The Ultra Violets Read online

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Opal moaned.

  She sat like that on the couch in her apartment for a long time, hoping her headache would pass. She sat until the sun went down. She sat in the darkness, staring at the shadows in the room. She felt like a stranger in her own home. Everything seemed different, like she was seeing it for the first time. Like it was somebody else’s house and she had stumbled into it by accident.

  At last she turned on a light, followed by the TV. The typical chatter of the news anchors helped fill up the emptiness.

  Opal stretched out her legs. They were numb from sitting for so long, and pins and needles prickled through them. She placed one foot gingerly on the floor, followed by the other, and stood up slowly, testing her weight. Then she shuffled over to the kitchen sink and dumped the remaining pomegranate juice down the drain. It was too sweet; maybe it had given her the terrible headache. From a bottle in the fridge, she poured herself a glass of pure water instead.

  To grab a few ice cubes, she reached into the freezer but quickly recoiled when her fingers touched something gelatinous and sticky. Gaping back at her from between the ice cream cartons and microwave dinners was a freshly frozen Frankenfish. Its scales still flashed blue and red, like a subzero police siren, and it seemed to be ogling her with its three misty fish eyes. She must have poked one of them.

  “Ewww!” Opal uttered, slamming the freezer door shut. What was her mom doing, keeping that thing in the fridge?

  She stepped back to the kitchen sink and washed her hands with dish detergent, though no matter how hard she scrubbed she could still feel the gummy eyeball on her fingertips. “So gross,” she muttered, finally giving up and shaking her hands dry.

  She hooked her loafers with two fingers in the heels and slung her backpack over one shoulder. But as she turned to go to her bedroom and begin her homework for the night, something caught her eye.

  Her mom’s tablet computer. On the kitchen counter all this time.

  “That’s odd,” Opal said aloud. Her mother never went anywhere without that tablet. She must have totally freaked when she realized she didn’t have it with her at BeauTek today.

  Curious, Opal picked up the tablet and brought it into her bedroom with all her other stuff. She pushed her door closed with her foot.

  It didn’t take too long for Opal to hack into her mom’s tablet. First, she tried a few obvious passwords: Her full name, Opaline Ann. Then just Opaline. Opal Ann. Then just Opal. Her birthday. Her mom’s middle name.

  Nope. None of those worked.

  “What does Mom love more than anything else?” Opal wondered. Since clearly it wasn’t her! She keyed in The FLab, then FLabby, just for fun, then BeauTek. Nope again. Those didn’t work, either.

  “Hmmm,” Opal pondered, taking a sip of her lukewarm water and shuddering at the thought of the flashing fish out in the freezer. Her headache seemed better, at least. She tried to think of anything her mom ever said about work. What was it printed on her employee ID badge, the one she sometimes forgot to take off when she got home?

  “Vi-Shush Clearance,” Opal recalled. “Vi-Shush . . .”

  She keyed in: V-I-S-H-U-S-H.

  And the screen glowed to life.

  “Score,” Opal said, scanning all the icons. Except for one folder called Press Releases, they all had weird scientific-sounding names that didn’t make much sense to her.

  “Eenie, meenie, miney—” Opal circled her finger above the screen, trying to decide if anything was even worth opening. Her mother could come home any minute now. “Mo,” she decided, tapping on the icon labeled Project Mute.

  Maybe it’s all the music she doesn’t want me to listen to? Opal thought.

  Color squares covered the screen, smaller than old-fashioned postage stamps. Opal thought they looked like playing cards in some video game, each one a different character. She pressed the first one, and its picture filled the screen.

  What she saw was no character any actress would ever want to play. It looked like a woman, maybe. A woman with gray-blue skin and the thick tusks of a hippopotamus.

  “Yikes,” Opal said, “talk about your ‘before’ pictures.” She knew BeauTek was a big beauty company, but it was going to take a truckload of cosmetics to make over that woman! She tapped the image again so that it shrunk back down to postage-stamp size.

