What a crazy girl, Wylder thought. Didn’t want to talk to him, spilled on herself and dashed off without her comic. Just—poof!—gone. A salad eater. She needed to find a sense of humor. Must be hard to be cool all the time.
He still didn’t know her name.
Wylder sat back down, ignoring the pool of salad dressing across the table. He bit into another onion ring. Chilly but still very good. The perfect accompaniment to reading. He stared at the cover of the girl’s left-behind comic.
“Fancy meeting me here!”
A man with a crooked mustache tapped the tip of his sword on the table next to Wylder’s hand. Wylder recognized the line. Flynn Goster said it all the time. This guy was dressed to look like Flynn—as much as he could, considering that he was short and fat and Flynn wasn’t. Flynn didn’t squint either. And his sword wasn’t plastic.
“You are holding the new Goster comic, yes?” The man had a bit of an accent. “The Summer Special, yes?”
“Yes.”
“I have been seeking this issue and not finding it. No one has a copy. And then I hear you and the girl talking. Your girlfriend, yes?”
“Yes—I mean, no.”
Why was Wylder blushing?
“Not at all. I don’t even know her name,” he said.
“But she gives you comic, and now is yours. You will sell to me, yes?”
The man’s tray held a cheese sandwich, a pickle and a paper cup of coleslaw. Wylder tried not to shudder.
“I am Flynn Goster’s number one fan,” said the man. “I live my life like him. I carry his collapsible sword with the concealed second blade. I look good like him, yes?”
“Uh …”
“I have many copies of first two issues, with autographs. I have poster from Comic Con in New York last year—Flynn Goster and the Emeralds of Green Gables. You will sell to me new one, yes? I have much money.”
The man’s mustache slipped a little. Wylder was getting the creeps. He put the box of leftover onion rings in his backpack and stood up. “I have to go now,” he said. “My mom wants me.”
The man put down his tray and pressed the button on his sword so the second blade slid out of the handle. He held the weapon in two hands, like Flynn did, and whirled it with a flourish over his head.
“It’s smiting time!” he bellowed—another Flynn line. The food court was crowded. Wylder wasn’t the only one who ducked.
There was some applause from across the court. The man turned with a smile and a bow, and Wylder grabbed his chance to hurry away.
My mom wants me. Yeesh.
The hall was full of booths and people and fun. Wylder slowed down and took it all in, keeping watch for the tall girl. Ahead of him was a little kid dressed normally except for a blue cape. He tore around his parents like a dog on a leash—round and round, pumping his elbows, making the cape flutter. His smile was bigger than his face.
Down the hall on the left stood a padded ring where people fought with foam swords and spears and hammers. LARPing, it was called. Wylder got in line. Two years ago he’d wanted to do this, but his mom had said no, too dangerous. Now he’d give it a try. He was feeling dangerous.
Time to look at the comic. FLYNN IN LOVE? said the teaser on the front cover. Wylder wasn’t sure he liked that.
The opening page, under the caption VANCOUVER STATION, 1899, featured an old-timey train with a smokestack and a cowcatcher, but other details showed this wasn’t exactly real history. Not even close! Moving ramps allowed passengers to glide onto the train, and what looked like garbage cans on wheels carried baggage in extra-long rubber arms. Behind the engine and the coal car sat a flatbed carriage covered with a striped canvas labeled HOT-AIR BALLOON. Coupled to that was a car of burnished metal, like a giant safe. The League of Best Western Red Riders stood on guard, blunderbusses at the ready. An inset showed stacks of gleaming gold inside the armored car.
OPEN INVITATION TO TRAIN ROBBERS, IF YOU ASK ME, one Rider said to another.
So that’s what was going on, thought Wylder.
There were so many details in the drawing. He knew he’d have to come back to it. He turned the page. The train was on the move now. The next panel showed a short guy with a comb-over, bulging eyes and monogrammed luggage: A.K.L. Wylder recognized him from the first Flynn comic—Professor Aldous K. Lickpenny, criminal mastermind. He and the geeky kid next to him held what looked like video game controllers.
NEVINS, YOU INSECT, USE THE BLUE BUTTON! snarled the professor.
The next panel showed two huge guys with beaky noses and bowler hats lurching along. Robots? thought Wylder. Is that what the controllers are for? He turned the page.
His phone vibrated again.
u ok?
He was typing still fine, mo—when the first panel of the new page caught his eye. He slid the phone back into his pocket without finishing.
