Power to the Purple!

by Sophie Bell

  “Ruder than cutting in line?” some girl grumbled—clearly L’eau d’Opes was already poisoning her mood. A shot from Scarlet’s gunpowder eyes struck her silent. But Douglas, the boy with the wispy sideburns—and therefore the boy most interested in a fun-size sample of aftershave—stared at Cheri, bedazed. Possibly because of the perfume, too. But probably because her emerald green eyes were so fresh. And her lip gloss was so glittery. Wait, didn’t he know this girl from somewhere?

  Cheri spun around to face front, bowing her head, too, so that the hoverboys wouldn’t keep gaping at them.

  And then Iris stepped up to Opaline.

  Iris hardly dared look at her. As she focused her powers, her temperature started to skyrocket. She could feel her eyes beginning to blaze ultraviolet. “Happy birthday, Opaline,” she whispered, in a voice she hoped was as bland as her tracksuit.

  From her seat on the throne, sipping her brussels sprout sludge through her straw, Opal eyed the girl in the hood with suspicion. She couldn’t quite see her face, but something about her seemed familiar. Or maybe she went to the same school as those hoverboys behind her?

  Eh, Opal thought, happy to add another zombo to the crew. The more the scarier!

  “C’mere,” she whispered back, beckoning the girl closer. Her pinkie finger fizzed with electricity. “I’ve got a special birthday secret to share.”

  “Ooh, goody!” Iris cooed, trying to sound both stupid and excited as she adjusted her ultraviolet body temperature just so. And very, very, (very) carefully, keeping her hair hidden, she tucked the hood behind her ear and leaned in to “listen.”

  As she’d done with all the guests before, Opal gave her pinkie a lick. Then she stuck the sizzling digit into Iris’s ear. But this time was different. This time . . .

  “Yuck!” Opal yelped, yanking her finger out again. “What the—?”

  Opal’s pinkie was coated in a rubbery purple substance. A waxy polymer that just so happened to stop electric currents in their tracks (and certainly would have won first place in any science fair, thank you very much again, Iris’s smartypants mom!). After Iris had filled her ear with the gummy plummy cream that the girls had concocted from their FLab shoplifting trip, she powered up her temperature for the catalytic conversion. And within just a second or three, it had hardened. Right onto Opal’s lethal fingertip, wrapping around it like some sort of tiny chemical jellyfish!

  The Ultra Violets had put a cap on Opaline’s power pinkie. The electric wet willy portion of the party was so over.

  As Opal spluttered, hopelessly shaking her hand, unable to get the goop off it, the Ultra Violets stepped out of line. Next on their to-undo list: the baddy bags. But one person—or rather two persons—or rather two halves of one person?!—blocked their way.

  “Hey,” Cheer Brit drawled uncertainly, while Goth Bella simply sneered. “Are you guys on pep squad? I don’t recognize that school color . . .”

  Cheri was just about to bluff some beigey answer—she’d gotten supergood at bluffing since the start of this story—while Scarlet and Iris snuck past. But then this happened: A long ringlet, 100 percent purple from root to tip, sprung straight out from beneath Iris’s hood like a jack-in-the-box making a jailbreak. It was as if her hair had a mind of its own.

  “Iris?” Sebastian said from his spot in the line.

  “Iris!” Opal screamed, pointing an accusing electric finger. The purple rubber pinkie cap stopped the flow of the voltage, and all of Opal’s frustrated energy circulated back into her nervous system. Sparks as long as snakes shot from her shoulders, and her hair stood completely on end.

  Betrayed by her own tresses, Iris stood there, exposed. The Ultra Violets’ cover had been blown.

  Not Cute

  OPALINE SLID OFF HER THRONE. SWINGING BACK HER hand, she shoved her tankard at one of her glum followers. Her backlogged electricity had made the glass so scalding hot that the kid immediately dropped it, and it shattered to pieces. Boiling brussels sprout sauce splashed all over the place, chunky driblets sizzling onto the lower rows of the scary smiley balloons and even staining Sebastian’s best sneakers.

  “Dude,” he muttered, disgusted, and immediately hopped onto his hoverboard to keep off the sticky, stinky floor. His two buddies did the same.

