A World of Trouble

by T. R. Burns

  I quickly assess the situation. The air’s warm, but not hot. I don’t see flames, and I certainly don’t hear them over the noise, which I assume is the helicopter’s engine preparing to combust. I don’t smell smoke either. The opposite wall’s still crumpling, probably melting from heat I don’t yet feel, but it’s pretty far away.

  So I press my hands to the wall on either side of the doorway. Push with every iota of strength my linguine-like arms can muster. And lift myself up and inside.

  The helicopter holds steady as I scurry down the front of the couch. I can just reach the stuffed animal’s horn without coming off the sofa. Trying to take the whole bag might jiggle the coatrack and send things flying, which could make the helicopter fall completely on its side—with me stuck in the cabin. Instead I grab the horn between my pointer finger and thumb, hold my breath, and gently pull. It takes a little wiggling and a lot of patience, but eventually the unicorn drops from the bag and into my arms. I zip it inside my coat, then shimmy backward as fast as my hands and knees will move.

  I’m halfway to freedom when I spot a stick figure screaming for help. He could also be laughing. It’s hard to tell when the face in question consists of three dots and one line. The important thing is that he’s screaming or laughing from the pages of Abe’s drawing pad, which is wedged between an end table and a magazine rack.

  I shift my position slightly, reach forward, and tug it toward me, inch by inch. It slides out fairly easily—until the spiral binding catches. The space between the end table and magazine rack is too narrow for it to pass through. Holding my breath again, I give the pad one last, quick yank.

  The spiral binding bends. The pad slips out.

  The helicopter drops.

  I stay perfectly still for a few seconds. When there’s no more movement, I look between my legs, toward the door. The ground’s closer, but I’m guessing there’s still two feet or so between it and the aircraft. For someone who’s barely cracked five feet, that’s plenty of room.

  There’s still no sign of smoke or flames, so right now my biggest concern is getting out before the chopper lands completely on its side, blocking my only exit. Following close behind is my concern that I’ve saved something of Gabby’s and something of Abe’s, but nothing of Lemon’s.

  I scan the cabin. The first thing I see is my best friend’s favorite matchstick-shaped lighter. I change direction and lean forward until my belly hits the floor. The lighter’s stuck in the other couch, between the cushion and the frame, which is likely where Lemon put it, out of habit, before taking a nap. He always slips fire-starting supplies between the mattress and box spring before going to bed each night. I know, because I always take them out so he can’t reach for them in his sleep.

  Fortunately, the thickest part of the lighter, the matchstick tip, is sticking out. I strain until my right shoulder feels like it’s going to pop out of my socket, and am just able to take the tip between my pointer and middle fingers.

  I tug. The lighter slides out.

  I shove it in my coat pocket and shimmy backward.

  The helicopter drops.

  This movement is harder, sharper. It makes pillows fly from the couch. Paintings fall from the wall. Water bottles and juice boxes tumble from an open refrigerator near the cockpit’s silver curtain.

  I cover my head with both hands. This sends me off balance—and sliding back. Fast. Too fast. My legs shoot through the open door. I reach out one arm and flail my hand at something, anything. My fingers graze something cool and hard, and tighten instantly.

  “Seamus!” GS George shouts off in the distance.

  I look down. The gap between the ground and the helicopter’s side is narrowing. But I can’t go. Not yet.

  I force my left arm parallel to my right. My fingers intertwine around the coffee table leg. A groan spurts from my pressed lips as I pull my body up. My weight shifts the table, which is good and bad.

  Bad because something that was lodged between the coffee table and the couch breaks free, falls—and slams into my ribs.

  And good because that something is my K-Pak.

  I shove the mini computer down the front of my coat. Then I reach my right hand toward the back of an armchair. The left toward the open refrigerator door. The right toward the cockpit partition. The left toward a dangling seat belt. I move slowly, carefully, as if hanging from monkey bars set over a pit of flames. Which, let’s face it, is pretty much what I’m doing.

  The pounding grows louder. The crumpling wall closer. My palms sweatier.

  But finally I see it. I see them. Ms. Marla and Rodolfo.

