by Brian Tacang
“Humor was not my intention,” mumbled Millicent, as she wiped her nose. She couldn’t help but notice he was staring at her in the most peculiar fashion. He glanced at Tonisha, then her, as if he were confused.
“Did I say funny?” asked Fletch. “I think I meant to say ‘cute.’ You’re cute when you sneeze.”
Tonisha glowered.
Cute? thought Millcent. Gross. The last person she wanted calling her cute was Fletch Farnsworth. The truth dawned on her. He was responding to the Bully-Be-Gone on her. She eased the green bottle out of her pocket with one hand, covering it with the other. Closer, she thought.
He grinned at Millicent, his face inching toward hers. “Has anyone ever told you that you smell like—like freesias and warm bread?”
Millicent brought the bottle higher until it was level with her chin.
Tonisha glared hotly. “What?” she asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. “What?” she shouted.
Millicent lost her nerve and stuffed the bottle back in her pocket.
Tonisha’s body trembled, her headwrap jiggling like a pillar of pudding. “I smell like freesias and cornbread—I smell like freesias and cornbread.” Tonisha stamped her foot.
“Warm bread,” both Millicent and Fletch corrected.
“Oh, fine,” growled Tonisha. “They’re in cahoots.”
Millicent froze. Oh, my, she thought. Getting worse!
“Is this what you wanted to talk to me about, Millicent?” asked Tonisha, her voice low and dangerous, her headwrap swaying like a cobra. “You have crossed the line—crossed the line.” She drew a line on the concrete with the toe of her shoe. “Here’s the line, Miss Girly Thing. And you have crossed it.”
“But—but,” Millicent stammered.
Tonisha spun on her heels and stormed off, talking to herself. “I want to talk to you, she says. I want to talk to you—I want to talk to you. About what? About stealing your Fletchie, that’s what. Just gonna snatch your Fletchie away like that. I am so through with you.”
Fletch looked at Tonisha, then Millicent, then back at Tonisha. Finally, as if he’d made the hardest decision in his life, he ran after Tonisha, hollering her name.
“Tonisha,” Millicent whispered. “You can’t leave.”
Millicent sat down at the fountain’s edge and heaved a sigh that seemed to start at her ankles. She reviewed the events of the past two days; bullies had crushes on her friends because of her invention, the very pink Roderick Biggleton had a crush on her, she’d been caught soaping herself in the girls’ room sink, and she’d been to the principal’s office. Juanita wasn’t speaking to her, and, worse, now her best friend wasn’t speaking to her. To top it all off, she had a solution in her pocket but couldn’t get close enough to the bullies to use it.
“Could my life get any worse?” she asked herself.
She pivoted to her right and considered the bronze likeness of the Bendable Francine Tippit, a.k.a. Winifred T. Langley. She’d never noticed before, but she and Francine had so much in common. They were both brilliant yet accident prone and they were both in compromising positions.
“Could my life get any worse?” she asked again, this time directing the question to Francine.
The statue didn’t answer her, of course, but if Francine were so empowered—animated by a life force or perhaps a complex system of cogs and wheels and artificial intelligence—she might have replied. Craning and creaking her metallic neck toward Millicent, she would have winked a horrible, high-pitched, metal-on-metal wink. She would have grinned a brassy grin and said in the raspy voice of a person who hadn’t spoken in years, “Why, yes, Millicent dear. From where I’m sitting, I’d say your life can get significantly worse.”
Fifteen
As the bus rattled along the highway, Felicity breathed two spots of fog on the window. She drew a face on each of them with her forefinger, a man’s face and hers. They evaporated, leaving the countryside scenery whizzing by.
“You don’t know who’s touched that window before you—it could be germy,” said a thin woman sitting in front of her, across the aisle. She’d been watching Felicity.
“I’m sure it’s clean,” Felicity said.
The woman made a tart expression, as if she’d sucked on a lemon, then buried her face in a book.
“They look clean to me,” said a young voice.
“Yup, clean,” said an identical voice.
Felicity turned to face twin boys who appeared to be traveling alone. They took turns drawing on their window, their fingertips leaving grimy streaks.
