by Sarah Cannon
Seriously, though. The town is so proud of those puppets. If some adults don’t know about the puppeteers, and even the ones who do think the puppets are protecting us from something important.… I sigh. The grown-ups aren’t going to get their poop in a group and solve this problem. It has to be us.
Mason comes hopping down the steps.
“Hey!” he says. “Look what I’ve got!”
He pulls a coin the size of a soup can lid out of his pocket.
“Whoa, Mase!” says Raymond. “How’d you get that?”
Mason flips it, trying to be all cool, then scrabbles for it when he drops it by mistake. Recovering, he says, “Got it from Uncle Dale for hosing out the armaduino cages. We just got back. Will you walk me down to the bakery? I’m buying.”
Finally, something we all agree on. We meander down to the bakery. We also watch our backs.
Aunt Bets made bizcochitos, and I’m inhaling the licorice-cookie smell before I even open the door.
What I’m not expecting is the out-of-place noise that greets the four of us as we enter. It’s a sort of metal-on-metal rushing sound.
I follow instincts born and bred in every kid in Oddity and drag Mason down in front of the counter. For once, he doesn’t argue.
* * *
We listen. Whatever it is, it’s fast, made by friction. It speeds up and slows down, but never completely stops. It reminds me of a metal boa constrictor, which is not outside the realm of possibility. I don’t hear any screaming, though. Maybe it already swallowed Aunt Bets? Maybe some of the ductwork has come alive and uncoiled from the ceiling. Maybe I’d better go check, since she’s family and all. Cranky, pain-in-the-butt, amazing family.
She can twist my ear all she wants if she just won’t orphan Mason.
“You wait here,” I say, grabbing him by the backpack straps and giving him a shake, proving once and for all that Cayden was right, and a one-strap shoulder bag you can slip out of is the best thing to carry to school. That’s annoying.
After a careful glance past the edge of the counter, I duck-walk around it and toward the employee-only door that leads to the rear of the bakery. It’s normally kept open so Aunt Bets hears customers come in when she’s baking, but someone has moved the stopper. It’s a swinging door, though. With a little luck I can ease it open far enough to see what’s going on.…
Something whizzes past the crack I’ve made, and I’m so startled I fall back, and the door whooshes shut. Then comes a sound I’m not expecting at all. Laughter. Not maniacal, evil laughter, or the hysterical laughter of a lost soul surrendering to its fate, but genuine, helplessly happy laughter. It sounds like my aunt Bets, but how can it be? I can’t remember the last time I heard her laugh that way. More than anything, it’s my refusal to believe it’s her that makes me brave enough to open the door again.
Something whooshes past my line of vision again, and this time I don’t jump, because I’m too busy staring. Mason, who like younger relatives everywhere is biologically incapable of following the direction “Wait here,” crowds up at my elbow and gapes over my shoulder, Raymond and Cayden right behind him.
All around the kitchen, someone has installed some sort of bizarre gutter, like a marble run, or maybe a garage door track. It rises and falls in great, roller coaster–style hills and valleys. The shadow streaks past again.
It’s Aunt Bets.
She’s wearing a harness like a climber or a bungee jumper might use, and it’s attached to a set of wheels that ride the track. The apparatus supports her all the way up past her waist, and straps wrap around her thighs but leave her stumps dangling free. She rolls right past her empty wheelchair, which sits forgotten in the corner. She goes sailing past the doors of the big industrial oven, drops down a slope in the track, and comes to rest with a shooshing sound in front of the slab table where she kneads the dough. Brakes. That’s what I heard. I crane my neck to see the rest of this outrageous contraption in our bakery. It’s been patched together from all different pieces of metal, but it stands steady and strong—and it will take her to every important place in the kitchen, faster than she could walk there if she still had her legs. The big mixer, the storage shelves, the coolers … everything. And she’s giggling. Aunt Bets is giggling. I haven’t seen her do that since Uncle Mike disappeared and she started doing everything herself.
