The Boy Who Could Fly

by Laura Ruby

  “I have to keep my parents safe, Agnes.”

  Agnes sighed. “You need boy with you.”

  “Well, he’s not here, is he?”

  Agnes pointed at Georgie’s heart. “He’s right there.”

  Georgie flushed. “I’m going to my room now.”

  “Yes,” said Agnes. “But remember one thing.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t disappear because things are hard.”

  After the cleaning was done, Georgie went to her room with Noodle. She sat on her bed, marvelling at the state of the world, a world that her parents didn’t seem to be fully aware of. It was a world filled with vampires and giant sloths and giant octopi and lumpy statues that leaped off their bases to bite people in the sequins. It was a world filled with Roma Radissons and Mr Fusses and a mysterious wacko named Mandelbrot.

  She was sitting on her bed, petting Noodle, wishing that the cat would purr and all the mixed-up, desperately crazy thoughts would go away. And then Noodle did start to purr, and Georgie felt herself relax. But she didn’t relax the way she used to. She didn’t fall into the purr the way she used to. She didn’t think of strange riddles and her head didn’t clear.

  Now, what was up with that? Suddenly, Georgie was angry. So angry she didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t fair that things changed so quickly. First she was invisible to the world, and then she really was invisible, and then she wasn’t supposed to be invisible, and now her power didn’t work right all the time, and she had to worry about her feet showing or her nose showing or whatever. First, she didn’t have parents, then she did have parents – amazing and wonderful parents – and now she couldn’t tell her amazing and wonderful parents anything. She had no friends, then she found Bug, and now she wasn’t allowed to see him. Shouldn’t a person be allowed to get used to things before they change? It wasn’t right!

  A scratching at the window caught her attention. “Oh no. Not again!” she said. But she was still angry at the unfairness of it all, so she lifted Noodle off her lap and marched to the window with the intent of telling off whichever vampire happened to be hanging there, no matter how cool that vampire’s outfit was. But there were no vampires at the window. Bug hovered outside, waving, Pinkwater fluttering beside him.

  Georgie held up a finger, telling him to wait a minute. She ran to her bedroom door and propped a chair against the knob so that her parents wouldn’t be able to come in. She ran back to the window and opened it.

  “Surprise!” chirped Pinkwater.

  “Shhh!” Georgie said. “My parents will hear you.”

  “Oops!” chirped Pinkwater, more quietly. He flew over to the bed and perched on the tip of Noodle’s tail. Irritated, Noodle lashed it. “Whee!” said Pinkwater, as if he were on an amusement park ride.

  “Nice to see the kids getting along,” Bug whispered, and Georgie stifled a laugh.

  Bug sat at Georgie’s desk, whirling the chair around to face her. “You’re still grounded?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Till when?”

  “I don’t know. The twenty-third century?”

  “That bad, huh?”

  Georgie shrugged.

  “Well, at least you have parents to ground you. That’s more than I have.”

  Georgie opened her mouth to say something, but then what was there to say? They both knew what it felt like to be alone in the universe.

  “I’ve got a lot to tell you,” Bug said. “Remember that book club woman?”

  “The grumpy one with the funny hat?”

  “Yeah. Well, she woke me up yesterday and practically dragged me to one of her meetings. You won’t believe what she asked me to do.”

  “She wanted you to read something.”

  “No, she wanted me to steal something. A book. Get this: a book that can bring things to life.”

  Georgie snapped to attention, suddenly remembering what Agnes had written on the note: “Books are powerful things” “Wait, what book? What are you talking about?”

  Bug explained that the book club ladies figured out Mandelbrot had a book called The Book of the Undead, and that he was the one who was causing the odd things that were happening and that these book club ladies were the ones who had awakened the book because they, not The Professor, had the pen.

  Georgie’s mouth dropped open as she worked to untangle his story. “But why would this Mandelbrot guy bring all these weird things to life? What’s the point?”