“What are your names?” Felicity asked.
“Clay,” said one boy.
“Cleon,” said the other.
“Clay and Cleon, it works better if you breathe on it first,” Felicity said. “Like this.” She breathed a patch of mist onto her window and drew a stick-figure dog.
“Really,” said the thin woman, looking up and over her shoulder, “how unhygienic—breath and fingerprints.”
The bus pulled into a quaint station, spitting itself to a stop. “Windy Mill Township,” the bus driver called.
No one got off, but one man got on the bus. He wore a piggishly pink, ill-fitting leather suit. On his face, a plastic pig’s nose attached to an elastic strap hid his real nose.
“And you are?” he asked the bus driver.
“Anne,” she replied.
“I suppose I don’t need to introduce myself, as you probably recognize me,” he said.
Anne shook her head.
The man huffed and made his way down the aisle. With a curt nod, he acknowledged a passenger dressed as a cowboy and a serious-looking man in a suit, saying, “No autographs, please.”
Felicity didn’t know who he was. She craned her neck to see if there were paparazzi snapping photos at the bus station—she remembered the nuisance of the paparazzi from her human cannonball days—but it stood empty.
“Do you mind?” he asked, gesturing toward the empty spot next to her.
“Not at all,” she said and patted the seat.
The bus burped into motion again.
She studied him carefully. His suit had patches sewn to it that advertised various pork products. On his sleeve alone there were three: Fatty Patty Pork Patties, Sizzle Queen Bacon, and Better-Left-Unsaid Sausage Links. He was also wearing a heavily padded shoulder harness. He grinned at Felicity, which she thought was hysterical considering his swinish nose. She didn’t want to seem rude, so she stifled her laugh.
“Getting married?” the man asked.
“No, I’m not getting married,” she said, covering her mouth.
“Odd get up for someone not taking vows,” he said.
Odd get up? She clenched her teeth to keep from laughing.
“I take it you’re not a fan of the races,” he said, clearly detecting her wanting to guffaw.
“Races?”
“The Piggy five hundred,” he said. “NASPIG.”
“Oh?”
“I’m quite famous, actually,” he said. “On the piggyback racing circuit, that is. I’m a professional racer. My name is Boris.”
“Pleased to meet you, Boris. I’m Felicity.”
They shook hands, then faced forward. Felicity thought they were through talking, but her gaze kept creeping over to his patches. Why does he have pork product labels on his clothes? she thought.
“They’re my sponsors,” Boris said, as if he’d heard her unasked question.
“Sponsors?” She had no idea what sponsors were.
“Sponsors,” he echoed, “are folks who pay you to display their logos on your uniform. If you’re famous, as I am, they pay you lots for the privilege.”
“Why?”
“Because customers will see the logos and rush out to the refrigerated aisle of their local grocery store and buy boxes and boxes of Fatty Patty Pork Patties, for example,” he said.
Felicity considered how that worked. Try as she might, though, she couldn’t picture being driven
to buy bacon or sausage because she’d seen a patch on a celebrity’s outfit. Then again, she hadn’t been grocery shopping for many a year, so she reckoned it was possible there were people around who were so easily persuaded.
There were other things about Boris that didn’t make sense.
“Yes,” she said, after a moment, staring at his sleeve. “But if you’re running around a track, how can people see these tiny patches?” She poked the Better-Left-Unsaid Sausage Links insignia on his arm. She focused on his nervous little eyes. “Besides, if they pay you so much money, why are you riding the bus?” she asked pointedly.
“Two very astute questions,” he said, avoiding her stare. “To the second, I will say that I am deathly afraid of driving—speed, you know, it’s a dangerous thing. To the first, I will say—umm—that—uhh—all professional piggyback racers wear patches, which show up quite nicely in publicity photographs. Yes, yes, that’s right.” He slapped his hands on his thighs as if he’d made up a clever answer on the spot.
Felicity frowned. “A racer afraid of speed?” she asked, cocking her head.
Boris examined his wristwatch. “Haven’t we reached Masonville yet?” he asked.
