Day 1 on the Barren Planet Pick Your Own Path You have arrived on the barren planet where the food weather and local inhabitants are completely bizarre You A Panic steal a spaceship and head for home Turn to page 98 Page 98 You’re caught by the Pig People of Pluto and you live out your life in their zoo begging for Piggy McJiggles Snax for Humans from zoo visitors B Embrace it and try to blend in Turn to page 57 Page 57 You blend in too well and become part of the hive mind like an ant which is fine until invaders from Mars invent a giant magnifying glass and use it with the sun’s rays to burn your planet C Suck it up and try not to whine Turn to page 66 Page 66 You are rewarded with a fuzzy mild mannered creature with eight legs who will become your new sidekick
So far my new spider is the only good thing about moving to Dallas Mom gave her to me as my not whining in front of Izzy about moving bribe Who knew a little sister could come in so handy I must have been great at faking the enthusiasm I could have ended up with a millipede or some other boring insect like a butterfly instead of an arachnid But my tarantula is AWESOME What isn’t awesome is Texas It’s flat and brown like the alien planets in classic Star Trek episodes The only difference is that the people don’t have lizard heads or speak in hisses It’s too bad they don’t It would be hilarious to see kids at the mall eating ice cream cones with forked tongues and claws Maybe it would look something like this
Back home Belle Lake wasn’t a huge city like Dallas But at least it had hills and you could see mountains and smell ocean air And like pretty much all of western Washington it was covered in green I miss looking in all that green for garter snakes with Jack and Dawson We didn’t have any venomous snakes in Belle Lake Guess how many Dallas has FOUR SPECIES I looked them up online before we moved I know Mom’s excited to live in an area with a larger population of people with Mexican heritage like us but she could have been an accounting manager anywhere We could have moved to somewhere cool like California but noooo she got a job in Texas It’s weird here even without the lizard heads The people talk weird it smells weird and the weather is weird it’s still sunny enough here to wear shorts and flip-flops even though school starts in less than a week WEIRD And speaking of school I’m even more worried than I was before the move Just writing about it makes my
stomach gurgle I realized today that I’ve known all my friends pretty much all my life I’ve never had to make new ones Is making friends like riding a bicycle Will I remember how it works What if I don’t On the one hand Brenton Park will be a whole school full of smart people since it’s a magnet school for kids interested in science And that should make it easier since I know science Highest grades in class always the leader for our projects in school speaker for our Science Squad science guy extraordinaire right But on the other hand writing pick-your-own-path stories and loving science fiction might make me look like I don’t belong there I guess I’ll just have to act like I know what I’m doing and pretend to be Mr Awesome Knower of All Things Especially Things about Spiders I wonder if you could walk a spider Like put a tiny harness and leash on her somehow Then I could take her outside and scare that pinched-up old lady who lives on the other side of our duplex The face she made when the movers unloaded my bug-net-launcher project looked like
