by Laura Ruby
Georgie nodded.
And that’s when the man smiled a sad smile, his white fangs gleaming in the moonlight.
Chapter 10
Mega Megatherium
Juju Fink sat across from Bug in the limo, working the phone. “I don’t care what you have to do,” he said. “I want M&M’S, huge bowls of them all over the place. Little snack bags of M&M’S, too. And I want all the brown ones removed. Bug doesn’t like brown M&M’S, he never eats them, and if he sees one, well, I don’t even want to say.” Juju snapped his phone shut.
“I don’t have a problem with brown M&M’S,” Bug said.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Juju. “We’re just keeping everyone on their toes.”
Bug didn’t understand how making people pluck out all the brown M&M’S was going to do much but make them hate Bug. Then again, Bug also knew that arguing with Juju was pointless. Bug sighed and looked out the window, trying to ignore the paparazzi who half ran, half flew alongside the car snapping pictures.
“Remember,” said Juju, “wait until the job is finished before you decide to act up like you did at the Skreecher shoot.”
“I wasn’t acting up,” Bug muttered.
Pinkwater, who was sitting on Bug’s shoulder, chirped, “Calamari!”
Juju scowled. “Do you really have to take the bird everywhere with you?”
“What difference does it make?” said Bug.
“OK,” Juju began, rubbing his browless forehead, thinking. “Say, you rescued a bird from a shelter. A sick and dying bird that you nursed back to health yourself. You fed it with an eyedropper. Chicken soup.”
Pinkwater erupted in a flurry of squawks and flapping wings.
“OK, OK. No chicken soup. You fed it with an eyedropper, though. Medicine. Water. That’s good stuff. We need a little something to balance out your bad boy persona.” He flipped open his phone. “Yeah, Delores? Get me Frankie’s number. He’s at the Times. I got a story for him.”
“Rubbish!” said Pinkwater, and bonked Bug in the jaw with his head.
Bug absently petted the bird with a fingertip. It was rubbish, of course. But then most of what Juju told the press about Bug was rubbish. Sometimes Bug had trouble understanding how all this rubbish was helpful. When he first won the Golden Eagle back in November, it seemed as if the whole city was his friend. But then, feelings began to change. People started to doubt that he’d really flown as high or as well as he had. People said that the Golden Eagle should be revoked because he was never officially entered in the race and so therefore had no right to the trophy. Reporters wrote article after article about how Sweetcheeks Grabowski had also started out as a child model and look where he ended up. They seemed to go out of their way to print photographs that made him look crazy or tired or just plain ugly, and paired with captions like “Bug Grabowski Parties Too Hardy?”
Juju said all press was good press, but Bug thought it was unfair. Like the world was just looking for a reason to hate him. The only reason he was doing this advertising stuff was so he could make enough money to live on his own and be his own person and fly like no one in his whole family ever had. So people could never say that he was like his dad. And they all said it anyway.
After Juju finished his call, he snapped his mobile phone shut. “You know what you need?”
“No,” said Bug, “what?”
“A girlfriend.”
Bug blushed. “Why?”
“What do you mean, why? Because it would be news, that’s why. Publicity. Has to be the right girl, though. An athlete could work. Maybe one of those cute little ice dancers. Do you like ice dancing?”
“I—”
“Forget the ice dancers. A film star or a singer would be better. A TV personality. Someone really famous.”
For some totally strange reason, Gurl – Georgie – popped into his head. Technically, she was famous, being the daughter of The Richest Couple in the Universe. But then, Gurl – Georgie – was just like everyone else. She had told him that he was like like his stupid, cheating, thieving father. How could she say that? Why would she say that? He had been tempted to give Pinkwater back. Almost did it too. Flew over to the Bloomingtons one day with every intention of handing Gu—uh, Georgie that bird and telling her that he didn’t want her gifts and didn’t need her gifts. And it was hard, really hard, because Pinkwater was a talker and Bug had forgotten how nice it was to talk to somebody that wasn’t trying get him to sell something, even if that somebody was small and blue and prone to insane exclamations. Anyway, the chef – Agnes? – opened the door and told him that Gurl—duh! Georgie! wasn’t home, and no, he couldn’t give the bird to Agnes to hold, because Agnes didn’t want the bird to be eaten by the “fat kitty” and he would just have to keep the thing until he saw Gurl—Georgie, Georgie, Georgie again. Which, of course, was never happening.
