The Christmas Genie (2 page)

I do remember this much—when it happened, Mrs. Walters was talking about meteorites. She's an astronomy nut, and at night she's taking graduate classes because she's working on her Ph.D. in astrophysics. She tries to bring astronomy into everything she teaches us. Like, we'll be doing math and she'll have us adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing stars or planets instead of apples and oranges. Or we'll be doing health and she'll start talking about whether or not germs can survive in outer space without oxygen. I feel sorry for Mrs. Walters's
family because they have to hear this stuff
all
the time.

Meteorites are kind of cool. You may not realize this, but there's a whole lot of stuff flying around in outer space, and it all has different names. Like, meteorites are rocks from space that hit the Earth, but meteors are still in space. Comets, meteoroids, and asteroids all orbit the sun. But meteoroids are small, asteroids are bigger, and comets have a tail. I know all this stuff because Mrs. Walters talks about it all the time.

“One day in 1998,” Mrs. Walters told us, almost in a whisper, “some boys were playing basketball in a driveway in Monahans, Texas. And suddenly, they looked up and saw a meteorite come flying out of the sky! It crashed into the vacant lot next door to them. Can you imagine that? It was all over the papers and the TV news.”

“That must have been cool,” said David, who thinks everything is cool, even stuff that is totally uncool.

“You mean I might be outside minding my own business and a giant rock could come flying out of the sky?” asked Ashley. “That would be terrifying!”

Ashley is the kind of kid who worries about every dumb thing that could possibly happen to her. Like, what are the chances that anybody would ever get hit by a meteorite?

“Did the meteorite ruin the basketball game?” asked Jacob, who sits in front of me. I like sports too, but Jacob is obsessed. All that guy ever talks about is sports.

“I would think so!” said Mrs. Walters.

We were having this discussion when suddenly there was this loud
BOOM . . . BOOM . . . BOOM
outside.

I guess it could have been a sonic boom. That's the noise that an object makes when it travels faster than the speed of sound—about 750 miles per hour—at sea level. I looked it up in one of my science books. But it wasn't a plane. The sound was really close, like it was right outside. We all turned to look out the window. And then, maybe a second or two later, there was a
crash
and the window next to me just
exploded
! Glass was flying all over the place. Whatever it was that smashed through the window was heading straight for my desk.

Everything happened so fast after that, there wasn't a lot of time to react.

Somehow, I had the sense to cover my eyes with one arm and dive off my chair. I hit the floor next to Madison, who sits next to me. There was a lot of shouting and screaming. I didn't see anything after that.

When I finally looked up, my desk was shattered. I mean
shattered
. There was something half-buried in the floor underneath it. It looked like a rock, and it was about the size of a small garbage can. If I hadn't dived out of the way, it would have crushed my legs, or maybe gone right through me.

I would have been dead.

It was amazing! But that's not even the
really
amazing part of the story. I'll get to the really amazing part in a minute.

Naturally, everybody freaked out, even the cool kids who like to pretend nothing bothers them. We were all on the floor, hiding under our desks and covering our heads. The girls were screaming. Somebody was crying. I figured it must have been a bomb. Maybe our school was being attacked by terrorists.

“What was
that
?” asked Ella, who sits in the back row.

“Remain calm!” Mrs. Walters shouted, with panic in her voice. “Everybody stay under your desk!”

Like staying under a desk was going to protect us from a bomb, right? I didn't have a desk to stay
under anyway, because my desk was in a million pieces. I just lay there on the floor, dazed.

About a minute passed before anybody said anything.

“Is everybody okay?” asked Mrs. Walters.

We got up slowly. All of my body parts seemed to be intact. No blood anywhere. I was afraid another bomb might come flying through the window, and thought we should just get out of there. But nobody was making a move for the door.

“I think there's a piece of glass in my arm,” Ashley groaned. She sounded like she was going to cry.

Mrs. Walters went to help Ashley, while the rest of us gathered around the thing that was stuck in the floor. There was smoke pouring out of it.

“What do you think it is?” asked Olivia.

“I'll tell you what it is,” said Ava, the walking encyclopedia. “It's a meteor.”

“It can't be a meteor,” I told her. “Meteors don't hit the Earth. It's a meteor
ite
.”

Everybody seemed to be okay. There wasn't even any glass in Ashley's arm. The big crybaby just hit it against something while she was diving under her desk.

“It
is
a meteorite!” Mrs. Walters exclaimed as she got down on her hands and knees to look at it. Her eyes were wide with excitement.

That's when our principal, Mr. Hamilton, charged in the door. Mrs. Walters jumped up and stood in front of the meteorite so Mr. Hamilton couldn't see it.

