by Sarah Cannon
“Hey, Ada?” he says.
“What?” I ask, dragging the word out.
He points.
I can’t see a thing from down here. I climb up next to him, staying quite a bit lower than he is, leading by example. When I spot what he’s talking about, I’m impressed he saw it. The sun’s almost down. Not a good time to spot anything, especially … I groan.
The Blurmonster. That thing is like a bad penny lately: turning up everywhere. Then I notice the sweaty boy smell to my left.
“Doggone it, Cayden!” I hiss. “Are you wearing BASH!?”
He winces. “I forgot.”
The Blurmonster emits a purring growl.
Chapter 2O
Hide-and-Shack
Cayden’s BASH! addiction is an increasing problem, but at the moment I’m more worried about where to hide until the Blurmonster moves on. Which is why I’m hunting for the base the older kids used to use when they played hide-and-shack, back when the Blurmonster wasn’t coming this close to town.
“Hide-and-shack? Why do they call it that?” asks Cayden.
I’m prowling around a clearing trying not to look directly at anything. Between that and trying to hide from an invisible monster, my peripheral vision is really messed up right now, so his question makes me trip, which makes my leg holler at me (figuratively speaking) to let me know it’s about done for the day, thanks.
“They call it that because base is super hard to find,” I say.
He peers over his shoulder into the gloaming, which is the word I prefer to use when the gloom is looming.
“It just figures that in Oddity you’d have to go looking for base, instead of whoever’s ‘it’ looking for you,” he says.
“Being base is a dull job. Our base got bored, and innovated.”
Cayden looks distinctly nervous.
“So … your base is alive?”
I’m not actually sure how to answer that.
“Um … alive is relative, I guess.”
I still don’t see the darn thing. I try not to look like I’m looking, which fails miserably.
“You can’t find it, can you? We’re going to get eaten.” Even in the shadows, I can tell his face is red. I hope the BASH! makes him taste horrible.
“It has to be around here somewhere!” I say. The brush crackles maybe thirty cubits behind us, and I feel an unpleasant new emotion. I think it might be desperation.
Cayden fists his hands like he’s going to freak out at me, but instead he does something I should have thought of first. He yells, “Olly olly oxen free!”
The twilight shadows seem to shake themselves, like a wet dog in slo-mo on TV. And then there’s a shack in the clearing, where a minute ago there wasn’t. Behind us, the crackling heads our way.
We leap for the door. I remember just in time to shut it quietly. With luck, the Blurmonster wasn’t close enough to see where we went.
* * *
“How long do you think we’ve been in here?” Cayden asks, after what feels like forever.
“I don’t know. It’s pretty dark.” I didn’t think to check the time when I called Bets, and now that it’s all the way dark outside I don’t want the light from the phone to show through the windows. If the shack’s still visible, that is. Possibly a passerby would see only an empty clearing.
“Maybe one of us should look out the window,” he begins, but trails off as he realizes how hard it will be to spot the Blurmonster in the dark.
I should tell him not to talk, but the quiet is weighing on me. My hurt leg starts to cramp, and I shift, my sneakers scraping on the gritty wooden floor.
“Ada?” he asks, and why are all these boys having feelings today? I start to tell him that this is not called the Sharing Shack, but the next thing he says totally throws me.
“Tell me about what happened to Pearl.”
I stare through the dark in his general direction.
“You know what happened to her. She won the Sweepstakes.”
He’s quiet for a second, in a way I don’t totally understand. Not like I successfully shut him down, but like he’s handling me. I don’t like it.
Finally, he says, “I know about winning the Sweepstakes, but I’ve never actually been there for Sweepstakes Day. What’s that like?”
Maybe he’s just embarrassed that he has to ask. He’s literally the only person in town who doesn’t know.
“It’s the best day of the year. My daddy saves up for months so we can eat at as many food trucks as we want.”
“I love carnival food,” he says. “Funnel cakes and lemon shake-ups.”
What the actual frack?