  Next she was confronted by the sight of a grinning, too tan man. He appeared normal enough at first, with his slicked-back hair and his pinstriped suit. But as Opal looked closer, she realized that the man’s smile revealed row after row of jagged shark teeth.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, immediately closing that image, too.

  She expanded one more image. The creature that filled the screen this time was frighteningly familiar. A giant opossum, larger than a four-door car, with crusty yellow nails and a handlebar mustache under its long, mushroomy snout.

  The monster from the park.

  Opal scanned down under the image to a small box of text. Opossumani, it read, followed by a description, notes about its habitat—shrubby underbrush, of course—and other details. After that was an alphabet’s soup of different chemical formulas and compounds.

  “Opal?”

  The call came from the hallway, and she could hear the apartment door whir shut. Her mother was home.

  “I’m in my room!” Opal called back, shoving the tablet under her pillow and hastily buttoning up her shirt. She’d have to sneak the tablet out again later, maybe after her mom had gone to bed.

  Dr. Trudeau poked her head in the bedroom just as Opal was opening up the reading assignment on her own computer.

  “Have a good day at school?” she asked.

  Opal shrugged.

  “Homework, hmm?” Her mom tried to smile, but ever since she’d started working at BeauTek, her face always seemed a bit stiff. “Honey, you don’t mind if I order dinner again, do you?” she said. “I’m just too tired to cook tonight.”

  “Sure,” Opal said. “I’m not really hungry, anyway.” The image of the three-eyed fish pulsing in the freezer floated in front of her eyes again, and she felt like she could vom.

  “Great,” her mother said. “I’m just going to take a quick shower first. ”

  • • •

  Opal waited until the water had been running for a couple of minutes before she took the tablet computer out from under her pillow and opened it up again. As she scrolled through image after image, she wondered: Just what was it her mother did all day across the river at BeauTek? Was it top secret? Is that why the project was called Mute?

  If Opal couldn’t have superpowers of her own, she could at least find out more about all the other freaks filling her mom’s computer folders.

  And the streets of Sync City.

  Shrieking Violet

  CINNAMON GUM IS SPICY, GRAPE JELLY IS SWEET, AND Iris Tyler is violet all over, inside and out. Purple pride, people!

  That’s pretty much what Iris was feeling in the park that afternoon, hanging with Scarlet and Cheri. After putting vile Karyn Karson in her place (“You got served!” Scarlet joked afterward, imitating Brad Hochoquatro’s end-zone dance. “You got served ravioli! On your head!”), Iris was beginning to think that their strange powers could be used for more than just redecorating monorails and perking up dull ballets.

  “Maybe,” Scarlet said when Iris mentioned this. “But don’t forget what Candace said.”

  “Yeah,” Cheri agreed, hugging Dogiego close. He was now fire-engine red, with jaunty black polka dots as accents. “Don’t forget there are people who want to PROBE us!”

  “I know,” Iris said. Still, she felt invincible. If anyone came within fifty feet of “probing” them, she’d cover them in trick mosquito bites. Scarlet could dance them to a pulp. And Cheri . . . well, Cheri could mess up their ta
x returns. Then they’d REALLY be in trouble!

  They were back on the grassy knoll. Scarlet wanted to dance on a hill, like they did in The Sound of Music. Cheri wanted Dogiego to stretch his squat Chihuahua legs before she had to bring him back to Helter Shelter. And Iris, even though she didn’t tell the other two this, was curious whether they’d see any more weird creatures. Scared. But curious.

  She figured as long as they stuck together and left before dark, they’d be okay.

  Iris sat on the bench. She gazed down at the row of fluffula trees that bordered the orange brick path and out to the Joan River beyond them. Then she dug out the rhinestone stylus from the bottom of her messenger bag and tapped open her iCan.

  Cheri placed Dogiego next her, snapping his leash around the rusted metal armrest. She gave the dog a pat on the head, then skipped over to join Scarlet, who was throwing down a fierce hip-hop hilltop routine.

