by Laura Ruby
The man inside the indoor garden blinked, and then lifted his hand and gave a wan little wave. Gurl waved back.
Bug slapped at her hand. “What are you doing?”
“He waved at us.”
“Why don’t you turn us invisible or something?”
“He’s already seen us,” said Gurl. “What difference does it make?”
“He probably thinks we’re here to steal all his flowers and whatever else he’s got in his crazy house.”
“He looks sad.”
“Sad? You’re crazier than he is. Rich people aren’t sad. They’re rich.”
“I still think he looks sad,” said Gurl. The sad rich man pressed his face closer to the window, staring at them. Suddenly, he slapped both palms against the glass, yelling something that they could not hear. One word, shouted again and again.
Before Gurl could protest, Bug yanked her away from the window.
“Bug,” said Gurl, “he’s talking to us.”
“He’s going to call the cops. Come on!” Bug said, sending them into a steep dive for the street below.
“Slow down!” Gurl shrieked as the pavement came closer and closer.
Abruptly, Bug jerked upwards, trying to set them on their feet, but he misjudged their speed. The two of them went sprawling across the sidewalk. A smartly dressed woman out with her shiny black mynah bird stepped right over Bug, clucking her tongue with disapproval.
Groaning, Bug got to his knees. “Hey, don’t worry, lady,” he called after the woman. “We’re just fine. No need to get an ambulance or anything.”
The mynah, perched on the woman’s shoulder, turned to look at Bug. “Scoundrel!” it said primly. “Rapscallion!”
“Yeah,” said Gurl weakly, picking tiny bits of gravel out of her palms. “What the bird said.”
“Sorry,” Bug told her. “I guess I have to work on the landing part.” He picked up a monkey that was lying next to him on the sidewalk.
“Is that one of Mrs Terwiliger’s monkeys?”
“Yeah. I swiped it from the old bat’s office. It must have fallen out of my pocket when we landed.”
“Crash-landed,” said Gurl.
“Whatever.”
“The monkeys all have names. Did you know that?”
“Not all of them. Unless ’What’s It To You?’ counts as a name.” He showed Gurl the sticker on the monkey’s butt.
“I wonder what that’s supposed to mean.”
Bug rolled his eyes (a gesture with great power when one had eyes twice the regular size). “Who knows?” he said, shoving the little monkey back in his pocket.
They half flew, half walked back to the orphanage. Bug kept grabbing her hand to lift them off the ground and whisk them away, but he seemed tired and deflated, and couldn’t fly more than a block or two without having to take a rest. Still, flying was flying and Bug was thrilled.
“I guess I’m a little worn out. And I do have to work on landing,” he said. “But, admit it. I’m pretty good.”
“Not bad,” said Gurl.
“Not bad! I’m better than anyone at Hope House, that’s for sure.”
“Like that’s hard,” said Gurl, smiling.
Bug tipped his triangular head thoughtfully as they walked. “I could never fly at Hope House, but I’m flying now. I wonder if it’s because you turned me invisible.”
“How would that make a difference?”
“I have no idea, but maybe it did. Up till tonight, I could barely get my feet off the ground. Then you turn me invisible, we take a ride on a crazy carousel, we watch some pretzel guys dance the merengue and all of sudden I’m flying like a Wing. Come on, it’s got to be you.”
Gurl thought that it might be something else; it might be Noodle. Maybe cats were more than just rare, maybe they were magic? But she didn’t want to say so. She didn’t want to give Bug another reason to want Noodle all for himself.
Despite being able to fly only a little, and then not very fast, they reached the orphanage much more quickly than Gurl would have on her own.
“Thanks,” she said when they got to the front gate of Hope House.
Bug opened the gate. “For what?”
“For helping me. And for taking me flying with you.”
“Oh. Well.” Even in the dark, Gurl could see him blushing and felt herself flush too. “Uh…no problem. Thanks for the now-you-see-us, now-you-don’t thing.”
“You’re welcome.”
