A Pinstriped Finger's My Only Friend (12 page)

Mom looks perfectly normal, except for the bright green scales all over her and the little pink forked tongue flickering in and out of her mouth.

For some reason, she's the first person we see when the new version of reality takes hold. She's the only person or thing we
can
see, since she is
all
the way
up
in our
grill
as soon as the world of words and whiteness goes away. Her face is
inches
away from Judd's...

(...as in
two
,
three
at the max...)

...and she looks and sounds frantic...

(...
beyond
frantic...)

...wide-eyed and shrill-voiced, on the border between the People's Republic of Panic and the Kingdom of Hysteria. Which, naturally, sets Judd's pulse racing, boosts blood pressure to the moon in him and me too as we both gotta wonder...

...what the flying fudge is it gonna be
this
time?

"Quick, son! Hurry!" Mom dives another inch closer, so Judd can smell the bacon on her breath.

(Not in a
good
way!)

"It's your
brother
!" Mom gets so much closer, her nose bumps his. "It's
Nick
!"

Judd's heart hammers faster than ever. The fact that he's getting the news from a green-scaled, fork-tongued Mom doesn't make any difference. This is his
brother
she's talking about! "What
happened
to him?"

"It's
terrible
!" Mom grabs the front of Judd's shirt and shakes him hard. "Worse than you can
imagine
!"

Judd's starting to lose it. "
Tell
me! Tell me what
happened
!"

"I can't! I can't bear to
say
it out loud!" As she throws her head against his chest and sobs, I wonder why she's so quick to accept this kid without green scales or a forked tongue as her son. The version of Judd who's native to this reality, the one
my
Judd displaced, couldn't have had pink skin and human features, could he? Maybe
my
Judd puts out some kind of
field
that makes the locals see him as the local version of himself.

(Or maybe I'm full of hot air and the true answer's inconceivable.)

Whatever the reason for Mom's acceptance of Judd, she's keyed up beyond belief. Pushing away from his chest, she gives him another hard shake by the shirtfront. "We've got to go
now
!"

"Wait!" says Judd. "Please, tell me what happened to Nick! Just tell me
something
!"

But Mom whirls and starts running without another word. She's wearing a bright red pantsuit with those bright green scales...

(Talk about
clashing
!)

...plus a hot pink scarf and black-and-white polka dot high heels. It's like she just came from the office, if the office was a three-ring
circus
.

Now that she's out of our grill, we finally get a good look around. So much for the white-space-with-words zone. Everywhere we look, there's a riot of rainbow colors; Judd's standing in a hallway at school, and every inch of the place is coated with swirls and stripes of psychedelically bright reds and yellows and greens and blues and purples. The kids milling around us look just as garish; like Mom, they wear violently clashing clothes from green-scaled head to toe. They look about as frantic as Mom does, too, with eyes wide as cantaloupes and teeth chattering like castanets.

(Sympathetic panic? How bad
is
Nick's situation, anyway??)

"Judd! Come on!" Mom's shout over her shoulder snaps us out of our taking-things-in daze. "There's no time to
waste
!"

The way the other kids are gaping and gawking lights a fire under Judd. He dashes to catch up with Mom, who never stopped run-walking toward the door.

As we pass the admin office, Debbie and Sally look up from the counter and wave emphatically toward the exit. Like everyone else, they've got green scales and forked tongues--but you couldn't mistake them for anyone else. Debbie's still got the long black hair and cute horn rim glasses; Sally's still gray-haired and overweight.

(Does lizard-person Sally still like peanut butter cups, or will Judd need to stock up on live mice to keep her happy?)

Mom blows through the double doors like a runaway truck with Judd on her heels. We keep hurtling forward, getting our first look at the outside world as we go.

And what a
wild
world it is. The crazy colors and psychedelic designs inside the school were just a preview, a pale reflection of the
riot
of sights outside the building. If we weren't in such a freakin' hurry, I think Judd and I would both be totally shell-shocked right now.

Mom leads us down a glass sidewalk flashing with colored light. Whenever her feet touch down on a new slab, it flares to life, casting up a stream of colorful rays. As soon as her feet step off and Judd's feet step on, the slab blazes with light of a different color, shifting from green to red or gold to blue or white to violet.

To either side of the glass walk, the school's front yard ripples with moving pictures. The grass constantly changes colors, flowing with images like the film projected on a movie screen. The pictures are different angles of Mom and Judd running away from the school--one a tight shot on their faces, another a high wide shot somehow captured from above.

