Weird Kid

by Greg Van Eekhout

  I repeat the lines with a little more groove.

  “That’s it.”

  I go down the neck a little for lower notes, keeping the rhythm. When I’m comfortable, I dive a little lower, going for some runs on the thicker strings.

  It sounds good and I’m doing okay, but I’m just playing stuff I could play on any bass. This isn’t what Basszilla was designed for. It’s not the kind of practice I need.

  High up the neck again, I try some lines using the big seventh and eighth strings. And then, the ninth.

  Now I’m feeling it in my guts—that deep, menacing, Hum-like throb.

  “That was good, dude, but why’d you stop?”

  “Just . . . getting used to the sound.”

  Again, I play the ninth string, thumping it with my thumb. Softly at first. Then a little less softly. Then I give it a good whack. The floor vibrates under my feet, and my middle feels a little swimmy. But as the note fades, I start to feel solid again. Good and solid.

  “You’ve created a monster, Dale.”

  He grins, proud.

  Maybe it’s a monster I can get used to.

  Chapter 10

  “I GOT YOU SOMETHING!” AGNES hands me a book as thick as a paving stone as we’re walking out the school gates at the end of the day.

  I read the title: Physiology of Animal Species, A Zoological Compendium.

  “Aw, thanks, Agnes! A textbook! Just what I always wanted!”

  “Did you get me anything?”

  “No. I am a huge jerk. So what’s the deal with the book?”

  She drops to a whisper. “If you’re going to be turning into things, you should develop a broad working knowledge of the animal kingdom. That way you’ll have more options.”

  “Thank you. That’s actually very thoughtful. But I don’t think reading a chapter about”—I flip to the table of contents—“fiddle crickets is going to help me turn into a fiddle cricket on demand.”

  She nods like she can’t wait for me to stop talking. “I know, that’s why I built you this.”

  She passes me a metal box the size of a pack of American cheese. It has a single red knob that should probably be labeled EXTREME DANGER.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s a frequency modulator with bass enhancer. Hook it up to your TV, turn the knob all the way to the right, and think of whatever animal you want. Bird, snake, dog—it doesn’t matter. Well, probably don’t think about fish. Unless you’re in the tub. How far do the cables on your TV reach? Can you get the TV in the bathroom?”

  We’re still on school grounds, and anyone could easily mistake the box for a bomb. I try to give it back, but she won’t take it.

  “As soon as you told me about Basszilla I studied up on audiology. That’s the science of sound. I call the device the Hum-o-Tron. Plug the Hum-o-Tron into any good pair of speakers and it should give you low frequencies and high volume to simulate the Hum.” She drops to an even lower whisper. “That way you can train yourself to master shapeshifting. I didn’t have time to test it. To be honest, it could blow up your TV. And maybe rupture your eardrums. Do you have eardrums?”

  “Yes, I have eardrums. And I don’t want to practice . . . that thing you want me to practice. I want to practice not doing that thing. Can your box help me with that?”

  Agnes’s face changes. Not in an alien shapeshifting kind of way, but in a human, emotional kind of way. She’s angry. “If you can learn to . . . do that thing, it would be a crime to not do that thing. You could be as strong as you want. As fast as you want. You could learn to fly like an owl. You could run like a cheetah. You could go anywhere, survive anywhere. You could save lives. And you don’t even want to risk trying?”

  “I know you want to help, Agnes. But what if I turn myself into an elephant and then can’t turn back? Or what if I try to make myself a cricket only I end up like a giant kaiju? It’s just too dangerous. Okay?”

  I thrust the box back at her.

  She takes it back. It’s not okay.

  “Agnes, come on . . .”

  “I need to check up on the Fosters before martial arts lessons,” she says. She turns her back to me and hurries off. Not until she’s out of sight do I think about what kind of animal could have been strong enough to prevent boxes from crushing a forklift driver.

