Oddity

by Sarah Cannon

  Out of my way, but I can’t say that out loud, so I order a soda instead, and he ambles off to get it. I crane my ears like satellite dishes to find out what I missed.

  Angry Hair is talking. “If you want to be useful symbols, Godspeed, but I’ve got bigger fish to fry, like that big cod Lanches—”

  “Shhhh!” hiss Mustache and YOLObes.

  She lowers her voice in that way that suggests she has no clue how to whisper. “Look, Sparky was my mailman, and where is he now? We owe it to him and everyone else they took to wreck the junta. At least we can rescue the ones they’re using now.”

  I startle in my seat because this is what I’ve been waiting for. I need to go over there this second and tell them what’s what.

  Angry Hair gets up faster than I can, though, tossing cash down on the table to cover everybody.

  “I’m not known for being soft-spoken,” she says. “Let’s get out of here so we can talk.”

  “Where are we going?” asks YOLObes.

  “Nowhere.”

  Figures. I jump up to follow them.

  “Djoo pay?” asks Duke, wandering over with my soda. I thrust money at him and hurry out the door. They’re disappearing around the side of the diner. I’m rushing between the parked cars and the building, past a red bumper, when someone grabs my arm.

  “Ada, I’m so glad you’re here!” says Song. “Come help me with this.”

  “Song, I can’t,” I just about wail. “I have to go!”

  “It’s fast,” she assures me. “Come on.”

  She’s surprisingly strong. I let her drag me around the back of her car, craning my neck to track the Nopesers over my shoulder. She jams her key into her trunk lock and turns it. The hatch pops open.

  “See?” she says, shoving me in front of her. “Right there.”

  Before I can react to the mannequin reaching for me, it’s already pulled me in with it.

  “Song!” I shout. “What are you—”

  She slams the trunk shut behind me.

  Chapter 3O

  Scoby

  By the time I can have an actual conversation with Song again, I’m spitting mad. I’m also tied to a chair in the basement of her shop. Mannequins. You can kick and pinch them all day, but they don’t care, and I don’t have any matches on me, because Song took my backpack.

  “Who keeps a mannequin in the trunk of a Ford Escort?” I demand.

  “They’re my roadside assistance plan. Mannequins are surprisingly good at changing flats.”

  “And kidnapping kids.”

  “Don’t even try to play the victim card with me, Ada Roundtree! I know who you are. You’re that anonymous user who’s been fomenting rebellion on Nopes!”

  “What even is fomenting? It sounds like something Scoby would do.”

  “Ada!”

  I take a good look at Song, and it calms me down a little. I mean, obviously this is not how she should treat her independent contractors, but her forehead is glistening with sweat, and her hair’s borderline disheveled.

  “Song, why are you so upset?”

  “Because you think you’re invincible!” When I realize she’s on the verge of tears, I finally get it.

  I look down at myself in disbelief.

  “Are you saying you tied me up for my own safety?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying! If I hadn’t stopped you today, you’d have gone and … colluded with those Nopesers, wouldn’t you? Everyone in the diner could hear them talking! Have you thought for one second about how fast that’s going to get back to the Protection Committee?”

  “Don’t you mean the puppet junta?”

  Song wipes her palms on her dress. It’s white with black spots today, and I can’t help but think of another one of Cayden’s weirdo books, Treasure Island. Song’s wearing hundreds of warnings. When she speaks again, though, her voice is quieter.

  “Ada, I know things have been hard, but you have to stop behaving so recklessly. The police have been in twice asking me who bought sunglasses recently, did you know that? This is no time to start being all … death-defying.”

  Hey. I was defying death way before it was cool.

  I sigh.

  “I guess I understand why you’re worried, and … it’s nice that you care. But I swear I have reasons. You know about my sister—”

  “Pearl.”

  Oh, I love Song. No one says her name anymore.

  “Yeah. Pearl.” I look Song straight in the eye, which I’ve been avoiding. “If you untie me, I’ll tell you everything. I promise I won’t try to run.”

  Then again, there are like fifty mannequins standing guard, so I guess it’s a compliment that she tied me up in the first place.

