The Ultra Violets Read online

  Iris and Opal were alone in the Vi-Shush.

  As each girl took a step toward the other, her powers grew. Opal’s milky orbs glinted with bursts of orange, and sparks shot off the metal lab tables as she touched them. Iris’s violet rays beamed out around her, burning so brightly they curled the edges of the newspapers lining the empty animal cages. When just three steps separated them, they stopped. It was as if the girls were standing in thin air, everything around them obliterated by Opal’s coal-black cloud and Iris’s ultraviolet light.

  “Guess that didn’t work out too well with the mutant army,” Iris said.

  Opal shrugged, small volts shooting up from her shoulder blades. “Beginner’s luck,” she said. “For you and your . . . what did you call them? Ultra Violets? Cute name. All that’s missing is your rainbows.”

  “No worries,” Iris said. With a twirl of her hair and a wave of her hand, she swept a rainbow through the white-violet light. It sparkled brighter than the sun.

  Standing under it, Opal’s storm system shrunk and she seemed to waver, the white stripes thinning in her eyes.

  “Opaline,” Iris said softly, trying to see past the cloudiness to the brown-eyed girl she still believed was inside. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  “You’re right,” Opal said abruptly, her thunder rumbling. “And it won’t. There are more mutants where those came from, and they can be trained.”

  Iris tried again. “You know that’s not what I mean. This isn’t you. I know you had to wait a little longer till you grew superpowers. But now that you have them, why not join us? Why not use them—”

  “For good?” Opal cut her off with a caustic laugh. Her frazzled hair curled up on the sides of her face like a sarcastic smile. “Because it’s too late.”

  “Why?” Iris said, taking a step forward. She reached into the back pocket of her shopping-bag miniskirt and pulled out a lollipop. “Why is it too late?”

  As Iris went to offer her the lollipop, Opal doubled over in pain. Her electric thunderdome burst out around her, the force of it killing the rainbow and knocking Iris off her feet. The peace lollipop shattered into hard candy shards.

  “Because!” Opal screamed out, clenching her fists and forcing herself to stand upright again. “Because I don’t belong with you!”

  A thunderclap echoed after her as she ran out of the room.

  It’s So Not Over

  NO, IT’S NOT OVER. NOT EVEN CLOSE. OKAY, THIS BOOK is almost over. But our girls, the Ultra Violets, have only just begun.

  How did they slip back into their field trip unnoticed? How did Scarlet explain the lab skeleton she brought onto the school bus? (You already know Cheri is a pro at hiding pets, so Darth went undetected.) How many curse words did Develon spew from behind her big black Burkant bag when she found the Vi-Shush broken into and rained upon, with all the circuits blown and all the animals gone?

  And what fresh evil is going on in the sub-sub-parking lot?

  So many questions!

  Kind of makes me want to say those four little words: We need to talk!

  Me being Sophie Bell, authoress and tour guide of this strange and sparkly adventure, who would sincerely love to share the answers with you, darling readers. For reals, I would. But my lovely editor, who has hair as lush and lustrous as Iris’s, has vowed to hunt me down with a bazooka and force me at spork-point to wear sandals with socks (Ew. Seriously? So gross.) if I don’t deliver this manuscript to her by my midnight deadline.

  As they say at Therapists ’R’ Us, I’m sorry but our time is up.

  Besides, we have to save something for the next book, don’t we?

  But I can tell you this much: Scarlet bluffed. She claimed she’d bought Skeletony in the mall’s souvenir shop. Cheri even piped up about the 2 percent discount to make it more believable, and they bought it. Meaning the teachers bought the lie. The girls didn’t buy Skeletony. They rode him out of a nefarious lab and down the escalator like a bony Segway. Which you know if you’ve been paying attention.

  That’s one question answered.

  And here’s one last scene:

  • • •

  The story ends where it began, on the forty-second floor of the Highly Questionable Tower in the quartz crystal Fascination Laboratory better known as the FLab. Considering the chaos that occurred at BeauTek, Iris, Scarlet, and Cheri had decided to pay Candace a visit.

  Opal, of course, had gone rogue. If only she had gone pirate!

  Conveniently, all the moms were out at an astrogeneticist conference that afternoon. If they hadn’t been, the girls would have regrouped at the diner. It served way better strawberry milkshakes than the FLab.

  The three girls told Candace about what had happened in the Vi-Shush, and suffice it to say she was not surprised. Not surprised one bit! She’d had her suspicions, her uh-oh gut check. Now her fears were confirmed.

  “Girls,” Candace said from her stool at the lab table, “it’s worse than I thought. It sounds like BeauTek is some kind of mutant factory inside an abandoned mall! And only we know it. And only you can stop it with your secret superpowers!” She tapped the table with the spork as she spoke, then reached behind and scratched her back with it.

  What? She had an itch.

