by Laura Ruby
“Stop, stop!” said Gurl, breathing heavily. “I have to stop.”
“Yeah, OK,” Bug said, breathing just as heavily.
Gurl sat, drawing her knees close. “The Professor told us not to leave the subway car.”
“We could go back and be diced into ham salad, if you want.”
“Do you think those guys were the Punks that beggar was talking about?”
“Probably,” said Bug.
“I wonder why they stopped chasing us,” Gurl said.
“Who knows? They probably had a graffiti schedule to keep.”
“And who’s Sweetcheeks? And Odd John? Do you recognise the names?”
“Sounds familiar,” Bug said. “But I don’t know why. Maybe I saw something on TV?”
Gurl stood and looked left and right. Nothing but rusting tracks sliding into a deep, impenetrable darkness. “What do we do now?”
Bug sighed. “Walk until we hit the next station, I guess.”
“If we keep following the track in the same direction the train was moving, we should be OK, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. That is, if there aren’t any more Punks wandering around down here.”
“Or something else,” added Gurl.
They moved in single file. Though it seemed as if they marched a long time—the concrete strip was narrow, the fumes from the trains were dizzying and they were exhausted—they eventually saw a light up ahead.
“The station,” said Bug, and Gurl could hear the relief in his voice.
“I thought we’d never make it.”
As they approached, they heard the thin screech of an abused cello paired with a flatulent tuba.
“Music to my ears,” said Gurl.
The walked a bit faster. Then they saw the metal grate that sealed off the station from the tracks, the cellist and tuba player seated on a bench behind it. “Hey!” said Gurl. “What’s all this?” She pulled on the grate, but it didn’t budge.
“I think it’s locked from the inside,” Bug said.
“Can’t you pick it?”
“If I can find the lock. Do you see it anywhere?”
“No.”
The cellist and tuba player played on, ignoring the two kids who rattled the metal grate and pleaded with them to open it.
“What’s wrong with them?” said Gurl. “Why aren’t they even looking at us?”
“Because,” said Bug, “they’re looking at that.”
He pointed to one end of the station. An alligator—fifteen feet long, albino white, with a jaw full of jagged teeth—crabbed along the tile floor.
Chapter 16
The Face in the Mirror
“LOOK OUT!” SAID GURL. “THERE’S a gator!”
The cellist rolled his eyes, making the pouches beneath them quiver. “No!” he said, over the din. “Really?” He sawed at his cello even harder, and the resulting squeals made Bug and Gurl clap their hands over their ears. The alligator didn’t seem to like it either; he hissed, working his jaws in a most threatening fashion.
“I’m glad we’re on this side of the gate,” said Bug.
The tuba player got off the bench and slowly approached the gator, the instrument rumbling and snorting off-key. The alligator stopped crawling, seemingly paralysed by all this terrible noise. The cellist set aside his cello, stood and reached up behind him, pulling a pole with a net at the end from inside the back of his jacket. Using the tuba player for cover, the cellist crept up on the gator. At the last moment, the tuba player threw himself aside and the cellist netted the gator. Both musicians belted the animal’s mouth shut.
After the gator had been taken care of, the cellist shambled over to the gate and slid it open. “Not a good idea for you guys to be running around the tracks,” he said. “Punks are out tonight.” He considered them, dirty, sweaty and covered with purple paint. “Unless you guys are a couple of Punks.”
The tuba player grunted. “Not pierced enough for Punks, Fred.”
Bug, of course, was already over The Punks and wanted to know about the reptile. “What did you do to that gator?”
The cellist sighed. “The gators don’t like music. That’s why the city lets us play down here. Keeps the gators out. Mostly, anyway.”
“That was great!” said Bug. “So bad it made my ears hurt!”
The cellist scowled. “What do you mean, ‘bad’? What was bad about it? Are you saying our music is bad?”
Gurl elbowed Bug to shut him up. “No, we thought it was…original. Unique. Right, Bug?”
“Sure,” said Bug. “That’s what I meant.”
