The Ultra Violets Page 9

  Opal gasped, and Iris scrambled to her feet, worrying that Scarlet might be like a loose balloon carried away on the wind, never to return. But after a scary moment when they weren’t sure if they were still watching Scarlet’s airborne black ponytail or if that was really just a crow flying by, they could see the rubber soles of Scarlet’s sneakers zooming toward them, and all three scattered out of the way.

  Scarlet landed in a crouch, right in the small dirt hollow she’d cleared with her kicking feet. Sweeping her head from side to side, she scanned the park for any other observers. But only Iris, Opal, and Cheri had seen her cosmonautics.

  “No wayski,” Iris said, sitting back down on her science textbook and making a few quick digi-sketches of Scarlet in flight. “That was crayski! Very twirly. With some Slavic on the side. Like the Trepak dance in the Nutcracker!”

  “Um, if you say so,” Scarlet said, straightening her T-shirt, which had billowed out like a parachute on reentry. She was a little out of breath. “I tried keeping track of how many kicks, but I can’t keep up with myself.”

  “Seventy-eight,” Cheri said matter-of-factly. “Because I can. And you went fifty-three feet high, F to the YI.”

  “Cool,” Scarlet said, linking her fingers and stretching her arms above her head like a pro athlete. “Although all this supersonic dancing is going to be harsh on my sneakers.” She looked down at her feet—the soles of her shoes were already wearing thin. Smelly Barkson scampered over to sniff them. Covered in dust, the dog looked dingier than ever. Cheri could resist no longer.

  “Iris, will you change Smelly Barkson to a pretty color, like you did with Jaws?” she asked. “Pretty please? Did I tell you guys? After I snuck Jaws back into the shelter, instant adoption. People went mental over his lavender fur!”

  “OMV, really?” Iris said, feeling quite pleased. “So more stray animals might find homes if I colorized them?”

  As if she knew the girls were talking about her, Smelly stood up on her hind legs and wagged her tail expectantly.

  “Okay, little doggie,” Iris said. “I guess I could try again.” She took in the terrier, whose wiry fur was a gray-beige mix, like peppered oatmeal. “What shade did you have in mind?”

  Cheri gave Smelly a pat on her head. “We were thinking teal—like a bright peacocky green-blue—would complement her eyes. But don’t make her a peacock. Keep her a dog. Just peacock-colored.”

  “Wait, ‘we’?” Scarlet interrupted. “Who’s ‘we’? You haven’t told anyone else about our super skills, have you?”

  “No, of course not,” Cheri said, taking out her tube of lip gloss and dabbling some on. “By ‘we’ I just meant me and Smelly. When she heard about lavender Jaws, she thought she—”

  “Hold. Up!” Scarlet said, hands on her hips. “Smelly Barkson, the dog, told you she wanted to be peacock blue?”

  “Uh-huh,” Cheri said, tucking the lip gloss back into her bag and then running a finger up the bridge of her nose. “Of course, she didn’t tell me tell me, because everybody knows dogs can’t talk. Now that would be beyond the cray. It’s more like she thought it to me, and I heard her thought. The same way I can see math, I can hear dogs.”

  Scarlet slumped down on the ground, speechless. No point stressing about grass stains on her butt pockets, since the rest of her jeans were already so dirty.

  “Iris, I thought you could only change colors,” Opal questioned, imagining the possibilities, “not actual species?”

  “Not that I’ve tried,” Iris agreed. “That would be too mutant.”

  “I figured,” Cheri said, running her finger up her nose again. “But considering all the other strange things that have happened lately, there’s a one hundred percent chance more strange things could happen. Statistically speaking.”

  “I see,” Scarlet said, getting her snark back. “One more question, Cher. What is the deal with your finger on your nose?”

  “I’m pushing up my glasses.”

  “You’re not wearing glasses.”

  “Imaginary glasses.”

  “What good are imaginary glasses?” Scarlet spluttered. “And if they’re imaginary, why would they slide down your nose?” Cheri was one of her best friends, but the girl could drive a monkey to bananas.

