Triple Trouble

by Elise Allen

  “Five-and-a-quarter times?” Gabby asked as she shrugged off her knapsack.

  “The sixth time she cut me off two and half words into my sentence.”

  Gabby held out the charger she always kept in her knapsack. She didn’t love being without it while she was working—especially when she needed to keep checking her phone for potential Edwina updates—but Carmen had just saved her butt from Dina, so it was the least Gabby could do. Plus, her own phone was at 97 percent battery; she’d be fine.

  Gabby closed her fist around the charger. “Only if I get another hug.”

  Carmen sighed like the weight of the world was on her back. “Fine. But make it quick.”

  Gabby lifted her sister off the ground in a fierce bear hug that Carmen somehow managed to endure, then she gave her sister the charger and ran with Sneakers to catch up to Satchel and Zee. They were back in the Farm Zone, watching three large cows meander and graze. The cows were penned in by a horizontal-slat fence, and Satchel held up Sharli so she could stand on the middle slat and lean against the top.

  “Check it out,” Zee said when she saw Gabby. “Sharli’s trying to move the cow.”

  Gabby scanned the pen nervously—was a cow off the ground?

  “The brown-and-white one,” Satchel said, and the lock of hair in his face f lopped as he nodded across the pen. Gabby didn’t see anything strange, until she noticed the cow’s udder. It was smooshed to one side, and all the teats were pointed at Gabby and her friends, as if the udder were full of metal filings and Sharli held a giant magnet.

  “I think the cow’s too big for her,” Satchel said softly. Then he raised his voice and singsonged so Sharli could hear. “Great try, though, Sharli! You’re doing so good!”

  “Cow!” Sharli said proudly, and clapped her hands.

  “Pfft,” Petey said, and Gabby saw he was still in Zee’s top pocket. If he had to, he could pass for a doll. “No she isn’t. She’s doing zip. The cow isn’t moving at all.”

  Sharli shot him a look, then she stared back at the cow. A second later, one of the udders squeezed and shot a stream of milk right into Petey’s face.

  “Hey, come on!” he spluttered.

  Zee laughed but stopped short when the milk dripped down over her overalls. “For real?! Now I’m gonna smell like sour cow!”

  People were starting to stare. Gabby spun Zee away from the fence. “Come on, let’s go see more animals.”

  As they moved toward the chickens, Gabby checked her phone. She wanted to make sure Edwina hadn’t called. She didn’t want to go back too early if it was still dangerous at Sharli’s house, but she also didn’t want to be out at the fair when Petey’s dad and Blinzarra came home.

  No messages. To be honest, Gabby was glad. She’d been looking forward to hanging out at the fair with Zee and Satchel for ages; seeing it with Sneakers, Sharli, and Petey only made it better. They checked out all the animal pens—the sheep, the pigs, the llamas—and Gabby was impressed that Sneakers didn’t react to the other animals at all, except to wag his tail. A farmer even let Sneakers accompany the group into the petting zoo, and he adorably lay f lat on the ground to get nose to nose with a bunny. When Sharli petted a sheep, Sneakers rubbed up against the sheep’s other side, like he was petting it, too.

  Petey also had a great time, especially when Zee snuck him out of her pocket and deposited him on a sheep’s back. He sank deep into its coat and giggled out loud. “Gabby, the sheep’s hair’s just like yours!”

  After visiting the animals, they went to the Ride Zone. Gabby, Zee, and Satchel all loved the highest, fastest, wildest rides, but Gabby was on duty, so if anyone was going to miss out, she knew it should be her. After she checked her phone to make sure there weren’t any updates from Edwina, she made her decision: “You guys go,” she told Zee and Satchel. “I’ll stay with Sneakers, Petey, and Sharli.”

  “What?!” Petey complained. “I’m not a baby. I want to go on the big rides, too.”

  “You can’t,” Gabby said. “They don’t have seat belts for you.”

  “’Cause they’re size-ist!” Petey said. “But their prejudice shouldn’t be my problem. I’ll just sit in Zee’s pocket. Or she can hold me really, really tight.”

  “Won’t work, Petey-Man,” Zee said. “Laws of physics. You’d f ly out and splatter like a pancake.”

