“Whatever, Lauren,” Byron mumbled sourly.
“Let me handle this, ’kay?” Sam said out of the side of her mouth.
“Knock yourself out. I’m just gonna go be a disconnected individual over here.” Byron walked to the SuperSlide and flopped down on his back in the green section, putting his hands behind his head and staring up at the insanely starry sky, which was one of the few good things about being in practically freakin’ Canada.
Sam observed the way the Clutch was like an unbroken chain, each one in contact with another by way of a held hand, an arm around the waist, a half hug, and she sighed. This is either gonna be really tough or really easy.
“We want you to come to an emergency meeting of all the SleepWakers. In Dr. Fletcher’s sector. Tonight. We have to figure out how to stop Madalynn and the MeanDreams before they destroy our nighttime lives and our daytime lives, too. And we have to figure it out together. You, of all Wakers, should know that we can only be strong together. Will you come?”
A buzz of voices immediately rose up from the Clutch. Wichachpi put up her hand for silence.
“We did not know it was the MeanDreams you spake of. They are a danger to all Wakers.” Wichachpi seemed tentative for the first time.
“That’s why we were spaking of them!” Byron called out from his prone position. “Maybe you should pay attention when people spake!”
Wichachpi shot Byron a dirty look.
“Okay, thanks for your input!” Sam called to Byron, then turned to Wich again. “We need you. Please.”
The Clutch murmured as they Clutched even closer. But Sam was watching only Wichachpi, knowing that if she’d won her over, the rest would follow by nature, for they couldn’t bear to be apart. The elfin girl tilted her pointed chin upward, listening, as if her sharp little ears were antennae.
“And where is Dr. Fletcher’s sector?”
Sam breathed a massive sigh of relief, then grinned. “See ya in Jersey, dudes.”
But before she could see anyone in Jersey, dudes, Sam and Byron had one more stop to make. New Rochelle, New York.
“A real castle? In America?” Unfortunately, Sam was hyper-crossing through Niagara Falls when she asked this question, so apparently all Byron heard was pounding water. It wasn’t until they were buzzing through Buffalo that he was able to answer.
“Yeah, it’s called Leland Castle, built in the nineteenth century by some crazy old rich guy. The Extremes love it.”
It was easy to see why. As soon as they approached the imposing palatial mansion, Sam spied a figure balanced precariously atop a granite cross at the very tip-top of the structure, a hundred feet in the air. But only for a second, because then the figure jumped.
“HEYYYY!!” Sam screamed, her Helper spirit spontaneously spurring her soul body to hyper-hyper-cross toward the hurtling SleepWaker. Before Sam could even get into rescuing range, however, the Waker’s head came within probably an inch of the ground, and then her misty form rubber-banded back up in the air with a shriek of triumph.
Byron was relaxed. “I told you the Extremes love to bungee jump. It’s not like she’s actually gonna crash, right? She can just make her head un-solid—”
“Give me a minute,” Sam gasped. “Can’t listen to Waker logic when I can’t even breathe.” She turned away from the nauseating sight of the Extreme bouncing up and down the entire height of the edifice, but whirled back when she heard the sound of glass shattering.
“Emmy!” Now Byron was annoyed. “I told you, you can’t be solid when you go through windows!”
“Don’t be such a buzzkill, By.” The Extreme poked her head back through the obliterated window, picking a shard of glass from an elaborate set of multicolored braces on her teeth.
“That’s Emmy, the new one,” Byron said to Sam, shaking his head. “Even as far as Extremes go, she’s pretty extreme.” He yelled back up to the roof, “Guys! Can you come down here?”
The groans and catcalls came from far above, and Sam had to crane her neck back to see the outline of a group of SleepWakers balancing on turrets atop the castle’s west wing.
“Seriously! I need to talk to you anyway, so come down to earth, please!” Byron shouted.
One by one, the Extremes made sickening leaps from the turrets into nearby trees, shimmying to the ground. Emmy, of course, chose to rappel down the side of the castle on her bungee cord, which almost immediately gave way, plunging her at a wicked speed toward terra firma. She landed on her feet like a particularly nimble cat in pajamas.
Byron addressed the small group. “Guys, this is Sam. She’s gonna tell you what’s going on. This is right up your alley, trust me.”