They stood awkwardly until Gurl said, “You better go. I’ve got to wait for Mrs Terwiliger and tell her that she’ll be able to have another facelift after all. You don’t want her to catch you too.”
“I guess you’re right.” He walked over to the door to the dormitories. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She smiled. “Maybe you will, maybe you won’t.”
“Heh,” he said. “Funny.” He gave the brick wall one of his signature punches before he opened the door and was gone.
He did see her the next day, of course, and she saw him. As usual, no one asked Gurl how she was, no one sat with her at breakfast. And, as usual, Digger lumbered over, a mocking scowl on her blockhead head (but she skulked away when Gurl put a protective arm around her plate and glared). From his own table, Bug waved hello, but that was all. From the outside, it appeared as if nothing had changed.
But it seemed to Gurl that everything had changed. Bug had disappeared and reappeared. Gurl had flown like any Wing. Together they had discovered the city the way it really was: magical and mysterious and surprising. And because of all this, Gurl could not help but feel different.
She felt so different that instead of staying in the dorm after school so that she could daydream the evening hours away, Gurl joined the other kids in the “rec room”—a large, breeze-block room painted an unnatural shade of green and furnished with an odd combination of beanbag chairs and rows of old auditorium seats. Unnoticed, Gurl slid into a chair by the fuzzy TV set, pretending to read a book while she eavesdropped on the numerous conversations.
“You must be joking,” Persnickety was saying. “Rosy B. is a terrible singer.”
“That’s jive, girl,” Dillydally said. He pointed to the TV, which was playing Rosy B.’s latest video: “It Don’t Mean Nothing If It Ain’t About Love.” In the video Rosy B. was wearing a baseball cap and a mink bikini. “You going to tell me you think this song ain’t boss?”
“The volume isn’t even on!” said Persnickety, pursing her permanently pursed lips. “You can’t even hear her!”
Dillydally shrugged. “Who needs to hear her?”
“Nobody says ‘jive’. Nobody says ‘boss’.” Persnickety grabbed the remote control and flipped the channels until she found a movie she liked. “Now, that’s better.”
“Peter Paul Allen,” said Ruckus. “Why do all the girls like Peter Paul Allen? He needs a shower. And his teeth are crooked. He looks like a rabbit.” Ruckus stuck his front teeth out over his bottom lip.
“You’re just not normal,” Persnickety told him. “Normal people do not have worms sticking out of their heads. They don’t act like you.”
“Oh and you’re so normal,” Ruckus said. “You would fold your own hair if you could. What do you know about normal? What do you think normal people do?”
Persnickety stuck her pointy nose in the air. “I know that normal people respect one another’s opinions. They spend time with their families. They play games with their parents.” “You think parents are fun?” Ruckus grumbled.
“Oh, yes,” Persnickety said. “I think it would be nice to have parents. You’d have birthday parties. And maybe get to go to the movies once in a while. And have new shoes every month.”
“Aw, who cares about shoes?”
“When yours pinch you as much as mine do, you care. Anyway, I just think it would be nice, that’s all.”
“I don’t think it would be that nice,” said a familiar voice. Gurl looked up from the book she had been pretending to read and saw Bu
g standing near her chair. He gave her a barely perceptible nod before sitting next to the other kids. “You’d have all these rules, like when you have to get up, when you have to go to bed, when you have to take out the garbage.”
“That’s not much different from Hope House,” said Ruckus.
“Yeah, but at Hope House, no one cares if you get B on your biology test or what you want to be when you grow up. If you have parents, they care. Like, say you wanted to be a Wing. Parents would tell you that it’s more practical to be a doctor or a plumber or something. Parents always expect you to do what they did when they were kids instead of what you want to do. You can never be your own person. And if they’re not yelling at you, they ignore you.”
Dillydally said, “OK, homeboy. How do you know so much about parents?”
Bug paused. “I don’t.”
“You sound like you do,” said Ruckus.
“It’s just what I think, that’s all,” Bug told him.
“You think a lot of things,” said Ruckus. “You think a lot of yourself.”
Gurl could almost feel Bug’s scowl. “What are you talking about?”
