Other Worlds

by Jon Scieszka

  CONTENTS

  Before We Begin . . . by Jon Scieszka

  1. Percy Jackson and the Singer of Apollo by Rick Riordan

  2. Bouncing the Grinning Goat by Shannon Hale

  3. The Scout by D. J. MacHale

  4. Rise of the RoboShoes™ by Tom Angleberger

  5. The Dirt on Our Shoes by Neal Shusterman

  6. Plan B by Rebecca Stead

  7. A Day in the Life by Shaun Tan

  8. The Klack Bros. Museum by Kenneth Oppel

  9. The Warlords of Recess by Eric Nylund

  10. Frost and Fire by Ray Bradbury

  About Guys Read and Biographical Information

  Back Ad

  About the Authors

  Also Available in the Guys Read Library of Great Reading

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  BEFORE WE BEGIN . . .

  What would happen if invading warlords from another planet landed on your school’s basketball court?

  Or what if you took your older brother’s armor and ran away from home and the only way you could feed yourself was to pretend you were a tough and maybe magically powerful bouncer at a village tavern?

  Or what if smart robot shoes joined together to revolt against their human masters?

  You would be in the middle of some great science fiction and fantasy. That’s what.

  All fiction and storytelling is answering that “What if . . . ?” question. But science fiction and fantasy go a step further: They bend the rules of reality. They get to imagine the “What if?” in completely other worlds.

  And that is why good science fiction and fantasy stories can be so mind-expandingly fun.

  The first science fiction stories I ever read were written by a guy named Ray Bradbury. They were in a book titled The Illustrated Man. In it, the tattoos on this guy’s body came to life and told stories about an evil house, a Martian soldier, astronauts stranded on Venus, a time travel agency, and a mess of other freaky happenings.

  Ray Bradbury died in 2012. And I’m sorry I never got to meet him. Because I wanted to thank him for writing those stories that got me started reading science fiction and fantasy by Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, L. Sprague de Camp, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, Jules Verne, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Heinlein, and a mess of others.

  Now there are hundreds of amazing new science fiction and fantasy writers. Just look on the back cover of this book. We’ve got a bunch of the best for you. A nice mix of superstar writers you already know and some surprising writers you will be glad to meet.

  We also have one very special addition to this volume. We have a story of Mr. Bradbury’s called “Frost and Fire.” A tribute to the guy who inspired me, and so many other readers and writers.

  Thank you, Ray Bradbury.

  Thank you, science fiction and fantasy writers and creators of other worlds.

  Jon Scieszka

  PERCY JACKSON AND THE SINGER OF APOLLO

  BY RICK RIORDAN

  I know what you’re going to ask.

  “Percy Jackson, why are you hanging from a Times Square billboard without your pants on, about to fall to your death?”

  Good question. You can blame Apollo, god of music, archery, and poetry—also the god of making me do stupid quests.

  This particular disaster started when I brought my friend Grover some aluminum cans for his birthday.

  Perhaps I should mention . . . I’m a demigod. My dad, Poseidon, is the lord of the sea, which sounds cool, I guess, but mostly it means my life is filled with monster attacks and annoying Greek gods who tend to pop up on the subway or in the middle of math class or when I’m taking a shower. (Long story. Don’t ask.)

  I figured maybe I’d get a day off from the craziness for Grover’s birthday, but of course I was wrong.

  Grover and his girlfriend, Juniper, were spending the day in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, doing naturey stuff like dancing with the local tree nymphs and serenading the squirrels. Grover’s a satyr. That’s his idea of fun.

  Juniper seemed to be having an especially good time. While Grover and I sat on the bench together, she frolicked across Long Meadow with the other nature spirits, her chlorophyll-tinted eyes glinting in the sunlight. Since she was a dryad, Juniper’s life source was tied to a juniper bush back on Long Island, but Grover explained that she could take short trips away from home as long as she kept a handful of fresh juniper berries in her pockets. I didn’t want to ask what would happen if the berries got accidentally smashed.

  Anyway, we hung out for a while, talking and enjoying the nice weather. I gave Grover his aluminum cans, which may sound like a lame gift, but that’s his favorite snack.

