Oddity

by Sarah Cannon

  In my panic, my instinct is to preserve the frog when I should destroy it instead, so I don’t use my right hand to stop myself from falling. Instead, my left leg drops, my other leg isn’t enough to hold me up, and I slither and fall to the bottom of the shaft, so hard that I raise dust and my bones rattle.

  Before I can recover, hard wooden hands are dragging me out into the pit house.

  I’m coughing and choking on dust, and Whanslaw’s face is looming over mine, his features edged by the light from the shaft.

  I can’t think fast enough. I don’t know whether to roll over on the clay frog to stop him from taking it, or throw it, or slam it down on the ground, and before I can do any of those things he’s got my wrist and is twisting it so viciously that I’m crying aloud.

  He drags me to my feet.

  Whanslaw tries to take the frog with his free hand, and I have just enough presence of mind to stumble into him. The frog falls from my overpowered fingers, but it doesn’t break, just rolls clinking across the hard floor. Whanslaw is sandwiched between me and Pearl, but he’s already shoving me away. As he releases my wrist, I have one moment of clarity, and shove both my hands through the center of his strings like I’m playing a life-or-death game of cat’s cradle.

  I have to slow him down, but I can’t break his connection to my sister.

  I grab for her hands, and hold them down on the controls.

  He lunges for the frog jar, Pearl moving with him, and I throw myself down, gripping Pearl’s hands just as tight as I can. We collapse on our sides on the floor.

  Whanslaw is twisting and snarling, trying to get at me. Raymond and Cayden are shouting questions, trying to help.

  “Get the frog!” I yell, but I don’t know where Sugar got to, and it’s so dark. They probably don’t have a clue what I’m talking about.

  Then I hear a delighted little voice exclaim, “A-ha!”

  “NO!” booms Whanslaw, and then there’s the loud smash of terra-cotta against the floor.

  The air around Pearl and me pulsates with a shocked, roaring bullfrog croak, and Whanslaw’s puppet arms and legs stick straight out, rigidly, tightening the strings painfully around my arms. I scream again.

  Behind my back, something nasty scrabbles across me and squirms its way between me and Whanslaw. I cry out in disgust. Then the noise becomes muffled, as if it’s coming from inside the puppet.

  “Smash him!” I shout to the boys. “Smash him now!”

  Raymond’s boot comes down on the puppet. There’s a splintering crash that shakes me all over again, and a final, maddened, strangling croak.

  Greeley yells, “Boss! No!”

  I hear businesslike snapping, like someone’s sizing kindling.

  Then I hear the only noise I care about. Pearl’s voice, confused, but hers.

  “Ada?”

  “Hey, Pearl.”

  Whanslaw’s strings are cutting into my skin as the boys destroy him between us. My fingers cramp as I force them to let go of Pearl’s hands. The wooden control bar whispers from her grip and clunks against the floor.

  My head hurts.

  “Ada?” says Snooks. “I smashed the trophy. We won regionals. Be excited.”

  I pass out.

  Chapter 38

  Splinters

  “Xerple, stop! You’re going to get splinters!” says Cayden.

  The loud crunching must not have been in my head, then.

  “So?” asks Xerple, crunching some more.

  “It’s bad for you!”

  Xerple makes the noise he uses to shrug, since he doesn’t have shoulders. “Is good for everyone else.”

  “You might as well drink Signal Boost to wash it down,” Cayden grumbles.

  I blink. My eyes are prickly, but my head is resting on something soft.

  “I hate puppets,” I croak.

  “We need that on a T-shirt,” says Raymond.

  “Stop patting me on the head, Pearl,” I say. “It’s demeaning.”

  Wait.

  I open my eyes all the way, and keep them open, even though it stings. The first thing I see is glowing green light. I turn my head toward it. The three glow-stick-eating rabbits are in an inverted pyramid formation, with Sugar on the bottom. He gives me a grin and a thumbs-up, and the whole trio wobbles dangerously.

  Then something slides into view directly above me, and I turn my head to look straight at it. It’s Pearl’s head, upside down. My head must be resting on her lap.

  “So, hi,” she says. “You saved me from the evil puppets, but you couldn’t save me from hair puffs?”

