by Sarah Cannon
“What were you thinking?” I hiss.
“Mr. Bishop told me to bring you the puppet masks to repaint. He said you should finish them at home and I should help”—he grins—“because you’re finding it challenging.”
He shoves the Whanslaw mask into a plastic shopping bag, out of which peeps Kiyo’s scowling visage.
“Shut UP,” I hiss, and Mr. Bishop rattles his chair and clears his throat in warning. “Just because I’m not a glitter fiend like Pearl…”
I trail off, because over Cayden’s shoulder I can see Raymond, who has a look on his face like he swallowed a parasitic worm. Because I said MY sister’s name.
Cayden looks back and forth between the two of us, his smile disappearing. For a minute, I think he’s going to actually try to talk to us about our feelings or something, and I’ll have to glitter him to death. Instead, he reaches into the pocket of his hoodie and pulls out a travel can of BASH!, of all things.
“Lean forward,” he says.
I do, but only to argue. “Cayden, do NOT get that stuff on me,” I say, but instead, he uses the cover my body provides to begin spraying the cinder-block wall I was leaning against.
“What are you doing?” asks Raymond.
“You,” says Cayden, very softly, “are not the only people around here who know how to pull a stunt. I am going to get us out of play practice.”
“And BASH! is helpful how?” asks Raymond.
“Stench is his superpower,” I say. Cayden elbows me in the back.
“You know what’s really great about all these art supplies you like so much?” he asks.
“Um … no?” I say.
“They’re incredibly flammable,” he says. “Mr. Bishop will never know this was BASH! and not paint thinner.”
He pulls a lighter from his pocket and flips it on, leaning the gleaming flame toward the shiny BASH! slick he’s made.
“Simple,” he says. “It’ll burn just long enough to set off the fire alarms, we’ll have a fire drill instead of play practice, and—”
Raymond lunges to stop him just as I hiss “NO!” but it’s too late. The flame is already greedily licking the BASH! and racing up the cinder blocks. Raymond and Cayden overbalance, and Raymond falls against the wall. I hear the hissing of the BASH! can. Cayden must have landed on the button. The flames climb the spray emitting from the can and light the heavy velvet stage curtain on fire. Cayden’s mouth drops open.
Right about then, Raymond untangles himself from Cayden and sits up, which is when I realize the sleeve of his olive T-shirt is on fire. We all start beating at the flames, hissing commands at one another like a bunch of serpents.
Out on stage, Ralph, who’s playing the town’s original mayor (it literally says ORIGINAL MAYOR in the script) declaims, “I have never been so amazed in MY. ENTIRE. LIFE. These here puppets have saved our town from sure destruction, whereas I have engaged in arson and collusion. I will now upset myself—”
“ABSENT,” yells Mr. Bishop, losing patience. I look up and see that the curtain valance that frames the stage is now also on fire, and the rafters are full of black smoke.
“Aw, come on, Mr. Bishop,” says Ralph. “Teachers mark you absent; you don’t do it yourself.”
“When he says he’s going to absent himself,” says Mr. Bishop, twitching more than ever, “he only means he’s going to leave.”
Ralph makes a gusty, frustrated sound, throwing his arms up. “Well, obviously! If he’s absent, he shouldn’t be there in the first place!” He rolls his eyes, and catches sight of the BASH!ferno blazing overhead.
“Whoa!” he yells. Caps popping under his sneakers, he flees the stage, along with several spiders disturbed by the ruckus.
Mr. Bishop stands so fast he tips his folding chair, which hits the floor with a clank. He storms up the stairs onto the stage.
“Ralph!” he shouts toward the wings. “Get back here!”
At that exact moment, the flaming curtain collapses, right on top of him.
The fire alarms finally go off.
So does the suppression system, which dumps an inch of chemical powder on everything. It’s in my hair. It’s in my mouth. It’s all over the props. And the one thing it resembles more than anything else is … glitter.
There are screams, laughs, and roars of consternation from the stage. Mr. Bishop is gibbering under the flaming curtain, not about fire, but about angry spiders attacking him.
