Power to the Purple!

by Sophie Bell

  “Ruh-roh,” she muttered.

  While BellaBritney idiotically kicked up one leg beside her, Opal strained to channel her own electricity. With one pinkie rubber-topped by the purple polymer, her powers were hampered. But she still had her other hand.

  Opal focused just as hard as Iris, white fog cloaking her eyes. As she did, a coal-black rain cloud curled beneath the ceiling. It roiled and boomed over Iris’s blinding sunbeams, their heat burning off the condensation before it could rain.

  Rolling together electric currents like cookie dough, Opal formed a ball of lightning in the palm of her hand.

  “Iris, watch out!” Scarlet cried.

  But Iris couldn’t move. If I lose power now, she realized, I’ll never be able to build it up again. Not high enough. Not in time.

  Opal hauled back and threw the first pitch. The awk-wardness of the pinkie cap made the toss clumsy. It grazed Iris across the back of her thighs, the razor edges of the spinning lightning bolts slicing straight lines in her beige trackpants before exploding into the wall.

  “Owie,” Iris gasped, hoping she was not now flashing her purple panties at Sebastian and his friends. Then I would be a sun AND a moon, it occurred to her. And she wondered how she could possibly be thinking up jokes in the middle of a superhero showdown.

  Cheri stood by helplessly as Opal began to shape her next lightning-bolt ball. Darth, what can we do? she thought, chewing her thumbnail in spite of herself. If Opal keeps chucking lightning balls at Iris, sooner or later she’s going to make contact!

  From his hiding spot inside the tote bag, Darth answered, We needz bazeball bat.

  “But there are no baseball bats in diners!” Cheri cried aloud.

  Watching the “performance art” from the back of the room, Malik applauded her dramatic outburst—which must have meant something very profound. Even Goth Bella paused to give her props, because it sounded like her kind of poem. Cheri ignored them both. Instead, her glowing infra-green eyes scanned the party room, registering the spatial dimensions of every item in sight. The place was a total disaster zone. Off in one corner she could see the blackened spot where the BeauTek gift bags had been obliterated. Tables were upside down, chairs flipped on their sides, the floor covered with shattered plates and shards of glass, forks and knives and spoons, all of it stuck in dried-up brussels sprout sauce. The whole scene offended Cheri’s delicate sensibilities! And just as she feared, there was not a baseball bat to be found.

  But then her eyes fell upon something else . . .

  “Shine on, RiRi!” she called, skating off. “I’ll be right back!”

  Be right back?! Iris thought. But where is Cher going?!

  Another of Opal’s lightning balls crackled past, this one lobbed too high. It rocketed above Iris’s head, over the slowly recharging zombos, and crashed into the top row of scary smileys. Five balloons burst at once, the toxic perfume inside them sizzling into the ether. Their pops! couldn’t even be heard over the rumble of thunder.

  Scarlet’s arms were not getting tired holding up the solar tablet. No! They’re! Not! she commanded herself. Sweat dripped down her face, plastering her long bangs against her forehead. Since Opal’s psycho party had begun, Scarlet must have tackled and tied up twenty zombos. Then there was the squeeze-off with a mutant. But I! Am not! Tired! she shouted inside.

  And all of a sudden she realized why Agent Jack always talked like that. It was very motivating. In a boot camp kind of way.

  The sight of one of Opal’s lightning balls zooming toward her sharpened her focus. Instinctively Scarlet hopped to the side in petit allegro—she had to! To keep from being knocked over like a bowling pin! In that split second, Iris’s solar beams shot straight ahead, smoking a big hole right in the middle of poster-girl Opal and burning away another batch of the poisonous balloons.

  “Sorry, RiRi!” Scarlet called, hopping back into position. She couldn’t look behind her to see what was up with the zombos. But she thought she heard groaning . . .

  They’re starting to loosen the cord, Iris panicked, staring right at them. They’re going to break free before we can reboot them! She was blazing as hard as she could, but she knew she couldn’t keep it up forever. Soon she would be drained of energy. Empty. She felt like she might faint. If she did, would a mob of her own classmates stampede right over her?

