My Gym Teacher Is an Alien Overlord Read Online Free Page B

now no video games. I considered getting down on my knees and pleading, but I knew it would do no good. Mom was as likely to change her mind as the Joker was to start performing at children’s parties.
    She wouldn’t let me near the computer in the living room either, which made it impossible to probe the mystery of the plummeting airplanes. I was reduced to watching the news on TV like someone from the olden days.
    Annoyingly, the midair rescue was even more amazing than Lara had made it sound. As usual these days, every moment had been caught on multiple camera phones. First, you see the landing lights of the three planes as they line up for the runway. Then there’s a flash and the planes suddenly drop.
    The TV newspeople had overlaid the pictures with the conversation between the pilots and air traffic control. So as the first plane nosedives, you hear, “Control Tower, this is Delta Two Four. Experiencing catastrophic power loss to both engines. Attempting restart. Mayday. Mayday.” Before the control tower can respond, you hear the other two pilots call in the exact same Mayday from their cockpits.
    There was even video from inside the planes. The passengers are screaming and crying. The man holding the camera phone is desperately recording a message for his children. Saying good-bye. It’s awful.
    And then . . .
    â€œLook!” shouts the woman in the seat beside him, pointing a shaking finger at the window. The man turns his phone. At first you can’t see anything, but suddenly there, dropping through the clouds at three hundred miles per hour, streaking to the rescue, it’s . . .
    â€œStar Guy!” cries the woman.
    â€œAnd . . . the other one!” shouts the man.
    The coverage switches back to the outside of the planes. You see Star Guy approaching, cape fluttering in the wind, sun glinting off his sigil. He loops around the wings, containing the failing engines with his force field; then he uses his telekinetic power to stop the planes’ rapid descent. Dark Flutter dispatches pigeons to the wingtips, steadying the aircraft. Then Star Guy flies alongside the cockpit of the first aircraft and throws the pilots a salute, before leading them in for a perfect landing.
    Inside, the passengers’ screams turn to whoops of excitement. The man with the camera is crying, telling his kids that he’ll see them soon.
    Even I had to admit that my brother was getting the hang of this superhero business. The salute was a particularly nice touch.
    â€œThose passengers were very lucky,” said Mom, wiping away a tear as we watched them slide down the emergency chutes onto the runway in front of a line of waiting ambulances and fire engines.
    Statistically, she couldn’t have been more wrong. The chances of three modern airplanes going down like that at precisely the same moment in the same airspace were infinitesimally low. That’s what made it so suspicious. “What do you mean?” I asked.
    â€œIf that had happened anywhere else in the world, Star Guy wouldn’t have been around to save them.”
    I hadn’t thought of that. Mom was right. Could it be a coincidence, or did it point to something more significant? If I was going to investigate, I needed the Internet.
    â€œMom, I really need the computer to do my homework.”
    â€œReally? Can’t you use a wax tablet and a stylus like your dad and I had to?”
    I think Mom was trying to be funny, since they only used wax tablets and styluses in ancient Greece. And they didn’t have girls in school back then. And my mom wasn’t 2,500 years old.
    â€œFine. You can use the computer,” she relented. “But I’m installing a new security feature to make sure it’s only for homework.”
    I sat down confidently in front of the screen. There wasn’t any security software on the planet that I couldn’t outwit.
    Mom drew up a chair and