So technically, it wasn’t his choice to keep the bird. And if Juju wanted a newspaper to print up a bunch of rubbish about where he got it, and Georgie happened to see it, well then, technically, there wasn’t a thing that he could do about it.
Another thing he could do nothing about: traffic. It took half an hour for the limo to get Bug to the Empire State Building, and another twenty minutes for security to manouevre Bug through the waiting crowd to his trailer. Bug was exhausted. He had slept little the night before; he kept hearing this strange knocking at his window, kept dreaming of a voice whispering let me in, let me in. He was so tired that he told Juju he wanted a few minutes to himself before they had to do his hair and his makeup, and then he spent a few minutes wondering how in the world he’d got used to saying things like “I’d like a few minutes before they do my hair and makeup.” Juju pushed him inside the trailer and slammed the door shut.
“Company!” chirped Pinkwater.
Bug turned to see someone sitting on the couch. A very pretty someone with red hair and purplish eyes.
“Hi!” she said.
He knew her. At least, he knew who she was. Roma Radisson. An heiress. Probably one of the richest girls in the universe, besides Georgie (who he was not thinking about).
“Hi,” he said back.
“I bribed one of the guards to let me in here. I hope you don’t mind.”
He hunted his brain for words, but the only word he could think of was “pretty”. And “wow”. Could he say that? No. That would be dumb. What wouldn’t be dumb? “Uh…” he said.
“I didn’t think you’d mind,” she said. “Did you get my messages?”
“What?” he said. Wow. Wow. Wow.
“Messages. I left three of them with your agent. Well, my assistant left three messages.”
“Assistant?” She’d turned him into a parrot. A dumb parrot.
“You mean she didn’t leave messages? That girl is so fired. Anyway, I thought it would be nice if you and I went out tonight. The Red Room would be perfect. What do you think?”
“What?” he said again.
“The Red Room. It just opened. Supposed to be fab. Dutch-Asian-South African fusion.”
“Uh…”
“And maybe a film after that? Peter Paul Allen has a good one out about something. I forget. Oooh, look! M&M’S!” She reached into a bowl and pulled out a yellow one, held it up, and then put it back.
Bug made some sort of gargling noise. He couldn’t seem to understand anything she was saying. Her hair was distracting. He’d never seen hair so red. And shiny.
“I was thinking of wearing this pink dress that I have? Hot pink, you know, like bubble gum? With a ruffle around the neckline? So fab™. But then I have this other dress, it’s green with a black ribbon that goes down the side, like all the way down to my ankles. And then a blue velvet dress with a handkerchief hem, but I suppose I can’t wear that one now. Wrong season. Of course, I am Roma Radisson; maybe I’ll start a new trend. Velvet in the springtime! I could call Vogue. They could do a whole spread.”
“OK,” he said. He had no idea what she was talking about.
There was something in there about handkerchiefs, that much he knew.
Her brows crinkled. “We’ll have to do something about your hair.”
“Hair,” he said, still staring at hers.
“And your clothes. You need a different outfit.”
“Outfit?”
“You can’t wear jeans to the Red Room. You must have a suit, right?”
“A suit? Like for a funeral?”
“No! Like for a restaurant!” Roma said. “Have you been listening to me at all?”
“Sure,” he said. Her hair was shiny, her eyes were shiny, even her teeth were shiny. Her skin seemed to have some sort of sparkly powder all over it.
“Shiny!” chirped Pinkwater.
“Well, that’s good. Because I expect you to listen to everything I say.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, still mesmerised.
The door to the trailer opened and Madge the makeup artist and Bruce the wardrobe man came in, laughing and talking. They stopped, shocked when they saw who was in the trailer.
