Lexie tried to echolocate Maddy, but her sly sister had moved off.
“Ichi, ni, san, shi,” Lexie counted in Japanese, winding up her nerve as she waited her turn. Her knees had not bent backward in so long that she cringed to hear them crack as she rotated.
On Lexie’s turn, Sensei Katz pointed. “Ki-ai!” Lexie shouted. Her knee jerked, under-dipped, and pivoted, the heel of her foot brushing her nose as she twisted into a whip-smooth side thrust kick that she retracted so quickly, it might not have even happened, except that it did.
Anyone who saw it burst into wild finger-pointing and whoops. Those who hadn’t jumped up and down and demanded to know what they’d missed.
Sensei Katz was at Lexie’s side in a flash. “Okay, Lexington, don’t move. Can you feel approximately where it snapped? Can you indicate the fracture?”
“I don’t think I fractured anything.” Through lowered eyes, Lexie stole another quickie look at Dylan, who appeared positively awestruck.
Now Sensei was kneeling and tapping a finger to Lexie’s knee. “You’re not in…tremendous pain?”
“No, not really. See, I’m double-jointed in both my knees.”
“Yeeks,” said Sensei. “So you are.” She looked a touch afraid. She tapped Lexie’s knee a couple more times before she straightened up and shook her head wonderingly. “Don’t do that again, okay? I’m liable.”
“That was wild,” said Dylan. But he seemed sparked, just as Maddy had promised. “Cripes, Lex. Just thinking about your knees makes mine hurt.”
“Yow, I wish I was double-jointed,” said Alex.
“And could catch a peso at the speed of sound,” added Dylan.
“No, the peso was only traveling at a rate of thirty-seven miles per hour,” Lexie corrected. The guys looked impressed.
Lexie could feel Mina fuming in the stands. Worry gnawed the pit of her stomach. Mina was sharper than the other kids. If anyone was onto the fact that Lexie had performed a humanly impossible feat, it was Mina.
When Pete caught up with Lexie afterward to walk her home, he seemed less astonished. As in, not at all. His yellow eyes were coolly disapproving, and he didn’t acknowledge Lexie’s showstopping kick. Not that Lexie expected him to—but she didn’t think Pete needed to keep his nose stuck in The Three Musketeers for the whole walk, either. Of course, Pete had always been protective of her, to the point where sometimes Lexie wondered if he knew her secret. Other times, she suspected Pete was a fellow hybrid, too—though her friend was much too discreet to reveal an Old World connection.
“Are you mad?” she asked as they turned the corner to her apartment.
Out poked Pete’s nose. “More like alarmed. No love is worth breaking your knees over.”
“Come on, don’t be grouchy—I know, let’s pit stop at Candlewick for a Garden of Diva fruit blend, with a scoop of bee pollen,” Lexie bribed. “We can put it on our house account.”
“Some other time. Bye, Lex. See ya tomorrow.”
Lexie watched Pete go. He was probably right. Love was driving her crazy, and Pete was a voice of reason. On the other hand, Lexie speculated, if every person in the world listened to their voices of reason, there probably wouldn’t be a single poem.
But love was scary. Love made doomed poets jump overboard cruise ships, or drink poison, or stick their heads in ovens.
For poetic bat types, there were different rash options.
“I can’t waste another night dreaming about Dylan,” Lexie told her sister later that evening as she changed into a tracksuit, no sneakers, and stuffed some clothes into her bed to make a Lexie-sized lump. Unlike Hudson, the girls did not have special outdoor night-flight privileges, since neither of them could transform. But that didn’t mean they weren’t skilled. “It’s time to take action. I’ll be gone an hour, maybe more. I need to get downtown and profess my love.”
Maddy’s eyes widened. “Are you for real?”
“‘Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real.’” Lexie quoted the words of doomed rap poet Tupac Amaru Shakur, whose very name was a poem Lexie liked to recite. “You’ve got to cover for me, sis.”
“No problem. Got your back. I’m your number-one coconspirator. I’ll never squeal. My word is gold.” Maddy was always happy when people other than herself were breaking rules.
