The Foul Mouth and the Troubled Boomworm (The King Henry Tapes)

by Raley, Richard

  “Went at him with the ring because I wasn’t sure you could take all three,” I said instead, “Guess I should have known you could handle it.”

  “King Henry . . .”

  “This ain’t over yet, Val. I’m not letting that bastard get away with stealing your sister like this. Even if Vega and Ceinwyn and the Lady and . . .” I paused, trying to think of a higher power in my life to curse. One came to mind. An idea came along with it. “We ain’t stopping,” I finished.

  I said I’d crack the world for her . . .

  “I found the room where they held her,” Val said, “There was a glass of water and . . . a half eaten sandwich. We just missed her . . . if the meeting happened when it was supposed to, if the vampires and Washington—“

  “Yeah, ‘and if’, I like those too. Don’t do your sister any good though.”

  Val finally started to pull herself back together. Tears stopped, feet got firm. “Seattle, Vancouver . . . the Curator.”

  “Yup.”

  “Maybe we can get the vampires to talk.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed, though probably not.

  She stepped away from me, surveyed the bar room. “This is my curse I think. Killing people. Being apart from people. So scared of what’s inside . . . that those I care about might end up like these two if I don’t focus for every second of the day.”

  Guess it was. But she was strong enough to bear it. “Thanks for saving my life.”

  Most the time, my mouth just gets me into trouble. But occasionally it says the exact right thing at the exact right moment.

  Val smiled at me, that star remembering it both kills and gives life. “Anytime, King Henry.”

  “Now I save your sister.”

  She looked doubtful. “How?”

  I couldn’t tell her yet. She’d think I’d cracked. I half thought I’d cracked too, thinking what I was thinking. “We do need to regroup. Let Washington out of the trunk, go back to your parents, let them see you’re okay, ask if Ceinwyn knows anything more. Then we’ll make our next move.”

  “An airplane ride to Seattle?”

  “Yeah, to Seattle.”

  Please know something Ceinwyn, or Jackson, or anyone . . . please don’t make me go to him.

  Annie B is pretty scary. Horatio Vega is even scarier. This Curator might be scariest of all. But only one entity I’ve met haunts my nightmares . . .

  Meteyos.

  Session 29

  The hum of the Asylum’s especially annoying alarm brought a smile to my face. A real smile for once. Not often I show those. Feral grin . . . sure. Smirk . . . that too. Real smile . . . very rare. Ceinwyn Dale I’m not.

  I was exhausted, but I hardly felt it. Too excited, too amped up for what was going to be an amazing day. Day went the way I planned it . . . oh shit would it give me a revenge chubby. Day went the way it wasn’t supposed to go then that meant I got to play another match of Winter War against the Eriksons. Not so bad for a consolation prize.

  Exhausted: a night in the Infirmary, training and Winter War watching the next day, then a night sneaking around the Asylum with Raj at my back. Poor guy, he was out of his element. More ways than one. Cryomancers don’t burn hot enough for revenge. Don’t have what it takes to stoke the fire. They say revenge is a dish best served cold, but that’s a lie people tell. Revenge is hard to come by, so they take the cold scraps and call it good. Hot revenge, messy, wonderful, in your face, nothing-can-stop-it revenge . . .

  The earth we walk is cold . . . but if you dig deep enough you’ll always find magma.

  I like my revenge served hot.

  Just like a hot stack of pancakes.

  Just like a warm, slightly crisped waffle.

  Who don’t love pancakes and waffles for breakfast?

  I know the Eriksons do . . . know most the school does . . .

  Exhausted or not, I popped out of bed ready to sing a song with some blue cartoon birds flapping around me tweeting the chorus. I opened my cupboard, pulled out the black necromancer colors of my Winter War team, and laid them out like a good boy. I’d have whistled but that would have made my class suspicious.

  I wanted my gift to be a surprise for them too.

  Curtain open, I waved at a few of the other kids as I made my way to the showers. Pocket nodded, having a hard time waking up. Instead of dodging Naomi and her friends who wanted to ask him out, he’d spent yesterday dodging a Naomi who wanted to chew him out for not picking her. Naomi had even confronted Sabine about stealing her date. Really shouldn’t have slapped her . . . not worth the black eye Naomi got in return.

