Odds & Ends

by Amy Ignatow

  “Where did you say Nick was again?” Nick’s mom asked as she brought Farshad and Jay some chocolate milk. “It’s getting pretty late for him to be out by himself.”

  “Nonsense, my dearest Angela,” Jay said, enthusiastically slurping his chocolate milk while he opened her laptop without asking. “Nick just had to return some books to the library.”

  “The library is closed.”

  “He’s using the drop box. Terrific invention, without which he would have accrued a fine, and no one wants that.”

  “I thought you said he needed the books for the research project you’re doing. Which is why you needed my computer.”

  “No, no, he was returning other books so that he could return tomorrow to get new books for the research project. Don’t worry, he should be here any moment.” Jay was typing furiously into the computer. Farshad felt a sudden jealousy—he remembered when he had been able to type fast without needing to be hyper careful to not destroy the keyboard.

  “Angela?” Jilly called from the kitchen. “Is Molly home yet?”

  “Not yet, hon, she just texted to tell me that she’s stuck in traffic on 222, there’s some sort of accident or something.” Angela looked worriedly at the clock. “I’m giving Nick twenty minutes,” she told Jay, “and then I’m heading out to look for him.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t worry. Nick is a strapping young buck.”

  Angela stifled a laugh and headed to the kitchen. Farshad waited for her to be out of earshot and leaned closer to Jay.

  “Why did you tell her that?” he whispered. “We have no idea where Nick even is!”

  Jay dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “He’ll turn up eventually.”

  “He could be anywhere! He could be in Timbuktu!”

  “That seems unlikely. From what I gather he tends to end up in a place or with a person he’s been thinking about, and if I know Nick, which I do, Timbuktu hasn’t ever been that high up on that list.” Jay turned the laptop toward Farshad. “Here, does this seem in order to you?”

  Jay had found the contact page on The Hammer’s website and left a dramatic message about the bus accident, Auxano, and their suspicions about the Company Kids. He’d left out their names, but it was still disturbing to Farshad to see all of his recent personal turmoil spelled out in a few paragraphs. “I don’t know, Jay . . .” he started.

  Jay clicked the Send button. “Done!”

  “I . . . I was just saying that I didn’t know if this is a good idea!”

  “Second-guessing is for the birds,” Jay said. “Actually, birds probably don’t second-guess themselves. Second-guessing is for humans. Let’s be more like birds.”

  “Birds fly into sliding glass doors all the time.”

  “We should be like smarter birds, then.” Jay looked up from the computer. “I wonder how long it will take for him to get back to us. I imagine he’s a really busy guy.”

  “That’s funny, I imagined the exact opposite.” From across the living room Farshad heard a sharp cry. He and Jay stood up.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” Angela was telling Jilly as she led her out of the kitchen and into the living room. “I’m going to get your bag. Do you need to sit down?”

  “NO,” Jilly roared. She was clutching her pregnant belly and her breathing was heavy. “TALL KID, WALK ME TO THE CAR.”

  It took Farshad a moment to realize that she was talking to him. “YES, YOU,” Jilly yelled. “CAR. WALK ME. NOW.” He rushed over to her and she leaned on him as they made their way out the door to the driveway.

  “CALL MOLLY,” Jilly wailed as she heaved herself into the backseat of Nick’s mom’s car. Angela and Jay hurried out with Jilly’s packed bag.

  “Okay,” Angela said, sliding into the driver’s seat. “We are going to the hospital. Jay, you hold down the fort and when Nick gets home you tell him to meet us there. Here is money for dinner”—she shoved two twenties into Jay’s hand—“and you have my phone number. You call when he comes home and I’ll order him a car to take him to the hospital. You got that?”

  “I will endeavor—”

  “HE’S GOT IT. HE IS ON TOP OF THIS. WE ARE GOING,” Jilly belted from the backseat.

  “We’re going! Everyone is staying calm! Everything is great! JAY, YOU PROMISE TO CALL ME!” Angela yelled as they backed out of the driveway.

  “I PROMISE!” Jay yelled back, and then they were standing alone in front of the house.

