The Ultra Violets Read online

  Before she could see any more, her mother turned her around by her shoulders and pushed her out of the Vi-Shush.

  “You’re welcome!” Opal called out, her voice echoing in the empty corridor.

  In response all she heard was the laboratory doors locking behind her.

  With her head low and her hands in the pockets of Dr. Cooper’s borrowed lab coat, Opal walked to the top of the down escalators. But before she stepped aboard the moving stairs, she paused. Level C was the uppermost floor of the BeauTek complex. The windowed walls opposite the Vi-Shush looked out to the river and the Sync City skyline beyond it. Opal moved away from the escalators and toward the windows instead. Dr. Cooper had left a pair of black sunglasses in the lab coat pocket. Opal put them on. They were too big. But they blocked the sun. And, bonus, they helped with her disguise.

  Across the river, the domed top of the FLab stood out from all the other buildings. The HQT was the most famous skyscraper in Sync City. Opal also tried to find her own apartment building, and Iris’s. She could see the orange brick path of Chrysalis Park, the crimson leaves of the fluffula trees that bordered it, the small hilltop where she’d hung out with Scarlet and Iris and Cheri.

  Even with the threat of mega mustachioed opossums, it was still a nice view.

  As Opal’s gaze returned to the dock just below the BeauTek building, she decided she wasn’t going to go down there to wait for her mother after all. Not right away.

  No, she thought, walking away from the windows and toward the food court. I want a peach soda.

  Either the day-shift scientists were getting a late afternoon snack, or the night-shift scientists were eating an early dinner before they started work, or both of the above. The food court was busy enough, with lines backing up from all the different takeout counters. Thanks to Dr. Cooper’s lab coat and sunglasses, no one seemed to notice that Opal was in fact an eleven-year-old girl. I guess knee socks and barrettes must be trending with the scientific crowd, she thought. Still, she kept a low profile. Avoiding the lines, she swiped Dr. Cooper’s ID card on one of the many automatic snack dispensers. The can of peach soda rotated forward on a mechanical arm, and a small window slid up for Opal to take it. The swipe card made it so easy that she got herself a big piece of chocolate cake as a treat.

  She sat down at an empty table.

  Having her cake and eating it, too, Opal used the dark sunglasses as an excuse to ogle all the other people in the food court. Lots of scientists, all of them in lab coats, some of them wearing face masks or shower caps or those green doctor pajamas. Each one carrying a laptop or tablet, acting like the busiest person in the world. Definitely too busy to be bothered with her.

  But Opal choked a little on a mouthful of cake when she noticed not everyone in the food court was a scientist. Or, more choke-causingly, not 100 percent human. There was the Hippowomanus, loading up on cheesecakes. There was the too-tan shark man, chatting with one of the doctors and flashing his rows of teeth.

  They must all be here, Opal realized, her stomach twisting into a knot. All those creatures from Mom’s bizarre desktop flashcards. The thought terrified her. But it fascinated her as well. Like she was watching video game characters come to life. Something about the sunglasses made Opal feel just hidden enough to stay put. She swallowed the chunk of cake stuck in her throat, washing it down with a swig of peach soda.

  Suddenly the food court began to empty. The night shift must have been about to begin. All the scientists and research types streamed out the exit, leaving only the freaks behind. Opal was thinking about leaving herself when one sat down across from her.

  She started in her seat, then stayed very, very still.

  It took her a moment to recognize who it was. At first she was too fixated on the two smooth horn buds jutting out above his ears, through his shaggy, russet-brown hair. Then it hit her.

  Duncan Murdoch? The boy who had once oh-so-charmingly called her a turd? What was he doing here? And why did he have horns?!

  He stared across the table at her dully, and she could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks. But then she remembered. She was in the lab coat. Shielded by the sunglasses. And like Duncan Murdoch had ever noticed her outside a baked potato costume from kindergarten anyway!

  Opal recognized Duncan, but she felt sure that he didn’t recognize her.

  What an interesting development . . .

  With a guttural moo, Duncan reached a hand out toward Opal’s cake. Whether it was because of the sunglass protection or the strange location or her lack of sleep, Opal didn’t know. But instead of shrinking back, she snapped.