“All that stuff you said your first day. How you’re going to be just like Nathan Johnson. Like a Wing.”
“So? So what if I want to become a Wing? Are you saying I can’t?”
More laughter, this time from both Dillydally and Ruckus. Even Persnickety’s lips twitched. “Nobody from Hope House ever gets to be a Wing,” she said.
“Maybe I’ll be the first,” said Bug.
“You?” said Ruckus. “We’ve seen you fly. I mean, we’ve seen you try.”
“You talking jive, boy,” Dillydally said with a lazy grin. “You a jive turkey. A grounded turkey! Man, you so grounded, you a burger!”
Ruckus fingered his braids, twirling them so they stood higher. “You’re just as bad as her.” He poked Gurl in the arm.
But Bug only smiled. “Bad as her? Well, that’s OK then.” He got up from his chair and winked at Gurl. “See you on the flip side,” he said and swept from the room.
Gurl sleepwalked her way through her classes the next day, wondering when she and Bug would be able to get out of Hope House again. The winter holidays were now six weeks away, so some orphans were busily knitting berets and scarves with Christmas trees, menorahs and snowflakes on them, while other orphans practised their telemarketing skills: “Thank you, Mrs. Schlockenspeil, for your kind support last year! Your purchase of a handmade Hope House paperweight kept us in gruel for a week! This year we’re offering holiday hats handmade by happy orphans…” In literature class, they were working on the Hope House Holiday Newsletter, which featured hopeful articles paired with lots of photographs of the most pathetic, hungriest-looking kids Mrs Terwiliger could find. (Gurl herself was nearly one of them, but Mrs Terwiliger decided at the last moment that while Gurl was adequately pathetic, she didn’t look hungry enough.) The worst of it was that even though Gurl had managed to erase Mrs Terwiliger’s entire $20,000 plastic surgery bill, Mrs Terwiliger told her that she wouldn’t be able to visit Noodle for at least a week. “That,” said Mrs Terwiliger, “will teach you to be less disagreeable the next time I have an errand.”
At least Wingwork would be different, thought Gurl. She would be able to watch Bug fly; the whole orphanage would. And Mrs Terwiliger would have to admit that Chicken was not the right name for him. Eagle would be better or maybe Hawk.
Watching the children line up for Wing practice, however, Gurl decided that the best name for Bug was the one he gave himself. He really was one of the weirdest-looking people she had ever seen (apart from that rat man who had chased her, but who wanted to think about him?). Even though Bug resembled nothing so much as a bug, even though he was sort of rude and impatient and liked to punch things, he was growing on her. She couldn’t wait to see the look on everyone’s faces when he outflew them all. Like she usually did during Wingwork, she began to daydream, a new dream. A girl looks on as a boy crosses a finish line and the audience erupts into frantic applause. The boy gets a shining golden trophy and gives it to the girl, the one to whom he owes everything.
“Crouch!” Coach Bob shouted. “Spring! Up!”
Gurl smiled as she watched Bug crouch and spring. But up he did not go. Instead of rising as they had earlier, Bug’s feet remained on the ground. Bug frowned and tried again, and again and again and again, but nothing worked. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“That a boy, Chicken,” said Coach Bob, giving Bug a friendly pat on the head. “Don’t let failure bring you down.” Behind him, the boys burst into mocking snickers. Bug stalked away from them, dragging his leaden feet, and began boxing with the nearest brick wall.Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Nobody dared to stop him, not even when they saw the blood tattooing his hands.
School had been terrible, Wingwork even worse and, later, Gurl’s actual dreams weren’t a refuge either. In them the rat man chased her, but now he was at least nine feet tall. Instead of an umbrella, he carried a large pink eraser the size of a lunch box, which she knew he would use to rub her out completely. She ran faster and faster as the rat man gibbered, “Eraaaaassssse. Erase the missssstaaaaaake…”
Plink!
Gurl sat up with a start. All around her, orphans snored softly, some kicking and thrashing as if they, too, were being chased in their dreams.
Plink!