“What on earth are you doing on the floor?” she asks, catching sight of us. A big black hand reaches down to grab mine before I know what’s happening, and I’m hauled into the room by Badri. He has grease on his fingers, and I see a motley bucket of tools behind his beat-up boots. I forget to stop my forward momentum, and before I know what I’m doing, I’m hugging him. The whole room is very quiet suddenly, but I can’t stop myself, even though all this squeezing is making my eyes water.
“Well, hello, Ada,” Badri says, his voice soft as always. He sounds surprised, but not in a my-ribs-are-cracked kind of way.
I remember to let go after a minute. “Hi.”
Mason is staring at me like I have two heads, and this is the new one.
I look over at Aunt Bets, figuring she’s about to ask me if I’ve lost my mind because she’ll help me find it, but she’s turned around in her harness, floury hands holding on to the rail, looking at me with that nice soft look she used to have when we were little, and I think she’s glad I’m not going to scream you’re-not-my-uncle at Badri. Like I’d even do that. But wow, this is a really great audition, if he wants the role.
“There’s no food in the house,” I say, realizing belatedly that I’m hitting Aunt Bets’s don’t-act-like-you-don’t-have-family-that-feeds-you-and-clothes-you buzzer. I smile, even though I know it’s wobbly, because I figure a smile for a smile is fair. And I want her to keep smiling. I want her to still be smiling when I come in every day after school, which I am going to do, because I want to see this new thing that lets her whiz around like she used to do on her legs. I want to stand and watch her like she’s a piece of modern art and I’m pretentious.
“How will you carry the dough?” asks Mason, who’s walking along the track examining it. He runs his fingers down inside the groove, and they come away faintly glistening with fresh oil.
Aunt Bets reaches around the edge of the kneading table and grabs a long metal gaff, like they use to drag school talent show acts offstage when the puppets start booing. We both jump back a bit as she reaches around with it, but she’s only grabbing the handle on one of the carts, which has a big, clear kitchen bin of dough on it. She drags it across to her, and I see that someone, Badri I guess, has taken it apart and re-welded it so it will be the exact same height as the table. She slides the bin onto her work surface. In the harness, she’s tall enough to dump it herself, and she starts breaking it down into loaves like that hasn’t been an act of torture for months.
“See?” she says as she works. “What do you think?”
“You’re like a cyborg superhero!” says Mason.
My aunt grins, all white teeth and twinkling eyes. “Don’t you forget it. Ada?”
I’m smiling, too, like my face is so amazed it can’t help itself. “I think piracy builds important vocational skills.” Okay, that didn’t sound right. But when I look over at Badri, his knuckles are headed my way. We share a fist bump of swashbuckling solidarity.
“There are pecan pastries up front,” says Aunt Bets, which is how she fist-bumps people.
Chapter 27
Faults
We’re leaving the bakery when I see a flash of blue and red in the heat waves rising off the sidewalk. I grab Mason by the shoulder and press a wad of money into his hand.
“Mase,” I say, “we’re out of milk. Go over to the co-op and buy a gallon from Scoby.”
As he starts to whine, I add, “Buy caramel apples with what’s left. Say your mama sent you, not me, or he’ll give you caramel onions again.”
That does it. He’s so pumped he forgets to look both ways when he crosses. Normally I’d holler
at him, but right now I’m relieved he doesn’t see who’s coming.
I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen for almost a week. At least now I can stop dreading it.
There are moments, mostly when I’m really nervous, that something strikes me funny when it really really shouldn’t. This is one of those times. I’m imagining that Whanslaw, who has stopped being blue-and-red heat haze and is now a hazy evil puppet coming my way, has spurs on beneath his red robes. In my head, I imagine I can hear that old Western music they play during a showdown.
OooEeeOooEeeOooooh … Wah-wah-wah.
He seems to bob along the sidewalk in time with the soundtrack in my head, which makes the whole thing even more ridiculous.
What the heck is going on with his puppeteer, though? I can’t see him at all. Did he shrink?
“Ada,” says Cayden, “maybe we’d better go inside.”