“You wouldn’t happen to have one of those publicity pictures on you, would you?”
“You are full of meddlesome questions,” he snapped.
“A bit touchy are we?” she asked.
Boris said nothing and stared ahead. This was fine by Felicity. She was in too good a mood to converse with a grouch. She turned to watch the countryside change gradually from bright emerald farming land into foothills that pleated themselves at the base of the Curmudgeonly Mountains.
The Curmudgeonly Mountains are named for the effects their hazardous cliffs have on folks. Each peak has seven-hundred-foot-high granite walls on its western face. The cliffs wind past a valley before cascading into the sea where they form a peninsula called Cape Curmudgeon. A narrow road bends and coils along the tops of the slab walls and makes everyone who travels them edgy and cranky, common character traits of curmudgeons. When one finally makes it through Curmudgeonly Mountain Pass, seven miles from Masonville, he or she is sure to be in a rotten mood.
As the bus climbed the first of the Curmudgeonly Mountains, Felicity wondered how Boris would fare on the treacherous leg of the trip still to come, given he was already as snippy as snippy could be. His hands were pulsing tensely, leaving sweaty palm prints on his pink leather pants.
Otherwise, the journey was going well. There had not been any rain and winter was several months away, so the road was dry. An hour later, they had made it past the highest pinnacle and were on the final downward slope. Felicity strained to catch a glimpse of Masonville. She couldn’t see it yet, but she was happy nevertheless. She hummed to herself. Her happily ever after was drawing near.
Then the bus driver screamed.
Sixteen
The lunch bell rang, jolting Millicent out of a daze. She shuffled out of math class to the cafeteria, alone and downtrodden. Classroom doors opened and the hallway swelled with kids, laughing and talking, going to their lockers to retrieve their lunches. Millicent watched them. They seemed like an animated collage of friendship from which she’d been cut out.
She stopped by the student bulletin board and wiped her nose on a streamer of toilet paper she’d gotten from the girls’ room. A bright yellow sheet of paper grabbed her attention. It read:
MASONVILLE YOUTH TALENT EXTRAVAGANZA
at Lulu Davinsky’s Diamond Theater,
this Friday at 3:30 P.M.
Come see your peers Juanita Romero Alonso,
Tonisha Fontaine, and Wong compete in
their respective categories for the titles of
Masonville’s most talented kids.
A girl who Millicent recognized but didn’t know paused by the bulletin board. “Are you going to that?” she asked.
“I don’t know if I’d be welcome,” Millicent said.
“Aren’t they your friends?” the girl asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Not sure? They’re either your friends or they’re not.” The girl shrugged and bounced off.
“I’d like to go,” Millicent said to herself.
She went over to her locker a few yards away and hovered there for a second, unsure what to do with herself. Tonisha’s locker was three to the left. They usually met there before going to lunch together. She thought about waiting for Tonisha. “Oh, who am I kidding?” she asked. She put her books away and moved on.
Inside the cafeteria, she found a seat in the farthest corner from the entrance and sat down to unpack her lunch. She’d asked the Robotic Chef to make a bologna sandwich and it had actually made a bologna sandwich—a bologna sandwich with strawberry jelly, but a bologna sandwich nonetheless. She took a bite out of it. Her nose was still stuffed, so the sandwich tasted like paper pulp. She set it down and looked around the room.
Millicent watched Pollock and Juanita come in and look around nervously. They sat four tables away from her at the Wunderkinder’s normal table. Millicent could barely hear them over the din. She cupped her ear with one hand and covered her face with the other.
What am I doing? she thought. I should just talk to them. Leon had told her the truth helped. Perhaps his advice was the answer after all. She got up and walked to their table. The closer she got, the clearer their voices became.
“I couldn’t practice last night,” Juanita complained. “Pollywog came over to my house and sang along outside my bedroom window. Off-key, no less.”
Pollock got an apple out of his lunch bag. “Yeah, well, Nina called me six times last night,” he said between bites. “I couldn’t get any painting done.”
“I’m never speaking to Millicent again,” Juanita said.
“I know! I’ve had it with her inventions,” Pollock said. “Why doesn’t she take up knitting or something?”
