by Paul Tobin
“No, it’s real. Speaking of your head, it looks like a melon. You shouldn’t let bees sting you.”
I said, “Yeah.” I’m fully aware that it was a terribly lame comeback to Nate telling me my head looked like a melon (which is not something boys should do, incidentally, because it is rarely considered a compliment), but I’d just noticed there were four cars following us. I mean, there were a lot of cars following us, because we were driving down the street (Betsy was doing all the driving), but there were four cars in particular, each of them a dark red (I’m just going to go ahead and say they were the color of blood, because it sounds more dramatic) with a painting of a teacup on their hoods.
Beep beep, Nate’s buttons sounded out, warning us of imminent attack. I looked in the mirror, and then I looked to Nate’s button, and I nodded.
“Yeah,” I told the button. “Beep it is.”
“Four cars following us,” I told Nate.
“Yeah. I know.” He patted that glowing button. It beeped again, several times, apparently in some sort of code. I didn’t let it bother me. Nate speaks math. Like, as a language.
Nate said, “Betsy? Can you slide out the medical tray?” I lifted my feet. I knew where the medical tray was because Nate had once sprained his ankle at a park when he was trying to make slides more fun. He’d put jet accelerators along the edges of the slide so that when somebody slid down they reached Mach 4. I’m not sure if that sounds like any fun at all, but I can tell you it wasn’t as much fun as it sounds.
The tray slid out from beneath my feet.
“There’s some bee sting ointment in there,” Nate said. He was looking in the rearview mirror, at the oncoming cars.
“Good,” I told him. “I want some bee sting ointment. That is exactly what I want.” I started rummaging around in the tubes on the tray. There were salves for burns (such as you might put on your butt, if you’ve been on a slide and were suddenly accelerated to Mach 4), and there were bandages you could put on your forearm (if, for instance, you accidentally did a cartwheel off the edge of your house while watching Nate install a satellite receiver), and there was a liquid that, when you rubbed it on your skin, you smelled like cinnamon. I guess that last one was really just perfume, nothing all that special and I’m not sure why it was in the medical tray, but I do like cinnamon. I put a little on.
“Ahh, here it is,” I said. The tube of bee sting ointment had an illustration of a bee. Also, it was making a buzzing sound. “I like this illustration,” I told Nate. He’d done it himself. I know his art style.
“Thanks,” he said. He’d reached into the back and was grabbing the wet suit, and his face was twisted into his “thinking” expression.
“It made the ointment really easy to find,” I said, rubbing some on my arms. “Plus, I could’ve just listened to the sound of the buzzing. How did you make the ointment do that? Some sort of sound chip on the tube?” I was holding up the tube, looking at it. The buzzing was louder.
“It doesn’t buzz,” Nate said. He’d taken out some sort of remote control from his pocket and tossed the wet suit out the window. I didn’t bother to ask what he was doing. That’s useless. I did, though, decide it was going to be strange. I came to that conclusion based on prior experience with Nate. Most everything he does is strange, so you can reasonably expect that the next thing he does is also going to be strange. That’s called a hypothesis.
“It does too buzz,” I said, holding up the ointment tube, rubbing some on my melon-head. It was going buzz buzz . . . buzz . . . buzz buzz buzz. It was out of tune with Nate’s button, which was still going beep . . . beep . . . beep . . . beep beep beep.
“No,” Nate said. “I didn’t make the tube buzz. Good idea, though!” He was watching the wet suit flutter in the wind. It was caught up in the wake of passing cars, whooshing back toward the four cars that were following us, and which, incidentally, should not have painted teacups on their cars if they were going to be a part of a secret society.
“Then . . . what’s buzzing?” I asked.
Betsy said, “Passenger Delphine Cooper, I am detecting a life-form in your hair.”
“You are what?” I said. It came out as a squeak.
“There’s a bee in your hair,” Betsy said. Of course there was. I’d forgotten all about the bee in my hair. I suppose that says a lot about how my day was going, because I am not normally the type of sixth grade girl who forgets a bee in her hair.
