by Sarah Cannon
“See you later, Snooks,” I say so we can get on with things. He blinks.
“I will wait in your room.” Right. Because that’s what I meant. I’m going to be up late reading him bedtime stories from one of Cayden’s weirdo books, I can just tell. I suppress an impatient sigh and turn to Raymond.
“Did Cayden tell you he’s moving?”
“I’m trying not to think about it.”
He bumps my shoulder with his. “Sorry.”
“Me, too.”
Finally, Raymond lets out a long breath. “You gonna do something on Sweepstakes Day?”
“Yeah. You gonna try and stop me?”
He doesn’t answer right away, so I sit on Pearl’s bed and stare at her poster of zombies fighting unicorns, waiting while he thinks.
I want to convince him, but what do I say? He doesn’t trust me anymore. That’s unlikely to improve if I tell him Song kidnapped me to stop me from getting busted for collusion, so … things are looking pretty lose-lose, Raymond-wise.
“What are you going to do?” he asks.
“I’m going to find the puppets’ souls and turn them loose. If that wakes Pearl up, then we destroy the puppets.” I explain what Scoby told me.
“How are we going to find their souls when we’re supposed to be at the carnival?” he asks. He’s poking holes, and a huge wave of relief sweeps over me. Criticizing means he’s in. This is what we do, and it’ll be a stronger plan because of it.
“I figure the thing to do is get seen at the carnival at times we choose. Then, even if we’re gone for a while, everyone will assume we’re lost in the crowd.”
He nods. “I bet they’ll know it, when their souls are free,” he says.
I thought of that, too. “We’re going to have to time it just right.”
“We,” he says, not like he’s objecting, but like he’s scoping out the right spot for a puzzle piece. “Where do I fit in?”
I need about a million more hands than I have. Then it hits me.
I give him my wickedest grin. “I’ve got an idea,” I say.
* * *
The orange flappy-mouthed alien, the one we dubbed Bigmouth, blinks at me. “Regionals?”
I fold my arms. “Well, obviously. I mean, you’re highly skilled, and that kind of talent pays off. Sweepstakes Day is the perfect time to take things to the next level.”
After weighing my options, I decided to bank on the hope that punkball is so confusing because everyone’s making up the rules as they go along. If they can do it, I can, too.
“Who would we be playing?” asks Bigmouth.
I scoff, shaming it for not knowing. “It’s not about who’s playing. It’s about who gets there first.”
Coral Brain and Jump-Rope Ears drift out of the bushes, followed by some of the other aliens. The zombie rabbits are bivouacked on the other side of the yard, thankfully. I’ll get to them later.
Raising my voice slightly, I continue.
“See, regionals aren’t so much a game as a quest. If you’re really worthy, then your team will be the first to find them.”
“Find what?” burbles Coral Brain.
“The trophies.” There’s muttering among the ranks of tiny aliens. I quell the urge to run for my front door. Conviction. Loads of eye contact.
“How many are there?” asks someone farther back in the mob.
That one’s easy. “Four.”
The greedy little boogers groan. “Only four?”
Jump-Rope Ears has a more practical concern. “We don’t have a trophy case.”
I bug my eyes at it like it’s out of its mind.
“Good, because the last thing you’d want to do with a regional punkball trophy is display it for everyone to see!”
They’re all confounded by this little tidbit.
“Don’t tell me,” I say, “that you don’t know what to do with regional trophies!”
There’s some scuffing of feet, but no one wants to admit they don’t know.
I lean down and beckon. “Okay, I’ll tell you. But you can’t tell anyone where you got this information.”
They scuttle forward to listen. The ones that have necks cock their heads.
“The thing about regional trophies,” I say, “is that you have to destroy them as soon as you find them … so no one else can get them.”
“Ohhhhh,” they say as one.
I figured that would work. They’re mostly motivated by malice and paranoia.
“Where must we go on Sweepstakes Day?”
I lift my arm and point to where the puppet junta’s house hulks on the hill like a constipated werewolf.
“There.”