  Raj couldn’t meet my gaze. He’d tried to talk me out of what I did no less than four times. I’d eventually told him a lie about how Miranda liked rebellious guys—which she could. I mean . . . I don’t know how ginger minds work—and that shut him up long enough to be a good lookout.

  Miranda herself scowled at me as I walked past. Nothing new there.

  Valentine smiled at me. “You strutting?”

  “Always!”

  “Hard to tell with such little legs,” she teased.

  Scowl from Hope, roll of the eyes from Debra, fierce concentration from Welf. Door, common room, showers.

  Isabel waited for me like a tiger prepared to pounce. And she was a tiger . . . or a fox. Not the same girl she’d been first year, not at all. She changed her appearance monthly by Bi. It would eventually be weekly and then almost every day. Damned confusing if she wouldn’t have been in her colors and wearing a name tag. That morning she was hot stuff, five feet and ten inches maybe, curly black hair, Victoria’s Secret frame of legs that went forever, tight muscles, and just the right amount of tit to perfectly use a push-up bra.

  I flinched at the sight of her. Unlike Pocket, I only had one crazy girl following me around and I’d gotten good at dodging her. Except I have to bathe and I have to sleep, so . . . caught at last, King Henry. “Hey . . . Isabel . . . good . . . um . . . morning and all . . .”

  I knew what her body looked like since she’d already removed her clothes and had both her red and white corpusmancer coat and pants draping over an arm. Nothing left but Asylum-issued underwear. “Like this one?” she asked me.

  Her voice was the same. Argentinean being washed out by America. The voice . . . only way to tell. Only thing that kept Prince Henry from running the show, knowing it was really weird Isabel with pounds of corpus-anima manipulation. “It’s nice, make it yourself or out of one of your magazines?”

  “All me,” she said, shifting to show off the legs. So long . . .

  “You’ve gotten really good at it,” I said, all nice and oblivious. Pretending to be oblivious was the only thing that kept her at too-interested-teenage-girl crush instead of at stalker-pure-nutso-have-a-shrine crush.

  Disappointment flooded her face, all hard edges and slanting eyes. “See anything I could improve?”

  I shrugged, like I’d been caught stealing, as I slid around her and into the boys’ shower. “You know me, I like everything.”

  Behind me I heard a low whisper, “Apparently not me . . .”

  Love’s fucked—how many times I got to say it to convince you, kiddies?

  [CLICK]

  The whole school converged on the Cafeteria every morning. The watering hole—the one place where predators and prey played nice. Everyone needs water. Don’t attack us and we won’t keep you from drinking, Lion. Okay, Zebra. All nice and friendly.

  Unless some crazy motherfucker poisons it . . .

  With cyanide.

  Kidding.

  With laxative.

  Can you blame me? They left me alone in the Infirmary all night, what did they expect would happen? Of course I explored. Of course I raided the supplies. Getting the bottles into a backpack and out of the Infirmary the next morning was harder than opening the locks with a blast of geo-anima. Enough time and enough geo-anima and I could rob Fort Knox blind. What’s a medical lockup compared to that?

  Do you kno
w that some laxative bottles come by the gallon?

  I waited in line like everyone else. It’s a surprisingly efficient operation. Not that the whole Asylum ain’t surprisingly efficient itself. Feeding, clothing, teaching, and caring for almost two-thousand kids takes some planning. Takes some major efficient if you don’t want the place to explode every other week.

  Walk up to the line. Wait your turn. Get to the front of the line and give your order off of the menu for the day. Wait a couple more minutes for the plates to be handed out and then—blam—breakfast is served.

  That particular day, they had crossed off the usual favorite menu items of sausage and bacon from the list. Apparently, someone had played a prank and dumped the morning’s supply in the middle of the Field. Wolfgang von Welf and the other faunamancers had to spend an hour fighting off all the crows before anyone could clean it up.

  Every single kid got to the front of the line, saw the change, and frowned over the slim pickings. “Pancakes I guess,” they’d say.