As we leave the sidewalk and lawn behind and bolt into the parking lot, the row of trees along the border hops and whistles. They're like something out of a cartoon nightmare, with heads like green afros and big glossy eyes like bowling balls in pools of milk. They bumble around on roots like spidery legs, waving crooked limbs with emerald tufts on the tips like cheerleaders' pompoms.

All around us, the air rushes with stripy 3-D arrows streaking past in all directions. They leave gusty wakes and glittering trails as they loop and slalom and swirl, tricked out in fluorescent reds, yellows, and pinks so bold and bright they seem to quiver as you stare at them.

Up above, the sky's a patchwork of interlocking shapes, all manner of multicolored lines and squares and circles all sliding and turning and twisting like an elaborate clockwork. Some shapes drop down as others recede, then push back up again. Others break free and tumble across the vast upended bowl, landing in new spots that open up with the perfect outlines to accept their forms. Once in a while, a hole stays open long enough to reveal a flash of golden light from beyond, suggesting a heavenly firmament above the sliding sky shapes...

(And something else, too! I swear I see a giant
eyeball
up there once, ticking back and forth like a pendulum, glaring down at us!)

...and maybe that firmament's the one true sky of this world, and the garish curtain of throbbing colorful shapes conceals the reality.

But what about the parking lot below? The one we're making a mad dash across? Let's just say, if not for the words "Parking Lot" slathered in gray on the yellow pavement, it would be unrecognizable for what it is.

Instead of cars made of metal and plastic, the lot is full of what look like blotches of paint floating in midair. Each blotch consists of a gamut of hues all jumbled together, transformed into a smeared, mixed glob of a color not present in nature.

"Hurry up and get in!" Mom points at a nearby blotch of greenish brown with traces of yellow around the edges. "You drive!"

At this point, Judd stops and stares at the blotch, because how the huh is he supposed to drive
that
? The thing's like twelve feet long, five feet high, and looks like a blob of paint.

"Judd, come on!" Mom's standing on the other side of the blotch, gaping at him. "Nick
needs
us!"

Dude just keeps staring. Some things, you just can't
improvise
...like driving a blob of
paint
.

"Oh, wait." Mom smacks her forehead. "I forgot to give you the keys." With that, she clears her throat and proceeds to sing a series of notes. "Ah, ah, ah,
ah
, ah, ah, ah." The notes rise at first, then get lower...and she does it again, in a higher register. "Mi, mi, mi,
mi
, mi, mi, mi." After that run of notes, she nods. "The key of A sharp and the key of E. Those are the
keys
to the
car
."

Suddenly, the color blotch expands like an amoeba, engulfing Judd and Mom. Now we're on the inside looking out...

(...a
dark
and
sticky
place to be...)

...lying flat and facing front with no better idea than before of how to drive this so-called car. As always, we're the idiots in Wonderland, trying to figure out which magic bottle to drink from.

"Judd,
please
!" Mom sounds like she's about to lose it for real this time. "You have my permission to drive as
fast
as you
want
to!"

"Right." Judd looks around and does nothing. How can he, when no controls are visible?

(Unless you count a splattered mass of blended brownish paint as controls.)

"What's gotten
into
you?" wails Mom. "Why can't you do one
simple
thing?"

Judd shakes his head. "I don't know, I don't know."

Killdigit to the rescue! That's the way it
should
go, anyway, with me as a one-finger cavalry...but not
this
time. For once, I'm just as stumped as the dude is, up the blotch without a paint brush. If there's a way to get this thing moving, it's beyond the genius of Oogachucka.

So without a miracle from yours truly, Judd turns to Mom. "Maybe you should drive this time."

Mom releases a heavy sigh and rolls her eyes. Then she shows us how to drive the blotch.

Forked pink tongue flickering, Mom closes her eyes and sinks deeper into the layers of paint. Soon, she's up to her nostrils; the front of her is sunk, while her back and the top of her head remain visible.

Then, her body breaks apart into pieces. She sheds her green scales, which float off into the paint like tadpoles, leaving behind a layer of red muscle. Next, the muscle melts into the paint, followed by the skeleton--all of it drifting apart into little red and white bits. Finally, the only thing left of her is her brown hair, red pantsuit, and black-and-white polka dot shoes.

But the green scales, red muscle fibers, and white bone chips form a matrix all around Judd, merging with the brownish paint blotch in a kind of geodesic bubble.

Which then starts bouncing.

The geodesic paint bubble with the Mom interior flies forward and down...hits the yellow pavement and pops back up, then does it again, sound effect included.

