by Sophie Bell
“Mmmaybe,” Cheri said, her waves glowing magenta again as she gave it her full consideration. “Though, in general, I’m not sure that boys text about their hair very much. Do your brothers?” Cheri just had a baby sister, which wasn’t much help in the sibling department.
“Based on how much they hog the bathroom in the mornings, probably!” Scarlet scoffed, posing one foot and then the other in cou-de-pied.
“Still, it seems très random that Jack would suddenly send you a message about his hair. An anonymous message!” Cheri remembered. “All kidding aside, we don’t actually know it’s from him, Scar. And we don’t know it’s to you, either. We both got the text. Maybe ‘red’ means me, because of my hair? Or that it’s from his partner, ‘Big Red’ Sidney Bristow?”
“But ‘red’ could also mean Scarlet, right?” Scarlet said hopefully, dropping her hands down from second position and jumping up in relevé.
“C’est possible.” Cheri skated a full circle around Scarlet as she balanced. “Oh, why must boys be so oblique!” she bemoaned, borrowing a term from geometry. “Why won’t they just come out and say what they mean!” She thought back to Iris’s retelling of her painful conversation with Sebastian, all his false starts and sentence fragments, all so open to interpretation. “Maybe the text message isn’t even from a boy!”
She and Scarlet both flopped down on the nearest bench, dejected by that option.
“No, it has to be,” Scarlet argued, finding a piece of cinnamon gum in the pocket of her jeans and folding it in half. “Can’t we trace it later, back in Club Very?”
“We can try,” Cheri said, tearing off her share of the gum stick. “It’s probably protected by some sort of spyware, but maybe we can hack it.” Suddenly she grinned, and her green eyes lit up. “It is all kinds of delicious, isn’t it? The mystery of the secret text message? It’s irresistible!”
Scarlet exhaled an exaggerated breath, puffing up her cheeks like a freckle-faced chipmunk. “It’s stressing me out,” she said. “I am not going to lie to Jack!” She gave her shoulder a stern thump, as if she was fighting with herself. “And I am not ‘hopelessly in love’ with him, either! Ugh, even if I forgive Opal for everything else, how can I ever forget she said that? But I’m not going to let Jack roll out Projekt BeauTekification, no matter what.” She paused to stretch the thin membrane of gum with the tip of her tongue till she poked a hole through it. “I only wish Iris were with us,” she said. “But if Sebastian—”
“We don’t know one hundred percent for sure that he’s with the Swans,” Cheri rushed to say before Scarlet could finish the thought. As a believer in love, she wasn’t giving up on Iris’s Graffiti Boy just yet.
“Cher, he was wearing the black suit . . .” Scarlet reminded her. Scarlet wanted to believe in love, too—just as much as Cheri. But growing up with those three older brothers had given her a more realistic, sometimes more skeptical, opinion of the opposite sex.
“Anyway, you’re right, it’s just as well Iris isn’t here—just in case Sebastian is,” Cheri admitted. “So she’s off developing gunk antidotes with Candace. And we’re . . . doing recon!”
“Recon, exactly,” Scarlet readily agreed. “Observing the enemy. Totally legit.” Borrowing a brush from Cheri’s bag, she fixed her bangs. “How do I look?” she asked, jetéing up from the bench.
“Viomazing,” Cheri said, clicking a quick picture on her smartphone. “All that’s missing is . . .”
“Let me guess.” Scarlet passed the brush back to Darth, who nudged up a berry-colored tube with his snout. “Lip gloss.” She screwed the cap off, swabbed some of the rosy-red cream on her pinkie finger, then swiped it across her mouth.
Cheri tapped her phone again and held it above her head.
“Vio-may-ay-ay-zing!” Furi sang out in robotic autotune.
Scarlet adjusted the neckline of her loose top, but it just slipped off one shoulder again as she set off down the pathway in pas de basque. “C’mon!” she called back to Cheri. “It’s almost four o’clock!”
• • •
They knew they were close to the harbor when all three of them—Darth included—sneezed.