  “Waah,” I say. “You stole my locket, and suddenly it has a portable ghost. So unfair.”

  There’s a loud crash overhead.

  “Is that the aliens?” I ask. “Someone should tell them we found the trophies.”

  “I think it’s the rest of the house falling down,” says Raymond, like it’s no big deal.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “The pit-house roof seems to be protecting us from the worst of it. The rabbits had to get out of the pit, though.”

  There’s some grumbling off to one side.

  I cough, then sit up, scooting so I can lean on Pearl in case she tries to vanish or something.

  “What did you do with Greeley?” I ask.

  Cayden shoves his hair out of his face, revealing some nasty scratches on his forehead. “One of the rabbits bit a knot by accident. Greeley got loose and climbed back up the cords right before the house started collapsing. I don’t think he made it out in time.”

  I nod, and point at his poor bloody head.

  “Maggie?” I ask.

  “Yeah.”

  Xerple takes another big bite out of what I now see is a pile of red robes, black yarn, and puppet shrapnel. He chews with vicious satisfaction.

  “I understand beavers now,” he says. “Trees are jerks.”

  “Why are we still here?” I ask. I didn’t save Pearl just to get her buried in a fiery grave.

  “What were we supposed to do, carry you out on a travois made of evil puppet parts?” asks Pearl.

  I shudder. “Okay. But we’re leaving now.” I stand up, and nothing wobbles but me, so that’s good.

  There’s a carpet of zombie rabbits and tiny aliens all around us, stretching away into the dark beyond the rabbit lamp. The aliens must have retreated down here when the fire got bad. They look pretty dispirited to have lost regionals, but things are remarkably peaceful, aside from a bit of shoving in the ranks.

  “We made them shake hands,” says Raymond. “It took forever.”

  Coral Brain grunts. “Appendage-ist.”

  Raymond deflates a little. It has been a really long day.

  Pearl pats him on the shoulder. “Come on, Mendez. Let’s go see if the town burned down.” Her hand trembles a little, and I think about how long it’s been since she’s been home.

  “Hey,” I say. “Pearl.”

  She turns to me, and I grab her and hug her as tight as I can. She hugs me back, right away, which makes me feel less ridiculous for doing this in front of everyone. This time, she’s warm, like a sister is supposed to be. I lean my cheek against hers. We’re still just the same size and shape. I may never let her out of my sight again.

  “It’ll be okay,” I say. “Our family kicks all the butt.”

  “Yeah,” she says, and I know she’s smiling.

  Over her shoulder, I notice how worried Cayden looks when I say that. He probably thinks his parents are roasting the town’s remaining marshmallows in the oncoming flames while quaffing Signal Boost.

  He might be right.

  “Let’s go,” I say, letting go of my twin, and we limp out to the hallway with aliens and rabbits flowing around our knees.

  “We’re going to have to come back, you know,” says Raymond. “We can’t just leave the pit house here for someone else to use.”

  The log roof caves in behind us with a terrific crash. A shower of sparks rushes out
into the hallway. Zombie rabbits everywhere beat out the flames on one another’s pajamas with their ears.

  “Or not,” says Raymond.

  The tunnel seems twice as long going back. The power’s permanently out, so the glow-stick rabbits do their best to light the way, but there’s a lot of stumbling and running into one another and complaining. I sure hope the Blurmonster didn’t damage the other door too badly to open it, because the mood’s going to go south in a hurry if we have to backtrack. Xerple snarls at anyone who gets too close to Cayden. When the flickering green glow lights them for a moment, I catch Cayden patting Xerple on the head.

  It takes all of us to budge the door when we get there—the aliens and rabbits stack themselves in bizarre, swaying towers to help. It finally opens with a squeal, then falls off the hinges completely. It lands on the floor of the freezer with a groaning crash, rocking slightly on what’s left of Whanslaw’s sculpture’s bashed-in nose.

  We troop out of the freezer. I’m so tired, I’m zombie-walking, but I’m awake enough to remember to check for the Blurmonster, just in case it’s still cranky. To my relief, the loading dock door has a Blurmonster-shaped hole in it, through which I can see a gorgeous New Mexico sunrise. I hear a distant chutter, so I figure we’re probably safe.

