The Ultra Violets Read online

  With confusing costumes and no music, the dancers didn’t know what to do with themselves. They came to a halt on the stage, standing around like they were waiting for a bus, not performing a ballet. The audience began to murmur that this was the most avant-garde spectacle they had ever seen. The dancers had switched roles, and now they weren’t even dancing!

  But someone was about to dance.

  To dance her sass off.

  Someone in the front row of the balcony who had been fidgeting in her seat since the start of the ballet.

  Scarlet leaped to her feet. Jumped on top of the balcony railing like it was a balance beam. And sprung over the orchestra seats to land in the center of the stage. She looked out at the shocked audience. It was so quiet, you could have heard a flower bloom. To silence, she started to perform Cinderella’s solo from Act Two, even though the company had barely begun Act One.

  “Just dance,” Scarlet panted as she pranced. “Gonna be okay, da-da-doo-doo, just dance . . .”

  “Shorty, I can see that you got so much energy!” the drummer called from the orchestra pit, getting over his fear of spiders and picking up the beat. The audience settled back in their seats, mesmerized by the ninja ballerina dancing her hip-hop Cinderella.

  But were their eyes playing more tricks on them, or was that a tiny white poodle chasing after the stepsister dressed like a minivan?

  “Eek!” she shrieked, the license plate on her butt bobbing as she ran.

  “Mister Marshmallow!” the blue-haired lady cried from the balcony when she realized her dog was on stage taking a bow-wow. With clicking red claws festooned with glittering cocktail rings, she went to snap up her handbag from under her chair, only to see it open and empty and swinging from Cheri’s pinkie finger.

  “You really shouldn’t take poodles to the ballet in your purse,” she said. “The teacup breed much prefers the soothing sounds of smooth jazz. And you really ARE a crab!”

  “Well, I never!” the lady huffed, snatching the bag back from Cheri and waddling out of her row to make her way down to the stage. By now, most of the audience was on its feet, clapping along to Scarlet’s solo. She came to a stop just as the red-faced, blue-haired old lady mounted the stage to chase Mister Marshmallow as he chased Cinderella’s minivan stepsister with the license plate butt.

  Surveying the chaos, Scarlet muttered, “Grape googly moogly.” Looking for an escape route, she moved toward the wings in controlled catlike leaps.

  “Hey! Pas de chat!” Iris called from up in the balcony, pointing down at Scarlet’s steps. “Whoot! Whoot!” She turned to Cheri and Opal with a wide smile. “I didn’t learn how to do those in my undance class!”

  Crouched down in her seat, Candace covered her face with the collar of her lab coat and shook her head. This was SO much more out of control than she’d realized.

  And it wasn’t even intermission.

  We Need to Talk

  OH, THOSE FOUR LITTLE WORDS. WORDS TO BE AVOIDED at all costs.

  1. We.

  2. Need.

  3. To.

  4. Talk.

  Do we really? Do we need to? Is it absolutely, positively necessary? Because “we” know what those four little words mean. “We” know what you’re going to say:

  We need to talk . . . about your straight-C report card.

  We need to talk . . . about your peanut-butter morning breath.

  We need to talk . . . about the haircut you gave your little brother.

  Or, in the case of our girls: We need to talk about what just happened at the ballet.

  Nothing good ever comes after “We need to talk”!

  Nevertheless, that’s how Candace began the conversation. She had hustled the girls out of the theater at Thinkin’ Center and across the avenue to Tom’s Diner. Well, she hustled Iris, Cheri, and Opal. Scarlet did the hustle herself.

  “What’ll it be, girls?” the waitress had asked, pulling a pen from her bouffant to jot down their order. Two white stripes ran up the sides of her towering brown hairdo. She reminded Scarlet of the Bride of Frankenstein in an apron. Luckily, she didn’t appear to have any bolts sticking out of her neck.

  Opal was about to order when Cheri spoke over her. “Strawberry milkshake, please.”