Chapter 32
Outburst
I remember how it felt to wake up to the music of the merry-go-round, the smell of fried rattlesnake, and the clattering alarm bells of the shooting galleries and know that today, somebody’s whole life would change.
Today, I’m afraid it might be mine.
Even though I knew Sweepstakes Day was coming, even though I’ve got a knot in my stomach the size of the brain-coral alien, I’ve got to go see, like we’ve always done. Part of me thinks it would be bad luck not to.
I throw on jeans and my sailor blouse, tear down the stairs and out the front door, and run smack into Cayden.
“OW!” I yell, much louder than I need to, then glare around, waiting for a zombie rabbit to mess with me. Strangely, there aren’t any in the yard. Just aliens, panting under the hedges. Maybe they won, and all the rabbits are evicted. Why does that make me even madder?
“What did you think you were doing?” I ask, glaring at Cayden.
He’s rubbing his forehead. “It’s Sweepstakes Day. I thought you might want some company.”
“Last I checked, you had one foot out the door. You couldn’t wait to get back to Normal Land, where everyone douses themselves in BASH! and eats deep-dish pizza and…”
“Ada, shut UP!”
I’m so shocked that I do. He shoves his hair out of his face, which is now extremely red, and starts shouting at me.
“You know where you screwed up just now? You never asked me, ‘Cayden, do you still want to leave?’ No, you went off, like you always do. You are the most annoying person I’ve ever met!”
“You really want to stay?” I stare at nothing, thinking this over, calculating his potential to survive to adulthood. Surprisingly, it’s gone up quite a bit. I look at his blotchy face. Should I apologize? But he’s already talking again.
“Did you ever read those Narnia books I loaned you?”
I’m confused. “The Narnia books?”
“Talking lion? Magical world?”
“Yeah, yeah. I know what books you’re talking about, but I don’t get what that has to do with—”
“Remember Eustace Scrubb, in the third book?”
Ew. I do. He was a total whiner. I was waiting for him to get eaten for hundreds of pages, and then he didn’t. Total missed opportunity, C. S. Lewis.
Cayden’s watching me. “See? You hate him. Everyone hates him. He gets to go on this amazing, magical adventure, then he spends the entire time inventing buzzkill.”
“So? He’s made up!”
Cayden turns around and sits down on our front steps.
“But I’m not. And I don’t want to be that guy who’d go home in the middle of the story if he got the chance. Aslan always makes the other kids go home at the end, remember? They don’t want to. You’re not supposed to want to.”
I’m leaning against the railing, taking this in, when he looks at me.
“Do you want me to?”
I think of almost getting savaged by a leopard because of his slow reflexes, of getting chased by the Blurmonster because of his BASH! spray, of his parents pushing Signal Boost on me like drug dealers. I think of him coming with me to Whanslaw’s basement, and I think of Xerple hiding behind his house to cry.
I sit down next to him on the steps. For a minute, the only sounds a
re the carnival music and the rush of the scrambler ride. I make a totally, completely selfish wish.
“I wish you could stay.”
He sighs, and shoves me. “Me, too. At least let me help.”
I side-eye him. “You sure? Because if you are, I have something you can do.”
* * *
When I head down to the carnival for some early reconaissance, Aunt Bets is already there, with Mason and Badri. She’s testing out her new running blades. Her gait’s different than it used to be, but she’s really, truly walking around on actual legs—shiny black ones that curve at the ground to form “feet” with little spike pads attached to help with traction.
Badri’s bakery coaster was such a win that Bets decided to research whether prosthetics could be made out of metal, too, and lo and behold, they could. Or something like metal, anyway. Carbon fiber, I think she said. Cayden heard that kind is super expensive to make. When I asked Bets how she did it, she said something about a forge, and an autoclave, and was my homework done yet and why didn’t I just bring it downstairs so she could have a look? So I quit asking.
