“Theron—”
“You don’t even care about André,” he yelled.
I paused so I wouldn’t scream, and swallowed down that painful thing in my chest. “Theron,” I said as calmly as I could, “let’s talk about this. On the ground.” Even though adults never remembered anything about the Wishing World, I felt really uncomfortable yelling about it in front of them.
“Tell me you’re going to do something,” he said.
“I told you why we can’t just . . .”
My tongue caught in my mouth like it was suddenly full of peanut butter. Beyond Mr. Stevenson, against the wall of the school building, stood Jimmy. He wore a black hoodie, pulled back just far enough that I could see his freckled face. He was talking to Jayla.
Jimmy, The Ink King, who had stolen my parents and would have kept them in the Wishing World forever. Jimmy, who had vanished after I defeated him and nobody knew where he had gone.
Jimmy patted Jayla on the shoulder and dropped something small into her hand.
I pushed my way through the crowd, then ran toward them. Jimmy saw me coming and took a step backward behind the building. Jayla gazed at the thing in her palm.
“You don’t want that,” I yelled to her as I ran past her. “Whatever it is, chuck it!” I wanted to stop and talk to her, but I had to reach Jimmy before he disappeared.
She stuck her tongue out at me.
Double face-palm with a scream on top.
I’d have to come back to Jayla. I chased Jimmy around to the front of the school—
—and ran into him.
He caught me like I was some kind of friend, then pushed me back on my heels. I did an awkward two-step and caught my balance. He’d grown in the last year. He was still skinny, but now he was as tall as me.
“So, you didn’t go back to the Wishing World after all,” I said.
Jimmy tossed a little stone into the air and caught it. He didn’t say anything.
“The police looked for you,” I said. “They think you’re dead.” I kinda wanted to punch him. But I wasn’t Theron, and I wasn’t very good at that sort of thing.
I thought about the big trees in the front of the school. I imagined their roots popping above the grass and tying him up. My pencil had worked on the Flaming Beard-O. Maybe it would work again. “You know, your father’s in prison because they think he killed you.”
“My father’s in prison because you put him there,” he said, then he shrugged like he didn’t care. “He deserved it. Good job on that.”
Good job? Jimmy was being awfully smiley. “You went back to the Wishing World, didn’t you?”
He watched me, still with that little curl to the side of his lip. Well hello, Mr. Mystery. Barf.
“Why did you send the Flaming Beard-O to my classroom?” I asked. I didn’t know he’d sent it. But I thought I’d take a shot. I watched his eyes. He’d look smug if he did it, and that would tell me for sure if he’d been back to the Wishing World. Can’t send a Beard-O if you’re not in the Wishing World.
“Flaming what?” he asked.
“Mr. Multi-Legs with the whip.”
“You,” he said pleasantly, “are such a freak.”
“Why’d you send him?” I pressed.
“Maybe ask Jayla. She really wants to go to the Wishing World,” he said. He kept flipping that rock in his hand. It glimmered silver like Theron’s knight figurine, like the necklace Dad had given to me, and I suddenly knew what I was looking at, what he was sticking right in my face. That was part of Narolev’s Comet—Veloran spelled backward—otherwise known as the Wishing World. When kids like my brother and André—and even Jimmy—needed the Wishing World, it invited them by dropping a piece of the comet into their lives. For some, it was a symbol of their power, like Theron’s knight figurine, carved from silver rock. In Theron’s case, the rock actually flattened, unfolded and turned into the mirror armor that covered his body. It was the device that made him into his Doolivanti self. For others, like me, the comet stone was just a rock on a necklace. But no matter how it looked or acted for each individual Doolivanti, there was one thing that was the same no matter what. You couldn’t get into the Wishing World without one.
“Stay away from my friends, creepo!” I came toward him, pointing my pencil at his freckled face. He backed up quickly. How was Jimmy able to give out pieces of the comet? Could he also take kids to the Wishing World?
Then it hit me like a pan to the head: André. Jimmy. The Wishing World.
“What did you do to André?” I demanded. Jimmy was about to find out if I really could make roots grab him.