“Gesund . . .” Scarlet started to say, but her glossified mouth dropped open as they rounded the bend toward Gazebra Plaza. At the far end of the lawn, fresh as a newly dug grave, was a construction site. Mud-splattered backhoes tore their steel teeth through the pavement. Dusty dump trucks carted off chunks of dug-up cement. Bulldozers with caterpillar wheels pushed back mounds of dirt. And between all the vehicles bustled a crew of Projekt BeauTekification volunteers, their hardhats the same nauseating yellow as their ridiculous grass skirts. They were carrying shovels, or jackhammers, or ice-cream cones. Parked in its usual spot, the Mister Mushee truck was doing a brisk business, its jingle tinkling through the air in weirdly cheerful contrast to all the demolition noise.
Off to one side, stacked in a pile, were a bunch of black-and-white planks. Nails jutted out of them at awkward angles; Scarlet and Cheri could see the splintered wood beneath chips in the paint. Its supporting posts ripped out like rotten teeth, all that remained of the Gazebra was the shingled black-and-white roof. It sat atop the flattened platform of the stage, a collapsed soufflé.
“No more black-and-white!” Cheri gasped. “It was the Gazebra! BeauTek destroyed the Gazebra!”
“But . . .” Scarlet spluttered, “now where will I debut my new dance routine? And where will we light the holiday tree in winter? Or have Synchro de Mayo next year?”
Scarlet’s nervousness at possibly seeing Jack had been brusquely bumped to the back of the line of her emotions. Anger had muscled its way to the front. She was a heartbeat from bursting ahead and beating up the first suspect to cross her path, be it Sebastian, Big Sidney, or Lil’ Freckles himself. But before she could bolt, Cher caught her by the collar and yanked her back.
“Hold up, Captain Impulsive!” she hissed, skating in reverse, dragging the feisty Ultra Violet behind the trunk of a fluffula tree. Scarlet squirmed under Cheri’s grip. Cher could feel her nails breaking from the strain. With Scarlet’s superstrength, there was no way Cheri could contain her. Her only hope was to use math. “Take a deep breath and count to ten! It’s too late to stop them now, and we’re outnumbered. Let’s stick to the plan. Do some spying of our own.”
Rather than count, Scarlet gave herself ten quick slaps on the arm. Then, just once, she stomped her foot on the grass. The tremors that resulted reached all the way over to the stack of striped planks, shaking a few off the top. “All right!” she agreed reluctantly. “But let me go!”
“Pinkie-swear you won’t run out there and grand battement someone!” Cheri demanded. The fabric of Scarlet’s sweatshirt had almost slipped from her grasp.
“I promise!” Scarlet swore. To prove it, she held up a pinkie finger. “Ka-pow,” she grumbled. “Or not.”
Cheri touched her pinkie to Scarlet’s, and ultraviolet sparks burst from their fingertips. “Blammo,” Cheri murmured back. “Or not.” Then she let Scarlet go—or maybe she just lost hold of her shirt. As Cheri hid behind the tree trunk, Scarlet squirreled up it and into the branches for a better view.
Darth scampered out of Cheri’s tote bag to follow her.
From above or below, though, girls and skunk saw the same thing. Supervising the crew were two high-heeled women in hardhats. One was skeletally slender: Her wasp-waisted suit appeared impervious to all the dust swirling around her, and her six-inch stilettos somehow didn’t sink in the dirt.
“Develon Louder,” Scarlet whispered down.
The other woman had a squatter, broader build. Her face was flushed pink from exertion. Strands of root-beer-brown hair stuck to her sweaty forehead. Clumps of mud caked up over her shoes like crusted anklets.
“And Mayor Blumesberry,” Cheri whispered up. “Scar!” she quietly called. “Check out who’s
behind the wheel of the steamroller.”
Scarlet peered through the frilly red leaves of the fluffula tree, focusing in on the driver. Protected by the vehicle’s cab, he hadn’t bothered with a hardhat. Scarlet would know that frizzled orange flattop anywhere.
“Big Red Bristow,” she spat, right as he flattened a bike rack.
Darth let out a squeak and pawed at Scarlet’s elbow. When she looked at the little skunk beside her on the branch, he pointed his tail.
“Cher!” Scarlet psssted. “Sebastian, nine o’clock!”
As smart as Cheri was at math, it took her a moment to remember where the nine was on the dial—since most watches were digital now. But as she glanced over to the left, she spotted him. Shoulders hunched, he was hiding behind a grove of trees, too, surfing in and out of them on his hoverboard. He wasn’t wearing a hardhat. Or, to Cheri’s relief, a black suit.