  Song weighs her options for a minute, then nods to a mannequin behind me. It unties the ropes, and I rub my wrists. Then she pulls up a stool and listens like she promised, her face serious. She does not interrupt me once. In the color and whirl of her shop or the diner, it’s easy to miss how beautiful Song is—how she stands out from everything around her. Here, illuminated by a bare bulb in the dark of the basement, she’s suddenly the only thing I see, and the idea of losing her friendship if she doesn’t understand hurts almost as much as losing Pearl. Untouchy me gets touchy all over again, and I reach out to take her hands. Mine are scruffy, with dirt under the nails. Hers are smooth and perfect, with bright red, shiny nail polish.

  “I believed so many lies, Song,” I tell her when I’m finished. “Mike Hannagan wasn’t a murderer; his store was in Greeley’s way. I bet you anything the original mayor and sheriff didn’t commit arson, either. The puppets wanted to run things, so they framed them. I know—” I hesitate. No one talks about where new people come from, even if she had told me. “I know you came here from someplace bad. If the junta is allowed to keep using people as puppeteers, Oddity will be a bad place, too. So they have to be stopped. But I’m not colluding with anyone. I just can’t sacrifice my sister if there’s a chance I can save her. I need everybody to stay out of the way and let me try. Please?”

  Song is always smiling, always moving. Only now, when she’s so still, do I realize that being happy can be a way of hiding. I guess it’s a better way than Mama’s, but I think I’ll see through it from now on. Her warm, tan face has gone almost gray, quiet enough for the dust motes twirling down through the harsh light to start seeming like they’re making noise. Then she squeezes my hands.

  “You could get hurt. Even killed.”

  “I’d rather be a dead person who tried than a live person who did nothing. Are you going to rat me out?”

  She flinches, and her eyes widen in shock. “Ada, no!”

  I try not to look relieved. “What are you going to do, then?”

  “I’ll be quiet if you be careful.”

  I squeeze her hands. “Deal.”

  So now I’m walking home for dinner. I totally lost the Nopesers, and I’m betting I’m not going to get a chance like that again. It’s my own fault for not noticing I was being stalked while I was stalking them. I should tell Mr. Mitchell that I really get irony now.

  The Sweepstakes is bearing down on me like a charging Blurmonster. I never canvassed half my route, though that probably doesn’t matter now.

  But because Song interfered, I still have the element of surprise. No one else knows I haven’t given up, not even Raymond, not even Whanslaw. There has to be a way to put things back in balance, to save everyone, including Pearl. I just have to find it.

  Then something that’s been tugging at the edge of my attention for weeks finally connects, and I realize I have an idea who might know.

  * * *

  The store bell jangles as I enter the co-op, but the way the monstrosity in the jar on the counter is glaring at me, you’d think I’d pulled the fire alarm. I never, ever come in here, and he’s the reason why.

  Scoby.

  Imagine a huge sun-tea jar, the kind with a spigot at the bottom, filled with a pale, bubbling liquid. Now ima
gine a yellowish-brown, flying saucer–shaped funguslike thing floating in it. Back in third grade, when Delmar puked on the floor in the middle of GMO Taste Testing Day, Ms. Burchett told us that another word for puking is emesis. Every time I see Scoby, I think about how the word nemesis has emesis right in it.

  That can’t be an accident.

  There’s a white five-gallon bucket on the floor under the tap, to catch drips. On the counter next to the jar is a black sign with white lettering that reads TAP HARASSMENT WILL NOT BE TOLERATED. There are, in fact, a number of pretty cranky black-and-white signs around the co-op. SHUT THE FREEZER DOOR WHILE YOU THINK. UNATTENDED CHILDREN WILL BE CONSIDERED SOURCES OF FREE-RANGE MEAT. That kind of thing.

  The first time Mama ever brought us to the co-op, we must have been three years old, because we were wearing our bike helmets and carrying wooden swords. We didn’t understand Scoby was alive until we were right up by the counter. He slammed against the side of his jar and snickered when I screamed.

