The Other Normals

by Ned Vizzini

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, hurry up!”

  I feel for the next pin. As I do, my fingers slip, the tension wrench comes out, and I have to start over. No! This has to work. Eventually I’m going to need to use the bathroom, and I’m not doing it in a trough in front of Ada.

  I get the first pin clicked again. Then the second. The third one I have to push up very far, the fourth only a little. The world inside the lock magnifies in an exploded view behind my closed eyes; my tiniest motions take on great significance, like when you play with your mouth when you have a cold sore. The last pin won’t move, so I pull the pick out, turn around, spit on it, and stick it back in. Click. Ada’s cuffs spread open and slip onto the stone floor.

  “Yes!” she whispers. She rubs her hands. “Now I’ll do you.” She picks my cuffs in about a tenth of the time. “These local locks—cheap. We’re lucky.”

  “I thought I was good.”

  “No.” She smiles. “You’re good. Now don’t start moving your hands. They might see us. Stay calm and follow me into that corner.” We shuffle over. Ada picks the locks on both our feet. “Now you need to get ready to run. Can you do that?”

  I test my ankle. “I think so. Can I bring the princess figure?”

  “Yes, Peregrine, get the princess figure.”

  I slip it into the side of my getma, nestled against my hip bone. “I feel like it’s calling to me.”

  “It is. You just have to kiss Anna at your camp and you’ll do what it wants you to do.”

  “What about you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Can I kiss you? Before we try to get out of here. Just in case.”

  “What?”

  “Like, what if we get caught? I’ve never kissed a girl. I don’t want to die without doing it. I—”

  “No, you can’t kiss me, Peregrine. Anna’s the one you need to kiss. Didn’t anybody ever explain to you that you shouldn’t ask to kiss girls?”

  “No. I thought it would—”

  “If you want to kiss someone, you just have to do it.”

  “Right. Okay.”

  I pucker my lips and lean forward. Ada pulls aside. “Not me, Peregrine!”

  I wipe my lips on my shoulder and pretend that that’s what I meant to do all along. Normally this kind of social failure would make me want to die via implosion, but right now there are too many other things to worry about. “It’s cool,” I say. “Honestly.”

  “Humans,” she says. Then she adds, “Boys,” and then she calls for a guard.

  38

  A FISH CREATURE COMES TO THE DOOR, mottled and smelly. I can’t tell if he’s the same one who threw us in the cell, but for some reason I picture him playing baseball—getting ready in the batter’s box—and it makes me smile. I’m not handcuffed. God, life is good when you’re not handcuffed.

  The batracian hisses at us, “Whatthyou want?”

  “I’m sick,” Ada says. “I need to see a nurse.”

  “Whathh sickkk on you?”

  “It’s private. You wouldn’t understand.”

  The fish creature grumbles and unlocks the door. Ada grabs my wrist; as soon as the door is fully open, she squeezes. I guess she forgot that Officer Tendrile scraped me up with his tentacle in that exact spot; I yelp as I jump and run behind her for the door.

  The batracian snarls at our unshackled legs and reaches for his spear, but Ada whirls her decuffed handcuffs and thwacks him in the eye. He shrieks. He grabs at her, but he’s too slow. I run out the door after her—right into the passageway between the cells, which is full of batracian guards.

  “What do we do?”

  Six of the guards point spears and hiss. From the cells on either side, excited prisoners scramble to watch. Ada holds up the cuffs she whacked the guard with and jangles them. They’re dull black metal, and the light from the overhanging lanterns is dim orange, but the guards are as fascinated as if they’re seeing diamonds. They blink their purple eyes. They try to focus on us, but they can’t stop looking at the twitching cuffs. Ada sways them back and forth.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Distracting them with shiny objects!”

  “That works?”

  “Of course it works! Haven’t you ever gone fishing?”

  “It’s still the first day of camp; I haven’t had a chance!”

  I think part of the magic lies in Ada’s hands, which are so finely put together, with subtle curves ending in glittering fingertips. I’m momentarily distracted too. Then I notice one guard, directly in front of me, aiming his spear harmlessly toward the ground. You have Speed 7, I remind myself. You shouldn’t do anything drastic. But really, if any moment calls for something drastic, this does.

