by Chris McCoy
“Everybody safe?” said Dwack, out of breath.
“I’m fine,” said Dr. Narwhal.
“That was great,” said Vango. “I should have painted that.”
“Ted?” said Dwack. “How are you doing?”
But Ted didn’t even hear the vampire because he was staring at what was coming down through the collapsed ceiling—swarms of Presidential Guards.
The guards were cutting their way down into the tree caves. Ted looked behind him to see if there was somewhere to run, but up and down the corridor, President Skeleton’s troops were busting through the ceiling and barreling through the ACORN fighters, many of whom were too busy freeing themselves and their friends from collapsed branches to realize they were under siege.
A man wearing Victorian dress and riding an antique bicycle—huge wheel in front, small wheel in the back—came roaring out of the ceiling toward Ted, intent on running him over.
Ted reached for his badminton racket but he’d left it where he’d been sleeping. The Victorian bicyclist clipped Ted with his front wheel, cutting his leg and causing him to tumble to the ground. The Victorian whirled on his bike, came pedaling furiously back at Ted, and was about to slice him in half when—
“THEO!” said Vango, soaring through the air and colliding with the cyclist. The bicycle skidded away as Vango landed on top of his target.
“Who is—” was all the Victorian managed to get out of his mouth before Vango plunged a paintbrush into his side, and the Victorian exploded into a purple puddle beneath him.
“Thanks, Vango!” said Ted.
Dr. Narwhal was grappling with a half dozen Presidential Guards and Dwack was sucking blood from a mandrill. Ted forced himself to his feet and tried hard to imagine the battle away. What if the floor of the tree cave became a trampoline that launched the guards back to the surface? What if the ceiling grew vines that let ACORN swing to safety?
“Come on,” said Ted to his arm, but nothing happened. Joelle-Michelle had told him that his brain could do amazing things, but she hadn’t told him how.
All around him, Ted could see that ACORN was being steamrolled by the sheer number of Presidential Guards.
C’mon, brain, do something! Please! he thought.
Down the corridor, Joelle-Michelle was surrounded by fierce Presidential Guards, but as fast as she could kick them with her pointe shoes, new backup guards rushed to join the fight, until there were simply too many coming for her to fight back.
Ted saw a huge locust wrap its wings around her and—WHOOSH!—shoot upward through a hole in the ceiling.
The leader of ACORN had been captured.
“Jo—” yelled Ted, but he couldn’t even get her name out of his mouth before a skull-head moth swooped down and wrapped him up in its wings. Ted felt the moth rocket upward through the same hole through which Joelle-Michelle had been whisked away.
As he started to get dizzy from the ascent, he promised himself that if he ever made it back to Cape Cod, he would stick one of those moth-frying zap-lights out on the back porch and watch bugs cook themselves all night long. Zzzttt.
IV
Carolina was in a bad mood. Though she had explained to Scurvy Goonda that she was sorry for having tormented Ted and that she was in Middlemost to find him and apologize, when the bird skeleton that seemed to be in charge had returned to the room and ordered that Carolina be taken to the dungeon, Scurvy hadn’t objected.
“Please, please tell her that I’m not a threat!” Carolina had said.
“I have observed yer bullyin’ ways fer many years, and a bit of jail time might do ya good,” Scurvy had replied.
Two guards hauled Carolina out of the room and down three flights of stairs into a dingy basement lit by dripping candles. She had seen places like this in horror movies and books about the Middle Ages, but here there were large cracks in the floor from which geysers of natural gas occasionally exploded: pfffft! The guards steered Carolina around the gases, eventually reaching a long row of jail cells.
“In,” said the larger guard, opening the cell with a rusty metal key and pushing Carolina inside.
“See you when you’re old!” said the other guard. With that, both disappeared back the way they had come.
Carolina looked around her cell. The floor was dirt. A heap of sticks in the corner served as a bed. A small window was built into the wall, but when she looked through it, all that she could see was a plaque that read: YOU’RE IN JAIL!
