The Boy Who Could Fly

by Laura Ruby

  “What are we doing?” she whispered.

  “We can’t go to my apartment,” Bug whispered back. “And this is the last place anyone will think to look. We’ll go up to the observation deck.”

  “What if there are people up there? What if there are cops up there? Don’t you think they’ll hear us talking?”

  “Nah,” Bug said. “They’ll think it’s the wind.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Georgie, I’m going to fall over if I don’t sit down soon.”

  “OK,” said Georgie. “Let’s go.”

  They slipped past the reporters and followed a plainclothes detective into the building. Several cops got off one of the lifts and Georgie and Bug sneaked in. Bug pressed the button for the observation deck and the two of them waited in silence. But since the Empire State Building has superfast lifts, Georgie only had to wait forty-five seconds before lift doors opened on to the eighty-sixth floor. The two of them walked out on to the deck, which was surrounded on all sides with high bars.

  “Cool,” Georgie whispered as she looked out over the vast city. The noisy, bustling chaos of the city below seemed quiet and still from way up here, the only sound the eerie whistle of the wind. Though the observation deck was deserted and it seemed safe to reappear, she kept close in case she had to turn them invisible quickly. She tried very hard not to notice that the arm she was so close to was a lot, um, beefier, than it had ever been.

  “Beefy!” chirped Pinkwater, making Georgie jump.

  It seemed wrong not to try one of the coin-operated binoculars placed all around the observation deck, so Georgie popped some quarters into one of them. Bug and Georgie took turns using it. All around, the buildings rose like enormous stalagmites from the ground and the cars moved like toys on tracks. Bug and Georgie noticed the people trying to fly here and there.

  “Hmmpf,” Bug sniffed. “They look like fleas.”

  “Yeah, well, not everyone can fly like a Wing.”

  “Most people can’t fly at all,” he said. Then he looked at Georgie in horror. “Oh! Sorry, I meant—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Georgie. “Most people can’t turn themselves invisible. As a matter of fact, nobody else can.”

  “You win,” he said, grinning. “So what were you saying earlier about dogs? And vampires? And bagels?”

  They sat down on the ground by the binoculars and Georgie told him how the Punk in the plaid trousers had shown up at her door, how the Punk and Noodle had a hissing contest, and how Agnes had chased the Punk away with a lasso of sausage and a meat fork. Then she told Bug about the trip to the museum, how Giacometti’s Dog had come to life and bitten “one of her classmates”, which made Bug laugh.

  “And now for the really weird part,” she said.

  She could hear Bug snort. “As if the other parts weren’t weird enough.”

  “Weird,” chirped Pinkwater.

  The night before, Georgie told Bug, she had just begun to fall asleep when she heard an odd knocking at the window. At first, she said, she wasn’t scared because she thought it was Bug. But of course it wasn’t Bug. A young man hovered outside, a young man pale as death (a young man wearing a perfectly fabulous outfit, a detail she didn’t mention to Bug). But she still wasn’t scared. Not scared enough. He asked to come in and…

  “And?” said Bug.

  Noodle howled and Georgie froze, staring at the fabulous man-boy who didn’t look so fabulous any more. He looked more like what he was, a vampire. A vampire hanging outside her window, a vampire in a shiny shirt and skinny velvet trousers, scratching the pane with a crooked fingernail, grinning at her with pointy teeth.

  But he was outside. It was OK because the vampire was outside and he couldn’t come in. The window was closed and she wasn’t going to open it.

  Except that he was opening the window. He was opening the window and putting one skinny, velvet-trousered leg inside her room and she couldn’t move. She was frozen. How could he get inside her locked window and how could he open the window without even looking like he was opening it and why couldn’t she move? And then she remembered something about vampires, about how vampires can’t come inside your house unless you let them and she certainly didn’t say he could come in, did she? No, absolutely not, she would never tell a vampire that he could come crawl through her window and come into her room. Never, never, never.

  Except. He’d mouthed the words, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he asked to come in and she’d…

  …nodded.

