by Sarah Cannon
My usual urge to defend my hometown comes boiling up, but when I open my mouth, nothing comes out.
Ralph and Delmar go lumbering by, chortling as they chase a postal worker who’s shedding letters from her bag as she flees.
“It’s like we’re the only ones who notice,” I say.
Raymond rubs the back of his neck. “The Sweepstakes has been going on for years. We’re all used to it.”
“Yeah,” I say, “but the trolls are Nopesers. They know the PC has been lying to us about stuff.”
Cayden shrugs. “From what my folks say, lying is what most politicians do.”
He’s probably right, but I’m uneasy, as if something’s lurking nearby. I mean, something’s always lurking nearby, but this is different. It’s like I’m forgetting something, something big, and I’m going to remember one crucial second too late.
“Well,” I say, “maybe the Greeley’s sneak will help us make sense of things.”
The total silence that greets this statement makes me turn around to look at my friends. Raymond’s scowl is so big I bet it could be used as a power source, and Cayden’s hiding behind the sweep of his hair.
I squeeze the straps of my backpack. “What?”
If you can believe this, Cayden talks first.
“We’re not sure we should do it, is all.”
For a second I’m so flummoxed I can’t answer.
“Cayden is speaking for both of you now?”
Raymond won’t look at me.
“And are you going to tell me why?”
Raymond frowns and doesn’t answer right away, which means I am not going to like this.
“Ada, the other sneaks were great. But this?”
“Hey, if this is getting too difficult for you—”
“I didn’t say that. I’m not sure it’s a good idea, is all. The things we’ve done so far, they’re like training exercises. We get smarter and tougher and stay out of the grown-ups’ hair. Everyone wins.”
I close my eyes so I won’t kill him. “But?”
“Breaking into Greeley’s is more like climbing into the grown-ups’ hair and lighting it on fire.”
“So? What’s the problem, Raymond?”
“You already got into trouble with your aunt once this month. Are you ready to bring Greeley and the Protection Committee down on us just to get more hits on Nopes?”
“Since when are you worried about getting in trouble?”
“I’m not. I’m worried about you getting in trouble.”
My eyes roll so hard, they might get permanently stuck up in my head. “First of all, we’ll only bring the Protection Committee down on us if we get caught, which I have no intention of doing. Second, I think it’s pretty interesting that the guy whose moms let him do a-ny-thing he wants—”
He huffs aloud. “That’s easy for you to say. I’m their only child, Ada. I can’t—”
“WHOA.”
My scalp prickles until it feels like my braids are sticking straight out all over my head. There’s a rushing noise in my ears, and my vision swims with darkness and light.
“I hope that sentence had an amazing ending, Mendez,” I say. “Because it sounded an awful lot like you were saying that Pearl and I played fast and loose because our parents had a spare.”
“There’s no such thing as a spare! You get that, right?”
My eyes sting. “Of course I get that! If there was, my mama wouldn’t—” I can’t finish.
Oh, I am not going to cry in front of these boys.
When I can look at Raymond again, his face is all scrunched up, like he’s as upset as I am. I think back to that moment during play practice when things got awkward. He looked the same way then.
“You never talk about Pearl,” I say. “Do you know how much that bothers me?”
His cheeks go red, and he mumbles something.
I storm off toward home, almost ramming into Oddity’s local Sasquatch as he comes out of Fair Weather Bakery with a paper coffee cup in one hairy brown hand. Aunt Bets would kill me if she knew. He’s super shy and a really good customer.
“Sorry!” I mutter, but I keep going.
“Ada, wait!” yells one of the boys behind me.
My braids are practically glued to my head with sweat. It’s undignified, and I know it, but I don’t look back. Without Pearl, those two boys are the only backup I’ve got, and now they’re quitting on me? I’m starting to feel the full weight of sneaking into Greeley’s with no help at all.
Raymond catches up, trying to block my way, then walking backward in front of me when that doesn’t work. I can feel Cayden approaching behind me, but before he gets here, Raymond mutters, “I’m scared to talk about Pearl.”