“But…uh…I thought gators lived in the sewer?”
“Did you hear that, Joe?” the cellist said to the tuba player, who patted his forehead with a hanky. “These kids think that gators live in the sewer.”
“That’s stupid,” said Joe.
“Now, if you were a gator,” said the cellist, “would you hang out in the stinky sewer with a bunch of oversized, icky rats or would you come to the subway, where the nice tasty people are?”
“Well, when you put it that way,” said Gurl. “I guess we should be going.”
“How about a song first?” said the cellist eagerly. “Fred and I have been working on a new piece.”
“Uh…” said Bug.
“Um…” said Gurl.
“Stay right there!” the cellist ran back to his cello and the tuba player picked up his tuba. “You are going to love this!”
They started to play. The trussed gator thrashed and hissed like a punctured truck tyre as the children braced themselves for one more onslaught.
It wasn’t till after one in the morning that Bug and Gurl dragged themselves back to Hope House. They were too tired to hunt for Noodle and besides, they agreed, it could take a while to find her. So they decided to stay at Hope House for at least one more night. They would wash off the purple paint and then go to bed. The next day they would attend school and search for Noodle after lights-out.
With this decision made, they parted. Gurl lay in her bed and tried to sleep. But it was no use; too much had happened and too much was going to happen. Just a while longer, she thought, just till we find Noodle and then we’re out of Hope House. She sat up and looked around the room. Digger was sprawled flat on her back, snoring, with one bare, callused foot hanging from underneath the covers. Persnickety was neatly mummified in her blankets. The other girls—some on their sides, some in balls, some with their heads under the pillows—twitched and snorted in their sleep. All these girls, and all this time, and Gurl felt no connection to them at all. Here she had lived at Hope House for most of her life and yet there was no one here who would miss her. And no one she would miss. She had been nothing more than a ghost or a dream, and she would fade in the same curious way. But instead of making her feel sad, these thoughts cheered her. To be like a dream!
Gurl fell asleep smiling.
She didn’t realise, however, how poisoned the children of Hope House had become and how hard they would work against her. Hope House—formerly The Institute of the Destitute, The Home of the Friendless and The Asylum For The Poor, The Lazy, and The Wretched—hadn’t stayed in existence for 200 years by letting snot-nosed little girls fade like dreams any old time they liked. By its very nature, Hope House sucked the souls from the orphans and filled them instead with hopelessness and rage. Their hearts became hard, their feet leaden and their spirits weary. Is it any wonder that none of them could fly?
Yet Bug and Gurl had flown and hoped to fly again. And while they didn’t know it, this hope had brightened their faces and put a spring in their steps. How could the other children help but notice? How could it not make them seethe with disappointment and despair? They kept watchful eyes on Bug and Gurl as they sat down to eat their breakfast the next morning. (Or rather, not eat their breakfast, because sour soy milk on stale cornflakes is not very appetising.)
Ruckus was, not surprisingly, the one to start the ruckus. “Hey, Chicken,” he sai
d to Bug. “How come you’re not sitting with your girlfriend?”
Bug curled his lip at the rancid smell wafting up from his cereal bowl. “Name’s not Chicken,” he said. “It’s Bug.”
“Right on, Chicken,” Dillydally said. “Whatever you say, Chicken.” If he was expecting a reaction from Bug, he was disappointed. And if Gurl was worried that Bug might get up and start using the other boys as personal punch bags, she was wrong. Instead, Bug fished in his cereal bowl, pulled out a black leggy thing and examined it with great interest.
Lunchmeat joined in. “Come on, why don’t you go sit with your girlfriend. She misses you.”
But Bug merely reached out and dropped the black leggy thing into Lunchmeat’s cereal bowl. “Here,” he said. “Nice and crunchy.”
Ruckus pointed to Gurl, who was deliberately ignoring them all. “Look, she’s lonely. She’s going to cry. Boo hoo hoo!”
At this, Bug grinned. “I don’t know. You look like you’re the one who’s crying. And I don’t blame you. If I were as dumb as you, I’d be crying too.”
