by Bryan Chick
Ella crossed her arms and lifted her eyebrows. “No—find a sawmill.”
The boy stopped laughing and his smile went flat. He hurried back over to his parents—or at least the people posing as them.
Ella grabbed Richie’s jacket and hoisted him to his feet. Chameleons slid down his front and peppered the floor. She corrected his wardrobe with a tug here, a pull there. Then she grabbed the sides of his head and forced his gaze onto hers. “You okay?”
Richie nodded.
Once the last of the chameleons had portaled through the Specters’ pockets, Jordynn walked over to the display cabinet and worked the pull tab of the broken zipper free. Then she offered it to Richie. “You’ll want to fix this.”
“Thanks,” Richie said. He plucked his hat free and then slipped the tab into his pocket. Then he remembered the portal and reached in after the zipper piece.
Evie screamed, “Richie—NO!”
Richie pulled back his arm and flung as many as a dozen chameleons into the air. As they landed, they took off in different directions. He held his hand in front of his face. His fingers looked like pieces of chalk.
Evie jumped a few steps forward, saying, “You okay?”
Color seeped upward into Richie’s flesh. Within seconds, he was back to normal.
“What happened?” Megan asked.
Evie said, “His hand—it portaled.”
“I could feel it!” Richie said. “On the other side of the portal—I could feel my hand! Chameleons—they were crawling all over it!”
“You sure you’re okay?”
Richie practiced bending his knuckles and turning his wrist. “I . . . I think so.” His gaze settled on his wrist. “My watch! It’s gone!”
“The chameleons. They stripped it off.”
“But . . . it was my favorite one!”
Ella said, “That plastic watch with Boba Fett on it? Seriously? Didn’t you get that thing from a gumball machine?”
This seemed to irritate Richie. As he forced his hat back on, he said, “No—I get gumballs from a gumball machine.”
“Guys,” Evie said, “you can’t break your zippers. And you can never, ever reach into the portals.”
“So where did his hand go?” Ella said. “The Secret Zoo, I get that. But where in the Secret Zoo?”
Evie frowned. “You really want to know?”
Everyone nodded but Richie, who was doing just the opposite, his bushy pom-pom wobbling around.
“Okay,” Evie said. “I’ll show you. Tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 10
SPIDERS, MAN
In the early evening after their first training with the Specters, Noah found himself home alone. His mom and dad had gone over to Richie’s parents’ house to swap stories and desserts, and Megan was over at Ella’s. Noah did some schoolwork, goofed around on the Wii, and raided the fridge a few times. Around six-thirty, he headed upstairs for a warmer shirt.
In his closet, he was searching for his favorite sweatshirt when he noticed something moving on a pair of jeans: a plump spider, which quickly scurried out of sight.
“Disgusting.”
He snatched up a slipper and held it like a club. As he reached out for his clothes, something threadlike fell across his fingers, and light shimmered on a silvery strand of web. He wiped his hand on his hip, reached out a second time, and slid about five sweatshirts over to one side. A spider appeared, clinging to the wall, perfectly still.
He eased the slipper forward a few inches. The spider kept motionless on the wall, its spindly legs making it look like an asterisk on a blank sheet of paper. As the shadow of the slipper fell onto it, the spider twitched and crawled forward an inch.
“Hold . . . still,” Noah breathed.
As he prepared to deliver a blow, he felt something moving on the arm that was holding back his clothes. Then something else . . . and something else. When he looked and saw more than a dozen spiders crawling on him, he dropped his slipper and started swatting his arm. Some spiders fell to the ground and others had their black guts smeared across his sleeve. He stamped to squash the ones that were scrambling away, but he couldn’t get them all—a few managed to crawl up the wall and escape into the heat vent.
Noah’s eyes widened. The spiders had come from the ductwork in the walls.
