And they took MY jewelry box! And most of that was just costume stuff. I think I maybe had a little gold chain in there, and that was it.
I’m sitting on the floor in the living room now. I can’t see the view because the balcony has a concrete wall and it’s right in front of me. I’d be out there, but the two outdoor wicker chairs are gone, too.
They’re my parents. How could they do this?
I wonder how long they’re going to survive without me paying the bills. Of course, they have whatever money of mine is left. So there’s that. For a while.
And I just now realized I can’t stay here. In this apartment, I mean. It costs too much. And I don’t have any new jobs booked. Turns out my agent really worked for Mommy and Daddy. And my court advocate is pretty much done with me now that the case is over.
So, no more high-rise city view for me. No more pretty rooms.
And next week is my birthday. I’ll be 15.
Yay me.
“Okay, then,” Wally said, wiping his eyes and his rust-streaked cheeks. Tiny orange flakes fell away. “Where do we look next?”
I considered. “Maybe to Jinka’s in case she went for another smoothie. If she was yawning like Ralph says, maybe she needed a sugar bump. Or we could wait to see if she comes back here. I mean, Ralph says she was outside, but she didn’t come in. And we always come in.”
“That’s sweet, kid,” Tulip Ralph said. “Of course, it’d be sweeter if you ever spent any money.”
The giraffe-necked joker made a trumpeting noise, and two of the other gamers chuckled. But the lizard-skinned lady shot out her tongue and smacked Giraffe Neck on the ear.
“Shhhhh,” she said. “Shhhtupid.”
Wally put his hands on either side of his head. “All I want is to find my little girl and bring her home.”
“Me, too,” I said. Outside, the shadows were already starting to get long. And I had the sudden panicked thought that if we didn’t find Ghost before dark, we might never see her again. So I made what Mom calls an executive decision. “Come on. We’ll go by Jinka’s and back toward Carter, and maybe we’ll spot her. Tulip Ralph can text me if she comes back here. He has my number for Ocelot 9 updates.” I looked at Ralph. “Okay?”
He shrugged. “Sure. What else have I got to do?”
Then, as I stepped toward the door, my phone vibrated. I took it from my jacket pocket and saw that I had another text message from Yerodin. Excited, I slid my thumb across the screen.
The world went gray, and I couldn’t catch my breath. It was worse than anything I could have imagined.
It was a photo of Ghost lying on a grimy mattress on a dirty concrete floor … unconscious. I recognized her orange Ocelot 9 T-shirt, her dark purple jeans, and her pink sneakers with the electric-green laces. Her ebony skin and braids were in stark contrast to the dingy fabric of the mattress.
Someone wearing a Golden Boy mask stood over her, flipping the bird to the camera the way the knuckleheads had flipped the bird to Tulip Ralph.
A text appeared after the photo.
We added somethin’ Xtra to her smoothie at Jinka’s. She don’t go thru walls so good now. She’s OK. But that can change.
Ghost hadn’t just run off. She had been kidnapped.
My legs went weak, and I thought I was going to hurl.
But I shut down that feeling as if I were shutting down a fire hydrant. Because that’s what Mom would do. At least she would have, before Kazakhstan.
“What’s wrong?” Wally asked.
I held out my phone. He took it, and it was tiny in his huge hands. I thought he’d crush it when those hands started shaking. “Oh, gosh,” he said. “Oh, gosh, no.”
I took the phone back. It vibrated again, and another text appeared.
U want her, ‘Morpho Girl?’ Come to Orchard and Stanton. Now. U alone. U get a cop, might be 1 of us anyway. But we C badges, so long Ghostie.
Also, we h8 Bubble baths. H8 them. Know Bubbles left for Panama this AM. Coz we know. But if she comes back and U get her—bye bye Ghost.
Just U. No cops. No suds. No Tin Man. Rusty shows up, we make Ghost a ghost.
And then a pic of me and Wally popped up. It showed us stepping into the Tumbling Dice. Whoever had taken it had been right across the street. It was hella creepy.
But I would have to shake that off. And I would have to get to Orchard and Stanton. Alone.