“Oh, now you care about André?” he said. “Or do you just want me to think you do? Where were you when he needed you? Did you know he was dying here?”
André wasn’t dying. You couldn’t die from not being in the Wishing World. Could you?
“Where is he?” I demanded.
“I helped him,” Jimmy said.
“He wouldn’t get within ten feet of you,” I said.
He opened his hands in a friendly gesture. “I gave him what you wouldn’t. And now, your best friend Jayla, she dreams about being a cat princess. Did you know that? It’s so close she can taste it, but do you care? No.”
A cat princess? I mean, Jayla liked cats, but she didn’t even own a cat.
Jimmy studied the befuddled look that must have been on my face, then he smiled. “It’s interesting how you tell these people you care about them, but you really don’t. Yet they somehow still believe in you.”
“Shut up.”
“That’s a neat trick,” he continued. “Lorelei, the loyal friend. Lorelei, the savior.”
I lifted my chin.
“Big. Fat. Lie,” he said coldly. His smile vanished, and I saw the demon-eyed Jimmy from last year. “You know, I used to call you Loreliar, but that doesn’t really fit, does it? You don’t lie with what you say. You lie with who you are. Making people believe you’re this noble thing. Actually being the most selfish person on the planet. Your name is perfect just the way it is, Lorelie,” he said in a low voice. “The Wishing World deserves a better savior than you.”
“Here’s a truth for you,” I said. “You killed other Doolivantis. Imprisoned them. Stole my parents and did who-knows-what-else. How much do I care what you think? Zero much. You should be in jail.”
He drew a long breath and forced that smile back onto his face. “Well, I’ve changed. I’ve found a brand new—”
“You,” Theron yelled as he rounded the corner with Principal Stevenson, all the teachers, and a horde of kids behind him. He must have slid down the flagpole and wormed his way through the crowd. A hundred people were chasing him. Theron lunged at Jimmy, but Principal Stevenson finally caught his arm, stumbling as he held on and hauled Theron to a stop. He reached out and grabbed my arm, too.
“No wait! Get him,” I said, pointing at Jimmy with my free arm. “Please, Principal Stevenson, don’t you know who that is?”
Jimmy stepped back, flipped his hood up over his head. “Goodbye, Lorelie. Enjoy your ordinary life.” He slipped behind Mr. Stevenson, who didn’t see him or didn’t care, and wormed his way through the crowd.
“Wait,” I said. “That’s Jimmy Schmindly!” I twisted, but I couldn’t shake loose. They weren’t listening. Nobody was listening to me.
There were so many people now. I lost sight of Jimmy for a second, and then he was gone.
"I saw him," Theron said, breathing hard. His face was red.
“Come on, you two.” Mr. Stevenson guided us to the front doors. Theron kept trying to catch my gaze, but I avoided it.
Jimmy was back. And he had taken André.
Hello Hot Mess, nice to meet you. Except, you know, not really.
Two
Lawn Fail
Mr. Stevenson sat us down in the red plastic chairs by the school’s admin desk and called Mom. He seemed like he was going to say something, then sighed and went into his office.
&
nbsp; Theron swiveled his head and drilled me with his gaze. “Jimmy’s back,” he said.
“Duh.”
He crossed his arms and started tapping the song Seven Nation Army on his shoulders like they were his drum set at home. He did that when he was really excited and couldn’t run around the school fifty times.
“Stop it,” I said.
He stopped drumming. “He vanished,” he said. “He was there, then he wasn’t. With a hundred people around. He probably went straight to the Wishing World.”
“Probably.”
“You could follow him,” Theron said. “If he could do it, you could do it twice over.”
I pressed my lips into a tight line.
“What if Jimmy is taking over the Wishing World right now like he did when he stole the Sea Kingdom?” Theron asked. “What if Princess Ripple is stuffed back in a cave? What if no one can beat him? What if you’re the only one who can?”
I didn’t answer. Theron’s gaze narrowed to a glare. When he realized I wasn’t going to say anything, he went back to his body drumming. Loudly.