  Opaline sensed Iris weakening. She snickered, whipping up her biggest lightning ball yet. “Gimme a one! Gimme a two! Gimme a strike three!” BellaBritney cheered her on with her shorn pompom, both of her personalities excited by the chaos. Opal wound up for the death pitch, spitting, “O na na! What’s my name?” Then she leaned back. And released a split-finger fastball. Headed straight for Iris’s heart.

  Iris couldn’t see the pitch—she couldn’t turn away. But she could feel it coming. She could hear the fizz of the balled-up, barbed-wired lightning bolts as they cut through the air. She could imagine the shock, like a hundred electric knife blades stabbing her at once. It would blast her right off her feet. It would finish her on the spot.

  SHAZAM IT! she screamed inside, reaching deep, detonating more energy than she even knew she had. She felt her hair stand on end. She rocked back as the awesome solar surge burst out of her. And she’d done it! She knew she’d done it! She thought she’d done it? She hoped she had, desperately. It was better than the best she could give. It was the ultimate. It was the ultra. She’d done it, and she was done. It didn’t matter now whether Opal’s jagged lightning ball hit her. Whether it completely blew her away . . .

  And here it comes, Iris thought, starting to faint, starting to fall. The snakelike hiss of the approaching electricity was so close, itching at her ear. And then . . .

  BLAMMO!

  Cheri stepped right into the line of fire. Stepped in swinging. Swinging at that lightning death pitch, swinging for the ceiling. But no, not with a baseball bat. There are no baseball bats in diners.

  With a saxophone.

  Cheri caught the lightning ball in the gaping bell of the horn. Then she spun around on her platform skates and whipped it right out again. Scarlet’s mouth dropped open as she saw it barreling toward her, a high-voltage bomb. Suddenly she realized what Cheri had done. And she turned to face it head on.

  KA-POW! Opal’s lightning ball, hooked by a saxophone and then hurled out again, exploded into the computer panels right after Iris’s awesome burst. The combination of the solar power and the electrical energy surged through the holiday lights, shocking all the kids off the ground—and back to their senses. It was a magnificent explosion. Sunbeams burst out of ears and mouths. Rainbow-colored lights rained down like fireworks. All the scary smiley balloons combusted. And all the recharged kids jumped to their feet, tearing off the blown-out lightbulbs they found clamped to their faces. They began talking excitedly, wondering what had just happened. And why three hoverboys were giving them a standing ovation.

  Scarlet dropped the fried tablet and rushed over to Iris, who had collapsed onto the floor.

  “Iris!” Cheri whispered, already by her side. “We did it!”

  “We kick-started all our friends!” Scarlet said, giving her a shake.

  Iris didn’t reply. She just lay there, motionless, while Darth tickled her nose with his tail, which he’d scented lightly of smelling salts.

  “Water, now!” Scarlet cried out, alarmed. She looked up into the gathering crowd, only to see a full glass right beside her, as if it had been there before she’d even asked. Thanks again, Jack, she thought. She was too worried to smile.

  Sebastian had zoomed up and hopped off his hoverboard. He knelt down next to Iris and gently put an arm beneath her shoulders. “She’s got a super-high temperature!” he announced, feeling her forehead. Cheri and Scarlet exchanged knowing glances. Then Scarlet held the glass of water up to her mouth, trying to get her to drink.

  Iris moaned lightly.
Her eyelids fluttered, tiny flickers of pale violet light flashing between her lashes. When she blinked them open, the first thing she saw was Sebastian’s face, his lips pursed with worry, gazing down at her. She smiled feebly as he said, “Iris, that was AWESOME! How did you do it? You are so committed to your art!”

  Iris was too wiped out to come up with another lie. But she didn’t have to. Before she could even take a breath to speak, she was interrupted by one seriously unhappy birthday girl.

  “Ugh, spare me!”

  Opaline stood on the edge of the circle, shooting daggers at the three girls. (Not literally, at least not this time. That’s just another way of saying she was giving them the major stink eye. Also not literally, since all her poisonous perfume had been evaporated. The point is, she was irked to the max.) “I hope you’re all happy now,” she began.

  “We are!” the rebooted guests shouted with glee.

