Beware the Ninja Weenies (14 page)

Nothing.

I was fine with that. They had their lives, and I had mine. I had my family. I had our week in the Adirondacks. I had Grammy and Gramps. I didn't envy their good fortune. I had no desire to give them the evil eye.

The charms worked beautifully.

 

THE DARK SIDE OF BRIGHTNESS

“
I
want a dazzling
smile!” Cranston screamed.

His parents exchanged puzzled glances and then turned nervous smiles in his direction.

“What was that?” his mother asked.

“A dazzling smile,” Cranston said. “Didn't you hear me the first time?”

“We did,” his father said. “But we aren't sure what you mean. Your smile is just wonderful.”

“It's not dazzling.” Cranston pointed toward the closest television, which was currently tuned to a channel featuring entertainment news. “In the ads, the beautiful people have dazzling smiles.”

Cranston, who was eight years old, watched far too much television, which wasn't difficult, since there was a set in nearly every room in the house. Some celebrities could sing or dance. Others could act or tell jokes. Some didn't seem to have any talent at all. But they all had dazzling smiles. Every single one of them. Cranston was pretty sure he didn't have any talent, so his only hope of being a celebrity was his smile.

“Your smile is already perfect,” his mother said. She took his chin in her hand and told him, “You're my perfect little angel, and your smile is just right.”

Cranston issued a howl of frustration and stomped out of the room. Nobody seemed to understand how important this was. He needed a dazzling smile, and he needed it right now. His neighbor's mother was a celebrity. Becky's mom gave the weather forecast on the local news channel, and appeared in commercials for a used-car dealer. On the news and in the commercials, her smile was dazzling. Whenever she had to go anywhere, a limousine picked her up. Whenever she went into town, people asked her for her autograph. That's what happened when you had a dazzling smile.

Cranston knocked on Becky's door.

“Hi?” she said. Cranston never talked to her, and had never knocked on her door before, so she was puzzled by his sudden appearance.

“I want a dazzling smile,” he told her.

“No problem,” Becky said. “My mom uses these strips. They make her teeth totally dazzling. I use them, too.”

Becky flashed a stunning grin at Cranston. He almost asked her for her autograph, but he had more urgent things to do. Becky led him to her parents' bathroom and opened the cabinet under the sink. There were seven boxes of Perfect-Smile Concentrated Whitening Strips stacked on the bottom shelf.

“Can I have one?” Cranston asked.

“Sure.” Becky reached inside an open box for a strip.

“No. Not one strip. One box,” Cranston said. He was pretty sure one strip wouldn't do the trick. If it did, why would anyone need seven boxes?

Becky shrugged and handed him a full box. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.” Cranston carried the box back home and went up to his bedroom. He read the first line of the directions on the side of the box.
Place strip against teeth and let sit for fifteen minutes.

Cranston didn't bother reading the rest. He took out the strip, placed it against his teeth, and checked the clock on his desk. The strip tasted like glue mixed with mouthwash. Cranston didn't care. He'd do anything for a dazzling smile.

After fifteen minutes, he took off the strip and flashed a grin toward his mirror.

The grin had a short life.

“They're the same!” he screamed. He leaned so close to the mirror that his breath fogged it. As far as he could tell, his smile still wasn't dazzling.

He put on another strip and left it there for two minutes. Then he took it off and grabbed a fresh one.

By the tenth strip, he was pretty sure he was seeing a change. He kept it up until the box was empty. That's when he noticed the line below the instructions that warned:
Do not use more than two strips each day.

A moment later, his mom walked into the room. She glanced down at the scattered litter of thirty wrappers and thirty used whitening strips. “What are you doing?”

Instead of answering, Cranston decided to show her. He gave her his most dazzling smile. He knew, when she saw it, she'd let him do whatever he wanted. That was the power of a dazzling smile.

His mom gasped, put her hand over her mouth like she was holding back a scream, and staggered away until she bumped into a wall across the hall from the bedroom door.