  When I get home from school, Growler is on her belly, facing my closet, growling with her sharp little teeth bared. I don’t think too much of it. Growler doesn’t need a special reason to growl. Me playing guitar is enough. Or coughing. Or standing. Or existing.

  But then someone inside the closet says, “This is a clever raincoat.”

  My mouth goes dry.

  The smart thing to do in a situation like this is creep out of my room and call the police and tell my parents and maybe get out of the house.

  Instead, I reach for the only weapon I have: my guitar. Grasping the neck, I carry Stringy like a club and advance to the closet. I hope I don’t have to hit anyone with it. I love Stringy.

  I plant my feet and swing the closet door open.

  It’s the twins, Dairy and Gravy.

  Gravy is wearing one of my flannel shirts over his head with the sleeves tied under his chin.

  “Hello, Jake,” says Gravy. “Greetings from your fellow bloblets.”

  “What are you doing here? I’m gonna call the cops.”

  There’s no actual way I’m going to call the cops, because even if the twins are a new they, that doesn’t mean the cops aren’t still an old they.

  “Be calm, sibling bloblet,” says Dairy. “We are here to help.”

  “How did you even get up here?”

  “We formed into insects and your wall mouth let us in.” Dairy points at the window.

  “You . . . you can turn into insects?”

  “Of course,” says Gravy. “We are like you. Only better at it. But we can help you.”

  I try to speak, but an avalanche of words gets stuck in my throat.

  If they’re telling the truth, that means the twins are like me.

  That means I’m not the only shapeshifter, maybe not the only alien.

  That means I’m not alone.

  “Help me how?”

  “You are too much like congealed grease, sibling bloblet. Like a hard, cold donut. You must learn to be hot grease. Only then can you be the kind of grease you wish to be.”

  “That made no sense. Not even a little. And why do you keep calling me bloblet?”

  “Words are stiff. We are all bloblets from the same blob. We are like brothers and sister.”

  I have so many questions. Did they come from the same planet I did? Why do they know so much about what they are when I hardly know anything about myself?

  But the question that spills from my mouth is “Can you teach me how to shapeshift?”

  “Teaching? No. There is no teaching of us to you. But learning? Yes. You can learn to be yourself. And we can help you with that.”

  So, here I am with strangers in my closet with strangers who know what I am because we’re the same kind of weird. The tornado of thoughts swirling in my head makes me dizzy.

  “How do I start?”

  “This closet is confining,” Dairy says. “Your house is confining. School is confining. But we have a place that is open.”

  Gravy nods. “You must come with us to our open place. It is way out in the desert.”

  “Like, a military complex with gleaming steel dissection tools? No, thanks.”

  “There are no gleaming steel dissection tools, bloblet. Do we appear dissected to you?”

  They do not appear dissected, I have to admit. “Whatever, I can’t go out in the desert with you.”

  “It is not that far,” Dairy says. “It’s at the dead mall. We will take you there after school.”

  The dead mall is only a few miles from here.

  It’s also where Agnes’s tracker lost the hazmat creeps.

  The Hum.

  The sinkholes.


  The xenogel.

  The hazmat creeps.

  My uncontrollable shifting.

  And now, the twins, all connected like beads on a string.

  Only it’s a knotted string that I can’t figure out how to untangle.

  I’m dying to call Agnes right now.

  “Monday,” I say. “I can go with you after school on Monday.”

  That’s only a couple of days away. And it’s the only time when I’m not at school or under my parents’ watchful eyes.

  Dairy grins. I don’t think she spends much time practicing normal smiles in the mirror, because her smile is pretty much ear to ear.

  “This is a wonderful development! We will leave you to your strange and cramped quarters, then.”

  “Hey, wait. One more thing. How did you find me? How did you figure I’m . . . I’m like you?”

  “Your friend,” Gravy says, as though it’s an insignificant question. “The girl. She led us to you.”

  My body goes stiff as beef jerky. My heart feels like it’s tunneling to my knees. “You mean . . . Agnes?”

