It happened one afternoon when Dave was home alone. Sticky simply crawled onto his shoulder and said, “Buenas tardes, señor!“
“What?” Dave said, looking at the gecko with wide eyes.
“You heard me, hombre,” Sticky said as he cocked his head. “I said, ‘Buenas tardes.’ You know, good afternoon?”
“I know what buenas tardes means! But…but…you talk?”
“Looks like,” Sticky said with a shrug, implying that Dave was brainy like a burro.
Dave shook out one ear.
He shook out the other.
“It’s impossible!” he whispered, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t hearing what he was indeed hearing. He looked at Sticky and said, “Talk again.”
“What do you want me to say, señor?”
Dave fell into a chair. “A talking lizard!” “A talking leeezard,” Sticky repeated, pronouncing “lizard” the only way his accent would allow.
“A talking lizard!” Dave said again, and ah though Dave was much, much larger than Sticky, he looked enormously frightened.
“A talking leeezard!” Sticky repeated again, and although Sticky was much, much smaller than Dave, he looked enormously amused.
Dave sat up a little. “How can you be talking? Are you enchanted? Bewitched? Cursed?”
Sticky shrugged. “I’m just me, señor.”
“Have you always been able to talk?” Dave asked, his voice but a whisper.
Sticky nodded his little gecko head and grinned. “Sí, señor. Ever since I can remember.”
“Can all lizards talk?”
“Ay caramba, don’t I wish? No! I’ve tried to teach them, but they look at me like my head’s full of loco berries! I say to them, Theees is how you do it, seeee? You move your leeeeeps. You push words ouuuuuut.’ But they won’t even try! All they want to do is eat bugs and sleep.”
“Eat bugs and sleep,” Dave said, like he was in a trance.
“Sí, señor. So what was I supposed to do? Hang around a bunch of sleepy-eyed cricket catchers for the rest of my life? No way, Jose! I needed to shake a tail! Flap a tongue! Find someplace where I belonged!”
Dave’s eyes were enormous. “And…and…you belong here!”
Sticky’s face scrunched to one side.
His eyes became a bit shifty.
He inspected the fingernails of his little gecko hand.
And just when it seemed he would huff on his nails and buff them against his chest, he put the hand down and muttered, “That depends on you, señor.”
“On me?”
“Sí. On whether you’re willing to help me.”
“Help you?” Dave asked helplessly. “Help you how?”
“Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky said. “This is not easy to explain.”
Dave stared at the lizard for a moment, then said, “Well, try!”
Sticky tapped his little gecko chin with a little gecko finger and murmured, “Dios mío, where to begin?” But then, with great gecko wisdom, he decided that the very best place to begin was… at the beginning.
Now, as Sticky told Dave about Damien Black and the ancient Aztec powerband, and the vast, unforgiving mountain where he had so selflessly risked life and limb, he did it in a very spicy way, generously seasoning the story with expressions that were neither English nor Spanish, nor even Spanglish. Expressions like “Holy tacarole!” and “Freaky frijoles!” and “Chony baloney!”
Expressions that, really, could only be called one thing:
Stickynese.
In fact, the telling of the tale became so spiced that as Sticky was explaining the power of each magic ingot, Dave could take it no longer. He jumped up and said, “Stop! I don’t believe you! Not for a minute! There’s no such thing as a wristband that can make you fly! Or turn you invisible! Or let you walk up walls! It’s impossible!”
Sticky pursed his lips.
He cocked his head.
His whole mouth screwed around from one side of his face to the other.
And at long last he said, “You cut me to the quick, señor. I am most insulted. Perhaps you are not the one to help me after all.” Then he jumped off of Dave’s shoulder and scurried across Dave’s bedroom, vanishing behind a small bookcase.
Dave cried, “Wait!” because although he knew a magic wristband was an impossibility, so, too, was a talking gecko lizard.
And what if it was true? In his wildest dreams, in his very best dreams, he could fly. And to be able to become invisible? That was more than he dared even dream of.
Dave pinched himself, but he was, in fact, not dreaming.
“Hello?” he asked, peering behind the bookcase. “Where’d you go?”
Just as he was beginning to fear that the lizard had disappeared, Sticky emerged over the top of a row of books, dragging the ancient Aztec wristband behind him.
“Holy smokes!” Dave gasped, for it was plain to see that this was no ordinary bracelet.
It glowed like a band of sunshine.
It shimmered like a deep pool of molten gold.
It had designs on it that were both foreign and mysterious. Designs that seemed to hold the secrets of an entire civilization.
Designs that, without a doubt, held the promise of power.
“Holy smokes!” Dave gasped again.
“So, señor” Sticky said, “do you still think I’m a liar?”
Dave’s head wagged slowly from side to side.
“Do you want to be able to fly and go invisible? Do you want to be able to lift boulders like pebbles and climb walls with ease? Do you want the speed of a roadrunner and the—”
“Yes,” Dave gasped. “Yes!”
Sticky crossed his arms and cocked his head. “Then you must promise this, señor: you will tell no one about the wristband, and you will tell no one that I can talk.”
“No one?” Dave asked, for even in his understandably stunned state of mind, he knew that this would be difficult. He had a talking lizard! And a wristband that (he now believed) could make him. fly.
How could he not tell someone about it?
But despite his understandably stunned state of mind, Dave did manage to realize that if he did tell someone—anyone—about any of it, the lizard would probably never speak to him again. And if that happened, who’d believe him?
People would think that he was crazy!
Mad!
Wholly and totally mental!
Or worse, a complete dork.
So with all these thoughts muddling through his stunned state of mind, Dave grudgingly agreed to Sticky’s conditions:
He would never tell a soul about the wristband.
He would never tell a soul that the lizard could talk.
“Very good,” Sticky said. “Because if you do, I will never talk to you again, and people will think you’re loco, man. Or worse, a complete dork.”
In the wink of an eye, Sticky had scurried up Dave’s leg and onto his shoulder, where he looked Dave directly in the eye and said, “So, señor, are you with me?”
Dave nodded.
“You will help me get the power ingots away from that wicked ratero Damien Black?”
“I will!” Dave said, his head bobbing with growing enthusiasm. “I swear I will!”
“I have to warn you, señor” Sticky said slyly, “it won’t be easy…”
“I don’t care!” Dave cried. “We’re good, he’s evil! We can do it! We can!”
Sticky smiled.
They bumped fists.
And so the pact was made.
For weeks after, Sticky and his new partner schemed and plotted and planned, carefully detailing ways to retrieve the power ingots. But in the end, they chucked it all and simply headed for Damien Black’s house, armed with the determination to get inside any way they could.
So! Now that you know what Dave and Sticky were doing, creeping through a frightening forest and an oozy, stinky cave toward the underbelly of a nightmarish mansion, let’s get back to them, shall we?
They are, after all, in grave peril…