Cranston was about to ask her what was wrong, when he realized his legs felt strange. Something had spilled on them. It looked like little splashes of sour cream. He felt more wetness on his chin, and on the front of his shirt.

I'm drooling?

“What…”

As he spoke, he realized his tongue was striking emptiness. Cranston stared at his face in the mirror. He definitely didn't have a dazzling smile. Far from it. His teeth were gone. They'd dissolved into a liquid and dribbled out of his mouth.

It was a bright, dazzling liquid, but it would never be part of another smile.

 

DAY CARELESS

“
Jordan, I need you
to pick up Danube,” my mom called as she rushed toward the garage with my baby brother Nile tucked in one arm and a diaper bag dangling from the other.

“What?” I hit
START
on the controller to bring up the
PAUSE
screen and looked over at her from the couch.

“Pick up your brother from day care. I have to take Nile for his booster shot.”

“But…” I pointed at the screen. Clearly, I was nowhere near a save spot. It had taken me fifteen minutes to fight my way to where I was, and I didn't want to face the poison-spitting giant cockroaches again. No thanks. They were just too hard to kill. I'd barely made it past them this time. As it was, my health bar was nearly gone.

“No argument,” Mom said. “It's just a couple blocks away. Three-fifty-nine Burlman Street. Go there. Get him. Walk him home. Then you can get back to your game. Understand?” She vanished into the garage before I even had a chance to nod.

I left the game paused and headed out the front door. Burlman Street was more than a couple blocks away.
A couple
meant “two.” Not seven. But there was nobody I could complain to. And even if there were, it wouldn't do me any good.

When I reached the place, I saw that it wasn't a building. It was someone's house. But I spotted a hand-painted sign in front:
DAY CARE. CHEAP RATES.

As I walked up to the front door, I could hear the squealy noise of little kids coming from inside. Danube is four, which makes him close to useless as far as the two of us having fun together. I can make him do stupid things, but that gets boring pretty quickly.

I knocked on the door and waited. Nobody came. I knocked again. I waited awhile longer, and then really thumped it. Finally, the door opened and a woman peeked out. She looked like she was maybe forty or fifty years old. I could tell she was having a rough day. Her hair was all messy, like someone had tossed a small bomb onto her head. Her dress was rumpled. She smelled like meat loaf—but not the good kind my grandma makes. More like the kind they serve at school.

“Yes?” she asked.

“I'm here to pick up Danube,” I said.

“Who?”

“Danube. My brother.” I lowered my hand like I was patting the top of his head. “Little guy. Runny nose. Brown hair. Likes trucks.”

“Oh, sure. Come in.” She led me through a living room, where the TV was on. A steaming cup of tea rested on a table next to a large chair. I didn't see any sign of kids, but I could hear them. The woman opened a door on the wall next to the table. The squeals got louder. I followed her downstairs to a basement. I spotted Danube over in one corner, playing with some wooden blocks. Other kids were playing with cheap toys, watching a cartoon video on an ancient TV, or just sitting doing nothing.

Before I could call for Danube, the woman said, “Look. I need a favor. I have to run out for five minutes to pick up my prescription. Can you watch them?”

I glanced at the room full of toddlers, ranging from babies to a couple kids who were older than Danube. “No way.”

She reached in her pocket and pulled out some money. “Five dollars for five minutes,” she said.

“Ten.”

“Deal.”

She shoved a bill in my hand and left, closing the door at the top of the stairs.

“Jordan!”

Danube had spotted me. He rushed over and gave me a sticky hug. Mom and Dad had named us all after rivers, which is pretty funny when you think about how dirty Danube and Nile get. It's sort of crappy for me, since Jordan could also be a girl's name. Luckily, I'm a pretty good fighter. Even if I did have a hard time getting past the giant cockroaches.

“Home?” Danube asked.

“Soon. We just have to hang out here for a few minutes.”

Above, I heard the sound of the front door closing. The slam was followed by no sound at all. It took me a second or two to realize the squealing and chattering had turned into silence. The kids in the room had stopped babbling at each other or crying or screaming. Every single one of them was staring at me.