  “This is turning into a very weird evening,” Farshad said, and thought for a beat. “Another very weird evening.”

  “Let’s see if The Hammer wrote back!” Jay said, dashing back into Molly and Jilly’s house. Farshad followed him.

  “He wrote back! He wrote back!!!” Jay yelped with awed delight a moment later. “He wants to meet up! Should I tell him to come here?”

  “No!” Farshad exclaimed. “You can’t invite a total stranger to meet up at the house of your friend’s aunt who has just gone into labor and trusted you to be alone in her house.”

  “Who says?”

  “ANY. GOOD. HUMAN. BEING.”

  “Yikes strikes, man, calm yourself, I won’t have him come here. But this puts us in a bit of a pickle, because Angela has entrusted me to stay here and wait for Nick.” Jay paced back and forth in front of the coffee table with the open laptop on it. “Pickle pickle pickle.”

  “Look, we just can’t go. You made a promise. We have to stay here.”

  Jay stopped pacing. “Actually, that’s not technically true.”

  “I was there.” Farshad sighed. “I heard you.”

  “Yes, I did promise I’d stay here, but you made no such promise. You, my very tall extraordinarily be-thumbed friend, are going to have to go alone.”

  “What? No.”

  “I know, I know, I’m as disappointed as you are that I can’t come along. But someone has to go, and clearly it can’t be me.”

  Farshad looked at the clock. “My parents are going to freak out if I don’t get home soon,” he said. “And they’re going to super freak out if I get murdered by some weirdo conspiracy theorist that I foolishly met up with in the middle of the night.”

  Jay gasped. “I GASP AT YOU!” he said. “The Hammer would never murder you in the middle of the night, or any other time. He is a speaker of truths and a warrior for righteousness, not a murderer of extremely tall almost-teenagers. Here”—he sat on the sofa and started to type—“I’ll tell him to meet up outside of the ice cream shop. It’s public and well-lit. Just email your parents and tell them that you got stuck at Nick’s because his mom had to take his aunt to the hospital, and then you can go.”

  “I like exactly none of this,” Farshad growled.

  “Pish-posh, get over it,” Jay said. “Just get there and find out what he knows. The more information we have, the better prepared we’ll be to deal with whatever comes next.”

  “You are a freaky little dude, you know that, right?”

  “I’m well aware. Off you go!”

  Cookie looked around, bewildered. No more banging, no more screaming, no more sticky dumpster, and most of all, no more rage thoughts permeating her brain. “Oh my god,” she whispered. “Oh my god oh my god oh my god.”

  “Nick,” Martina said, “you did it.”

  Nick half leaned, half fell into a bale of hay in the barn where they found themselves. “And all it took was the complete terror of being hunted down by a roving band of deranged middle-school overachievers.” He hugged the chicken he’d named Rihanna closer to him.

  “What happened?” Abe asked at the same time that Cookie asked, “Where are we?” They looked at each other for a moment before Abe relented.

  “You are in my neighbor’s barn and that is my chicken. I can take you back into town unless . . .” He looked at Nick expectantly.

  “I am pretty sure that I shouldn’t try that again until I can control where I’m going,” Nick said. “I don’t want to zap us right back to the roving band of deranged midd
le-school overachievers.”

  “I would prefer not to do that,” Martina chimed in.

  “Me, three,” Cookie said. “I never want to see any of those lunatics ever again.”

  “Who is a lunatic? Who are we talking about?” Abe asked.

  “Remember how we suspected that the kids of the people who worked for Auxano were being given the same formula that made us get these superpowers?”

  “The poison they gave to Rebecca and the others, of course.”

  “Well, we think it’s made them kind of violently crazy and they’ve formed a mob and are running around Muellersville destroying stuff,” Nick told him.

  “And you are sure this is not something they normally do?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “We should probably stop them,” Martina said, “before they actually hurt anyone.”

  “What are you going to do, change your eye color at them?” Cookie snapped.

  “Do you think that would stop them?” Martina asked. “I don’t think it would. We probably need a better plan.”