I tried to say, “That’s no good. I don’t want a bee in my hair. Can somebody please take it out?”
It came out more like, “AHHHHHHHHHH!”
“Don’t scare the bee!” Nate said.
I tried to say, “Why shouldn’t I scare the bee?”
But it came out more like . . . punching Nate in the arm.
“Guhh,” Nate said. He’s not really accustomed to physical combat. Not that it was really combat. It was more like he was just getting punched. You’d think he’d get used to it. We’ve been friends for a while now.
“Would you like me to help you with the bumblebee?” Betsy asked.
I said, “Yes.” I was spinning around in my seat, trying to get a look at the bumblebee, but all my twisting and turning was mostly turning my seat belt into a giant cobweb, where I was trapped.
The air-conditioning kicked on, which confused me. Did Betsy think we could air-condition a bee out of my hair? Then, the whole car suddenly filled with the scent of . . . flowers. How was that going to help?
The bee flew out of my hair.
It hovered fatly in front of my face. It pivoted in place, around and around, spinning like a tiny yellow-and-black tornado. It went, “Bzzz?” There was definitely a question mark at the end of it. I could hear it.
Betsy said, “I have flooded the car with the scent of calamintha and perovskia.” The bee landed on the dash. Spun around. Obviously confused.
I said, “Huh?”
Nate said, “Calamintha and Russian sage, the latter being a more common name for perovskia, are two flowers that bees favor. Betsy is overloading the bee’s hunting instincts.”
“Bees have hunting instincts?” I did not prefer bees having hunting instincts. Nothing that was ever in my hair should have a hunting instinct.
“Sure,” Nate said. He was still looking behind us, toward the cars. They were closing in. “Bees hunt flowers. Nectar. They’re quite peaceful.”
“Says the boy who doesn’t have a melon for a head.” The bee was now trying to fly into the air-conditioning vent, but the wind was too strong. It kept blowing the bee back.
Nate said, “Oh. Yeah. Well, the thing is, the Red Death Tea Society is obviously using the bees. Programming them with chemicals and mechanical quarks.”
“Aren’t quarks, like, the smallest thing there is? Even smaller than atoms?” When you’re friends with Nate, you pick up a few stray bits of knowledge along with the random adventures and occasional injuries.
“Much smaller than atoms,” Nate said. “Much smaller. The fact that somebody has actually managed to nudge them into mechanical shape is invigorating.” Nate did indeed look invigorated. His cheeks were practically flush. He stuck his head out the window and waved back to the cars following us. They were keeping a safe distance, tracking us, even though we were now whooshing through the streets at a speed that I wouldn’t think a human driver could match. We had Betsy on our side. Who did the Red Death Tea Society have on theirs?
The lead car was about a hundred feet back. I decided they were waiting for us to reach somewhere not quite so public, and then they’d make their move. We were zooming along Parade Avenue, with all the secondhand clothing stores, the comic book store, the bookstores, and the art galleries. It’s one of my favorite sections of Polt, but it was going by so fast that I couldn’t make anything out, especially while still struggling to unwrap myself from my seat belt.
“Catch that bee,” Nate said. “We need it.”
“Catch it how?” I asked. If it was a cricke
t or a grasshopper or a fly, I would’ve cupped it in my hands. This is because in such a situation a cricket would think, “I’ll make an irritating noise,” and a grasshopper would think, “Hmm, guess I’ll spit up some stinky juice,” and a fly would think, “Guess I’ll do some buzzing.” A bumblebee, however, would think, “It’s time for some top-notch stinging on the hands of this foolish sixth grade girl. You would think she’d know better.”
“I do know better,” I said.
“What?” Nate asked.
“Nothing. But, again I ask, how am I supposed to catch the bumblebee?”
“Pet it.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not. Betsy is spilling friendly scents into the air. The bee already likes us now, so just pet it, and it’ll be your friend forever.”
“Why would I want to be friends forever with a bumblebee?”
“Not really forever, actually,” Nate said. “Bees only live for about a year. Usually less.”
