She rolls her eyes. “The lady is my stepmother.”
I gasp. “She met Kobayashi? When?”
“Oh, about three months before she married him.”
CHAPTER 15
You know that expression “My head is swimming”? When I put together what she’s telling me, my head doesn’t swim, it flails around like the people in the adult swimming lessons I saw at the YMCA once. It’s not so much swimming as drowning without dignity.
“Your dad is Tatsuo Kobayashi!”
“Wow, can’t fool you.”
“But . . . ,” I sputter, “why didn’t you tell me?”
She rolls her eyes. “If I had a mirror right now you’d understand.”
I’m suddenly aware of the contortions on my face. I check my lower lip. There isn’t a lot of drool, but I wipe what’s there away with my sleeve anyway. The picture is under a lamp so I lean in close to examine it. I never noticed the resemblance between him and Megumi before. But then again, why would I?
“So, that means this is his office?”
She sighs a perturbed sigh. “With those detective skills, I can’t believe you haven’t found the Boogerloo yet.”
Normally a comment like that would make my scalp bead up with sweat, but nothing can ruin the feeling I have right now. I am in the personal office of one of the great artists of our time. I spring from the couch and run/walk to the desk. “Is this where . . . ?”
She nods. “When he’s here.”
I scan the desk, hoping for a glimpse of a work in progress. I’d even settle for a small doodle on the corner of a scratch pad. Unfortunately, the desk is more organized than the Colonel’s sock drawer.
“Where is he?”
“I told you, Chub. He’s never here.”
The way her face darkens makes me very aware of the silly grin I have plastered all over mine. I do my best to get rid of it, but the most I can manage is to smash it down into a small smirk.
Megumi comes over to the other side of the desk. “So, now you know my secret.”
By the look on her face, she thinks her big secret is a lot more embarrassing than it is. If we were to have an embarrassing-secret contest, I would win in a landslide. I wouldn’t even have to dig that deep. I could beat this with a small one like, “Sometimes when I push a fart a little too aggressively, I have to hide my underwear in the middle of the laundry basket and hope my mom doesn’t see it before she tosses it in the machine.”
I compose myself. “Why don’t you want people to know who your dad is?”
“Everybody thinks they know him just because they’ve read some of his comics. He’s my dad and I don’t even really know him.” She looks away. “Sometimes when people at school find out who he is they get all . . . weird.” She gives me a look. “Some of them even literally drool.”
I flush, embarrassed. There must be some good things about having a famous dad. I bet she’s never been woken up at five o’clock in the morning by the sound of prehistoric radiator pipes popping as they warm up. (It sounds like a monkey destroying the plumbing section of Home Depot, in case you’ve never heard it.)
Then something occurs to me. “Wait, why do you go to a dump like Alanmoore? How come you don’t go to a private school?”
“I went to one of those schools when we lived in Tokyo. It was even worse than public school. At places like that everyone’s parents are somebody, and everyone finds out who’s who sooner or later. Those schools might be in nicer buildings, but they are just as bad when it comes to ranking everyone by status.”
I’d never even considered that. I guess I always assumed that the more money you have, the easier your life is. Still, living in a house like this probably wouldn’t completely suck. It would have to be better than your parents never being more than fifteen feet away.
Then something hits me. “Megumi, if you don’t want anyone to know who he is, why’d you bring me over here and let me into his office?”
She shrugs. “I never said I don’t want anyone to know. I said I don’t want everyone to know.”
That makes my face hot again. “Why me?”
“I don’t know. I guess I like the way you fight back when the system is wrong. Reminds me of Ronin Girl, you know?”
I nod, but the truth is I don’t know. I still haven’t gotten to read it, and I’m starting to wonder if I ever will. I almost ask her if now would be a good time, but considering what she just told me, I don’t want to upset her by bringing up her dad again. The best thing for now is to use her phone to call the Getter and then get out of here before I say something dumb and mess up my invite to Emerald Con.