“WTV!” Scarlet blurted out, grabbing Cher’s attention. If there hadn’t been such a ruckus coming from the construction site, she was sure someone would have heard.
“What?” she called up to Scarlet just as she realized Darth was racing back down the trunk. He made a nosedive into his bag. “What is it?”
Then Cheri’s eyes fell upon what Scarlet must have seen. Standing beside Develon Louder—his mother—was Agent Jack Baxter. His black suit, just like hers, seemed defiantly spotless despite all the construction dust. Protective goggles covered his eyes, protective orange earmuffs covered his ears, and a bright yellow hardhat covered his hair—which, Cheri imagined, was just as salt-and-peppery as ever.
But that wasn’t what had caused Scarlet to cry out.
No, what was most disturbing about this freakish family portrait was that Jack, in his sleek black suit and shiny safety gear, was gripping a slim black canister, his thumb poised above a round red button at its top.
“Is that—?” Cheri stammered.
“A detonator,” Scarlet grimly confirmed.
Cheri stuck her fingers in her ears. Scarlet held her breath. Darth—even though he was already in the bag—shielded his eyes with his tail. As the two girls watched from their hiding spot, Jack looked up at his mother. Through the clear plastic panel of her megabucks handbag, she looked down at her son. Silver chignon bobbing like a bell, she gave a single, decisive nod.
Jack nodded back. Pressed the button in the palm of his hand. And the roof of the Gazebra blew to smithereens with a muffled boom.
Cheri still had her ears plugged, and the explosion drowned out Scarlet’s words. But Scarlet didn’t care. She said them anyway.
“That is it, Jack Baxter!” she vowed, shaking her small fist at the Black Swan through the fluffy red foliage of the tree. “I’m now hopelessly at WAR with you!”
The Morning After
{*Two Kisses?!}
IT WAS RIDICULOUSLY EARLY FOR A SUNDAY MORNING.
But when you’re a superhero . . .
And when an evil cosmeceutical corporation is in cahoots with the kooky mayor, seemingly scheming to somehow enslave the city’s entire population by glutting the river with time-sensitive, mind-controlling talcum powder . . .
And when your love/hate crush is making cherished, black-and-white-striped pieces of public property go boom, well . . .
Sometimes you have to get up early. Even on a Sunday. Even when you didn’t sleep a wink the night before.
Scarlet was the first to arrive at Club Very Ultra Violet. She’d had a restless night for sure, cancan-kicking off her sheets as she dreamt terrible dreams of Agent Jack Baxter in a garish yellow hardhat, his eyes hidden by his black sunglasses, slimy catfish whiskers hanging down around his mouth, same as on that mutant’s. Except Jack’s were black-and-white, like his hair. And like the Gazebra he’d blasted to smithereens. As he tilted his face closer to hers, the moist barbels coiled and twitched, reaching out like tiny tentacles to suck the freckles off her cheeks.
She woke up screaming.
The brother in the bedroom to the right pounded on the wall and shouted for her to shut up. The brother in the bedroom to the left knocked three times and asked if she was okay. The brother across the hall didn’t say anything. He still had his TV on. Scarlet could hear its low rumble of dialogue and then, clearer, the commercials for laundry detergent and aeroscooter insurance when the volume automatically bumped up.
“Sorry!” she softly called, hoping her parents had slept through her cries and wouldn’t come to check on her.
In the dark, she gathered up her blankets from the floor and tried to straighten out her bed. But as soon as she fell back into another fitful sleep, she kicked off the sheets all over again. At the first sign of dawn, when slivers of white-gray light outlined the blinds covering her bedroom windows, she gave up and got up and quietly got dressed.
Dew beaded the grass in her backyard. As Scarlet adjusted her robo-hummingbird wings for takeoff, the wind from the vibrating vitanium scales blew the verdant blades by her feet flat against the ground.
Sneezing just once during her ascent, she reached an altitude above the immediate airstream of the powdery pathogens. With the sun’s orange promise on the horizon but the inky blue vestige of the previous night still high in the sky, the view was breathtaking, and the cool air revived her, at least a bit. Since it was still so early, she flew a meandering loop-de-loop around the city, circling the carved crystal FLaboratory atop the Highly Questionable Tower; gliding over the oddly egg-shaped, eerily empty, green-glassed Chronic Prep building; and then soaring past Chrysalis Park, with its riverside promenade, square of chess tables, and freshly excavated construction pit formerly known as Gazebra Plaza (!).