  I inhale until lung hits bruised rib. Stretch one arm forward. Lunge.

  I snatch the photo from the scrambled computer screen on the first try. This is good, since one try is all I have time for.

  The helicopter drops again. Through the windshield, I see a gray lizard skitter across the ground.

  It’s inches away.

  “Seamus!”

  That was Lemon. I had no idea his voice could reach such volumes.

  “Sorry, Mr. Rex,” I whisper to the scary cat-rat glaring at me from the out-of-reach cup holder.

  Then I slip the photo inside my coat-sleeve cuff. And move.

  The next two minutes are a blur. All I can think is that for the first time, I’m glad I’m short. Because if I were any taller, I wouldn’t be able to squirm out of the eight-inch gap between the helicopter and ground a millisecond before the two crash together. Or run as fast. Or duck under cactus arms without having to shift direction and lose time.

  Or hide behind the crooked, rusty DESERT FLOWER FILL ’N’ FUEL sign.

  At minute three, though, things start to clear up.

  Starting with the air. When the helicopter collapses, the propeller arms, which are still moving slowly, snap off, one by one. The dust settles. Soon I have an unobstructed view of the damaged aircraft half a mile away. It’s in bad shape, but it’s not on fire. It groans and wheezes, but it doesn’t explode.

  A quick glance behind me shows GS George and the rest of Capital T hiding behind old gas pumps. An ice cooler. A mountain of shredded rubber tires. I try to catch GS George’s eye to see if he has any idea what’s happening, but he doesn’t look away from the helicopter. It’s like he’s mesmerized. Hypnotized.

  When I turn back, I see why.

  The deafening drumming? That wasn’t the chopper engine getting ready to combust.

  That was people. Kids. They’re running around like numbers without decimal points, as Dad would say, so it’s hard to know exactly how many there are. I count at least ten. They all yell. Laugh. Beat their fists against metal. Break windows. Climb in and out of the chopper cabin.

  All of them, that is, except one. Who stands off to the side and occasionally chimes in with a halfhearted whoop or holler, but mostly stares at the ground.

  Fiddling with her long red braid.

  Chapter 20

  DEMERITS: 465

  GOLD STARS: 300

  Elin—”

  A hand clamps over my mouth. It smells like pencil lead, so I assume it’s Abe’s. I try to wriggle free, but not for long. Because as we watch, a tall, wide figure scales the fallen helicopter. At the top, which is really the beaten-in side, he pounds his chest with both fists. Howls. Grunts. The other kids form a loose circle around the chopper and do the same. Then the leader, who’s so big he makes Bartholomew John look like a munchkin, releases one final ah-WOOO, pumps his fists in the air, and jumps to the ground. They turn and run, abandoning the helicopter and leaving a thick brown cloud in their wake.

  “Animals,” Abe says, releasing my mouth.

  “Elinor.” I spin around and face GS George and Capital T, who come out of their hiding spots. “She was there. I saw her. We have to go before they—”

  “Do to us what they just did to that fine piece of machinery?” GS George finishes. “You’re right. We do.”

  He pushes past us and starts jogging.

&nb
sp; “Don’t move!” he calls over his shoulder. “I’ll see if I can salvage her!”

  By “her” I think he means Elinor and by “salvage” I think he means save. My heart lifts. But then he reaches the helicopter, pats its side, and gives one of the broken blades a peck, like the chopper’s a sick Cornish rex in need of some TLC. As he enters the cockpit through the hole left by the shattered windshield, I realize he intends to fix our ride so we can leave ASAP. And my heart sinks.

  I turn to my alliance-mates. “We can’t go. Not yet.”

  “Um, did you see the same thing we did?” Abe asks. “Those kids—if you can call them that—were out of control.”

  “All the more reason to rescue Elinor,” I say.

  “But how?” Gabby asks. “We don’t know where we are, who they are, or where they went. All we know is that they can kill a helicopter with their fists. I’m all for a fun troublemaking adventure, but that’s enough to get me on the first flight out of here.”

