Ignatius MacFarland (10 page)

The mole guy started laughing, which made him shake, which made his sword start moving back and forth across my stomach. I sucked in my gut the way my uncle Dan does whenever a pretty girl walks past him on the beach and hoped that the mole guy was going to stop finding whatever he was finding funny amusing.

“We got ’em!” he yelled loudly. And with that, a ton of uniformed creatures that sort of looked like huge three-legged armless gorillas walked in and surrounded us.

“Great work, kid,” said Karen as she looked around and realized that we were completely trapped. “Way to go.”

Two of the octopuses walked forward to grab Karen. She looked down at her pole but then saw how outnumbered we were and so she just sort of deflated, the way you do when you get back a test that you were sure you had earned an A on, only to find you flunked it. The octopuses were just about to grab her with their long arms when, all of a sudden . . .

. . . my cell phone rang.

15

SAVED BY THE BELL. LITERALLY!

Look,
I
wasn’t the one who put the goofy ring tone on my cell phone alarm. It was Ivan who thought it’d be funny to make my alarm play that song my grandpa said used to be the theme from some show called
The Lone Ranger
. The alarm always went off half an hour before my piano lesson so that I wouldn’t forget to go over to Mrs. Noble’s house and horrify her with how badly I played, even though I had spent the entire week practicing some song that nobody in the world would ever want to hear played on a piano, even if it was performed really well. But I always went to my lesson because my dad loved to tell me how happy I would be later in life to have a skill that could make me “the life of the party.”

Well, I don’t know if what happened next made me the life of the party, but I’m pretty sure it at least saved our lives.

Just as the creatures were about to grab Karen and the mole guy was about to cut me in half, I heard the
du-du-dunt/du-du-dunt/du-du-dunt-dunt-dunt
of my alarm go off. The cell phone was in my backpack, which was lying in the middle of the floor, and as soon as it went off, all the creatures stopped in their tracks as if someone had just yelled “freeze!” And the next thing I knew, as the alarm played louder and louder, the creatures all screamed and shrieked and growled and whistled and made all the other noises they made when they were scared and ran out of the room as if somebody had just rolled a live grenade into the place.

I fell onto the ground the second the mole guy let go of me, and Karen stumbled into the wall as she jumped to get out of the way of the stampeding creatures. We then looked at each other as we heard them all running and rolling and bouncing and thumping off into the distance.

“That’s weird,” was all I could say before Karen suddenly hopped up, grabbed me by the shirt, and started to pull me out of the room. I reached out and snagged my backpack just as Karen yanked me through the explosion hole and pulled me behind her as she ran faster than I’ve ever seen a girl run in my life. We sprinted through a crooked hallway with sagging ceilings and flickering lights, past uneven doorways that led to offices filled with rickety desks and all sorts of creatures dressed in poorly fitting business suits and ties and dresses that looked like somebody had designed them in the dark. All the creatures were staring at us as we ran past, many looking terrified to see us as we raced toward the back door. Karen hit the door but it was locked. She crashed into it and then I smashed into her and we clunked our heads together like we were in a Three Stooges movie.

“OW, YOU IDIOT!” she yelled at me as she grabbed her head in pain.

“HEY, YOU’RE THE ONE WHO RAN INTO THE DOOR!” I yelled back as I grabbed
my
head in pain.

I turned and saw all the creatures looking out of their offices at us as a tall feel with lipstick on was yelling into a phone, “She’s in the hallway! The Anti-Art’s in the hallway!”

Karen heard this and turned back to the door.

“HELP ME BREAK THIS DOWN!” she yelled as she kicked it as hard as she could and broke it off its hinges.

“Hey, I would have helped if you’d given me a chan —” I was starting to feel sort of useless in all this as she grabbed me by the shirt again and pulled me through the doorway.

We ran away from the building and back into the curvy streets filled with the old round dwellings. I tried to keep up as Karen started pulling on my shirt so hard that it felt like it was about to rip.

“You’re tearing my shirt!” I said as I stumbled along behind her.

“If you ran faster I wouldn’t have to!” she yelled as we made a sharp turn and dashed between two big round buildings.

“Where are we going?” I asked, as I started to pant really hard from all the exercise I was suddenly getting. I wasn’t exactly a candidate for the President’s Physical Fitness Award.

“Just shut up and keep running.”

And with that, we ran out from between the buildings and suddenly found ourselves flying through the air. It wasn’t because Karen had magical abilities or because we had just run off the side of a cliff. It was because neither one of us saw the ten-legged creature that looked like a really long centipede with a head like a turtle. We tripped over it and slammed into the ground, then tumbled all over each other as the centipede thing looked at us and started yelling.

“Why don’t you watch where you’re going!” it hollered at us in a voice that sounded like a tuba. Then, suddenly, it stopped.

“ANTI-ARTS!” the thing yelled in terror as it ran off and disappeared down the curving street.

Everything was suddenly quiet as I lay on my back trying to catch my breath.

“I’ve got to stop for a minute,” I said.

“You wanna get killed? Fine. Go ahead and rest. I’m getting out of here.”

Karen tried to stand up but I was sitting on her shirttail. I heard a small rip and saw that the seam on the bottom of her shirt had just split.

“Oh, God!
Move,
kid! Haven’t you done enough damage for one day?!” she said as she shoved me sideways.

Just then I heard a loud meow. We both looked over and saw the cat that thought it was a dog running toward us. It jumped through the air and landed on my chest, knocking the air out of my lungs. It then started licking my face and drooling all over me. It would have been gross if I hadn’t been so happy to see the cat at that moment. Since Karen was yelling at me all the time, it was nice to find
something
that liked me.