As hopeless as her surroundings were, Carolina had the feeling that she wasn’t completely alone. Mixed in with the harsh pfffft sound of natural gas was the occasional cough or groan—the stone cellar was an echo chamber, and Carolina could hear everything.
“Hello?” said Carolina, and her voice bounced back at her: HELLO-LO-LO …
The only response was a series of wet, hacking coughs.
“I can hear you,” said Carolina.
HEAR YOU—HEAR YOU—HEAR YOU, repeated the echo.
Carolina thought she heard a sputtering sound that could have been somebody or something trying to respond, though it could just as easily have been the normal groaning of a cellar that had thousands of tons of Presidential Palace sitting on top of it. But the sound didn’t repeat itself. Carolina sat down in the corner of the cell and wrapped her arms around her legs.
How did I get myself into this? she thought.
For the next few hours, she tried to distract herself from her predicament by drawing pictures in the dirt. The ground felt warm to the touch. She figured that some sort of scalding natural gas was running directly below her, and she could see a deep crack in the floor on the other side of her cell.
Perhaps, she thought, I’m going to be vaporized? And with that thought in her head, she began to write her will on the wall, using a rock.
To My Family and Friends—
If you somehow get this message—and I don’t even know HOW that would happen, but I don’t have anything else to do down here—I’d like all of my possessions to go directly to my little brother, except for the more adult stuff like my furniture, which my parents bought anyway, so they should probably keep it.
I’d like whatever money I have in my bank account to be used to set up a scholarship at the high school for kids who have been pushed around. Call it the Ted Merritt Memorial Defense Fund. Just have the other students vote—they know who the unpopular kids are. And more than anything, I’d like for someone to apologize on my behalf for the way I have treated Ted Merritt.
Carolina had ground the rock in her hand down to powder; she began searching the floor for another stone to continue her writing.
She had just dug up a perfect piece of granite when she heard a rumble down the corridor. The noise sounded almost like a party approaching at a very fast pace—howling and stomping and a generous amount of cursing.
Carolina pressed her face against the bars of her cell and saw a herd of abstract companions fast approaching, shackled and irritated, forced forward by a battalion of armed guards. Moments later, the companions were streaming past her cell, and she could hear other cells being opened and clanged shut, filled to the brim with new prisoners. There was a battered-looking narwhal, a painter struggling with a guard for control of his paintbrushes, and a vampire with purple-stained hands and a broken fang.
Carolina had become so hypnotized watching the bizarre parade that she hadn’t even heard a female voice talking to her from a few feet away.
“Perhaps you vould like to tell Ted yourself?” said the voice.
“Huh?” said Carolina, still watching the procession, realizing that somebody was addressing her. “What?”
“I just read your vill on the vall,” said the voice, which seemed familiar.
Carolina turned toward the voice, and when she saw who it was, she nearly broke her head on the bars of her cell trying to rush forward.
“CZARINA!” yelled Carolina. She had her hands tied behind her back, waiting to be pushed forward into a c
ell.
“My vord,” said Czarina Tallow. “Dear girl, vy are you here?”
“It’s such a long story,” said Carolina.
“NO TALKING,” said a guard, snapping his whip and peering back at Czarina over the crowd.
“Don’t you DARE yell at her!” said Carolina.
The guard cracked his whip again. “Awfully loud for a prisoner,” he said.
The guards began filling another set of cells and Czarina lurched forward with the rest of the group, disappearing into a clanging box somewhere down the line. She tried to wave goodbye; Carolina could see her pale hand sticking out above the throng.
Soon the door to her cell was yanked open, and a guard started yelling “IN YA GO!” at a rabble of ab-coms. The door clanged shut, and Carolina looked around at a dozen new roommates.
A living statue sat on the floor, fists on his chin, thinking intently. A pink manta ray flew around the cell flapping its fins, trying to fit between the bars. A merman flopped around on the ground until it spiked its trident into the floor and managed to lift itself to a sitting position in the back corner. A large Hawaiian musician leaned against the wall, plucking a ukulele.