  “Now that I have math brains,” Cheri answered, “I should look the part. Look smart. I was thinking cat-eye. So I’m practicing. Like you did before with the pretend skirt.” The idea of it made Cheri giggle all over again.

  “Oh, good grief,” Scarlet grumbled. She caught Opal’s glance and they both shook their heads at Cheri’s kookiness. “Let’s just get on with it. Iris, color that puppy!”

  Iris wrapped a violet strand around her pinkie finger and fixed her gaze on Smelly Barkson. She closed her eyes for a second or three. As the other girls watched, she seemed to waver within invisible waves of light, and they could almost feel the heat undulating from her. When she opened her eyes again, Smelly was perfectly turquoise.

  “Is that close enough?” Iris asked, gripping the arm of the bench to steady herself. She knew from her art classes that turquoise was a little more yellow than teal.

  “Totally!” Cheri said, beaming. “Smelly says thanks, Iris! Thank you smelly much!”

  “Oh. Good. Grief!” Scarlet repeated.

  The blare of a horn from a ferry crossing the river prompted Opal to stand up from the bench. “I probably should get going,” she said to the group, hitching her backpack over both shoulders and pulling up her knee socks. “You know, vocabulary quiz tomorrow. And my mom will be home from work soon.”

  “I’ll walk with you,” Iris said, gathering up her art supplies and stuffing them back in her messenger bag. “I should get home, too.”

  Cheri held open her tote and turquoise Smelly hopped right in. “And I should swing by Helter Shelter and sneak back Smelly B,” she said cheerfully. “Now that she’s such a pretty color, she’s positive she’s going to get adopted pronto.”

  “I suppose the dog just ‘told’ you that,” Scarlet said, getting to her feet. She held up her hand to stop Cheri before she could answer.

  The four girls trudged down the hill and walked in silence along the orange brick pathway that bordered the river. On the other side, the MALL OF NO RETURNS sign glowed into life for the evening. The warped reflection of the letters rippled on the water’s surface.

  The park exit was still several lampposts away when a strange shadow slithered across their path, leaving a sticky trail of slime behind. They heard a splash.

  “What was that?” Opal asked, a note of panic in her voice. “Did anyone see? Did it go in the river?” She grabbed Iris’s hand just like she used to when they were little kids.

  “Eww!” Cheri said with a shudder, stepping over the slime marks, which were as wide as the wheel of a monster truck. “Whatever it was, it gave me the creeps.”

  They continued on toward the exit, looking over their shoulders for any more slimy shadows. As darkness fell, the park seemed more dangerous. With every chirp or chitter or bustle in the hedgerow, the girls jumped, wondering what kind of animal might be making the noise. And not really wanting to know. They still had two lampposts to go when they heard a sharp smwack-smwack sound coming from the bushes. They all froze to the spot.

  “What should we do, what should we do?” Opal whispered.

  “Make a run for it!” Scarlet urged.

  “Easy for you to say, Twinkle-toes!” Cheri quietly cried—although, with her gold-dust polish, her toes were pretty twinkly, too.

  “Stay calm, girls,” Iris said in a low voice. “Act natural. Just keep going. Follow the orange brick path.”

  “Follow the orange brick path,” Opal repeated, squaring her shoulders and clicking her
heels together three times.

  “Follow the orange brick path!” Cheri breathed, clutching her little blue dog close.

  The four girls linked arms, and just as they were about to take their first step, a creature dashed in front of them, halting underneath the lamp’s circle of light.

  On curdled yellow claws, it turned to face them.

  It was as big as a four-door sedan, but much hairier than any car they’d ever seen. Except for its long, rubbery snout, which was fleshy white like a rotting mushroom with a massive handlebar mustache underneath. AND except for its even longer ringed tail, which whipped back and forth like a dropped garden hose. Its bulging beach-ball eyes darted from one girl to the other and its crusty lemon claws scratched at the brick path. As its spongy wet nostrils snuffled up to Cheri, it made the smwack-smwack noise again.

  She gasped, “Oh . . . my . . .”