  Or a waffle.

  Sometimes just chopped fruit or cereal, or with eggs on the side, but almost always pancakes or a nice big fluffy waffle. All that sweet batter; made the night before and left chilling in a huge vat. Where anyone could come in and dump something inside . . .

  “Hash browns and eggs,” I told the order-taker chick. Not sure if they have some fancy food title or not.

  Raj came up behind me. “Just cereal,” he said, shaking a little bit and watching all the plates of waffles and pancakes. “We are horrible people, King Henry.”

  Having been at the front of the class, I waited long enough for Pocket to slide up. I leaned over to whisper at him, “No pancakes or waffles, okay?”

  Pocket squinted at me. “Dude?”

  I gave my guilty-but-don’t-care shrug. “Tell the rest of the class but don’t tell them it was from me.”

  Pocket kept squinted as I pulled Raj forward to get our food. “Dude?” he asked again.

  “See, we warned some of them.”

  “We are horrible people.”

  “We’re protecting our class.”

  “Horrible, horrible people.”

  “And impressing the girls.”

  Raj sighed. “Why can’t women just be impressed by men being nice, respectful, and intelligent?”

  “Good thing they’re not . . . or I’d be up shit creek without a paddle.”

  We got our food and went to the table marked for our class. I took the time to find the Eriksons, who sat with their team instead of by class. Usually their years would put them on the second floor but Winter War mixed things up. Teams on the first floor, everyone else on the second floor. Lucky for me, I got to see their plates. Big ol’ huge stacks of yummy yummy pancakes.

  Besides the Eriksons, all the other teams were there. Singles with Vicky Welf being her usual bubbly not-very-Welf self. Tri’s with Leo looking aggrieved, chatting with Jacob Walden and a few of his other friends. Quads, the Three Queens surrounded by the Blackjacks, safe as can be and lucky for them eating chopped fruits. Three Queens . . . soon bitches, you’ll be the enemy, just give me a few more hours going my way.

  Raj poked his cereal with a plastic spork. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

  “What?”

  “Shit.”

  “Raj . . . you cursed. Am I a good influence, or what?”

  “No, I used a word descriptively.”

  “The ‘it’s just a female dog’ or ‘vagina is a medical term’ loophole, is it? I still have much to teach you, Young Padawan.”

  Pocket sat down with a double helping of eggs. “Mind explaining what’s going on?”

  “Did you warn the class?”

  He sighed over his eggs. “Yeah, but only a few of them bought it. Val, Miranda, Jesus, Welf’s group, believe it or not. Naomi ordered pancakes just to spite me.”

  “Poor, poor Naomi,” Raj moaned in ethical agony.

  I smiled in pure joy around a bite of hash browns. “We tried.”

  Pocket flinched at the smile. “Whoa . . . that’s scary.”

  The class sat down around us to eat. Over on the other side of the Cafeteria, one of the Honey Badger kids got up in a hurry and sprinted for the bathrooms. I’m not a doctor—so I can’t be sure—but I think the laxative bottles I stole might have been concentrated.

  [CLICK]

  Besides Naomi’s group of girls, who had followed her lead, Class ’09 made it out perfectly.

  The rest of the school . . . not so much. It’s a really good thing they brought in the extra porta potties for the Winter War . . . that’s all I’m saying.

  Our group set up at the staging zone behind the Mound and waited for our semi-final match. We waited a long time. Friends from other classes—those not locked in a bathroom—kept showing up, asking if we’d heard about the food poisoning going around. We’d all nod, a few of my classmates glancing my way suspiciously. I’d just beam a smile back.

  Think that freaked them out more.

  “How did you do it?” Miranda eventually asked me in a whisper.

  “I didn’t,” I lied, “I’m King Henry Price, I’m stupid and stuff, remember?”

  Val leaned in so she was close by my ear. “Felonious, bad tempered, crude, but also a criminal mastermind.”

  “Such flattery won’t win you an answer, Boomworm.”

  “It was in the pancakes I assume,” Miranda theorized for us all. “You stole something from the Infirmary the other night.”

  My guilty-but-I-don’t-care shrug. “I can neither confirm nor deny . . . but Raj helped.”