  Opal stamped her foot in fury. Then she bowed down over the Ultras, her eyes still streaming with clouds, her hair frazzled and frizzy, the ends of her patent yellow Peter Pan collar curled up from all the crazy weather. “You three may have ruined my birthday party,” she sneered. “But you haven’t smelled the last of me yet!”

  And with quick, hard yanks, Opaline pulled their hair. One, two, three: Iris, Scarlet, Cheri.

  “Owie!” Cher yelped, covering her head as Opaline ran out the swinging doors.

  The beehived waitress strutted in right after her. She took one look at the destruction and her eyebrows shot up into her bouffant. She marched right over to the kids. Then marched right past them.

  Without uttering a single word, the waitress gave the jukebox a hefty hip bump. As she sashayed out of the party room again, the music began to play.

  “Ooh, I love this song!” Cheri clapped, forgetting about her hair.

  “Me too!” Scarlet shouted, leaping to her feet. “Let’s dance!”

  And there among the ruins, with Iris still lying on the floor, her head in Sebastian’s lap, that’s exactly what everybody did.

  Return of the

  Mall of No Returns

  LATER THAT EVENING . . .

  . . . across the Joan River . . .

  . . . inside an acid-yellow abandoned shopping mall . . .

  . . . up two flights of escalators on lonely level C . . .

  . . . locked behind the two glossy pink doors of the top-secret Vi-Shush lab . . .

  . . . a twelve-year-old girl and her mother were performing a postmortem. An autopsy, as it were. Dissecting the details of a spectacularly disastrous birthday party.

  “Oh honey,” Dr. Trudeau said, dipping Opaline’s pinkie finger in a special solvent that would dissolve the purple polymer cap—in another eight hours or so. “I know you’re disappointed.”

  “Shut up, Mom,” Opal groused. The words came out in a mush, her cheek squishing her mouth sideways as she propped up her chin in her other hand.

  “Don’t say ‘shut up,’ Opaline,” Dr. Trudeau scolded. “It’s not polite. The important thing is that you tried.”

  “No it’s not!” Opal snapped. “And whoever says that is a liar! The important thing is that we failed!”

  “Failure is a vital part of the scientific process, sweetie,” Dr. Trudeau said, using her soothingest voice. “Everyone here at BeauTek knows that. It’s the sixth point in the company’s mission statement. That I drafted.”

  Opal rolled her eyes. Her mother was forever drafting contracts and clauses and press releases as part of her job at BeauTek. As far as Opal was concerned, it was all just a bunch of mumbo jumbo that adults came up with to cover their butts.

  “We’ll find another test group to roll out our trial run of L’eau d’Opes,” her mother continued. “Don’t you worry your electric little head about it. In fact, Sir Develon is spearheading a plan to broaden the base. Why just enslave your classmates when we’ve got an entire city of oblivious citizens at our disposal? Right across the river.”

  A surly Opal swirled her purple pinkie in the liquid solvent. She’d only encountered Develon Louder, the president of BeauTek, on a couple of occasions. But they’d been enough to convince Opal that the woman was bat-poop bonkers. She talked at you from behind a giant black pocketbook. No, actually, she shouted at you from behind a giant black pocketbook. Every other word was a curse. And she made all her employees call her “sir.” What was that about? Then again, the woman had built BeauTek from the ground up. Bat-poop bonkers or not, she had a way of getting what she wanted. And if what she wanted was complete control of Sync City, well, Opal wanted that, too.

  “What about those boys you mentioned?” she said, changing the subject. “The spies. What happened to them?”

  “Hmm, that’s another story,” Dr. Trudeau replied, rolling her eyes. “One of them is on board, but he reminds me of a chlorofluorocarbon. Or the acetone in this solvent.”

  She paused, waiting for Opaline to get the joke. Her daughter just stared at her blankly.

  “That means he’s a volatile organic compound,” her mother explained. “Get it? His temper could land him in trouble.” She tittered at her own wit.

  Opaline just shook her head. She was in no mood for nerdy scientist humor. “And the other one?” she asked.

  “The other one,” Dr. Trudeau answered, turning serious again, “I suspect might be a double agent.”

