by Sophie Bell
Opal turned her back to the breeze. In the opposite direction, past the chess tables and the Gazebra and out on the street, she could see Albert’s sandy-blond head bobbing at the counter of the ice-cream truck. The electricity throbbed in her veins: She was sorely tempted to shoot a horizontal lightning bolt all the way across to him and disintegrate their cones. That would buy her some time. But it didn’t seem like the kind of thing an Ultra Violet—an almost Ultra Violet. An Ultra Violet on probation?—would do.
She forged ahead with her questioning.
“So that’s why you asked me about mutants at the street fair,” she prompted Big Red. “Because you knew they’d be the ‘volunteers’ behind the project?”
“You’re legend among the mutants at BeauTek,” he said, for once sounding impressed instead of obnoxious. “The ones who survived the destruction of the Vi-Shush and the ones who got cloned after.”
Opal puffed up with pride in spite of herself. Luckily the mic in her barrette couldn’t amplify her feelings.
“That’s why Sir Louder has us spying on the Ultra Violets,” Jack added offhandedly, grinding his gum. “We haven’t been able to prove it. Yet. But those girls. Obliterated. Her first generation of mutants. She can’t let them derail her new project.”
“You call your mother ‘sir’?” It was off-topic, but so strange that it caught Opal off-guard. She still couldn’t believe that the president of BeauTek was—OMV?—his mom.
“Everyone does,” Jack Baxter stated matter-of-factly. “Your mother included.”
Should have known that! Opal thought, realizing her gaffe too late. Hoping Jack wouldn’t pick up on it, she scrambled to divert his attention. “The Ultra Violets,” she said. “That’s why I needed to meet with you. So that we combine our efforts. I’m working to infiltrate the group at Chronic Prep, but it won’t be easy. Cheri Henderson is a mathematical genius—no doubt she’s run every conceivable algorithm to intercept interlopers. It sounds like you might have an in with Iris Tyler, though.” She chucked her chin at Sebastian.
“Yeah,” Big Red agreed, tugging on the lapels of his black suit jacket. “We’ll break him.”
“Excellent,” Opal commended, drumming the tips of her fingers together in her best imitation of an evildoer. Perhaps too good an imitation. It was as if a taco—a long-ago taco snatched from her lunch tray by a pony-tailed sprite—had snapped in her mind. Because a teensy bit of the bad Opal had returned. Electricity still itched through her system, and a teasing thought tickled her brain. She couldn’t resist saying, “Scarlet Jones might be the toughest nut to crack, but . . .”
“But what?” Lil’ Freckles tensed, his teeth gripping his gum, as he waited for Opal to explain.
“But I believe she could be compromised,” Opal pretended to confide in the salt-and-peppery spy. “The rumor at school is that she’s hopelessly in love with . . .”
She paused for effect and looked from side to side as if she were worried someone else might hear.
Jack lowered his sunglasses to stare at her with his navy blue eyes.
“With?” he pressed, his jaw clenched.
“Why, with you, silly,” Opal purred. Then she stuck out her hand. “Gentlemen,” she ended their meeting, giving each boy a brisk shake before skipping off to catch up with Albert.
No harm was done, really—if anything, a fake relationship between Scarlet and Jack could help the girls counter-spy on the Black Swans. Still, Opal had to smirk. She knew that, wherever the “undisclosed location” was, Scarlet was probably punching holes through its walls right now.
Sometimes, Opal thought naughtily as she accepted her chocolate cone from Albert, you can have your cake—or ice cream, or hot dog cobbler—and eat it, too.
Not About Boys?
ABOVE THE JOAN RIVER, JUST BEYOND THE GAZEBRA, a sparkling white cloud swung back and forth like a rocking horse in the sky. Scarlet Jones was not literally punching holes through the walls of the Ultra Violets’ cloudship. But she was literally bouncing off them.
“‘Hopelessly in love’?!” she quoted for at least the third time as she did another frenzied backflip.
Iris and Cheri covered their heads to block against any stray kicks and tried hard not to laugh. Scarlet was so incensed, it just seemed to prove that Opal’s prank was on target. Strapped into their seats, the two friends fought to keep down their giggles, tears trickling down their cheeks.
