A World of Trouble (24 page)

Abe gives her a quick nudge with his elbow. Noticing a shredded banner hanging over the street, its rope ties hanging onto crooked lampposts by threads, I point.

Judging by the scribbles, lines, and original type, here's what the banner once said:

BEHOLD BLACKHOLE'S BUSINESS DISTRICT!

CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF UNPARALLELED CUSTOMER SERVICE

HOW MAY WE HELP
YOU
?

STOP BY THE GENERAL STORE AND RECEIVE

A COMPLIMENTARY SOUVENIR!

And here's what it says now:

BEHOLD INCRIMINATION!

CELEBRATING AN ETERNITY OF AWESOME ADULT CORRECTION

HOW MAY WE FIX
YOU
?

STOP BY THE GENERAL STORE AND RECEIVE A LESSON

YOU'LL NEVER FORGET!

Gabby squints as she reads the sign. “I don't get it. Is this place some kind of—?”

She's cut off by a series of loud, sharp pops. My alliance-mates cover their heads and duck. Having fired enough weapons to know what real danger sounds like, I take another step closer to the wall's edge for a better look.

“As you begin your stay,” Nadia shouts into the megaphone, “I'd like to share with you a tip my parents offered me more times than I'd like to remember!”

The kids scream their approval. The adults, still reeling from the firecrackers thrown at their feet, spin and hop.

“Don't mess with the bull . . . because you'll get the horns!”

More firecrackers are launched. The adults jump and knock into each other. A few of them drop to the ground. The ones still standing help the fallen back up. The kids scream louder, only now they're not just cheering. They're chanting. It takes them a while to sync up, but when they do, I make out two words being repeated over and over again.

Shepherd . . . Bull! Shepherd . . . Bull! Shepherd . . . Bull!

I scan the crowd for a bearded guy holding a staff and surrounded by sheep, and an enormous, snorting beast pawing the dirt with heavy hooves. While I'm doing this, the same child-giant who scaled the helicopter joins Nadia on the roof of the bus. His weight's so great and the bus is so beaten up, two tires blow from the pressure. The vehicle tilts toward the adults. They cower. One woman in a frilly green skirt, black sweater, and pearls, falls to her knees and cries.

Someone dashes forward and gives the hysterical lady a handkerchief. I can't see the kid's face.

But I can see her long red braid.

“There she is,” I say quietly to Lemon, who's recovered from his fear of gunfire and crouches next to me. Hearing ticking overhead, I glance up and see a clock on top of an iron post. The
post is bent and the timepiece cracked, but, somehow, its second hand's still clicking.

10:23. If we're going to get back to GS George before liftoff, we need to make a move. Like, now.

Or, better yet, thirty seconds ago. Before Elinor tried to dry that woman's eyes. And was seen by Nadia. Who now leaps from the top of the bus, Spidey-style, grabs Elinor's braid, and pulls so hard, so fast, her daughter's heels drag in the dirt.

I start to bolt from the hiding space. Lemon grabs my coat and tugs me back.

“We'll follow,” he says. “But let's give them a small head start.”

He's right, of course. The closer we are the likelier we are to be caught. But how come the right thing to do is rarely the easiest? This seems like a good question for Miss Parsippany. Maybe I'll ask it in my next note.

It takes all the mental and physical strength I can manage not to immediately run after Elinor and her mother, but I do as Lemon says. In the meantime, Shepherd Bull, who appears to be the leader of this messy misfit army, tucks his massive body into a cannonball and throws himself from the bus. His feet shoot
out just before slamming into the ground. He selects a dozen kids from the gathered group and barks orders. Still in line, the adults turn to the right—away from us, thankfully—and place their hands on the shoulders of the person ahead of them, like this scene's a party and they're about to conga. Then they shuffle down the sidewalk while their kid keepers bounce and leap around them, shouting and cackling.

Finally, at 10:26, the entire crew rounds a corner and disappears.

“Let's go.” I step one foot out of the alleyway—and am tugged back again.

“What's our plan?” Abe asks.

“Um, to rescue Elinor?” I say.

