man in the electric wheelchair, who was zooming past.
“Excuse me,” the man said.
Logan didn’t answer. He was too busy looking for Aggy. He didn’t see her. She must have gone into the store. Bubba, still tied to the bike rack, was on her feet, whimpering, as if frightened.
“It’s okay,” Logan said, rubbing Bubba’s head. “I’m watching out for you. Where’s Festus?”
That’s when he noticed a collar lying beside Bubba on the sidewalk. It was attached to a retractable leash, and buckled, as if it were still around a dog’s neck. The collar was made of faded pink nylon with white polka dots. Logan knew it instantly.
“Not again,” he said, swiveling his head left and right, like an owl looking for prey. A few people sat on the benches, chatting, snacking, sipping. A woman was tucking her baby into a stroller. The old man’s wheelchair was humming as it navigated the crosswalk. A kid rode up on her skateboard. Logan looked at Bubba.
“Where’s Festus?” he asked.
“Unnnh, unnnh, unnnh,”
Bubba said
.
Logan darted into the store, yelling, “Aggy! Aggy!”
The cashiers and customers at the checkout counters stopped what they were doing and stared.
“Have you seen Aggy?” he asked them. “It’s urgent.”
“There’s a girl over—” one of the cashiers began to say, when Aggy appeared at the end of an aisle.
“Logan!” she said, her jaw tight. “What are you yelling about?”
Logan rushed to her. “Where’s Festus?”
“Outside,” Aggy said.
“No, he’s not.”
“I tied him next to Bubba. I thought you’d be in here….”
“He’s not tied next to Bubba. Come on. I’ll show you.”
He took her arm and tugged.
“Let go!” she said, and jerked her arm free.
“It’s just his collar and leash. Like before. With Pickles. Come see.”
“What?” Aggy said, her resistance evaporating. “Just his collar?”
“Pink with white polka dots,” Logan said.
Aggy raced for the door.
“The alien vaporized him right out of his collar,” Logan said.
“Maybe he slipped out of it somehow,” Aggy said hopefully. “You know. Squeezed out of it. To get free.”
“Not likely,” Logan said.
Festus, like Bubba, was a slow-moving, older dog. He’d also recently undergone hip surgery. He wasn’t prone to escape attempts.
“Maybe somebody undid his collar,” Aggy said. “Then rebuckled it. You know, for a joke. A prank.”
“I’ve been casing the corner for hours,” Logan said. “I saw everybody who came and went and wrote down everything they did. I ran over when I saw you, but a truck pulled up and blocked my vision. You know, it must have happened right then. Shoot! If it weren’t for that stupid truck, I would have witnessed the dognapping!”
“How could somebody have unbuckled him, taken him, and rebuckled the collar that fast?” Aggy asked.
“That’s just it. No human could have. Did you talk to anyone? Did anyone ask what your dog’s name was?”
“Yeah, some lady did. She stopped and petted Festus and talked baby talk to him. Why?”
“What did she look like?”
“I don’t know. She was an old lady. Gray hair. Short. I think she was wearing glasses. And tennis shoes …”
“Hmmm,” Logan said, as he dug out his clipboard. “The hairy guy petted Pickles, then went into the store to look for her owner. He asked Trudy what her dog’s name was, then Pickles just disappeared. Without anyone around.”
“But that didn’t happen to Chloe. Or Ollie. They just disappeared.”
“They were in their yards, unsupervised,” Logan said. “We don’t know who was around. Maybe the aliens take human form, then hang around a dog, listening, waiting to hear the dog’s name. Maybe they need the dog’s name to beam it.”
“That’s a lot of maybes.”
“It’s a theory,” Logan said.
“I better call my mom and tell her Festus got away,” Aggy said, pulling out her phone.
“You should call nine-one-one and inform the police your dog was abducted by aliens.”
“Yeah, I’m not going to do that,” Aggy said, pressing numbers, then putting the phone to her ear. “Hi, Mom. Can you meet me at Sandwiches? Festus—”
Aggy stopped midsentence because a man pushed open the door beside her and exited the store, a plastic bag of groceries in each hand. In each hairy hand. His face and neck were hairy, too.
“It’s him!” Logan said. “It’s the hairy man! The dognapper! The
alien
!”
“Shhh!” Aggy said, and elbowed Logan hard. “You’re talking out loud, you know.”
Logan hastened after the man and asked, “Excuse me, sir, but are you an alien?”
“Logan!” Aggy said.
The man’s gait faltered. “What did you say?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at Logan, perplexed.
Logan took advantage of the man’s disorientation to catch up with him.
“You have an accent, sir,” Logan said. “You’re an alien, are you not?”