“No,” I say, and now my voice seems stretched like taffy, as if time is slowing down. “No. If we run, he’ll know it was us. Take a good look at the puppeteer. You should be able to see him if you really try.”
I’m half expecting Whanslaw to be the bait in some elaborate trap. Right now, angry attack dogs should be jumping out at us from behind buildings, or something. But there’s nothing. Just Whanslaw bobbing along in front of his mysteriously shorter puppeteer. Passing right by me without even slowing down, though he turns his head toward me and opens his mouth in his version of a smile. Then I see why. Behind him … behind him. Is Pearl.
They’ve got her hair styled in two neat puffs she’d think were babyish. She’s wearing a plain black cotton dress and black Mary Janes. I glimpse a flash of gold at the back of her neck.
Her hands are working Whanslaw’s controls like she’s been doing it all her life. I don’t think she has any idea we’re even there. And she’s wearing those shades, those horrible sunglasses. I have to see her eyes, see if they’ll look back at me or be awful and vacant.
I don’t realize I’m trying to get to her until I can’t. Raymond’s got me around the waist. I struggle to push his hands down and off me. I hit him in the face. But I’m not struggling like a smart girl who knows how to fight. I’m freaking out, shouting a name that doesn’t mean anything to its owner anymore.
She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t even pause.
The bells on the bakery door bang the glass as Badri comes rushing out, holding the door for Aunt Bets, who’s back in her wheelchair. Whanslaw and Pearl are just passing them, and I hear my aunt’s agonized groan as she hears my words and, looking, sees what I see. Badri’s hands are twitching erratically, like he’s seconds away from trying to grab Pearl. But there’s nothing any of us can do.
This is my fault.
This is all my fault.
When I’m finished throwing up my bizcochitos in the bakery bathroom, I find Aunt Bets waiting outside the door. She rolls back a bit to let me pass.
“Guess you’ll still have to get out of that contraption Badri made sometimes, huh?” I say. I wipe my nose.
Bets gives me a stare that says she isn’t going to let me be fake okay. I guess carriers of that disease recognize the signs.
“I hoped you’d never have to see that,” she says.
I’m so turned inside out with guilt that I can’t even answer.
“Ada,” she says, like she thinks my attention is wandering. “Ada. You saw. And I saw. But Mason didn’t. Your mom didn’t.”
Now I’m looking right into her serious eyes.
“Where’s Badri?” I ask. “Where are the boys?”
“Badri is walking the boys home, and they are having this same talk. Mason will be back from the co-op any minute. We have to pull ourselves together. Right now.”
I let my jaw drop a little.
“That’s it?” I ask. “That’s all you’ve got?” I swear, I never used to be so rude to adults, but this is getting ridiculous.
“Young lady!” says Aunt Bets. She shuts her eyes for a second, breathes out slowly. “I don’t like this any better than you do. But your mom is … fragile.”
I know she is. Iknowsheis. I don’t want to hear about it anymore.
I move to brush past Aunt Bets, but she grabs my arm in an iron grip.
“Ada.” She waits until I look at her again. “Our family’s lost enough.”
“Do Mama and Daddy know how to see them?” I ask.
Bets sighs. “Yes.”
I feel like the floor vanished, and I’m about to drop into the void beneath. All this time, they’ve known. I sounded brave earlier, but I want so much for my grown-ups to just HANDLE it. If they haven’t already, it’s not happening.
My aunt’s still talking.
“We didn’t want to get you and your mama’s hopes up, but your daddy’s been appealing to the WUT trying to get Pearl back—do not roll your eyes, young lady! He’s doing his best, going through proper channels—”
“The puppets designed all the channels, Bets! Nothing’s gonna change if we do it their way!”
Bets rubs her hands through her hair. “That may be, Ada. But we still have you and Mason to worry about. Even what little your daddy has done seems to have made the puppets angry.”
Oh, please let that be true. Let what happened to Pearl be someone else’s fault.
“He’s going to be devastated, Ada. Promise me you’ll keep this to yourself for now.”
“Someone else will gossip,” I say, but I look away before Bets does. I won’t tell Daddy, and nobody will say a single word to Mama. That’s just the way things work.
