Camp Alien Read Online Free Page B

was just a kid, I’d hate to meet her parents.
    Vraj held out an egg. “All right. This is what we’re looking for. Not easy on a rocky hillside in the dark.”
    I looked at the egg clutched in her claw. “But it helps that it glows.”
    â€œGlows?” Vraj growled.
    Mistake.
I
could see the glow, but apparently Vraj’s kind of alien couldn’t. I didn’t want Opal to catch on that I had special alien powers. “Eh … maybe it’s just reflecting starlight.”
    â€œNo, it’s glowing all right,” Opal chirped. “These should be as easy to find as giant glowworms.”
    I relaxed. It seemed that humans and my own species could both see the glow, but Vraj’s beady yellow eyes couldn’t. The Cadet grunted with annoyance and turned to go uphill. She moved ahead in quick jerky steps, her tail sweeping back and forth. I guess, all told, I was lucky to get this sort of alien for apartner. Something that looked like a badly animated movie dinosaur was still easier to explain to Opal than some green alien with three heads.
    Through the misty starlight, Vraj led us over the crest of a ridge and onto a steep hillside bare of everything but rocks. Zillions of rocks. Glow or not, it wasn’t going to be easy to find those eggs. And if we didn’t find them soon, two mismatched alien kids—and maybe this whole planet—could be in big trouble.

It was the weirdest egg hunt I’d ever been on. After long hours of scrabbling in the dark, we were tired and cold, and our eyes ached. All we had to show for it were nine more eggs. Nine plus Vraj’s seven left eighty-four more eggs to find.
    The sky was paling to gray when Opal and I slipped back into our cabins. It seemed like the wake-up gong sounded only seconds after I’d crawled into bed. But by then it was fully light, and everyone was bustling around, excited about the first full day of camp. As for me, I almost fell asleep at breakfast and nearly drowned in my pancake syrup.
    After breakfast, I blearily noticed that Melanie had cornered Opal between the dining hall and the nurse’s cabin and was apparently making her cry. I told myself to ignore it, but nobody deserves to be bullied, not even little pests like Opal. And with Opal holding that big secret, I figured I’d better check things out.
    â€œSo who’s your boyfriend?” Melanie was saying as I walked closer. “Tell me, or I’ll tell the counselors I saw you sneak out last night to meet a boy.”
    â€œI didn’t,” Opal sobbed. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
    Melanie had backed Opal against a tree and was smirking down at her. Angrily, I stepped up to them. “Hey, leave the kid alone,” I said. “Don’t you have some artsy showing off to do?”
    Melanie spluttered. Then suddenly a nasty glint came into her eye. “It was
you
, wasn’t it? The guy was tall and dark haired. I saw that when they came back.”
    Opal started to protest, but I jumped in. “Melanie, who would have guessed you havesuch a dirty mind? If you must know, we’re planning our Nature Nuts project. We want to lead a nighttime hike, but we need to figure out where to go.”
    Opal, eyes big and teary, nodded earnestly.
    Melanie sneered. “You expect me to believe that?”
    I shrugged. “Who cares what you believe? But when we get the hike planned, Arts Farts and Sports Dorks will
not
be invited.”
    As we split up, Opal gave me the thumbs up, followed by what looked like dinosaur claws. When it came to keeping a secret, that kid was a time bomb.
    Still, when we got to Nature Nuts that morning, I had an idea churning. As Opal and I settled onto a bench, I tried it on Muskrat. “Opal and I have a great project idea, and it could involve other people’s projects too. A nighttime hike. Chelsea could do her bird-call project with owls, and Opal could point out