  “Ew,” Satchel said. “And do pancakes really splatter? I mean, maybe if they’re undercooked, then I guess the runny insides would splatter all over…”

  “No runny insides,” Gabby insisted, then she turned to Petey. “No dangerous rides.”

  “Hold up, Gabs,” Zee said. “Gimme a sec.”

  She put Petey in one of Sneakers’s vest pockets, then plopped down cross-legged right in the middle of the walkway. Gabby and Satchel knew better than to bother her when inspiration hit, so they took Sneakers, Sharli, and Petey on the nearest kiddie ride—a train that went slowly around in a circle—while they waited.

  Sharli loved it. Petey groused the whole time. When they got off, he was so happy to be free, he jumped out of Sneakers’s pocket and darted into an empty paper soda cup someone had tossed on the ground. He ran inside the cup like it was a hamster wheel, rolling unseen right up to Zee.

  “What’cha got?” he asked her as Gabby approached with the others.

  “Your ticket to happiness,” Zee crowed. She pulled open her top pocket. “Safety harness.”

  Gabby looked inside. She had no idea how Zee had done it, but somehow she’d wrangled the random items in her other pockets to create a full-body harness for a miniature kid. It looked like the restraints for a baby swing, blended with something a person would wear to go sky diving. There were straps for Petey’s legs, plus an upper-body piece that folded down to let him get in, then zipped into place to hold him tight. When Petey slipped inside to try it, Gabby had to admit he looked even safer and more snug than he’d been inside his bike-bag seat. Still, she dragged Zee over to a patch of grass and made her run, jump, and do cartwheels with Petey inside to make sure he didn’t fall out. She even had Zee unclip the top of her overalls and shake the bib part as hard as she could to ensure Petey didn’t budge.

  He didn’t. Not even a bit.

  “That was awesome!” he crowed when Zee clipped back up. “Now to the Danger Drop!”

  The Danger Drop took its riders thirty feet straight into the air, then let them freefall back down. Gabby had visions of runny pancake insides, and her stomach turned.

  “Maybe work your way up to the Danger Drop,” she said.

  “Deal,” Satchel said. “We’ll start on the Scrambler. I promise I won’t let Zee smush him.”

  “I would never smush him,” Zee said. “I mean, not on purpose.”

  Gabby almost called the whole thing off and kept Petey on the kiddie rides, but she knew she could count on Satchel to be careful, plus Zee had mad construction skills and understood the laws of physics well enough to bend them into submission. Her pride alone would keep Petey safe; Zee would never allow one of her inventions to be the reason anyone got hurt.

  The fair was amazingly cool about bringing dogs on kiddie rides, so Gabby took Sneakers and Sharli, while Petey went off with Zee and Satchel. Satchel took selfies of their group after each ride and sent them to Gabby to prove they were still alive. Gabby appreciated it, but she also promptly deleted each one and made them do the same. After so much time as an A.L.I.E.N. associate, she’d learned that nothing on anyone’s cell phone was truly safe. That said, Petey looked deliriously happy in each picture, and Sneakers and Sharli were loving their rides, too. Gabby wondered if they’d ever been to a fair before. Would Blinzarra have taken Sharli last year? Did Petey’s parents ever find a way to take him?

  Gabby doubted it. There was something about the way Sharli’s eyes lit up at every ride, and how she kept taking Gabby’s hand and pulling her back in line saying, “’Gen! ’Gen! Peeeeez!” Even the way Sharli giggled as her braids clickety-clacked in the breeze while
the kiddie coaster chugged along its track—it all seemed new to her, and Gabby was thrilled to give her the experience.

  They spent ages exhausting every ride in the kiddie area multiple times over. Gabby had so much fun, she almost forgot that the fair wasn’t her original plan, and she was only there because of some kind of emergency. Each time she did remember it was like an electric shock through her spine and she’d quickly whip out her phone to check for texts from Edwina, but there was nothing.

  Was that good? Was it bad? Gabby had no way to know. All she could do was follow Edwina’s orders in the text she’d sent: Act naturally, and await further instructions.

  So that’s what she’d do.

  After a couple of hours, Gabby knew Sharli and Sneakers needed food, so she texted Satchel and Zee to meet her at the top of the midway. Gabby got there first, and she tried to keep Sharli entertained by letting her watch the carnival games. Sharli wasn’t so interested in the games, but she went wild for the prizes. “Bear!” she squealed. “Big bear! Sharli big bear!”

