“Wait, Julia, you do know how to conjugate, right?”
“You’re funny! Why do you and Bonnie talk about private things like that?”
“You know what?” said Lisa, “I think I’ve heard enough.” She rolled her eyes and headed back to customer service.
“Bonnie,” said Julia, “You should friend me already.”
“Oh yeah, Julia,” said Bonnie, “Remind me later, but I should warn you. My mom is always watching me on the social networks.”
“Your mom watches you? Seriously? How old are you?”
Bonnie sighed with embarrassment. “Twenty-four.”
“O-M-G! Bonnie! My mom didn’t even do that when I was a teenager!”
“Wait. How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“So wait, when you were a teenager?”
“You know what I mean!” laughed Julia.
“Whatever,” said Bonnie, “Anyway, my mom seems to think the social networks are rotting my brain. I can tell you, though, I catch her on there sometimes. For some reason she’s big into Tumblr.”
“Yeah. Well she’s old, right?”
“She’s in her forties. She had me young.”
“How young?”
“Actually, Julia,” said Bonnie, “Nineteen.”
“Stop it!” shouted Julia, “You’re freaking me out!”
It wasn’t long before the two were giggling. Bonnie didn’t notice Lisa watching them from afar, looking sad.
“Alright!” said Johnny Gunn to Pam as they sat in his private jet, “This better be worth it!”
“Let me explain,” said Pam, “Uri Presputnik is a former KGB agent. He went rogue, and he’s involved with several sleeper cells in former Soviet republics in Central Asia.…”
“I don’t care about his life story! What can he do for me?”
“He has access to three space probes, each of which is equipped with a hydrogen bomb. Russia lost contact with them twenty-five years ago. They were led to believe that they were destroyed, but actually, this guerilla group in Kazakhstan took control…”
“Stop with the boring history talk! What is he doing?”
“He is going to aim those nukes at your enemy. But listen. We need to work on this too. Somehow she needs to be lured up to the Dark Side of the Moon.”
“The what?”
“That’s how they kept them secret all these years. You see…”
“I don’t care! All I care about is destroying the harpy! You figure it out.”
“You know what?” said Pam, “I can do that. I can. Don’t worry.”
That afternoon, Hal came into The Big Box with Stacy. On his way in, he caught a brief glance of Bonnie. She gave what seemed like a cursory glance, and maybe the ghost of a wave. Hal answered by miming a “hi.” He then moved over to electronics, and chatted with Teddy. Lisa happened to be on her break, and joined in the conversation.
“You’re buying Barbie’s?” said Teddy.
“That’s why I’m here,” said Hal, “Stacy’s starting to need new toys. It’s been months since anyone bought her anything. I just decided to take her already.”
“You’re a better man than me.”
“So Teddy,” said Hal, “Career’s going nowhere, but I have an idea. Johnny Gunn has been promising to make a big announcement in Herald Square this Wednesday. I’m going to rent some video equipment, and produce a news story myself. Then I can use it as a demo reel. It’s going to cost me, but I think it’s a small price to pay if it helps to jump start my career.”
“Really,” said Lisa, “What is your career?”
“I’m going to be a TV reporter,” said Hal.
“Oh,” said Lisa, “Don’t you worry? I mean, Gunn’s supporters get pretty nuts.”
“Yeah. I know. It could be dangerous. But if something does happen, and I get a good story on film, then that would be something I could really use.”
“Hey,” said Teddy, “you gonna ask Bonnie out?”
“You think I should?” said Hal, “I kind of have a lot on my mind right now. I’m also spending every dime I have on this. I’m not in a position to take out a girl.”
“Hal,” said Stacy holding up a video game, “Can we buy this?”
“Oh! Sorry, Stacy. That’s out of the budget.”
“Please?”
“How about I get you some ice cream on the way home?”
I just can’t face him, thought Bonnie, I flew with him, and…he doesn’t know it, but…I just can’t face him. It’s just too weird.
