Adolescents Only

Gary Elvin, a weary teacher boarding with the easygoing Schermerhorn family, finds his already chaotic life upended by a red object falling from the sky. What seems at first like a meteorite proves to be a glowing rocket that hums with eerie music and strange blue light, and inside it he discovers a sealed metal strip that floods his mind with alien sensations and a transparent cylinder of multicolored spheres. Before he can make sense of it, the cylinder vanishes, the Schermerhorn teenagers are caught chewing the spheres like gum, and Elvin is left wondering whether he has witnessed a prank, a hallucination, or something far more dangerous. What follows is a wild blend of suburban comedy, schoolroom satire, and mounting science-fiction menace. The students become impossibly serious, devouring books from the library, acing surprise tests, and even producing gold in a lab experiment while a principal dances in public and faculty behavior turns bizarre. Elvin's attempts to restore order fail as he confronts the Schermerhorn twins, who calmly reveal an unsettling mastery of hypnotism and psychology. By dawn, the mystery has become deadly: the town bank has vanished, a jungle full of tigers stands in its place, and the people of San Benedicto are forced to face a threat that has transformed ordinary life into a surreal battle for survival. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.