Power to the Purple! Page 10

  “You boys must have a serious case of pins and needles,” Iris concluded, “if you’ve been stuck on those toilets all this time.” She began to power up just a bit. Not so much that the boys would notice she was glowing. Just enough to turn up the heat in the room. Then she switched her smartphone to digi-video mode and began recording the interrogation. Spying on the spies! she thought. Now’s our chance to break them.

  Big Red ran a damp hand through his crinkled carrot hair, tugging it straight up till his head looked like one of those triangular rubber eraser tops you put on the ends of pencils. He jiggled a bit more above the toilet seat.

  “Careful,” Cheri teased, smoothing Darth’s fur with her fingers. “You wouldn’t want to slip and step in the toilet now, would you?”

  After another twist, this one the most spastastic so far, he said, “Yeah, well, remember last time?” He grunted a little before squeezing out the next sentence. “When you said that boys come and go?”

  “Yes . . . ?” Cheri said hesitantly, holding Darth closer. She wasn’t sure where this was coming from. Or if she liked where it was going.

  “I’ve really got to,” he panted.

  “Got to what?” Iris asked from behind the lens, zooming in on his huffing face.

  “Go!” Big Red burst out. “To the bathroom!”

  “Eww!” all three girls cried out together, ick-facing all over the place. Lil’ Freckles covered his eyes and shook his head in shame, same as last time, except not upside down. “Agent Bristow!” he barked, and his voice boomed off the tiled bathroom walls. “I told you! Not to! Drink the sixty-four-ounce soda! Before a mission!”

  “I was thirsty!” Big Red snapped. “So sue me, dude. My contract doesn’t say no soda on the job. And I didn’t know we’d be standing on toilets for an hour!” After this angry outburst, he crossed one leg over the other. Balancing on one foot, he bobbed in place.

  The sight of the chubby, red-faced spy squatting above a toilet, dying to use it, kind of grossed Iris out. But a documentary film director would push past the ew to the truth! she told herself just as her phone buzzed to alert her she’d received a text. It was from Candace. Iris swiftly scanned the message. Then she focused her camera again and continued her interrogation.

  “Let’s get to the bottom of this,” she said, slipping the latest intel into her speech. “You, Agent Sidney Bristow, allergic to peanuts, soprano soloist in your kindergarten glee club, could wet your pants any minute now.”

  Big Red’s eyes popped wide open at the sound of his full name and those private biographical details. He scowled at the camera, sweat beading across his upper lip.

  “Which means you, Agent Jack Baxter”—Iris turned her lens on the short spy—“former peewee football wide receiver and winner of the Sync City Ironboy Triathlon for three years straight, are caught between a skunk and stinky place.”

  Lil’ Freckles folded his arms, furious.

  “Tell us what we want to know,” Iris commanded, “and we’ll let you go. To the bathroom.”

  “NEVER!” Lil’ Freckles bellowed at the exact same instant Big Red blurted, “OKAY!”

  Iris turned to the Ultra Violets, wrapping a long lavender strand around one finger. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a standoff, girls,” she said. “Any suggestions for how to break it, Scarlet? Anything that might be, ahem, ‘in your file’?”

  Scarlet marched back and forth in front of the two stalls like an army general, punching a fist into her open palm. Every few paces, she switched to grapevine steps—she couldn’t help it. “The big one, Red, is done for,” she decided. “Any second now he’s going to burst.”

  Iris and Cheri both took a step back as Scarlet went on with her strategy.

  “It’s Lil’ Freckles who needs to crack!” she shouted, slamming both hands against the sides of his toilet stall so hard that some of the screws popped out. “He’s the one with the secrets! And I know how to get him to spill.”

  The smaller Black Swan went so white, even his freckles disappeared. “You wouldn’t,” he snarled.

  “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Scarlet snarled right back.

  Suddenly a staring contest was so on! Scarlet’s steel-gray eyes bore through his dark blue ones until, overpowered by the sharp pong of the urinal cakes in the steamy bathroom, he blinked first.

  “Last chance,” Iris offered from behind her camera lens. “Tell us who you work for and what you want, or—”

  “Or we’ll give you a swirlie you’ll never forget!” Scarlet threatened.