“Hey, Cayden,” says Raymond. “You know who’s going to have to clean this up?”
From the way his head is hanging, yeah. He knows.
Chapter 13
Butterfly Wings
When we get to my place after school the next day, Aunt Bets is already there, and she’s got company. I thought pirates were supposed to loot things, and pillage. Or something. But Badri Hassan Khalid is at our house again, and I’m starting to get suspicious about what kind of booty he’s interested in. Namely, my aunt’s.
“You want to tell me how she got up on the counter?” I mutter to Mason as I come in.
“He put her up there!” says Mason admiringly. I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He saw Daddy lift her when she first got hurt. I guess those pirate muscles of Badri’s make it impressive. He’s a lot scrappier than Daddy, though. Daddy’s built like a tank. Makes me a little bit proud.
Speaking of Daddy, either he’s taking a well-deserved day off or he’s home early. He’s definitely here to stay, because his feet are bare, and he’s discarded his tan work shirt. His white tee glows against his brown skin. I rush over to him. On top of whatever sneaky thing he’s up to, he’s been working a lot of extra hours because of all the work Mama missed right after Pearl left. I miss him! He lifts me up in a big smiling hug, then goes back to peeling sweet potatoes into the sink. He could pulp one with his bare hand if he wanted to, but hopefully he’ll make sweet potato fries instead. I kiss his cheek.
Aunt Bets is leaning back on her hands and smiling at Badri, who’s busy talking. Like, really talking, and sketching things out in the air with his hands for her. Something he wants to build, probably with the stolen scrap from Sunset Ridge.
Then I remember how he bailed us out that night, and feel sort of guilty for being all suspicious.
“Hi, Badri,” I say.
He actually smiles. Who knew he could do that?
“Hey, Ada,” he says, and his accent sounds even better coming out of a smiling mouth.
I want to be a smart aleck and ask if he’s volunteering with the fire department because Aunt Bets got stuck up a counter or something, but I can’t really be my usual charming self because while Badri might be distracting Aunt Bets with his air drawings, if I say too much she’ll remember how she met him in the first place, and she and I have had a sort of truce since bald morning.
I get out the fixings and start making sandwiches, putting them on napkins since the plate cupboard is behind Aunt Bets.
“All those sandwiches, Ada?” says my aunt, proving that no matter how cute the pirate in her kitchen is, she’s still paying attention.
“Two are for Cayden. Trust me, he needs them both.”
This meets with no comment from either of our responsible adults, so I’m in the clear. One thing I appreciate about Daddy and Aunt Bets: they do not gush like Cayden’s mom. I guess Mama used to do that, a little, back when both her daughters were around. But Aunt Bets’s way suits me down to the ground.
I take the sandwiches downstairs and Cayden about yanks his out of my hands, like some kind of magician’s trick where he can take the top one and the bottom one and I will miraculously not drop the ones in the middle. I may possibly kick one of his shins in retaliation the process of maintaining my grip.
“Whoa,” says Cayden as we hunch over the laptop.
I scroll through a sea of new comments on our video. Some Nopesers think our footage is a hoax, of course. But others think the Blurmonster is an insurance scam Greeley created to make money on abandoned real
estate.
“Ada, stop scrolling so fast,” says Cayden, mouth full of sandwich.
“Keep up, neighbor boy.”
Raymond is shaking his head at the ghost preservationist who claims Greeley is destroying crucial spook habitat. Right under that, a chia farmer demands that more empty houses be knocked down to make way for his xerifarming.
The comments that get to me, though, are the ones explaining that it’s all a big misunderstanding, and Greeley is definitely probably doing this for totally aboveboard reasons—like maybe he’s trying to knock down things the Blurmonster could hide behind.
For some reason, those hurt.
“So we go back out,” says Raymond. “Get real Blurmonster footage this time, and show these fools.”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “I’ve got a better idea.”
“I didn’t want to say anything,” says Cayden, “but I don’t actually like a lot of your ideas.”
Aw, he made a joke.