“No, Cayden. Good stuff. Cactus candy, and Elvis-on-a-stick. And the squid-chinned aliens make epic barbecue.”
He doesn’t answer me. I notice he does that sometimes, when he decides he’s had it with whatever I’m saying.
We sit in silence for a minute, and I’m surprised by what I say next. It’s not something I want to admit.
“You were right, you know. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“The way the adults have been running from us.”
“What do they do the day of the Sweepstakes? Show up and look happy?”
I consider. “Basically, yeah.” I say, “I always assumed they really meant it, because the puppets are very insistent about that.”
“They insist that you mean it.”
“Naturally.”
There’s a pause. I take comfort in the nothing I hear outside.
“That was what I noticed most, when Pearl won. All the grown-ups, all MY grown-ups, kept saying how happy they were for her. Over and over. You ever notice how if you repeat something enough times, it stops meaning anything? But they wouldn’t stop. They kept on saying it, with smiles so stiff that everyone looked like puppets, until I wanted to smash things, until I was lying in bed with ‘I’m happy for her’ running through my head like some kind of ritual chant. So I climbed out my window to get away from it, and ran off, and—” I’m not about to tell him I was crying. “It was really dark, and before I knew what I was doing, I was in the park.”
Cayden hisses. I look at him, already nodding. “Yep. Spiders.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get eaten.” The very first time we had to school Cayden, the day he moved in, he was headed for the park with a soccer ball. I know he’s picturing the same thing I am: dark, malicious orblike forms slowly lowering themselves from the branches above, the moonlight glittering on their outspread legs.…
“I felt something sticky on my cheek, and then it started to burn. By the time I finally clued in, spiders were suspended around me everywhere I looked. I tried to follow standard spider attack rules—”
“Shut up and grab a stick,” murmurs Cayden.
“—but by that point, I was so scared and confused that I snapped. Oh, I grabbed a stick all right, a big one, and I was swinging away and hitting spiders like they were piñatas, but I was screaming cuss words at the top of my lungs the whole time. It should have gotten me killed, but it saved my life instead. My dad came charging through the darkness, swinging a bat, and the next thing I knew, he had me stuffed under his arm like a football and was running the other way.”
Cayden says, “I bet Bets grounded you for a month.”
I shake my head.
“That’s the whole problem, isn’t it? My family acts like things are all business as usual. But no one ever said another word to me about that little stunt, when they should have put me on restriction for life. And my mama’s a mess. And—”
I sit there as my worst fears come bubbling up like the aftereffects of Anti-Ven-Om Nom Noms, even though Old Joe’s been sold out for months.
I glance at my quiet neighbor boy. “You always thought it was strange, but I didn’t listen. I mean, you think everything here is strange, so sometimes I don’t take you seriously. But the grown-ups, they aren’t just playing around with us. They’re really scar
ed of winning. I never knew that before. Now it turns out the puppets are liars, and kind of bullies, too, and kids never used to win, but Pearl won. Greeley … he was trying to kill me, and—Cayden, if the Sweepstakes is bad, then what happened to my sister?”
“We’ll find out.”
I know he’s pretending to feel brave when he says it.
It still helps.
Chapter 21
Night, Gunnar
It’s pitch-black outside when we finally decide the coast is clear. By the time we get home, I’m limping pretty bad. We circle our block, in case Dewey forgot not to remember me after all, but nothing seems out of the ordinary at either of our houses. We should probably talk, but I’m so tired I can barely think. All I want is to cry myself to sleep in my own bed.
“I’m going to tell them we decided not to sleep over after all,” I say, and Cayden nods wearily. I wave good-bye, but he’s already disappearing through his front door.
I can just make out a little cluster of screaming aliens over on one side of the field, the field being our side yard. I shake my head over them as I head inside in search of a snack. I’m not about to get involved. They’ve been known to riot like soccer fans. Once they even set the Hollowells’ car on fire. As I put my hand on the front doorknob, though, someone squalls piteously, and I recognize the voice.
It’s Xerple.