Millicent halted. Hearing these words come from her friends’ mouths made her blood run cold.
“Yeah,” Juanita replied. She raised a potato chip toward her mouth, but something stopped her hand in midair. “Hey, let go!” she yelped.
Pollywog had appeared out of nowhere and had latched onto Juanita’s wrist. Nina had Pollock by the arm, too. Millicent scampered back to her table and hid her face behind her hand again.
“What are you doing?” Pollock growled, struggling to free himself from Nina’s big hand.
Millicent peeked between her fingers.
Both Nina and Pollywog got on their knees. Nina smacked the gum she was chewing. “Me and Pollywog are here to, uh…” She removed the gum from her mouth and kneaded it with her thumb and forefinger. Pollywog did the same with his. “Me and Pollywog…”
“It’s Pollywog and I, not me and Pollywog,” Pollock corrected.
“You and Pollywog what?” Juanita asked impatiently.
“We don’t have real rings,” Pollywog said.
“We hope these will be good enough,” Nina said.
Millicent thought she might gag.
“You’re gonna marry me,” Nina said, wrapping her gum around Pollock’s ring finger.
Pollock cringed. “Yyyyyeeeccchhhh.”
“You’re supposed to ask,” Pollywog instructed Nina. “Like this: ‘Juanita, will you marry me?’” He tugged his gum with his teeth and fingers into a strip and wound it around Juanita’s finger.
Millicent clutched at her neck. She suddenly remembered the fake wedding Nina, Fletch, and Pollywog had staged on the playground a couple of years before. Nina married Pollywog and Fletch presided, having borrowed his dad’s ministerial collar. Nina had brought two bags of rice, courtesy of her father, who owned the granary in the center of town. Millicent and the rest of the Wunderkinder watched from a safe distance, trying not to fall on the blacktop in fits of laughter. At the end of the ceremony, Nina heaved one of the heavy sacks of rice at Pollywog because he had said, “I do take this dork to be my wife.” It knocked him
off his feet. As further punishment, Nina had led him around school on a dog collar and leash for an entire week, until they finally divorced.
Juanita’s face blanched as she watched Pollywog drape her finger in chewing gum. “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,” she panted, fighting to wrest her hand from Pollywog. “EEEEEE, YUCK!” She kicked her feet and screamed like a wild creature. Breaking free, she jumped up, tore the gum off her finger, grabbed her violin, and ran screaming out of the cafeteria. Pollock bolted free, too, and flew in Juanita’s wake, his portfolio banging against his leg. A few of the students who sat nearby were laughing.
“That went pretty good,” Pollywog said. “Wasted my gum, though.”
“You fool,” Nina said. “That did not go good. It’s Plan B now.”
“We have a Plan B?” Pollywog asked.
“You have a Plan B?” Millicent asked so quietly only she could hear herself.
“I have a plan B,” Nina barked at Pollywog. “You do what I say. Come on, let’s go get Fletch. Tomorrow afternoon it all goes down. Pollock, Juanita, and Tonisha will have no choice but to marry us.” She took Pollywog by the ear and dragged him from the cafeteria.
Tomorrow afternoon? Millicent’s mind raced, trying to imagine what Nina had up her long, long sleeve. Obviously, the bullies couldn’t really marry the Wunderkinder, but an interference of any kind could throw Pollock, Juanita, and Tonisha off for the extravaganza competition. Millicent gulped down her last bite of bologna-and-strawberry-jelly sandwich that skidded past the lump in her throat like a go-cart over a speed bump.
She had to put a stop to Nina’s Plan B before it ruined her friends’ most important day.
Seventeen
“A bear!” A bear!” Anne the bus driver shrieked. She grappled with the steering wheel as she tried to keep control of the bus.
Brakes screeched, and the bus lurched as if it had tested the length of a very short leash. Then it swerved to the right in a wide, shuddering arc. Umph, umph, umph, the wheels went as they tried to grip the road. Boris slid on the seat, crushing Felicity. People on the other side of the bus grabbed onto the seats in front of them. Some toppled into the aisle.