  “I’ll try to win you a big bear, Sharli,” Satchel offered as he and Zee joined them. Petey was out of his harness but still inside Zee’s top pocket so he could easily duck out of sight.

  Gabby was beyond relieved to see them. She had to use the bathroom, and it’d be much easier to do that solo than with Sharli and Sneakers in tow. With human three-year-olds she’d take them along anyway just to make sure they had the opportunity, but Blinzarra had said her and Sharli’s bodies didn’t work that way. She didn’t know about Petey and Sneakers, but Petey was old enough to speak up for himself, and Sneakers had shown he was smart—if he needed it, he’d lead them to a place where he could do his business. She gave Sneakers’s leash to Satchel, had Sharli take his other hand, then she shrugged off her purple knapsack and got out some money, which she gave to Zee.

  “Nice!” Zee said. “For games?”

  “For food,” Gabby said. A.L.I.E.N. babysitting jobs paid ridiculously well, and while she was saving most of what she earned for R.A.M.A., the Royal Academy for the Musical Arts and her future college of choice, she kept a small amount handy for unexpected expenses on the job.

  “Got it. Food. And maybe one or two games.” Zee knelt down to meet Sharli’s eyes. “’Cause Satchel could try, but I bet you’d win us the biggest bear!”

  “That’s cheating, Zee!” Gabby called, but she was already walking away. She couldn’t wait any longer, especially since the closest bathrooms were alllll the way down the midway. When she finally made it there, she had to wait in a line so long she had to play every note of En Forêt by Eugéne Bozza—the hardest piece of French horn music she knew—in her head just to distract her from the urgency. Twenty minutes went by before she got to a stall, and she must have been delirious from the wait because the whole time she was inside, she had bizarre f lashes of the fairgrounds, like she was seeing them right in front of her eyes. She saw the midway rushing by, as if she were running quickly right up the main drag….

  Then it disappeared and she was back in the stall. Moments later it happened again. She saw a quick f lash of people walking past the Ring Toss game, looking down at her as they came her way, walking in the opposite direction…then it was gone.

  Gabby’s skin prickled. She didn’t like this new power Edwina had given her one bit, but the visions never came for no reason. Every time they’d shown her something she needed to see.

  So why did she need to see these f lashes of the fair?

  Gabby had no idea, but she had a terrible feeling she had to get back to Sharli, Sneakers, and Petey as soon as possible.

  She hurried out of the stall and washed her hands in record time, then pushed her way through the crowds around the door, only to reel back as she had another f lash, this time of the Ride Zone moving swiftly past her, as if she were at a jog. The vision disappeared as fast as it came, but it left Gabby breathless. She yanked out her phone and texted Zee and Satchel: All OK? Ready to meet back up. Where are you?

  The reply from Zee came back right away: LOL—same place as when u left us 5 mins ago! Giant Deep-Fried Gummy Bear on a Stick!!!

  Gabby’s skin tingled and her ears burned.

  She hadn’t been at Giant Deep-Fried Gummy Bear on a Stick five minutes ago. She’d been in a bathroom stall five minutes ago.

  Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  Another vision hijacked her brain: the kiddie ride area, with lots of people walking by. In the vision Gabby looked up at them from knee level.

  It faded right away, but Gabby’s pulse rushed in her ears as she understood.

  The vision was from a person’s knee level—the way Sneakers would see everything.

  Instantly, Gabby remembered every moment she’d seen a f lash of something she couldn’t see: Petey making faces at Sharli, Petey landing on Sneakers’s fur, the Silver Fox’s SUV driving up behind her. She hadn’t imagined them, and it wasn’t that Edwina had given her some kind of sixth sense to help her be a better babysitter.

  Sneakers had seen them and sent them into her head.

  And now Sneakers was moving quickly through the fairgrounds, while Zee and Satchel were in line for giant deep fried gummy bears on a stick.

  Heart pounding out of her chest, Gabby wheeled around until she saw a smiling giant red cardboard gummy bear rising from a stand across the midway.