The “alone” part was going to be tricky. I knew if I told Wally what the deal was, he would never let me go by myself. Despite the kidnappers’ threats, he would probably call the cops. He might even try to get hold of Mom.
Yeah, Mom was in Panama. But she might come running back for this. In which case, either the kidnappers would kill Ghost right off the bat, or the current post-Kazakhstan version of the Amazing Bubbles might start blowing stuff up. Maybe including Ghost. After all, Mom had almost blown up me a few weeks before. Which wasn’t something Wally knew, and might not believe if I told him.
So I was going to have to do something I never would have done when I was little. I hoped my new teenage self would know how to do it right.
I was going to tell a huge, bald-faced lie to my best friend’s dad.
I stared down at my phone. “They’re sending demands,” I said.
Wally held out a massive, rusty hand. “Let me see!”
I shook my head. “No, they say we have to split up right away, and that I have to relay instructions to you. I guess they think that’ll make them harder to track down.”
Wally pulled his own phone from a back pocket. “The heck with that! I’m gonna call the police!”
I grabbed his flaking wrist. “Wally, the kidnappers are watching us, and they claim that some of them are cops.” That much, at least, was true. “And if we do anything that makes them nervous, they’ll—” I hesitated. “You know.”
Wally slumped and shuddered. Tulip Ralph and the gamers all stared. The mighty Rustbelt looked as if he were about to crumble.
I looked back down at my phone. “They want me to stay here, and they want you to go to the newsstand beside the subway stop at Union Square. When they’re sure you’re alone, they’ll have me relay a text with further orders.”
Wally’s head snapped up. “Union Square! That’s something like fifteen blocks away!”
Tulip Ralph made a throat-clearing noise. “Then you should get going, Mr. Rustbelt. And don’t count on catching a cab in this neighborhood. There’s a subway stop two blocks east, but you’ll probably go faster on foot. I’ll keep an eye on Miss Adesina.”
Wally looked back and forth between me, Ralph, and the door. He was breathing hard. And I hated myself. But I had to do what I had to do.
“Go!” I said.
Wally gave a sudden nod and lumbered to the door. The whole shop shook. “I’ll text you when I get there, Adesina,” he said. “And we’ll do whatever we have to do for Yerodin!”
I held back tears. “Yes. We will.”
Then Wally flung open the door and barreled into the street. The door closed with a ting of the bell, and I watched Wally through the window until he disappeared.
“Wow,” the giraffe-necked joker said. “That was intense.” The lizard-skinned lady whapped him with her tongue again.
I turned toward Tulip Ralph. “I just lied to one of the nicest people on earth.”
Ralph adjusted his glasses. “I know. I can tell when someone’s gaming. But sometimes, that’s the only way to get anywhere.” He jerked his head toward the curtained doorway behind him. “So if there’s anywhere you need to get, I suggest going through the back room into the alley.”
I started around the counter. “Thanks, Ralph.”
“Don’t mention it. And listen, kid—text me if I can help. I’m a pretty good gamer myself, you know.”
The kidnappers had said I had to do this by myself or Ghost would die. So I didn’t think there was any way Tulip Ralph could help. But as I pushed through the Tumbling Dice’s back door
, I tried to take comfort in the fact that he wanted to.
It made me feel just a little less alone.
Mom’s Diary
I didn’t mean to kill him.
I was about to give him my purse. That’s how it works. They pull a weapon and you give them your money.
But he shot me. In the chest.
It hurt. It hurt worse than anything. I heard a crack and then, nothing.
Then I felt good. Really good. There was a second when it felt like my belly pooched out a little, and then the bubble shot out of my hand. It hit him in his lower left side, and bright red blood bloomed on his dirty camo-green sweatshirt.
I ran home. I guess. I mean, I know I did, but I don’t remember it. Thank God Mom and Dad don’t live with me anymore. They’ve been gone two years now, and I know what they’d do if they found out my card had turned. Probably sell tickets.
I yanked off my sweaty blouse to see if I was bleeding. But I wasn’t. I had a dollop of blood on my chest, but when I wiped it away, there wasn’t anything there. No bullet hole, no nothing. Just my own smooth pinkish-white skin.