  “That’s what I said. But maybe there isn’t any point. Maybe he’s just a crazy Punk doing crazy Punk things. The book club ladies are scared that he’ll bring something even more terrible and dangerous to life and destroy the city in the process. They want me to go to Mandelbrot’s party and get the book back from him. I have to do it. But I can’t do it alone.”

  Georgie sighed. She saw the determined look on his face. And if he felt like he had to save the world, then she would have to save the world, too, because nobody could save the world all by himself. They would have to go to Mandelbrot’s party not only to stop the vampires from going after Georgie’s parents, but to stop Mandelbrot from doing whatever it was that Mandelbrot planned to do.

  “OK,” Georgie said. “How do you want to work this?”

  Georgie endured the next couple of days as best she could, with Agnes taking her back and forth to school, with Roma taunting her, with her parents eyeing her as if she were some completely different girl, someone they weren’t expecting and were not sure they wanted to keep around.

  On Friday night, Georgie complained of a headache and a stomach-ache and went to bed early. She stayed in bed most of Saturday as well, doing her best to appear sluggish and ill, but not so sluggish and ill that a doctor would be required. After telling her parents she was turning in for the night, she did what any self-respecting girl who needed to sneak out and save the city would do: she arranged pillows underneath her blankets to look as if she was still there. She told Noodle that Noodle would have to stay home for this particular adventure.

  “Rrrrow!” Noodle growled in response.

  “I need you to watch my parents, OK? If anyone – anything – comes to the window, you make sure you get Agnes. Protect them, Noodle. I need you to.”

  Bug showed up a few minutes later. Georgie opened the window, and he held out his hand to help her through. If she had to describe the feeling of stepping out of that window with nothing to hold her up but Bug, she would have said that it felt like being cradled by a cloud; the very air seemed to thicken around her, setting her in place like a cherry in a cup of gelatin. But she didn’t have time to dwell on how it felt to step out of her window. They had places to go. Books to steal. Vamps to con. Punks to punk.

  Bug took off. Georgie looked down to see Deitrich the doorman peering gravely up at them, watching as they hurled away from the penthouse. With Pinkwater dancing a few metres above them, Bug blew by skyscrapers and over rooftops. The wind pulled at Georgie’s hair and whistled through her teeth as they flew. The lights of the city blazed all around them, giving everything a fuzzy golden halo and making the flight seem all the more impossible, all the more magical. Georgie was tempted to tell Bug to forget about the Punk and the vampires and about the pen and The Professor and about the book, tempted to tell him to keep going until he couldn’t go any more. But then the kind, worried faces of the Bloomingtons rose up in her mind, and she knew there was no escaping what they had to do. When they reached the lower end of the island, Bug came in for a landing, setting them gently down on their feet.

  “Wow,” said Georgie, after he let go of her hand. “You’ve got really good.”

  Bug smiled. “Yeah?”

  “You know you have,” she said, “so stop with the modest stuff.”

  “I’m a modest guy.”

  “Sure,” Georgie told him. “I’ll remind you that you said that the next time you tell me about one of your photo shoots.”

  “Shut up,” he said, knocking her with his shoulder. H
er stomach fluttered in her gut, but she couldn’t be sure whether it was because of Bug or because they were about to attend a party thrown by a lunatic Punk and his battalion of bloodsucking minions.

  They found the address they were looking for. The two of them stood in front of an old building that stank of seawater and fish, staring up at the lights in the windows.

  “Are you ready for this?” Bug asked her.

  “No,” said Georgie. “Are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Nope!” chirped Pinkwater.

  “Great,” Georgie said. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” Bug said.

  Georgie turned. “What?”

  “This could be dangerous,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “I mean, really dangerous.

  Georgie nodded. “I know.”

  “It’s just that I…” He trailed off.

  “You what?”

  Bug stared at the sidewalk and mumbled something.

  “What?” Georgie said.

  Bug looked up. “I like you.”

  “Oh,” said Georgie, not sure exactly what he meant by this. There were so many possibilities. I like you like a friend. I like you like a cousin. I like you like a sister. I like you, but not as much as I’d like you if you weren’t three metres tall with delusions-of grandeur hair and that weird tripping-over-yourself problem.