He dropped to his hands and knees in front of the vent and pressed an ear to the metal slats. From deep inside came a low groan, and then cool air brushed his cheek. When he saw that two screws secured the vent cover to the wall, he jumped up and rushed out of the closet. In the garage, he snatched a small flashlight and screwdriver from his father’s toolbox. Back in his closet, he went to work removing the screws. The vent cover dropped to the floor with a flat clang, and a rectangular hole stared at Noah like a single black eye in the face of the wall. He shined the flashlight inside, revealing the steel duct, which made an immediate right turn for the basement.
He eased himself forward. With his face and the flashlight just inches from the open vent, he stopped. Would the duct be full of spiders? Was the magic of the Secret Zoo—the magic he’d seen in the cellar of Clarksville Elementary and in the pockets of the Specters—involved here? Was DeGraff behind this? Or was so much going on in Noah’s life that his imagination was overwhelming him?
He worked up his courage and stared into the hole, aiming his flashlight into the depths to reveal what there was to be seen. Nothing. There was no mold, and Noah couldn’t even locate the spiders that had crawled away.
A familiar click from far below revealed how the furnace was ramping up to heat the house again. A soft, cool wind began to tousle his hair; seconds later, the wind turned warm.
Noah pulled back his head and sat wondering about the spiders.
He screwed the vent cover back on, stood, checked his clothes on the rack for more spiders, found a few, and then squashed them. On his way downstairs to return his father’s tools, he made a mental note to discuss with the scouts all the weirdness he’d been experiencing in his closet. Maybe they’d have an idea about what was going on.
CHAPTER 11
THE STREETS OF TRANSPARENCY
“No . . . way,” Richie said.
The scouts were on the Streets of Transparency. Just inside the portal, they’d halted so suddenly that the rubbery soles of Richie’s running shoes had squeaked and Ella had bumped into Richie’s back.
“No . . . way,” Richie said again in a perfect echo.
The scouts were on a bumpy cobblestone street that was little more than a narrow alley. On both sides rose walls with intricate stonework, weighty wood doors, and windows with no glass. Short bridges reached across the alley, and beneath canvas awnings, iron railings boxed in balconies.
Parts of the alley were covered with thousands of colorful chameleons, and other parts were . . . gone. Or seemed to be, anyway. Street signs hovered in the air; tree branches didn’t have any trunks; the corners of buildings and doorways were chipped away; colorful awnings and iron balcony rails were full of holes—holes that seemed to be moving.
“Uhhh . . .” Ella said, tipping her head so her ponytail dangled down her back. “I’m thinking . . . weird.”
Noah said, “The chameleons . . . they’re doing this, right?”
“Of course,” Evie said. “Camouflaging—it’s just what chameleons do. Sometimes they even mirage.”
“Mirage?” Noah said, remembering that Mr. Darby had mentioned this. “What’s that?”
“It’s an advanced Specter move,” Evie said. Then she glanced over at her friends. “Should I show them?”
The other Specters stayed quiet. Finally, Lee-Lee shrugged to show she didn’t care.
Evie opened one pocket and a line of chameleons streamed out and spread across her body. Strips of her faded away and then came back into focus looking different. Her skin tone lightened. Her shoulders and hips seemed to narrow, and she shrank a few inches. Eyeglasses appeared on her face, and her long bangs now seemed tucked up under the broad, ribbed cuff
of a red winter cap. Evie wasn’t Evie anymore. She was Richie.
The real Richie gasped.
“No way!” Ella said. “How . . .” Her lips moved into different shapes, producing no sound.
The Richie that was Evie smiled. “Like I said, it’s an advanced move.” Evie’s voice was her own. “Comes from years of practice—of being so close to the chameleons. We think, they do. We imagine—they create.”
Richie took a cautious step forward. He touched Evie’s arm, shoulder, head. He peeled back one side of her open jacket and saw his pocket of nerd-gear. Then he took a step back and looked into his own jacket. “They’re not the same,” he said. “You’re missing some things.”
“Miraging works that way. I created the image from my memory. It’s not like I pay attention to that stuff you carry around.”
Ella said, “Man! When do we learn to do that!”
“You don’t,” Evie said. “We barely have enough time to teach you how to ghost. And so far you’re not real good at that.”