(KA-BOING!)

It's got a heck of a bounce, because it pops higher and further forward with every strike. Pretty soon, we're grabbing some serious air, climbing thirty, forty, fifty feet on the up-bounce.

We're out of the parking lot in nothing flat, springing down the pink-pavement streets through neighborhoods of spinning stained glass houses. Other paint bubbles leap past us in all directions, bounding with the chaos of ping pong balls in an air-driven tub on a TV lottery drawing.

"What a ride!" I say to Judd, but he doesn't answer. He's all about the intensity at this moment, teeth clenched and eyes fixed on the up-and-down view through a thin spot in the paint. So what if he's riding in a bouncing blotch driven by pieces of bacon-breathed Mom? His brother's well-being matters in a big way. Even in an alternate reality, he's
family
.

(What does that make
me
? Would he rush to my side if
I
was in danger?)

(Assuming I wasn't still attached to him, of course.)

The paint bubble with us inside charges across town, making with the sound effects all the way.

(KA-BOING KA-BOING KA-BOING)

At one point, we get high enough that I see what looks like a flock of birds. But as the bubble crests its arc and starts back down, the "birds" get closer, and I see they're sneakers with wings.

(Talk about
wing-tip
shoes!)

It's a good thing we get away from them fast, because the toes of the sneakers open as we pass, revealing mouths studded with rows of pointed teeth.

(Remind me not to take a balloon ride in this freak-show world!)

When we hit the pink pavement and bounce back up again, I notice Mom's cutting back on the altitude. We don't rise up to sneaker-level this time, and the bounce after that's even lower. Time to slow down, I guess.

We must be getting close to home.

*****

The bubble finally bounces to a stop in front of a stained glass house that resembles Judd's family's house back home.

(Except for the being-made-of-stained-glass part.)

As soon as the bubble stops moving, Mom's bone chips, muscle fibers, and green scales crawl out of their geodesic matrix and swarm into her red pantsuit and polka dot shoes. Before Judd's eyes, they build a new Mom from the bones up in the sticky brown paint. Her clothes fill out and rise, taking shape like a balloon being inflated.

The second she's back in one piece, Mom sings the car keys, and the blotch drops us on the driveway...

(...which is made of something like gelatin, it jiggles when it catches us...)

(...it's also purple and tastes like grape when Judd gets some on his mouth...)

...and then Mom rolls out from under the blotch, and Judd does, too. Both of them leap to their feet and race toward the front door.

(Ol' Maw runs purty
good
for someone who just went to
pieces
a few minutes ago.)

Without a word, Mom grabs a neon yellow and pink crowbar from the welcome mat...

(...the
psychedelic
welcome mat, which is covered with a crazy-quilt of moving symbols, shapes, and patterns...)

...and then, as the big bold arrows of the air swoop around her...

(...there's a stiff breeze just then, propelled by the arrows...)

...she hauls back the crowbar over her shoulder and swings it forward, smashing the door to stained glass smithereens.

"Let's go! Hurry!" Without looking back, Mom steps over the threshold and crunches through the bits of stained glass on the other side. She drops the crowbar on the red marble floor...

(...the
fluorescent
red marble floor...)

...where it lands with a CLANG-A-LANG as she keeps on stomping into the house, fists balled at her sides.

Judd steps over the wreckage of the door and follows her. Right away, he can see that the layout inside the place comes close to the home he knows, so that's a plus. It also helps that the walls, floor, and ceilings are all made of stained glass. Though he's a few steps behind and around the corner from Mom, he can see her through the multicolored layers of glass as she charges down the hallway toward Nick's bedroom.

He can see Nick, too, sitting on the edge of his bed, cradling his head in his hands. Seeing him like that's a big relief, considering the possibilities that have been flashing through Judd's mind ever since Mom said "something terrible" had happened to him.

As Judd rounds the corner, Mom stops in front of Nick's door, which is across from Judd's room at the end of the hall. "Honey?" She knocks softly on the red stained glass panel in the top half of the door. "Your brother's here. Can he come in and talk to you?"

Judd draws up behind Mom and peers through the door glass. On the other side, Nick slowly lifts his head from his hands. "Tell him to go away!" he says. "Tell him to leave me alone!"

Mom looks at Judd with super-wide, terrified eyes, then turns back to the door. "P-please, honey. Judd just wants to talk, okay?"

Nick lets out an anguished cry and claws at his hair. "He can't
help
me!
No one
can! This is
it
! This is the
end
!"