“But I did not know it was a rule infraction!” he pleads, and I draw closer to listen in spite of myself, grabbing a rake that Mason should not have left outside because it could very easily get used on one of us. I’ve armed myself without having to go to the garage, though, so I guess he gets a pass this time.
“You did not KNOW? The ugly bunnies are our mortal enemies!” This comes from an alien who is almost entirely head. It’s round, and orange, and its arms and legs appear to be wearing a suit and fancy shoes. When it shouts, its whole mouth blows open like when we flap a parachute in gym class after using it to practice emergency skydiving.
“I was not helping the bunnies, I was helping Cayden!” wails Xerple.
“Ahhhh,” burbles a squishy pink alien, who has a permanent frown and some kind of brain coral growing out of its head. “But the Cayden helps the bunnies, doesn’t he? He and the landlady have been resupplying the bunnies since the punkball game began.”
I’m a landlady, huh? I guess I am the human they see most often. If I’m the voice of authority, maybe I can help Xerple out.
“Uh, fellas? The marshmallows are part of a previous agreement. They don’t have anything to do with punkball.”
Three little faces look up at me, two glaring, one cringing.
“We live here, too,” gargles the squishy alien. “You do not give us marshmallows.”
I frown. “Do you eat them?”
Its mouth opens and closes several times in outrage. “No!” it says at last. “But it’s rude not to offer.”
Long on mouth, short on logic.
“Look, Xerple helped because he owed us one. We helped him out when he was, um, up a flagpole.” Xerple is bobbing agitatedly behind the other two aliens, shaking his head frantically. Too late.
“Whaaat?” shrieks Bigmouth, its lips and cheeks billowing out to expose its choppers. “The flagpole is a solitary ritual! No one is supposed to have help!”
It turns to Xerple, who rushes around to hide behind my legs.
The orange and pink aliens look at one another and nod grimly. Then they turn to Xerple. As one, they begin to chant.
“Your person is foul. Your person is foul. Your PERSON is FOUL!”
Other aliens race over, taking up the cry. “Your person is foul! Your person is foul!”
Before I know it, there’s a ring of gleefully furious aliens around me and Xerple, who is sobbing, “Not a person foul! Please!”
The light dawns. “A … do you mean a personal foul? Like in basketball?” I almost laugh. It’s just like them to get something like that wrong. Then my smile vanishes in a hurry. Their punishments are really awful. Xerple’s more likely to get killed than benched. And we’re surrounded.
A door clacks from across the yard. “Cayden!” I holler. “Cayden!” I brandish my rake at the tiny, vicious mob. “Respect your landlady!” I holler.
A gray alien with teeth like tusks and ears like jump rope handles attacks Xerple, who puts his back to my leg and fights him off, enormous choppers clacking.
“Cayden!” I yell again. I smack the gray alien with the back of the rake, and it leaps into the surrounding mob.
Finally, that neighbor boy of mine gets here. He sweeps through the crowd, literally. Like, with a broom. I rush through the gap, heading for Cayden’s house. A despairing bleat behind me alerts me that the aliens have already closed the gap. They’re not concerned with me. They only want Xerple. I turn to go back, but Cayden’s already there, wading right into the middle of the mess. He uses the broom to shove back the aliens, then reaches down to grab Xerple around the neck. Xerple’s snapping at anything that moves their way, but a couple of the aliens jump to hang from Cayden’s legs. Bigmouth even bites him, like Xerple was doing to the flagpole when we met him. Cayden hollers with pain, and I whack that nasty little orange booger into next week with my rake. From the bushes, the zombie rabbits cheer.
“Some help you are!” I mutter, but I can’t really blame them. They already did me one big favor this week.
We back away from the advancing horde, brandishing our weapons, until I about trip over Cayden’s back porch steps. Before we can get inside, Bigmouth pushes its way through the crowd, returning from wherever I knocked it to.
“You can’t take him!” it roars at me, mouth flapping.
“Why? What were you going to do with him?”
It squares its nonexistent shoulders. “We were going to send him away. FOREVER!”