  I try to answer her questions. “We’re in Arizona. I saw that on the cockpit computer map before we lost control and started falling. We must be near, if not in, Blackhole because those kids, who are probably Elinor’s new classmates, reached us really fast. And they must’ve run back to their school, because besides this ancient rest stop, there doesn’t seem to be anything else around for hundreds of miles.”

  “Wrong,” Abe says.

  I look at him. He bends down and picks up a faded, rusty sign.

  1 MILE TO MAIN STREET!

  STROLL & SHOP THE BEST STRETCH IN THE WEST!

  TRY OUR WORLD-FAMOUS PRICKLY PEAR PUDDING!

  MINUTES AWAY FROM HISTORIC ROUTE 666!

  “Isn’t it Route sixty-six?” I ask.

  “Isn’t six-six-six a bad number?” Gabby asks. “Like if you dialed it on a phone, you’d reach the devil?”

  I don’t want to think about this. Fortunately, Lemon distracts us with another question.

  “Which way?” He nods to the red arrow at the bottom of the sign. It points to the right, but since the sign was on the ground it’s hard to know where it originally stood.

  Before we can guess, fast footsteps sound behind us. I spin around and see GS George running.

  “Bad news,” he gasps, out of breath, when he reaches the gas station. “It’s broken. They stripped the engine. And dismantled the electrical system. And took the computer. I can’t fix it. Not by myself.”

  Two thoughts come to mind immediately.

  The first is that if GS George can’t fix the helicopter, then we can’t leave. And if we can’t leave, we can try rescuing Elinor.

  The second is more of a question.

  If we can’t leave . . . what good is rescuing Elinor?

  “We’ll get help.” I point to the sign. “There’s a town. Towns have cars. Cars need mechanics. I’m sure we can find someone who’ll come take a look at the helicopter.”

  “And how will we explain the helicopter?” Abe asks. “Carrying a bunch of kids and crashing in the middle of the desert? Without alerting everyone in the town and inviting unwanted attention?”

  I frown. Abe seemed to return to his normal self once he was back on solid ground. He has a point. . . . But I still think I like him better scared.

  “It’s worth a shot,” Lemon says. “What other choice do we have?”

  We fall silent as we think about it. Then GS George sighs, unzips his fanny pack, and removes his K-Pak.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Writing Annika.”

  “What? Why?”

  “So she can send someone to get us.”

  “But what about your job?” I ask. “I thought you were afraid of losing it?”

  “I’d rather be out of work than dead in a dust bowl.”

  He starts typing. I want to convince him to give our mission more time, but my head’s spinning too fast. I can’t find the words.

  So I use a visual instead.

  “Ms. Marla!” Beaming, GS George lowers the K-Pak and takes the photo I hold toward him. “Rodolfo! When I didn’t see this in the chopper just now, I didn’t think I’d ever see it again.” He looks at me. “When did you get it? How?”

  “When I was getting these.” I unbutton my coat, remove the stuffed unicorn and drawing pad, and hand them to Gabby and Abe. I take the matchstick-shaped lighter from my pocket and give it to Lemon. “And very carefully.”

  “You thought the helicopter was about to explode,” Gabby says, squeezing her stuffed animal, “and you still went back for these? For us?”

  I shrug. “You came all this way. I had to try.”

  Gabby grins. Abe takes a pencil from behind his ear, scribbles something on a blank piece of paper, and turns the pad around so I can see the smiley face with spiky hair. Lemon reaches over and taps me on the shoulder with his (unlit) lighter.

  “Thanks,” he says.

  “You’re welcome.”

  They’re so appreciative I almost forget my selfish reason for kicking off the gift-giving with GS George’s picture. But then our pilot tucks the photo into the front pocket of his fanny pack and clears his throat.

  “Elinor,” he says, “as in Annika’s niece?”

  Oops. I didn’t mean to say her name in front of him. I didn’t want him to know the emergency that brought us here because I thought it would make him even more determined to take us back. After all, if Annika had wanted Elinor rescued, she would’ve instructed GS George to go get her. At the very least, I thought it’d make him contact Annika to see what she wanted him to do with us before we had a chance to do anything ourselves.