  “Hey!” she said, banging the table. “Keep your stinking fingers off my chocolate cake!”

  Duncan drew his hand back. Opal couldn’t believe it. She could see fear in his eyes. In his big, cow-boy eyes! Now who’s the turd? she smirked, feeling a rush of power she’d never experienced before. As Duncan pushed away from the table, Opal stood up and shouted after him: “And bring me a bendy straw!”

  All the mutants in the Food Court fell silent and turned to look at her.

  Opal cleared her throat and sat down again, staring back at all the freaky customers through her black sunglasses. Her heart was thundering in her chest. But, ignoring her fork, she picked up her piece of cake with her bare hands and took a huge bite out of it, certainly getting chocolate icing all over her face and probably on her buttoned-up shirt collar, not to mention the borrowed lab coat. She didn’t care. She chewed slowly, savoring the dark, rich flavor. Then she licked the crumbs off her fingers, from pinkie to thumb. It tasted good. And shouting down a mutant Duncan Murdoch tasted even better.

  So that’s what it feels like, she thought, to be the bosser, not the bossee.

  Opal polished off her cake and cleaned off her hands with a sani-wipe: This being a lab, they were on every table, right next to the ketchup. She got up from her chair, hitched her backpack over one shoulder, and picked up her can of peach soda. She was just about to leave, to make sure she beat her mom to the ferry dock, when another mutant approached her.

  This creature had a long neck with folds of skin rippling around it like fleshy necklaces. Its heavy jaws hung down as well, blending in with its neck creases. The bags under its four eyes were so deep, Opal was sure the sunglasses she was wearing would get lost in them. It stooped over her, all its saggy skin flapping above her head, and opened its mouth. When its muscles inched into a grin, the skin folds rolled up with it. The creature had no teeth that Opal could see. She wondered if it wanted to gum her to death.

  For the first time that day, she truly feared for her life. What had she been thinking, coming to this crazy place by herself? Her mother was just two pink doors away, and here Opal might be eaten by some sort of walking wrinkle inside the food court of a converted mall!

  Still, Opal didn’t run. Even when the oversized sunglasses slid down her nose and she was truly eye to eye to eye with the creature, she held her ground.

  The mutant stretched out a saggy fist. If it was trying to punch her, it was the slowest punch Opal had ever seen. But then it turned over its clenched fingers and opened them.

  Crushed in the palm of its hand were several bendy straws.

  Opal sneered as she took one and knocked the rest to the floor. The wrinkled creature crept away, dejected, as Opal pushed the sunglasses back up her nose and popped the straw into her peach soda.

  Ha, she thought, her mind reeling as she made her way to the down escalators. Mutants at my beck and call? Boys from school mooing at my feet? I could definitely get used to this.

  Red Rubber Balls of Doom

  “I SO DESPISE DODGEBALL,” CHERI SAID, FLINCHING away from an incoming red rubber bomb. “It is brr-rut-tal on one’s manicure.” She held up her metallic k
elly green nails to cover her face. “It raises the chance of chips tenfold.”

  “And I,” Iris said, adopting Cheri’s dramatic language, “abhor it! Because it’s barbaric.” Her purple curls were pulled up in a high ponytail, bouncing as she jogged in place. She easily caught a curve ball tossed by Karyn Karson, but instead of lobbing it back, she handed it over to Scarlet. “How is pummeling one another with balls exercise?”

  “Dodgeball rules!” Scarlet shouted, jumping just a little too high. She whipped her arm out in a salsa wave and spun the ball right back at Karyn, hitting her on the knee. “Burn!” Scarlet declared. “You got served, Karyn—again!”

  With the exception of a few of Karyn’s trendoid friends, the gym class laughed at Scarlet’s joke. Although Karyn didn’t know it was superfly Scarlet Louise Jones herself who had dropkicked the ravioli on her spaghetti-blonde hair, the cafeteria incident was already legendary.