  “Butterbeer!” Scarlet shouted, banging her fist on the table. “And don’t skimp on the caramel sauce.” Then she took a long slug of her water. That Cinderella solo had made her mighty thirsty.

  The waitress arched an eyebrow at her, nudging up the white streak above it.

  “And I’d like the triple-berry parfait,” Iris said, though it was hard to choose from all the sweet options on the menu.

  “How ’bout you, hon?” the waitress asked Opal, who shrunk back in the corner of the booth, disturbed by the sight of her bouffant. “Looks like you could use a stiff butterbeer, too, same as your jittery little friend here.”

  “Oh, no thank you,” Opal said, so softly that the waitress had to bend over the table to hear. Her Oreo-striped beehive towered above Iris like a hairy storm cloud. “Just a hot chocolate for me,” Opal squeaked. “With Mister Marshmallows. I mean mini marshmallows!” Opal corrected herself, blushing.

  “And one camomile tea.” Candace needed to stay calm.

  “Got it,” the waitress said, snapping her notepad shut and shoving it in her apron pocket. Then she repeated back their order in a weird shorthand that went with the classic-diner vibe: “Pink in a Blender, the Harry Classic—heavy on the sauce—Three in the Snow, and Polar Bears Swim Lake Cocoa. Plus camomile tea for mom.”

  “Mom?!” Candace spluttered as the waitress walked away. “I hardly look like I’m old enough to be your mom!” Between the funny food names and Candace’s anger, the girls burst out laughing all over again. Scarlet covered her nose with her napkin to keep from snorting out water.

  “Girls, come on,” Candace said. “Sit still. We need to talk.”

  (Don’t say you weren’t warned!)

  At the sound of those four little words, the four girls did settle down as best as they could, after Iris gave Cheri one last playful kick beneath the table. Candace looked at the four bright faces staring back at her and took a deep breath.

  “I know,” she said quietly, so that none of the diner’s other customers could hear, “about your superpowers.”

  “What?”

  “No way!”

  “We don’t have any—”

  “Uh-uh,” Candace said, wagging a finger. “Don’t even say it. And don’t try to deny it. Don’t you think I saw the pandemonium at the ballet?”

  “There were pandas at the ballet?” Cheri cried out. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  “Kung-fu pandas?” Scarlet asked. “Because that would be awesome.”

  “No, not pandas,” Candace said. “Pandemonium. Chaos. Mayhem. Craziness!”

  “Hullabaloo too?” Iris suggested helpfully.

  “Hullabaloo too,” Candace said, once more observing the girl with the purple hair. “And I think it all started with you.”

  “Me?” Iris repeated.

  “You,” Candace affirmed. “Those super-violet strands were a major clue.”

  “Oh,” Iris said, trying to hide behind them.

  “So let me get this straight, curly girl,” Candace said. “You can turn things whatever color you think of?”

  Iris nodded, her purple locks quivering from root to tip. Even though she hadn’t hurt anyone with her color-changing, she felt a little bit ashamed. “I only ever did it a few times,” she said, her blue eyes blinking back tears. “Mostly in my room. And it helped the dogs from Cheri’s shelter!”

  “It’s okay,” Candace said, giving Iris a hug. She’d get the deets abo
ut the shelter dogs in her bedroom later. “The first step is admitting it.” With one arm around Iris, Candace turned to the table’s dancing queen.

  “And Scarlet,” she said. “Based on your gravity-defying, standing-O, hip-hop ballet solo, I’m concluding you’re a power dancer?”

  “It’s stupid!” Scarlet complained, balling up her paper napkin and tossing it across the diner. “I try not to, but I can’t help it!”

  “I know you can’t.” Candace tousled the top of Scarlet’s head. “And it’s not stupid.”

  She looked at Cheri, who was toying with her mood ring, twisting it back and forth around her thumb. “Cher,” she continued, “you’re an overnight math wiz and mind-melding with poodles to boot?”

  “Not just poodles,” Cheri whispered. “And not just in boots.” She took a deep breath and then gushed, “Also terrier mixes. And thirteen stray cats. Usually in my platform roller skates.” She lifted one foot up on the booth’s padded bench to show Candace.

