by Mark Crilley
Billy shut off the phone with great relief. He knew that the money his parents paid Leo involved him physically being inside the Clikk home. Periodically Leo would skip the phone call and just arrive at the front door. On these occasions he always left behind some very clear proof that he'd been there— doodles on a notepad, a half-finished bottle of Gatorade—apparently thinking a bit of Leo-was-here evidence every once in a while would be enough to convince Billy's parents they weren't completely wasting their twenty dollars.
Doodles on notepads. Bottles of Gatorade. Billy noticed stuff like that: details. He'd always had a knack for it, even when he was just a kindergartner. If the dark blue crayon in Crayola's big box went from being called cerulean one year to cornflower the next, Billy knew about it and had a preference. And it wasn't just kid stuff. If Billy got even half a second's glance under the hood of a Hummer H2, he could tell which parts were new, which were old, and which parts the shady repairman had used strictly to skim money off the bill.
The lobster creature had reached the roller-coaster mountain in the middle of the amusement park and was tearing apart its papier-mâché walls. Sweaty actors with loosened neckties pointed and screamed convincingly.
Man. This is one stupid movie. If I were fighting a monster like that, I'd just pull the zipper on his back, stick my head inside, and tell him to get a better costume.
Billy punched the remote and jumped from channel 63 to 64. The Shopping Network: two middle-aged women going nuts over a very ugly piece of jewelry. Punch, punch, punch, punch: 65, 66, 67, 68. Boring, boring, boring, and boring. He was just about to shut the television off.
Huh?
That guy on TV.
That guy looked an awful lot like his dad.
Billy sat up and leaned halfway over the coffee table, staring with all his might. Piker sat up too.
The TV screen was filled with unsteady hand held video: some kind of ticker-tape parade. Street signs in a foreign language, early-morning sunlight. Dark-haired people with open-necked shirts, shouting, cheering. And there, in a big convertible sailing slowly through the crowds…
That's Dad!
No, it can't be.
Billy pressed the VCR button on the remote and then hit Record.
Bee-beep, bee-beep, bee-beep
“No tape!” Billy jumped off the couch, leaped over the coffee table, and fumbled for a blank videotape from the shelf under the TV, all the while keeping his eyes glued to the screen. Piker jumped down from the chair and began whining loudly.
“That can't be him,” said Billy. “It's impossible.”
Billy's heart was beating faster. He tore the cellophane off the videotape and crammed it into the VCR as quickly as he could. He punched the Record button and sat down on the coffee table to continue watching the program.
“That's not Dad. It just…can't be. This stuff was obviously shot in a foreign country. Dad never goes to other countries. Except, like, Canada.”
But the man had the same face as Billy's father: the wide forehead, the slightly grayed wavy hair, the enormous protruding jaw. There was a woman seated next to him. It was hard to tell because she was wearing a wide-brimmed hat, but that was…Billy's mom, wasn't it? She had the same perky nose, the same thin-lipped mouth, and—from what he could see, anyway—was wearing the exact same style of thick-rimmed glasses.
No. Way.
Excerpt from Billy Clikk: Creatch Battler
Copyright © 2004 by Mark Crilley
Published by Delacorte Press
an imprint of Random House Children's Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York
All rights reserved
Published by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children's Books a division of Random House, Inc., New York
Copyright © 2003 by Mark Crilley
Akiko, Spuckler Boach, Poog, Mr. Beeba, Gax, and all other characters contained within, their likenesses, and other indicia are trademark Sirius Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved.
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eISBN: 978-0-307-51076-1
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