  Beneath her black sunglasses, Opal smiled along. Having been bullied by the girl all through primary school, she wasn’t exactly a member of the Karyn Karson Fan Klub, either. “Dodgeball has its purpose,” she said to the other three girls, catching a ball thrown her way and immediately hurling it back at pudgy Emma Appleby. “It separates the strong from the weak.” The ball hit Emma smack on the forehead and she tipped over like a sleeping cow.

  The image of a downed cow set Opal chuckling. “Moo!” she laughed beneath her breath, clapping sarcastically as Emma struggled to her feet. Scarlet arched an eyebrow at her teammate and friend.

  Standing on the sidelines in her traffic yellow tracksuit, Ms. Skynyrd blew her whistle. “Girls!” she yelled to the PE class, clearly directing her speech at Opal. “No faces! Keep it below the neck!”

  Opal held her hands up in a “whaddayagonnado?” gesture. “Sorry!” she called back to the teacher. “Accidenté!”

  A new round of balls were thrown. Iris was just about to catch the dodgeball version of a high pop fly when Opal bumped her out of the way and grabbed it for herself. She spun it back instantly, the red rubber ball burning across the pasty white thighs of Annie Barrett. Annie limped off to the benches, rubbing the hot mark on her leg.

  “Hey, Opes,” Iris said, trying to mask her irritation with a smile, “take it easy, okay? It’s just a game.”

  “Is it?” Opal said, smiling back at Iris from behind her black sunglasses. “Is that all it is?”

  As Opal strutted back and forth behind the line, preparing for the next ball assault, Iris said quietly to Cheri and Scarlet, “Does Opal seem different to either of you?”

  Cheri glanced over at Opal, who was double-fist-pumping in anticipation. “Well, the sunglasses with the regulation gymporium shorts are a, um, different fashion choice,” she said.

  “Are you guys talking about me?” Opal challenged, approaching the trio and propping Dr. Cooper’s black Stang-Rayz up above her barrettes.

  Cheri blushed and hoped it just looked like she was sweating. “Oh, no, Opal, I was just wondering about your sunglasses, that’s all. Are they for your headaches?”

  “We’ve hardly seen you the past couple of days,” Iris added. “Are you still not feeling okay?”

  Opal tipped down her sunglasses again and turned just in time to catch another dodgeball. “Never better!” she answered. She gave the ball a single bounce on the gymporium floor and hurled it back. It hit Julie Nichols square in the stomach and she doubled over, braying in pain. Opal laughed.

  “Girls!” Ms. Skynyrd trilled her whistle again, gesturing toward Opal.

  Opal flung her arms wide in a “whaddayawantfrom-melady?” pose, then strutted around like that, a rap star in gym class. “You said ‘below the neck’!” she shouted back to the PE teacher.

  Ms. Skynyrd called a time-out as all the balls were gathered up and all the girls already benched were let back into the game. Opal, Cheri, Iris, and Scarlet lined up again, one next to the other, with the rest of their team. Iris balanced on the tips of her toes, ready to catch any red rubber balls.

  “Hey,” Scarlet whispered next to her. “Do you think the balls would hurt any less if you made them sky-blue instead red?”

  Iris gave Scarlet a playful little shove on the shoulder. “Remember what we said! We’re only going to use our ahems to . . . you know.”

  “Protect the weak and kick mutant butt?” Cheri muttered.

  “What she said.” Iris nodded at her.

  “Though I have to confess,” Cheri admitted from the other side of Iris, “my ability to calculate the projectiles of the dodgeballs is helping me not get hit by them!”

  Ms. Skynyrd blew her whistle to start the second round of the game. “That’s different!” Iris called over her shoulder to Cheri as she sprinted to the centerline to grab a ball. “That’s self-defense!”

  There was an instant dodgeball massacre in the middle of the gymporium as girls from both teams scrambled to grab balls and bounce them off their opponents at close range. A whole new round of casualties were immediately called out, and the survivors retreated back to their sides.

  “Anyway,” Opal announced, joining their conversation again, “I’m going to need these sunglasses next week, on the boat.”

  “What boat? Eek!” Cheri jumped aside, tucking in her butt just in time to miss getting hit. “Are you moving out of your apartment to live at sea?”