  Then, off to the left, I hear a shrill, whiny shriek.

  “No! Absolutely not! No no no no no!”

  It’s Dewey.

  If it weren’t for the name tag pinned to his safety vest, he’d be unrecognizable. His hair is standing straight up, gelled with marshmallow. In fact, he’s basically head-to-toe marshmallow, coated with soot. Despite his personal filth, he’s running a floor buffer through the middle of the sea of melted marshmallows and BASH!

  His eyes are bugging in a thoroughly irrational way. They’re also fixed on us.

  “No!” he screams again. I hold my hands up to show him we come in peace (this time).

  “Whoa, Dewey. We were just—” I say, but he’s having none of it.

  “What?” he squeals. “Are you back to unleash a plague of locusts? Paint a mural on the front window with kale smoothies? Take a random dollar amount from each cash register right before shift change? When my uncle gets back, he’s going to—”

  “Dude,” says Cayden, “I don’t think he’s coming back. The puppet junta’s house sort of burned up and fell on him.”

  “Well that’s just GREAT!” Dewey yells. “Now I have to close! And tomorrow I have to open! I have to CLOPEN!” He revs the buffer, and I realize he hasn’t blinked in a really long time.

  “We should go,” I say, nodding like he’s rational and I’m respecting his space. “We’ll just … we’ll go now.” We all begin shuffling toward the front of the stockroom, trying not to turn our backs on him. The rabbits and aliens run ahead, bursting through the swinging door and whooping like kids coming back from Unstructured Outdoor Social Interaction.

  I guess we don’t move fast enough, because Dewey snorts like an angry bull.

  “GET OUUUUUUT!” he rages, and it almost sounds like an honest-to-goodness Greeley roar. Dewey brandishes the buffer, sweeping it in wide arcs back and forth across the floor, then runs at us. “AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!” he yells.

  “AAAAAHHHHHHHH!” we yell.

  We run.

  Chapter 39

  In One Piece

  As it turns out, Oddiputians didn’t need the puppet junta near as much as they thought.

  The town is filthy, but it’s still here. Old Joe and Young Joe are in front of Bodega Bodega, handing out water bottles. They do a quadruple take when they see me and Pearl together, but we just thank them for the water, and guzzle it down.

  Pearl looks at each building like an old friend. Through the co-op window, we see Scoby drifting, exhausted, in his jar. Outside, Raymond’s mom is using a squeegee to clean the windows. Raymond gives each of us a shoulder squeeze or a slap on the back. Then he goes to hold her stepladder for her, because she’s staring at me and Pearl, and her eyes are welling up, and it looks like she’s about to fall off.

  The bakery’s in one piece, but locked.

  “Wait’ll you see what’s new in there,” I tell Pearl.

  As we approach our street, Song steps outside her shop with a broom.

  “Song!” I yell. I run to her and give her a hug, finishing the job of trashing the butterfly dress I found so pretty yesterday.

  “Ada!” She gasps, and hugs me back hard. “How did you get away?”

  “Oh,” I say. “We overthrew the junta.”

  No one would dare to say something like that if it wasn’t true, and she knows it. Her thousand-watt smile starts powering up and hits full brightness right as she looks up and sees Pearl. All of a sudden her eyes are sparkling with diamond tears.

  “Hello, Pearl,” she says.

  Pearl smiles, but her attention’s all focused on our street. She grabs for me, and we walk up the hill swinging our hands between us, Cayden and Xerple trailing behind us.

  We crest the top of the hill just as Bets is stretching her back. I bet she’s been on her new blades way too long. She looks sore. When she sees us, she loses her balance and just about falls over. Daddy steps out from behind the hedge and grabs her, steadying her. I can see her squeezing his arms, but she never takes her eyes off us.

  “Sis?” Daddy asks.

  She points. Daddy turns and looks at us, and he sways like a tree about to fall.

  Then Mama walks around the side of the house with a bucket. She spots us right away, but it’s like she’s all of a sudden stuck to the ground. I can see the water sloshing over the top of the bucket as it shakes in her grip.