He rolls his eyes. “How? We're just going to waltz in, say hi, take her by the hand, and excuse ourselves? Something tells me that's not going to fly here.”

I glance at the clock. 10:27.

“We don't have time for plans. They probably wouldn't do much good anyway since we have no idea what else we'll find when we find Elinor. We just have to do whatever it takes to get her out of here.”

“But did you see those crazies?” Gabby asks. “All muscley and
dirty and out of control? Armed with baseball bats, firecrackers—and who knows what else? Without my backpack, my only weapon's a stuffed unicorn. Its cuteness quotient's unmatched, but this group would totally rip it to shreds long before that magic's put in motion.”

“And . . . I have a drawing pad.” Abe lifts his shoulders and tilts his head to one side.

“Well, I have a lighter.” Lemon holds it up for proof. “And as we all know, I'm not afraid to use it.”

“I have my K-Pak,” I add, realizing how silly that sounds. What am I supposed to do if we get into trouble? E-mail GS George? The Hoodlum Hotline? The Kommissary Krew? A lot of good that'll do if we're tossed into another black hole and buried alive. “And if you see anything along the way that might be useful, grab it.”

“Okay,” Abe says, sounding doubtful. “But here's the thing. When I agreed to this little project, I thought we'd take a trip, see some sights, get your girl, maybe swing by the Grand Canyon on the way back—”

“Oooh, good idea!” Gabby squeals softly.

“—and be done with it.” Abe pauses, looks around. “I didn't
realize I was agreeing to this, whatever this is. And dealing with them, whoever
they
are.”

“Me neither. But forget about them.
We
are Capital T.” I look at them, one by one by one. “We're the best of the best, remember? And we can rock this.”

I sound more confident than I feel. I'm guessing they look as confident as they feel—which isn't very. But then Gabby hugs her stuffed unicorn. Abe pats his drawing pad. Lemon flicks on his lighter. And when I turn toward the alleyway entrance, they do too.

I glance at the clock once more.

10:30.

I'm the only one who saw Elinor dragged off, so I take the lead and we head in that direction. We're alone on Main Street now, but voices are all around us. They seem to come from inside buildings and nearby roads. They're loud. Excited. They make me wonder when these kids go to sleep. We don't have curfews at Kilter, but since twelve hours of troublemaking can be exhausting and we have to be up early for classes, we're usually in bed at a reasonable hour.

Picking up the pace, we pass abandoned cars. Jump over broken glass. Weave through discarded telephones, cash registers,
and cardboard boxes that litter Main Street's sidewalks like leaves after a crazy summer storm. Peer into stores and cafés, which look like they were broken into long ago, their owners and patrons permanently run out of Blackhole. The shelves are empty. Dishes shattered. Furniture toppled.

It's a ghost town. Like the ones you see in movies.

Only here, given the way they're howling, the ghosts are very much alive.

Besides us, the only sign of life currently on Main Street comes at the very end. Two businesses, one on each corner, appear to be open. As we scurry closer, I see the first is the General Store. My brain tells my torso to lower and my feet to sprint by the illuminated window, but only my torso listens. Lemon, Abe, and Gabby slow to a walk too, so they must see the same thing I do.

There are more adults. But they're not the ones who just got off the bus. They still wear suits, khakis, and dresses, but the pleats are gone, the fabric faded and torn. They're all barefoot. The men have mustaches and scraggly beards. The women's hair stands around their heads, forming what I imagine would be lovely homes for some wayward desert birds. Unlike the kids
running through the aisles, they move slowly. Awkwardly. Like they haven't sat down in weeks.

“What did I say?” one kid yells so loudly I hear him like he's standing right in front of me. He looks about my age, maybe a year or two older. “Use. Your.
Words!
”

The man he addresses winces as he tries to stand up straight. He takes a box from the shelf, which, unlike those in the other stores we passed, is fully stocked. His mustache moves, so I assume he's speaking, but I can't make out a single syllable.

“What's that?” The kid cups one dirty hand to an even dirtier ear. “You want me to buy you a limited-edition sandstone coaster set? Even though it's not your birthday? And I just bought you those jarred chili peppers last week? I. Don't.
Think so!
”

The man's mustache moves faster. The kid shakes his head.