  He made Pearl cry.

  Nobody makes Pearl cry.

  This is the first time I’ve come in here to do anything but wreak havoc in eight years.

  I eye the little fungus.

  “They’re not here!” he shouts.

  I roll my eyes. “Who isn’t?”

  “Anyone! Whoever you’re here to see! I’m the only one here, ergo they’re not! So get out!”

  I fold my arms and do my best to look bratty.

  “You’re out of luck today, Scooby,” I say. “I’m here to talk to you.”

  He ignores my oh-so-on-purpose mistake. “Like I have time.”

  I crane my neck to look pointedly around at the nothing that’s happening in the co-op right now.

  “I’m going to go ahead and talk,” I say, “and if you don’t like it, you can leave.”

  We both look down at the place where the jar meets the counter. He snarls, a nasty, bubbling sound, and spins around to face away from me.

  Mad as he is, I don’t think he’ll … well, I was going to say run and tell the junta, and of course he’s not going to do that, but I don’t think he’ll tell on me, is the point. I’m banking on the fact that Scoby hates … well, everybody.

  “I have questions about the Protection Committee,” I say.

  “Why would I know anything about that?” he asks with another snarl.

  “You’ve been here longer than anybody. In fact, I’m pretty sure you came to town with the original Greeley and the puppets.” One good thing came from all that glitter torture. While redoing the cardboard caravan, I realized: That’s not a bottle painted on the side. It’s a jar.

  Scoby rotates in his fizzy potion until he’s facing me again.

  “You filled the co-op with bees!”

  “I did not!” I say. In my defense, it was an act of social justice. Me and the bees were liberating the honey.

  “You’re the one who taught the other children to call kombucha Scoby-Doo.”

  That was Pearl.

  “I have nothing to say to you, you little germ!” he burbles. “Get out of my store!”

  “It’s not a store, it’s a co-op, and you’re being pretty uncooperative right now,” I say.

  He sneers. “Well, isn’t that just too bad?”

  I’ve had it with uppity mushrooms who replace the frosting in my sandwich cookies with toothpaste. I grab the spigot on his jar.

  He freezes. I mean, not literally, I’m sure he’s room temperature, but he stops moving.

  “Don’t you dare,” he says.

  “I do,” I say. “I totally do dare. I am going to drain this jar dry if you don’t start talking, Scoby, because I do not have time for your nonsense right now.”

  He locks stares with me, but I don’t flinch. Finally, he … blinks, I guess, and says, “Ask your inane questions.”

  Slowly, I remove my hand from the tap.

  “So…,” I say. “The puppets use puppeteers as, like, batteries, right?”

  “As energy sources, yes,” he says. He seems to puff up a bit as he speaks. “The puppets use the energy from the puppeteers’ souls.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” I say. “After all, a puppet wouldn’t have a soul.”

  He snorts at me. Ew. That means there’s Scoby snot in the kombucha. One more reason not to drink it.

  “Shows what you know,” he says. “Most puppets aren’t alive, are they?”

  “Of course not. But these puppets are different. You said so yourself. They’re alive because they feed off people’s souls,” I say.

  “I said no such thing!” he says. “How would they ever get the idea to feed off people’s souls if they weren’t alive? Dead things don’t get ideas.”

  What?

  “That makes no sense,” I say. “If they need souls to be alive, how were they alive before they had souls?”

  His edges ripple a bit. It’s interesting, watching a fungus be smug.

  “Better ask yourself, ‘How long have they been puppets?’”

  Now that’s interesting.

  I widen my eyes to look extra curious. “How long, Scoby?”

  He dips forward in the jar, like he’s leaning my way. I step closer.

  “That blue-faced fancy man and his fish-headed friend came to America with Cortés, the conquistador.”

  I’m insulted. “I know who Cortés is. But, um, their names are Whanslaw and Lanchester. That doesn’t sound very Spanish.”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of an alias, little girl? The point is, they came in their own skins.”

  It takes a minute for it to sink in.

  “They were people, and they put themselves in puppet bodies on PURPOSE?” I ask.