  Opal didn’t care about the steaming brussels sprout puddle. She marched straight through it and up to Iris, her jaw clenched. Iris held her ground, hands on her hips, pale periwinkle eyes burning back at Opaline, who reached out with her rubbery pinkie and pushed off Iris’s hood.

  More ultraviolet than ever, Iris’s curls burst out north, south, east, west, in every possible direction. Obviously her hair was happy—if hair has feelings—to be free again.

  “Double-yoink,” Scarlet mumbled, slowly pulling down her own hood. Her aubergine pony swished to and fro as she stood beside Iris. Next to her, Cheri ran her fingers through her magenta waves, hoping the hood hadn’t flattened them.

  “The Ultra Violets,” Opal growled in a voice so low only the four girls could hear, “were NOT invited to this birthday party!”

  “Alas, Opes, that was très mean of you!” Cheri exclaimed. “I know I turned down the role of evil brain in your, um, cute little O+2 thing, but still . . .”

  “We are not ‘cute’!” Opal barked—much to Cheer Brit’s disappointment and Goth Bella’s glee.

  “I completely agree!” Cheri cried. Finally Opal was making some sense! Progress?

  “You know, Opal”—Scarlet blew her black-purple bangs out of her eyes—“we actually had a whole ice-cream sandwich birthday party planned for you. That we had to cancel when you blew us off for this freak show!” (Wisely, Scarlet decided to leave out the part about their party doubling as an intervention.)

  Opal quaked with fury. Electric yellow currents orbited around her, and tiny lightning bolts whizzed all over the place. The hum of her pent-up electricity enthralled her shocked followers, and they all shuffled closer, lowing like cattle at a fence. Opal swung back her good hand again, keeping the zombos at a distance. They huddled in the brussels sprout puddle beneath the pulsating L’eau d’Opes poster and the bobbing cult of balloons.

  “Let me guess, the skunk sniffed me out,” Opal said bitterly, her brown eyes overcast with storm clouds.

  “That’s why you wanted Darth? Because you knew he’d smell the truth about your vile perfume?” Scarlet challenged.

  “Because the Vi-Shush turned him into a bioweapon, too!” Cheri tightened her grasp on Darth’s bag. “He did try to tell us,” she admitted. “But we had to see it for ourselves!”

  Opaline tossed her head, sending a fresh round of electrical charges into the balloons behind her. A few popped like bubble wrap, spitting their toxic fumes into the air. “Why can’t you three, and your stanky little mascot, just leave me alone?” she snapped.

  Iris shook her head like this was the saddest thing she’d ever heard. Even her curls drooped a smidge, like they were sad, too—if hair has feelings. “Opaline,” she said, “you may not want to make up and be friends again—”

  “Dur!” Opal interjected churlishly. She hated it when Iris called her by her full name. The way she said it made it sound so darn sparkly!

  Iris ignored this. “But no way are we going to just stand by and watch while you fry the brains of our entire class!” Or my sorta boyfriend, she thought, also trying to ignore the fact that Sebastian was probably staring at her right now, glowing ultraviolet.

  Opaline scoffed, leaning back a bit as K-Liz and BellaBritney flanked her sides. “Too little, too late, losers!” she smirked. As if to prove her point, all her electrocuted minions repeated, “Toohlilootlayloozrz.”

  “We thought you might say that,” Iris answered, with a cross between a shudder and a shrug. “Cher?”

  Cheri had just been lifting Darth out of her tote bag. In stressful situations such as the
se, she found it helped to snuggle the soft little skunk. And stroking his fur protected her manicure, since it kept her from biting her nails. “Yes,” she said, turning her attention back to the face-off. Her green eyes streamed with data as she stated, “We—well, I—calculated that if we channeled a mass transient variation of current, we could reverse the effects of your individuated electroshocking with a, um, single awesome solar event.”