  I like you, but I don’t like you like you.

  But Bug was standing there staring at her with his enormous eyes. Pinkwater chirped. Georgie had to say something. She said, “Thanks.”

  As usual, it was not the right thing to say. Bug sighed. “What I’m trying to say is, I was never going out with Roma Radisson. I let you think that because… well, I don’t know why. I don’t like her. I like you. I like you like you. Do you know what I mean?”

  Now Georgie felt so awkward that she had no idea what to do. She wanted to jump up and down. She wanted to moult out of her own skin and leave the drying husk on the sidewalk. She wanted to disappear. And then she wanted to smack him upside the head for his incredibly bad timing. They were about to confront a crazy Punk who had named himself after an almond biscuit. She didn’t need to be worried about how bad her hair looked or whether she should have worn lip gloss or maybe slouch a little so that she didn’t look so ridiculously huge.

  Bug seemed to read her mind. “I just wanted you to know, that’s all. In case anything happens.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” she blurted, practically shouting. How dare he say something like that? How dare he make her worry more than she already was worrying? She repeated herself: “Nothing’s going to happen.”

  He smiled. “OK.”

  They approached the doorless doorway. All around the jamb and the windows, the blue paint was chipped and faded. They kicked through old soda cans, newspapers and empty take-out containers in the entranceway, broken bottles on the stairs.

  “This is a nice place,” said Bug, and Georgie could hear the tightness in his voice, the same sort of tightness that she could feel in her muscles as they walked up the three flights of stairs to the “gallery”.

  On the third floor, the landscape changed. Gone were the newspapers, the cans and the bottles. The walls gleamed with fresh white paint and the floors shone with wax. A sign marked the right door.

  THE CHAOS GALLERY:

  A New Perspective in Art

  “Right.” Georgie reached out, twisted the doorknob, and pushed open the door.

  Chapter 23

  Art Appreciation

  The first thing they noticed: the place was packed.

  The second thing they noticed: it was a veritable who’s who of the rich and famous.

  Correction: the place was a veritable who’s who of the children of the rich and famous. To whit:

  Nathan Johnson Jr, son of three-time Flyfest winner Nathan Johnson. Because he was a leadfoot, Nathan Jr couldn’t follow in his father’s flight path, so he was recording a rap CD. The CD featured songs about Nathan’s life as a young gangsta (though he’d spent all of his sixteen years in a brownstone on the Upper East Side with a chef, a valet, a butler, a personal trainer, a driver and a guy who came once a week to polish the chandeliers in the bathroom).

  James Todd Sean, son of director/producer Sean Todd James. James’s dad regularly cast him in bit parts in his films, where he tortured the rest of the cast with his incomprehensible improvisation and bad breath.

  Isabella Sophia Radicchio, the daughter of real-estate tycoon Leonardo Radicchio. Isabella sold her own line of pet carriers, Tiny Totes, designed to tote wealthy teens’ miniature parrots around. Isabella was developing a TV sitcom for her own bird, Boo Boo. The show was called “Boo Boo’s Boo-boos”.

  “What are all these people doing here?” said Georgie.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Hey,” Georgie whispered to Bug. “Do you think they know they’re hanging out with vamps?”

  “Even if they did, I don’t think they’d care,” Bug said. And there they were – pale-skinned, black-garbed, black-hearted demons – lurking in the corners of the room, their faces pasted with the most exquisitely bored expressions that Georgie had ever seen. If you didn’t look too closely, you wouldn’t know they were vampires. You would have thought they were a bunch of disgruntled Goth kids at a square dance.

  “Never mind them,” said Georgie. “Look at this ‘art’.”

  Numerous canvases covered the walls on all sides. Georgie got close to the nearest canvas, a piece entitled Roly-poly Fish Heads. There was nothing fishy about it, but there were pickle slices affixed to the surface of the canvas with some sort of yellowish goo that Georgie couldn’t identify. The whole thing had a peculiar smell.

  “Do you like it?” a voice said behind her.