From across the store, Bonnie listened to Hal’s conversation with Lisa and Teddy with her super hearing—or at least to most of it. She drifted out when he got to the part about buying a camera, or something. That wasn’t too interesting. But it was incredibly sweet how he was buying toys for his sister. And now he wouldn’t ask her out because he was out of money, or something. She didn’t quite get that part either. Could she ever work up the nerve to ask him out? Not long ago, she had encouraged Lisa to ask out a guy, but now, her own courage was completely lost.
As she watched Hal approaching the front end, she wondered if she could face him again. But finally, she couldn’t stop herself.
Hal went to Julia’s register when he could not find Bonnie. Suddenly Bonnie came darting up out of nowhere to bag his order.
“Oh hi, Bonnie,” said Hal pleasantly.
“Did you come to say hi?” said Julia.
“No!” said Bonnie defensively, “I said hi before!”
“It’s okay,” said Hal awkwardly, as he and Stacy left, “Nice to see you.”
Julia looked at Bonnie curiously. “Well, that was smooth!”
Bonnie’s face fell. “I blew it, didn’t I?”
Johnny Gunn’s plane touched down in Uri Presputnik’s camp in Siberia. As Johnny and Pam stepped off the plane, they looked around with doubt. The place was little more than a cluster of several trailers, pushed close together at irregular angles, with a few portable bathrooms completing the settlement. Two men were sitting at either end of the compound, ostensibly on watch, though they could not have expected much to happen. All around them there was little but flat tundra, nearly featureless except for the frozen bogs that punctuated the mass of rock-and-moss-covered land around them.
“They run space probes from here?” said Johnny, “How? It looks like they could barely afford Port-o-San’s.”
“Mister Gunn!” called a man with a thick Russian accent, “Welcome! You are the man who will breathe some life into our organization. And this lovely lady…?”
“Pam. Pleased to meet you.”
“She is my assistant,” said Johnny, “My assistant.”
“No argument,” said Uri, “So, let’s discuss our plan, shall we?”
“Oh. You have a plan,” said Johnny sarcastically.
“Please,” said Pam, “Fill us in. We’d love to know what you have in mind.”
“Thank you,” said Uri, “First we lure your Ms. Infinity to our location in space. Then we use our nuclear missiles to take her out.”
“How do we lure her?” asked Pam.
“I thought of that,” said Uri, “We have drones flying within the atmosphere with speakers. We’ve used them before for propaganda purposes. You can announce it to her from there.”
“She’ll hear that?” asked Johnny.
“She has super hearing, right?” said Uri, “So then we direct her toward our probes, make her think that they are asteroids heading toward Earth. Then bam! Three nukes, and she’s gone!”
“Let’s keep it to two,” said Johnny, “I’m going to need the third one later.”
“You’re saving a nuke?” said Uri, “May I ask what for?”
“For the next phase, of course.”
As the work day drew to a close, Bonnie worked her way over to customer service to talk to Lisa. She found her looking uninterested.
“Hey Lisa,” said Bonnie, “Do you want to walk home together?”
“I don’t get out for another two hours,” said Lisa, sounding dispirited.
“I thought you were going home when I was.”
“Oh. Um, some time needed to be filled here. Bobbi—I don’t think you met her—she called out. I’m taking the overtime.”
“So, do you want to get together afterwards?”
“It’s going to be like eleven. I really don’t think…”
Bonnie looked at Lisa in disappointment and disquiet. “Is everything alright?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“Lisa, I don’t know what I did to…”
“Bonnie, I can’t. I have a customer.”
Bonnie looked at Lisa in shock. In all the years they had known each other, never had Lisa brushed her off like that. Inside her she felt panic. She felt like she would do anything that would make everything all better again. But the line was picking up, and Lisa was too busy to talk. Bonnie finally walked away, holding back tears.
Bonnie punched out, and was on her way out the door, when she saw Julia texting.
“Hey Julia,” said Bonnie.
“Oh. What’s up?” said Julia, barely looking up.