  “Do you think they’ll hold a talent show at school this year?” she asked as she attempted to mimic Scarlet’s modern choreography.

  “IDK,” Iris said. She was concentrating on capturing Scarlet and Cheri in motion, but it was hard because they kept moving.

  “If they do,” Cheri puffed, “maybe we could perform a dance routine. Scarlet, you could teach us! Opal, too, when she’s feeling better.”

  Iris looked up from her iCan to study them. Cheri was a bit taller than Scarlet—a lot taller in her platform sandals—and was being careful not to elbow Scar Lo in the ear as she tried to pop and lock along. “That could be fun,” Iris agreed. “We just need a really cool name for our team.”

  “Totally,” Cheri said. “And matching outfits!” Even as she danced, she was imagining their costumes for this future talent show. Exciting!

  “Hey, Scar!” Iris called out. “As long as you don’t leap across the gym into the basketball net or something, we might even win!”

  “Like I said before,” Scarlet shouted back, “I’m working on it!” She wasn’t really sure how she felt about busting a move in front of the whole school. A wrestling match was really more her groove. Or at least it used to be. This whole superdancing superpower was so confusing! It was messing with the entire way Scarlet saw herself. It was kind of making her crazy.

  And the crazier it made her feel, the more manically Scarlet danced.

  “Slow down, b-girl!” Cheri gasped. “A mere mortal such as myself”—huff huff—“cannot keep up with you!”

  “Neither can I!” Iris said. She looked at her sketch so far. It was a blur of lines and colors: cherry red and licorice black and blue-jean blue.

  Scarlet came to a stop and staggered over to Iris, who handed her a fresh piece of gum. Cheri followed, stumbling dizzily toward the bench. She flopped down next to Iris. “That was très to the cray,” she panted. She took a piece of gum, too. Then she glanced across at Iris’s drawing. “Is that supposed to be us?” she asked. Scarlet also leaned over to look at the combustion of colorful lines and narrowed her eyes quizzically.

  “Well, it’s drawn in a very, um, ‘impressionistic’ style,” Iris explained with a smile.

  Cheri smiled, too, but suddenly her face dropped. “OMV!” she cried out. “Where’d Dogiego go?”

  Iris and Cheri jumped to their feet and the three girls circled the bench, looking for the red-hot polka-dot Chihuahua.

  “Cher, he was just here, I swear!” Iris said. “I was working on my drawing, I was watching you two dance, I thought he was on his leash!”

  Cheri grasped the rusty metal armrest. There was a break right where the leash must have slipped through.

  “Ooh!” Cheri exclaimed. “Stupid oxidized iron!”

  “Wait, so now you’re aces at science, too?” Scarlet asked.

  “It’s an equation!” Cheri spluttered. “A chemical equation! And never mind that now! We’ve got to find Dogiego before it gets dark!” Cheri feared she might freak out. “Iris! OMV, OMV,” she stammered, starting to bite off her rose-gold manicure.

  “He’s bright red,” Iris said, trying to calm her. “We’ll find him.” She faced west, toward the river. The sun had already begun to set. She almost couldn’t believe the words that came out of her mouth next.

  “We should split up.”

  Cheri and Scarlet exchanged glances. In the movies, you were never supposed to split up in scary dark parks. You were never supposed to split up, period! That was always when bad things happened. What if this time Cheri crossed paths with something a lot less friendly than a curly-tailed calico cat? What if Scarlet couldn’t dance away some fresh, freaky danger?

  Both girls gulped. But they both nodded.

  “I’ll take the path along the river,” Scarlet offered bravely, hitching her backpack over both shoulders and tugging on the straps to tighten them.

  “Okay,” Iris agreed, though she didn’t like it. “But be careful, because . . .”

  “I know,” Scarlet said, remembering what they had encountered the last time they were in the park after dark. “I will.” Standing there on the hilltop, she touched pinkie fingers with Iris and Cheri for a split second, so fast the other two hardly even knew she’d done it. And with just one bounce, she was over the grassy knoll and down on the orange brick path.