“Ooo, that’s sad,” I said, reaching out to pet the poor thing. It was still hovering in front of the air vent, and it bobbed up and down as I ran my finger over its back. It turned around and looked at me, which made me nervous, but it made a buzzing sound that was . . . friendly? Then, it darted through the air and landed on my shoulder. It seemed content.
“There,” Nate said. “You caught her.”
“Her?”
“Sure. Can’t you tell by the buzzing?” Nate was entering a series of numbers on his remote control, glancing to me, glancing to the cars following us, and glancing up into the air, at something I couldn’t see.
“You can tell by a bee’s buzz if it’s a girl or a boy?”
“Yes. Also, it stung you. Only female bees do that.”
“Ooh. They’re mean.”
“You should name your bee.”
“How about Melville?”
“That’s . . . not very feminine. But it’s okay, I guess.”
“What do you think those guys are after, this time?” I asked, looking back to the cars following us. My bee pivoted on my shoulder, looking back along with me, already loyal.
“Umm,” Nate said, unwilling to tell me something, which I always consider to be a bad sign. If I had any warning buttons on my shirt, they’d have been wailing like sirens.
“Nate,” I said. “What have you done?”
“Umm,” Nate said.
Betsy said, “Passenger Delphine Cooper, I might point out that today is Saturday the fourteenth.”
“Yeah?” I said. “But what does that have to do with . . . with . . . oh. Oh no.” I turned to Nate. He shrugged. The fact that it was Saturday the fourteenth meant that yesterday was the thirteenth. Friday the thirteenth. And that was a problem. Nate is so smart that he often grows bored, and to keep his mind lively he schedules himself to do three really stupid things every Friday the thirteenth, such as . . . in one recent instance . . . teaching math to a caterpillar. Sometimes his Friday the thirteenth experiments are fun. Sometimes they go awry. Spectacularly. From my side, I’m constantly puzzled why Nate does these things, but I’ve come to accept his oddities, because that’s what friends do. After all, he never complains about my Cake vs. Pie meetings, or how I collect photographs of my meals whenever I eat macaroni and cheese at a restaurant (eighty-four of these photos, to date), and so we just . . . accept each other the way we are.
Which is slightly disturbing, I suppose.
Anyway, alerted by Betsy, I turned to look at Nate and said, “Yesterday was Friday the thirteenth.”
“That’s true,” he admitted.
“Which means you probably did three really dumb things.”
“I did,” he said.
“Tell me about them,” I ordered. I gave Nate the meanest look in my mom’s arsenal, the one that could turn aside a tornado.
“Oh, okay,” Nate squeaked. “I . . . ahh . . . I developed a deodorant that makes your underarms sweat more.”
“You really do use your time wisely,” I entirely lied, glancing back at the cars that were following us. “What’s the next thing?”
“I made an Infinite Engine,” Nate said. Melville, on my shoulder, buzzed in an inquisitive fashion, probably asking the same question I was about to ask Nate.
“What’s an Infinite Engine?” I asked.
“Ooo!” Nate said, infinitely eager to talk about science. “I stabilized Nothingness after extracting electrons and neutrons from an atomic field, and bathed the field with gravitational waves, so that—”
“Bzzz?” Melville said.
“I know, right?” I told her. “But that’s how he always talks. I think he’s trying to say that he created a machine with . . . infinite energy?”
“That’s right!” Nate said. “A small, self-contained, infinitely self-sustainable system. Limitless power! The possibilities are endless!”
“I see,” I said. “And . . . I’m guessing one of those possibilities is that those guys in the cars back there want this thing, right?” I gestured to the cars following us.
“Um, yeah,” Nate said, deflated that the news was turning bad.
“And what could Maculte and the Red Death Tea Society do if they got their hands on your infinite energy machine?”
“Um, bad things. The possibilities are still endless.”