Mom turns and whispers to Judd. "Did you
hear
that? You've got to
do
something."

Nick unleashes another anguished cry, much louder than the last. He sounds like his head's about to explode or something.

Judd turns away, rubbing the back of his neck. "Oh my God." He says it under his breath. "He sounds awful."

(Cue the pinky finger that roared!)

"So get in there and help him!" Words of wisdom courtesy of Killdigit! "Maybe this is your big
chance
, dude!"

"My chance for what?" says Judd, taking two steps away from Mom and the door.

"To learn a lesson and change yourself! Maybe this is how you're supposed to do it!" I jab him hard in the palm with my nail.

(Gettin' a lotta
use
outta that nail these days, aren't I?)

"Maybe helping other people is the way to go!" When I say it, I jab him again for good measure.

"Judd?" Mom is calling. "Can you please talk to him?"

I can see the gears turning as Judd nods his head. He stuffs his hands in his pockets...

(Not the
pockets
!
Here we go again
!)

...as he turns and walks back to the door.

(Let me
outta
here, you friggin'
doof
!)

I hear him knock once on the glass...

(With his good-for-nothing
right
hand!)

...and then he calls out to his brother. "Hey Nick, can I come in?"

"I don't wanna talk to you! I don't wanna talk to anyone!" Again, Nick lets out an anguished howl.

"Just open up, all right?" Judd jiggles the doorknob, which is made of stained glass like the door. "Five minutes, that's all I ask."

I can't see what happens next...

(...because I'm jammed in a
pocket
...)

...but everyone shuts up for a little bit, for a moment or two...and then I finally hear footsteps on the other side of the door. The knob jiggles and turns, and the bolt slides free of the lock.

"Five minutes." It's Nick's voice. "Lock the door behind you."

Doofus finally gets around to tugging me out of his pocket just in time for me to see him walking into Nick's room. He closes and locks the door behind him, just like Nick said.

Then he's face to face with his brother.

(Let the messed-up sibling games begin!)

Like Mom and everyone else, Nick's covered in green scales and has a forked tongue. He wears bluejeans with yellow polka dots and a t-shirt covered in wild fluorescent flowers of every color in the spectrum.

(Pretty bright outfit for someone in the throes of
agony
, right?)

"So what's up?" Judd moseys over and leans against Nick's stained glass dresser.

Nick throws himself on the bed (which looks like it's made of some kind of bright orange gelatin) and lies back to stare up at the ceiling. "A
nightmare
. A terrible, terrible
nightmare
."

Judd frowns. "What kind of nightmare?"

Nick tosses his head from side to side. "I can't
go
on
like this." He sounds like he's on the verge of tears. "My life is
ruined
."

Judd's uncomfortable. He isn't used to seeing his brother like this. The closest they come to a heart-to-heart talk back home is fighting over the TV remote. "Why is it ruined? What happened?"

The gelatinous bed quivers as Nick starts sobbing.

(So much for the
verge
of tears.)

"Aw, Nick." Judd sighs and looks at the bedroom door. The hall on the other side's more crowded than ever; Dad and Brooke have joined Mom, and everyone's watching through the glass. Even Sphinx the chocolate Lab's out there.

(Are those glowing neon
porcupine spines
all over him??)

"Why me?" Nick wrenches out the words between sobs. "Why
me
?"

What the heck is this kid's
deal
? Incurable
cancer
?

Judd has another look at the audience in the hall. Mom gestures impatiently, waving him over to Nick. Dad repeats the gesture, and so does Sphinx.

Finally, Judd shrugs and commits to the project. He starts to stuff his hands in his pockets...

("
Don't you dare
!" I yell as loud as is fingerly possible.)

...and then he changes his mind and plants them on his hips instead. "Tell me about it." Slowly, he walks over to the bed. "Please. I want to know."

Nick rolls over on his side, facing away from Judd. This time, when he blubbers between sobs, his voice is high-pitched like a girl's. "I can't! I cuh-can't do it!"

Judd clears his throat. "Sure you can." He lowers himself to sit on the edge of the orange gelatin bed, which makes a slurping sound as his butt sinks down into it. "Tell me, bro. What's wrong?"

Nick's sobs intensify, then gradually trail off. He gasps for breath, fighting to steady himself. Eventually, he manages to speak in a voice that isn't high-pitched or sob-choked. "It's bad, Judd."

"I'm your brother. You can tell me."

"It's really, really
bad
," says Nick. "B-but...I'll try."