  Big Red let out a shrill yip. A wedgie was bad. A pantsing was worse. But a swirlie?! The thought of having his head dunked in a flushing toilet made him dizzy with fear. And by a girl? Thank goodness he had already cracked.

  Now if only he could pee.

  “You’re bluffing,” Lil’ Freckles uttered. His voice was so strained it sounded like he was chewing leather bubblegum.

  “Who, us—bluff?” Cheri winked one bright green eye at the Black Swans as she waved her tote bag full of poker winnings in front of them.

  In frustration, Lil’ Freckles spit into the toilet bowl between his feet. He thumped his hands against the walls of the toilet stall, which wavered dangerously now that Scarlet had loosened the screws. He raised his head to the ceiling and growled like a trapped animal, “Grrrrragh!” Or maybe it was more like, “Nnnnrruh!” No, no, it was definitely, “Grrrrragh!”

  And then he gave in.

  “You promise you’ll let my partner pee?”

  “Oh man, I have got to pee so bad!” Big Red griped from the next-door stall.

  “Promise,” all three Ultra Violets said, wrinkling their noses together again. Then Iris tried to urge on Agent Baxter’s confession. “We already know you work for BeauTek,” she really did bluff—because they didn’t actually know, they just suspected it. “We don’t know why, because you seem like okay boys.”

  “When you’re not spying on us!” Scarlet said. Then she spat on the floor, too, just to show she could.

  “It’s the Anti Clause,” Lil’ Freckles muttered. In the neighboring stall, Big Red was now doing a jig on the toilet seat.

  “What’s that?” Iris pressed. “What’s the Anti Clause?”

  The broken spy hung his salt-and-peppered head as he spoke, and his shoulders sagged in his black suit jacket. “It’s a clause in the BeauTek contract that says anyone who’s against—who’s anti—BeauTek has to be stopped. By any means necessary.”

  “I knew it!” Scarlet shoved up her sleeves, prepared to give Lil’ Freckles a swirlie anyway.

  “Scarlet, no!” Iris stopped her. “Not yet! If we sink to their level, the enemy wins!”

  Scarlet pirouetted and punched the towel dispenser instead, knocking it off the wall. Through the lens of her camera phone, Iris thought she detected a frisson of fear from the tough lil’ agent.

  “Who believes in the Anti Clause?” she questioned him. “Whose idea was it?”

  “Develon Louder’s,” he admitted. “President of BeauTek. But we got our orders to investigate you from her second banana, the scientist who writes all the contracts. A Dr. Trudeau.”

  Opaline’s mom! All three Ultra Violets thought the same thing.

  “But why?” Cheri asked. “Why are you spying on us?” First she’d been uninvited to Opal’s birthday party. Now Opal’s mother had put her on some blacklist! Her popularity was definitely taking a hit this year, and it really hurt her feelings.

  Jack Baxter raised his head. He looked from Iris Tyler, holding the camera steady in front of her wild purple hair, to Cheri Henderson, cradling her pet skunk like a beauty queen’s bouquet, lip quivering as if she might cry, to Scarlet Jones, who blew her long black bangs out her eyes with an angry huff. He stared longest and hardest at her, searching for any sign of weakness. And not finding a sing
le one.

  “You three are the prime suspects in the destruction of the Vi-Shush lab,” he answered at last. “And the demolition of a bunch of mutant prototypes that were in development for . . . I’m not sure what. That part was blacked out of the documents.”

  “Confidential!” Big Red heaved.

  The three girls didn’t say a word. Because of course it was true. They had wrecked the Vi-Shush, the evil laboratory they’d stumbled upon in the Mall of No Returns when they’d sneaked away from the school trip to follow Opaline up the escalators to level C. That was when they freed Darth and all the other test animals. And took out Opal’s mutant army with an ultraviolet combo of barrel turns, burning light beams, and toxic skunk stank on platform roller skates. And they’d do it all again in a heartbeat if they had to. But they couldn’t tell that to the Black Swans!

  Then each girl remembered Candace’s advice at the diner:

  Admit nothing: “We have zero idea what you’re talking about,” Iris said.

  Deny everything: “As if three girls could destroy an entire lab all by themselves!” Scarlet said.