  Cheri sat across from Candace, buffing her iridescent pearl-white manicure on Darth’s soft fur. “I don’t care if I do have purple DNA or whatever,” she said. “I never want to see another mutant again.” Her smartphone lay on the lab table, and she peeked at the screen. She’d texted Opal three times, but still no response.

  “And I was thinking of trying out for—nobody laugh!—the school musical,” Scarlet said, practicing arabesques by the windows. She might have grown an inch since all this power-dancing started. Or maybe she just stood a little taller now. “Wouldn’t being a superhero get in the way of rehearsals?” she asked.

  “But we can’t let mutants take over Sync City, you guys!” Iris said. She sat on the floor by Scarlet, attempting to craft a soft sculpture out of a bunch of stray socks that she’d found in a box. In honor of her lost friend, she’d pinned her long purple ringlets down with two prim barrettes. But her hair was so wavy they kept popping out. “Scar,” she said, argyle in hand, “battling mutants is like fending off bullies, on a mega scale.”

  “Well, since you put it that way . . .” Scarlet said, dipping down into a demi-plié. She had to admit that the thought of another dance-off with some stupid mutant was making her hips shake. And hips don’t lie.

  “And Cher,” Iris said, “who else is going to protect the animals?”

  “We’ve got to protect the animals!” Cheri cried. She couldn’t sleep at night knowing there was even one monkey trapped at BeauTek. “But what about Opal?” she asked.

  Iris looked to Candace. Just the mention of Opal’s name made her heart hurt. She had really tried to be her BFF, but something had gone wrong, and she didn’t understand why.

  Candace could see the sadness on all the girls’ faces. “It might not be too late,” she said. Remembering the Heliotropium accident, she felt responsible for Opal, no matter how badly she was behaving now. “She’s still one of you. She was here that night, too, and got splattered with the goo. It just made her go evil, instead of good.”

  “We can’t give up on her,” Iris said hoarsely, her eyes welling with tears. Her anger at Opal had passed. Now all she felt was compassion. The pain in Opal’s voice as she’d run out of the lab still echoed in Iris’s mind. “We’ve got to bring her back.”

  “Back from the Dark Side,” Cheri sighed, brushing back a tear herself. She fed Darth a grape. His favorite.

  It was so quiet in the FLab you could hear an atom split. Even Scarlet stood still for a few seconds, wondering if things
would have been different if only she’d treated Opal a little more thoughtfully.

  Candace surveyed the glum group. This wouldn’t do.

  “Girls!” she said with a clap of her hands. “Cheer up! You just defeated a bunch of mutants and freed all those animals! That’s awesome!”

  Scarlet sprung up on her tippy toes again. “It is pretty awesome,” she agreed.

  “It’s viomazing,” Cheri added, flashing the V sign from the lab table.

  “Majorly viomazing,” Candace encouraged them. “You’ve got the ultra-smooth moves.” She winked at Scarlet. “And you’ve got the ultra-sharp math,” she said to Cheri with a tip of her eyeglasses. “And you”—she pointed the shiny spork at Iris—“have got a rainbow spectrum of sparkle, girl. Mix those powers with best friendship, and it’s the perfect formula. You’ve totes got what it takes to save the day. Sync City needs you three!” Then she rested her chin in her hand and thought hard. Hard as only a teenius can. At last she said, “All you need now is a rockin’ superhero name.”

  “Um, Candace?” Scarlet said, spinning around with a smirk. “We got that.”

  “C’mon, Candace,” Cheri giggled. “Try to keep up!”

  “Is that so?” Candace said, but she was smiling. “Okay, then. Let’s hear it. Who are you supergirls?”

  Iris got to her feet, and Cheri dashed over to join her and Scarlet. Standing before the cut-crystal windows, with sunbeams filtering through the prisms, the three girls linked pinkies. “You tell her,” Cheri giggled again.

  “No, you!’ Scarlet bossed.

  “No, on the count of three!” Iris said.

  “But I thought I had the math!” Cheri joked, giggling even more.

  “One . . .” they counted, “two . . .” Scarlet shouted, “three!”

  “We’re the Ultra Violets!” the girls sang together, Iris shaking her purple curls free, Scarlet pirouetting, Cheri giving Darth a hug and a kiss.

  All that was missing was a blast of glitter.

  The Ultra Violets. Candace sat at the lab table watching them. The fate of an entire city in the hands of three sixth-grade girls?

  Yeah, she felt pretty good about it.

  • • •

  Later, as the three girls rode down in the see-through elevator, looking out at the Sync City skyline in all its gleaming glory, Scarlet said, “So I guess we’re officially the Ultra Violets now.”

  “Guess so,” Cheri said, holding up Darth so he could enjoy the view. “Though Iris is still the only one violet on the outside.”

  Before Iris could respond, Scarlet said, “We know, we know, we’re all violet on the inside!”