I’m scanning the office for a phone when she says, “Who do you think was in the kangaroo costume?”
My first thought is that it was the Arch, but after he singlehandedly saved us from getting caught in the office by pulling the fire alarm, it doesn’t feel right to accuse him.
“I have a couple of theories,” I lie, hoping she doesn’t ask me what they are.
She nods. “I guess you have to ask yourself why someone would do it. I mean, you and the Arch are the ones with the reputations for that sort of thing—everyone knows that—so doesn’t that sort of rule you out? Why would you commit a crime knowing you’d be the first ones to get hauled in?”
I say what I’ve been thinking ever since I first saw that the Boogerloo had disappeared. “Unless one of us wanted to frame the other.”
She bites her lip. “I don’t buy it; too risky. You’re both smarter than that.”
“Okay, so what’s your theory?”
“Maybe this has nothing to do with Lockhart.”
I’ve been so worried about proving my innocence that it never occurred to me. “I’m listening.”
“I’m just saying, maybe it’s someone you’ve never thought of, for a reason you’ve never thought of.”
I’m not sure where she’s going with this, but I don’t like it. “What are you saying, exactly?”
She spins and walks back toward the couch. “Think about it, Chub. You hang out with a bunch of kids who have all kinds of experience pulling capers at school. Is it so weird to think it might be one of the people you meet with behind the Dumpsters?”
That makes my head break out in a full sweat. Nobody in the Cadre would do something like that without telling me, would they?
Megumi throws her legs over the arm of the couch and flops back, staring at the ceiling. “Can you think of a reason why one of them would do it?”
It feels like I’m betraying my friends to even think it, but I run through a checklist in my head. Not the McQueens; Lockhart succeeded in putting the fear of God into them.
Sizzler might still want to get back at the Arch for stealing his golden-boy status on the track team last year, but he’s bigger than most adults I know. If it had been him in the suit, it would’ve been obvious.
That leaves only Shelby and Moby. In my wildest dreams, I can’t imagine one of them doing something that bold.
“I don’t think so, Megumi.”
“All I’m saying is you can’t know for sure until you know for sure.”
Moby was mad at me last year when Shelby joined the Cadre, but we’ve been cool ever since. And there’s no way Megumi could know about that anyway. That only leaves . . .
“Shelby?”
She shrugs. “I just wouldn’t rule out anyone whose alibi isn’t ironclad.”
“Great! That means I’m the only one I can be sure about.”
Megumi stands up and dusts off her hands. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” She gathers up the mostly untouched snack packages from the couch.
“Can I use the phone while I’m here?”
She looks around like it might be lying on the floor. “Let me go find it.” She goes out and leaves me to soak in the mystique of Kobayashi’s den.
A section of the bookcase catches my eye. The books on the shelf don’t look like the others. I float toward them like I’m on a remote-c
ontrolled hoverboard. I’ve seen spines like that before; they’re the kind of albums serious collectors use to catalog things like magazines and rare comic books. I tilt one of the volumes slightly out of its place on the shelf to inspect it. My heart flutters like a moth in my chest when I see the neat rows of vinyl slipcovers, each filled with colorful pulp pages.
I wait for the rush of my pulse in my ears to calm, then strain to hear any clue as to where Megumi is in the house. After a few seconds of silence, I’m rewarded by the sound of a drawer opening in a distant room. I quickly slide the album off the shelf, carefully open the cover, and get my first glimpse at the personal collection of Tatsuo Kobayashi.
I have no clue what I am looking at. I know only two things: it is awesome, and I wish I knew how to read Japanese. Unfortunately, I don’t, so it makes no sense to me. The album is full of other issues of the same comic, which as far as I can tell is about an angry octopus-god who fights a legion of giant cyborgs. As quickly as possible I replace the volume and move over a few shelves to see what other treasures he has hidden in here.