  Make counteraccusations: “Maybe you’re the ones who destroyed it,” Cheri said, “and you’re just looking for an escaped goat to blame! Or whatever that saying is!”

  “Are you done yet?” Big Red shouted, doubled over.

  “Hold it!” Iris ordered.

  “I can’t!” Big Red groaned.

  “Last question!” Iris said, her focus back on Freckles. “What’s in it for you?”

  “No!” The stubborn spy clenched his jaw, turning his face away. “I can’t!”

  “Suit yourself,” Iris said, motioning to Scarlet. “Let’s give this boy a swirl.”

  “All right!” At the sight of Scarlet knotting up her ponytail, Jack Baxter caved completely. “It’s height! Height, okay?”

  “The overdue spurt,” Iris breathed. “At the Tall-a-Boy Workshop, I bet!”

  “You mean BeauTek promised to make you tall?” Scarlet whispered, feeling something like sympathy.

  “And me thin!” Big Red added, fumbling with his belt buckle. “They said they’d get rid of my baby fat. It just might take a few years.”

  Right then the door banged against the trash can. The three girls ran to press against it.

  “Somebody in there?” the custodian asked from out in the corridor.

  “Almost done!” Iris said, dropping her voice to sound like a boy. “Darn bran muffin!”

  Cheri began to giggle. She buried her face in Darth’s fur to muffle the noise. The little skunk giggled, too.

  “Hurry up, then,” the custodian said on the other side of the door. “I’ll be back.”

  The girls listened as he wheeled his cleaning cart away. A breeze on the backs of their necks made them spin around. The window was open.

  Agent Jack “Lil’ Freckles” Baxter was gone.

  Agent Sidney “Big Red” Bristow had slammed the door closed to his toilet stall again.

  And—ick-face alert!—you won’t be relieved to know what he was doing. But gee whiz, he was!

  Sprinkled and Shushed

  THAT’S QUITE ENOUGH BATHROOM HUMOR FOR THIS book, readers. Number one (tee-hee), it’s terribly immature. And number two (tee-hoo), like bran muffins, it’s best in small doses. Taken with a spoonful of sugar. (Mary Poppins added that last part. Girlfriend and her umbrella get around.)

  In the grand smorgasbord that is life—or, more befittingly, in the humble buffet that was the Chronic Prep cafeteria for breakfast—Opaline Trudeau had wisely avoided the bran muffins. And yet still she had an upset stomach. She had sidestepped the lemon-lime fruit cup. And yet still she had a sour frown on her face. She had politely declined the pickle omelet. Yet still her head felt scrambled. She had . . . well, you get the idea!

  Opaline Trudeau was in a bad mood.

  Her mother had to be at work early—as usual. Big goings-on at BeauTek: regenerating the mutant army; reinforcing the olfactory factory assembly line; and, of course, revamping the damaged Vi-Shush. So Dr. Trudeau had dropped off her daughter at school well before the bell. Hardly anyone was at Chronic Prep at that unhappy hour. Oh, the principal, Dingelmon, was probably in his office, practicing his scales before his morning announcements. And the teachers were probably in their lounge, fueling up on coffee before their first classes. And the lunch ladies were definitely in the kitchen, whipping up such gourmet delights as the aforementioned to-be-avoided-at-all-costs pickle omelet. But Opaline sat in the cafeteria alone, scraping the rainbow sprinkles off a chocolate-covered donut.

  One might ask: Why get the rainbow sprinkles only to pick them off?

  But you see, for Opaline, picking off the rainbow sprinkles was the best part.

  It had been a blah couple of days for Opal. Her birthday party was coming up soon, so she should have been more excited. Her signature scent had been right on the nose so far—bumming out every classmate who came into contact with it. She smirked at the memory of Martin Gibbs stomping out of the boys’ room like her own private Frankenstein. Of course, the über-vibrant Ultra Violets had proved cheerfully immune to her depressing perfume. BeauTek had expected that—no way could a chemical concentrate of brussels sprouts and sweat socks overpower sunshine and ballet. It irked Opal nonetheless. But her rival supergroup, O+2, was coming together, sort of. Though it had its share of problems, too. BellaBritney was constantly fighting with herself. And K-Liz had the vomitous habit of snacking on fly strips.