  “Nose!” Scarlet declared. Breaking from the group, she dropped into the same Nutcracker squat she’d shown off before. But instead of cracking nuts, she started kicking schnoz. With flailing feet she pummeled the beast’s snout like it was a punching bag. It shrieked at the assault, putting one yellow paw up to protect itself. Scarlet pointed her arms in an arabesque pose and jabbed it in the stomach. As the creature scrabbled toward the water, Scarlet tap-danced down the length of its slithering tail. She jumped off just as it slipped into the river like the mysterious slime-leaver before it.

  Scarlet stared at the water defiantly, arms crossed, daring the monster to come back out and desperately hoping it wouldn’t. Finally, she turned back to her three friends, stock-still behind her. They stood like that for a second—before they all started screaming at the top of their lungs while they bolted for the exit.

  They ran past the last two lampposts, past the park gates, and booked it for the next four blocks straight, until finally they had to stop to catch their breath. Scarlet, too. It occurred to her afterward that she probably could have bounced out of the park in a single bound. But in the fear and the frenzy, she had just kept running alongside her friends.

  “That . . .” Iris said between gasps, “was like . . . an opossum . . .”

  “On steroids!” Scarlet spat.

  “With a mustache!” Opal heaved.

  “And a manicure!” Cheri wailed, as Smelly Barkson moaned along with her. “Tell me I didn’t almost get eaten by a mutant rat with a yellow manicure!”

  “Opossum,” Iris repeated, still breathing hard. “Mutant opossum with a manicure.”

  When their pulse rates finally returned to normal, they realized they were at the crossroads where they would have had to split up anyway. It was too late for them to talk any longer. And nobody knew what to say. Except:

  “Thanks for seriously Cossack-kicking, um, mutant opossum snout, Scarlet,” Cheri said as Smelly yipped her gratitude.

  “Yeah, Scar,” Iris said. “Thanks for tap-dancing mutant opossum tail!”

  “Oh,” Scarlet said with a shrug, trying to sound nonchalant, “NBD.” Her chest swelled with pride, but the crackle of her earpiece punctured the bubble pretty fast. “Yes, Mom,” she said, making a funny face at the girls. “I’m just a few blocks away!” Then she cupped her ear to cover the small microphone while she said to the girls, “We’d better not tell our parents about this—they’d never let us hang out in the park again.”

  They all agreed and promised to text each other as soon as they were safely inside their homes. Scarlet strode off one way, Cheri the other.

  “Guess we’re not the only weirdness going on in Sync City,” Iris summed up to Opal, a chill running down her spine. She waved goodbye and hurried toward her apartment building. The evening light tinged her lavender blue.

  First the three-eyed fish, Opal pondered, then the glow-in-the-dark broccoli, now a gigantic stache-sporting opossum. “And I guess weird isn’t always good,” she said as she stepped away in the opposite direction. The thought scared her. But it also made her a little bit glad.

  Amok, Amok, Amok

  AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR:

  Is all this talk about DayGlo vegetables and mustachioed marsupials bringing you down? Do you long for that innocent bygone time when girls were blonde and dogs kept their thoughts to themselves? Do you firmly believe Russian folk-dancing should not qualify as a mixed-martial art?

  If you answered yes to all three of these questions, we’re sorry. We can’t help you. We have nothing for sale that will stop any of these shenanigans from happening. Alas, we can only distract you for a chapter with snapshots of our heroines’ superpowered hijinks as they run amok in Sync City.

  So let the wild amoking begin!

  Hear Kitty, Kitty

  Downtown Sync City.

  After school.

  Cheri glid (that’s how we spell it!) across the sidewalks on her platform roller skates. She was on her way to Helter Shelter to volunteer for the afternoon. Just as she’d hoped, Smelly was another success story. The dog’s now-owner took one look at her beautiful turquoise coat and immediately renamed the little terrier Tiffany Blue. Which Cheri immediately clicked *like* on!

  Tiffany Blue was a much more flattering name than Smelly Barkson.