“Well, we can’t let that happen, then. So let’s hope we can lose the cars behind us, and—”
But it was at that point that I saw four more of the Red Death Tea Society cars. These new cars looked a lot like the other ones. Exactly like them, I suppose. Except that while the first four cars were behind us, the new ones were in front of us, roaring down the street in a line, side by side. There weren’t any corners we could take. We were trapped.
“Hold on,” Nate said. “This is going to be impossible.”
He was enjoying himself, again.
The cars from behind were getting closer. Much closer. It looked like they’d just been waiting for their trap to close, for the other cars to block off our escape. Betsy was slowing down, having nowhere to go, and the four cars behind us were only a hundred feet behind, and I could see the drivers now. They were carrying guns. I’d known that was a possibility, but I’d still been hoping they were carrying tea.
“They have guns!” I told Nate.
“Idiots,” Nate said.
“Why are they idiots?” I asked. It was comforting to hear they were idiots. I already had a genius-level friend, and felt no overwhelming need for any genius-level enemies.
Nate said, “Have you ever heard that saying about not bringing a knife to a gunfight?”
“Yes. It means that you should always be prepared, or something. But what does that have to do with—?”
“They brought guns to a wet suit fight,” Nate said. He gave me the look of a person who was expecting me to say something like, “Wow!” or “Hah!” or “Hurray! We triumph!”
Instead, I said, “Huh?”
Nate sighed. His shoulders slumped. He said, “Wait for it, Delphine.”
I did wait for it. Betsy had all but stopped on the street so there was little else for me to do, so I simply waited while the other cars came closer, closer, and I could see there were multiple men in each of the cars and that they were all wearing sunglasses and red suits and they were waving guns. They seemed exceptionally enthusiastic. They were only about hundred feet away. Fifty. Twenty. I was bracing for impact and gunfire.
And that’s when it happened.
The wet suit swooped down from above. It was like an octopus or something, latching onto the lead car and grabbing tight, entirely covering the windshield. The car began to swerve and I could hear the driver shrieking, now driving blind, worried he would crash, except . . . he honestly didn’t have to worry about running into anything on the street.
Because the wet suit became a jet suit.
Seriously, the jets kicked in and they were powerful. The jet suit nabbed the car up into the air and then dropped it on
the next car, making a noise that I’ll just describe by saying that it sounded like one car dropping on top of another. Add in a few exclamations of surprise, and you’ve pretty much got it.
The following cars slammed into the lead ones, creating a wall of smashed cars. Men began spilling out from the cars, jumping out, falling out, stumbling out. They were all waving their guns. Some of them were trying to shoot the jet suit, which had unhooked itself and was whooshing back toward us.
“Hold tight!” Nate said, which was unnecessary, because “holding tight” is something I always do when Nate is around.
The jet suit latched onto Betsy and grabbed us up. We began to rise into the air.
“Wheeee!” Betsy said.
“Guhll,” I said, because it felt like it does when an elevator zooms upward much faster than you thought it would. Except in this case I hadn’t thought there would be an elevator in the first place.
“It works!” Nate said.
“Did you think it wouldn’t?” I screamed in a conversational tone.
“I estimated it had a sixty-three percent chance of simply tipping us over,” Nate said. “The odds were against us.”
“Guhll!” I said, because the jet suit was carrying us over the pile of wrecked cars, taking us twenty feet into the air. Since I’d recently fallen from over fourteen thousand feet, you’d think that a mere twenty feet would be meaningless, but it felt even worse.
“Bzzz?” Melville said. My bee was right in front of my face, making the buzz that she makes when she’s confused (it really is distinctive) and flying in a circle. I decided she was perplexed as to why I was panicked about flying. If you can fly, it must be hilarious when other people can’t.
I said, “I’m a little busy being utterly panicked, Melville. Can’t you go sting the bad guys or something?”
She said, “Bzzz!” and zoomed out the window, just as the jet suit slid Betsy to a rolling drop on the street past the wrecked cars.
“Perfect!” Betsy said. Her wheels started spinning and squealing, and then we were racing off down the street. The crashed cars behind us had filled the entire street, blocking off the cars that had appeared in front of us, back when things had been only reasonably crazy.