Ruckus scowled. “At least I’m not some sort of alien!”
Bug grinned even wider. “No, you’re just plain ugly.” He looked like he could keep this up all morning and might have, if Mrs Terwiliger hadn’t floated into the cafeteria. Immediately, she could see that the children’s attention was focused on Bug, something that she didn’t much like. In her book, that boy wasn’t right. It was the huge shifty eyes that gave him away. Anyone with eyes like that was bound to be up to no good.
“What’s going on here?” Mrs Terwiliger barked.
Ruckus, Dillydally, Lunchmeat and even Bug himself stared up at her innocently. “Nothing,” they said.
Mrs Terwiliger pinned them with accusing eyes. “Nothing?”
“Nothing,” they repeated.
“Hmmm,” said Mrs Terwiliger. “Hmm…” She floated around the tables until she found a more cooperative student. “Digger!” she said. “Can you please explain what these boys are up to?”
Digger shrugged her huge shoulders. “Chicken’s got a girlfriend.”
“What? I won’t tolerate those sorts of shenanigans. Who is it?”
“The leadfoot,” said Digger.
Mrs Terwiliger thought all the orphans would classify as leadfeet, really, if one was to be technical about it. “You’ll have to be more specific, Digger, dear.”
Digger hooked a fat thumb in Gurl’s direction. “Her. She’s his gurlfriend. Heh. G-u-r-l-f-r-e-n-d. Get it?”
Mrs Terwiliger was too surprised to correct Digger’s spelling. Since when did Gurl have any friends? Especially ones as shifty as Chicken! That would not do at all. Why, the girl could get ideas about all sorts of things. And there was nothing worse than an orphan with ideas. But what to do, what to do? Lock Gurl up? Lock Chicken up? Threaten the cat again? It was getting so tiresome. Children never knew what was good for them.
Then Mrs Terwiliger herself got an idea. “Listen up, children!” she said. “I’ve got an assignment for you all. It seems that Gurl and Chicken have need of friends. So I want you to be friends with them as best you can. Digger, Persnickety and Tot will be friends with Gurl. And Dillydally, Lunchmeat and Ruckus will be friends with Chicken. That means that you need to stick together. I don’t want Gurl or Chicken to go anywhere on their own, do you understand? You need to be with them every minute of every day and night.” Digger frowned. “What are we supposed to do at night? How are we supposed to get any sleep?”
“You’ll take turns staying up and keeping an eye on Gurl, that’s all.” Mrs Terwiliger looked right at Gurl, noting with satisfaction the dimming of hope in her eyes. “So she doesn’t get lonely.”
At first Digger made the most of her assignment. She ground her knuckles into Gurl’s back and kicked her shins underneath the desks. She hid Gurl’s schoolbooks and ate all her dinner. “We’re friends,” she boomed in Gurl’s ear. “Best, best friends.”
But by nightfall she had tired of the game. She started punching and kicking Tot instead, which, of course, made her cry. And then she pulled on one of Persnickety’s neat braids, which made her cry. All the crying grated on Digger’s nerves, so she started to yell. None of them could agree on who was supposed to stay up and watch Gurl sleep so, after crying and yelling and kicking one another for a few hours, Gurl’s three “friends” finally fell into an exhausted sleep. Gurl could only hope that Bug’s “friends” were equally occupied so that they could start the search for Noodle. They had to leave now.
Gurl didn’t have long to wait. Soon after midnight there was a soft tapping at the window as Bug picked the lock.
“What happened to all your buddies?” whispered Gurl as they made their way from the dorms to the main building.
“The weirdest thing,” said Bug. “All three of them came down with horrible colds. Had to spike their drinks with cough medicine. I don’t think they’re gonna wake up for a week.”
“Good. That will give us time to find Noodle and get out of here.” Gurl looked over at Bug. “We can’t stay another night. They know about us.” She flushed. “I mean…”
“I know what you mean,” Bug said. “And you’re right. But I’ve looked everywhere for the cat and I’ve never found her.”