I watch from a distance as Mason cracks wise and she attempts to go after him, laughing. I can’t tell if she’s swaggering or just balancing, but either way she looks terrific. I’m careful to stay out of her sight line, though. I’m way too jumpy. She’d notice, for sure, and then who knows what would happen? She gets an unhealthy amount of pleasure out of telling us how she’s going to be even faster on blades than she is in the wheelchair. If I were her, I’d pretend to be worse at walking than I really was, just to have surprise on my side the next time I had to dish out some justice.
Daddy always works the early part of Sweepstakes Day, because he catches a lot more illegal critters with a lot fewer casualties when there aren’t screaming bystanders in the way. City Hall is closed for the holiday, so Mama’s lying down, of course. For now, I’m on my own.
I wander over to For a Song, but Song’s nowhere to be found, and the store’s locked up, so I go back home. I watch a little TV. I pretend to read a book. Finally, I drift aimlessly around the house until I find myself outside my parents’ room. Through the doorway, I see the end of their bed, the wooden footboard with the round balls on top, and on the mattress, a pair of feet in brown, high-heeled shoes. It’s like living in a funeral home. I’ve been sad, and mad, and jealous, and all of a sudden it all comes boiling up and I don’t have one more minute of waiting in me.
“Mama!” She doesn’t move. Her feet don’t even twitch.
“MAMA!” I scream. I enter her room, like I never do anymore, and I slam the open door into the wall on purpose. She hates that. She ought to be hollering at me to be careful, but she doesn’t say a single word. She’s awake; her eyes are open, staring up at the ceiling. All I want is to shock her out of this stupor. Just this once.
I reach blindly for the top of her dresser, and for one second I see the two of us, little, in the rosy light from her lamp, giggling as she sprays us with perfume. I grab the first thing I touch, a ceramic jewelry box, and throw it at the far wall as hard as I can. It shatters, and earrings fly everywhere. She doesn’t blink, which only makes me madder.
I’m her Stella-in-the-closet, but I’m going to learn from Stella’s example. I’m not staying in there anymore. Mama’s going to have to see me. I throw one precious thing at a time:
Perfume atomizers?
SMASH.
Old cut-crystal vases, filled with pencils and dried flowers?
SMASH.
I destroy each of them, one by one, until there’s a jagged mess on the floor that looks like I feel.
There are so many things I want to say to her, but why? She was a good mama once, and a good mama ought to know without being told. I wipe my wet cheeks with the back of my hand, and slam the front door when I get there, for good measure.
Chapter 33
Inevitable Betrayal
The carnival’s a lot busier by the time I get back. When I get to the corner by Bodega Bodega, the curb is wall-to-wall packed with parked cars, and there are still people cruising for a spot.
I dodge between the slow-moving, turn-signaling vehicles with Xerple and Snooks close on my heels, and work my way through the throngs of Oddiputians. I pass a booth staffed by a tall, gray, black-eyed alien named Zacharias Cavalcade, who tells fortunes by having people breathe into a whirring machine he holds in the palm of his long-fingered hand. The last time I tried it, he told me I had a 27 percent chance of being killed by an Oddity Bodkin, and that I should buy an Oddity Bodkin for protection. I call shenanigans.
Dewey is standing in front of Greeley’s automatic doors, name tag freshly Sharpied. He’s waving people over, ushering them inside, talking up specials on everything from sleep-inducing Popsicles to take-and-bake pizza. That is, except when he isn’t. The zombie rabbits are Dewey baiting. From what I see as I go by, they’re hiding under food carts like sparrows eyeing crumbs. Every few minutes, one of them will run for the automatic doors. Sometimes he sees them and starts yelling. Other times someone will greet him or ask him a question, and a rabbit will dash forward and trigger the doors before he notices. They’re not going in, just messing with him, but Dewey is a lot redder than usual.
Manager distraction can only work in my favor, so I give one rabbit that notices me going past a discreet thumbs-up, and mouth, “Marshmallows.” He does some complicated semaphore with his ears, which I have to assume means yes. I’m betting there’ll be a zombie rabbit semaphore instructional sheet written with who knows what slid under my door if I survive this.
“Go on, Snooks,” I say, and he runs to join the others, gathering them under the nearest car. I don’t see the ensuing conference, but I hear creepy little giggles and some cheering, so I assume they’re as stoked about “regionals” as the tiny aliens, who are hopefully even now trashing Whanslaw’s house under Raymond’s direction.