  He happily munched on the cans while the nymphs started discussing what party games we should play. Grover pulled a blindfold out of his pocket and suggested Pin the Tail on the Human, which made me kind of nervous since I was the only human.

  Then, without warning, the sunlight brightened. The air turned uncomfortably hot. Twenty feet away, the grass hissed and a cloud of steam whooshed up like somebody opened a big pressing machine at a Laundromat. The steam cleared, and standing in front of us was the god Apollo.

  Gods can look like anything they want, but Apollo always seemed to go for that I-just-auditioned-for-a-boy-band look. Today he was rocking pencil-thin jeans, a white muscle shirt, and gilded Ray-Ban sunglasses. His wavy blond hair glistened with product. When he smiled the dryads squealed and giggled.

  “Oh, no . . .” Grover murmured. “This can’t be good.”

  “Percy Jackson!” Apollo beamed at me. “And, um, your goat friend—”

  “His name is Grover,” I said. “And we’re kind of off duty, Lord Apollo. It’s Grover’s birthday.”

  “Happy birthday!” Apollo said. “I’m so glad you’re taking the day off. That means you two have time to help me with a small problem!”

  Naturally, the problem wasn’t small.

  Apollo led Grover and me away from the party so we could talk in private. Juniper didn’t want to let Grover go, but she couldn’t argue with a god. Grover promised to come back safely. I hoped it was a promise he’d be able to keep.

  When we got to the edge of the woods, Apollo faced us. “Allow me to introduce the chryseae celedones.”

  The god snapped his fingers. More steam erupted from the ground and three golden women appeared in front of us. When I say golden, I mean they were literally gold. Their metallic skin glittered. Their sleeveless gowns were made from enough gilded fabric to finance a bailout. Their golden hair was braided and piled on top of their heads in a sort of classical beehive hairdo. They were uniformly beautiful, and uniformly terrifying.

  I’d seen living statues—automatons—many times before. Beautiful or not, they almost always tried to kill me.

  “Uh . . .” I took a step back. “What did you say these were? Krissy Kelly something?”

  “Chryseae celedones,” Apollo said. “Golden singers. They’re my backup band!”

  I glanced at Grover, wondering if this was some kind of joke.

  Grover wasn’t laughing. His mouth hung open in amazement, as if the golden ladies were the largest, tastiest aluminum cans he’d ever seen. “I—I didn’t think they were real!”

  Apollo smiled. “Well, it’s been a few centuries since I brought them out. If they perform too often, you know, their novelty wears off. They used to live at my temple in Delphi. Man, they could rock that place. Now I only use them for special occasions.”

  Grover got teary-eyed. “You brought them out for my birthday?”

  Apollo laughed. “No, fool! I’ve got a concert tonight on Mount Olympus. Everyone is going to be there! The Nine Muses are opening, a
nd I’m performing a mix of old favorites and new material. I mean, it’s not like I need the celedones. My solo career has been great. But people will expect to hear some of my classic hits with the girls: ‘Daphne on My Mind,’ ‘Stairway to Olympus,’ ‘Sweet Home Atlantis.’ It’s going to be awesome!”

  I tried not to look nauseous. I’d heard Apollo’s poetry before, and if his music was even half that bad, this concert was going to blow harder than Aeolus the wind god.

  “Great,” I said half-heartedly. “So what’s the problem?”

  Apollo’s smile faded. “Listen.”

  He turned to his golden singers and raised his hands like a conductor. On cue, they sang in harmony: “Laaaa!”

  It was only one chord, but it filled me with bliss. I suddenly couldn’t remember where I was or what I was doing. If the golden singers had decided to tear me to pieces at that moment, I wouldn’t have resisted, as long as they kept singing. Nothing mattered to me, except the sound.

  Then the golden girls went silent. The feeling passed. Their faces returned to beautiful, impassive metal.

  “That . . .” I swallowed. “That was amazing.”

  “Amazing?” Apollo wrinkled his nose. “There are only three of them! Their harmonies sound empty. I can’t perform without the full quartet.”