I randomly pick another album and carefully slide it out of the shelf.
“I see you found his collection,” Megumi says.
She’s standing right next to me and her voice makes me jump. The album leaps out of my hands like a frog. I grab for it, but Megumi snags it out of midair before I get the chance.
“Are you trying to give me a heart attack, Megumi?”
“No.” She holds up a phone with her other hand. “I was trying to give you this.”
“Thanks.” I go to take the phone from her, but she pulls it back.
“Can I ask you something, Chub?”
I’d rather wait until after I talk to the Getter, but she looks pretty serious. She’s working up the nerve to say what she has to say when the sound of the front door opening echoes from the front hall. Megumi snatches the phone and tosses it on the couch.
“What are you doing?”
Her forehead wrinkles with worry. “That’s my stepmom. I’m not allowed to have anyone over when they aren’t home.”
At least there’s one thing our parents have in common.
Her eyes plead with me. I shoulder my bag and then follow her to the open window.
A voice like a goose with a sinus infection pierces the air from the front hall. “Gumi, you home, baby?”
Megumi takes my bag and tosses it into the bushes outside the window. “You have to go now!”
I do my best to mount the windowsill without embarrassing myself, but I can’t get my leg over without Megumi pushing on my butt. When I’m halfway out I turn to her. “When will I see you again?”
“Probably tomorrow at school.” Before I can say anything else she shoves me the rest of the way out the window.
I try to stick the landing like Iron Man, but when I hit the ground it’s more like a turd falling out of the back end of a horse.
When she closes the window above me, I crawl out of the bushes I’ve fallen into and dust myself off. I still need to call the Getter, and with Moby out getting coffee, Shelby’s house is my next best bet. I don’t want to believe it, but maybe she has something she wants to tell me before I make the call.
CHAPTER 16
I shove myself through the hole in the wall and pop out onto the sidewalk. Even though Maplehurst is only a few feet away, the air smells completely different. In there it smelled like flower gardens and just-watered grass. Out here it smells like asphalt and exhaust.
It takes me a second to get my bearings, then I start off toward Shelby’s house. I only have a few blocks to figure out how to approach her about this. Is it even possible that Shelby took the Boogerloo? She has been on edge lately, but that doesn’t prove anything.
By the time I get to her house I’ve decided how I’m going to rule her out as a suspect without making her mad. My Uncle Stosh always said, “Honesty is the best policy.” But since in this case honesty might earn me a severe case of bird-girl wrath, it’s safer to go with the second-best policy: snooping.
Shelby’s Grammie opens the door before I’m even done knocking. Her wrinkled cheeks pull back like theater curtains when she sees me. “Hello, Chad!”
“Um, it’s Chub, actually.”
She looks confused for a second, then shakes her head and invites me in. “Shelby is in her room. I’m sure she’d love a caller.”
“I don’t have a cell phone. Can I just go talk to her?”
Her confused look returns. “Okay.” She gestures down the hall.
I don’t have to ask which room is Shelby’s. The first door I come to has a theater poster tacked to it. It’s written in French or something. The only word I recognize is “Miserable.” This is definitely her room. I knock.
“Come in, Grammie,” Shelby calls from inside.
I crack the door, praying like heck that she isn’t changing clothes or something. “It’s not Grammie. It’s Chub.”
I’m about to open the door all the way when the handle is yanked out of my hand, pulling me off balance. I stagger into Shelby’s room.
“What are you doing here, Maciek?”
I try to sound casual. “I just came by to say hi.”
She looks surprised. “Oh . . . hi.”
I take a quick look around the room. I’m not sure what I expected, but this isn’t it. I guess I figured there’d be doilies and vases and stuff to go along with the granny way she dresses, but instead the walls are plastered with posters and magazine pages.
“Where’s Moby?”
“He’s out with his mom. Just me.”
“Well, this is a nice surprise.”