  Georgie watched in horror as the vampire pushed the window open wide and put one leg and the other inside the room. He had both legs and all of his body and his whole, pointy-toothed mouth inside her room and she couldn’t move. His wings fell against his body, turning into the smooth silk of a cape.

  “Hello,” the vampire said, his hair almost as pale as his skin. “My name is Phinneas. Lovely room.”

  “What?”

  “The room. It’s very nice.”

  “Uh, thanks,” Georgie said.

  The vampire strolled around the bed and computer desk, running a thin, bony finger across the furniture. “Most wealthy people don’t have such exquisite taste.”

  Georgie wasn’t sure what to say. “OK.”

  “I’ve known hundreds of rich people. Kings. Queens. Models. Film stars.”

  “Really?”

  “The stars are the worst,” said the vampire. “You wouldn’t believe how many of them have life-sized photographs of themselves all over the place. Tacky. Boring too. Are you boring?”

  This, Georgie decided to answer honestly. “Yeah, I think I am.”

  The vampire sighed. “Too bad.” He gestured to Noodle. “Well, that’s not something you see everything. Is that a riddle?”

  Noodle meowed.

  “Well,” said the vampire. “At least she’s not boring. I always liked cats. Maybe it’s the fangs.”

  He smiled, but Noodle issued a warning growl. Georgie wondered if Noodle was being overcautious. That was the problem with cats. They were always jumping to conclusions. Maybe vampires weren’t that bad. This one seemed polite.

  For a bloodsucker.

  Phinneas the vampire exhaled. “I did come for a reason.” The vampire reached up and pulled the chain from his neck on which hung a tiny white square, a folded piece of paper. Georgie opened it and found this:

  Join us for an evening of fun and art and fun at the grand opening of the Chaos Gallery. See fine works by Mandelbrot, Artist and Chaos King. Food and drinks will not be served so bring your own cheeseballs, Cheeseballs.

  Scrawled along the bottom of the invitation was an address at South Street Seaport and a date and time a week away.

  Georgie had no idea what to make of this. “You want me to go to an art opening?”

  “Mandelbrot really wants you to be there,” said the vampire.

  “Who’s Mandelbrot?” Georgie asked. “Wait, the Punk?” Phinneas blinked. “The artist.”

  “Well, I, um,” said Georgie. “I appreciate the invitation, but I think I’m busy that day.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” the vampire told Georgie. “He needs you to be there.”

  “I’m sorry about that, but—”

  Phinneas’s sigh was now one of exasperation. “I really don’t think you understand. He’ll get very angry. Crazy angry. He’ll get so angry that he might just say to me, Phinneas, since she didn’t come to my opening, you should go back to her apartment and have a few bites of this or that. And it’s boring, you know, the vampire thing. It gets old. Deadly old. I don’t recommend it. Now do you understand?”

  Georgie read the invitation again. “You mean to say that if I don’t go to your gallery opening, you’re going to come back here and bite me? And turn me into one of the undead?”

  “No,” said the vampire. “What I mean is that we might come back here and bite you. But we won’t stop with you. Mandelbrot will have us bite your mum and dad too. Maybe even the kitty.
Mandelbrot will take everyone you love away from you. Mandelbrot doesn’t like love. He doesn’t believe in it. Or maybe he does, but he hates it and wants to bite it out of existence. Who can tell?” Phinneas reached under his cape and pulled out a poppy-seed bagel. He held it out to Georgie. “You want one?”

  “No thanks.”

  “I wouldn’t either,” the vampire said. “This one’s stale.” He tossed the bagel over his shoulder. “I’m waiting for your answer.”

  Georgie said, “I guess if my choices are death or art, I choose art.”

  “Good,” said the vampire. “I’ll tell Mandelbrot. He’ll be happy.” Phinneas looked out of the window at the full moon hanging low in the sky. “It’s nice that someone will be happy.” Georgie watched as the vampire tucked the poppy-seed bagel back under his cape. He walked slowly to the window, stepped up on to the ledge, and dropped outside. A minute later, he rose up again, a dark comma against a midnight blue sky.