Which seemed to be covering more of me than there was before.
It almost looked like I was getting fat.
I stood on the southwest corner of Stanton and Orchard as the sun dropped behind the buildings. The jokers who passed by looked me over as if they thought I was selling something, and I felt a jolt of nerves every time. Was this one of the kidnappers? Were they just going to let me stand here while they did who knows what to Ghost?
See, I sort of knew what had happened to Aunt Joey that made her card turn. And I wanted to yark when I thought about something like that happening to Yerodin.
After four or five minutes, two men—one all wiry and twitchy, the other thickset with lumpy muscles—dropped from the bottom of a fire escape across Orchard. Almost every building along Orchard has a fire escape bolted to its facade, so the men had been invisible within the shadows of the zigzagging metal stairs.
As they crossed the street, I saw that both were wearing masks that looked like Mom. Seriously. They were even wearing long, braided, platinum-blond wigs. It was just … totes creepy.
Then I remembered that the kidnapper in the photo with an unconscious Ghost had been wearing a mask, too. Of Golden Boy.
And then I realized who had Yerodin: the Werewolves.
Mom had broken up a fight between the Werewolves and the Demon Princes several years back, and she had said how weird it was that a gang called the Werewolves always wore masks … but that the masks almost never depicted, you know, werewolves.
My stomach turned, and my palms got sticky. The Werewolves had been around for a long time, and they were bad news. They had started out as your basic street gang, like, before Mom was born. But now they were up in all kinds of nasty business. Everything from mugging to embezzlement to gambling on cockroach races. And the stories about them involved payoffs to politicians and police. No wonder they’d said that any cops we called might be theirs.
The two Werewolves in the Amazing Bubbles masks stopped a foot away from me and stared. Their eyes were watery and bloodshot behind the holes in their masks. “Sorry to make you wait,” the one on the left said. “We hadda be sure you were alone.”
“Well, I am,” I said. “So where’s … where’s my friend?” My voice trembled, and I was ashamed I couldn’t stay calmer. “Is she okay?”
The one on the left, the muscular one, spoke again. “Aw, she’s fine. Fuhgeddabouddit.” He had a deep voice with a thick accent. Brooklyn. So I thought of him as “Brooksie.” That made him less intimidating, somehow.
“She’d better be.” I let my wings unfurl. They stretched across the whole breadth of the sidewalk. And they made me feel bigger. Stronger.
The twitchy Werewolf on the right laughed. It was a high-pitched chortle that set my teeth on edge. I decided to call him “Laughing Boy.”
“Why is that funny, Laughing Boy?” I asked in my snottiest tone. And I knew it might be super dumb for me to talk to him that way. But these … these poop heads had Ghost. So what I really wanted to say was, “Hey, poop head, give me back my friend before I stomp you into tomorrow.”
“It’s funny,” Laughing Boy said, “because those pretty wings are the only things that’ll keep your friend alive.” And then he chortled again.
I wasn’t sure just how hard I could hit him with the edges of my wings, but I sure wanted to find out. They jerked toward Laughing Boy’s head.
“Put those things away,” Brooksie said. “But don’t worry, you’ll need ’em soon enough.”
I glared at them both, but I folded my wings. For once, they obeyed. “What do you want?” I asked, crossing my arms.
“Well,” Brooksie said. “What we want are some special services from ‘Morpho Girl.’”
Laughing Boy snickered. “Yeah, yeah. ‘Special services.’” I could tell he was grinning behind his mask. “Like from a cute little butterfly.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
Mom’s Diary
I don’t know why I’m auditioning for American Hero. I mean, I’m no hero. But I guess I’d like to be one. It has to be better than being a model.
I know I’ve been lucky. The Cover Girl contract made me a lot of money. And I started getting Paris and New York runway again. I look younger than I am and they always like that. Plus I can make myself just about any size without having to diet. I just bubble the fat away and I look skinny again. And then I can jump out a window and get fat again. And it feels so good.