  Opal scrunched her eyebrows together, struggling to process this information. With a crisp snap of her fingers, she ordered Al-bot Feinstein, her backup brain, to step forward. He tottered out from the crowd and stared at Cheri with empty eyes. She didn’t think he even recognized her, not really. And *silent scream* he was wearing high-waisted, pleated-front khakis again, in total defiance of Cheri’s original stealth makeover. Cheri had to turn away for a moment, so disturbing was the sight. “The horror,” she whispered, holding Darth close to shield him from the hideous pants. He’d already faced way too many terrors in his young skunk life. Cheri adamantly refused to expose him to this one.

  “An impossible hypothesis,” Albert droned. “To execute a surge of such magnitude on so many subjects simultaneously would require a mammoth generator. Or a private sun—”

  “Check,” Scarlet muttered under her breath, casting a sidelong glance at Iris.

  “—and a multi-clamp jumper cable,” Al-bot finished. Normally his glasses would have fogged up with the excitement of delivering such an airtight defense. But now he just seemed to be prattling facts. Like a talking textbook in *second silent scream* pleated-front khakis.

  “Oh, we know!” Cheri nodded, attempting to defrost Albert with a warm smile. She searched deep in his eyes for some sort of reaction. For the boy who once kissed her underneath the schoolyard fluffula tree. But all she saw was the double reflection of her green data streams in his glasses. “We’ve got all that, Albert.”

  “Meaning what?” Opal said tersely. Something about Cheri’s scatterbrained brilliance bugged Opal almost as much as Iris’s purply perfectness.

  “Meaning we’re going to kick-start your zombos!” Scarlet had been struggling to stay still all this time and had only broken that one chair and maybe cracked a couple of cake platters all afternoon. But now she sprung up in a split scissor leap, bashing in a ceiling tile with her raised fist. When she dropped back down, she broke into a boom-boom-clap, boom-boom-clap, stomping her feet so hard she could have rocked an entire stadium. “We will, we will, re-shock you!” she sang—really projecting, too, like she’d learned in drama club rehearsals.

  The zombos picked up the stomp. But what they sang sounded slightly different . . .

  “We will, we will, stop you,” they mumbled, shuffling forward like they do in that famous music video, except at least not all rotting and undead. And the way they said it, it sounded more like, “Weevil, weevil, shamu.” Which made Darth chitter with skunk snickers—it must have been an animal inside joke.

  Still, the Ultra Violets knew what they meant.

  The stamping and chanting got louder and louder, chairs rattling on the floor, balloons bouncing so vigorously that a few flew off the wall and floated into the crowd like beach balls at a concert. Then, apropos of totally nothing, the double doors from the diner burst open and everyone fell silent as . . .

  . . . the saxophone-playing clown boogied in and started wailing out a super-cheesy jam.

  “Let’s go, girls!” Iris called just as Opal whipped both her arms around in wide circles, snapping her fingers at her minions. “Stop them!” she commanded.

  And that is officially when the party went out of bounds.

  Darth scampered up onto Cheri’s shoulder as she reached into her tote bag and pulled out one end of . . . the string of holiday lights?

  “Got it!” Scarlet called, grabbing the cord from Cheri’s hand and spinning off in one direction. Cheri clicked down the wheels on her platform roller skates and, careful not to gum them up in the brussels sauce spill, went the other. Between them, they unraveled the holiday lights like a long rope. It wasn’t easy to keep it from getting tangled. Every which way they turned, they stumbled into a stray chair or a table corner. Or a zombofied classmate.

  “Ack!” Cheri squawked as a lumbering Brad, his eyes clouded over, clawed toward her. “Mmnoh,” he moaned. “Dopes!”

  “Please, not the hair!” Cheri cried, slapping his hands back. On her shoulder, Darth turned around and, with a targeted squirt from his bling-ringed tail, shot out a stinky plume.

  Bullziye! Darth thought.

  “Burns!” Brad roared, stumbling backward.

  On the other side of the room, Scarlet was fighting off the Jensen twins. They bared their matching buckteeth at her, chirping through the gaps like a couple of angry birds.

  “You asked for it, sisters,” Scarlet growled. “This is my angry face!” She arced a leg in pointe tendu, hooked both girls at the ankles, and flipped them off their feet. Out of nowhere, like it had been choreographed, two chairs slid Scarlet’s way, and the twins each fell into a seat. Scarlet scanned the room but saw nothing but zombos. With two swift kicks to the chairbacks, she sent the twins skidding toward the center of the room. Then she piqué-turned and elbowed zombo Ian in the gut just before he grabbed her.