In the opposite corner of the cell, a stunning porcelain-skinned ballerina was raising her leg against the bars of the cell, taking her imprisonment as an opportunity to stretch.
Carolina was instantly jealous of the ballerina, but she made a point of being civil.
“I’m Carolina,” she said.
“Un moment,” said the ballerina. “I must do my other leg.”
Carolina fidgeted. She wasn’t used to being the second-prettiest girl in a room—especially in such a very small room—and the ballerina’s fancy accent annoyed her.
“Uh, Carolina? Is that you?”
Carolina turned to find herself face to face with Ted Merritt, who was sitting in the middle of the floor. His hair hung down over his forehead and his entire body was stained purple.
“It is you,” said Ted. “Uh, hello?”
“Hi, Ted,” said Carolina. “I’m really glad to see you. Even here.”
The ballerina stopped stretching and turned to see what was going on. Ted and this girl know each other?
“You know my name?” said Ted.
“Of course I know your name,” said Carolina.
“Why are you here?” asked Ted. “I mean, this is such a weird place to see you.”
“I actually came to apologize.”
“For what?” he said.
“For the way I’ve treated you through high school,” said Carolina. “And through junior high.”
Ted thought about this.
“And middle school,” Ted added.
“What did I do in middle school?”
“You destroyed a Christmas ornament I made for my mother,” said Ted.
“Wow,” said Carolina. “I’m an awful human being.”
“Terrible,” said Joelle-Michelle, suddenly paying much more attention.
Ted didn’t say anything.
“You’re not saying anything because you really do think I’m an awful human being,” said Carolina.
“I’m not saying anything because I’m not sure what you want me to say,” said Ted.
“The whole reason I’m here, the whole reason I tracked you down, is because I wanted to say I’m sorry. For everything,” said Carolina.
Ted paused.
“I always wondered how you lived with yourself,” he said.
“I can’t. I want to change,” said Carolina. “Czarina Tallow is my imaginary friend. I didn’t want to be treated like you, I—”
“I met her. She’s a nice lady,” said Ted. “And she’s a great fighter with her parasol. You should have seen her during the last battle.”
“Do you think there is room for another nut in ACORN?” said Carolina. “I’d like to help.”
“Mon Dieu!” said Joelle-Michelle. “Now we are taking in bullies?”
“Joelle-Michelle,” said Ted. “This is my … my friend? Carolina, this is Joelle-Michelle. She is the leader of ACORN.”
“Ted is our secret weapon,” said Joelle-Michelle. “He is brave. He is imaginative. How could someone like you have bullied him?”
Carolina looked at Ted for an explanation.
“I’m much cooler here than I am in high school,” he said.
V
Trapped with two beautiful girls. Ted wished that Vango were here to paint a picture of this scene.
Carolina tracked me down all the way to Middlemost? he thought. I never even knew that she was capable of emotion, especially guilt.
Carolina was clearly happy that he had accepted her apology, but now the mood had turned strange, with the two rivals sizing each other up from opposite sides of the cell.
“So, uh, Carolina,” said Ted, “I don’t think I’ve talked to you since that Valentine’s Day.”
“Valentine’s Day?” said Carolina.
“Yeah,” said Ted. “Um, Valentine’s Day in third grade. You were the only kid in class who put a card in my mailbox. Thanks for that, by the way.”
Carolina’s face twisted up.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
“She came all this way for you and you haven’t even spoken to her since third grade?” said Joelle-Michelle. “She is very easy, no?”
“You’re the one who isn’t leaving anything to the imagination with that leotard,” said Carolina.
“Ah,” said Joelle-Michelle. “I forgive your lack of culture. These are traditional dance clothes worn on the stage.”
“We’re not on a stage,” said Carolina.
“I am always onstage,” said Joelle-Michelle.
