Waylon! One Awesome Thing

by Sara Pennypacker

  Text copyright © 2016 by Sara Pennypacker

  Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Marla Frazee

  Cover illustration © 2016 by Marla Frazee

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  ISBN 978-1-4847-4632-5

  Visit www.DisneyBooks.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  Also by Sara Pennypacker and Marla Frazee

  About the Author and Illustrator

  To Carl Sagan, for plugging in so many kids.

  —S. P.

  To Lisa Gilden, who Mrs. Holcomb predicted would be “the first lady astronaut.” Oh, well.

  —M. F.

  Waylon craned his neck. “Moon at the nearest point in its orbit—check. Clouds—check. But Joe, I’m telling you—”

  “Are you sure about the clouds?” Beside him, Joe squinted at the sky. “They look so fluffy.”

  “Oh, they have plenty of mass,” Waylon assured him. “A medium-sized cumulous cloud weighs as much as eighty elephants. But remember, the effect will barely be—”

  “Don’t forget the Airbus A380. That plane is huge. There it is, on the horizon.” Joe flattened himself against the brick wall and chalked a mark at the top of his head.

  Waylon sighed. Joe used to be the shortest kid in the class. He was pretty much normal-size now, thanks to a recent growth spurt, but he was still height-crazy. Last week Waylon had made the mistake of mentioning to him that Skylab astronauts had each grown two inches due to zero gravity. “That’s it!” Joe had cried. “Gravity is what’s keeping me down! You’re science-y—do something!” He’d been pestering Waylon ever since.

  “Remind me how this is going to work?” Joe asked now.

  “Something really dense and really close, like the earth, has a lot of gravity,” Waylon explained again. “But you could counteract it a little bit by stacking the moon, the clouds, and the Airbus above you. But seriously, it probably won’t be enough to notice.”

  “How much?”

  “Maybe an angstrom, which is really small, Joe! It takes about twenty-five million angstroms to make an inch.”

  “I’ll take it!” Joe said. He pressed his shoulders to the wall and grinned.

  Actually, Waylon was kind of excited, too. He was buying a special journal this weekend. In it, he would record his life’s work as a scientist. Lately he’d been concentrating on gravity, and he was expecting a big breakthrough soon. If today’s experiment worked, Counteracted gravity to help a friend get taller would look great on the first page of his new journal. “Here comes that plane, Joe,” he cried. “Get ready!”

  Just then, Arlo Brody ran up. He head-butted Waylon on the shoulder—not hard, but still, Waylon went sprawling.

  Arlo jerked his thumb, and Joe trotted off with a grateful look on his face, as though he’d been waiting all recess for someone to send him away, never mind the getting-taller nonsense.

  Arlo Brody was like that—he only had to suggest something, and a person magically felt that it would be an incredible honor to do that exact thing. Waylon suspected the phenomenon was related to Arlo’s hair, which stuck up like a crown. Arlo sure acted as if he was king of the whole school, and all the other kids acted like his subjects.

  Waylon watched sadly as the clouds parted, and the Airbus zoomed away. It might be a long time before there was another perfect opportunity. But just then, Arlo smiled down at him, and Waylon felt as if he were basking in the warm glow of royal rays. His mouth automatically smiled back.

  Arlo helped Waylon up. “I told you yesterday, you’re on my team. You’re supposed to spend recess with us. We have a name now. Shark-Punchers.”

  A bunch of boys had followed Arlo. They bared their shark teeth and head-butted each other.

  “Shark-Punchers. That’s our signature move,” Arlo explained. “Get it?”

  “Well, but…sharks can’t punch.” Waylon worried that might have sounded offensive, so he added a “Sorry.”

  Arlo threw a double punch at the air. “Sure they can. They have fins.”

  Waylon had no choice but to correct him. Science was science. “No. A shark’s fins are hydrodynamic. They provide lift like plane wings. And they pivot to change the angle of attack. Also, sharks use them to signal other sharks. But they can’t punch.”