  “Oof!” he uttered, doubling over. She booted him toward the middle of the room, too.

  Cheri was at one end, unwinding holiday lights, while Darth sprayed the funk on any zombotic student who came too close. Scarlet was at the other, corralling them behind her end of the line with grands battements and karate chops. Iris, after checking to see that all was underway with the hastily named Plan K, dashed over to the baddy bag table.

  Her blazing ultraviolet eyes took in the vile baggies, all those nauseating yellow Mall of No Returns gift pouches packed with Opaline’s mind-numbing “perfume.” The idea of the kids in her class breathing it in just so that they could be colorless drones . . . Ugh, it disgusted her. Iris was an artist. She was all about color!

  Hasta la never! she thought, twirling one of her purple ringlets. Then she closed her eyes for just a second or—

  “Hey, Iris!”

  Her eyes popped open again.

  Balancing beside her on his hoverboard was Sebastian, hair falling into his eyes, baddy bag in his hand.

  Boys Come and Go: The Sequel

  IRIS POWERED DOWN LICKETY-SPLIT, EVEN THOUGH she needed her ultraviolet rays if she was to destroy the—

  “Aftershave, huh?” Sebastian said, digging into the despicable yellow bag and fishing the fun-size sample out of it. “That’s dope,” he joked. “And is this party messed up or what?” He lifted the vial of greenish-gray liquid to the light. “Those psycho balloons. The flash mob with the stomping. And then that clown with the saxophone shows up out of nowhere? Crazy! It’s like a performance art piece or something—a happening! You know?”

  Iris did know about happenings—when you act out your art, whatever you want it to be, and you get other people to join in, too. Iris had even thought that, with Scarlet’s awesome dance talents and Cheri’s naturally glam personality, the Ultra Violets could stage some viomazing performance art of their own. Involving lollipops and lots and lots of glitter dust . . .

  But Opal’s birthday party of gloom was no performance. It stunk for real.

  “Oh, it’s definitely ‘something,’” Iris said, forcing herself to smile. She grabbed Sebastian’s hand, the hand holding the mini-bottle of L’eau d’Opes, and pulled him closer. “You’re still wearing the friendship bracelet,” she pretended to notice, stalling for time. “That’s supersweet!”

  Sebastian’s face broke into a broad grin and he flipped his hair back. It immediately fell right into his eyes again. “Your hand is so warm,” he said.

  “Is it?” Iris stammered. Of course it was! Three seconds earlier and it would have been ultraviolet-hot! She wished she could
evaporate the perfume right out of Sebastian’s fingers, but she knew she couldn’t do that without burning him, too. “I’m so surprised to see you!” she said instead. “What are you guys doing here, anyway?”

  “Doug’s cousin Ian told us about it,” Sebastian explained. “And Malik remembered your friend mentioning a party that day behind the ice cream shop. I wanted to see you again . . .”

  Iris’s smile came easily this time. But she could hear the ruckus going on behind them. All she could think was that, at any second now, zombo Ian might break a plate over his unsuspecting cousin’s head.

  “Hey,” Sebastian said, dropping his voice, “can I ask you? Are you, like, in a fight now with the birthday girl? Things were getting pretty intense between the two of you before.”

  Iris tried to act abashed, faking a sheepish grin. “We did kind of have a teensy tiff,” she admitted. About mind-control of the entire student body! She hunched up her shoulders apologetically, as if the whole thing could just be shrugged off. “You know how it can get, school cliques . . .”

  “Yeah, I hate that stuff, too,” Sebastian agreed. “Live and let live, I say.” He switched the vial to his other hand and laced fingers with her. “No way this perfume does all the things she said”—he shook his head in disbelief—“but maybe it smells good enough to get everyone to chill already.” He jiggled the mini-bottle back and forth, and little brackish bits floated in the murk. “Plus, after that brussels sprout sauce,” he teased, “this whole party needs a breath-freshener.” Sebastian raised the moldy L’eau d’Opes sample spray, about to squirt some onto his tongue.