Are two beautiful girls actually fighting over me? Ted was totally fascinated and completely unsure what to do. Should he step between the girls and say something cinematic like “Ladies, ladies—”? Should he point out that they needed to figure a way out of this cell before the guards did whatever they planned to do with them?
At a point of mutual exasperation, Joelle-Michelle and Carolina turned to Ted at the same time.
“I can’t talk to this girl!” said Carolina.
“This vache bores me!” said Joelle-Michelle, calling Carolina a cow.
They both waited for Ted’s response.
“I think you should work it out yourselves,” said Ted, smiling inside as they started arguing again.
But then he heard something.
“Hush!” said Ted, and Joelle-Michelle and Carolina were quiet.
Music. A melody was drifting down from far above; there was no mistaking what it was: Duh, duh, duh-duh! Duh, duh, duh-duh! The wedding march.
“Sounds like President Skeleton and Scurvy Goonda have started their wedding ceremony,” said the living statue.
“Holy crow!” said Ted. “Poor Scurvy.”
The wedding march started again, this time in a different key.
Da, dah, da-da! Da, dah, da-da!
“No,” said Joelle-Michelle. “They are just rehearsing.”
Ted knew he needed to help his friend. Fast. If Scurvy was just upstairs…
“Use your hand!” said Joelle-Michelle.
“What does that mean?” said Carolina.
“I’ve discovered that my hand does weird … things,” said Ted.
Come on, think of a way out of here. He pictured himself turning into a drill and grinding his way upward through the ceiling, or changing the cell bars into chocolate and eating his way through, but nothing happened with his hand, and he felt everybody in the cell looking at him.
“Worthless hand!” yelled Ted, slapping the wall. “Stupid birthmark! Come on, Ted, think!”
Ted’s outburst silenced Joelle-Michelle and Carolina, who had started bickering again. His voice bounced up and down the corridor, echoing off the stone: Come on Ted think come on Ted think come on Ted think …
But the only response came in the form of a hacking cough from the end of the cell block.
The courtyard was nearly perfect. Dozens of tables with tasteful sugared-fruit centerpieces. Hundreds of chairs for less important guests, and a general-admission standing area for abstract companions who wanted a glimpse of the high life but couldn’t swing a formal invitation. There was a stage for the orchestra off to one side, and a mahogany bar off to the other. Dead center at the back of the courtyard loomed a white wedding gazebo decorated with silk bunting and taxidermied doves.
Scurvy and Persephone were sitting on the balcony overlooking the courtyard, at a table piled high with bacon on Scurvy’s side and a half dozen glasses of milk on Persephone’s. Milk was Persephone’s way of getting in shape for the wedding. All that she could improve upon was her skeleton, and she had read in MORE, MORE, MORE magazine that calcium was good for bones. When Scurvy pointed out that the milk wouldn’t do anything because she wasn’t actually digesting it, she shot him such a look that he decided not to mention it again.
“You haven’t touched your bacon, Scurvy-Burvy Glopsy-Gurby,” said Persephone.
“I know, I know,” said Scurvy. “I think I’m gettin’ a wee bit tired of it. Ya’ve probably been feeding me tha equivalent of four or five pigs a day.”
“Seven,” said Persephone. “You’ve been eating seven pigs a day.”
“Seems a mite excessive.”
“Oh, come now,” said Persephone. “I’m just getting my big man happy for our big day. Doesn’t the wedding march sound wonderful?”
In the courtyard, a creature in a powdered wig was playing a grand piano specially imported for the ceremony.
“Louder!” yelled Persephone, and the organist responded.
Duh, duh, duh-duh! Duh, duh, duh-duh!
“Fer me second wedding, we banged out that song on tha side of me ship using cats,” said Scurvy.
“Don’t let’s talk about your other wives!” said Persephone.
“Rightie-o.”
“Put your arm around me,” ordered Persephone.
“But yer on tha other side of tha table, and I’m all tha way over here.”