  “Whatever,” Arlo said with a grin so big that Waylon’s own cheeks hurt from returning it. “Look, it took me a while to decide whether to put you on my team or not. The blurting-out thing? Like the mucus stuff on Monday? Remember?”

  Waylon remembered. Mrs. Fernman had just pointed to New Zealand on the map. Waylon had shot out of his seat. “There are these amazing glowworm caves there, except they’re not really glowworms, they’re fungus gnat maggots, and they drool long glow-in-the-dark mucus strings to attract insects. It’s so awesome!”

  Everyone, except for Mrs. Fernman, had cracked up. This happened a lot when he shared something he’d learned on his favorite show, Miracles of the Natural World. He didn’t understand the reaction—if someone had just told him something so interesting, he would be thanking that person, not laughing. But he had never minded it.

  Until right now. The “blurting-out thing”???

  “But even with the blurting-out thing,” Arlo went on, “you’re obviously a brain. I’m putting the brains and the jocks on my team.”

  Arlo beamed another shiny smile, and once more Waylon beamed it back.

  Why had he done that? Waylon didn’t want to be put on any team at all. He wished Arlo hadn’t started the whole team thing in the first place. So why had his mouth just smiled back at Arlo?

  Alien Hand Syndrome, he knew, was a rare disorder where a person loses control over one of his or her hands. It was his absolute favorite of all the conditions listed in Chapter Five, “Bizarre but True,” in The Science of Being Human. But he’d never heard of Alien Mouth Syndrome.

  Waylon forced his lips into a non-smiling position. “Are those the only choices?” he asked. “Brains or jocks?”

  “You could be both, like me, but otherwise, yeah, one or the other. Except for Willy.” Arlo crooked a finger at the Shark-Punchers, and Willy trotted out.

  Willy looked anxious. Of course, he had been looking anxious since Day One of fourth grade. This was because for the first time he wasn’t in the same class as his twin sister, Lilly. For weeks now, he had been skittering around in a state of nervous panic.

  “Willy’s our artist,” Arlo explained.

  Waylon bit his lip to keep from saying But Willy can only draw sharks. Clementine is the artist in our class, because he knew what Arlo would say. Arlo had explained the rule yesterday: Teams are boys only.

  “He’s going to draw our logo. A shark, punching. Remember? All he has to learn to draw is the punching part. Easy. Right, Willy?”

  Arlo seemed proud of this idea, but Willy looked petrified. Arlo threw an arm around his shoulders. “Forget the fins. Just make the shark’s head a fist. With teeth. Okay?”

  Willy looked around des
perately. Waylon could tell he expected Lilly to be right beside him, telling him what to do.

  “Disambiguation, Willy. Phantom Limb Syndrome,” Waylon explained in a soothing tone. “When an arm or a leg gets amputated, people still feel like it’s there. You have Phantom Sister Syndrome.”

  Now Willy appeared even more terrified of Waylon than he was of Arlo. “My sister wasn’t amputated!” he howled. “She’s just in Room 4C!” He dove back into the bunch of Shark-Punchers.

  Arlo shot his pack a grinning thumbs-up, which they all returned. He spun back to Waylon. “We can get started now. Everyone’s on a team.”

  Waylon scanned the playground. The girls were sprinkled all around, playing or talking in little groups. But it was true that the fourth grade boys were divided. Half were clumped behind Arlo. The other half lined the fence, keeping a nervous eye on Arlo’s clump. “What do we have to do?” Waylon asked.

  “I told you yesterday. Stuff,” Arlo answered. “Against the other team.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re against us.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re against them. Doing stuff. Come on, let’s go. It’s going to be cool.”

  Waylon considered the Shark-Punchers. Lots of his friends were there. Matt, whose mother worked at the aquarium. Matt let him explore behind the tanks with him whenever he wanted. Rasheed, who’d been building a duct-tape city with him since first grade. Zack, who was teaching him soccer.