  Then there were the auditions for the school play. Opal hadn’t actually thought BellaBritney, with her split personality, stood a chance. Little Orphan Annie was neither a cheer-leader nor a beatnik. But seeing Scarlet Jones up on stage! Scarlet, who’d always been such a tomboy, singing and dancing her heart out! For a moment it reminded Opal of their childhood talent shows. For a moment, if she were to be completely deep-down honest with herself, Opal missed Scarlet. Which made her sad which made her mad which made her shoot out all the stage lights with thunderbolts.

  And to pour salt on the wound, Cheri Henderson, former ditz, had won her favorite pearl collar in a card game! Opal wasn’t sure how, but Cheri must have used her superpowers to do it—she saw her hair glowing magenta pink in that boys’ room. It vexed Opal to no end to know that little skunk Darth was still out there, a furry olfactory factory himself! But if Opal were to be completely deep-down honest a second time, if she had Cheri’s megamind, she’d use it to win at poker, too.

  Because all’s fair in love and war, Opal thought.

  She pictured her black pearl collar on the FLab’s old lab skeleton, Skeletony, wherever it was the Ultra Violets kept him now. In a bittersweet way, it gave Opal cold comfort. Cold comfort to know there was still a small part of her with the other three girls. Her ex-BFFs.

  Opaline sat in the cafeteria early that morning, mulling over all this. The more she brooded, the darker the storm cloud grew above her head. When she’d finally finished scraping all the rainbow sprinkles off her donut—Take that, Iris Tyler!—she took a bite.

  The dough part was stale.

  But the chocolate icing tasted divine.

  She was just swallowing her second mouthful of donut when she saw him. Albert Feinstein. Holding out his breakfast tray at the humble buffet. The open cuffs of his oversized shirt hung like blue plaid flags from his wrists. He chucked his chin at her as a wordless way of saying hello, then began to walk toward her table.

  He looked decent.

  He almost always did now, ever since Cheri had given him a stealth makeover. His sandy hair stuck out behind his ears, but in a cute way. He stumbled over the laces of his too-big basketball sneakers and nearly spilled his bowl of cereal, but that was cute, too. Sugarsticks, Opal thought grudgingly. The sight of him still scattered her storm cloud.

  “Good morning, Opaline,” Albert said, pulling out a cha
ir and sitting down. Without even asking!

  Still a nerd, Opal noted, with a mix of disdain and admiration. “Good morning”? Please.

  Albert sniffed, his sinuses filling with the fetid stench of Opal’s perfume. As if he could read her mind, his face began to go a bit red. But no, Opal realized, he wasn’t embarrassed for his geeky greeting. He was embarrassed for her. “You, ah, you have some . . .” he stammered, pointing to the ring of chocolate frosting around her mouth.

  Opal stared at him, raising her eyebrows in faked confusion. She could sense her storm cloud returning with a vengeance. She wondered if she should prolong the supreme awkwardness of the moment. If she should wait to make him say it. Say it, Albert! she dared him in her thoughts. Say that I’ve got chocolate on my face—say it to my face! But he was turning redder by the second and taking too long to spit it out. The perfume was probably having its pestiferous effect, too.

  Opal lost her patience.

  To Albert’s complete and total shock, she grabbed his hand. With a jolt, he shot up straight in his seat: He could feel the sparks between them! She raised his arm off the table, and . . .

  Ran the wide sleeve of his flannel shirt across her mouth. To wipe off the chocolate.

  Then she dropped his hand, and it landed on the table with a thud.

  Or was that the thud of Albert’s pounding heart? Opaline’s gesture was so surprising, even a bit savage, that it left him dumbstruck. Stunned.

  “Thanks,” Opal said, smiling at him sweetly. Her warm brown eyes misted over with spots of white. “Don’t you just hate when that happens?”

  Albert looked away, flustered. And noticed the plate with the scraped-off sprinkles. “Mmm!” he said, licking a fingertip. “Rainbow-flavored!” And he stuck his finger down to pick some up.

  Opal struggled to keep her smile sweet. An idea was forming in her mind.