"Okay." Judd's heart is pounding like a drumroll. I can feel the dread pouring off him as the moment of revelation approaches. "You can do it, Nick."

Nick takes deep breaths and rolls over. "All right." His face contorts as he sits up beside Judd, and I think he might break into tears again...but he doesn't. "I'll tell you."

"Go ahead." Judd's stomach is churning. Cold sweat rolls down his back and sides. What's Nick going to
tell
him? How bad can it
be
?

Nick lowers his voice and leans closer. "I'm scared, Judd." He looks up with eyes so wide, I think they might pop out of his skull. "Really, really scared."

Judd's frown deepens. "Scared of what?"

"It's a nightmare," says Nick. "A terrible nightmare."

"You already said that." Judd reaches over and pats him on the back. "So how is your life a nightmare? In what way?"

"You don't understand." Nick shakes his head. "I'm talking about an
actual nightmare
. The
nightmare
is the
problem
."

What the bleep?

(If this were a movie trailer, right about now's when you'd hear the sound effect of a phonograph needle sliding off a record.
Scree-yooop
.)

Judd can't help scowling in disbelief. "Are we talking about a
bad dream
here?"

"The
worst
." Nick lowers his voice even further. "I dreamed you won the
Permanent Tournament
and brought home the
Living Cup
!"

Judd scratches his head. "And that's a
bad
thing?"

"What's
wrong
with you?" Nick gapes at him like he's lost his mind. "Winning is
always
bad."

Who the how the what now
???

"Oh, right." Judd nods knowingly. "That's what I meant to say." Gotta hand it to him, dude's getting better at this adapting-to-craziness stuff.

(Thanks to his mentor
Killdigit
, of course!)

"You
won
. In the dream, you
won
." Nick combs his fingers through his brown hair and wags his head. "But that wasn't even the worst part!"

"Really?" says Judd. "So what
was
the worst part?"

Nick glances at the rest of the family outside the stained glass door. Then, he leans closer and drops his voice to a faint whisper. "I got a
hangnail
."

To his credit, Judd doesn't ask the obvious question...

("
What kind of nutcase are you???
")

...and instead manages to sound sympathetic. "It must've hurt pretty bad, huh?"

Nick shakes his head gravely. "That's the
problem
, Judd. It hardly hurt
at all
."

"Okay." Judd pats him on the back again. "I'm really sorry to hear that, man."

"You are?" Nick's eyes well up with tears as he looks at his brother. "You don't think I'm some kind of
freak
?"

(Yes he does! And so does Oogachucka!)

"Of course not." Judd's voice is ultra-reassuring. He's taking this helping-others thing to heart. "I'll bet that in your next nightmare, I'll
lose
the tournament and get
expelled
from school, and the hangnail will hurt like
hell
and bleed all over the place."

"You think so?" Nick looks deliriously happy through the teary-eyed misery. "And maybe you'll
die
, huh? In a really gruesome way?"

"Sure." Judd grins and tousles Nick's hair. "The more gruesome my death, the better."

"Thanks." Nick sniffles and smiles. "That gives me something to look forward to."

"Any time, bro." Judd shakes Nick's hand with a steady grip. He looks pleased with himself for helping Nick, no matter how silly his issues.

"I'm proud of you." That's what I tell him, and I mean it. I think he did some good work here. How often, before this, did Judd reach out to help someone with an emotional crisis? How often did someone else's feelings matter so much to Judd when he had no expectation of getting something in return? I'd call that learning something and changing for the better, wouldn't you?

If this doesn't earn us some points and straighten out our crazy karma, I don't know what will.

"So do you think you'll be okay?" says Judd.

"Yeah, bro. As long as I remember things can always get
worse.
" Nick's chuckle's a little shaky, but at least he's laughing. "I was scared they might keep getting
better
, y'know?"

(
Better
? Who in their right mind would want things to get
better
?)

"You'll be all right," says Judd, and then he catches himself. "I mean you'll be
lousy
. Things are gonna totally
suck
."

"Awesome." Nick sniffs and gives Judd a playful punch in the bicep. "You always know the right thing to say, Judd."

(Good deed accomplished! If our theory's correct, the world oughtta be changing any
minute
now!)

"No worries, man." Judd tousles Nick's hair once more, then gets up and walks to the door. "That's what brothers are for." He turns the knob and pops the lock with a jaunty, feel-good smile.

Whereupon the stained glass door crashes into the room so hard, it nearly knocks him off his feet. The crowd from the hallway's pushing in whether he likes it or not.

(Must be dying to get to Nick, right?)