  Then he looked over at the other group. A lot of his friends were there, too. Charlie was the funniest kid in fourth grade. He and Waylon were working on a cartoon strip about astrophysics. Marco was studying to become a famous chef. He tried out new recipes on weekends and shared the leftovers with Waylon on Mondays. Next to Marco was Joe, who shared his dog, Buddy, with Waylon sometimes. Joe was so nice, he even let Waylon call Buddy Galaxy, and Buddy was so nice, he answered to it.

  Waylon didn’t get it. Until last week, everybody in the class had been friends, or at least they hadn’t been not-friends. Why had Arlo gone and messed that up?

  Just then, the Recess-Is-Over bell rang.

  Arlo charged off to herd the Shark-Punchers to the front of the line. The other team gathered at the back.

  Waylon stood alone in the middle. He felt a terrible collapsing sensation in his chest, as if a black hole had just swallowed his heart.

  Joe and Charlie came over while Waylon was waiting for the bus. “Sorry about recess,” Waylon told Joe. “We can try again next full moon.”

  “That’s okay,” Joe said. “What did Arlo want? Did he finally put you on our team?”

  “And did he give us a name yet?” asked Charlie. “Something great, like theirs—the Shark-Punchers?”

  Waylon sighed. “That’s not a great name. Sharks don’t punch.”

  Joe shrugged. “Still great. So, what does Arlo call us?”

  “He just calls you the other team.”

  Joe and Charlie both shrugged at that. “Okay. We’ll be the Others. What should our signature move be?”

  Charlie and Joe shrugged at each other again, and Waylon thought, A shrug—that’s your signature move. He shrugged back.

  “And a logo. We heard the Shark-Punchers are going to have a logo, so we need one, too,” Charlie said. “You could draw it, Waylon. Make it science-y. I know—something science-y punching. How about a space monster?”

  “Monsters are the opposite of science-y, Charlie. Extraterrestrials are science-y. Besides, Arlo’s putting me on his team.”

  “No!” Joe looked as if he’d been punched, and not by a shark. “You’d be against us. You can’t be against us.”

  “But you’re against them.”

  “Well, sure. They’re against us!” Charlie and Joe: more shrugging.

  “But Arlo’s my friend. So are a lot of other kids on his side.”

  “But we’re your friends, too.” Joe got a crafty look in his eyes. “And so is Buddy. I mean Galaxy. You can’t be on a team against Galaxy.”

  Galaxy! Waylon could picture him so clearly it hurt. Galaxy, looking up at him with eager brown eyes, one ear up and one down, a Frisbee in his mouth, and then…trotting away.

  “I don’t want there to be teams at all,” Waylon muttered.

  Just then, the first bus opened its doors, like a big shark mouth, and Waylon watched Joe and Charlie run off together. When his bus came, he took a seat at the very back and pressed his face to the cool window.

  Recently, a strange thing had been happening, and it was happening now. The strange thing was: he imagined how he appeared to others. As though he was outside his body, watching himself.

  Not extraterrestrial others. Extraterrestrials watching wouldn’t bother him at all. If they were looking down from their space pods, Waylon felt sure they would grok him. Grok was a word he’d learned in a science fiction story. It meant to understand something so completely you practically merged with it.

  No, it wasn’t extraterrestrials he worried about, it was other human kids. And when Waylon imagined other human kids watching him, he imagined them laughing—not nice laughs, but mean smirks.

  Why is that boy sitting alone at the back of the bus like a loser? those imaginary kids would ask each other now with big, mean smirks. Arlo Brody, king of the school, wants him on his team—he should be happy. What’s his problem, anyway?

  Seeing himself from the outside made Waylon feel dangerously sheer, as if he were a hologram instead of a solid boy.