He kept that up for the next hour until school ended and Mom showed up. She looked tired and upset that we’d been called to the principal’s office. Again. She talked with Mr. Stevenson for a moment in hushed tones. I could guess what they were saying, even though I couldn’t hear them: “They’ve been exposed to so much trauma; we have to be gentle in how we reprimand them . . .”
Once they’d had their adult moment, Mom took us to the car.
Home was only about fifteen blocks away, and it was a silent drive. We rolled past familiar scenery: friends’ houses, street signs, and parks. We stopped at a light and I looked along Downing Street. There was smoke. A big curling plume of it.
“What’s that?” I asked, sitting up.
Mom glanced that way. “Oh, goodness. Someone’s house is on fire.”
I leaned forward, fingers pressed to the glass. Not someone’s house. Jayla’s house. I knew that red fence, the flat roof of the carport. Jayla and I had snuck up there a couple of years ago to watch the stars; we played space pirates. I was captain and I wanted her to be my first mate, which sparked an argument. She wanted to be the queen of an alien planet. Come to think of it, the aliens were cat people.
“We have to go there,” I said to her.
“We are going home,” Mom said sternly, followed a beat later by, “honey.” I felt bad. She was the nicest mom in the world, and I knew we were driving her crazy. But I couldn’t pretend things were normal just because she couldn’t see the weird.
“Mom, that’s Jayla’s house,” I said, wishing I was wrong, knowing I was right.
We stopped at a stoplight, and Mom hesitated, peering through the window. “Sweetie, you don’t know that—”
Theron opened his door and jumped out. A car turning right slammed on its brakes and honked as Theron dashed in front of it.
“Theron,” Mom yelled.
I skitched across the seat and leapt out the door. “I’ll get him, Mom.”
“Lorelei! You— No! Get back here right now,” Mom shouted from the window.
We raced one block up and one block over, and there it was. Jayla’s house was fine, but there was a pillar of fire in her front yard taller than me. It reached up like a red hand, then flickered and dropped. Then there was just a big, black circle of burnt lawn and a thick curl of smoke, drifting into the sky.
The front screen door opened and Jayla’s mother came onto the porch.
“Where’s Jayla?” I asked.
Her mother got that sleepy look and blinked. “She’s . . .” Jayla’s mother shook her head. “She’s at a friend’s house.”
“Which friend?” I knew all of Jayla’s friends.
“I . . . can’t remember,” she said, seeming confused. “I’ll have to ask Michael.”
Right. She’d been zinged by the Wishing World.
Jayla’s mom looked at the big black circle on the lawn. She blinked again, then smiled benignly.
That’s right. Nothing weird about your lawn turning black. Hot springtime weather. Lawn fail. Except that it’s not. Your daughter’s been dragged into an air burp by a Flaming Beard-O.
Theron nudged me with his elbow.
“Ow,” I said.
“Was it Jimmy?” he asked.
“It wasn’t the ice cream man.” He was stealing my friends. First, my family. Now, my friends. He’d taken Jayla. And he’d taken André, who saved my family. Who saved my life.
Mom pulled up in the van behind us. Her voice was sharp. “You are both grounded for a week. Get in the car right now!” I stared at the burnt lawn, and Theron stared with me. My heart hurt. Jimmy had them both.
Mom apologized to Jayla’s mother, then her voice cracked like a whip at us. “Now, you two. Get in the car!”
We got in the car. Theron clicked his seat belt and looked at me. “Well?”
“Well,” I said. “Time to get your mirror on.”
Three
Bring On The Snot
I waited in the girl's bathroom, the obvious place to start an adventure, right? Screw up your courage and flush.
But that's where the Tasting Tulip painting had grown, all by itself, during this past week of weird. All the adults saw it and thought it was some other class’s art project. “Oh, isn't it nice that that Ms. Rampart's class decided to paint the bathroom?” Never mind that no elementary school kid could paint a giant flower that real. Leonardo Da Vinci couldn’t paint a flower that real. Never mind that sometimes it actually moved, broke away from the wall, and reached toward you. It hadn’t touched anyone yet, that I knew of, but most of the girls used the bathroom on the other side of the school now.