“Oh!” said Madge.
“Oh!” said Bruce.
“Yes, it is me,” Roma said. “But I was just leaving. Bye, Bug. See you later.” She turned to go, then turned back. “Oh, and Bug?”
“Yeah?”
Roma smiled a magnificent, shiny smile. “Lose the bird.”
Bug walked out of his trailer, makeup done, hair done, Hero® brand socks, T-shirt, and warm-up trousers on. Pinkwater sat on his shoulder, bonking him in the face.
Lose the bird? Lose the bird?
No one was that shiny.
Bug walked faster. And what was all that stuff about his hair? What was wrong with his hair? His eyes, maybe – having them so huge and buglike was kind of weird – but he always thought his hair was OK. And a suit? Was she crazy? He pulled a snack bag of M&M’S from his pocket, but shoved them back in when he realised that they might mess him up (he was messed up enough by genetics, thank you. He didn’t need to have chocolate stuck in his teeth like a five-year-old).
As he headed towards the set, he saw Roma standing behind one of the barricades. She blew him a kiss. The paparazzi went nuts, snapping, snapping, snapping photos of Roma, photos of Bug walking by.
“Roma!” yelled one of the photographers. “How long have you and Bug been an item?”
“Practically for ever,” Roma said.
“And how are things going?” yelled another photographer.
“You know what I always say? That’s so fab™. And it is.” She winked, and the photographers burst into another explosion of photos.
In Bug’s ear, Pinkwater chirped, “Fabulousity!”
Great.
Bug tried to forget about Roma, forget about the paparazzi and focus on the job at hand, which was the advert for Hero®. He only had one line, which was “I’m a hero for Hero®”. He was supposed to say this line, flex a bicep and then launch himself in the air. Simple enough, and yet it would probably take all day to shoot and he would feel like he’d flown four hundred races afterwards. How did he get himself into this? Why did everything feel so hard?
Roma was still chattering at the photographers when Bug took his place in front of the cameramen filming the advert. The director, a grumpy, grizzled man with a heavy Russian accent, screamed for quiet on the set and then screamed, “Action!” Bug opened his mouth, ready to do this so perfectly that the advert would be shot in a single take, when the crowd began to scream.
The Russian turned round with his bullhorn. “Ven I scream it does not mean you scream, borscht brains! Oh! OH!”
Bug put his hands on his hips, wondering if he really should start acting up, be the bad boy the tabloids said he was. But he had no opportunity to act up, because something else was acting up. A brown shaggy something was pushing through the crowd, a shaggy thing that looked like a cross between a grizzly and a gerbil. But it was much, much bigger than a grizzly and much, much, much, much bigger than any gerbil. It was the size of a bull elephant, this strange and shaggy thing, and it lumbered and lurched along in slow motion.
“Vat?” shouted the director. “Vat is dat? Giant hamster? Argh!” He dropped the bullhorn. The people screamed even louder and then flew, bounced, hopped and ran every which way, followed by the director and the entire camera crew. The only people who stayed put were Bug, who was too surprised to move; Roma, who thought the crowd was yelling for her, and the paparazzi, who wouldn’t miss getting photographs of a giant hamster for anything.
“Bug!” yelled Juju Fink, making a break for the limo. “Get the heck out of there!”
But Bug was rooted to the spot. The great shaggy thing padded along on huge feet tipped with half-metre-long claws. Every few metres, it stopped and grabbed a person with an enormous paw, sniffed with its giant pinkish nose, groaned and put the person back on the ground. It was getting closer now, coming right up behind Roma, and Bug could see that its brown fur was splotchy with some kind of bluish-green stuff, and its eyes were large and titled downwards.
It looked sad.
“Bug!” yelled Juju. “Get in the limo!”