“So Julia, you’re done now?”
“Uh, yeah. I think so.”
“You think so?”
“Well you know. I’m like not doing anything.”
“So did you punch out.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“So Julia, do you want to do something now?”
Julia looked up at Bonnie. “As in what?” she said.
“You know,” said Bonnie, “like you and me?”
“Oh, really?”
“Well, of course. I mean, I want to be friends. Don’t you?”
Julia’s face froze in an awkward moment of perplexed anxiety. Bonnie might not have realized it, but her face did this very frequently, especially when her mother had questions about her schoolwork, or her whereabouts the previous evening. This look would soon make many appearances at work, whenever Maria demanded anything more than basic responsibility. Be that as it may, Julia clearly did not want to socialize with Bonnie, and there was no mistaking it.
“Never mind,” said Bonnie, “It’s alright.”
“Oh Bonnie,” said Julia “It’s not you. It’s late. You know, I’m just going home.” This claim might have had some legs, even for a 19-year-old girl at 9:00 PM on a Saturday night. However, she had just finished putting lipstick and eyeliner on and said to herself, “Party time!”
“Uh, you know what?” said Bonnie. “Me too. Yeah.”
Bonnie and Julia left The Big Box. To save herself embarrassment, Bonnie allowed Julia to get far ahead of herself before she moved on. However she heard her with her super hearing, making plans with friends to go out dancing. Bonnie finally could hold back her tears no more. “I knew it!” she said to herself, “Nobody likes me. I’m a weird, scary freak. I hate myself!”
Bonnie began to walk. But suddenly, she stopped short. She heard something disturbing. Somewhere amidst the vast hordes of sounds in the atmosphere was a rough but familiar voice coming from far away. As she listened closely with her super senses, she could determine that it was Johnny Gunn’s voice, coming from somewhere in the sky.
“Well Ms. Infinity, this is your last chance. I sent my spacecraft out to loosen a couple of asteroids, and they’re headed straight for Earth. They’re going to collide into Washington in minutes. Then it’s the beginning of a new era. America is mine! That is, unless you can stop it!”
On another day, Bonnie might have seen a trap. But then she was, as always, headstrong, certain that Gunn could not do her any harm. And now she was preoccupied with her mounting frustration, between Lisa’s brushoff, Julia’s snub, and her own moment of deep embarrassment in front of Hal.
It sucked to be Bonnie Boring. Being Bonnie meant being a short, scrawny nerd who nobody wanted to talk to. It meant being ignored by men, slighted by friends, and talked down to by her mother. But she didn’t have to take it, did she? At least, not all the time. Bonnie could stop being Bonnie. She could change. She could throw off her whole miserable life as a human, transform herself into Earth’s Greatest Hero, and kick some butt!
Impatiently, Bonnie found an alleyway and darted into it. As soon as she was out of sight from the street, she felt freedom upon her. She instantly started running at super speed. Then she began to change. In seconds, she grew from small and scrawny to tall and voluptuous, her schlubby clothes morphing into her brightly-colored, form-fitting costume, and Bonnie Boring had changed into Ms. Infinity. And with that, she flew far into the sky.
Just after Bonnie left, the line at the customer service desk began to die down, and Helen Billings approached.
“Helen!” said Lisa warmly, “How has your dad been?”
“His health has been no worse than usual,” said Helen, “He’s getting around at least, and his breathing has been more or less normal.”
Maria walked by, dropping off a Ms. Infinity doll. “Please see that that’s put back on the floor. Thanks.”
“My cousin Linda met Ms. Infinity a couple of times,” said Helen.
Lisa tried not to allow her expression to drop. “That’s…interesting. How did that come to be?”
“I never told you about her. My mom’s sister married well, and her daughter has a nice cushy job. She’s Jonny Gunn’s receptionist. He hates Ms. Infinity. Today she overheard a conversation between him and his personal assistant. He wants to finish her off for good. This sounds farfetched, but he wants to hit her with nuclear missiles somehow.”