“I heard a crash,” Mr. Hamilton said. “Is everyone all right?”

Mr. Hamilton has to deal with lots of crisis situations all the time. Like, every year there's always some dope who pulls the fire alarm for no reason. Or that time we were in fourth grade and Miss Rassky found a snake in the cloakroom.
That
was interesting! But I'm pretty sure this was the first time a meteorite had ever come flying into a classroom.

“A desk broke,” Mrs. Walters said, lamely.

Mr. Hamilton looked around suspiciously. “I'll get the custodian,” he said. And he left.

Once it was clear that everybody was okay, we weren't afraid anymore. We were all excited about what had happened.

“I can't believe a rock fell out of the sky and landed right here in our class!” said Alyssa. “What are the odds of that happening?”

“Well, it had to land
somewhere
,” Ella pointed out. “The odds are just as good that it would land here as they are that it would land anywhere else.”

Ella is so sensible. Sensible can be annoying.

“But it landed here just as we were talking about meteorites!” I pointed out.

“This is the most exciting thing that ever happened to me!” Mrs. Walters said with wonder as we gathered around the hole in the floor. “I've been waiting my whole life to get my hands on a meteorite. I'll be able to study this and write it up as a research project.”

I wanted to touch it, but common sense told me that when something is smoking, it's hot. And hot stuff burns your skin. And burning skin hurts. That didn't stop William, who is on our school football team and looks like he's in eighth grade. He's really good at football, but he needs a common sense transplant. William put his finger on the meteorite and immediately pulled it away.

“Owwwwwwwww!”
he said, shaking his hand.

“I didn't mean I was going to get my hands on it right away, William,” Mrs. Walters scolded.

I leaned closer. It didn't look like a regular rock. It wasn't smooth. Mrs. Walters got a magnifying glass from her desk and held it up to the meteorite. There were small pits in it. Abigail took out her stupid cell phone camera and shot some pictures.

“This could be four and a half
billion
years old,” Mrs. Walters told us. “It may provide clues to the solar nebula, the swirling cloud of gas and dust that gave rise to the sun and the planets. If it contains water, that would suggest it had an encounter with a comet, which is essentially a cosmic snowball.”

“Cosmic Snowball would be a good name for a rock band,” said Logan. What a dope.

“What do you think it's made of?” asked Josh. “Lava?”

Mrs. Walters went over to the whiteboard and took one of the magnetic clips she uses to hold up papers and stuff. She touched it against the meteorite and it stuck with a click.

“It's made of iron,” said Ava, who knows everything.

“Just think,” Natalie said, “this thing could have been flying around space for centuries. For
eternity
. Maybe it's been to the edge of the universe and back.”

“There are no edges to the universe,” Ava said. “The universe just goes on forever.”

“How do
you
know?” said Ella. “The universe can't go on forever. It has to end
some
where.”

“And what do you think happens after that point?” asked Mrs. Walters.

“Nobody knows,” Josh said.

“God knows,” said Ava.

“What should we do with it, Mrs. Walters?” asked Ella. “Should we call the police?”

“No!” Mrs. Walters exclaimed.

“What would the police do?” asked Ethan. “Maybe we should call the science museum. They would know what to do.”

“No!” Mrs. Walters exclaimed.

“I say we call the news,” said Andrew. “I'll bet they'd send a camera crew over here. We'll become famous like those kids in Texas. Hey, I bet we could make some money out of this
thing.” Andrew is always talking about getting famous and making lots of money.

“No!” Mrs. Walters exclaimed. “Don't call
anybody
! I want to be the first to study it. This will be our little secret, okay?”

“Okay,” we all agreed.

The smoke had stopped coming out of the meteorite. Mrs. Walters leaned over and touched a piece of paper against it. The paper didn't burn or turn black. Then she tapped a finger against it for a moment.

“It's cooling off,” she told us. “You can touch it gently if you want.”

We all leaned over to touch the meteorite except for Ashley, who said she was afraid—of course. It felt warm, but not too hot to hold your hand against it. There were twenty-four of us reaching out to touch it at the same time. I rubbed a finger against it, and so did some of the other kids. Nothing came off on my skin. It didn't burn.

Let me just warn you that this is when the
really
amazing part happened.

While we were rubbing our hands against the meteorite, it started to vibrate slightly and give
off a humming sound. Then it started to glow yellowish red. It was like there was some kind of energy source coming from deep within it. There was the crackle of sparks. We all pulled our hands off and backed away. Something very strange was happening.

And then . . . this
thing
started to rise up out of the meteorite.

Okay, this is the part of the story that you might find a little bit hard to believe. But as I said, I was there when it happened and you weren't. So who are you gonna believe, your own sense of what's possible, or me?