One of the pictures catches my eye and I step past her toward it. It looks like Hugh Jackman, but he’s wearing a leopard-print shirt and holding a pair of maracas. “Is that Wolverine? I didn’t know you liked comic book movies.”
She lets out an annoyed breath. “I don’t, but I am a fan of a multiple-Tony-Award-winning actor who happens to play in one occasionally.”
The rest of the pictures on the walls are similar, but I don’t recognize any of the people in them. I pull out a small stool in front of a three-sided mirror and sit. “This is a nice room.”
Shelby wrinkles her nose. “No it isn’t.”
She’s right, but something tells me this isn’t the thing to suddenly agree with her about.
“Did you come over to check on my decorating skills, or was there another reason?”
“I don’t know. You’ve been kinda grumpy lately and I thought I’d check on you.”
Her mattress sits directly on the floor, and as my Uncle Stosh would’ve said, “The room is so small you’d have to go outside to change your mind.” If Shelby was hiding the Boogerloo, the only place to stash it in here would be the closet. Unfortunately, the closet doors are closed.
“Well, there’s been a lot going on. But we don’t need to ruin this visit talking about that.”
Thank God.
She runs her hand over her dress to smooth out the wrinkles. “Grammie and I were about to watch Masterpiece Theater. They’re airing a production of Othello from the National Theatre in London.”
She may as well be speaking Swahili. Not one word of that made sense to me. “Oh, cool.”
“It’s a play. You could watch it with us if you want.”
I’d probably agree to watch something as horrible as ballet if it would get her out of the room for a minute. “Sounds good.”
Shelby puts her hands together like she’s about to pray and claps them excitedly. “You’ll love it! I swear.”
“I knew you were in theater club and everything, but I didn’t know how much you were into it.”
She looks down. “I’m interested in lots of things, in case you never noticed.”
I look around the room again for a clue about what else she might be into. Unless she’s into peeling wallpaper, or piles of clothes, I have no clue what she’s talking about.
After a moment of
awkward silence, she looks at the picture of Hugh Jackman. “Life isn’t always about comics, you know.”
She’s right. Lately mine has been about everything but. The whole Boogerloo situation has me nostalgic for the days when I knew exactly who my nemesis was and I could spend my time plotting his downfall. This year was supposed to be even better. This year I was supposed to stay out of trouble completely.
The sooner I find that stupid glass blob, the sooner I can start my life as just another Alanmoore student. I need her out of the room so I can check the closet.
I force an eager smile onto my face. “Hey, does your Grammie have any of those cookies she had last time I was here?”
Shelby perks back up. “I think so. Perfect theater food. Good idea!” She turns to go.
The cookies were slightly more difficult to swallow than a stick of sidewalk chalk. I poke my head out her door and call, “Can you bring something to drink, too?”
Her reply is a sing-song call. It comes from the kitchen, so I have a minute to myself.
I move to the closet door and inch it open. The door makes a sound like the one Moby made that time he forgot to wear underwear and zipped up his pants too quickly. I freeze, listening for footsteps in the hall. When there aren’t any, I inch the closet door open more, lifting on the knob to keep the hinge from giving me away.
Down the hall, a pantry door slams. She’ll be back any minute. If she catches me in her closet I will be toast.
I press my eye to the opening and peer inside. It takes a second to adjust to the dark, but when it does, I see what I should’ve expected to see: rows of sweaters neatly hung on hangers and a small rack of old lady shoes on the ground. I’m about to call it clear when something in the back corner catches my eye.
Something purple.
My heart races. I quickly listen toward the hall for any sound, then reach in closer for the purple thing, making sure I don’t move the noisy door.
Suddenly I hear footsteps approaching. I stretch toward the back corner of the closet. With one last push, I grab it. I expect to wrap my hand around the silly glass blob. Instead I feel . . . feathers?
I yank my hand out of the closet just as Shelby glides into the room with a plate of cookies.
Electric Boogerloo Page 11