I was not expecting that.
“You’re not scared of anything.”
“I am now. Ada, they never took a kid before. You, me, and Pearl, it was supposed to be us forever. Now Pearl’s gone, and I know she’s probably happy, but I’m not. I miss her. What if they take you next?”
“They don’t usually take too many people from one family—”
“Right, like they don’t take kids.” He rubs a hand over his buzz-cut hair. I’ve never seen him lose his cool this way. “I’m just saying … think twice before jumping into this sneak with both feet. I … would feel better if you stay off the radar.”
Stop watering, eyes. I can’t swallow back tears and yell at the same time.
“I’m tired of doing what I’m supposed to! I make good grades, I kick butt, and I canvass for the Sweepstakes, and look how it is! I know it worked out great for Pearl, but it’s a little bit different for me, Raymond!”
He looks like he’s frantic to shush me but also positive I’ll pound him if he tries. He’s right.
We stand there staring at each other. Cayden waits just outside our bubble of silence.
Finally, Raymond takes a deep breath and says, “You’re going to do this no matter what I say, aren’t you?”
“Yes!” I don’t tell him that our sneaks are the only things that seem to be worth doing lately. I didn’t realize how special being a twin was until I was nothing special anymore. I will settle for being Oddity’s reigning queen of shenanigans.
Raymond and Cayden look at each other and reach a decision.
“Just … promise after this we’ll stick to stuff that won’t end up on our permanent records if we get caught,” says Cayden.
Conviction, and loads of eye contact.
“I promise,” I lie. Cayden nods in relief, but Raymond looks skeptical. I need to distract him, quick.
Like a wish granted, Cayden’s little alien comes blazing out of the park, chasing a tumblegeek. He’s snapping his choppers, and man, it is LOUD. Of course, as soon as he sees us, he trips over his stubby feet and suddenly he’s jerking himself upright. If he had identifiable hands he’d be stuffing them in his pockets in an attempt to act casual, and for a second I think he’s going to start whistling.
Cayden’s mouth opens in alarm. I think he keeps hoping the alien will forget he exists and find another flagpole to fixate on, but the little guy seems pretty attached.
Cayden starts walking again, shooting us a look that plainly says to watch his back. As he passes the alien, the little guy falls in behind him, like he’s one of us, or a particularly unfortunate-looking dog. How many times can he bail on the other aliens who hang out in our alley before they won’t take him back anymore?
“Cay-den.”
Whoa.
“CAY-den.”
Our tiny, toothy shadow has officially distracted Raymond, bless him. Poor Cayden is frozen on the sidewalk, like he’s hoping maybe he didn’t hear what he thought he heard.
“Cayden?”
Cayden slowly turns around.
“Yeah?” His voice is a bit hoarse. I actually think that this once, mine would be, too. The little aliens, they’re all over the place, but they’ve never talked to us.
“Xerple.”
“Z
ur … zurple?”
The little guy’s bobbing his head. He’s really, really excited that Cayden’s talking back. “Yes! Xerple!”
“Xerple.”
“Hi, Cayden.”
“Um … hi.”
“Hi.”
They stand there looking at each other, Xerple so excited he’s just about vibrating, Cayden all awkward like … well, like someone who has an alien following him around for reasons unknown.
I bet they could both stand here all day. I break the stalemate. “Hey, uh, Xerple? Walk with us, okay?”
Which is probably a reckless thing to say, because I never really know how these things translate when I’m dealing with someone with a totally different culture. For all I know, I told him we’re bonded for life. But whatever. I want to swing by the house, grab my swag, and get to For a Song before it closes. And it’s fun to see Cayden so nervous when he’s frankly driving me up the wall.
Xerple hisses a bit when I say his name, but by the time I finish, he’s into it. He looks back at Cayden, for permission, I guess. “Cayden?”
“Yeah, uh—” He shoots me a dirty look. “We’re headed home. You can come if you want.”
