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announced that it was time to go home. I felt like I had swallowed a stone.
    Nobody spoke on the trip back. Even Earl sat still on the back seat with me and didn’t make a sound or bother to look out the window. Dad had returned from Sam’s place by the time we arrived home. ‘How was the beach?’ He asked, but he didn’t seem like he was interested in an answer. I knew that he was about to hit us with some bad news.
    ‘I got a phone call this afternoon from a guy called Chase Craven. He said he was from PUXCorp, the organisation that was on the news last night. He’s coming around tomorrow. It seems they already know that the nose cone splashed down here. And they want to ask us a few questions.

Bother

    T he sky was clear and blue on Monday morning, but if life was a cartoon, there would have been one little grey cloud hanging over number fifteen Bell Street. Dad had no idea how much Chase Craven already knew, so he couldn’t make any promises to us about Earl. And he wouldn’t let me skip school, even after I pleaded and argued that it would probably be Earl’s last day with us. I put on a brave face when I said goodbye to Earl. But I’m sure he knew something was wrong.
    School was an endurance test. I wasn’t allowed to talk about Earl but he was all I could think of. It didn’t help that the return of the nose cone was the hot topic in the playground. Some of my friends even bragged about seeing it on Thursday night, despite the fact that none of them would have been up that late. By lunchtime, everyone was trying to outdo each other with stories about UFOs and extraterrestrials. I badly wanted to blow all their stories away with the amazing truth.

    Our teacher, Miss Perry, organised a class debate in the afternoon. ‘We should only explore other planets once we have stopped destroying our own,’ was the proposal. I had to sit on my hands and bite my tongue for the whole session. Miss Perry asked me why I wasn’t joining in, so I said I was experiencing gastrointestinal disturbances, which I thought sounded better than a tummy ache. She gave me a ten-minute early mark.
    I ran home faster than ever before, hoping like crazy that Earl would be there. But when I got to our front gate, ten tonnes of doubt fell on me. I stopped to pat Bagpipes, who was lolling on his back in the sun, and prepared myself for the worst.
    ‘Home early again, Avery Bloom?’ Elsie Birkett called from her porch. ‘I certainly hope you’re not playing hooky.’
    ‘No, I’ve chosen rugby this season.’
    ‘Well your parents are home, anyway. A man in a very smart suit called on them today. It seems that your father might be in a spot of bother withthe law. I certainly hope that it doesn’t run in the family.’
    ‘Pull your…’ I didn’t manage to finish my sentence because Serenity came up behind me and covered my mouth.
    ‘Be nice,’ Serenity whispered in my ear. ‘She’s only interested in other people’s lives because she has no family left of her own.’ Sometimes my sister surprised me. We walked into the house to find Mum and Dad drinking tea in the kitchen. But there was no Earl.
    ‘Where is he?’ I asked.
    ‘Avery, we did what we had to do and…’
    ‘He’s not here, is he?’
    ‘No, he’s not here,’ Dad said.
    ‘So what happened?’ Serenity asked.
    ‘That guy, Craven, from PUXCorp, said he was searching for any information that could assist his team in locating the cone, or any part of it. I asked him why we were of particular interest to him and he said he’d received anonymous information about us.’
    ‘Elsie,’ I muttered.

    ‘I told him I knew absolutely nothing about the rocket until I saw it on the news. He was a big guy and he came up so close to me that he was almost standing on my toes. He said that if I concealed any information or artefacts, or refused to cooperate, I could face prosecution. He was very threatening.’
    ‘So you told him everything,’ I