I’d gotten my comet stone and Gruffy’s feather necklace down from my shelf and put them on. The comet stone was warm where it rested against my throat, almost vibrating. You could feel the Wishing World in this place. If we were going to cross over, this or the Starfield patch on the playground were the places to do it. Since the teachers weren’t likely to let us go outside at 8:15 in the morning, it had to be the bathroom. I didn’t want to rip my way into the Wishing World, and maybe I wouldn’t have to if I entered here. Maybe I could just walk right through.
I looked at the clock on the wall. A clock in a bathroom. Who timed themselves in the bathroom?
It said 8:20. Theron was late. Maybe Ms. Quintana wouldn't let him go by himself because of what had happened yesterday—
I heard feet running up the hall. Small feet running fast. Adult feet running after.
"Theron!" Ms. Quintana's voice echoed in the hall.
Theron skidded to a stop, slammed into the doorjamb, and ducked inside.
"Okay," he breathed, grinning. "Let's go!"
"Is the whole school behind you?" I demanded.
"Just Ms. Quintana and Ms. Rampart, but they're not running very fast."
"What makes you think I can do this that quickly?"
"Just do it," Theron said.
"You suck." I held up my little wooden quill. André had carved it for me from a stick he'd found in the snow last winter. He said the stick looked like a quill feather, and that a Doolivanti who took her power from writing stories ought to have a “talisman.” That's what he called it. A talisman. The little carving wasn't a real pen. It didn't have any ink in it. It wasn't meant for anything but this.
I raised it and wrote the words on the air:
Lorelei and Theron returned to the Wishing World.
I waited for the wall to become more than a painting, to start moving, but nothing happened.
Behind us, footsteps slowed before the door, and Ms. Quintana said, “Theron, you can't go into the girls’ bathroom.”
I raised my hand and tried again:
Theron and Lorelei went to Veloran. They saved André and Jayla.
Ms. Quintana came around the corner and frowned down at us. "Lorelei, what are you doing here? What is going on—"
The Tasting
Tulip suddenly became three-dimensional. It swayed forward off the wall, and the giant white petals engulfed us. Ms. Quintana's eyes went wide, and then I couldn't see her anymore. We were lifted up. Theron whooped. We tumbled into the flower, water sloshing and coconut-sized seeds thumping against us.
"Sorry," I yelled to Ms. Quintana, not even sure if she could hear us, though I was pretty sure it wouldn't matter in another few minutes when she forgot everything.
Theron’s eyes glinted, and next thing I knew a wave of gloopy water hit me in the face.
“Oh, no you didn’t,” I said and launched at him, laughing. I couldn’t help it. We were aligned again. Side by side.
“Woo hoo!” he said, jumping into the wrestling match.
It was no contest. He pinned me almost instantly, but—
The tulip lurched over and spat us out. We swirled in an eddy of thickening water and seeds. Theron rolled easily to his feet, holding his hands up, ready to fight with the giant seeds stuck all over him. I snarfed a laugh. “You look ridiculous.”
But he didn’t hear me. He whooped at the white-streaked sky, at the purple, orange and Silverweft trees of the Kaleidoscope Forest. Seeds flew off him as he spun around. He sprinted headlong for the forest, turning into his Doolivanti self, Darthorn. Or as the rest of the Wishing World called him: The Mirror Man. He sent up a spray of leaves as he plunged in.
I shook the seeds from my arms and wrung flower snot from my hair, but I grinned while I did it. My heart felt full. Everything was brighter. The trees were greener. And purpler. The white-streaked sky was magical. I knelt down and felt the giggling grasses beneath my feet. “It has been too long,” I whispered.
“Doolivanti.” The most-wonderful-voice-in-the-world spoke from behind me.
I jumped to my feet and spun around. Gruffy towered over me. He was enormous now! Not that he had been a small griffon before—about the size of a horse—but now he was taller than an elephant. His wings flapped once, like giant feather canopies, before they settled at his sides. His front talons spread as wide as truck tires, and the muscles on his lion hindquarters bulged. Jeepers.
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