All the little aliens cheer.
O … kay.
“You,” I say, “have done an amazing job. You have sent him all the way over here, to Cayden’s house. He is hereby banished from that property.” I point at our yard.
“Says who?” asks Jump-Rope Ears.
“Says me! THE LANDLADY!” The crowd goes wild. Vengeance. Even sweeter than marshmallows.
We lock the kitchen door behind us, just the same.
* * *
Xerple won’t eat the Full Bars. He won’t drink Signal Boost, either. He takes one sniff and snarls.
“Nasty medicine. I not need.” He shoves it away with one foot. Cayden and I frown at each other over his head. Medicine?
“Suit yourself.” Cayden takes it with a shrug and raises the bottle to his lips, pretending to drink.
“No!” Xerple jumps at him, Chuck Norris–kicking the Signal Boost from Cayden’s hands and sending it spinning across the kitchen, spraying red Signal Boost everywhere. “You don’t need medicine, either. Is nasty!”
“It’s not medicine, Xerple,” Cayden says. “I mean, I’m not saying it’s real food. But it’s really okay. It won’t hurt me.”
“Won’t help, either,” says Xerple. “You forget.”
“I forget what?”
“Things. Worries. You drink that, you have very good day because you forget there is any such thing as a bad day, until BAM! Bad day to the face! Then you go down like a Floost ship in the Gammar Wars.”
“Um.” Floost ships are the Samsung Galaxies of alien invasion ships, but they were decommissioned way before the Gammar Wars according to Mr. Mitchell, who replaced Mr. Bishop. But I am so not getting into that with Xerple.
“Bottom line, you no drink it. Just no. Take it for me. Is nasty.”
“Xerple, you’re exaggerating. My parents drink this all the time.”
There’s a thump as Cayden’s mom runs into the door frame on her way into the kitchen. “How long has that been there?” she asks in confusion. She rubs her forehead. “Just came down for more Signal Boost. Daddy and I are stocking a mini fridge by our bed, in case we get thirsty between our bedtime Boo
st and our wake-up Boost.” She has to mess with the fridge for a minute before she figures out how to open it. Xerple makes a fake surprised face at Cayden, which mostly involves opening his mouth very wide while craning his whole head to one side in fake shock.
Cayden’s mom pats him on the head as she comes back by. “Hey, get the dog off the table, okay? And take him out before you turn your light off. Give him some Signal Boost in his bowl. Good night, Gunnar.”
“Mom, Uncle Gunnar’s in Latvia.”
“Right. Night, Gunnar.” She turns off the light on her way out, plunging us all into darkness. I whack my hip on a chair going to turn it back on.
“Okay, that was kind of weird,” I say.
Xerple is bobbing on all four legs like he’s about to do a polka. “So, now you see,” he says, in rhythm with his bobbing. “The drink is bad. It is nasty. It make you sad.”
“She’s not sad,” says Cayden. “She doesn’t seem to feel much of anything.”
He stops bobbing. “Sad like pathetic, not sad like crying,” he explains. “You see how sad she was? I not dog. I not even a mammal. Her nomenclature all irrational.”
“My parents have been acting really strange lately.” He hefts a bottle of Signal Boost in one hand. “Do you think someone’s drugging these things?”
“I guess it’s possible,” I say. “Maybe they just really like it, though.”
“Okay,” says Cayden, “but DOG? D-O-G? When we first got here, they thought the local news was an elaborate hoax. When there were aliens in the alley, they said some of the armadillos looked kind of inbred. Now they don’t think anything is unusual, ever.”
I shrug. “It’s like that for all the newbies. First they freak out, then they adapt.”
Cayden rolls his eyes. “You do not get it, okay? My parents used to make a big deal about living in a good school district. They bought charity coupon books. They shopped Black Friday sales after Thanksgiving.”
“They went out on Black Friday? Everyone is supposed to huddle in their basements contemplating their own mortality and being quiet so the crawling chaos won’t hear them.”