  Chapter 13

  Old Crow

  “Who’s this Mandelbrot?” said Bug.

  “I know he’s a Punk, but I don’t know anything else about him,” Georgie said. “I was planning on looking it up later to see if I could find out anything else.”

  “And where are they having that art opening?”

  Georgie told Bug the address. “You know,” said Bug, “that’s right around where that octopus pulled me into the water.”

  “But what could an octopus have to do with a Punk and a vampire?”

  “I had these dreams last night, dreams where someone was knocking on my window saying ‘let me in, let me in’.”

  “Let me in!” chirped Pinkwater.

  “Maybe they weren’t dreams,” said Georgie.

  “Maybe they weren’t.”

  Georgie shifted, her back aching from sitting so long. “Didn’t The Professor have a skeleton that looked like a giant bat at his place?”

  “Yeah,” said Bug. “But we didn’t believe him when he told us there were vampires around.” There was a pause, and then: “Maybe we should go and see him.”

  Georgie thought about this. “He might have some idea about what I should do. I really don’t want to go to Mandelbrot’s art opening. And I really don’t want to spend eternity eating poppy-seed bagels. Or whatever it is that vampires do.”

  “And maybe he can tell us about the other stuff,” Bug said. “The octopus and the sloth and the statue. Something strange is going on, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe none of it is connected.”

  “And maybe it’s all connected,” Bug said. “What about the pen?”

  “My dad said that he gave it back to The Professor. And he said it was really dangerous. There’s no way The Professor would write anything with it.”

  “I think we need to go and ask him anyway.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow’s good.” Georgie stood. “I should get home. My parents will be worried.”

  “Let’s just sit here and rest a few more minutes,” Bug said. “I’m still tired.”

  “That’s what you get for being such a hero.”

  “Hero!” chirped Pinkwater, who decided to leave his perch on Bug’s head and neatly darn the sky above them.

  “Ha!”

  “OK,” said Bug. “I get the joke. I should have let the sloth have Roma.”

  “I wasn’t laughing,” said Georgie.

  “Then who was that?”

  They turned to see a crow perched on the railing behind them. “Ha!” it called. “Ha! Ha! Ha!”

  “I’ve been seeing a lot of those lately,” Georgie said.

  Another crow joined the first on the railing. And then a third. And a fourth.

  “I see what you mean,” Bug said.

  A fifth crow perched itself on the railing. Then three more arrived.

  “This is starting to freak me out,” said Georgie.

  Pinkwater darted back and forth in front of the crows. “Hello!” he chirped.

  “Ha!” said the crows.

  “Bonjour!” he chirped.

  “Ha!” said the crows.

  “Ciao!” said Pinkwater.

  “Ha! Ha! Ha!” replied the crows. Four more alighted on the railing. Their eyes were black and beady, and their beaks seemed unnaturally sharp.

  “Where’s a cat when you need one?” Bug said.

  “At home, ordering books from Amazon,” said Georgie.

  They backed all the way into the door to the building and then slipped through it. As soon as they closed the glass door, they looked back at the railing. The crows were gone.

  “What do you think they wanted?” Georgie asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Bug. “Birdseed?”

  “Ha!” said Pinkwater.

  Georgie made them invisible again and they got in an empty lift. Another forty-five-second ride and they were at the ground floor. After all the hubbub, it was strangely hushed. The cops had moved on to other crimes and the reporters to other news stories. All that was left was a bunch of empty sweet wrappers.

  “Litterers!” chirped Pinkwater indignantly.

  Because Bug was so worn out from saving Roma from the clutches of the giant sloth, Georgie insisted that they take the subway back to his apartment. The fact that Bug didn’t argue proved how tired he was. They walked to the subway station and jumped the turnstiles. (When no one was looking, Georgie left a subway pass sitting on top of the turnstile. Georgie might have to disobey her parents by pulling her ghost routine and running around the city unnoticed, but she would never again commit any crime whatsoever, not even one as small as trying to get on a subway that most people didn’t want to use.)