  I grab the spear. The guard falls forward and smacks the ground. The prisoners cheer.

  “Good job, little human!”

  “Now stab him! Stab him!”

  I examine my new weapon. It’s several feet longer than me. I’ve never stabbed anyone in real life; I’m not particularly good at stabbing people in video games; once I cut myself on a plastic butter knife while eating fish sticks … but I have stabbed people in C&C with Sam. I lunge forward and plunge the spear into the batracian’s shoulder. It goes in with surprising ease—like stabbing nothing. The creature howls. Ada leaps over him and runs back toward the market.

  “Wait for me!” I leave the spear in his body and follow. The guards snap out of their trance and hurl their weapons at us. One of them grazes my side, tearing a whispered rip above my pelvic bone, but the princess figure stays safe, and by then, honestly, I think you could have clonked me with a microwave and I’d still be moving.

  Ada and I run toward the giant doors. I steal a glance behind me: two of the guards are tending to their injured comrade; the other three are in pursuit.

  “Can we—huff— open the doors?” I manage.

  “We’ve got to! We need to get you back to the thakerak chamber!”

  But that isn’t going to be easy. Two octopus-men—celates—are guarding the doors. They drink coffee on stools. One is Officer Tendrile. He stands and says, “Look at this! Mr. John Johnson Perry Eckert, come back to play.” The other officer steps up behind him, but Officer Tendrile shakes him off and pulls his long sword: sssssing! “Do you believe in God, Mr. Eckert?”

  He’s ten feet away. “I … uh …” I back against Ada. “My mother used to make me go to Episcopalian church.... I never really believed in it, but I liked the community....”

  “You’re not supposed to answer,” Officer Tendrile says, furrowing his considerable brow. “That’s just something I ask humans before I kill them.”

  “You’re not killing me,” I manage, “so it makes sense that you would get a different answer.”

  “What are you doing?” Ada hisses. “We’re not getting through there!”

  “Fire door,” I say. I grab her wrist and run to the right.

  39

  OFFICER TENDRILE SWINGS AT ME, BUT I suck in my chest to avoid the tip of his blade. I’ve spotted a passageway that leads along the rock wall next to the giant doors. The other celate, seeing my speed (maybe I’m more than 7! I’ve never really tested myself) spills his coffee and yelps. I know we have a few seconds before he’s not-burned enough to kill us.

  The rock is cool and dry under my feet. The seam that leads away from the doors is big enough for me and Ada.... I hope it’s too tight for Officer Tendrile. Tentacle noises behind me destroy that notion. He’s closing in. The only chance we have is to reach a door I don’t know is there.

  “What are you doing?” Ada gasps.

  “Whenever there’s a big door, there’s a small door.” I hope I’m not a liar. I’m looking for a service entrance, something like the fire door at school that Sam could open and close so freely.

  “If you stop now, I’ll kill you quick!” Officer Tendrile yells. I turn back—his tentacles pump on the floor and walls beside him, propelling him through the passage like a tum
escent insect. His sword is out. He’ll be on us in seconds—

  There. A door cut into the wall on the left. Small and gray with a red bar across it. Emergency.

  “‘Alarm Will Sound,’” I tell Ada, and shove it open.

  40

  A RAUCOUS CLANG HERALDS OUR TUMBLING into the Penner marketplace. Opening the door pulled a string to set off an array of bells. People stop their selling and haggling and cursing and spitting and eating smelly meat on sticks to point at us.

  “Othersider!”

  “Human!”

  “Female!”

  Officer Tendrile powers out the door, a mass of tentacles and torso, and swings at me. His blade glints and the glint speaks to me—duck!— and I grab Ada and crouch as the sword decapitates the air above me. I pull Ada away and trip into a meat stand, upsetting a sizzling grill, knocking it into a bewildered frog-head. I apologize and pick up some meat on a stick and throw it at Officer Tendrile. He catches it in his mouth and chews as he advances. He doesn’t just chew the meat; he chews the stick.