  She broke into a run.

  ee!” Gabby screamed as she ran toward the Giant Deep-Fried Gummy Bear stand, dodging and darting around swarms of fair-goers on her way. “Satchel!”

  She found them at the front of the line. Zee was just reaching out to receive five giant, sort-of-bear-shaped, dough-crusted, and sugar-dusted deep fried blobs on sticks, while Satchel waited just behind her. He bowed under the weight of a massive stuffed bear, holding it like he was giving it a piggy back ride.

  Aside from that, they were alone.

  “Gabs, I know you said you didn’t want one of these, but trust me, you do,” Zee said.

  Satchel looked up at Gabby from under the bear and frowned. “Where are Sneakers and the kids?”

  Gabby’s heart dropped into her stomach. She’d had a terrible feeling this was coming, but hearing him say the words was much, much worse.

  “I don’t have them,” she said. “You said in your text I was here five minutes ago, but I wasn’t. I haven’t seen you since I left for the bathroom.”

  Zee wrinkled her face. “That’s not true. You were just here. You said you wanted to get the kids real food before they had the gummy bears, so that’s where you took them.”

  Gabby shook her head. “It wasn’t me.”

  “It had to be you,” Zee said. “I mean, it was you. It was exactly you!”

  “Unless it was a Body Snatcher!” Satchel said, his eyes wide. “Oh snap! An alien Body Snatcher took Sneakers and the kids!”

  In other circumstances, Gabby would have been impressed that Satchel had come to this conclusion without losing consciousness or having his brain explode, but right now she was too worried to even think about that.

  The kids were gone, taken away by someone who could change their shape to look exactly like her, and the only clue they had was…

  Gabby put her hand to her head as she had another vision. She saw the fair from Sneakers’s point of view again. Everything bounced up and down, as if he were moving at a trot. The Danger Drop loomed ahead in the distance….

  And then the vision was gone.

  “This way!” Gabby said, and ran top speed back up the midway. Zee and Satchel raced to catch up with her, Zee still clutching a fistful of giant deep-fried gummy bears on a stick, Satchel still holding the massive stuffed bear on his back.

  “Where are we going?” Satchel asked, although since he was bent over, the stuffed bear’s head was closer to Gabby’s, and it looked like it was the one talking to her.

  “Sneakers isn’t just a dog,” Gabby panted as she ran. “He’s an alien dog, and he’s sending me images of whe
re they are. They’re headed for the Danger Drop!”

  “They’re going on a ride?” Zee asked, then took a big bite of deep-fried gummy bear on a stick.

  “Dunno,” Gabby said. She was running so fast she could barely get the word out, but Zee didn’t seem winded at all. She took another big bite of gummy bear and Gabby gaped. “How can you eat right now?”

  “What am I gonna do, waste ’em? Besides, instant energy. Here.”

  She held out a stick to Gabby, but Gabby shook her head. She had a cramp, and she knew no matter how fast she ran, she’d never catch up with whoever had Sneakers and the kids—not when they had such a huge head start.

  “Daaaaad!” a little girl whined. She was several yards ahead of Gabby, Zee, and Satchel, but her voice was so loud and screechy it cut through everything. “I told you, I want a bear like that! You proooomised!”

  Gabby looked. The girl was around six years old. She was sitting on her father’s lap, and her father was riding in a mobility scooter—a small motorized vehicle the fair rented out to people who had the ability to walk but were uncomfortable doing so for the amount of time it took to tackle an entire fair day. This particular dad looked around the same age as the Silver Fox, albeit not quite as fit. He also looked exhausted, and while that might have been from negotiating the crowds all day, Gabby had a feeling the whining had a lot to do with it, too.

  “I tried!” the dad snapped. “It’s impossible. The games are rigged!”

  “It’s not fair!” the girl wailed. “I never get anything!”

  Gabby couldn’t help but notice the girl was holding a giant cotton candy, had a balloon-hat on her head, more balloons tied to her wrist, wore a fair-themed T-shirt, and had clearly just come from a face-painting booth, because her face looked like a bunny’s. “Daaaaaaaaad!!! I need a big big beeeeear!”

  As a babysitter, it was Gabby’s policy not to give in to whining kids and their demands. This, however, was an emergency. She veered to the dad and spoke rapid-fire. “We’ll give you the bear for the scooter.”