  There was a twinkle in Iris’s pale blue eyes. “That’s not what I was going to say!” She tugged a strand of her purple hair, which was wild and wavy once more. “What I was going to say is that Cheri is not the only one who can give makeovers.” And she closed her eyes for just a second or three.

  As Cheri and Scarlet watched, the crystal elevator filled with pure, sparkling light. It was like they were riding a diamond. Cheri reached her hand out, as if she could touch the sky. Then Iris opened her eyes again, and the glitter star dust disappeared.

  Cheri’s berry red hair now glimmered with a magenta pink tint. Her emerald green eyes shone as she realized it. Magenta went with everything! And Scarlet’s straight licorice- black strands glistened with the deepest purple, a rich eggplanty shade.

  “Aubergine, it’s called,” Iris said as Scarlet looked at her reflection in the elevator’s walls. “Do you like it?”

  “I love it!” Cheri said, while Scarlet just said, “Cool.”

  “Now that we’re all violet on the outside,” Cheri said, “what superhero-y thing should we do first? Go to the park? Back to the mall, to investigate?”

  “Should we hit the mean streets of Sync City and track down some mutants?” Scarlet said, crouching in a samurai warrior stance.

  The elevator neared the ground floor, and Iris put on her messenger bag. “Sounds good,” she said, “but I still haven’t done my homework! And I’m all out of lollipops. We’ve got a lot to do if we’re going to get to the bottom of this mutant drama—we’d better keep our strength up! So . . .” The elevator doors opened, and she stepped out into the city. The breeze from the river wove through her ultraviolet hair, and an aura of ultraviolet light glowed around her. “Anyone up for some fro-yo?”

  Txs, Merci, and XOX!

  {Acknowledgments}

  STANDING ATOP THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING IN GOLD platform ankle boots, trumpeting the call through a neon green conch shell, the original Sophie Bell sings out her sincere thanks to the few, the steadfast and true:

  Editor Jocelyn Davies, who seemed to have a sixth sense about me and the UVs, and who tracked me down through a blizzard in Istanbul to manifest it. (No, she did.) For her infinite optimism, encouragement, positivity, and patience. For helping me hit the emotional beats. For courageously stetting all the crazy. Thank you, Jocelyn!

  Publisher Ben Schrank, certifiably cool for getting it and putting it out there. So proud to be in your house.

  Team Razorbill: Erin Dempsey, Empress of Marketing; publicist Marisa Russell; and big beaucoups to editor Rebecca “E is for Awesome” Kilman, for picking up the rhinestone baton and boldly pirouetting into the purple maelstrom, and designer Kristin Smith, who wrangled and tangoed with a monster or two of her own to create such a viomazingly blue-tiful book, who made sure Graffiti Boy was supercute, and who flipped the lyrics, turning what was just a paper bag into a pretty bird.

  Chris Battle, for giving the UVs their fabulous look.

  Ethen Beavers, who powered the girls through the pages, from the first splatter of goo to the final mutant smackdown.

  Micol Ostow, the Gladwellian maven, brilliant and generous and an all-around classy dame, for connecting the dots.

  Super-sparkly, bright-eyed late birdie Aimee Friedman! La fille qui m’écoute et me calme. As some idiot once said, “Truck ’em easy.” P.S. Hey girl, your books are like your hair: full of delightful twists.

  Jeffrey Salane, secret former indie rock star and stealth brother-in-arms.

  Barry Cunningham, Officer of the British Empire, the closest I may ever get to royalty, even with the restraining order.

  Massive glitter blasts of man tanks for reals, and deep, mascara-destroying, chocolate-covered Buddha gratitude to Jazan Higgins, cosmic guru, beneficent Scorpio, for seeing and believing. Coffee cannot espresso how much your support has meant. Don’t stop!

  Lastly, the clan: Cornelius, for his dark charms, forever in my heart; Bridget, for hard work and bleached sheets; Fiona, Eila, and Niamh, the rainbow butterflies. And through the looking glass to Siobhán McGowan: Shine On You Crazy Diamond.

  LOOK OUT FOR THE NEXT

  VIOMAZING ADVENTURE FROM

  THE ULTRA VIOLETS

  WITH BOOK TWO:

  If SOPHIE BELL could have just one superpower, it would be to control the frizzies come rain, snow, tornado, or monsoon. Either that or invisible-flying. Like the Ultra Violets, she once had purple hair, and it came at a terrible cost—about fifteen dollars per extension. She lives with many inappropriate shoes in Brooklyn, New York.

  CHRIS BATTLE is an Emmy-nominated animation character design artist, best known for his work on the hit Cartoon Network shows Dexter’s Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, and Samurai Jack, as well as shows for Disney, Nickelodeon, Warner Bros., and more. Chris, his wife, and their daughter make their home in Los Angeles, and they like pancakes.

 

 

  <
br />