  “Their parents should be stopping them!” Cookie exploded. “It’s their fault! They did this to their own kids and it made them into freaky monsters and it’s all because they wanted them to do well on some stupid tests and they need to stop it!”

  She glared furiously at everyone in the barn. “Well? How is this our job?”

  Abe took a step toward her. “Because we can,” he said, his voice full of resolve.

  The barn was silent.

  “So?” Cookie asked, very annoyed. “That is not an answer. I CAN do lots of stuff that I don’t do all the time. Now, please, if you don’t mind, I don’t trust Blinky Boy over there to zap us home, so I’m going to have to ask for another ride in the horse buggy of death to get back into town.”

  “All right,” Abe said, his shoulders slumped. He looked at Nick. “You’re going to have to leave the chicken.”

  “Bok,” Rihanna said.

  Farshad waited outside the ice cream parlor, feeling ill at ease. It was bad enough that he was supposed to be meeting up with some weirdo who was probably going to think Farshad was a terrorist the moment he saw him, but he also had a weird feeling in general. After about ten minutes of sitting on the bench outside the parlor Farshad realized why—besides the two bored teenagers working behind the ice cream counter, he hadn’t seen anyone else.

  No one was walking down the street. No one else was in the ice cream parlor. There were hardly any cars driving by. The whole town was eerily silent and still.

  Jay had lent Farshad his watch (while pleading with him to please try not thumb-crushing it). It was still early enough that Farshad’s parents shouldn’t have been too worried, but Farshad knew that they were, seeing how serious and almost frightened they’d become when they saw Willis’s computations. Maybe he should just blow off this whole stupid meeting (“It’s a rendezvous!” Farshad almost heard Jay saying in his head) and go home. Answer any questions in as vague a way as possible, sleep in his own bed, and let everything just sort itself out. Yes. That’s what he should do.

  Farshad heard a crashing sound in the distance, as if someone had thrown a metal trash can into a car or something. He heard a car alarm go off. And there was another noise as well . . . people. Loud people in a group. Farshad stood up and looked down the street to get a better view.

  It was the Company Kids who were supposed to be at the party where Cookie and Martina were supposed to be. Addison was leading the group, and as she passed under a street lamp Farshad could see that she was carrying something that looked like a stick or a pipe. Behind her a lot of the Company Kids seemed to be carrying the sort of stuff you’d find lying around a construction site—Eric Mathes had a two-by-four.

  They were still pretty far away, and Farshad took a step toward them, hoping to hear what they were saying. It took a minute for him to realize they weren’t saying anything.

  They were just making noises.

  Screamy noises.

  Farshad quickly looked around for a shadow to hide in, but he was in the center of town and everything was entirely too well-lit. Farshad turned back to see Addison raising what he could now see was a lead pipe and smashing it down on the windshield of a parked car. A victorious roar went up from the crowd behind her.

  Farshad grabbed the handle to the ice cream parlor door and tried to open it, but it was locked. The two teenagers who were working inside were standing right there with their faces pressed up against the glass, looking with terror at the oncoming mob. “Let me in!” he whispered as loud as he dared, pulling in vain at the door.

  “ZOMBIES!” one of them screamed.

  “Are you kidding me?!?” Farshad hissed through clenched teeth. “Let me in!”

  “NO THANK YOU!” the teen screamed.

  The next voice came from down the street. “TERROR BOY!!!”

  Farshad looked up. The good news was that the Company Kids could still use actual words instead of just random primal screams. The bad news was that they had spotted him and now they were all yelling, “TERROR BOY! TERROR BOY! TERROR BOOOOOYYYYY!!!”

  “YOU GUYS SUCK!” Farshad yelled at the ice cream parlor employees before turning and running down the street away from the howling Company Kids.

  Farshad knew he was fast, but as he ran it occurred to him that it was entirely possible that Dr. Deery’s formula had given one of the Company Kids super speed or teleportation like Nick’s. He could be beating his best running time just to hurl himself smack-dab into his enemy. He focused thoughts at Cookie as he ran, desperately hoping that she would somehow be able to hear him and find a way to help.