“How can you let it do that?” Karen said as she stood and watched me get the outer layer of my face practically taken off by the cat’s scratchy tongue. “I hate dogs.”

“It’s a cat,” I said.

“Yeah, but it thinks it’s a dog.”

“But it looks like a cat.”

“But it acts like a dog and I don’t like dogs.”

“Do you like cats?”

“I love cats.”

“Then how can you not like something that looks like a cat?”

“Because it’s not a cat. A cat’s a cat because it acts like a cat. A cat’s a dog if it acts like a dog.”

“Yeah?” I said as I grabbed the cat and stood up. “Well, I like it because it’s the only thing that’s been nice to me the entire time I’ve been here.”

“I just saved your life!” she said, sounding insulted.

“Because you had to, not because you wanted to.”

“That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard anybody say in my life! I almost died because of you and now you’re mad at me because you don’t like the reason I kept you from getting killed?” She glared at me, and then turned and starting walking off down the street. “Fine! Have a great time with your dog!”

“It’s a
cat!
” I yelled after her. “And I will!”

I turned and looked at the empty street. Doezens of eyes were staring at me from every doorway and window. Maybe now isn’t such a good time to be on my own, I thought.

“Uh . . . hey, girl?” I said nervously. “Wait up!”

And with that, I ran to catch up with Karen as the cat that thought it was a dog peed all down the front of my shirt. Again.

16

A KICK IN THE NUTS

By the time Karen and I had run out of the city and were winding our way through the thickest part of another weird-looking forest, I was soaked with sweat. I had long since dropped the cat, who was now running along with us and who didn’t seem to be tired at all. Actually, Karen didn’t seem to be tired, either. I guess I was the only one of us who was way out of shape. “All that fast food you eat while you sit on your butt watching TV,” I could hear my dad saying in my head from the frequency that now seemed so far away. It’s weird how even when you’re running for your life you can still feel like lying down and taking a nap. Or at least
I
could.

“Can’t we stop?” I asked as well as I could with hardly any breath left in my lungs. “I think I’m gonna have a heart attack.”

“Geez, kid, you’re really useless, you know that?” she said over her shoulder as she kept running just as fast as ever.

“Hey, I was the one who kicked that table over to you during the fight. You would have gotten cut in half if I hadn’t done that. I saved your life.”

She suddenly stopped running and looked at me.

“
You
saved
my
life? If it weren’t for me, you’d be dead right now!”

“Without that table, you’d be dead, too.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Yes, you would.”

She stared at me for a few seconds, like she was figuring out if she should beat me up or not. I just stared at her, trying to catch my breath and figuring that if she
was
going to beat me up, I was too tired to do anything about it anyway. Finally . . .

“Thank you for pushing a table at me instead of actually picking something up and helping me fight those mutants,” she said as sarcastically as she possibly could.

“Thank you for saving my life even though you’ve been nothing but mean to me from the second we met,” I said as sarcastically as
I
possibly could.

“You’re welcome,” she said, just as sarcastically.

“
You’re
welcome,” I said, even more sarcastically.

She stared at me for another few seconds. I could only imagine what the next wave of insults was going to be. However, to my surprise . . .

“I’m Karen,” she said without a smile, holding her hand out to shake mine.

I looked at her to make sure she wasn’t going to flip me karate-style if I took her hand. But as near as I could tell, she seemed sincere.

I held out my hand and shook hers. “I’m Iggy.”

“Gross, your hand is totally sweaty,” she said, pulling her hand back and wiping it on her pants.

“Sorry,” I said, feeling pretty insulted. “I’ve only been running for, like, five thousand miles.”

“God, don’t exaggerate. I know you’re only, like, eleven, but try to be a bit more mature when you talk.”

“Hey, I’m
twelve,
” I said, even more insulted. “I’m almost thirteen, actually.”

“What kind of name is Iggy?” she said, scrunching up her nose at me.

“It’s short for Ignatius,” I said defensively.

“Did the kids used to call you Piggy?”

“Yeah,” I said, really surprised. “How did you know that?”

“Gee, that’s a tough one,” she said with her trademark sarcasm. “They used to call me Sarin — you know, like the poison gas — and Karen’s, like, a totally normal name. So I can only imagine how bad you got it. Most of the kids in our district were total jerks.”

“That’s for sure.”

We both nodded and then stood there, staring at each other.

For being so mean, she was sort of pretty. Really pretty, to be honest.

“What’s it like being trapped here?” I finally asked her.

“It sucks,” she said. “You’ll see.”

“Why did they try to kill us?”

“Because he knows I’ll tell everybody he’s a faker.”

“Who?”

“
President
Arthur,” she said mockingly. “What, you didn’t see his name and stupid face plastered all over the place?”

“I saw that he’s saying he wrote
Hamlet.
”

“That’s nothing. He’s, like, a total fascist. He has an army and he forces everyone to like everything he does and he’s completely ruining their world. He’s totally out of his mind.”

“I know who he is,” I said, trying to impress her. “He used to be a teacher at my school.”

“No duh, dimwit,” she said, raising her eyebrow at me. “He used to be
my
teacher. And now he’s freaking out because he knows I can totally bust him.”

“How does he know you’re here?”

She gave me a look that showed she was trying to figure out whether she was going to tell me the story or not. Then . . .

“Because when I first got here, I went to him for help. I didn’t know where I was and when I saw his picture I was really happy, because I liked him in junior high and thought for sure he’d be able to fix everything. I went to the stupid mansion he lives in and he was really excited to see me. He told me all about how he got here and about the frequencies and how much he hated it back home and for a while it was lots of fun.