  But I guess the rat-cat’s out of the bag.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “She must be something special for you to go to all this trouble.”

  I look down.

  “All righty.” He claps once, snapping my head back up. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to e-mail my good buddy, GS Carl. He’s a techno whiz and knows the ins and outs of that machine back there better than the machines that made it. Without giving anything away, I’ll see if he can help me figure out how to get it running again. While I’m doing that, you four are free to do what you’d like. Chase tumbleweeds. Eat prickly pear pudding. Find your friend. Whatever. If I don’t know what you’re up to, I can’t worry about whether I should report you. Fair?”

  “Definitely.” I smile.

  “Good.” He checks his watch. “It’s ten p.m. Mountain Standard Time. You have an hour.”

  “An hour?” Abe scoffs. “Town’s a mile away. We don’t even know if that’s where the school is.”

  “Should I make it half an hour?” GS George asks. “Troublemakers usually work best under pressure.”

  “We’ll take the hour,” I say quickly. “Thank you. Really.”

  He tips his invisible hat and shuffles backward. “Meet back at the chopper. Don’t be late. I won’t wait.”

  He turns and starts running. Gabby hurries after him.

  “Where are you going?” I shout.

  “To get my backpack! We need supplies!”

  This GS George responds to. “Don’t bother!” he hollers without turning around. “They took it all! Backpacks, K-Paks, juice boxes . . . There’s nothing left!”

  Gabby slows to a stop.

  “That’s strange,” Lemon says.

  “And mean.” I shake my head. “What kind of kids would hijack a grounded helicopter in the middle of nowhere, scare off its stranded passengers, and steal everything inside? We’re training to become professional Troublemakers, and even we wouldn’t—”

  Lemon stops me by pressing the tip of his lighter to my arm. “Not that,” he says. “That.”

  I hear it before I see it. A steady, constant crunching. A gentle rumbling. A soft squealing that makes me think of Wheezing Willie back home. Of course, Willie gets his name from wheezing, not squealing, but the sound that pierces my ears every time he hits the brakes is the same.

  As the rumblin
g grows louder, I understand why.

  It’s a school bus. Or what looks like it used to be a school bus. It’s brown instead of yellow. Its windows are blacked out. The headlights are broken. The name of the district it once belonged to is scratched off the side, revealing dull gray metal beneath even duller paint. Every now and then it squeals and slows down to allow for passing lizards, scorpions, and furry black spiders as big as my head.

  “Gabby!” Abe hisses.

  She’s still standing where she stopped when GS George said there were no supplies left, and now spins around. Spotting the vehicle lumbering toward us, she crouches down and darts back to the rest stop.

  “I didn’t know this was a road,” she whispers, joining us behind the DESERT FLOWER FILL ’N’ FUEL sign.

  Me neither. Because there’s no pavement. There are no lines to differentiate it from the surrounding dirt. There aren’t even tire tracks suggesting it’s an unmarked route only local residents know to travel.

  Still, the strange brown bus is headed somewhere. And right now, with the clock ticking and no other clues, following it is our best bet.

  “Let’s go,” Lemon says, reading my mind.

  We bolt out from behind the sign. As we run we stay low to the ground several yards behind the bus, partially to avoid being seen but also to keep from choking on the sprawling dust cloud the bus’s tires create. The sky darkens the farther we go, but I don’t turn on my K-Pak and Lemon doesn’t flick on his lighter. This also helps keep us from being spotted—and makes it impossible to see the desert creatures all around us. There’s not much that could stop me right now, but if anything can, it’s coming face-to-face with an oversize tarantula.

  After what feels like hours but is probably only five minutes, we pass the first sign since leaving the rest stop.

  NOW ENTERING BLACKHOLE, ARIZONA!

  POPULATION: 1,032 (crossed out), 811 (crossed out), 560 (crossed out), 278 (crossed out), 99

  COME ON IN! STAY A WHILE!

  The next sign appears almost immediately. It’s bigger than the first. A single flickering lightbulb at its base shines on a peeling picture of a pretty neighborhood filled with orange houses.