“Drop and give me twenty!”

The man's suit sleeves, which were made for a much larger figure, hang from his thin arms. I doubt he has the strength to do one push-up, let alone twenty. But it's soon clear the kid wasn't talking calisthenics. Because the man gets on his hands and knees, lowers his head to the kid's boots like a dog to a water bowl, and puckers up.

“Ew,” Gabby says as the man kisses one filthy shoe, then the other.

“Absolutely not!” another voice yells. This one's female. It belongs to a tall girl holding a sombrero-shaped statue in one hand and a donkey-shaped statue in the other. Black and white dust sprinkles the floor around her, so I assume the statues are salt and pepper shakers. “Did you make the bed the way I told you? Or put away your clean clothes?”

She's shrieking at a woman who's wearing what was probably once a bright yellow sundress. The woman's lips move. The girl steps toward her. Glares. Raises both arms overhead. The woman crumbles like a cookie to the floor.

“You don't
have
clean clothes? What an ungrateful little—”

Another tug on my coat pulls me away from the window. This is good and bad. Good because we have to keep moving. But bad because these kids are definitely playing several cards short of a full deck. And the more we see, the more I want to help the adults.

As we hurry away, we hear more shouting across the street. I glance over my shoulder. A strange scene is visible through the smudged window of the Prickly Pear Café. More scruffy adults
sit at tables, their heads lowered and shoulders slumped. More kids stand over them and yell, ordering the diners to eat their vegetables or starve.

“Now where?” Abe asks.

I turn back. We've reached an intersection. Across the street is a large dirt square. It's empty except for a set of swings without seats and an upside-down slide. To the right and left are houses. I check the roads for fresh footprints, but there are so many it's impossible to tell which, if any, are new.

But then I see it. Lying in the middle of the road to our left.

A single green ribbon.

“This way.” I run, snatching up the hair tie along the way.

The road leads to the entrance to Rustic Rose Estates. That's what the sign says, though the houses inside the complex look better suited to Rundown Rows Estates. They're pretty big and at one point were probably the nicest homes in all of Blackhole, but now graffiti covers their exterior walls. Doors are off hinges. Roof tiles litter yards. Garbage is strewn about. Forgotten cars are dented, their tires flat and windshields shattered.

“They all look exactly the same,” Gabby says. “How do we know which one she's in?”

It's a good question. And at first, I don't have a good answer. But then the front door of a house halfway down the block squeals open. It slams into the side of the house, sending stucco flying. Nadia Kilter flies down the steps and jumps into a battered pickup truck parked in the driveway. Through the hole where the driver's side window used to be I see her bend down. A few seconds later, there's a sharp scratching noise. It's followed by a loud rumbling as the engine starts.

“She just hot-wired the car,” Abe says. “Like on TV. Probably because the little mongrels swallowed the keys.”

“Awesome,” Gabby says.

The rumbling grows to a roar. The pickup fires backward from the driveway, turns so fast its tires spin through dirt before gaining traction, and heads for the entrance. We dart and duck behind the closest hiding spot: a six-foot-tall iron coyote sculpture in someone's front yard. I hold my breath as the truck nears, but it zooms by without slowing down. As soon as it leaves the neighborhood, we start running again.

When we reach the house, we move without speaking. Lemon, Abe, and Gabby crouch below windows and peer inside the house. I go to the front door, which is still open after being thrown into the exterior wall.

“Seamus!” a voice hisses.

I jump. Look to the right. Lemon's standing by a cracked wooden gate several feet away. He waves for me to follow. I do the same to Abe and Gabby, who are behind me. We all dash through the gate and into the backyard.

Where I don't know what Lemon wants us to see. The backyard resembles the front yard. It's grassless and empty. The only difference is an inground pool, which doesn't look like it's ever held swimmers—or water, for that matter. Lemon, however, seems to think the crumbling stone edges and deep, unlined ditch make for prime doggy-paddle conditions.

“Hope you brought a bathing suit,” he says. “Or better yet, a wet suit. Made of metal. And a helmet. The old-fashioned kind. That's so big and heavy it looks like it could double as a submarine.”