The paparazzi backed up but continued to snap pictures as the beast put his pink nose right on top of Roma’s head and gave it a great big sniff. Roma shrieked and turned to tell off whatever moron was ruining her hair but was struck dumb at the sight of the enormous monster behind her. Unluckily for Roma, Bug wasn’t the only one who thought she was pretty. The beast scooped her up with one paw and kept walking, pausing every so often to sniff the top of her head again as if she were some sort of exotic flower.
“Get it off me!” Roma screamed. “It smells!”
The paparazzi kept snapping and Bug kept gaping and the people who hadn’t run off started reaching for mobile phones. Several policemen came running after the monster, but stopped when they saw what they were up against.
“What the heck is that?” said one.
“I don’t know,” said another.
“Megatherium,” said a third. “Giant sloth.”
The first cop gave the third a look. “It’s mega all right. But how do you know what it’s called?”
“You might try reading a book once in a while. The museum just got a skeleton of one of these shipped in. Anyway, they were supposed to have died out ten thousand years ago.”
“Looks like a big hamster. Doesn’t move very fast, does it?”
The third cop got a peevish look on his face. “It’s a sloth. As in slow. See that green stuff on its fur? That’s algae. Grows on the fur because the sloth can’t clean itself fast enough.”
“Well, what do we do? Shoot it?”
“I’m not sure our bullets will pierce its fur and hide.”
“You’re a big help, Mr I Read So Many Books.”
Roma kept screaming about the stinky sloth and its smelly paws and her ruined dress and her hair and a bunch of other things as the sloth sloooooooowly lumbered past Bug and made its way over to the Empire State Building. It stopped, craning its short, hamster-y neck, and then it started to climb the building.
“It’s climbing the building!” one of the cops said.
“No duh,” said another. “You’re a genius, you know that?”
“We really should try to stop it. Roma Radisson doesn’t seem to be too happy.”
“That’s because it’s probably going to eat her.”
Bug didn’t think Roma was a very nice person, but he certainly didn’t want her to be eaten by a giant hamster. The sloth hadn’t done anything violent, but who knew what would happen if someone tried to surprise it. It was huge and shaggy and weird, and its tusk-length claws could cut a man to ribbons. (Imagine what they could do to fourteen-year-old boys.) Maybe he should wait until someone called in more police officers, or the army, or the air force?
The sloth continued to climb, seemingly in no real hurry. A few officers in jet packs buzzed by it. The sloth ignored them, moving so slowly that it was almost boring to watch. Almost. The officers in jet packs di
dn’t seem to know what to do either. Roma shrieked at them and told them she would totally sue them if they totally didn’t rescue her right now.
“You think he’s going all the way to the top?” one of the cops on the ground said.
“Oh yeah,” said another.
“Huh. This is going to take all year.”
Bug spoke up. “Aren’t you guys going to do anything?”
The cops looked at him. “Like what?”
“Like go inside the building and try to grab Roma as the sloth passes by a window or something.”
“Right,” said one of the cops. “And then that thing gnaws our arms off.”
“And drops Roma to the ground.”
“Besides,” another cop added, “we’re waiting for our team of experts.”
“The police department has giant sloth experts?” Bug wanted to know.
The cops only glared.
Bug looked down at his T-shirt, at the Hero® logo emblazoned on the front of it. What if, he thought, he could help Roma? What if he could save her? Maybe it would stop all those people saying all those nasty things about him in the papers. Maybe they would stop printing those horrible pictures with his eyes crossed or scratching his nose. Maybe they would finally believe that he wasn’t like his father. Not even a little bit like him.
“How many floors is the building?” Bug asked.
“One hundred and two,” said the cop who’d read all the books. “Looks like the sloth’s almost a third of the way up now.”
Which meant that the sloth was thirty-three floors up. Which was higher than Bug had ever flown before. Which was higher than anyone had ever flown. Which was impossible. He was so tired that he wasn’t even sure he could fly at all, let alone more than thirty-three floors. Anyway, even if he could fly the thirty-three floors, what would he do once he got there?
Pinkwater flew in dizzying circles around his head. He said, “Munchies!”
“What?” Bug said.
“Feed me!” chirped Pinkwater.
“Are you hungry?”