The image of Jack pressing the button and the pavilion going kablooey flashed through her mind, and she shuddered in midair.
Even that early in the morning, the Mister Mushee truck was singing its spooky tune. It echoed throughout the empty park. Even that early, the place was swarming with BeauTek’s weird, twig-thin workers in their hideous luau uniforms. So many workers, Scarlet began to wonder if they were multiplying right on the spot. She had no idea where they were all coming from, or what, exactly, they were. With worry, she observed the harbor just beyond. By now a thick scum of congealed crazy powder swirled on the surface, plump with all the water molecules it must have absorbed. From Scarlet’s aerial vantage point, the sludge appeared to be seething, little grellowy bubbles boiling up and bursting like a simmering poison soup.
Oh, that can’t be good, Scarlet thought, cutting short her joy-fly. Not good at all!
She darted up and away from the disturbing scene with such haste that she bumped right into the Statue of SynchroniCity’s giant plasma orb. Luckily she didn’t shatter it. But it did light up with a frenzy of crackling currents, purple, red, and blue, from the stimulus of her crash. “Sorry, Lady!” she said aloud to the giant sculpture’s placidly smiling face.
After that near miss, she made a beeline for the violet beacon that blinked on the rooftop of Iris’s sleek apartment building—and Club Very Ultra Violet.
She let herself in, tiptoeing down the spiral iron staircase and barely rustling the beaded curtain into the room. From his potpourri pillow, Darth lifted one eyelid, then greeted her with a lazy wave of his tail before settling back to sleep. In the silence, Scarlet tried to still her mind by repeating a basic ballet barre routine at the clubhouse’s massive flower window.
But even this reminds me of Jack, she couldn’t help thinking. Because that window was where he’d first spied on her.
• • •
“You couldn’t sleep, either?” Cheri whispered when, fifteen minutes later, she, too, pussyfooted down the spiral staircase and into the clubhouse. She hung up her hummingbird wings next to Scarlet’s, then tiptoed over to give Darth a good-morning kiss on his soft, sleepy, purple-striped head.
“Nightmares,” Scarlet stated simply.
“Me too.” Cher draped herself across the marshmallow sofa with a sigh. “I dreamed of Mayor Blumesberry’s big 3-D head looming over Sync City like a parade float on the loose.”
“Yikes,” was all Scarlet said. She didn’t feel like going into details about her bad dreams, so she switched to small talk instead. “I’m trying to dance quietly so that I don’t wake up Iris downstairs.”
When Cheri didn’t respond, Scarlet looked over from the sunny window to see that she had dozed off on the couch. Darth pitter-pattered over from his pillow, hopped up, and snuggled into her side.
A dull thud above caught Scarlet’s attention. At the sound of steps on the roof, her supersenses started tingling in spite of how tired she was. Fists raised, she chassézed toward the stairwell just as Iris slipped through the strands of beads. She was wearing the black eyeliner again. Her purple ringlets were once more in knots. She carried a flimsy bakery box, balancing a cardboard tray that held four large paper cups on top. Scarlet could see the steam escaping through the slots in their lids.
“Hey, girl, don’t battement me!” Iris said with a half smile, surprised to find Scarlet already in CVUV. And Cheri, too. “I got your text, but I didn’t think you’d be here so early. I haven’t really been sleeping well—”
“Me neither,” said Scarlet, taking the tray from Iris and placing it on the black marble table.
“So I figured I’d fly down to Tom’s Diner,” Iris explained as she hung up her wings beside Cheri’s, “and pick us up some lattes.”
“Coffee?” Scarlet lifted the cup labeled with an S and took a tentative sip. “Ooh, strong!” she said, making a mild ick-face. “And a bit bitter.” She took another sip, this time pausing to savor the milky brew. “But good!” She grinned. “I can taste the cinnamon. And the caramel sauce.”
“A butterbeer latte. The sassy waitress thought you’d like it.” Iris half smiled again. “She says hi, btw. Mine’s got vanilla-lavender essence. Cheri’s is peppermint . . .”