After their parents had gone to bed, and with Maddy standing guard, Lexie swung out the window, inching her way to the fire escape, which she took down to the sixth floor, the best point from which to plunge. While Lexie had not been blessed with Hudson’s shape-shifting powers, she did not have his clumsiness, either. In fact, she possessed amazing night stealth. Under the cover of darkness, Lexie was strong as a bodybuilder and agile as a trapeze artist. She could hurdle fences, swing under bridges, run for miles, and roost on the narrowest ledge.
The Easterby family lived downtown on the west side. Lexie had memorized the address a long time ago. One good thing about this city, thought Lexie as she rushed downtown, is that no matter what time of day or night it is, everyone is too busy to look up. Whether rushing across town for dinner or uptown to the acupuncturist, people rarely stopped to inhale the polluted air or enjoy the smoggy skyline. And being invisible suits me fine, Lexie decided as she swung and dropped. Since it was so cold, she headed through the theater district. All those bright, hot lights would warm her. Plus, she liked getting a close-up view of the billboards.
At the intersection, Lexie leaped on top of a truck heading south. She made it downtown in minutes. From there it was only a few more vaults to Dylan’s apartment complex. She scaled the side of the building, pulling herself up and up and up, until she reached the fourth floor. Slithering around to Dylan’s bedroom window of Unit 4F was no problem.
Seeing Dylan was.
“Oooh.” Standing in his underwear, Dylan was practicing his side snap and roundabout kicks while his chunky little brother, Charlie, sat on the rug watching him. So much Dylan, all at once, made Lexie realize that spying on a half-naked cavorting person was a very compelling hobby, indeed. Especially if that person was Dylan Easterby.
Lexie pressed her unclipped toenails into the window ledge until she found her balance. She would just peep for a minute. Then leap back down to the sidewalk and toss a few pebbles to his window. When Dylan pushed it open and looked down, that’s when she would speak her love—either in lofty verse or regular words, whichever popped into her mind first.
The funny thing about spied-on Dylan was that he didn’t seem to be his same, assured schoolkid self. His face was tense from frowning and his hair stuck sweatily to his ears as he muttered “coil kick, recoil, recover” along with his bad kicks.
Oh, no. Had she ever noticed how truly pitiful he was at karate?
When Charlie gave Dylan’s last kick a double thumbs-down, Lexie started to laugh, promptly losing balance and pitching backward. Quickly, she veered forward to steady herself—a little too forward. Smack! went Lexie’s braces against the windowpane. Startled, Dylan spun around. And that was how Lexie found herself staring love-struck into the wide eyes of the boy she adored, at the same time Dylan’s mouth made a surprised O before shaping her name. Lexie?
Then her footing failed completely. Lexie dropped backward, bull’ s-eye into a large metal garbage can, a landing slightly softened by the garbage bags piled up inside.
The window shoved open. Dylan’s head poked out. “Lexie? Lexie! Where are you, Lex?”
“O, Dylan, if thou dost love,” whispered Lexie from in the trash, “pronounce it faithfully.” She couldn’t help but tingle—in a way, this was such a feverishly dramatic reenactment of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, the most doomed story of all. “And I, too, have night’s cloak to hide me,” she reminded herself. Same as Romeo.
“Stay put. I’ll get you out of there.” Dylan’s head ducked back inside.
Then Lexie caught a whiff of herself. Not good. Frankly, stinky. It occurred to her that being rescued out of a large metal garbage can wa
sn’t at all the perfect moment for love-professing.
“Haste, haste,” Lexie whispered as she struggled to rescue herself.
“Lex, Lex!” Dylan was already outside. How had he moved so fast?
With a rattling clatter, Lexie tipped over the can. She winced in pain as she stumbled to her feet. Ugh, she was covered top to bottom in slimy bits of apple peel and coffee grounds and eggshell and other goopy scraps of damp, discarded grossness.
“Tupac Shakur,” Lexie whispered, for strength. Then she started to run down the alley, as far from Dylan as she could get, and as fast as her long yam feet could take her.
Hudson
6
PLASTIC POLICEMAN
ECO-FRIENDLY TIPS
REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE.
