Zach Zanto! Have you ever heard a cooler name? Ever? I haven't. Far as I'm concerned, a guy with a name like that is destined to be cool.
No one really knows anything about Zach, which isn't saying much since this is after all Pluto, Washington. Weird is normal here, so no one asks a whole lot of questions. It's the greatest place in the world to live, especially if you or your family don't fit that whole Brady Bunch persona. (That's my new word...persona). Anyway, no one really remembers when Zach started school here. A bunch of us tried to figure it out one day during recess, but no one could actually remember Zach's first day. I mean one day he wasn't there, and the next day he was. We just can't figure out when. Weird huh?
I got to know him a little better this semester since he sits next to me in Honors Physics. There's only nine of us in the class, so our teacher, Mr. Stratum (yep! That's his real name), has us all sit in a semi-circle facing his chair. Zach sits to my left, and Millie Milkweed sits on my right side. You know the funny thing about Millie, and I don't mean funny ha-ha, I mean funny strange? She...oh...never mind! That's another story. Back to Zach, like I said, he sits next to me now, and at first I never noticed anything weird about him...at least...no weirder than usual. Then things started happening.
I started paying more attention to Zach when I noticed his silvery blonde hair making a crackling sound.You know that staticky kind of sound you get on the radio in your mom or dad's car when you're trying to get a decent station and they don't have satellite radio? It's annoying, like a bunch of angry bees getting ready to charge you. Well, that's the sound that was coming from Zach's hair. At first I thought he had one of those old-fashioned radio headsets with him, but when I looked closer to see if he was wearing ear buds, I realized his hair was moving. Yeah, you heard me! I said his hair was moving. At first I figured maybe the wind was ruffling his hair, right? I mean, how else would someone's hair move? Then it slowly dawned on me that the windows were shut tight because it was the middle of winter. There was no wind! What the hey, Man?
I stared at Zach, or rather, Zach's hair, moving around his head, making that strange buzzing sound, and I must have looked pretty freaked out because Mr. Stratum asked me in a very loud voice if I was all right. I didn't answer because I didn't know he was talking to me, and anyway, I seemed to have swallowed my tongue.
"Mr. Beaker!" Mr. Stratum barked, making me jump.
I blinked, looking around. "Yessir?"
"Please tell the class what you find so fascinating about Mr. Zanto's hair?"
"Wh-what?" I croaked, knowing my face was turning tomato-red.
"You've been staring at Mr. Zanto's hair for a full five minutes. Please enlighten the rest of the class as to why."
I swallowed, wishing I could dive under my chair and have it gobble me whole. "I just...I just..I mean..I don't..." I stammered. Oh brother, could I sound any more of a loser? I mean, what was I supposed to say? Zach's hair is ALIVE! Check it out!
"As I suspected, you haven't paid any attention to the problem we're discussing. Since I can only assume you already know the answer, perhaps you'll be good enough to share it with us."
I stared at the jumble of numbers and equations in front of me, trying to make some sense of it, but a part of me was acutely aware of Zach's grey eyes on me, watching me closely. I don't know how, but I felt like I saw something I wasn't supposed to and that Zach was far from happy about it. A cold shiver went down my spine, and it took all of my will power not to leap up and run screaming from the room.
I must have muttered the correct answer because Mr. Stratum grunted and moved on with the class. I let out a big gust of air and before I could stop myself, I glanced over at Zach. He was still watching me closely...only...and I swear on my great-grandma's grave this is true -- his eyes turned from a dark grey to the same color as his hair.
That cold shiver I felt earlier? It washed over me like a cold shower as I stared into those unearthly silvery eyes. I struggled to remember. Were his eyes always that color and just looked darker depending on what angle you saw him from? Maybe he normally wore darker clothes that made his eyes seem greyer than they are? No! Staring at him then, unable to tear my gaze away, I knew, I just knew that his eyes had changed. And there was something else that convinced me I was right. Zach was smiling at me as if he knew I knew.
And it was the kind of smile that froze you in your tracks.
As soon as class was over, I grabbed my books and hurtled out of the room as if a hungry bear were after me. I didn't even wait for Mr. Stratum to hand out the homework assignment. I hightailed it to the cafeteria, bursting to tell Fatty and Wiggy and the other guys about what I saw, but as I turned the corner that led to the cafeteria I skidded to a stop.
There, right in front of me, was Zach. And he wasn't even breathing hard.
"How--?" I croaked.
He shrugged, smiling that same knowing smile again. "I took a short cut."
I shook my head. "A shortcut? But...there isn't one from the Physics Lab. What--"
He laughed, cutting me off. "Obviously there is Beaker. How else would you explain how I beat you here?"
He had me there. "I guess you're right," I said, but I wasn't convinced. To paraphrase my favorite detective of all time, the great Sherlock Holmes, something was amiss here. "Um...did you want something?" I asked, hoping it wasn't my head.
He held out his hand. "Here. You ran out so fast you forgot your homework."
I took the paper he held out to me, wondering if maybe I overreacted a smidge. "Oh...yeah...thanks. Um...Zach?"
His eyes drilled into mine. "Yes Beaker?"
"Your eyes...um..."
His smile widened, making my legs quake. "They're...uh...kind of silver..."
"And?"
"Well...I...uh...I could have sworn they were grey before..."
He stared at me a moment before answering. "Before what Beaker?" he said, so softly I barely heard him.
"Be..before class," I stammered, feeling like an idiot.
He didn't say anything, just continued to stare at me. Then he took one step closer to me and looked me eye to eye. "This is my true eye color Beaker," he said in that same soft, but somehow menacing tone. "In fact, we all have the same eye color where I come from."
I swallowed. "Wh...wh...where do you come from?" I asked, terrified of what his answer might be, but desperately needing to know.
He didn't say anything. Instead he glanced out of the window and pointed up at the sky with one long index finger. I was suddenly reminded of ET and thought that maybe his finger was going to light up or something. I held my breath and waited.
His strange, silvery eyes turned back to me. "Come over to my house some night when the sky is clear and I'll show you," he said. Then he turned and walked into the cafeteria, whistling the theme from "2001: A Space Odyssey."