“Scarlet!” Candace called from the cockpit, struggling to maintain cruising altitude while the hyperactive supergirl ricocheted around the aircraft. “Chill. Out!”
In response, Scarlet dropped to the floor and rolled up armadillo-style, burying her head in her knees and then screaming until her throat was raw.
Darth wrapped his tail into a turban around his ears. Scarlet’s jeans didn’t do much to muffle the noise.
“Scar,” Iris said. The sharpness of her scream had stopped Iris from laughing for a second, but as soon as she began talking, she started again. “It’s good that—”
“I thought Opal wanted to get back in with the Ultra Violets!” Scarlet shouted, cutting Iris off. “This is how she does it? By selling me out to Jack Baxter?!”
Iris slapped a hand over her mouth to cover her smile and slowly shook her head. Cheri tried next.
“Scarlet, no, I think what Iris was about to say was that if Lil’ Freckles thinks you like him, then we can use that to get closer to him—and to, OMV, his mother!”
“Develon Louder!” Iris exclaimed. “OMV is right.”
“But I don’t WANT to get closer to him!” Scarlet wailed, pounding her feet on the floor with so much power that now the cloudship bobbed up and down in the sky like a giant’s fluffy yo-yo. “Not like that! And definitely not if he is the spawn of Develon!”
“Scarlet, please!” Candace ordered from the pilot’s seat, clutching at the gearshift. The swizzle sporks she’d hung from the rearview mirror clinked and clanged.
Iris and Cheri exchanged looks. “Scarlet,” Cheri said in the soothing voice she usually used on skittish kittens at the animal shelter where she volunteered. “Are you sure you don’t like Jack even a little, alas?”
Scarlet lifted her head from her knees and heaved a deep sigh. Something about her round red face, her long black bangs, and her sprinkling of freckles reminded Iris of a ladybug.
“Of course I like him a little,” she finally admitted through gritted teeth, her eyes clamped shut. “How could I not? He saved my life at Opal’s party! But I can’t fake a crush on him to get intel—even if he is Develon’s son! That would be . . . wrong!”
Suddenly Scarlet’s conundrum didn’t seem so funny.
“I could see how that could get complicated,” Cheri agreed.
“Yeah,” Iris said, then added with bitterness, “though apparently it’s not so hard for Sebastian, who ‘won’t confirm or deny the boyfriend label.’” Jack’s blunt words had given her heartburn. She repeated them verbatim. Then started to cry again. Tears of sadness this time.
“Oh, RiRi!” Cheri gushed with sympathy. She threw an arm around Iris’s shoulders as Scarlet scooted over on her butt to squeeze her legs. Darth hopped up and burrowed into Iris’s lap to provide the group hug with some much needed warm-fuzziness.
After a moment of silence, Cheri breathed, “I’m sooo relieved that Philippe the adorbs busboy is not tangled up in this sordid affair!”
“Girls!” Candace commanded, looking through the rearview mirror at the trio. “Get a grip! This is not about boys! It’s about Projekt BeauTekification—finding out what it is and putting a stop to it. Right?”
“Right,” all three girls mumbled, Iris wiping away her tears, Scarlet crawling over to her seat.
“But are Albert and Opal BF and GF now?” Cheri whispered, so that Candace wouldn’t hear.
“And on the subject of Opal”—oops,
turns out she did hear after all—“what do we think?”
“I think they are BF and GF,” Cheri announced, now that she didn’t have to whisper anymore.
“Not about that!” Candace smacked her forehead, and this time it was her fault that the cloudship glid (we spell it thusly) to one side, almost grazing the glowing plasma globe raised high by the Statue of SynchroniCity out in the harbor. “Do we think she proved her loyalty? Did she pass the test?”
“Maybe I’d better not vote,” Scarlet muttered as she buckled her seatbelt. “I don’t think I can be very objective about it.” Although she’d stopped bouncing off the walls, her heart was still beating against her ribs at the thought of ever seeing Agent Jack Baxter again.
“No way,” Candace said, slowing down the cloudship until it was idling placidly above the water. She spun around in her pilot’s seat to face the Ultra Violets. “This has to be a group decision.”