  Grover was weeping with joy. “They’re so beautiful. They’re perfect!”

  I was kind of glad Juniper wasn’t within earshot, since she’s the jealous type.

  Apollo crossed his tan arms. “They’re not perfect, Mr. Satyr. I need all four or the concert will be ruined. Unfortunately, my fourth celedon went rogue this morning. I can’t find her anywhere.”

  I looked at the three golden automatons, staring at Apollo, quietly waiting for orders. “Uh . . . how does a backup singer go rogue?”

  Apollo made another conductor wave, and the singers sighed in three-part harmony. The sound was so mournful my heart sank into my gut. At that moment, I felt sure I’d never be happy again. Then, just as quickly, the feeling dissipated.

  “They’re out of warranty,” the god explained. “Hephaestus made them for me back in the old days, and they worked fine . . . until the day after their two-thousand-year warranty expired. Then, naturally, WHAM! The fourth one goes haywire and runs off to the big city.” He gestured in the general direction of Manhattan. “Of course I tried to complain to Hephaestus, but he’s all, ‘Well, did you have my Protection Plus package?’ And I’m like, ‘I didn’t want your stupid extended warranty!’ And he acts as if it’s my fault the celedon broke, and says if I’d bought the Plus package, I could’ve had a dedicated service hotline, but—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I interrupted. I really didn’t want to get in the middle of a god-versus-god argument. I’d been there too many times. “So if you know that your celedon is in the city, why can’t you just look for her yourself?”

  “I don’t have time! I have to practice. I have to write a set list and do a sound check! Besides, this is what heroes are for.”

  “Running the gods’ errands,” I muttered.

  “Exactly.” Apollo spread his hands. “I assume the missing celedon is roaming the Theater District, looking for a suitable place to audition. Celedones have the usual starlet dreams—being discovered, headlining a Broadway musical, that sort of thing. Most of the time I can keep their ambitions under control. I mean I can’t have them upstaging me, can I? But I’m sure without me around she thinks she’s the next Katy Perry. You two need to get her before she causes any problems. And hurry! The concert is tonight and Manhattan is a large island.”

  Grover tugged his goatee. “So . . . you want us to find her while you do sound checks?”

  “Think of it as a favor,” Apollo said. “Not just for me, but for all those mortals in Manhattan.”

  “Oh.” Grover’s voice got very small. “Oh, no . . .”

  “What?” I demanded. “What oh, no?”

  Years ago, Grover created a magic empathy link between us (another long story) and we could sense each other’s emotions. It wasn’t exactly mind reading, but I could tell he was terrified.

  “Percy,” he said, “if that celedon starts singing in public, in the middle of afternoon rush hour—”

  “She’ll cause no end of havoc,” Apollo said. “She might sing a love song, or a lullaby, or a patriotic war tune, and whatever the mortals hear . . .”

  I shuddered. One sigh from the golden girls had plunged me into despair, even with Apollo controlling their power. I imagined a rogue celedon busting into song in a crowded city—putting people to sleep, or making them fall in love, or urging them to fight.

  “She has to be stopped,” I agreed. “But why us?”

  “I like you!” Apollo grinned. “You’ve faced the Sirens before. This isn’t too different. Just put some wax in your ears. Besides, your friend Grover here is a satyr. He has natural resistance to magical music. Plus he can play the lyre.”

  “What lyre?” I asked.

  Apollo snapped his fingers. Suddenly Grover was holding the weirdest musical instrument I’d ever seen. The base was a hollowed-out tortoise shell, which made me feel really bad for the tortoise. Two polished wooden arms stuck out one side like a bull’s horns, with a bar across the top and seven strings stretching from the bar to the base of the shell. It looked like a combination harp, banjo, and dead turtle.

  “Oh!” Grover almost dropped the lyre. “I couldn’t! This is your—”

  “Yes,” Apollo agreed cheerfully. “That’s my own personal lyre. Of course if you damage it, I’ll incinerate you, but I’m sure you’ll be careful! You can play the lyre, can’t you?”