“Ada, promise.”
I nod, but I couldn’t be more shocked and hurt if Snooks jumped up and bit me. First my mama resigns from adulting, then Bets asks me to do it instead.
I walk out of this conversation, out of the back room, out of the bakery. Aunt Bets can lock up and collect Mason herself.
When I’m home, I head straight for the basement. I crash in a beanbag chair and pull an old blanket over me. Snooks was under the blanket, and he gets uppity and tries to yank it out of my hands, but I ignore him.
A few minutes later, I hear the back door rattle open, then shut with a bang, and my neighbor boy comes downstairs and joins me. Cayden doesn’t say anything, just picks his own beanbag and sits there shredding a Full Bar. His parents found his cache and got upset that he’s not eating them, so destroying the evidence is his latest hobby. NOW WITH NEW S’MORES ACTION! the wrapper blares. I think the cardboard-flavored foamy bits are supposed to be marshmallows.
We sit there in silence as I mull over the PC’s obvious betrayals, and Aunt Bets’s softer, subtler one.
If it’s true that doubt is the beginning of wisdom, I’m going to end up a genius.
* * *
It’s the third afternoon Cayden has spent in my basement. In theory, he’s here to keep me company while I stare at the wall. But he eats a lot of sandwiches while he does it. I can’t really blame him. Bets’s sandwiches are approaching epic proportions now that she knows how hungry he is, and she’s trying to apologize to me with food, too. I give Cayden mine.
Raymond’s there, too, but everything is weird between us. I think that for him, “his” beanbag chair in my basement serves the same purpose as a hospital bed. Raymond’s here for visiting hours.
I can’t deal with him sitting there not looking at me for one more minute.
I load Nopes and pull up my post about the puppets. I haven’t checked in for days, and it has a ton of replies. I scroll down, skimming as I go.
Sheesh.
The problem with Nopes is it’s like a hydra, in the sense that it has no clue which head is in charge. And it has a lot of heads.
Some Nopesers are seizing the opportunity to say a bunch of really nasty stuff about puppets in general.
Others think the puppets are a figment of our imagination, the result of chemicals in our drinking water.
There’s an argument going on about whether to demand the puppets’ birth
certificates, which is obviously pointless because of Oddiputians’ long, proud tradition of feeding babies mush made from their birth certificates to keep them off the grid.
Then part of the conversation seizes my attention, and it’s bad, bad news. My mouth goes dry as I realize what I’ve done.
“Nonono,” I say.
Cayden leans over to see what I’m looking at.
“Ada, even I know not to read the comments.”
I grab the front of his hoodie and pull him closer. I point at the screen.
“Look at that.”
StringCan: All I know is, there’s been a lot less collusion around here since the puppets came to town.
n00b: What even is collusion? Does anybody know?
AnonAnon: I’m with the original poster. The members of the Protection Committee are not our friends. They’re predators, and when they look at us, they see dinner.
SasquatchDude: ZOMG, the puppets are cannibals?
n00b: If they were cannibals, they’d eat would.
StringCan: Wood they really?
Anon-adon: I did some checking, and I figured out what kind of government we have. Do you know what a junta is? It’s a bunch of bullies who run off a community’s rightful leaders and take over. That’s what we’ve got right here: a puppet junta.
StringCan: I don’t care if it’s a puppet jamboree, at least they keep things orderly.
AnonLebron: Sure. And every now and then, they eat one of us. NBD.
StringCan: So? It’s not like Sparky was working on a cure for cancer.
SasquatchDude: Still …
AnonAnOnAnOn: Only one way to solve this problem. Somebody’s got to destroy the puppet junta.
I’ve never seen anyone dare to put something like that in writing before. And instead of everyone freaking out and swearing their undying loyalty to the PC, there’s an anon-a-thon of agreement. Then the conversation goes conspicuously silent, and I strongly suspect we’re about to have an epidemic of collusion.
I whirl on Cayden and Raymond, not sure if I’m talking or screaming.