The temporary stage and mic are set up in front of the tent, like last year, and Greeley is already warming up the crowd. I come into range as the folks watching laugh appreciatively at some joke he made. He’s flashing those big white teeth of his, running his finger along the brim of his straw boater hat. I shake my head. Greeleys have been doing this act since Gold Rush times, I realize. Before the puppets found Oddity, the one town where they didn’t need to conceal themselves, was the show how they chose their prey? Did Greeley slip through the darkness late at night, snatching the puppets’ chosen targets from their beds?
I spot Song, looking fresh as a daisy in spite of the wind and heat. She’s wearing a white dress trimmed with black and covered in bright butterflies. She was talking to Badri and Bets, but when she sees me, she excuses herself. She must not say my name, because neither of them looks to see where she’s going, and then Mason runs up to them with his hand out for money or tickets, distracting them. Song weaves through the crowd, frantically reaching for me. She bends down to speak into my ear so no one else will hear.
“Do you see them?”
“Who?” I ask.
“The Nopesers! There’s one by the cotton candy machine.”
I give a sidelong glance. Sure enough, Mustache is over there chowing on cotton candy. It makes it look like he has two mustaches and one of them’s pink. He’s staring at the stage as he chews. Scanning the crowd, I spot YOLObes by the Tilt-A-Whirl. His neck tattoo ripples as he swallows nervously.
Left to their own devices they’d have run out of steam by now, so Angry Hair must be here, too. I ignore the sinking feeling in my gut. Hopefully there’s no time for the Nopesers to do any harm.
I glance up at the puppets’ house crouching on the hill. It’s hard to tell from this distance, but as I look, I could swear I see papers flying out of an upstairs window. Lucky for us everyone else is too glutted on the aliens’ barbecue to notice.
“Ada!” I hadn’t realized Song was still talking. I meet her eyes, surprised by the intensity of her expression. “What can I do to help?”<
br />
Is she serious? She was so scared before. Now that I’m paying attention, it’s clear she still is. Her hands are shaking. But she’s offering, and she means it. She’d put herself in danger to help.
Just as I’m about to completely lose my head and hug her in front of the entire town, a hush falls over the crowd, by which I mean that Greeley yells, “And a hush fell over the crowd!” and we all yell “HUSH.” The so-called Protection Committee is ascending to the stage, each with a dark-clad puppeteer trailing behind.
I told myself I could handle it, but nothing takes away the sharp slice of pain when I see Pearl behind Whanslaw, working his controls. She’s wearing that same black dress. No point investing in wardrobe changes, I guess, when they’re just going to use her up. I understand the sunglasses so well now. If I could see her eyes, I’d never be able to stop myself from running to her, shaking her, trying anything I could to make her see me. There’s that flash of gold at her throat again, and this time, it startles me. Finally, I take a good hard look.
It’s the locket.
I think back to that horrible night in the pit house, and remember the tug as I let go of Pearl. Wheels start to turn in my brain, but before I can come to any conclusions, the announcement begins.
The members of the puppet junta turn to face the crowd. Whanslaw moves to stand in front, with glubby Lanchester and elegant Kiyo flanking him, and Maggie on his other side. Her button eyes stare right at me out of her newly replaced face, her vacant smile freshly painted.
Whanslaw steps up to the microphone, but he doesn’t need it. Fear inspires most of the townspeople to silence. You could hear a tumblegeek cough. Besides, I remember how Pearl and I acted before her name was drawn. The sooner the ceremony was over, the sooner we could go back to eating deep-fried candy bars. Some things aren’t real until they affect your family.
With no introduction, Whanslaw reads off the winners’ names in his deep, theatrical voice. The change is obvious right away.
They’re almost all kids.
Some of them I recognize but don’t know, but others, like that Emuel kid, and Delmar, are from our class. The only adult in the bunch is Mr. Mitchell, so I guess we’ll be getting another new teacher on Monday.