  “Yeah,” Opal said, rolling her eyes behind the dark glasses. “I’m going to be a pirate, Cheri, okay?”

  Iris could hear the sarcasm in Opal’s voice. She frowned. “No, seriously, Opal,” she said before Cheri could ask if that meant Opal would be getting a parrot sidekick. “What’s the deal with the boat?” She caught another one of Karyn’s feeble throws and paused for a second before she handed the ball over to Scarlet again.

  “Thank you smelly much,” Scarlet joked, clutching the ball and scanning the other team for her next target. “This is actually fun. And I’m not even using my ahems!”

  Iris shook her head, but couldn’t help but smile as once again Scarlet beaned Karyn with her own dodgeball. To her three friends’ surprise, Opal started to sing, “Na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye!”

  As Karyn skulked off to the benches again, Iris did a double take. For a second she thought she saw a thin lizard’s tail sticking out from the bottom of the girl’s shorts.

  While Scarlet continued to hold down the front line, Cheri, Iris, and Opal dropped back a bit, Cheri hiding behind Iris to tie her sneaker.

  “The boat?” Iris repeated to Opal.

  “The deal is,” Opal said, a big grin on her face, “the whole class is going on a class trip. Across the river. On the ferry, Cheri. Or I don’t know, maybe on the bus. To my mom’s work. The cosmeceutical company. BeauTek.”

  “We are?” Cheri said, surprised. Honestly, she was more interested in the pirate story and wondered if that was still an option.

  “The Mall of No Returns, huh?” Iris said as she scanned the air for round red missiles. “How did that happen?”

  “I suggested it to Mr. Knimoy for extra credit,” Opal said, obviously proud of herself. “He thought it was a ‘highly logical’ idea. That it would give the class a chance to see how a real lab worked.”

  “Okay, cool,” Iris said. From the times she’d spent at the FLab, she thought that coloring with chemicals, like the kinds found in oil paints, was more fun than just looking at test tubes and beakers of the stuff, which were always “do-not-touchable.” But a tour of the neon yellow mall could be fun. “And hey,” Iris added, “the whole class will get to meet your mom!”

  The smile left Opal’s face and she strutted away to toss another dodgeball. What Iris didn’t know was that Opal had yet to tell her mother about the school trip. The woman had been so thrilled by Opal’s surprise visit—not—that Opal could only imagine the mel
tdown to come when Opal showed up with twenty other students. But she’d worry about that later. After her little stare-downs with Duncan Murdoch and the wrinkly mutant, Opal bet she could finally command some respect—from her three super besties and the oblivious Dr. Mom. Her mother might not be happy to see her at her job next week. But Opal had a feeling she’d find some other support at BeauTek. Ugly, horned, fleshy support.

  That’s what sunglasses were for. To block things that were hard on the eyes.

  • • •

  Gym class was over. Their team had won. Iris easily caught any balls thrown her way. Cheri used math to miss them. Scarlet knocked out Karyn Karson a grand total of four times. And Opal scored really well, too, until Ms. Skynyrd finally called her out for “excessive aggression.”

  The girls had changed from their gymporium uniforms back into their regular outfits. Iris had taken down her ponytail, and Cheri had dabbed on some plum-tinted lip gloss. As Opal emerged from the girls’ room, the other three were surprised to see that she no longer had her hair clipped back in barrettes. Iris spied a streak of solid white running through the brown. It reminded her a little of the long silky hair on WuWu, the shelter Shih Tzu Cheri was toting around today. Iris wondered: Was Opal finally showing some effects of the Heliotropium? If she was and she thought eleven was a little young to go white, maybe Iris could change the streak to another color. Orange looks nice against brown, Iris mused, imagining it.

  From the bathroom, the four girls walked down the hall to their lockers. On the way, they could see Albert Feinstein approaching in the other direction. Iris couldn’t help but notice that the boy was looking better. Still nerdy, but cute nerdy now. Instead of being belted up around his chest, his pants hung below his hips. Instead of pleated-front khakis, he wore straight-leg dark denim. His shirt was still buttoned up to his chin, but his glasses were new. Not so thick and foggy as before.