Sam spoke in her most “we’re in grave danger” voice. “Extremes, we need your particular skills to combat a force of evil in our world. There is a meeting of all the SleepWakers tonight in Fletch’s sector—”
“Bo-ring,” Emmy intoned.
Byron sighed loudly.
“Come on, Emmy,” coaxed a girl with messy dreads. “Fletch is in New Jersey. We can street luge down the Garden State Parkway.”
Emmy made an exaggerated yawn face, patting a filthy hand over her multi-braced mouth.
“Lela’s right, that would be awesome,” said a bristly-haired boy with a parachute strapped to his back. “And after the meeting, we can go to Manhattan and BASE jump off the Freedom Tower.”
“Been there, done that, Charlie,” Emmy said, pulling out a giant hunting knife from somewhere on her person and cleaning her grubby nails with it.
Charlie shrugged apologetically to Sam and Byron. “Emmy’s pretty much afraid of her shadow during the daytime.”
Suddenly Sam had a brilliant lightbulb-over-the-head idea. “Emmy… how would you feel about gathering intel?”
For the first time, the Extreme looked slightly intrigued. “You mean, like… spying?”
Sam did her best Madalynn smile. “Oh, Emmy. When justice is being served, it’s not called spying. It’s called surveillance.…”
Sam stood at the vertical steps of the monkey bars, her face pressed against the metal, preparing herself mentally.
“You can do this, Helper.” Byron’s voice penetrated her fog.
She gulped. “Yeah, ‘Helper.’ Not ‘Speech Maker.’ And definitely, definitely not ‘Warrior Girl.’ ”
“Eh, warriors are a dime a dozen.” Byron shrugged. “Just be your own soul. It’s enough.”
Sam couldn’t resist a tiny “yeah-whatevs” look in his general direction before turning and climbing to the top of the monkey bars. She paused, wishing for just a moment that she had the slightest shred of Extreme in her essence, and then crawled onto the horizontal struts and stood up slowly, wobbling and dizzy. And what she saw below made her even dizzier.
All the tribes of the SleepWaker world were gathered in the park, following their soulish agendas: The Achieves were building a lean-to from fallen branches while practicing tai chi; the Numbs were simulating a game of Tetris, using their bodies as the pieces; the OCDeeds were measuring the length of the grass with rulers in the soccer field and trimming where the growth was a quarter of an inch too high; the Pranks were carefully following the OCDeeds and re-cutting their carefully trimmed patches of grass into silly shapes, giggling all the while; the Clutch had stuffed themselves into a tiny play castle and were huddled in a massive embrace; the Juvenold were running from tribe to tribe, trying to coerce everyone into a giant game of Red Rover; the Extremes, minus an intel-gathering Emmy, had unscrewed the giant bulb at the very top of a lamppost and were taking turns sticking their hands into the electrical socket; Chadney led the few Broadways who had not been soul-napped by Madalynn in a heart-wrenching rendition of “Left Behind” from Spring Awakening; and the Roamers wandered on the outskirts of the park, each one alone and remote from the others.
Sam balled her fists, trying to give her soul as much weight and possibility as it could stand.
“SleepWakers!” Intended to be a holler, it
sounded more like a mouse fart. “SleepWakers!” Slightly better. Heads started to turn toward her. “Uh… We called you here tonight to discuss—”
“Can’t hear you!” called an Achieve who was in the middle of his tai chi forms, moving through Wave Hands Like Clouds.
Sam cleared her throat. “Sorry! To discuss—”
“Red Rover, Red Rover, let Nina come over!” A Juvie (Nina, presumably) ran madly from her line of Wakers and rammed into the opposing line, bouncing back and falling on her bum. Both lines screamed with laughter.
“Discuss the situation we are all in—”
“Yes! Lela just electrocuted her soul!” The Extremes high-fived Lela, who was sparking like a metal fork in a microwave.
“WE ARE IN MORTAL DANGER, PEOPLE, PAY ATTENTION!!!” Sam bellowed.
An entire parkful of essences looked up in sudden startled silence.