  Too bad we can’t just turn Albert Feinstein turquoise, she thought. His makeover was going to be more complicated.

  Cheri had rolled to a stop at a red light and was imagining who her next clandestine pet would be when a random question popped into her head:

  I can has cheezburger?

  “Can I have a cheeseburger?” she said out loud, then answered herself. “But that would spoil my dinner. And I’m a vegetarian. And there’s no ‘z’ in cheese.”

  I can has cheezburger? the question came again, sort of from above. And Cheri realized it wasn’t her question at all.

  She scanned the fluffula tree branches, searching for the thinker. And then she spotted him: a calico, with a patch of orange over one eye and a patch of black over the other. He was sitting in a nook near the trunk, one paw tucked under his chin pensively.

  “LOL, Cat!” she said to the calico, giving him a little wave hello. Then she thought her next sentence, since she didn’t want any passersby to see her talking to a tree. I don’t has cheezburger, Cheri answered, but I’m on my way to Helter Shelter, where they have lots of milk.

  Shelterz no, the calico thought back from his tree branch. Me needz to b free.

  Cheri shifted her empty tote bag from one shoulder to the other. I understandz, she thought back. Cats were so much more independent than dogz. But it’z getting strange on the streetz. The other nite a giant possum almost haz me!

  This seemed to give the cat paws pause, because he didn’t respond right away. Instead, he licked at the bib of white fur on his chest. I heardz ’bout sum stuff like dat, he answered at last.

  “Then why don’t you come with?” Cheri whispered up into the tree. “How ’bout I promise not to takez u in and putz u in a cage? How ’bout I just bringz milk to the back door of the shelter?”

  The calico struck his thinker pose again, propping his paw under his chin. If u promiz, he said.

  “I promiz,” Cheri said. “Croz mah hart!” As she gestured an X over her heart, the calico noticed she had tiger-striped nails today. That sealed the deal.

  OK, he said, let me getz my friendz.

  “Ur friendz?” Cheri repeated, and nearly jumped out of her velour romper when the calico stood up on all fours, arched his back, and caterwauled “MEOWR!” into the tree. Cheri just had time to hold open her tote as the cats climbed down. One, two, three, four . . .

  In the end she counted a dozen. The thoughtful calico waited for all his friends to pile in first, and he couldn’t fit, so he perched on Cheri’s shoulder, purring in her ear.

  Letz roll, he said
, and she did.

  The oddest part of all wasn’t that Cheri was now skating through Sync City with a tote bag full of stray cats and a thirteenth on her shoulder. No, it was that all the cats had tails as corkscrewy as curly fries. She was frightened by the sight at first, but the cats were so kind and cute, she didn’t feel threatened.

  Mmm, curly fries, Cheri thought as she skated, her stomach grumbling. I bet they would go well with a cheezburger.

  The Good, The Bad, and The Scarlet

  The playground.

  High noon. (That means lunchtime.)

  Scarlet spots a dastardly duo, Duncan Murdoch and his sidekick Bobby McKay, shoving what she reckons to be a seven-year-old off the seesaw and stealing his Game-Boi. In the past couple of weeks, Sheriff Scarlet’s been so busy dancing, she’s let her anti-bullying patrols slide.

  And this is the result. A spike in schoolyard violence, spikier than any volleyball was ever smacked over a net at a picnic. A 10 percent hike, Deputy Cheri calculates, whipping a chart out of her tote bag that illustrates the peaks with a jagged red line.

  That just won’t do.

  “Not on my watch,” Sheriff Scarlet mutters, hitching up her jeans and heading toward the seesaw. As she approaches, she casts a shadow. A very short shadow. The two thugs don’t even notice her till she’s right beneath their yeller-bellied noses. From where she stands, she can see their yeller-bellied boogers. It ain’t a purty sight.

  Scarlet hawks up a loogie, spits it off to the side, and kicks dust over Duncan’s high-tops.

  “What’s the big idea, squirt?” he growls, looming over Scarlet like a bad umbrella. The kind that doesn’t know when the sun’s come out and it’s time to shut up.