Iris looked out the windshield at the view. The Statue of SynchroniCity gleamed rose gold in the sunlight, her tourmaline eyes glimmering pink and green, her giant orb fizzling with multicolored filaments. Down below, the Joan River flowed. Every now and then Iris caught sight of a fish flashing electric red or blue. More noticeable were the thick patches of phosphorescent sludge coating the surface of the water like lumpy grellowish porridge. And swarming all around Gazebra Plaza were BeauTek volunteers. Mutants, Iris thought. Yuck. It was difficult to see them clearly from that high above, although their citric grass skirts were hard to miss. If Iris was not mistaken, many of them appeared to be nibbling on ice-cream cones.
“Well,” Iris said, turning back to face the other three, “Opal did get the Black Swans to meet with her, like we asked.” She began to braid one of her ringlets.
“And she did let us mic the conversation,” Candace reminded them.
“The big reveal about, um, Freckles being Develon’s son was major?” Cheri delicately suggested as she filed her pinkie finger with a travel-size emery board. Considering Scarlet’s freak-out, she was reluctant to bring up the boy’s real name again. Go sit with her, she encouraged Darth. You have a very calming influence!
“It was weird to hear Opal talk about us to the Black Swans,” Scarlet said, bending down to pick up Darth, who had just scampered over to her feet. “Even before . . . argh, don’t make me go there again.” She stroked the skunk’s fur, careful not to use too much force, and gently kneaded his little velvet ears.
Iris rushed to fill in the gaps. “Yes, but she didn’t tell them anything new. They already knew about”—she swallowed—“me and Sebastian. And Cher came out as a mathematical genius at Synchro de Mayo. I’m more curious about the whole ‘midnight Sunday’ thing. I wonder what it means . . .”
“That’s only a few days from now,” Cheri said, “so we’d better find out.”
“Is that a yes vote, then?” Candace queried. “All in favor of accepting Opal back into the Ultra Violets, raise your hand.”
None of the three raised her hand.
“Hmmm.” Candace took off her thick black-framed glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “All in favor of rejecting Opal, raise your hand.”
None of the three raised her hand this time, either.
“When you put it that way, it sounds so mean, Candace,” Cheri said.
“I think . . .” Iris was up to her third little braid by now, though each one would start to come undone as soon as she let go of its ends. “I think Opal did what we asked, so we have to let her back in . . . but carefully.”
Scarlet and Cheri nodded. It was as close to a unanimous vote as they were going to get.
Candace spun back around in her pilot’s seat and shifted the cloudship into FLY gear. “That sounds like a solid plan,” she said, steering the aircraft in a wide circle back toward the center of Sync City. “To CVUV?” she asked the girls.
“Actually, Candace,” Iris said, “instead of Club Very, do you think you could drop us off by the harbor?”
Stupid Little Sneezes
“AH-AH-AHCHOOOOPSIE!”
It was a dainty sneeze. As dainty as the sneeze she snoze (that’s also how we spell it—okay, maybe just this once) four years ago in the FLab—the teeny-tiny squeak-sneeze that caused just enough of a change in the air currents to blast a beaker of radioactive goo clear across the room. But that’s almost ancient history now, considering this is book three. Today’s particular sneeze of Cheri’s took place out in the open. Alongside the Joan River.
Greezumtite! Darth thought, his head poking out of Cher’s tote bag, his nose twitching.
Candace had piloted the cloudship back over Chrysalis Park, lowering it right above the grassy knoll where the girls so often hung out—most recently for their post–Synchro de Mayo picnic. The teenius figured that a cloud sitting close to a hilltop wouldn’t be as suspicious as a cloud dropping all the way down into, for example, a parking lot. With an adios toot of the cloudship’s horn, she’d floated off again toward the spires of Sync City while the girls strolled down to the orange-brick promenade, then along the latticework Plexiglas fence, until they reached the cove behind Gazebra Plaza.
“Opal sneezed, too,” Iris said, rummaging around in her messenger bag and finding a tissue for her friend. “Did you notice that?” By now, all the little braids she had woven into her hair had unraveled, and the breeze off the river blew a few purple tendrils across her face. She frowned as she gathered up her long locks and looped them into a loose knot. “So did Sebastian,” she felt compelled to mention. It was so unfair, she thought, how once you liked somebody, you ended up noticing every little thing about them. Every stupid little thing! Like when they sneezed. They might not even like you anymore, and you didn’t want to still care about something as trivial as them sneezing. But you still did. So. Unfair!