  “KID, GET IN!” A maroon minivan was driving alongside Farshad, and the sliding back door was open. The driver was a pale, balding guy who looked like he was in his thirties.

  “NO!” Farshad yelled, running harder.

  “KID, I AM TRYING TO HELP YOU!” the guy shouted. “GET IN THE CAR!”

  “NO THANK YOU!” Farshad yelled back, pushing himself to run faster. They were in the middle of the block and there were no other roads or alleys for him to duck into.

  “GROOVY! GROOVY!” the guy yelled. It was the code word that Jay had set up so that Farshad would recognize The Hammer.

  “TERROR BOOOOYYEEEEEEEE!” The Company Kids were getting closer. He could either get into a car with a complete stranger who might be mentally unstable or face a large crowd of bloodthirsty racists who were definitely mentally unstable. He should have gone home when he had the chance.

  “FINE!” he yelled, and The Hammer slowed his car down just enough for Farshad to open the door and throw himself into the backseat, immediately becoming entangled in two toddler car seats that took up the entire bench. “GO GO GO!” he gasped as someone chucked a two-by-four at them. Another one bounced off the rear bumper.

  “STRAP IN!” The Hammer yelled.

  “THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE, I AM NOT THREE!”

  The Hammer muttered a few choice curse words as something else hit his minivan. “Get in the front seat!” he yelled, and Farshad scrambled to get his long legs over the cup holders and armrests to get situated. He fumbled to get belted in, which was really tricky to do without his thumbs. But he couldn’t trust himself to not break the man’s car.

  “I’m in!” he said when he heard the click, and The Hammer slammed his foot on the gas pedal, quickly leaving the horde of angry high scorers far behind them. Farshad slumped in his seat. “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” The Hammer said anxiously. “What have I done, what have I done, what have I done?”

  “What? What did you do?” Farshad asked, feeling the strength in his thumbs. He did still have them. If push came to shove, he could use them.

  “I don’t know how old you are but you have got to be under seventeen and I have no idea who you are and oh my god, I think I’m a kidnapper!” The Hammer was sweating profusely. “But I couldn’t just leave you th
ere, could I? They were going to kill you! But you also shouldn’t be in my car. Because I might have just kidnapped you.”

  “How about you drive me home, and then you will not be a kidnapper anymore?” Farshad said with care.

  “Of course! Of course. Yes. Very good.” The Hammer ran a hand through his thinning hair. “You know, I had this whole plan that I was going to park around the corner and then meet you and pretend to be The Hammer’s lawyer so you wouldn’t know my secret identity, but then I saw this mob of kids—kids!—just screaming and smashing everything and then I saw them chasing you and I saw how those jerks at the ice cream place wouldn’t let you in and I couldn’t just leave you, could I? And then I said ‘Groovy’ and I realized who you were and WHAT WAS UP WITH THOSE KIDS? What was happening? Do you know?”

  Farshad eyed The Hammer. He’d learned over the years to never give more information than was absolutely necessary, because that information could be used against you in the future. You tell someone that your parents are Iranian? A few years later everyone would think you were a terrorist. Farshad was not inclined to tell this panicking man in a minivan all of his deepest darkest secrets and the crazy stuff he’d seen and learned over the past few weeks.

  But Jay’s parting words nagged at him. “Tell him everything,” Jay had said, “because he’s the only one who is going to believe us and someone should know the whole story. You know. In case anything happens.”

  Farshad had rolled his eyes at Jay’s paranoia, but that was before he’d been chased by a mob of crazed middle-school classmates; now anything was possible. He looked out the window and saw that they were driving down a street where every several car windshields had been smashed in. “What is happening?” The Hammer asked again, this time in a quiet, terrified whisper.

  “Okay,” Farshad said, “I’m going to tell you everything that I know, but you have to keep all names anonymous, okay?” The Hammer nodded vigorously, his hands gripped tightly to the steering wheel. “And you’re taking me home first,” he added, giving The Hammer directions.

  They passed a few more blocks of smashed-up cars and mailboxes. “Where are the police?” Farshad asked.