“That does sound farfetched,” said Lisa, “Are you sure she heard it right?”
“I don’t really know. I just hope he doesn’t take the whole world down with her!”
“Good point. Listen Helen. I really should get some things done around here.”
“Hi Maria,” said Lisa as she approached the registers, “I hate to do this to you, but can you find some coverage for me?”
“Oh!” said Maria, “Sure. Is everything okay?”
“With me? Sure. I just have an emergency to take care of at home.”
“Is your family alright?”
“I hope so,” said Lisa, “Sometimes they seem invincible to me. But now, it looks like I might be the one to come to the rescue.”
15. Centerian Missile Crisis
Lisa ran frantically through the congested streets of Woodside. Now and again she strained to pass through the Saturday night crowds, her teeth gritting in frustration. She often slipped against brick walls, taking advantage of her smallness, but occasionally there was no choice but to take detours through the gutter. When she crossed the street, she darted blindly through traffic. Then there was the checkpoint. The wait was no longer than usual, but that was a solid ten minutes. She was relieved when she was waved on; by now the officer seemed to know her, and smiled at her a little too familiarly. Lisa did her best to keep her eye roll out of his sight.
Her mind raced as fast as her legs. Would she get there in time? Could she save Bonnie? Would she even be able to get through to her? She had no idea how to tell her what she had to say, or how she might take it. Could Lisa even say it out loud? Might Bonnie finally acknowledge what they both knew if it were life and death? Or did she have to go over Bonnie’s head? Mrs. B. If she were around, she would listen.
Lisa remembered one time, years ago, when she had noticed Bonnie and Betty communicating in what seemed like telepathy. Bonnie seemed oblivious to Lisa’s observance, but Betty caught on. Lisa immediately apologized, and frantically promised that she would never tell anyone.
Betty’s reaction was even more surprising than her superpowers. She was alarmed, but not at all for the reason Lisa expected. She sat her down and talked with her heart to heart. “Honey, I don’t want you ever to feel unsafe here. If you ever feel that there is something you need to tell your mother, please go ahead and do so.” She would not even let Lisa leave until she promised that she would.
Such was the sense of trust that Betty worked to cultivate, at least with Lisa.
Ms. Infinity flew far into the sky, at a speed that rendered her invisible. For the first few seconds, her concentration was intense as she negotiated around the density of air traffic in the lower atmosphere. She had to make many turns, and occasionally found herself doing full loops. This quieted down briefly, until she reached the zone of orbit. Then she had to get past the enormous swaths of space junk. Here she had developed the trick of finding a few articles moving, flying in tandem with them, then turning to pass them. At any rate, her entire flight from ground to the outermost reaches of the atmosphere was never more than a minute.
At times she wondered if her flight would make a great carnival ride.
She had begun to have some doubts about her sudden decision. She hoped Gunn wasn’t leading her on some wild goose chase, then pulling some other trick in her absence. But then she had definitely heard something amiss. At any rate, it wasn’t as if she was doing anything else that was important.
She used her super senses to scan the sky. Before long, she saw that there was something, not far from the Dark Side of the Moon. As she approached, she got a distant glance at the threat she was to face. Gunn had warned of “asteroids,” but that was a generous term for what these things were. If anything, they were maybe enormous rocks. They were on a strange trajectory; someone in Gunn’s team must have planned this well, since they were somehow free of the moon’s orbital influence. From her calculations, it was clear that they were headed for Earth. But then they would presumably burn up upon entry into Earth’s atmosphere. However, she did not doubt that if Gunn had something to do with this, there might be some kind of evil afoot.
She made some quick judgements, then flew at a dizzying speed. But when she reached the spot where she expected to meet the conveyances, there was suddenly nothing.
Lisa finally arrived at the Borings’ house and rang the bell. Nobody home. She wondered whether she should wait, or look for her friend. For a few minutes, she sat down on the stump in front of the door. But she became increasingly restless. What if she was wasting time there?
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