  Georgie turned and stared. Behind her stood Mandelbrot. He was tall and thin and pale like the vampires, but with the wolfish, pupil-less dark eyes of a Punk. He wore black leather trousers, combat boots, and a yellow T-shirt that said THE CHAOS KING. Two rolls of duct tape served as bracelets. On his head was what looked like an Indian headdress, complete with dangling beads and dyed feathers.

  “I said, do you like it?”

  “Oh! Yes!” said Georgie. “A lot.”

  “Good,” said the man. “Remember me? I’m Mandelbrot. The Chaos King. You can call me Mandelbrot. Or Chaos. Or King.”

  “OK, um, Mr King.”

  “Ing-kay,” said the man.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ing-kay. Pig Latin,” said Chaos / King / Mandelbrot / Whoever. Mandelbrot slapped Bug on the back hard enough to make the boy lurch forwards and Pinkwater go flying. “And you must be Master Grabowski.”

  “None other,” Bug said, reaching around his neck to rub his shoulder blade. Pinkwater flapped his wings and squawked as he settled back down on Bug’s shoulder. Bug reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of seeds to feed the bird, calm him down.

  “Good, good,” Mandelbrot said. “You’re rich too. You’re all rich. And that’s so nice. The world needs rich kids.” He broke out in a twist, which Bug and Georgie watched in shocked silence.

  “Something cool better happen here,” said Isabella, “or I’m taking Boo Boo home.” She held up a teeny pink Tiny Tote with the name “Boo Boo” in diamonds across the side. Something inside squawked irritably.

  “You are about to do something really cool,” Mandelbrot said. “The most important thing you will ever do in your lives.”

  “Yo, what that, Dawg?” said Nathan Jr (or Natty Bumpo, if you wanted to use his rap star name).

  “You,” Mandelbrot said, “are about to become art patrons.”

  “What?” said James Todd Sean. “What’s a patron?”

  “So that I can continue to make my art, you are all going to give me money. Lots of money. You’re each going to buy at least one painting. Maybe two or three or four or five. Cash is appreciated, but I also take personal cheques.”

&n
bsp; There was a silence in the gallery for a moment before Isabella Sophia Radicchio spoke up. “And why would we give you money? Why would we buy any of this?”

  “HELLO! Because your parents will hate it!”

  There was a collective sigh among the crowd and a few high fives. The rich and famous kids loved the idea. Everyone started opening wallets and purses.

  Georgie couldn’t believe it. Surely Mandelbrot wasn’t so crazy that he would threaten the lives of her parents for this?

  Just then Mandelbrot started doing his own version of an Indian war chant, whooping and circling around the room.

  OK, maybe he was crazy enough for anything.

  “I guess Mr Fuss was right,” Bug said. “You can’t take these guys too seriously.”

  Georgie shook her head. “Well, we still have to find that book, so let’s start looking.”

  Bug and Georgie split up and made a show of looking at every painting in the room as the gallery filled up even more. None of the guests knew what to make of Mandelbrot and his Indian headdress, and they seemed to be disappointed that there was no caviar or sushi available, and that there were no photographers to take their pictures. They did think the vampires were cool, though, and asked them lots of questions about eternal life, and what parties were like in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They wrote Mandelbrot large cheques and stuffed them, plus wads of cash, in the collection can he set up in the middle of the gallery.

  “Hey!” a voice rang out. “What is Georgetta Bloomington doing here?”

  Roma Radisson. Well. What would a party for the rich and famous be without The Second Richest Girl in the Universe?

  Roma was wearing a yellow gown that appeared to have spent a bit of time in a food processor. Vast shreds of gauzy fabric tumbled over her shoulders and down her legs. In her red hair sat a jewelled crown. On her feet were jewelled shoes. In her hand was a jewelled mobile phone. She had little jewels pasted on her cheeks. She looked like an overwrought parade float.

  “I mean it, Phinneas,” Roma said to the vampire at her side. “I want to know what Georgie Bloomington is doing here and I want to know NOW.”