I took Danube's sticky hand and walked up the steps. I figured I'd wait in the kitchen, right near the door to the basement, until I heard the woman coming back, and then slip down here again so she wouldn't know what I'd done. It would only be a couple minutes. Nothing bad would happen to the kids in that little bit of time. And as far as I remembered, she didn't say I had to stay in the same room with them.
Watch the kids
doesn't mean I had to actually look at them.

“Home?” Danube asked again. He clutched my pants leg in one fist and squeezed it like he was trying to extract khaki juice. His other fist remained locked onto my hand.

“Soon.” It was still creepily silent behind me. I grabbed the knob and turned it. My gut clenched as I realized the door was locked.

I pushed hard, but the door was too solid for me to force open. “Okay,” I said out loud, “it's no big deal. She just wants to keep us safe. She'll be back in a minute. Right?” I asked, as if Danube could answer questions that required real thought.

“Right,” he said.

I looked past the stairs to the basement floor. “You want to wait down there with your friends?”

“No.” He shook his head hard.

I couldn't blame him. “Okay. We'll stay here.”

Down below, the kids had gotten to their feet. All of them. They moved to the bottom of the stairs. They still hadn't made a sound.

One of them, barely older than a baby, crawled up to the second step. He looked at me and opened his mouth. I expected some sort of babbling baby sounds. Instead, I heard words.

“Big people are bad.” His voice was like an old man's whisper.

A girl about Danube's age pointed at me. “You're big.”

“You're bad,” the baby said.

They all pointed at me. “You're bad!” they cried.

“No!” I screamed.

Next to me, Danube howled. I thought he was just scared. Then he howled louder and yanked at my hand. I looked down. I was so scared, I was squeezing his hand. Hard.

I let go.

“Bad!”

They swarmed up the stairs. I scanned around for any way to escape. There was no other way out. I hit the door with my shoulder, but it didn't budge.

The baby had reached me. I raised my hand to push him back down. But I hesitated. How could I push a baby?

In the brief time when I'd paused, two more of them reached my step. They clutched at my pants legs. I tried to push one of them off. The baby grabbed my arm.

They swarmed over me, like ants on a scrap of meat. They pulled at my legs and tugged at my belt. When I realized I was in trouble, I pushed Danube away so he wouldn't fall with me. I toppled, rolling down the steps. As I tumbled, I caught sight of him tottering at the top of the steps. Luckily, he managed to keep his balance.

The rest of the kids fell with me. On the way down, I had the weirdest thought. I was like a
katamari
in that old video game, a sticky ball picking up everything I rolled over.

I crashed to a stop against a ratty old stuffed giraffe, still mobbed by the kids. They were pummeling me. None of them could hit all that hard, but I was at the center of a lot of fists and feet.

I had a difficult time breathing with so many kids piled on my chest. My head hurt. So did my ribs. The room started to get dark in a weird way, like someone had pulled a piece of red silk across my eyes.

They're killing me.

It was strange. Part of my brain didn't seem to mind. The other part told me to struggle.

The door at the top of the steps opened. Light washed over me.

“I'm back.”

Kids fell from me and scrambled to the corners of the room. They acted like they'd never left their games or toys.

I stood and took a deep breath, then headed up the steps. I forced myself not to run. When I got to the top, I took Danube's hand. Gently. I was definitely happy when we made it through the kitchen and out the front door. On the way out, I noticed a bag on the kitchen table. It wasn't from the drugstore. It was from the doughnut shop. She'd gone away and left all those kids with someone who really wasn't qualified to watch them, all for a snack.

“Home?” Danube asked as we walked toward the street.

“Yeah.”

“I don't like that place,” he said.

I patted his shoulder. “Don't worry. You're never going back there.”

Maybe none of those kids is going back,
I thought. Not after I told Mom what happened. Those kids might have acted like monsters, but I didn't think they were born that way. Someone, or something, had made them act like that.