“O-KAY!” he says, with tremendous enthusiasm, and though I still have no clue how he can see where he’s going when he has no discernible eyes, he practically skips over to Cayden’s side and begins to march alongside him.
Chapter 15
Unwanted Guest
The bell jangles as I shove my way into For a Song, my arms loaded down with swag. “Bee-Bop-A-Lula” is playing on the stereo.
“Finally!” says Song, rounding the counter in a swirl of pink and black. “I was starting to think you had abandoned me!”
How does whoever Song left behind feel about her? Do they miss her? I would. She lives over the store, but I’ve never seen any mail in the mailbox at the bottom of her steps.
She reaches over and pulls the top half of the pile out of my arms with pale pink fingernails. “Did you bring me anything blue?”
I look down at her black peep-toe heels in an effort to seem modest. “Some.”
“Ooh, you did good!” She dumps her armload on the counter and extracts the blue-velvet jacket, examining it closely. “Even the lining is okay. Ada, you are a pro.”
I don’t answer. I’m thinking about how glamorous she is, always done up and perfect, head to toe. She must be from a big city, right? Somewhere glamorous. Aunt Bets said Korea, so … Seoul?
“Song?” I ask.
“Hmmm?” She’s buried in my finds, checking seams, snapping things straight so she can get a good look at them.
“Do you like it here?”
That gets her attention. She looks me over. “Here, give me those,” she says belatedly, taking the rest of my stack. She sets them on the counter, her back to me, quiet, fussing. Then she turns. “You okay?”
I frown. “What? Me? Yeah. Why?”
She reaches over and tugs on the collar of my Peter Pan blouse, straightening it and smoothing it down. “You are brave. Smart. I forget sometimes that you are just a kid.”
Uh-oh. She’s got the “leftover sister” look. Now I’m cranky.
“Are you feeling sorry for me?”
“What? No!” She puts her hands on my shoulders, takes them off, puts them back. “I am being supportive. That is what friends do, right?”
Oh. I …
… I’m a huge jerk. Because I know that it would be totally wrong to take advantage of Song right now, and I’m going to do it anyway.
I turn around, twisting out from under her lacquered nails to go to the window and look out, like I’m sad. The mannequins turn their heads curiously as I come up behind them. One of them is wearing a fedora with a way-too-long-for-fashion feather in the band. I put a bracing hand on each of their shoulders.
“It’s just…,” I say, deliberately trailing off.
I wait, and after a long moment, Song’s heels clack two times as she steps closer.
The mannequins return to looking out the window. I wait again. I listen to the electric clock buzzing on the wall. Finally, I say, “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live somewhere else.”
“Oddity is better than a lot of places, Ada.”
It would be rotten of her to say otherwise when us kids are basically stapled to our parents until we grow up. On the other hand—
“It’s easy for you to say stuff like that, Song. You chose to come here.”
She laughs aloud. I’m so shocked I turn around. “What?” I ask.
“Technically, yes, I guess I chose, but I was not so much running toward Oddity as running away from everything else.”
She reaches out a hand to me, and I take it. We swing our arms gently back and forth between us, like a bridge, while I wonder what Song was running from.
Song chose Oddity. I bet Cayden would literally ride a rocket without a seat belt if he thought it would get him out of here.
“Why do you stay?” I ask.
This time she giggles, like a kid. “Sometimes I still don’t know. The night I moved into the apartment, I heard rats running around down here and called an exterminator. Only it was not rats I heard, it was the mannequins. At first I was scared of them, but mostly they do what I say. I’ve gotten used to the strangeness of this place.”
She side-eyes me. “Besides, Oddity has its upsides for us new people. Badri Khalid has been spending a lot of time at the bakery, hasn’t he?”
Shoot, does the whole town know?
Song sighs. “The truth is, Oddity is the kind of place that makes you think anything is possible, and I need to believe that’s true.
“Now,” she says, taking her hand back so she can circle the counter. “I can give you—” She names an insultingly low price.