“Okay, then! You’re listening! That’s good! Yes!” Sam plunged forward bravely. “Some of you know me already, but for those of you who don’t, my name is Sam and I’m a Helper. And it seems like I’m the first one of those, so I don’t exactly have a tribe.” She moved on quickly, before anyone could get suspicious or question her loyalties. “And we are here tonight to discuss a threat that is common to all of us: the MeanDreams tribe.”
Immediately, there was a furious buzz of voices, some fearful, some angry, and one who was an obvious fan of outstanding middle school fantasy literature: “They who should not be named!!!”
Sam forged ahead. “The night has been a safe haven for us. But if we don’t act now, that will be taken away. Many of us have been bullied in the light, haven’t we? Aren’t we tired of it? Can we allow someone to come into our world and bully us here too? Remember what we’ve learned in all those anti-bullying rallies in school, ‘If you see something, say something!’ ”
“That’s the slogan for spotting terrorists,” Byron whispered.
“Oh, sorry, right. Uh… ‘Stand up! Speak out!’ That’s it!” Sam mustered her best fighting spirit. “Look at us! Look at our numbers! If we all stood together against the MeanDreams, they would back down!”
“Or they would fight back!” yelled an Achieve. The rest of the Achieves murmured their agreement.
“Yeah! What are we supposed to do, challenge them to a rumble?” mocked a Prank. Chadney perked up at this mention, and the Broadways switched to the “Tonight” quintet from West Side Story.
“No! We’re not going to fight, we’re just going to present a united front! There’s power in numbers!” Sam winced. It sounded so wimpy all of a sudden, especially with a 1950s musical as background.
“Oh, puh-leeze.” An OCDeed eyerolled. “Like confronting a bully ever works.”
“And even if we did take them on together, what happens when we separate back into our tribes? They’ll find the smaller groups and punish them!” a Juvenold wailed.
“Not if they know we have each other’s backs!” Sam forged on valiantly. “We just have to show them that we care about each other!”
“Except I don’t really care about the rest of you,” a Roamer said flatly. “Sorry to be a downer, but I have enough to deal with in the daytime. I don’t need to be picking fights at night.”
“We will take care of our own.” This came from somewhere in the Clutch clutch. “There is no need for cross-tribing.”
“Taking care of your own is not working!” Sam was getting heated. The “inspire unity” approach was floundering, so now she was going to have to inspire some fear. “How many of the tribes have lost Wakers to the MeanDreams?”
This caused more buzz, even angrier and definitely more fearful.
“They went because they wanted to go!” yelled an Achieve.
“No one can force a SleepWaker to do anything against their will!” called out another Roamer from the farthest edge of the park. “In the night, we are our essential selves, and in control of our own destiny!”
Suddenly there was a little voice from the seesaw. “No! No! That’s a fib!” Alyssa stood up on a frog head while another Juvenold held the plank in balance. “Minnie Mouse didn’t want to go! The nasties stole her off a slide!”
The Numb with the soul patch, Noa, jumped up. “They took Kyra, too! During her highest-scoring game!”
A Prank shouted, “And they snatched Arthur right out of the grocery store! While he was putting up a sign that said ‘Mini Cucumbers’ on the jalapeños!”
These revelations had the effect of causing near pandemonium.
“So, what are we supposed to do about it? If we agitate them, they’ll come for us, too! None of us would be safe!” a Roamer shouted.
The long-armed Clutch, Odakotah, called out from the play castle, “How fitting! A Roamer’s essential purpose is to save himself! And to blame the remainder of the SleepWaker world for his selfishness!”
A different Roamer hollered from behind the baseball diamond backstop, “Leave it to a Clutch to blame a Roamer! Hide behind your mommy’s tribe, why don’t you!”
Now it was legitimate pandemonium. Tribes started yelling insults from every quarter of the park.
“Pranks are evil clowns!” yelled an OCDeed.
“Oh, go organize your silverware, O-C-Dee-generates!” bellowed a Prank.
“Numbs?! More like Numbnuts!” shouted an Achieve.
“Did you Achieve your degree from Doofus University?!” squawked a Numb.
“Juvenold are cold and full of mold!” screeched an Extreme.
“You are Extremely pathetic!” bawled a Juvie.
“Can you hear the Wakers sing, vile and mean and insulting…” warbled the Broadways.