  Cheri would have been majorly impressed if she weren’t stressing about her missing Chihuahua.

  Iris turned back to Cheri, who was chewing her thumbnail again. “Here’s our plan,” she said. “Scarlet’s got the riverside covered. I’ll go into the park toward the uptown exit,” she explained. “You go down. Canvas the area, and we’ll each circle back toward the middle till our paths cross. Got it?”

  “It’s got,” Cheri said, surveying the park. The landmarks popped up in her head like points on a map. “Either direction is only about a quarter of a mile,” she said, “so we should meet at the midway point in under ten minutes.” Then she looked the way Scarlet had leaped, toward the sunset. “And with the sun at that angle, I’d estimate we’ve got about another ten minutes of daylight.”

  “Then we’d better get going,” Iris said, slinging her messenger bag across her body. She put her hands on Cheri’s shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re going to find him. He’s bright red!”

  Cheri nodded, blinking back tears. “He likes tacos,” she whispered, fumbling with her smartphone to set the GPS with the park bench coordinates.

  “We’ll have to give him some when we find him,” Iris said. “And if anything happens, just shout out . . . Violets! At the top of your lungs.”

  “Violets,” Cheri repeated, sniffling. “Go team Violet.”

  And without another word, the two girls raced off in opposite directions down the hill.

  • • •

  Underneath the fluffula trees and off the park’s paved walkways, it was already darker than Cheri expected. Every little crack, snapple, or pop she heard made her afraid, recalling the mega opossum with the mustache. But she kept on searching for little red Dogiego Boneata. She sent her best doggie thoughts ahead of her.

  Here, Dogiego! she concentrated. Yo tengo tacos! And as soon as I take you back to Helter Shelter, I just know you’ll get adopted to a wonderful new home!

  She kept thinking these thoughts and listening for a reply as she scanned the shadowy grass for a polka-dot Chihuahua.

  Cheri was just about at the midway point in her corner of the park, expecting at any moment to see Iris with her purple curls, and hoping that along with those purple curls she’d see a red dog, when she saw something else. Something definitely not Iris.

  A tall man in a dented hat and a thin brown trench coat was stooped underneath the canopy of a tree. It sounded as if he was whispering. Cheri strained to hear but couldn’t separate his words from the wind rustling the leaves. She took another step, and her heart leaped in
to her throat. Little red Dogiego was standing at the man’s feet! Cheri wanted to call out, but some instinct stopped her.

  Instead, she crept closer, moving as quietly as she could on her platform sandals.

  Dogiego! she thought. Come here! Right now!

  The Chihuahua must have heard her, but instead he skittered back in the grass, never taking his eyes off the man in the thin brown coat. Dogiego curled his lips in a snarl and gave out a low growl.

  Cheri was near enough now to hear what the man was saying. But it still didn’t make sense. It sounded like ticka-ticka-ticka-ticka. She was near enough to see the creases in the man’s long coat. The fraying at its hem . . .

  The green wingtips sticking out above his shoes?

  “Oh!” Cheri gasped just as the man shot out two pointed claws and lifted up the yapping little dog. As he turned around to face her, his hat fell off and two antennae whipped into the air. He fixed Cheri with one bulbous insect eye and his mandibles twitched, ticka-ticka-ticka-ticka, hungry for Chihuahua.

  “Iris!” Cheri shrieked into the twilight. “Scarlet! Help me, Violets!”

  At the sound of her cries, the mantis man scuttled toward the walkway, tucking Dogiego under his armpit like a wriggling polka-dot football. Cheri stumbled after him, her eyes searching the grass for a weapon. Randomly, she spied a lacrosse stick and a single dirty stiletto in the weeds. She didn’t have time to think how those two items ever could have ended up in the same place. Who plays lacrosse in high heels? she wondered. Then she reminded herself: She didn’t have time to think about that! She crammed the shoe in the net so that the spiked heel jutted out of it, and held the lacrosse stick in front of her like a Japanese bamboo shinai.