“Riiiiight,” I say. “Give me the inspirational talk, then lowball me.” I’m going to get my price, and the brown clothes I’ve been scoping, too.
Song rests her hands on the counter and leans forward, eyes gleaming. This is my favorite part.
I don’t realize until I shut the door behind me, with most of the money I wanted in my pocket and all the brown clothes I wanted in my arms, that I still didn’t find out where Song’s from.
* * *
Rotten pirate. Who does he think he is?
I lift my head from my pillow long enough to scowl at the door I just slammed. As I thump my head back down, to the side this time, because I’m done screaming, I see Stella-in-the-closet. She’s got her arms folded, and I’m a bit surprised to find she’s frowning at the door, not me. Even she gets it, and nobody’s made her dinner in who knows how long. Maybe that’s why. I squeeze the locket in my hand.
It has been eleven months since our mama has packed my lunch, made me dinner, or stocked our pantry with Malicious Pixies breakfast cereal (We Don’t Know What They Put In There!). Here I come upstairs after a horrible day, and what do I see? Badri Hassan Khalid, large as life, bringing my mama a plate like he’s a member of the family. Mashed potatoes, buttered roll, and everything. My stomach is growling like Mr. Phillipi’s ice cream truck when it broke the sound barrier, but I’m not going down to dinner now. No way.
He was talking nice to her and everything. Called her Mrs. Roundtree, like he’s a Kiva Scout instead of a raider of the high seas.
I wipe my eyes on my pillowcase and turn my head to the other side, so Stella-in-the-closet can’t see me crying.
Rotten pirate.
Chapter 16
Zombie Rabbits
I’ve got my team, my gear, and a solid plan. It’s time.
My feet crunch in the dry grass as I approach one of the sleepy piles of zombie rabbits scattered across the side yard between my house and Cayden’s.
“What are you all doing lying around? Aren’t you going to get stomped by the aliens?”
Snooks, dusty and bedraggled, looks over without raising his head. “Halftime” is all he says.
Perfect.
&
nbsp; “Snooks, I think it’s time to refuel. You need to keep your blood sugar up,” I say, though there’s absolutely zero evidence that zombie rabbits have blood.
He eyes me with interest. Good old Ada, provider of snacks.
“You know where I would go if I were you?” I ask.
He sits up. I hear rustling as the rabbit piles around me begin to stir.
“Tell me now.”
Oh, I can do better than that.
* * *
Dinnertime at Greeley’s is a nightmare. For one thing, most people are done with school and work for the day, so the store’s already busy. Greeley’s has cornered the market on basically everyone’s favorite convenience food. There’s fried chicken, fish fry, a taco bar, take-and-bake pizza, and a sushi chef. The whole place is crammed with parents who are short on patience and kids who are using up the rest. It’s also cocktail hour for every resident of Oddity who drinks dinner, and the ones who live out in the desert pay their tab by scavenging cans and bottles and bringing them in for the deposit fees. The front of the store is jammed with shopping carts and wagons filled with trash bags full of sour-smelling recyclables. It’s chaos.
And we’re about to upgrade that to bedlam.
I watch from around the corner, where I’m drinking a soda I bought at Bodega Bodega. The parking lot isn’t any calmer than the store. Not a minute goes by without a near fender bender. Customers already tired from the store are close to snapping as they jockey for position in the pickup line by the conveyor belt. They’re so busy that they fail to notice small flashes of movement under the sea of parked cars. Likely no one inside has time to glance at the security camera. Either way, if they don’t know exactly where to look, like me, there’s nothing to see.
I hope they remember what I told them. Then again, what difference does it make? Some people have an inherent ability to create chaos. Besides, whether I can count on them to pay attention to my directions or not, they’re fixed on Greeley’s like it’s a giant electromagnet, and nothing is going to turn them away.
When the attack finally begins, it’s almost unimpressive. I can’t see anything much from here, except for the automatic doors staying open for a really long time, and some startled people flailing, then falling down. A white plastic grocery bag gets shot-putted up into the air, shedding frozen burritos as it goes.