  “Hmmm,” was all that Candace said to this news, staring at the rainbow-striped wedges. It was even kookier than she’d expected. She’d better just get it all out in the open.

  Opal, sitting at her right side, was fiddling with the condiments. As Candace gazed at her from behind her stern square glasses, Opal fumbled the saltshaker, knocking it on its side. Little grains of salt scattered across the table.

  “Don’t be nervous, Opal,” Candace said, sweeping the loose salt off the table into the palm of her hand and tossing it over her left shoulder for luck. (Even though Candace was a fledgling scientist, she was not above following harmless superstitions.) “We’re all friends here. We can trust each other. That’s important, guys. Trust.”

  The other three girls nodded vigorously.

  “So spill it!” Candace said with a wink, setting the saltshaker upright again. “What wild power do you have? You’ve done a way better job of keeping it secret than these three chiquitas!”

  Opal swallowed. It seemed as if her entire life had turned into one long game of Confess or Risk, and she always had the wrong answer.

  “None,” she said drily. “I’ve got nothing. I’m just the same as I’ve always been.”

  “Oh, thank goodness!” Candace declared, squeezing Opal’s shaking hand. “At least one of you has been spared this insanity.” Candace seemed genuinely relieved. But the other three girls looked at Opal with what she was sure was pity.

  The bouffant waitress returned with their order: a tray stacked with sugary bliss, with Harry Potter in a Blender and Polar Bears in Pink Snow or whatever the heck she’d called the desserts! She passed them around the table: elegant parfait glasses to Iris and Cheri, a frothy pitcher to Scarlet, and warm mugs to Opal and Candace.

  They sat wordlessly for a few seconds, each one tasting her dessert. Cheri sipped her strawberry milkshake, pursing her lips at its sweetness. Iris scooped a blueberry out of her parfait with a long swizzle spork. Scarlet took a big gulp of her butterbeer and exclaimed, “Ahh! Hits the spot!” Then burped.

  As Opal bowed her head over her mug of hot chocolate, the white clouds passed over her brown eyes once more. Like mini marshmallows. Or Polar Bears on Lake Cocoa. She winced, blinking to clear her vision, but it didn’t help. She could hear the noises of the diner around her: the clink of silverware, the sizzle of burgers and eggs being fried, the chatter of other people’s conversations. But the girls at the table said nothing. When Opal could see clearly again, she raised her eyes. The other three girls were engrossed in their desserts, while Candace was distracted by her slippery camomile tea bag, trying to scoop it out of her cup. No one had noticed her momentary whiteout.

  Of course they didn’t, Opal thought, even though she was relieved.

  “Awkward silence alert?” Iris said, offering Opal a blueberry. Opal took it, but squashed it in a napkin once Iris turned away.

  Now that they’d finally told a grown-up—well, not a total grown-up, but Candace—about their superpowers, Iris wanted to hear what the babysitter knew. Candace was smart, a teenius: Maybe she could help figure out what was happening to them.

  “Candace, is that why you took us to the ballet?” Iris asked. “To test us?”

  Candace blew on her camomile tea to cool it down a bit, but that just sent herbal droplets across her glasses. “After I saw Iris at the sleepover,” she said, removing them and wiping the lenses with Opal’s discarded napkin, “naturally I was curious.”

  The four girls waited for her continue.

  “So I sent up a MAUVe to track your actions.”

  Scarlet’s mouth dropped open. Cheri’s eyebrows shot up.

  “A what?” Iris asked.

  “Miniature Aerial Unmanned Vehicle,” Candace spelled out. “A, um, drone. It’s like a camera in the sky.” As she spoke, she placed her glasses on the table and reached inside her bag to take out her smartphone. “I input a few key locations—Chronic Prep, your home addresses—and then had the images filtered back to me.”

  Candace tapped her phone, then held it up. “See?”

  The girls were astonished to see themselves on the screen at that very moment, from just outside and slightly above the diner. Cheri waved tentatively out the window, and Opal watched her waving on the screen of Candace’s phone.