The real Richie still looked ready to faint, and his eyes kept shifting in their sockets. “I can’t . . .” His voice trailed off and his expression changed with a new thought. “Oh my . . . Am I really that skinny?”
Ella laughed. “Turn sideways, Evie. Show him.” When Evie did, Ella added, “See? You almost disappear, wafer-boy.”
Richie’s jaw dropped down a few inches. “But my butt . . .”
“Yeah . . .” Ella said. “Practically inverted, we know.”
The mirage of Richie began to break up as ghostly shapes moved across it—the chameleons. Seconds later, the mirage was gone, and Evie stood in its place, looking like her normal self again.
“Come on,” Evie said. “Something you should see.”
“What?”
“The Portal Place. It used to be an old bakery. That should give you an idea of why you never want to do what Richie did yesterday in Penguin Palace.”
As the scouts followed the Specters down the street, Megan said, “Can your portals go anywhere with you? Even beyond the Clarksville Zoo?”
Evie nodded but kept quiet as she led them up a steep flight of stairs and then onto a new street. As Noah’s heels twisted and turned on the bumpy cobblestone, he took in the new-but-familiar sights: arched bridges, dark doorways, glassless windows. He watched as parts of the city seemed to fade away: railings, signs, the peaks of rooftops. Other parts reappeared. Chameleons were crawling in all directions, thousands of tiny eyes staring down on the scouts.
At last, Evie said, “Bhanu didn’t create our portals. We did.”
“The Specters?”
Evie shook her head. “The Secret Society. A team of magical scientists.”
The scouts kept quiet and waited for more as the group continued down the street.
“They were geniuses, and like a lot of geniuses, they didn’t fit in with anyone, so they usually worked by themselves. Somehow they redeveloped Bhanu’s magic and created a velvet curtain—a single portal—which could cross beyond the boundaries of the Clarksville Zoo. But before they could share their findings, they went amiss.”
The scouts knew what this meant. In rare cases, some portals could misfire and cause people and animals to disappear into unknown places.
“Their curtain was stripped down and sent to the lab of the other magical scientists, who studied it for years but could never figure out what made it so powerful. When it was decided to lock the curtain in a secure place, the Descenders petitioned Council for the right to use it. They were granted permission to use half of the curtain—the Secret Council keeping the other half in case of future studies—and the Specters were born.”
“So the Specters are part of the Descenders,” Megan said. “It doesn’t seem that way.”
Evie glanced at Jordynn, who shook her head so suddenly that waves moved through her bushy hair.
“That’s a story for another day,” Evie said. “If ever.”
Noah grunted. Another secret of the Secret Zoo that the scouts weren’t trusted enough to know.
Noah said, “DeGraff—he found a way to portal beyond the Clarksville Zoo. You think his magic is as strong as yours?”
Evie and the other Specters stopped walking and turned to a small shop where an open door separated two bay windows. Bright chameleons spotted the door frame and panes of glass, and a near-invisible sign beneath a near-invisible awing read, “i y r at nd Se o e ts.”
“City Treats and Sector Sweets,” Evie read, filling in the letters the chameleons had camouflaged. “The Portal Place is inside.”
“Evie—what about DeGraff?” Noah said.
Evie tipped her head to one side and allowed her bangs to slip across her face. “Kid—he’s only getting started.”
Before Noah could respond, she tiptoed through the chameleons on the porch and passed through the open door of City Treats and Sector Sweets. Glass display cabinets ran along three of the walls. Once upon a time they’d undoubtedly been filled with donuts and muffins. Now they had mounds of chameleons. The colorful lizards also covered the counters, the ovens, the registers.
Noah looked over the Specters: Kaleena’s long braids; Jordynn’s wild tuft of hair; Lee-Lee’s long, curling eyebrows. They were stepping into open spots on the floor, careful not to squash any chameleons beneath their black boots and bright hiking shoes.
Noah saw that his legs, from the knees down, had turned invisible. Same with the other scouts and Specters. The chameleons were running across their feet.
