And then, as I reached to pull one of the monitors off its wall-mounted bracket, Number 5’s image flickered to life on the screen.

“I thought you were the Alien Hunter, not the Alien Vandal,” he laughed.

I was speechless. How did he do that TV trick? It looked like a regular old set.

“You’ll be happy to know the broadcast was completed before you destroyed any of this equipment.”

“I don’t care,” I managed to say.

“Don’t you?” he said. “I’m not sure I believe you. Not that I suppose it matters. The only thing that would be a help is if you stuck around town till we’re ready for the final episode. You have a starring role in it, you know.”

“You’re not even going to make it to episode two, you fishy freak.”

“Ah-ah-ah-ah!” he laughed at me. “Very good, young Alien Hunter. That’s just the kind of bravado the audience loves to see. And it will make it all the funnier when I kill you in a live broadcast.”

“DUDE,” SAID JOE as I hurled the monitor through the window. “He’s totally toying with you.”

“Let him keep thinking that,” I said-although, truth be told, I was getting pretty freaked at this point.

“How can he possibly keep seeing me through TV screens like that, Joe?”

“Maybe he’s got them reverse-wired somehow, has them working as cameras.”

“Is that possible?”

“Almost anything’s possible if you have alien technology on your side.”

“Can you take a look and find out for us?”

“Sure,” said Joe. “Of course, it would’ve been easier if you hadn’t thrown it out the window and smashed it into a thousand pieces… but I’ll see what I can do.”

He stepped out of the shack to gather up the remains.

“Okay,” I said to the rest of them. “You guys have any big ideas here? Personally, I’m starting to wonder if going after Number 5 wasn’t a big mistake.”

“But he’ll keep killing animals if you don’t stop him,” said Emma.

“And humans,” said Willy.

“And probably you,” said Dana. “You guys are a great help,” I said.

JOE DIDN’T FIND anything strange in the wrecked TV. No nanocameras, no light-sensitive data films, no reverse-broadcast microtransceivers. Which left me one conclusion-Number 5’s electromagnetic powers were greater than I’d even begun to imagine.

I mean, the only thing I could figure was that he was actually able to inhabit electronic devices. And, in a world as wired as this one was becoming… well, there wasn’t much to keep this soulless creep from turning the entire human race into an unpaid variety show and then committing the worst extinction event the planet had ever seen.

Just to be safe, I had the gang run a complete analysis on the van’s equipment, and, when we made it back to the house, we shut off the main circuit breaker in the basement and cut the phone lines.

Clearly, if I was going to find a way to surprise Number 5-and I’d been miserably failing at it so far-I couldn’t have him watching me through the electrical sockets.

I turned to my family and friends. “If you were Number 5, what would be the last thing you’d expect of a young Alien Hunter bent on wiping your foul-smelling stain off the face of the planet?”

“Acting normal for once in your life?” offered Pork Chop.

I was about to give her the L-is-for-Loser sign, but that’s when it hit me. Tomorrow morning I was going to do exactly what any normal kid my age would do. I’d get up, get dressed, drink some orange juice, eat a frosted strawberry Pop-Tart, and go to high school.

Number 5 wouldn’t expect that in a million years.

DANA AND I had English class first period, although maybe class isn’t quite the right word for it. It was more like a holding pen in which the substitute teacher and the students had collectively agreed to spend fifty-five minutes doing as little productive activity as was humanly possible.

The sub clearly just wanted to keep things quiet enough to avoid the attention of any hallway-roving administrators. And the kids, for their part, were taking full advantage of the situation. Some were texting friends; some were chatting idly; some were staring off into space; and two boys were actually sleeping at their desks. The closest thing to learning taking place in the room was a single dark-haired girl reading some manga.

“And, in this great country’s quest to create a democratic, self-governing citizenry,” Dana declaimed to whomever was listening-namely, me-“it was determined that the most important function of its free and public schools was to help its children become motivated, engaged, and eager-to-learn participants in the democratic process; that although the downward-sloping road to lowest-common denominators might have seemed the easiest to travel, the job of teachers, parents, and the larger community was to provide an education that showcased the highway to mathematics, reading, writing, problem solving, and critical thinking as the more compelling and rewarding route.”

“You are so weird,” I told her.

“Aren’t you always reminding me that I’m a product of your imagination?”

“You have a point there.”

“You mean about the failures of this country’s educational system or that stuff about how if I’m weird, you have only yourself to blame?”

“Both, really,” I said.

It was frustrating to see these kids wasting this opportunity. I know I’m not the oldest or wisest entity in the cosmos, but life is short no matter what planet you’re from-way too short to waste chances to learn.

Plus-as has been proved only a couple million times-List aliens have a much better time taking advantage of undereducated people than well-educated ones. Trust me, in my alien world, the ranks of abductees, hosts, slaves, and murder victims include a lot more TV and video-game addicts than they do book readers.

I saw a group of girls gather around an iPhone to watch a little red-carpet footage from some second-rate award show.

And then I had an idea.

Because this was supposed to be an English class, I decided to make up for some of the time they’d lost and uploaded into every student’s brain a couple of my favorite human books-which I’ve of course memorized word-for-word in both text and audio formats-The Catcher in the Rye and Stranger in a Strange Land. And then, as a bonus, I gave them the entire contents of Wikipedia.

The poor sub must have thought he was getting punked. All the kids-having suddenly discovered the joy of a good book for the first time-were lining up and asking him for more things to read.

It felt good to put things somewhat back on track here, but I sensed there was a lot more fixing to do in this school, so Dana and I gathered up our books and went out into the hallway.

ONE OF THE many cool things about Robert A. Heinlein’s classic Stranger in a Strange Land, which is about a guy with alien superpowers living among humans here on Earth, is this thing called “grokking.” Grok is a Martian word that literally means “to drink,” but it’s one of those words-in both the book and real life-that often means a whole lot more. When you grok something, you’re saying you get it.

Like when Dana and I stepped into the linoleum-floored corridor, I instantly grokked the fear, confusion, and hopelessness of about a hundred freshman filing, zombie-like, down the hall toward the back of the building.

“Number 5,” I whispered, and Dana nodded in agreement. I quickly made us look a little younger-I’d make an excellent plastic surgeon if I were into that kind of stuff-and we joined the end of the line.

“Where are we going?” I asked the little messy-haired kid in front of me.

“We’ve got another practice for the big musical, stupid,” he replied.