  “You spied on us!” Scarlet said, stunned.

  “Er, yes,” Candace had to admit, clicking off the live feed and stashing her phone back in her bag. “But in a good way! Like a ‘Big Sister is Watching’ way! Just to make sure you were okay!”

  “So you saw me change Smelly Barkson in Chrysalis Park,” Iris said, putting the pieces together.

  “The turquoise dog?” Candace said. “Yes.”

  “And you saw me flamenco around the fluffula tree?” Scarlet asked.

  “Your floreos were fabulous,” Candace answered, attempting to imitate the swirling hand flourishes of the Spanish dance.

  “But how did you know about me and math?” Cheri wondered aloud. “You can’t watch math by satellite.”

  “That’s true,” Candace acknowledged. “The moms may have also mentioned some things at the FLab . . .”

  “My mom is such a blabbermouth,” Scarlet interrupted, a butterbeer mustache above her mouth. “That’s why I never tell her anything! The woman can’t keep a secret.”

  “Well,” Candace said, “without tipping them off, I tried to find out from your moms—not your mom, Opal, because she’s over at BeauTek, though I guess it doesn’t matter, if you haven’t experienced any side effects—”

  Opal flinched as the babysitter babbled, but Iris cut her off midstream. “Side effects of what?” she asked. Her mind was still reeling from the MAUVe thing.

  Candace took a sip of her tea before responding.

  “Of Heliotropium.”

  “Heliowhat?” Scarlet said, confused all over again. The girls shifted uncomfortably in their seats, waiting for Candace to continue.

  “He-li-o-tro-pi-um,” she repeated slowly, sounding out each syllable. “It’s a plant-based derivative altered with subatomic particles.”

  The girls were even more confused than before.

  “It’s a destabilized bioorganic compound containing a chain of highly reactive free radicals.”

  The girls were starting to feel like they were at a foreign film minus the subtitles.

  Candace could see the question marks on their faces. She frowned, then tried again.

  “It’s the goo that got splattered on you at the FLab,” she said simply. “Four years ago, when you were just four rambunctious seven-year-olds.”

  “Oh . . .” Cheri stirred her straw in her strawberry milkshake. It had been four years, but she still wondered what ever became of Darth Odor the skunk, her very first pet.

  “I remember that,” said Scarlet.


  “The talent show!” Opal nodded.

  “The drop-kick,” Iris said slowly. Then it hit her. “So it’s all my fault this stuff is happening to us?” she asked, alarmed.

  “No, no, sweetie.” Candace shook her head. “It was an accident. If anything it was my fault. I should never have been messing with that serum, especially not with four little girls underfoot. But you know what they say! ‘Curiosity killed the—’” Candace caught sight of Cheri and started over. “Er, curiosity got the best of me.” An almost dreamy look crossed her face as she thought back to it. “There I was in the FLab, all those chemicals at my fingertips, like a kid in a candy shop! I’d read on some sci-fi conspiracy blogs that a top-secret formula was being developed at the HQT. A formula that could alter fundamental biogenetics. So when I found the Heliotropium in a box labeled CLEANING SUPPLIES next to the lab skeleton . . . well, you know the rest.”

  “I thought we washed off all the slime in the safety showers,” Opal said. She could still hear that electric thunderclap. The memory of the missing Skeletony still sent a shiver down her spine.

  “Those showers were like water slides times one hundred,” Scarlet agreed.

  “I thought so, too,” said Candace. “I certainly hoped so. But as soon as I saw Iris’s hair, that night at your sleep-do-over, I knew I was wrong. That your bodies had absorbed the serum, and that a sixth, supernatural element had been added to your DNA. What I can’t figure out is, after four years, what triggered your reactions now? What activated them?” Candace picked up her glasses and put them back on. The lenses were smeared with blueberry mush from Opal’s napkin. Candace pulled them off again, puzzled. Then she dunked them in her water glass, swished them around, and started cleaning them anew.