  Miranda and Val turned to Raj in surprise.

  More than just his shrug looked guilty and all of it cared. “What did I do . . . all those people . . . that smell . . .”

  “But why?” Val asked.

  “Got back at the Eriksons and the Intras who just watched it happen, didn’t I?”

  “And a thousand other people.”

  “A thousand?” Raj squeaked.

  Miranda rolled her eyes. “Not just the students eat at the Cafeteria. Granted, teachers have a different menu than we do and more options—and some eat at home—but I hear they took Mrs. Dingle out on a stretcher.”

  Raj and I shared a look. “We are in so much trouble,” he said.

  “Nah,” I tried to calm him down, “Dingle’s just on a stretcher because they couldn’t find any other way to lift her fat ass.”

  “I don’t want to be expelled,” Raj whimpered.

  “Raj, not making a good impression,” I pointed out.

  Raj’s head snapped up to glance at Miranda. “Right . . . right . . . um . . . aren’t we . . . awesome, King Henry?”

  “That we are, that we are,” I gloated. “Pure badasses.”

  Miranda huffed a bit. “I’m disappointed in you, Raj. I thought you above something like this.”

  Raj’s whole body crushed in upon itself. “But . . .”

  “Pranks! What are we, children?”

  “But . . .”

  “Raj,” I helped him out, “tell her why you eventually agreed with doing it.”

  Raj couldn’t seem to decide what I wanted out of him.

  “The Winter War rules . . .” I helped some more.

  “What does this have to do with the Winter War?” Miranda asked suspiciously.

  Raj told her exactly what it had to do with it, “If a team can’t field fifteen members at the appointed time of the match, then they automatically forfeit. Rule one-hundred and five, in the section concerning match parameters. Apparently in 1962 there was a match where one of the teams was outnumbered two-to-one and after the smaller team suffered even more injuries, one-hundred and five was written in to keep balance and prevent further harm.”

  Val caught on the quickest, being both smart and devious, where Miranda was just smart and oblivious. “You mean that if the Eriksons don’t manage to field fifteen people in an hour from now—we win the semi-final without playing it?”

&
nbsp; I pointed to my partner-in-crime. “That part was all Raj’s idea.”

  Word spread quickly through the class. Raj was even more of a hero than Pocket. Everyone, even Welf, decided to keep the news quiet and to not tell anyone, for fear it would get out to the teachers and we’d be the one’s disqualified. Miranda kept beaming every time she glanced Raj’s way and every time her attention was elsewhere Raj turned to me and muttered a thank you.

  Next to me, this time just as on the outs as I was, Pocket shook his head. “You’re on a roll, dude.”

  “Yeah . . . well,” I muttered to myself.

  “It’s okay,” Pocket said, “I won’t tell anyone you have a gushy center.”

  I nodded. Welf pulled a watch from somewhere and started a countdown, our whole class eyeing the spot where the Erikson Eagles should have been but very much weren’t. I’d later learn that the Eriksons had ordered their whole team to eat pancakes and eggs to build up calories.

  Sometimes you just get lucky.

  “This was the easy part though.”

  “How’s that?” Pocket asked.

  “Now I need to get Miranda to agree to go with Raj and Valentine to agree to go with me.”

  “You got me a date.”

  “On accident.”

  “With a super hot older girl.”

  “On accident.”

  “Or maybe like with Sabine: you should just ask, dude.”

  [CLICK]

  Over the last couple days Raj had given me little bits of what he’d learned by hanging out at the same Library tables as Valentine. It was a surprising amount of shit. Also a surprising amount of useless shit. Raj being Raj he’d concentrated more on things like how Val studied for tests or what books she reads for fun—apparently some weird motherfuckers do this—or what kind of political leanings she has.

  In other words: not the shit I needed to know to woo her. I needed favorite foods, favorite colors, favorite anything the least bit romantic! Not how she held her pencil or that she’s left handed!

  I know what you’re thinking, kiddies, you’re thinking: you bet your love life on a nerd, a nerd attracted to Miranda Daniels . . . of course you’re getting nothing but buckets of fail, King Henry.