“I don’t like it when the Protection Committee sends Greeley to invent disasters. All this time, we were so sure the puppets were protecting us from things like the big, bad Blurmonster. Well, they fooled us, didn’t they? You know what my daddy likes to say? Trust, but verify.”
Raymond laughs. “He says that when he’s checking up on you!”
“The POINT is, no matter how much you admire a person, what they say isn’t a fact until you’ve checked it out yourself. That’s what we’re going to do from now on.”
“I’m not sure the Blurmonster takes interviews,” says Cayden.
“I’m not talking about the Blurmonster anymore. I’m talking about Greeley.”
I watch their eyes get wide. I’ve got my work cut out for me if I’m going to get them to agree to this.
Fortunately, I’m very convincing.
* * *
A tiny, masa-smeared hand smacks against my cheek.
“Let me get that, sweetie.” Raymond’s round, brown mom comes at me with a spoon, skimming the cornmeal mush from my skin and popping it into the mouth of the neighbor baby on my lap.
Weekends are always like this at Raymond’s. Home-cooked chaos with a side of rice. Raymond’s family works just as hard as mine, but since his mom has a little sculpting studio out back, and his jefa runs a hair salon out of their converted garage, they’re around all the time—which is pretty funny, because they spend a lot less time managing Raymond than Bets spends managing me.
“What have you three been up to, wandering around by yourselves?” asks Jefa as we eat our empanadas. A lifetime as the most sought-after stylist in town has honed her approach and her short black rock-star hair to razor sharpness.
The good news is that the best approach with Jefa is the same as with Aunt Bets. Lie with confidence and loads of eye contact. The bad news is that Raymond rarely bothers, which means that word of my more dangerous exploits often makes its way home from Raymond’s house. Drives me up the wall.
Cayden’s no help. He can’t focus on anything but food. He stuffs his mouth with empanadas and washes them down with a swig of kombucha. Raymond’s mom is big into the health benefits of kombucha, almost like she’s been brainwashed by Scoby. Personally, I’ll drink soda made by a weird little spongy alien when they pry my rigor-mortis-locked jaw open and pour it down my throat. If it revives me, then we can talk about making it a regular thing.
Baby neighbor shoves more masa in my face, which makes it hard to answer Jefa but easy to mask tells.
“Just treasure hunting,” I say. “Song’s looking for some new stock for the store.”
“That’s funny,” says Raymond’s mom, spooning more masa off my face to feed to the baby. They don’t worry much about germs around here. “I was in there looking for something, and she said she hadn’t seen you.”
“Yeah, she’s gonna come drag me from my house if I don’t find something good soon. I’ve been doing it for a while now. My usual spots are getting pretty picked over.”
It’s a point in the Mendezes’ favor that they know I sneak into abandoned houses, and never make a big deal about it. They see knowing all the abandoned houses in town as good disaster preparedness.
“Treasure hunting, huh? That what you were doing out at Sunset Ridge?” asks Jefa, her eyes glinting dangerously.
“Yeah, that was a bust. I guess the houses are too new. I’ve been looking around on the other end of town. There might be some places tucked away that no one has gotten to yet.”
“Watch yourself,” says Raymond’s mom. “Dangerous creatures can seek shelter in abandoned houses.”
What does she think I am, a rookie?
“She’s a smart kid, Dee,” says Jefa, giving me a wink.
“I know, but it’s got to be said.” Neighbor baby is getting fractious, and Raymond’s mom is trying desperately to wipe her down before she gets free, but mostly, everything’s getting on my clothes. I’m not wearing any good finds today, at least.
“Forget it,” says Raymond’s mom, surrendering. “I’m gonna strip her down and give her a frozen juice bar. Go grab them out of the garage freezer, would you, Ada?”
* * *
I close the door behind me, looking around in the dim light that comes in through the windows. Across the room, there’s a clank as Raymond sets a wrench on the floor. He’s on his back under one of the rinse sinks, fiddling with something. For the moment, I ignore him. I haven’t been out here in a long time. I’ve been avoiding it. I’m old enough to do my own hair now, I guess. But it’s not the same.