  Pearl squeezes my hand till it hurts.

  “Dale?” says Mama.

  “Yeah?” he says back, real soft.

  “Are they really there?” Oh, my poor mama.

  Daddy gives a bit of a sob. “Well, Veda,” he says, “I don’t know.” He reaches a hand back to her. “How about we go and find out?”

  She puts the bucket down slow, wiping her hands on her skirt. Then she walks over, takes Daddy’s hand, and they come down the front steps together.

  It’s not real until Mama touches us. She reaches out to feel Pearl’s sleeve, and when that turns out to exist, she puts one shaky hand on my left cheek, and the other on Pearl’s right. She cups our faces together. I forgot how she did that. It must have looked strange to her when it was only me, like half of a valentine heart.

  Daddy gives a great big sob behind Mama, and the next thing I know, he’s hugging all three of us so hard we might get compressed into one person by the time he’s done. He’s kissing on all three of our heads, and I hear Bets yelling for Mason and Badri somewhere over his shoulder.

  Cayden’s mom hollers for him from their back porch, sounding much more like Aunt Bets than her recent, Signal Boost–addled self. Cayden takes off at a run, with Xerple loping behind.

  Daddy finally loosens up on us a little, and my mama fingers Pearl’s puffs.

  “Your hair needs done,” she says, like she can’t think what else to say. “Come on inside, and I’ll get it all fixed up.”

  She pulls us toward the house, but before I can go anywhere, my daddy takes me by the shoulder.

  “Will they be coming for you girls?” he asks me, low. “Do we need to ready ourselves?”

  I can see in his eyes that he means it. He’d take on the whole junta all by himself before he’d let us go again.

  “No, Daddy. We took care of it.” He cups my face like Mama did. Then, to my everlasting surprise, he picks me up like I’m a little girl, and hugs me tight.

  “Just one more time,” he says to me, “before you’re running the show.”

  I guess that’s okay with me.

  Six months later

  You would not believe how much chaos a bunch of fifth graders searching for pizza can cause. We won the end-of-year pizza party, of course. With Pearl back in class, how could we lose? We were unstoppable. We also (and this
is key) convinced Mr. Bakshi and Principal Zimmerman that ordering from Ransom Pizza and hunting down our reward would be a good bonding exercise for the fifth grade. Raymond, Cayden, Pearl, and I have been planning today for months.

  I sidle past the gym, where Myrtle is head down in a bin full of volleyballs. All I can see of her is her feet and her braids. There are clangs and screams coming from the cafeteria kitchen, where the trolls, Ralph and Delmar, are pillaging. I race around the corner undetected and join Raymond and Pearl, who are crammed into the water fountain nook outside the principal’s office.

  “Last one,” I say, passing it to my sister.

  “You didn’t open it, did you?” Pearl demands, taking the greasy pizza box from me.

  I scoff.

  Cayden eases the office door open from the inside and waves us over. Raymond and I keep a lookout as Pearl passes Cayden the pizza. He disappears inside. He’s back a minute later, empty-handed.

  “They’re so busy laughing at the security monitors I could have put one on Mrs. O’Halloran’s lap,” he says scornfully.

  “This was a good idea,” I say. “The grown-ups were getting a little too comfortable around here.”

  “Seriously,” says Raymond. “How do they not realize we can avoid the surveillance cameras? Time check.”

  I glance at my phone. “Eight seconds … six … four … two…”

  An enormous explosion rocks the main office. Tomato sauce and cheese hit the windows with a splatter so loud that I bet it’s making janitors shudder ten miles away.

  We can hear Mrs. O’Halloran having hysterics.

  Pearl and I look at each other.

  “I missed you so much,” we say in unison, then laugh.

  After school, the class crams into our yard to eat the non-exploding pizza we paid for by passing a hat around. Sending pictures of our pizza-coated teachers to literally everyone we know is not quite as good as a really great sneak, but it’s a close second.

  Later, when only the four of us are left, we lie on our backs in the patchy grass, tossing marshmallows in the air for the zombie rabbits.

  The consequences of the fire are mostly dealt with now. Evil puppet mansion is a heap of rubble. Kids go up there on dares sometimes, but that’s about it.