“We’ll just have to look again, that’s all,” said Gurl. “Go over every inch of this place. She has to be somewhere.”
Bug picked the locks on the main building, and he and Gurl searched the various offices and broom and supply closets, emptying cabinets and pulling files from drawers. And they left the mess they made for Mrs Terwiliger to clean up. Once they had Noodle, they didn’t plan to return.
After going through the entire building, they found themselves in Mrs Terwiliger’s office, surrounded by her monkeys.
“She can’t be in here,” said Gurl. “I’ve been in this room a million times. I would know.”
“Maybe Mrs Terwiliger hid Noodle somewhere else and then moved her back in here,” Bug said. “She could have a lot of hiding places.” To the monkeys all around them Bug said “Hey, boys. How ya doin’?”
“Some of those boys are girls,” said Gurl, rifling through Mrs Terwiliger’s desk, digging for a key or a clue or something that might tell her where Mrs Terwiliger was keeping Noodle. “Just check the names on the butts.”
“You think I’m some kind of pervert?” said Bug. He picked up one of the monkeys and flipped it over. “Darren Darren.”
“That’s not what it says.”
“Look for yourself,” said Bug, holding out the monkey. “Darren Darren.”
“I can’t imagine having that name,” said Gurl. She opened the last drawer: an eyelash curler, an eyebrow tweezer, tooth whitening gel and a dozen shades of lipstick. “Well, there’s nothing in here.” She flopped down in the chair, swivelled and stuck her tongue out at herself in the full-length mirror on the wall. “I don’t know where else to look.” She had thought of the little grey cat as hers for so long that the idea of leaving her with Mrs Terwiliger made her feel like weeping.
“What do you think they mean?” said Bug. “The names on the monkeys?”
Gurl shrugged. “You said she was crazy. What difference does it make?”
“It has to mean something.” He looked around the room. “How many do you think there are in here?”
“Two hundred?” said Gurl.
“And how many orphans do you think live at Hope House?”
“About the same.” Gurl raised a pale eyebrow. “One for each of us?”
“Yeah,” said Bug. “That’s what I was thinking.”
Gurl looked at the monkey in Bug’s hand, one with a tiny set of bongo drums. “But why?”
“Do you remember the first day you came here, to Hope House?” Bug asked her.
“No. I was just a baby.”
“Well, I remember when I came,” said Bug. “Sort of. I remember that I forgot.”
“You said that before. I still don’t know what you
mean.”
“I remember being here, in Mrs Terwiliger’s office. I remember that she put one of these in front of me. This one.” He put down Darren Darren and pulled the other smaller monkey from his pocket. “I think I told it something.”
“The monkey? What did you tell it?”
“I can’t remember,” said Bug, making a fist (but, miraculously, not punching anything). “I must have told it who I was. You know, before I came here. I know I was someone. I just don’t know who.”
Gurl couldn’t imagine having a whole other life that you can’t remember, a life that could have been good or even great. She got up from the desk and walked over to Bug. She took the monkey from his hand and flipped it over. “What’s It To You? But what’s that supposed to mean?”
Bug frowned, then sighed. “I don’t know.”
“My monkey just has the word ‘Gurl’ on it. That doesn’t help either.”
“But what could I have told it? And why don’t I remember?”
Gurl thought about this. “When I was here once, Mrs Terwiliger put one of those monkeys in front of me. It started to play the cymbals. So annoying. I thought that if I told it a secret, it would stop. I have no idea why I’d think that. Why would I think that?”
“So did you?”
“What?”
“Tell it a secret?”
“I didn’t have any secrets to tell it,” said Gurl.
“So you think maybe I told Mr What’s It To You? my secrets?”
“I guess,” said Gurl. “That’s if you had any secrets. And who knows if you did?”
“Maybe,” said Bug. But he continued to look like he wanted to punch something and Gurl was starting to feel the same way. She had no idea what the purpose of the monkeys was. More importantly, she had no idea where Noodle was and they’d already looked everywhere there was to look.