  “Um . . .” Grover plucked a few notes that sounded like a funeral dirge.

  “Keep practicing,” Apollo said. “You’ll need the lyre’s magic to capture the celedon. Have Percy distract her while you play.”

  “Distract her,” I repeated.

  This quest was sounding worse and worse. I didn’t see how a tortoiseshell harp could defeat a golden automaton, but Apollo clapped me on the shoulder like everything was settled.

  “Excellent!” he said. “I’ll meet you at the Empire State Building at sunset. Bring me the celedon. One way or another I’ll persuade Hephaestus to fix her. Just don’t be late! I can’t keep my audience waiting. And remember, not a scratch on that lyre.”

  Then the sun god and his golden backup singers disappeared in a cloud of steam.

  “Happy birthday to me,” Grover whimpered, and plucked a sour note on the lyre.

  We caught the subway to Times Square. We figured that would be a good place to start looking. It was in the middle of the Theater District and full of weird street performers and about a billion tourists, so it was the natural place for a golden diva to get some attention for herself.

  Grover hadn’t bothered disguising himself. His white T-shirt read: What Would Pan Do? The tips of his horns stuck out from his curly hair. Usually he wore jeans over his shaggy legs and specially fitted shoes over his hooves, but today from the waist down he was au naturel goat.

  I doubted it would matter. Most mortals couldn’t see through the Mist, which hid the true appearance of monsters. Even without Grover’s normal disguise, people would have to look really closely to notice he was a satyr, and even then they probably wouldn’t bat an eye. This was New York, after all.

  As we pushed through the crowd, I kept searching for the glint of gold, hoping to spot the rogue celedon, but the square was packed as usual. A guy wearing only his underwear and a guitar was having his picture taken with some tourists. Cops hung out on the street corners, looking bored. At Broadway and West Forty-Ninth, the intersection was blocked and a crew of roadies was setting up some sort of stage. Preachers, ticket scalpers, and hawkers shouted over each other, trying to get attention. Music blasted from dozens of loudspeakers, but I didn’t hear any magical singing.

  Grover had given me a ball of warm wax to stuff in my ears whenever necessary. He said he al
ways kept some handy, like chewing gum, which didn’t make me eager to use it.

  He bumped into a pretzel vendor’s cart and lurched back, hugging Apollo’s lyre protectively.

  “You know how to use that thing?” I asked. “I mean, what kind of magic does it do?”

  Grover’s eyes widened. “You don’t know? Apollo built the walls of Troy just by playing this lyre. With the right song, it can create almost anything!”

  “Like a cage for the celedon?” I asked.

  “Uh . . . yeah!”

  He didn’t sound too confident, and I wasn’t sure I wanted him playing Guitar Hero with a godly tortoise banjo. Sure, Grover could do some magic with his reed pipes. On a good day, he could make plants grow and tangle his enemies. On a bad day, he could only remember Justin Bieber songs, which didn’t do anything except give me a headache.

  I tried to think of a plan. I wished my girlfriend, Annabeth, was here. She was more of the planning type. Unfortunately, she was off in San Francisco visiting her dad.

  Grover grabbed my arm. “There.”

  I followed his gaze. Across the square, at the outdoor stage, workers scurried around, installing lights on the scaffolding, setting up microphone stands, and plugging in giant speakers. Probably they were prepping for a Broadway musical preview or something.

  Then I saw her—a golden lady making her way toward the platform. She climbed over the police barricades that cordoned off the intersection, squeezed between workers who completely ignored her, and headed for the steps, stage right. She glanced at the crowd in Times Square and smiled, as if imagining their wild applause. Then she headed for the center microphone.

  “Oh, gods!” Grover yelped. “If that sound system is on . . .”

  I stuffed wax in my ears as we ran for the stage.

  Fighting automatons is bad enough. Fighting one in a crowd of mortals is a recipe for disaster. I didn’t want to worry about the mortals’ safety and mine and figure out how to capture the celedon. I needed a way to evacuate Times Square without causing a stampede.

  As we wove through the crowd, I grabbed the nearest cop by the shoulder.