  “What you do? What you do? You destroy my stand!” the frog-head yells. Ada and I are surrounded by peppers and broken plates and utensils and spices and gawking creatures, and the alarm is still sounding and I think, Really, if this is a dream or a hallucination, now is the time for it to stop, when the bad guy is coming forward munching on the last thing I’ve tried to use as a weapon against him.

  “This kind of property damage, you realize it comes out of my paycheck?” Officer Tendrile smiles.

  “I … I’m sorry.”

  Ada holds my arm. I don’t think she’s holding it because she likes me; I think she’s holding it because she wants to be holding on to something warm when we die. But it’s still there and it still counts for something. I grab her hand and hold it tight. What with the failed kiss in the jail cell, this is officially the farthest I’ve been with a girl. Holding hands might not count for a lot of people, but it counts a hell of a lot for me. I’m not letting anybody hurt Ada. Not a blue hair on her head. And I’m not letting the princess down. I’m going to be a man about this.

  “No,” I declare. “No, I’m not sorry, Officer Tendrile. You can cut me open if you like, but I want everyone here to know that I’m not sorry! I haven’t done a thing wrong and I’m not apologizing to you”—I point at the hair above his lip—“or your stupid Mark-Twain-in-a-synth-pop-band mustache.”

  “Oooooo!”

  “Snap!”

  “Listen to the othersider!”

  Officer Tendrile roars. He jabs his sword at me like a fencer. I take a deep breath, my last—I will meet the point of his blade with an expanding chest—and suddenly I hear a jarring clang. An ax cuts through the air and knocks Officer Tendrile’s sword aside.

  “Gamary!”

  The okapicentaur steps into view. He doesn’t look like anything having to do with an ungulate—he looks like a full-on war machine with a bald angry head not about to take shit from anyone, snorting and brandishing his ax. Officer Tendrile retrieves his sword, his arm still vibrating from the force of the blow. Gamary flings a handful of gold coins at him. “Take your dirty di- back! I won’t have any part of killing children.”

  “You came back!” Ada yells.

  “Get on!” he orders. He kneels as marketplace gawkers swarm over Officer Tendrile, snatching up the coins. Tendrile has to slash at them, and by the time he has a clear shot at me and Ada, we’re on Gamary’s back, clinging to him as he gallops through the market.

  “I wanted to kill you, you bald-headed fool! I was telling Peregrine all about it!”

  “She was!”

  “I wanted to kill me too—huff— couldn’t bear the thought of you two—huff— not your fault Mortin brought you into this madness.”

  “What about your daughter?” I ask.

  “Misfortune is no excuse for cruelty.”

  I cling to the pumping sides of his body as he barrels through guards who try to slow us down. He’s faster than any of the octopus- or fish-men and he has the added advantage of righteousness. He’s like an out-of-control carnival ride, unregulated—real— and I feel my heart beating through his flesh. Powerful juice seeps through my body. I’ve heard of adrenaline but all I knew about it was the sweep of a good book or movie or roller coaster. Now I understand: real adrenaline is insanity juice. Real adrenaline is magic.

  “Out of the way!” Gamary yells. Shoppers cheer the spectacle as guards try in vain to keep up with his pumping hooves. Centaurs, perhaps, would catch us, but the centaurs are as amused as everyone else, watching with the same detached glee that people do when there’s a fire in Manhattan or a car accident or a homeless person yelling at a rich woman for no reason.

  Gamary approaches the end of Penner, where we left his thakerak chamber an hour before. I have to give us credit for a quick jailbreak.

  A contingent of batracian guards awaits us. They hold their spears at the ready.

  “What do I do?” Gamary panics.

  “Stop!” Ada yells.

  He brings his gallop to an abrupt end, digging his hooves into the rocky scree of the market floor, and Ada leaps off him like a cannonball, pulling her knees up and her shoulders in and landing in front of the guards, tumbling over herself and under one of them.