They both looked like the girl from lunch. Weird or what?
It got weirder. In the next panel, one of the girls wore a steampunk getup. The other girl wore jeans and a T-shirt with a question mark on the front of it. Exactly the same as the girl from lunch. Same hair, same green shoulder bag, same funny dimple in her cheek. She was the girl from lunch. Salad Girl. Only she was inside the comic.
Her speech bubble was the weirdest thing of all.
The man in line behind Wylder wore Dracula fangs. He was taking photos of the two LARPers smashing each other over the head. Wylder showed him the comic.
“Goster,” said the man. “I don’t read it. Not enough gore.”
“Do you think the one in the jeans looks wrong?” Wylder asked. “For the comic, I mean?”
Dracula shrugged. “No gore,” he said. “That’s what’s wrong. Unless …” He peered a little closer. “Is that blood on her pant leg?” he asked.
Wylder had noticed the stain too. “Salad dressing,” he said.
“Too bad.”
Wylder’s mind whirled. It wasn’t just some crazy coincidence, a picture of someone who looked like her. It was her—the girl who had told him to stop talking and then spilled salad dressing on her jeans and stormed off. To end up in this comic. But how? He read her speech bubble again: WE’RE IN A WASHROOM AT THE TORONTO CONVENTION CENTRE.
The other girl—Nelly, she called herself—looked suspicious. For half a second, Wylder considered the idea that Salad Girl was some kind of interplanetary alien. But the look on her face … she was human all right, and she knew something was wrong.
Was she scared? Looking at the picture, he couldn’t tell. He ran a finger down the page. ARE WE HAVING AN EARTHQUAKE? she asked. Wylder rolled the comic and held it tight.
“I have to go,” he said to Dracula.
“Don’t you want to play? It’s almost your turn, man.”
“I think I’ve got another game someplace else.”
Wylder trotted off to look for the bathroom, thinking hard. He didn’t think he’d be scared in Salad Girl’s place. Imagine being in a story. Imagine meeting Flynn Goster in person! Hard to get cooler than that. Unless things weren’t real in the comic. Maybe it was flat, in two dimensions, as if you were lying down all the time. That would suck.
But Salad Girl wasn’t saying, WHY AM I LYING DOWN? So the comic must look like real life.
Wylder found himself outside an almost empty Hall B. Inside was a familiar figure in royal blue tights, standing by himself, yawning. He saw Wylder and waved. Actually waved.
“I need a bathroom, Superman!”
That’s not something you get to say every day, Wylder couldn’t help thinking.
The Man of Steel smiled down at him. “Sure, sonny, I owe you a favor from lunch.” He lowered his voice. “Don’t tell anyone, but there’s a staff bathroom down a ways on your left. Near the big Flynn Goster train display.”
“Train display? Isn’t that at the booth?”
“Yeah, it’s broken. Last I saw, the maintenance guy was trying to fix it. Look for the whacking great train, and duck in behind it. That’s where you’ll find a service hall with bathrooms.”
Sure enough, Wylder found the cardboard train engine lying on its side, a bit squished. A man in a green uniform and a tool belt was fiddling with the casing over the headlight, watched by a little girl and her dad.
“I don’t know what’s wrong, kiddo,” said the repair guy, reaching through the conductor’s window. “The spotlight is supposed to go on when the steering wheel turns, but it’s mal-functioning. It blinks on for a second and goes off again. Some kind of faulty connection. I replaced the wire and the switch, but the light is still unreliable. You want a try? Go ahead. Turn the wheel.”
Wylder slipped past them down a dimly lit hall. The comic was in his hand. Behind him, the maintenance guy laughed. “Bingo! Look at you! You have the magic touch, kiddo! Shining right there on the door! But I don’t think it’s going to last …”
Wylder’s phone buzzed. Another text from Mom.
WHY NO ANSWER? U OK?
Wylder wanted to laugh. Okay? Way better than okay.
amazing he texted back.
In front of him was a door marked MEN/HOMMES. He paused for a second. He was going to do this, right? Well, yeah. How many chances did you get to go where no boy had gone before? He took a deep breath, and one more for luck. If he didn’t walk through that door, he’d think about it for the rest of his life.
But the bathroom was completely, boringly normal.
“Hello?” His voice echoed off the tile walls. Ello-o-o?
Wylder looked at the urinals.
“Idiot!” he said aloud. No girl would be in here! He hurried down the hall and turned the handle on the door marked WOMEN/FEMMES.