  “I don’t hear any music this time,” Bug said.

  “I guess we won’t be seeing any gators,” Girl whispered back. The last time Bug and Georgie had ridden the subway together, they had been chased by a wild bunch of Punks and then witnessed some musicians capturing one of the large albino alligators that lived in the subway system. This time, Georgie hoped for a less eventful ride.

  She got what she wished for. No Punks, no musicians, no gators. Just a pleasant, if sort of bumpy, journey uptown. Bug and Georgie got off the train and walked the few blocks remaining to Bug’s building. They stepped in to the lift and Georgie let go of his arm, making them both visible (though Georgie had to check herself to make sure that she’d got the job done thoroughly). Both of them were so exhausted from the events of the day that they didn’t notice anyone following them down the hallway once they got out of the lift.

  “Hola!” chirped Pinkwater.

  “Hello!” said a strange voice in reply.

  Both Bug and Georgie whipped round, surprised. Behind them was an older woman carrying a ridiculous number of books and wearing a blue hat with feathers on it, the very same old woman Georgie had seen the last time she was at Bug’s building. Her sharp dark eyes flicked from Bug to Georgie and back again, as if sizing them up for a fight.

  “Hello again, young woman.”

  She dug around in her oversized pocketbook and pulled out a crumpled flyer. This she held out to Bug.

  “For our book group. I was going to push it under your door, but I’m glad I caught you. We thought you might like to join us. My name is Mrs Vorona.”

  Bug looked at Georgie then back at the old woman. “I don’t really have time to join a book group. Sorry.”

  “We’re reading Washington Irving. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Scary stuff. That should interest a young man like yourself.”

  “Yeah, um, it sounds great, but like I said, I’m kind of busy.”

  “Crow!” chirped Pinkwater.

  Mrs Vorona’s arm drooped and she stared at the bird on top of Bug’s head.

  “Old crow!” chirped Pinkwater again.

  The woman sucked her shrivelled lips into her face in a gesture of extreme disapproval. She stuffed the flyer back into her purse and marched toward
s the lift.

  “Wait!” said Bug. “I’m sorry. He didn’t mean it. He’s nuts!”

  Pinkwater flapped his wings. “Crow! Crow!”

  “Shut up, Pink,” Bug said.

  “Crow,” Pinkwater insisted.

  The old woman punched the lift button and vanished inside.

  “That’s great,” said Bug. “We’ve pretty much covered all the bases. Octopi. Sloths. Statues. Vampires. And now we’ve insulted an old woman. I think our work here is done.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Georgie said. “Pink’s just a bird. They don’t really know what they’re saying.”

  “Croooooooow,” said Pinkwater, somehow drawing out the word.

  Bug rolled his impressively large eyes and put a hand to the top of his head so that Pinkwater could hop to his fingers. “So I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. Why don’t you meet me at my house? My parents would like to see you.”

  Bug seemed surprised. “They would?”

  Georgie was surprised that he was surprised. “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “No reason,” said Bug. They stood awkwardly by Bug’s door for a minute. “Well,” said Bug. “Good night.” He gave her shoulder a friendly punch. “Don’t talk to any vampires.”

  “Very funny,” said Georgie, rubbing the spot where he’d punched it.

  Georgie left, humming to herself as she rode the lift down to the lobby. Despite the fact that Georgie could be one of the undead in a week, despite the fact that Bug was going out with her mortal enemy, she was absurdly happy that she and Bug were friends again, that they would be visiting The Professor the next day. That they would be visiting The Professor together.

  She supposed this meant that she was maybe, slightly, insane.

  The lift door opened and Georgie stepped out, and into, the old woman with the blue hat, Mrs Vorona. “Excuse me!” said the woman, her eyes narrowing when she saw who had nearly barrelled over her.

  “I’m sorry,” Georgie said. “I didn’t see you.”

  “Teenagers,” said Mrs Vorona, “don’t often notice what’s right in front of their faces.”

  Georgie looked past the woman and saw that the doors had opened up on the second floor. “I really am sorry. I thought this was the lobby.”