SAVING THE PLANET STARTS WITH YOU!
HOW? MANY WAYS!
- Desist in use of plastic.
- Curb use of dishwasher.
- Wear your garments until they start to smell bad—a washing machine is a water waster!
- Flush toilet only twice per day.
- Unplug appliances whilst not in use. Even plugged in, they suck energy.
- For more information on what you can do to help, please visit http://www.stopglobalwarming.org.
MORE TIPS TO COME!!
Hudson stuck his note of tips onto the refrigerator for his entire family to see. He had printed up eighty-nine copies (all on recycled paper, of course) as a gift to the kids at school. He’d decided to put them on the desks of third-through fifth-graders only. Second-graders were too babyish, and sixth-graders were on the scary side. Also, Maddy was a sixth-grader—unanimously considered the scariest sixth-grader of all—and Hudson didn’t want her messing with his plan to save the world.
After his night flight with Orville, Hudson had made a decision. If he was destined to be a Protector, he would start immediately. And now that he was training sharper senses on water, air, and land, Hudson didn’t like what he saw. The East River, bottomless and brown as cold tobacco juice. The school bus that belched black smoke. The sidewalks an endless concrete trail of mashed gum and blowing litter.
According to Hudson’s research, even his own school was a waste pit in dire need of Protection. So now every morning when he arrived at P.S. 42, Hudson snapped off the lights in the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms. In the administrative office, he unplugged the copiers and scanners and printers and computers. Time permitting, he sneaked into old Mr. Schnur’s janitorial closet and cut off the heat generator. Hudson bet the heat heist was his biggest eco-save of all, since it took a couple of hours before the complaints about the cold started up, and at least another hour to find kooky Mr. Schnur, who liked to nap in odd places.
Hudson devoted his after-lunch recess to resorting the brimming trash cans, ensuring that all recycling was in the blue bins, with regular trash in green bins.
“Try all you want, but these kids’ll never get their garbage right,” Mr. Schnur once commented, leaning over his mop as he watched Hudson work. “I tell ’em over and over. But nobody cares what I say.”
This morning, after his usual tasks, Hudson slipped from classroom to classroom, folding a helpful flyer into each desk. He hadn’t signed his name to them, because being a Protector was a selfless act. Hudson’s teacher, Mr. Apple, read the tips as he replugged in his computer. “Hudson, my friend,” he said cheerfully, “that’s got to be your handiwork.”
Mr. Apple whistled as he thumbtacked Hudson’s tip sheet to the corkboard. Hudson stayed at his desk, silent with hands folded. He even held off scolding a couple of dimwits who had bent their own precious flyers into paper airplanes. At least Duane acted responsibly, studying the list before he tucked it into his notebook binder.
“Thanks, Hud,” said Duane.
“Why are you thanking me? How do you know who wrote that list?” asked Hudson.
“The whilst,” said Duane. “Whilst has your name all over it.”
Hudson frowned. He hadn’t meant to mix an Old World word into his flyer.
He waited for Mr. Apple to tell the class they’d be using first period, Social Sciences, to hold an emergency meeting about the environment. Instead, after roll call and morning announcements, Mr. Apple pointed to the whiteboard.
The word on the board was MEMOIR.
“Can anyone tell me what this word means?” he asked.
Hudson’s hand shot up. Mr. Apple picked somebody else. “It means a person’s personal history,” said the kid.
“Correct, Marcus. And we are going to use the next couple of weeks of Social Sciences to become personal history detectives. Our mission is to track our own life story. Each of you will create a family project and—yes, Hudson?”
“I’d like to remind my classmates that, when writing their life story, to use both sides of their paper.”
“Right. Thanks.” Mr. Apple’s smile turned serious. “So, take a few minutes to consider yourself. For example, where were you born? Have any of you traveled by plane to visit your relatives? Does your family have a secret cabbage soup or fudge brownie recipe that’s been handed down for generations? We’ll use today to jot down anything we can think of that makes us special.
“We’ll put up our finished projects all over the room so that everyone can learn more about our classmates. This’ll be cool, I promise.”
