How to Properly Dispose of Planet Earth

By Paul Noth

Popular New Yorker cartoonist Paul Noth continues his illustrated middle grade series about a boy, his wacky family, and an out-of-this-world adventure in this laugh-out-loud sequel to How to Sell Your Family to the Aliens.

Happy Conklin Jr. is still the only 10-year-old who has to shave three times a day, thanks to being tested on by his inventor father. And it's safe to say Hap is the only 10-year-old who accidentally sold his entire family to aliens. The good news is that Hap managed to save his family--including his tyrannical Grandma--but now the Conklins face a problem that might put the whole world in danger . . .

Hap wants a girl in his sixth-grade science class to be his lab partner but lacks the courage to even talk to her. Through the mysterious powers of Squeep! the lizard, he finds a way to overcome this fear but also, unfortunately, opens a black hole in his middle school that will swallow the solar system unless he's able to stop it. In his race against time to save everything, he's helped by his sister Kayla, greatly hindered by his sister Alice, and uncovers the truth about Grandma's plan to take over the Galaxy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jan 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781681196602

Book preview

Room

PART 1

SURRENDER, HAPPY!

CHAPTER 1

THE POSSIBILITIES

I, Happy Conklin Jr., am now eleven. Over the past year I’ve learned a lot about what’s possible and what’s not …

Why was asking Nev Everly to be my lab partner so impossible? Because my mouth refused to talk to her and my brain turned to useless goulash in her presence.

I didn’t realize Nev’s effect on me the first time I saw her. I only noticed that a smiling girl with long brown hair stood in front of our homeroom. Her vintage clothes made it seem like she had wandered in out of an old Hollywood movie.

Class, said Ms. York. We have a new student. Nevada, would you like to introduce yourself to the class?

Not really, said Nev.

I laughed.

I overheard her say two more things that made me laugh in our first-hour science class.

She’s funny, I thought. You’re funny too. You should ask her to be your lab partner.

So I walked up to her to introduce myself.

Then I walked past her.

I ended up in the back of the room sharpening a pencil.

At lunch that day, I stood in line behind a talkative kid named Felix, who for some reason always called me by my last name, Conklin.

Actually, Conklin …, Felix was saying.

Nev Everly got into the lunch line right behind me.

Hi! said Felix. You’re actually the new girl! I’m Felix.

Hey, she said. I’m Nev.

So, actually …, said Felix, do you want me to show you around the cafeteria?

I’ve been in a cafeteria before, said Nev.

I pretended not to know Felix.

This is my buddy Conklin, he said, putting his arm around me.

Hi, said Nev.

That’s when my brain melted into goulash.

I said nothing. I only stared at her.

Conklin and I both have lizards, said Felix.

Huh, said Nev.

It’s actually true, said Felix, looking at me. You know, come to think of it, Conklin, since we both have lizards, we should be lab partners in science class. We could actually do a lizard science project! How awesome would that be?

As Felix worked himself into a lather about all the reptile experiments we could do together, I fought back the urge to knock him on the head with my lunch tray.

CHAPTER 2

ACTUALLY …

Felix had attached himself to me on the first day of sixth grade. He seemed to want to be my best friend but also to correct every word that came out of my mouth.

Actually, Conklin, he’d say, it’s pronounced ‘orangu-TAN,’ not ‘orangu-TANG.’

Actually, Conklin, he’d say seconds later. Chimpanzees aren’t monkeys, they’re great apes.

Actually, Conklin … Actually, Conklin … Actually, Conklin …

I don’t mind being corrected when I’m wrong, but Felix racked up at least fifty Actually, Conklins on any given school day.

And after the first twenty, you start to feel like an idiot.

Felix also tended to speak at great length about his favorite subject, the digestive troubles of his pet lizard, the Mighty Thor.

After a few months of this, I made the mistake of telling him that I, too, had a pet lizard, by the name of Squeep!

"Actually, Conklin? said Felix. We both have lizards? Get out. What are the friggin’ odds?"

Why had I ever mentioned Squeep! or called him my pet lizard?

That wasn’t accurate.

Squeep! was nobody’s pet, and he hadn’t been a proper lizard ever since Alice stole him and stashed him in the Doorganizer, an infinite closet powered by a black hole.

This journey through extra-dimensional space-time had altered Squeep! in profound and disturbing ways.

Sure, he still looked like a lizard, but he acted more like an ambassador from another dimension. He seemed to have diplomatic immunity to our laws of physics. He’d escape from wherever I put him and show up wherever I least expected, sometimes only seconds later.

He’d moved out of his terrarium at my old elementary school, which was understandable. Once you’ve lived in a black hole and crisscrossed the galaxy, who could go back to sitting on a rock and eating bugs all day? Besides, a new lizard named Pete had replaced him as the class pet. So Squeep! decided to move in with me. Most mornings I awoke to find him sleeping on my forehead or chest.

He wasn’t so much a pet as a scaly roommate who slept on my head.

I preferred Squeep! to any normal pet.

Normal pet lizards need to be fed, cared for, and cleaned up after. They’re also—if you believe Felix—prone to constipation. The Mighty Thor could only poop in a warm-water bath. Felix said his family was always arguing about whose turn it was to poop the lizard.

Thankfully, Squeep! preferred finding his own food, and I never had to worry about how he went to the bathroom, except when I accidentally walked in on him.

But I didn’t like Squeep!’s constant disappearing and reappearing. I called it his Lizardini routine, after the famous escape artist Harry Lizardini.

It unnerved me whenever he pulled a Lizardini, but especially the time I discovered him inside my school locker. He sat in the upper compartment, staring at me. He refused to come out.

After some coaxing, I tried closing the locker door, just to show him I meant business. But when I reopened it a moment later, Squeep! had vanished, leaving behind a single gray seashell. I spent the rest of the day scratching my head about how and why he had done that.

I began noticing other little parting gifts that Squeep! would leave for me whenever he disappeared: the seashell, a nacho chip, a bottle cap.

It felt like he was trying to tell me something with these little doodads.

But what?

I even started a Doodad Decoder in the back of my pre-algebra notebook to figure out what each one meant.

CHAPTER 3

ALICE’S BROTHER

Before Nev showed up, my confidence at school had improved a lot, ever since the incident with the aliens last year.

After surviving that traumatic ordeal, getting teased by fifth graders no longer bothered me. It took more than being called Beard Boy to hurt my feelings.

When I stopped crying, the Make-Beard-Boy-Cry Dance seemed kind of pointless to everyone.

I even started getting along with some of the other kids, though not Willow Johansen. She never forgave me for ruining the dance she invented.

But still, I had reason to hope that Wonder Street Middle School would be a fresh start.

Then, on my first day of sixth grade, some seventh-grade boy started picking on me in the hallway.

Hey, Dinky! he yelled, walking toward me. His friend, who looked frightened, grabbed him by the shoulder and said two words:

Alice’s brother.

The kid who’d called me Dinky froze. The color fell from his face.

Sorry, he croaked.

They both backed away as though I were a stray pit bull foaming at the mouth.

Wherever I went that morning, a whispered Alice’s brother echoed among