  He wibbles in a way that must be nodding.

  “They have their own souls, and they’re using ours ANYWAY?” I ask.

  He wibbles again.

  “Those jerks!” I say. “Why don’t they use their own?”

  “They last longer the less you use them,” he says. “Here’s a better question: Where do they keep them?”

  That, I realize, is the ten-million-dollar question.

  “Do you know?” I ask.

  “Do you know?” he mimics. “No! How would I know?”

  “I thought Kiyo might have told you.”

  “That wicked old thing? Why would she tell me something like that?” he asks.

  This confuses me. “Well, I thought maybe you came to America together, since you come from the same country and everything.”

  He draws back, creating eddies in the liquid in his jar.

  “Which country?” he asks.

  Uh-oh. I hesitate. “Um … Japan?”

  Scoby squishes all up. If he had hands, they’d be on his hips right now. “Japan.”

  Isn’t kombucha Japanese? Like sushi?

  “Right,” I say. “Japan. Right?”

  “Get out,” says Scoby.

  “Where are you from, then?”

  “Get. Out.”

  “Korea?” I ask. “Is it Korea?” This is super embarrassing.

  “GET OUT!” Scoby’s kombucha foams wildly. His jar rocks and thumps on the counter.

  I duck behind a rack of potato chips in case Scoby’s jar explodes, and make my escape. But I make sure to slam the door when I go.

  Chapter 31

  Plotting

  Though Nopes shows no sign of ever returning, the sunglasses continue to appear, and the junta doesn’t take this little protest lying down. When taking all the dangling sunglass halves they can find doesn’t work, they clear the unbroken ones from store shelves. They confiscate Song’s supply.

  Protestors spray-paint sunglasses on walls and sidewalks instead. It’s not all kids anymore, either. Word is spreading.

  Then the police start knocking on the doors of people who’ve been buying spray paint at the five-and-dime. Doesn’t matter. People use chalk. There’s no point confiscating that. After all, there are plenty of rocks around here that work just as well as
chalk, as any kid who has ever been bored can tell you.

  The junta can’t watch everybody all the time, no matter how much they might like to. Even the zombie rabbits and aliens get in on it, scrawling insults on every available surface, though they’re really terrible spellers.

  Even when the junta orders everyone to be inside by sunset.

  Even when the secret police cruise the streets in black vans at all hours.

  I’m sitting in bed going over and over the remaining holes in my plan when there’s a thump low down on my door. I swing my feet out of bed and go to answer it, cautiously, in case it’s Aunt Bets and she’s traced all this trouble back to me.

  Instead I find Snooks.

  He’s wearing one of my purple-striped leg warmers. All I can see are his toes and his head. It’s like he’s been swallowed by a predatory turtleneck.

  “Raymond is climbing the house,” he says, without bothering to greet me.

  “I’m sorry, what now?”

  “He’s outside my window. It’s okay. We needed someone to heckle. But I tell you so you know, in case we hurt his feelings and he leaves.”

  I’m not gonna even get into Snooks calling Pearl’s window his. She can handle that mess when she gets back. I tiptoe down the hall.

  “Make a little more noise,” I tell Raymond from the relative safety of Pearl’s … er, Snooks’s window.

  “Will you pull me up?” he asks. “These little punks are gonna wake the dead.”

  From below come the jeers of our tiny delinquent crew.

  “You climb like a dog!”

  “Dogs don’t climb,” he says.

  “Right! You get it!”

  “They like it when you argue,” I say, hauling him up by the armpits. He turns sideways to sit on the sill, swinging his legs into the room, then shuts the window on the taunting below.

  “Thanks. What’s the trellis doing on this side of the house, anyhow?”

  “Dad moved it so I couldn’t use it to avoid punishment.”

  He nods. Dirtbag. He’s got a ground-floor window.

  Snooks is standing at the door like some sort of bizarre, purple-striped sentry. Raymond eyes him pointedly. I have a wild urge to pull out one of those old movie lines, like “Whatever you can say in front of me, you can say in front of Snooks,” and a giggle rises up in my throat. I squash it.