Hudson didn’t wait for Mr. Apple to call on him. “And, class, no oversharpening your pencils. Our trees are precious.”
Something smacked his ear and dropped to his feet. Hudson looked down. A spitball. How strange. Hudson knew that spitballs were often aimed at irritating, unpopular, or bizarre students. He had always assumed that his class held him in high regard. He was, after all, extraordinarily handsome, and he had entered fourth grade with many centuries of life experience.
He picked it up. Yes, a spitball, crushed up with slimy spit goo. He wiped his ear, then raised his hand to report it. But Mr. Apple didn’t look as though he’d be calling on Hudson again anytime soon.
Hudson checked the room for culprits. Except for Duane, he could never remember the names of any of the young hooligans in his fourth-grade class. He guessed the guilty party was the husky lunkhead sitting behind him on a southwest diagonal.
“Hudson.” Mr. Apple’s voice was slightly strict. “Eyes on your paper.”
Hudson glared at the lunkhead. Using his right hand, he wrote:
MY LIFE, SO FAR
By Hudson Livingstone
I was born at St. Vincent’s Hospital, New York City. I am the youngest but not the shortest. I have two bossy older sisters. My mom plays bass guitar and my dad is a drummer for The Dead Ringers. I like fruit. My hobbies are jigsaw puzzles and energy conservation.
He stared at his paper and yawned. This morning, the vanilla-coated facts of his hybrid-human life didn’t seem as pressing as what swirled inside his ancient soul. He turned over his paper, now switching to his left hand—bats are ambidextrous—as he began to write his essay again, this time in special Old World calligraphy.
My Life, So Far
By Hudson Livingstone
In the year of 1618, outside the rural province of Pembrokeshire, I was received with great relief and celebration as a firstborn son. Home was a cottage of wattle-and-daub. Father rented cattle and tilled fields of barley. Mother kept goats and tended beehives. Our Bess was a short-jointed mare, fourteen hands high.
Whilst I was yet in milk teeth, an early frost blighted our harvest, followed by a winter so vengeful and bitter we ate naught but winter root and stewed fruit bat. Our misfortune was followed by a deadly scourge of smallpox that—
Hudson broke off. The freckly redhead across the aisle had crumpled up her last paper and was starting on a second, brand-new piece. Usually she was sweet as a peach, and last year she’d given Hudson a pink carnation on Valentine’s Day. Too bad she was also a paper-wasting litterbug.
“Attention, freckled redhead girl.” Hudson pointed at her. “Both sides, please.”
The girl blushed red all over. “Hudson, for the zillionth time, my name’s Bethany Finn. And for your information, I did use both sides.”
“A doubtful story. Surrender your paper.” Hudson held out his hand for it.
Up front, Mr. Apple cleared his throat. “You can’t police your fellow students, Hudson. That’s my job.”
“You might need help at it,” said Hudson under his breath.
Mr. Apple had such good hearing, sometimes Hudson suspected a bit of bat lived in him, too. “Hud, bud, maybe you should spend the rest of this class in the library, where our wastefulness won’t disturb you, and where you can concentrate on your notes in peace.”
Hudson smarted at the reprimand. He folded his notes and stood. It was a lonely walk to the front of the room. The eyes of the class watched him go.
In the library, he wrote out his secret memoir and read it proudly to himself before tearing it up into a hundred little pieces. It was a spectacular story, with lots of flavor and drama. What a shame that the Argos would never let him go public with it. Time alone in the library gave Hudson new energy to rally the class at lunch period.
“Know this,” he decreed as he sat down next to Duane at the table. “Plastic utensils bleed our environment like a stuck boar whose fatal cries of suffering go unheard.”
The whole table went very, very quiet.
“Everything you say lately is like a scary warning, Hudson,” complained a kid.
Other voices pitched in.
“Yeah, like the lady with the flashlight at the movies if I put my feet up.”
“Or the substitute bus driver.”
“Or Monsieur Armand, my viola instructor.”
“Or my nana if I wake her up from a nap.”
“I think Hudson gets the point,” said Duane. “But, hey, at least he doesn’t try to trade us for his fruit lunch, right?”
Vampire Island Page 4