I don’t remember when I’ve ever felt like I do when I use my power. I tried cocaine once, but it made me jittery as hell, so I never used it again. Same thing with pot—made me eat everything in the house—which wasn’t much—and then I fell asleep for eleven hours. And all those other drugs—I don’t know why anyone does them. But when I get hit and get fat, it feels wonderful.
And the bubbles, well, I’m still figuring them out. But it feels really good when I make them, too.
No. Better than good.
Amazing.
“Follow us, sweetie pie,” Laughing Boy said. Then he chortled, of course. He was totes gross and lacking with the charm. He and Brooksie turned onto Stanton, and I had to go along.
They walked half a block, then ducked down an alley. I looked around, but no one was paying any attention to us.
We went down a few more alleys, turning here and there as if Laughing Boy and Brooksie wanted to throw off anyone who was following. Finally, we ended up on Rivington between Ludlow and Essex, at the front door of the old twenty-story Hotel on Rivington.
Or what was left of it. It had once been banging. But now there were a lot of broken-out windows—not a good look for a place that’s mostly glass to begin with—and stupid Devil-worship junk painted on everything that remained. 666 and whatnot. There was a pentagram carved on the door where the glass had been replaced with plywood. Plus a crude painting of some kind of bloody goat’s head.
Does anybody find that stuff scary? Now, what had happened in Kazakhstan—those things that had come out of some other place and time, those things that had driven Mom insane and me all cocoony—that stuff had been scary. A pentagram and a bad drawing of a goat didn’t even snuggle up close to it.
Brooksie turned toward me. “Okay, we’re here. So behave yourself. Any quick moves, any wing flapping, any crap, and your friend’s gonna pay. Understand?”
I nodded. “I’ll behave. But before I’ll do whatever it is you want, you need to prove that Yerodin’s okay.”
“Oh, we will,” Laughing Boy said. “But you need to remember that we ain’t on your schedule. You’re on ours.”
Then he chortled. Again. It was really starting to get old.
Mom’s Diary
I can’t believe it! I’m on American Hero!
I got as fat as I could before I auditioned. I also used wash-out black hair dye to hide my platinum hair. It took about five cans bec
ause my hair is so long. I hope they’ll let me bring more with me.
But even if my hair goes back to blonde, I’ll bet no one will know it’s the famous model Michelle Pond. Even though my eyes, nose, and mouth are all the same. People think fat girls are ugly, no matter what their faces and hair look like.
My power, however, is cool and visual. They’re all about the visual on TV. And maybe people can feel a little sorry for the fat girl while they’re at it, because that’s what people do. Or hate on her, because that’s what people do, too.
But for once, I want something in my life to be about something besides my looks. If it’s about how my bubbles look, though, that’s another matter.
We’ve been divided into different “suits.” I’m on the Diamonds team. There’s a girl I like called Tiffani. Unfortunately, I don’t think she’s gay. She sure is friendly, though. And pretty, too.
Sorry, diary, I’m not taking you along. They go through everything, and I don’t want them figuring out who I am.
All they need to know, for now, is that I’m the Amazing Bubbles.
And for now, that’s all I need to be.
The smell inside the hotel was awesome. Like someone had decided to use puke-scented air freshener. I gagged.
“Ain’t you prissy,” Brooksie said. He waved his hand, gesturing at the lobby. Trash littered the floor. There were stains on the carpet where it wasn’t torn up. The wallpaper was peeling, and an impressive amount of graffiti covered everything. “But you try keepin’ a place like this clean for thirty years. When you got other priorities.”
“Could you both please take off those masks?” I asked. Looking at the bad latex renderings of Mom was even worse than the smell. “They’re really distracting.”
Laughing Boy giggled. “Sorry, honey bucket. They’re to remind you not to try to involve Mommy Dearest.”
Brooksie pointed at me. “Besides, you ain’t in a position to make requests. You’re here to do what we say. And if you don’t, little Yerodin is dead. So I’d get over being distracted, if I were you. Capiche?”
“For all I know, she’s dead already.” The hot lead in my tummy turned cold at the thought.
The Flight of Morpho Girl Page 3