Wichachpi burst forth from her circle of hand-holders. “You dare to butcher the Clutch’s favorite musical, Les Misérables?! Heathens!”
“STOP! STOP!” shouted Sam. “Can’t you see that the MeanDreams are winning already?! They’re dividing us without even being here! SleepWakers! You don’t understand what you’re dealing with! It’s more than just the soul-napping. The MeanDreams are also—!”
The sound of a war cry cut Sam off, and Emmy appeared at the top of a huge oak tree across the street. She jumped approximately twenty feet from the topmost branch onto an old power cable, dashed down the length of the wire like a manic tightrope walker, flung herself over the electrical pole onto a fire escape, rode the ladder down, jumped on top of a moving minivan, leapt across to a Prius, and bounced off the soft top of a convertible like a trampoline, landing next to Sam on the monkey bars. There was a stunned silence, broken only by Lela’s “Nice!”
“I got you some intel, Boss Lady,” Emmy said, saluting Sam with a grubby paw. “You want it straight up”—she cast a glance at the listening SleepWakers—“or on the down low?”
Sam made a split-second executive decision. “Tell us—all of us!—what you know.”
Emmy gave her an admiring look, and Sam immediately knew this was going to backfire. “You got guts, Boss Lady.” Emmy turned to the waiting crowd. “So, I was dangling above the MeanDreams on a zip line I made out of fishing wire and an old seat belt—”
One of the Extremes raised his hand. “Awesome! How’d you do that?”
“DIY tutorial later, bro,” Emmy continued without pausing, “and I heard what they’re planning. You guys already know that Madalynn’s been hijacking sleeping bodies—”
There was a huge, collective gasp from the SleepWakers.
“Actually,” Sam whispered frantically, “we were just getting to that.”
“—and tooling around town in ’em—” Emmy just kept muscling through.
There was a huge, collective “WHAAAT?!” from the tribes.
“Probably shoulda gotten to it sooner,” Byron gritted through his teeth.
“—and now we know why! ’Cause she’s walking ’em over to some mysterious sleep doc who does a little hocus-pocus mojo and reattaches their souls so that they can never again be a SleepWaker!”
A stupefied silence
fell over the crowd.
“So that’s how they do it,” Byron whispered shakily.
“What mysterious sleep doc?” Sam whispered dazedly.
But her question was lost. Because suddenly there was a screaming, hyperventilating, hyper-crossing mass exodus off the lawn. Tribes disappeared faster than hot wings at a Super Bowl party. Within seconds, the park was completely empty, except for one ruler left lying on the grass by an OCDeed whose terror had trumped his neurosis.
“Oh, and, Boss Lady? You’re her next victim, by the way.” Emmy peered out at the vast emptiness. “Huh. Maybe if I’d said that sooner, everybody wouldn’t have bailed.”
Sam felt like a blimp that had accidentally flown into a commercial airliner and was now hurtling, airless, toward the earth. She would have sat right down on the monkey bars and cried, if not for one thing.
Alyssa was still standing on the frog head, which had thumped to the ground when her Juvie compadres abandoned the other end of the seesaw. She looked up at Sam, her mascara-free eyes filled with despair. “Minnie Mouse? They did this to her?”
Sam nodded.
“Then… I say we get those nasties.”
Before Sam could respond, Noa the Numb reappeared, hitching up his too-short pajamas. He nodded to Sam.
Then a Waker came out from behind a tree. It was Dev, the alphabetizing OCDeed who had almost concussed her with a bottle of spices. He grabbed the discarded ruler and raised it to Sam.
“Solidarity, Boss Lady.” Emmy pulled out her giant hunting knife—where the heck is she keeping that thing? Sam wondered—lopped off a chunk of her hair, and handed it to Sam. “You might want to put that in a pendant.”
And Byron.
Byron was still there.
A Juvie, an Extreme, an OCDeed, a Numb, a Roamer, and a Helper coming together to form a new tribe?
Only in the darkness.
THE THREE FACES STARING BACK at Sam were aghast. Even the fourth face, flat as it was, somehow looked flabbergasted. And furry. Flat, furry flabbergastation.
Sam Saves the Night Page 16