  “Yes, the one called Agnes. You have no other friends. Except for us now. Until Monday. Then we will show you more blob.”

  Dairy and Gravy splash to the floor like a bucket of water after the bucket disappears.

  One blink of the eye later, and they’re a pair of houseflies.

  They buzz past my ears and flit across the room. Growler does her best to catch them, and their high-pitched whines sound like laughter as they zip out the window and leave me alone with my racing brain.

  Chapter 11

  “YOU TOLD MY SECRET,” I text to Agnes.

  I wait a long time, expecting paragraphs telling me she didn’t do it, didn’t expose my secret. Or pages of explanations, telling me why she did it.

  But all she sends back is, “I’m sorry. Can we talk?”

  So that’s it, then.

  She told Dairy and Gravy about me.

  I turn off my phone and leave it off all through the long, sad weekend.

  At school on Monday, I refuse to look at her.

  “Jake . . .” she says in Advisory.

  I don’t answer.

  She tries to pass me a note.

  I don’t read it.

  I spend lunch in the library, instead of with Agnes.

  When school lets out, she tries one more time.

  “Please talk to me,” she pleads outside the gate.

  Her voice shakes and her eyes are moist. There’s nothing Night Kite about her now. She’s hardly even recognizable as Agnes, and I feel awful for brushing past her, over to the curb where my mom is waiting in the car.

  She’s the one who should feel awful. She was my only friend. And she gave away my biggest secret.

  Mom’s in a talky mood as she drives me to my guitar lesson. I figure talking is why she’s taking me instead of Dad.

  “Your dad and I understand why you didn’t tell us you shifted into a seal at the mall. We shouldn’t have held the prospect of home school like a sword hanging over your neck.”

  I shrug. “My neck can get pretty rubbery. A sword wouldn’t be that bad.”

  “Hm. So you wouldn’t mind home school?”

  “I didn’t say that. What if I never learn how to control my shifting? Are you going to homeschool me until I graduate high school? And then online college? And then some kind of job I can do without ever leaving the house?”

  “A lot of kids are homeschooled. A lot of people do college remotely. And a lot of people work at home.”

  “It’s not the same thing, Mom.”

  She releases a puff of air. “No, it’s not. We never wanted home to be a prison. We’re your parents and we love you. We want you to be whatever you want to be and soar as high as you can.” She thinks about what she just said. “But no birds in the house. I will not tolerate poop in my kitchen.”

  I laugh. Just a little bit. It feels like I haven’t laughed in a long time.

  “Your dad and I don’t always know how to help you be the most Jake you can be while keeping you safe. We’re just trying to figure this stuff out as we go along. And we’re going to make mistakes.”

  “I guess there aren’t a lot of how-to-parent-an-alien books in the library.”

  “There aren’t, and believe me, we’ve looked. But one thing is certain. You’re not a problem. You’re our son. And you’re not special because you can change shape. You’re special because you’re kind. Because you’re funny. Because you take great care of Growler. You’re our Jake who plays guitar and dreams of doing something special with his talent. The one who climbs up on the roof and strums in the night.”

  The conversation had been going so well.

  “You know about that?”

  Mom laughs. “We can hear Growler growling at you, even with the windows shut and the AC on.”

  “You never told me to stop. You don’t mind?”

  “We’re terrified that you’ll fall. But we don’t want to keep you chained down. Do you understand?”

  I do understand.

  But there are things they don’t understand.

  It’s not just that I don’t know where I’m from. It’s not just that I’m out of control. It’s that I don’t even know what I am.

  It’s time for me to get answers, even though it means lying to Mom and Dad again.

  Mom goes across the street to work at the coffee shop, and I dive into Dale’s. Dale is behind the counter, putting strings on an electric. He holds it up for me to see. “Fender Telecaster. Look at that sunburst finish. Not a scratch on ’er. What do you think?”

  I think it’s beautiful and I want to plug into a giant amplifier and strum my heart out, but I don’t have time for that.