“I wonder if Opal is off hanging out with Albert,” Cheri mused, dabbing her nose. “I wonder where they went after. And what they did!” Her green eyes glittered with the possibilities.
Scarlet didn’t say anything. She just tugged on the end of her ponytail and traced her pointed toe across the thin crescent of sand in ronds de jambe en terre.
On the touchscreen of her tablet computer, Iris checked the GPS coordinates of a blinking red dot, then bent over the nearest garbage can and reached in. “Here’s her mic,” she said, Opal’s discarded barrette pinched between her thumb and forefinger. She held it up for Cheri and Scarlet to see. “She must have trashed it right after she left the Black Swans.” Grimacing, Iris dusted off the hair clip, then dropped it into her messenger bag. After offering a pomegranate lollipop to Cheri and a plum one to Scarlet, she chose blueberry for herself. All three girls unwrapped their candy. Conveniently, they were standing right next to that garbage can—but Iris held on to her small square of waxed paper.
“I guess we couldn’t expect Opal to leave the mic on all day,” Cheri reasoned, secretly wishing Opal had. That way, Cheri could have eavesdropped on the rest of her date with Albert. After all, she had put beaucoup effort into getting those two crazy kids together! Though that’s book-one ancient history, too.
“Yeah, who knows what else we might have overheard,” Scarlet grumbled. Under cover of her long black bangs, she gave the chess tables darting, birdlike glimpses, but there was no sight of the spy boys, either.
Iris secured her tablet in her bag, then took a few steps closer to the riverbank. “I’m actually glad it’s kind of deserted here,” she said, crouching down and dipping her fingers into the water. “I wanted to get a close-up look at this.”
Cheri and Scarlet approached the water’s edge, too, Cheri cringing as her platform sandals sunk into the damp sand, Scarlet scattering pebbles and shells with her jeté steps. Iris straightened back up and showed the girls her hand. Chalky flecks of yellowy gray fungus stuck to her skin.
“Eww!” Scarlet twisted her features into an ick-face. “
What is that, pond scum?”
“I don’t know,” Iris answered, finding another tissue to wipe off the gunk. “But I noticed it when we were up in the cloudship. There are clumps of this stuff floating on top of the water. It’s what the BeauTek volunteer was dumping here.”
“And on Synchro de Mayo, too,” Cheri said, thinking back to the weird group that she now knew were not tourists at all.
“Eeeh-eeeh-eeehsqueech!”
“Darth, gesundheit!” Cheri exclaimed as the little skunk shook from the aftershocks of his sneeze. With a clean corner of her tissue, she rubbed his snout. “Let’s put on the sweater Iris knit you: I don’t want you catching cold out here.”
Smelz rotten, he told Cheri as she pulled the purple hoodie over his head.
Again? Cheri asked him. Beside her, Iris took a tentative sniff of the air. Scarlet itched at her nose, then squeezed her nostrils closed with one hand.
“Dud anybuddy else recognize dat scend?” she asked in a dulled, plugged-up voice.
“It’s sweeter this time,” Cheri said, the realization dawning on her.
“Powderdy.” Scarlet nodded, still pinching her nose.
“But with a soupçon of brussels sprouts . . .”
“BeauTek is dumping soup in duh ribber?” Scarlet gasped.
Before Cheri could reply that soupçon was just a sophisticated way of saying “hint,” a raucous splash grabbed their attention. Squinting out toward the Statue of SynchroniCity, the girls spotted three rose-tinted tails slipping below the surface.
“Wud wuz dat?” Scarlet wondered just as three dolphins the color of bubblegum soared up out of the water.
“Pink dolphins?!” Cheri clapped with delight. “Darth, did you see that? Maybe they can hear us!”
While Iris reached for her camera phone and Scarlet watched to see if the three dolphins would leap into the air once more, Cheri sent out her friendliest thoughts. Hello! she said. You look viomazing!