  Luckily, though, he had discovered that if he could find a perfectly quiet place—no easy feat in the middle of Boston, Massachusetts—he could hear himself living. From the inside. And hearing himself from the inside had the opposite effect from seeing himself from the outside. It made him feel solid again.

  When the bus dropped him off, Waylon tore into his building and raced through the condo, slowing down only enough to yell “School was fine!” before his dad could come out of his writing studio and ask about it.

  He skidded into his room, dug under his bed for the earmuffs his grandmother had sent him, then ran out again. He yanked open the heavy door to the fire stairwell and pounded down the steps.

  And there, in the silence of the double-thick concrete stairwell, he crouched under the bottom flight of steps, clapped the earmuffs to his head, squeezed his eyes shut, and listened.

  Not to the sounds of his heart beating and his blood pumping through his veins. Anybody could hear those sounds just by listening medium-hard.

  He listened underneath those sounds. To the tiny music of life: the infinitesimal cracklings of bone growth, the little zaps of electricity charging his brain, and the hushed whooshes of oxygen exchanging with carbon dioxide in his lungs.

  It is one thing to know you are alive on this earth, but it is quite another to actually hear the proof.

  In the comfort of the living-Waylon sounds, he totally forgot about teams and whether anyone might be smirking at him.

  But then he noticed something: every once in a while, the living-Waylon sounds disappeared.

  He pressed his palms over the earmuffs and listened harder. Yes, microsecond silences, randomly occurring.

  Waylon tugged his hair up. Even though he knew perfectly well that it didn’t make any more room for his brain, doing this always made it feel easier to think.

  And the answer came. It was obvious, but so amazing, it was hard to believe.

  A shiver thrilled up his spine. He jumped to his feet and tore off the earmuffs. A scientific achievement this huge would make him famous the instant he announced it.

  But before he could announce it, a scientific achievement this enormous needed a witness.

  He ran back up to his condo and, inside, banged on the door that was painted black. “Neon, I need you! You have to come with me!”

  Waylon’s sister opened her door and slumped against the doorway. She looked as if she’d been trying to scribble herself out. Black eyeliner, black lipstick, black nail pol
ish. She studied him for a good long time.

  “What,” she demanded, flicking her fingers through the spikes of her scribbly black hair, “is the point?”

  On the day she’d turned fourteen this past summer, Charlotte Brontë Zakowski had undergone a complete metamorphosis. Instead of spinning a chrysalis around her, she had walked into her bedroom and painted it black. When she’d emerged, she was wearing ripped black tights on her arms and legs, and over those, a variety of tattered black rags. She’d reminded Waylon of a bat who’d had a close call with a shredder. “My name is Neon now,” she’d announced, then gone back into her cave and slammed the door.

  Since then, Neon had been What-is-the-point?-ing pretty much anything anyone asked her to do. “What is the point,” the long form of her argument went, “since all of civilization is a waste, and everything is just random nothingness anyway?”

  Usually Waylon argued with her. The point is, right this minute scientists are figuring out hundreds of things that will make the world even more awesome than it already is. Telepathic communication! Human gills! Hover boards! Bionic body parts! he might have said today. But he didn’t.

  “I need you,” he repeated. “Come with me.” He held his breath. Nobody ordered Neon around these days.

  She dropped her head and exhaled, long and sizzly, like a volcano cooking lava. Waylon knew it wasn’t lava she was cooking. But it was something just as hot: the Glare.

  He braced himself. If Neon turned the Glare on in a grocery store, bacon would start to fry right in the package.

  She lifted her head and aimed the Glare. Waylon felt his skin start to blister, but he took her hand and pulled her all the way down to the bottom of the stairwell.

  “Is this about Arlo and the stupid teams?” she snarled when they got there. “I’ve told you: ganging up is stupid.”

  “No. It’s about teleportation,” he said. “I think I’ve achieved it.”

  Neon shot him a disbelieving eye roll and turned to leave.