“I don’t know why you are saying this,” the man said, walking faster, trying to get away from Logan. “It is nothing to you. Leave me alone.”
Logan persisted. “Have you been abducting dogs, sir? Can you make dogs vanish? Do you need to know their name in order to do it?”
The man looked back, alarmed, then doubled his step. He was walking as fast as he could without breaking into a run.
“Leave him alone!” Aggy called, snapping her phone shut.
“We can’t let him get away!” Logan called back. “Come on! We must follow him!”
“What about Bubba?” Aggy asked.
Logan skidded to a stop. He turned and yelled, “You said her name!”
“You can’t just leave her here,” Aggy said.
“Can you watch her?” Logan said, then shook his head, as if answering his own question. He ran back to his dog.
“I’ll bring her with me,” he grumbled, untying her from the bike rack.
“Why didn’t the dognapper take her, too?” Aggy asked.
“Maybe because she farts so much,” Logan said.
“I wish Festus did,” Aggy said with a frown.
Logan tried to shadow the hairy man, but Bubba hampered his stealth considerably. It wasn’t easy ducking behind trees or bushes with a large, lazy bloodhound tethered to him.
When the man disappeared around a hedgelined corner, Logan thought he might take a diagonal shortcut. He managed to penetrate the dense hedge, but getting Bubba through it proved much more difficult. By the time he had extracted her, he assumed the hairy man had gotten away. However, after he and Bubba had loped across the yard and he had burrowed through the second hedge, Logan was startled to find the hairy man standing there, waiting for him.
“What are you doing, boy?” he asked, his fists on his hips, his bushy eyebrows knitted together. “Why do you follow me?”
Bubba was still on the other side of the hedge. Logan decided she was safer there and dropped his end of the leash. He got to his feet and brushed the leaves and twigs from his clothes. He didn’t know about the ones in his hair.
“Why are you abducting our dogs?” Logan asked, jutting his chin defiantly.
“I am
not
abducting dogs,” the man said. “Why do you say such a thing?”
“Because you are an alien, of course,” Logan said.
“That is none of your business, young man, and you are very rude to say it.”
“Where did you come from?” Logan asked.
“If you must know, I am from Crete.”
“What galaxy is that in?”
“Galaxy? Crete is in the Mediterranean.”
“So there is a galaxy named after the sea. I did not know that….”
“I am walking away now, young man, and I do not wish you should follow me, okay? Leave me alone now.”
He turned and walked away, checking over his shoulder from time to time to see if Logan was behind him.
Logan didn’t follow, because when he reached down for Bubba’s leash, it wasn’t there.
“Bubba?” he called, peering into the foliage. “Where are you?”
“Unnnh, unnnh, unnnh,”
his dog said.
She had walked away from the hedge, dragging her leash behind her, and found a spot she liked on the lawn.
“Bubba,
come
.” Logan commanded.
She didn’t budge.
“The alien is getting away!” Logan said.
He had no choice but to return through the hedge and collect his dog.
“What are you doing, Bubba?” he asked as he walked up to her, again shaking off twigs and leaves.
He scooped up Bubba’s leash and led her out of the yard, this time taking the path from the house’s front door. He wondered why he hadn’t done so before.
Back on the street, he heard a voice call, “Hey, Logan!”
Without noticing it, Logan had ended up across the street from Thatcher’s house, and Thatcher was on his way over.
“Where are you going?” he asked Logan.
“Perfect timing, Thatcher. The hairy man is trying to get away. He just abducted Festus.”
“Aggy’s dog? Where? How?”
“He zapped him right out of his collar. Come on. Let’s find him.”
“Uh, I need to tell my mom if I’m leaving,” Thatcher said sheepishly.
“Fine,” Logan said. “Hurry up. And do me a favor and leave Bubba at your house.” He handed Thatcher Bubba’s leash.
“Okay. I’ll catch up to you. Come on, Bubba.”
“Unnnh, unnnh, unnnh,”
Bubba said.
Thatcher put her in his backyard with his dog, Bear.
“Be nice to her, Bear,” he said. “She’s old. And she farts. So look out.”
Then he ran into the house to tell his mom he was going.
“Are you sure that guy’s an alien?” he asked Logan when he caught up with him. “I see him walking his dog by my house all the time.”
“He admitted he was an alien,” Logan answered. “And look at him trying to escape. He’s clearly our dognapper.”
“There he is!” Thatcher said, pointing.
The man was a couple of blocks ahead, crossing midblock.
“See?” Logan said. “He’s jaywalking. He obviously does not respect our laws.”
“I do it all the time,” Thatcher said.
“But he’s an adult,” Logan said, “Come on!”