  Damn, she’s awesome. She springs up and punches a guard in the groin. He doubles over. I cheer. She grabs his spear, parries another guard who stabs at her, and puts the spear through his neck. He squelches against the wall behind him. Gamary advances. Guards attack him, but he whacks them away with his ax. Ada tosses a spear to me, still on Gamary’s back; I catch it, heft it, and jab it at the guards who circle us. They gibber and spit with their forked tongues but they can’t get close enough to me, not in my dominant position. I’m a knight! A knight on a white horse! The horse isn’t white and isn’t a horse, but that’s okay … you get a weapon bonus in Creatures & Caverns for being mounted, and now I see why—I’m like a king!

  “Agh!” Ada yells. A batracian guard grins as he digs a spear into her shoulder.

  “No! Get her!” I kick Gamary like he’s any old horse, which he probably doesn’t appreciate, and he surges forward, smashing through the remaining guards and the door that leads to the corridor to the thakerak chamber. The wood explodes around us as he grabs Ada and runs down the hall.

  “Are you okay?” I ask her.

  “It’s nothing—Tendrile and the celates will be here any second—let’s do this!”

  “Off!” Gamary says. We’re at the door to his chamber. Other business owners stare at us in wonder.

  I slide off him, streaking against wet patches on his hide. “You’re hurt!”

  “Don’t worry. Just get in there and go home. You never should’ve been caught up in this.”

  I enter Gamary’s thakerak chamber, noticing that my ankle still hurts. I laugh—it’s nothing now, a pittance, the concern of a lesser person.

  Inside, blue-haired Ryu sits reading.

  41

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” HE ASKS. He drops his book. It’s handwritten in that odd language from the sacks of hepatodes and it has pencil illustrations instead of glossy photos, but I see what it is: a New York City guidebook.

  “What do you care?” Gamary locks the door behind us. Ada grabs a strip of burlap and wraps it around her injured shoulder. Her blood is red, like mine.

  “You two should be in jail! Or dead! I’ll call the authorities—”

  Someone pounds on the door. It buckles, but Gamary puts his bulk against it and it holds. “They’re here, but they’re not getting in, and you’re not getting out.”

  “What’s wrong with you? You got paid.”

  “I’ve given it back.”

  “An attack of conscience from a thaklord? Will wonders never cease.”

  “Step aside, Ryu. We have business to take care of.”

  “No, I have business to take care of, and you should already be taken care of!”

  “What
have you been doing all this time?” Ada asks.

  “I know.” I approach Ryu. The thakerak in the dirt buzzes and clicks like it recognizes me. “You’ve been sitting here getting ready to go to Earth, reading that guidebook to make sure you’ve got everything straight.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Don’t lie. You’re scared. You’re trying to prepare for the unknown. So you read the book. You sit here, testing yourself, sweating, doubting, unable to make the final leap. I know. It’s a hard leap to make. I couldn’t have done it myself if weren’t for the wolf.”

  “Wolf?” Ada asks. Gamary shrugs.

  “But now you’ve waited too long. Now you’re not gonna get to New York and be a movie-making rock star. It’s sad but it happens. People fail. You failed.”

  “Shut up!” Ryu says. He whips out a knife, a curved blade that reflects an electrical pop of the thakerak.

  “Open this door!” someone yells outside. More banging, and then a metallic squeal. They’re trying to pick the lock.

  Ryu charges at me. The knife is his focus and mine. I see the arc it will tear through the air and through my body. I edge to the side. He stumbles and hits the wall. I have nothing else to throw at him so I use the princess figure. I miss, badly; the silver clatters on the floor.

  “Hey!” Ada yells.

  “Sorry!”

  Ryu comes at me again. I pick up Ada’s notebook, still on the ground, and hold it out blindly. The knife stutter-steps off the cover, and I feel the zinging recoil travel up Ryu’s arm.

  “Hey again!”

  “Well! Do you want to help me?”

  “You’ve got it under control.”

  Ryu slashes at me; I block with the book. The time-slowing power of adrenaline lets me see all his muscles and tattoos and … his lip ring! Right there at the end of his sneering face—

  I grab it and pull. Down and to the left.

  Ryu screams as he jerks like a hooked fish. I jump back—I didn’t mean to do that. I mean, I did, but I didn’t anticipate the blood, or the tearing sound, or the inhuman rancorous gurgle that comes from him as he throws his knife at me, desperate to do something to me—me, who would want to stab me? All of a sudden everyone does.