A chameleon fell off an overhead chandelier, landed on Ella’s head, and got tangled in her ponytail. As she tried to yank it away, she accidentally tore off its tail. She shrieked and violently shook her head, flinging what was left of the reptile across the room. When she spotted Richie laughing, she tossed the severed tail at him.
“Real funny!” she said.
“It was just its tail!” Richie chuckled. “It’s not like you killed it!”
“I’m not worried about the chameleon—I’m worried about me!” She reached up and combed her fingers through her ponytail. “So gross—I probably have invisible guts in my hair!”
Evie led the group into the back of the store. After all the spectacles of the Secret Zoo—the flowering abyss of the Forest of Flight, the snowy tundra of Arctic Town, the slides and waterfalls of the Wotter Park—the simplicity of the Portal Place was a bit surprising. The ordinary room, packed with chameleons, held two steel storage racks. From each rack hung twelve canvas packs arranged in pairs; brown and plain, they looked a lot like potato sacks.
“This is it?” Richie asked.
“What did you expect from an old donut shop?”
Chameleons crowded the racks, their feet curled around the steel rods. Thousands of independent eyes looked off in all directions.
Evie said, “Now you understand why it’s important to close your portals.”
“What are they doing?” Megan asked.
“Waiting,” Evie answered.
“For what?”
“For this.”
Evie reached down and unzipped her left pants pocket. From a bag on the storage rack came the unmistakable sound of a zipper—dozens of metal teeth pulling apart, a sound clearly amplified by the magic in Evie’s pocket. A small cluster of chameleons jumped to attention and slipped into the pack, then immediately appeared on Evie, a line of twenty scurrying up her leg. They spread out, camouflaging her. Evie’s left pocket closed and the right opened. As the chameleons retreated into it and appeared back on the rack, Evie slowly became visible, her hands on her hips.
“Try it,” Evie said. “Get a feel for how quickly the chameleons respond.”
The scouts glanced at one another, a bit uncertain, then opened their left pockets. They began to practice portaling chameleons from the storage rack to their bodies, drifting in and out of visibility. After a few minutes, Richie pointed across the room and said, “Look! Boba Fett!”
“Can’t be,” Ella sai
d. “He bit the dust in episode five, remember?”
“My watch!”
It was wrapped around the body of a large, blue chameleon, which had apparently wriggled its way into the plastic band.
“That belongs to me!” Richie said. He began to walk toward it but stopped when the chameleon and the watch disappeared.
“Forget it,” Evie said as she stared out at the writhing mass. “It’s not worth the trouble—believe me.”
Richie continued to gaze at the spot where his watch had been. “First my shoes . . .” he said, referring to how an ape had stripped off his running shoes on his first time in the City of Species, “and now this! I’m going to end up without any clothes!”
“Yikes!” Ella said. “Let’s just hope you’re invisible when it happens.”
Evie motioned for the door. “C’mon, we need to get back to the Clarksville Zoo. You got another chance to get this right. And this time, there won’t be any actors.”
CHAPTER 12
SNICKERS SNATCHERS
“Where we going?” Ella asked once the scouts and Specters had portaled back to the Clarksville Zoo.
“PizZOOria. You guys up for a snack?”
“As always,” Richie said. “And, as always, no cash. Can someone float me a few bucks?”
A few of the Specters chuckled.
“You’re not going to need to pay,” Sara said. “When you’re ghosted, everything’s free.”
“But . . . that’s stealing,” Megan said.
Sara made a strange sound—part laugh, part grunt. “For you . . . it’s practice.”
“I don’t know . . .” Richie said in his usual trembling voice. “There are rules for—”
“Rules don’t apply to ghosts.”
Noah felt a surge of excitement. Hadn’t some buried-deep piece of him always wanted to shrug away the endless restrictions kept on him? No fussing, no back talk, no texting at the table, no phone calls after ten o’clock. Noah wasn’t even permitted to choose his bedtime. The Specters—they seemed to answer only to themselves.
They merged onto the sidewalk and headed through Arctic Town. Noah thought of Blizzard again, and he wondered if it would be okay to steal if it was part of an attempt to rescue his friend.