Something hit the window above her bed. Gurl slipped from the covers and looked out. Bug sat under the window, a couple of pebbles in his bandaged hands. Come outside, he mouthed. He made turning motions and she knew he’d picked the locks for her.
Gurl quickly shoved her pillows beneath her blankets to make it look as if she were still there. Then she vanished from sight. She didn’t reappear until she was standing in front of Bug.
“It’s three in the morning,” she whispered.
“Make me invisible.”
“What?”
“Please!” he said, holding out his arm.
He looked so desperate that she did what he asked. Though she couldn’t see him any more than she could see herself, she could feel his movements. Crouch. Spring. Up.
“What are you doing?” she asked him.
Abruptly, he let go of her and reappeared. “I can’t fly,” he said, his face furrowed with disappointment. “I thought that maybe if you turned me invisible again, it would help.”
Gurl reappeared too. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why you can’t fly.”
“Someone must know,” he said. He reached out to punch the wall, but pulled at the last minute. “Wait, someone does know!”
“Who?” asked Gurl.
“The guy who knows everything.”
Gurl was totally confused. “There’s a guy who knows everything?”
“Almost everything,” Bug said, his expression brightening. “I’m sure he’ll be able to help me. And he probably knows about you too, the vanishing act and everything. Geez,” said Bug, shaking his head. “Why didn’t I remember this before? I could have been flying all this time.”
“Who is this genius?” said Gurl.
“Everyone just calls him The Professor. He lives downtown, but nobody knows exactly where.”
Gurl saw the gleam in Bug’s eyes, the same one he got when he was picking a lock or disabling an alarm, the gleam that made him look like someone else, someone she didn’t particularly like. “But you know where he lives.”
“Well, yeah. I guess.”
“I still don’t understand how you know.”
Bug was quiet for a moment, his expression inscrutable.
“It’s like the locks. I don’t know how I know. I just do.”
“Doesn’t that scare you?”
“Does it scare you?”
“Me? No,” Gurl told him. “Don’t be stupid.”
But he gave her a look that said he didn’t quite believe her. Gurl didn’t quite believe her either.
Chapter 14
The Queen Said �
�Ouch”
THE NEXT NIGHT GURL AND Bug headed out again. Bug picked the locked dormitory doors with no problem, but he still couldn’t fly, so the trip across town was slow and mostly silent. They didn’t bother with invisibility; though people were out and about everywhere, no one seemed to notice the two grubby kids trudging moodily down the sidewalk.
As if he had a map in his head, Bug found the place by feel. “Make a left,” he would say or, “Two blocks more, then a right.” On a dark and dingy street, in front of an old dry-cleaner’s that looked as if it could use a good cleaning itself, Bug stopped. “Here,” he said. “We’re here.”
“The guy who knows everything works for a dry cleaner’s?”
“He works under the dry cleaner’s. Let’s go around the back.”
They walked down the alley and around the building. An overflowing garbage can filled with empty Chinese take-out containers sat next to a rusting red door. The sign on the door said:
KEEP OUT.
DO NOT DISTURB.
GO AWAY.
FIND YOUR FORTUNES ELSEWHERE.
SHOO.
Bug looked at Gurl, shrugged and knocked on the door. In response a voice warbled, “I only take deliveries on Suesdays and Fundays!”
“Did he say ‘Fundays’?”
“This is a Funday,” said Bug grimly. “Don’t you think?”
“Sir,” shouted Gurl, “we’re not delivering anything.”
“Oh,” said the voice. “Then go away! Fine your porpoise elsewhere!”
“Shoo,” said Bug. He pulled out a paper clip and had the door unlocked in seconds. Together, Gurl and Bug pushed open the door, stepped inside and shut the door behind them. Then they walked slowly and carefully down the short flight of steps leading into a dark apartment. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Bug felt along the wall until he found a switch. He flicked it on.
“I don’t like people,” said a voice that seemed to be coming from a pile of clothing on the floor. On and around the pile, and all around the apartment, were dozens and dozens of cats. Sleeping, dozing, leaning, crouching, staring cats.