  I hand him Stringy. “I think there’s something wrong with the neck. I’m getting a buzz on the seventh fret. Can you have a look?”

  We go into the back room, and Dale lays Stringy on the worktable, right next to Basszilla. Within seconds, he’s completely absorbed in his work, and he doesn’t even look up as I slip out the back door, into the alley behind the store.

  A van waits for me there, the engine running. It is white. And unmarked.

  A man and a woman sit in the front seat. They’re dressed in regular clothes. The man is at the wheel. The woman is chewing on a burrito, spaghetti spilling from the tortilla. They’re the hazmat creeps from the Fosters’ house.

  They tell me their names are Leonard and Tami as the side door opens, revealing the twins.

  I should absolutely, under no circumstances, get in the van with them.

  I get in the van with them.

  The van stops in the nearly empty parking lot behind Cactus Center, otherwise known as the dead mall. To be fair, it’s not entirely dead. Just mostly. There’re still a few random shops open, plus the Tumbleweed Diner, where only retired people eat. And I’m sure a lot of creepy mannequins hang out in the dark, shuttered stores.

  It took us nine minutes to get here, so if it takes the same amount of time to get back to Dale’s, that leaves me forty-two minutes to learn everything I want to know about myself and about shapeshifting.

  I climb out and follow Tami and Leonard and the twins to the entrance of what used to be a department store. The windows are painted over in black, and above, on the building’s face, ghostly white letters and bolt holes are all that remain of the store’s sign. Mounted next to the glass doors is a sleek, black security system thing. Tami presses some numbers on a keypad, covering her hand with the other one so I can’t see her code. She removes her sunglasses, opens her right eye wide, and leans into a little camera lens. There’s a buzz and some clicks, and she pushes the door open.

  The security stuff is a bit unsettling, but it’s also kind of cool.

  Inside, it’s less cool, just a big space with some torn-up carpet, crowded with bare clothes racks and mirrors and glass cases with nothing in them.

  And, yep, there are mannequins. A lot of them:
plastic, naked, most missing heads and limbs, and a few of them wearing wigs that look like bad taxidermy.

  “Do the fake plastic people please you?” asks Gravy. “There are many more in the dark basement where they exist by themselves amidst the skittering of small rodents.”

  “There are also ghostly moans,” says Dairy. “They are caused by old air-conditioning equipment. Probably. We can take you down there if you wish.”

  “Thanks, but I’m kind of on a tight schedule.” I tap my wrist as if I’m wearing a watch.

  “The good stuff’s upstairs,” says Leonard. He and Tami lead us up a squeaking escalator.

  At the top, I step onto a gleaming white floor and find myself in a completely different world. A vast space bustles with people, some in business suits, some in lab coats, a few in hazmat suits. Rows of work desks and computers stretch into the distance. Big screens mounted on the walls display graphs and numbers and stuff that maybe even Agnes wouldn’t understand.

  This is more like the high-tech science-y stuff I was expecting.

  A woman with neat hair and neat clothes and a neat face approaches. I recognize her. “I’m Dr. Woll,” she says, offering a handshake.

  Dr. Woll. The person who came by our house on the first day of school asking questions about sinkholes.

  This means she’s connected to the twins.

  And to the hazmat creeps.

  And to the imblobsters who replaced the Fosters.

  None of which she mentioned to my parents at the door.

  I don’t return her handshake, even though that’s impolite. I can’t trust her.

  “I’ve told people where I’m going and if you try to dissect me or something, they will know about it. So don’t do anything bad or weird.”

  I haven’t told anyone where I’m going, and Woll could totally dissect me and no one would ever know.

  Woll smiles and raises a hand. “I solemnly promise that I will not dissect you, nor do anything bad or weird. Now, I know we’re short on time today, and I want you to get as much from this visit as possible, so shall we get started? Davy, Mary, why don’t you go eat some candy?”