Viminy Crowe’s mouth opened and closed with no sound coming out. For a few seconds, they stared, as if under a spell, at the comic in Wylder’s outstretched hand. Vim compared his copy to Wylder’s. They were the same. And both were wrong.
And then Vim started to hop.
Seriously. He nodded his head a few times, took a deep breath and began to hop from one foot to the other. Not very high, just an inch or so off the ground. More like skipping, really. He wore old-time running shoes, with black canvas tops and white rubber soles. His baggy cardigan flapped behind him as he skip-hopped his way around the room like a gray grasshopper.
Addy edged backward until she was next to the window. Probably dying of mortification, thought Wylder.
“Well, I am jiggered,” said Vim. “Bottled, mottled and spun dry. This is a shocker, all right. But the key to surviving a shock is not to panic. Are you panicking, Addy? Are you panicking, Wylder Wallace?”
“Uh, no, sir,” said Wylder.
“Good. Me neither. No panic here. I mistakenly presumed—when you two came out of the comic—that it would go back to normal. Ha! Lesson learned. Do not presume. Oh, and by the way, you don’t have to call me sir. Makes me feel old. Uncle Vim will do just fine.”
He joined Addy near the big window. The curtains in front were so thin you could see through them into the street.
Skip, skip, skip.
He was in great shape—not even breathing hard. His glasses slid up and down his nose, and his hair flopped around his head.
“Something alien entered the comic today. Something that shouldn’t be there.”
“Us.”
“Right you are, Wylder Wallace. And you two affected the way the comic behaved.”
He changed his pattern, hopping twice on the left foot, once on the right.
“Here’s what I think is going on,” he said. “When Addy was a baby, she swallowed a button that looked like a chocolate caramel. The button gave Addy a tummy ache until she got rid of it—if you know what I mean. And then she was fine. I think that’s what’s happening to the comic now.”
Ew.
“You mean we were like Addy’s button, making the comic sick?”
“Absolutissimo. Foreign bodies—viruses—messing up the story. You’re out, but some part of you is still inside, infecting the comic. What would that be?”
“My backpack,” said Wylder.
“You had a backpack? Well, then, maybe that’s it. The culprit, so to speak.”
Addy stared through the thin curtains at the traffic going by.
Wylder wondered if he should mention Catnip. Had Addy forgotten him? Just then, Addy swallowed her gum. She bent over, coughing. When she finished, she took a hanky out of her vest pocket and wiped her mouth and eyes.
Uncle Vim skip-hopped to get her a drink of water, but he had to walk normally to carry it back so there’d be no sloshing.
“You are a cuckoo bird,” Addy told her uncle.
“Have you been carrying a handkerchief all day?” Wylder asked.
“You are another one,” she said to him.
“First things first,” said Uncle Vim. “You must locate your impedimenta.”
“Good plan,” said Wylder. “What’s impedimenta?”
“Stuff,” said Uncle Vim. “Stuff you carry—stuff that gets in the way. You two should look through the comic and see where your stuff has ended up. We’ll devise a plan when I get back. I have to see the FunnyBones people. It’s ironic—I spent the morning yelling at Magnus Snayle to find the ten thousand copies of the comic so we could sell them. Now it would be positively cataclysmatical if they went on sale. What story will I tell him? The truth won’t work.”
His phone rang. He stopped hopping and shook himself all over like a dog. “Here’s timing,” he said. “Magnus Snayle himself.”
Vim punched a button. “I want to speak to you, Magnus,” he said. “I’m on my way to the booth. Don’t leave or something horrible will happen.”
He put away the phone. “The key to talking with presidents is confidence. Never let them know how much trouble you’re in. I have to keep the FunnyBones people away from the train station. That’s my job. Yours is to find your stuff.”
He was practically fizzing with energy. Didn’t he ever get tired? It made Wylder tired just to watch him.
“You thought of all this when you were skipping around?” asked Wylder.
“Skipping increases the heart rate and the flow of blood to the brain. It’s like instant IQ. I urge you to try it!”
Uncle Vim dashed over to give Addy a good-bye hug, saluted and swirled out the door, catching the tail of his sweater. He freed himself with difficulty.
“Until we meet again!” he said and finally disappeared.
Wylder sank onto the couch and closed his eyes, just for a second. The Crowes were an exhausting clan, he decided.
The loudspeaker announced that there was half an hour to closing. Doors would open again tomorrow morning at 8:30. Then Wylder heard his name.
He went rigid, as if he’d been electrocuted.
“Wylder Wallace, please report to the information booth. This is an emergency message for Wylder Wallace.”
“What is that?” Addy looked up. “Who’s calling you on the BuzzBox?”
BuzzBox. Ha-ha.
“My mother,” he said. Only his mother would use a loudspeaker to track him down.
By now she would have sent about a thousand text messages to the cell phone in his backpack. Should he find a pay phone? Call her and try to explain? Would she understand? Not a chance. The moment she heard his voice, she would ground him for the rest of the millennium. Uncle Vim and Addy needed him. He couldn’t go home now, especially when Uncle Vim expected him to help.
“Wylder Wallace! Please report to the information booth immediately.”
He’d have to go. Addy was a friend, and Uncle Vim was super cool, but Mom was Mom. He opened the tattered comic book to the first page and called Addy over.
“You’ll have to do this without me,” he said. “I’m really sorry but I have to go, so it’s up to you.”
“Cut it out, now,” she said. “The old mug is gone.”
“The what?” He stared at her closely. “What mug? What are you talking about?”
“You know, the old geezer.” She made a squinty face.
A horrible suspicion grew inside Wylder. No, it didn’t grow—it had been there all along.
“Addy?” he whispered. “Where’s Catnip?”
“Who?”
Her eyes were wrong. The tilt of her mouth was wrong. She was wrong.
“Your rat.”
“Listen, you squit. I don’t know what the game is, but I’m on to you. You’re going to shake down this Uncle Vim fellow? That’s fine by me, but don’t be thinking you can pull the wool over my eyes. I’ll be Addy if you want, but I get my cut. I’m fly, I am.”
“You’re … Nelly.”
“And what if I am?”
Wylder felt as if his head was full of bells. He couldn’t hear himself think for the ringing. All the noise was screaming one dreadful fact.
He’d grabbed the wrong girl.
He remembered the dizzying smoke and the lammergeyer, with two girls in its talons. Krackle was a hideous mechanizmo—and so strong! It had been able to lift all three of them into the air—Nelly and Addy, plus Wylder clutching on to her.
Except it wasn’t Addy. It was Nelly he’d dragged through the portal, and here she was, as sharp and scheming as ever. And totally out of place!
But if this was Nelly …
Oh no! No, no, no!
Wylder paged through the comic, looking for the scene on the train roof, afraid of what he might find. He didn’t pause even when there was a clanking bump from the loudspeaker and another voice came over the air.
“Wylder Wesley Wallace, this is your mother speaking. You need to come here right this minute! Do you hear me? Do you hear me?”
His mother was in the building! But that wasn’t the worst thing. Wylder stared in horror.