We used to make such a party out of it. Sunday afternoons, the only time Bets could get free. I run my hand along the back of one of the shiny red salon chairs and give it a spin, closing my eyes. For one minute, we’re all back in our right places. Pearl and me in the chairs, Bets behind Pearl on her own two legs, Mama behind me. Jefa sitting backward on a regular, non-spinny chair, with no one’s hair to cut, for once. Everyone gossiping, everyone laughing.
“You must be growing,” Bets says, like she always does, “because I do not have to pump this chair up as high as I used to!”
Pearl and I sit side by side, our freshly washed and conditioned hair curling up tight, as the grown-up sisters we want to be like someday start making parts along our scalps.
“Work toward the left ear, Bets,” Mama says. “I’ll work toward the right, and these girls will match like a pair of butterfly wings.”
I remember Mama braiding my hair, left under, right under, picking up new strands as she works her way down, until my whole head is tingling from her undivided attention.
I can’t remember the last time she looked me in the eye.
When I open my eyes, I’m staring at myself in the mirror that faces the chair. I’m annoyed for a second because what do I think I’m doing, daydreaming out here? Then I close my eyes again quick, as details of grown-up gossip emerge from the haze of my memory. I feel my way around the chair and sit in it, listening to my memory of a conversation I only half heard at the time.
“… but anything she does has to be a good thing,” Mama says. “Last time I was there, it sounded like there were things alive in the back.”
Jefa speaks up from where she’s leaning on her chair back. “He used to say it was the mannequins in the basement. I guess it could be.”
“I was more worried about bugs.” Mama uses her comb to separate out the next section of my hair.
“Well, she’s cleaning so hard I can see the dust flying all the way from the bakery door. She had soft hands the first time she came in for a snack, but she’s all-over blisters now.”
“She’s got a story,” says Mama with a sigh. “They always do, when they wander into town like that. What’s her name again?”
“Song, I think,” says Bets.
Jefa shakes her head, though her sharp black haircut doesn’t move. “That’s what I thought she said, too, but I think Song’s a last name in Korea, not a first name.”
“It’s the only name
she’s answering to.” Bets shrugs. “Better not to ask too many questions. Whatever she was running from, she’s here now.”
Raymond thumps a piece of sink pipe down on the checkered linoleum, interrupting my memory. He mutters something under his breath.
“It’s broken?” I ask.
“Yup.” He winces, rolling to the side as guck drips out of the pipe end hanging down from the drain. “And clogged.”
He heads for the kitchen with the busted part in his hand, and I go to get the frozen fruit bars. I open one for myself right away, because I can trust them to be made of real fruit juice at Raymond’s house, as opposed to the straight-up beet juice I got the last time I asked Bets to buy a box from Scoby. I bathe my face in the cold air from the freezer to help me calm down and think.
Between Cayden’s complaints and the PC’s fishy behavior, I’ve been feeling all off center. I’m an Oddity girl, born and bred. I don’t owe anybody an apology if my town’s not their cup of kombucha. Still, might be nice to talk to someone who came here on purpose.
I’ll drop in on Song soon. I’m overdue to take her the armload of swag I found, and the more I think about sneaking into Greeley’s, the more I know just what I’m planning to do with my pay.
Chapter 14
The Queen of Shenanigans
I don’t get to For a Song as soon as I’d hoped. Raymond, Cayden, and I spend the rest of the weekend canvassing. We’re hoping to kill three chupacabras with one stone, or something. But things are starting to get weird, and by weird, I mean weirder than usual.
I expected the people we canvassed to bail out of windows, hide in closets, take evasive maneuvers. That’s the fun of it.
But.
Mr. Shen ran face-first into a utility pole trying to get away from us.
We had to drag Mrs. McCutcheon out from under her front porch, feetfirst. She was wearing a skirt and some kind of bloomers. We may all be scarred for life.
Mr. Eflin tried to eat Raymond’s canvassing foldout.
“You guys realize how weird this is, right?” asks Cayden, venturing a cautious look at me from under his curtain of hair. “I mean, this goes way beyond making canvassing tough for us.”