  “A double agent!” Opal whined, pulling her hand out of the solvent and pounding the stainless steel tabletop. “You mean he’s secretly working for the Ultra Violets?! Great!” Opal stuck her pinkie finger back into the solvent so forcefully that it splashed up the sides of the bowl. “Could this birthday be any worse?”

  “Now now, I don’t know for sure,” Dr. Trudeau said, flinching as drops of watery purple solvent splashed onto her clean white lab coat. “But I’ve got that boy signed to a very strict contract—”

  “I bet you do,” Opal grumbled, and the two fell silent. For a few minutes the only sounds to be heard were the percolating of beakers and the pitter-patter of squeakers as lab mice ran on the wheels in their cages.

  “That stupid FLab is so stupid,” Opal said at last, repeatedly.

  “I know, sweetie. I used to work there, remember?” Dr. Trudeau reached out and tentatively began to comb the knots from her daughter’s tangled bob.

  “How can anyone take them seriously with a name like ‘FLab’?” Opal complained, wincing each time the comb snagged. “It’s ludicrous!”

  “It certainly is,” Dr. Trudeau agreed, trying to calm her down.

  “Mommy?” Opal asked, suddenly feeling very tired.

  “Yes, sweetie?” Dr. Trudeau answered, brushing the back of Opal’s head smooth and straight again.

  “Promise me that BeauTek will keep breaking into the FLab? Please? Pinkie-swear that we’ll find a way to stop the Ultra Violets. Stop them from being so . . . so . . .” Opal flipped through her mental dictionary, searching for any other word. But only one would do. “So ultra,” she said at last, with a defeated sigh.

  “I don’t even have to promise, honey,” Dr. Trudeau responded with confidence. “And I don’t think pinkie swears are legally binding. But I already have it in writing. Option seventeen of the corporate espionage clause.”

  Opaline laid her head down. With her free pinkie, she toyed with three colorful strands on the stainless steel tabletop.

  “There’s my supertrouper,” Dr. Trudeau said, patting Opal on her back. “Though we’d better put those away now.”

  “But they’re so pretty,” Opaline puled. “They’re the best thing I got for my birthday.”

  “You can play with them later,” her mother said, plucking them up between the fingers of her latex-gloved hands and plopping each one into its own plastic evidence pouch. “These belong in the files, along with all the other evidence we collect.”

 
“I know,” Opal agreed reluctantly.

  “Now, tell me again,” Dr. Trudeau said, taking out a marker and labeling each bag.

  “The berry-red one is Cheri Henderson,” Opal recited.

  “Indeed,” said Dr. Trudeau, writing it down. “Gilder of the lily . . .” she added under her breath. “And the licorice-black belongs to that rambunctious Scarlet Jones. And—”

  “And the prettiest pretty purple one is Iris Tyler,” Opal murmured, as if in a dream.

  “Excellent!” her mother exclaimed, snapping the cap back on the marker. “Why don’t you get some rest, Opaline?” she suggested, standing up from the lab table. “I’ll just nip over to the food court and nab you a peach soda.”

  “And maybe a piece of chocolate cake, too?” Opal asked. “From the automat?”

  “We’ll have our own special birthday celebration,” Dr. Trudeau said, giving Opal’s shoulders a squeeze. “Just you and me, right here in the Vi-Shush.”

  “And then tomorrow we’ll look at those blueprints?” Opal asked, beginning to feel a bit better. “And the plans for the river?”

  Right as she said it, the entire mall shook with a sonic BOOM! that gurgled up from far below them. Six levels under, to be exact, in the sub-sub-parking lot.

  “Hear that, honey?” Dr. Trudeau beamed. “It’s the sound of your future, Opaline. Of our future. Of BeauTek’s future! Booming!”

  Opal’s eyes were closed, her cheek pressed against the cool lab table. The stainless steel reflected a small smile.

  “It’s a brand-new year for you, sweetie!” her mother chimed. “The big 1-2!” Before she dashed out the double pink doors, she called back, “Keep feeling fascination!”—forgetting that Fascination was precisely what the F in FLab stood for.

  “Mwah-kay, Mommy,” Opal mumbled drowsily. “Mwah-ha-kay. Mwah-ha-mwah-ha-ha . . .”