MONDAY MORNING, 6:50 alarm. I open my eyes and think: Ugh. My sixth miserable, torturous week as a Peavey Middle Schooler stretches out ahead of me. How will I get through?
Plus today’s the day Mom’s forcing me to go say hello to that new girl next door. Double ugh.
I hit snooze and drift . . . until my eyes fly open in a panic. It’s 7:05!
Red Alert!
Red Alert!
Pretend your body’s the starship Enterprise, and it’s going into emergency mode: woop woop. With each woop, liquid panic pulses from your guts to the tips of your fingers and toes.
Lots of things give me Red Alerts. Principal Coffin’s safety drills. Fear of crowds. Too much noise. Getting stuck in a dog crate.
Missing the school bus!
I throw my clothes on and pound downstairs in record time. Whew! Cal’s still in the kitchen, cramming papers in his backpack while shoveling toast in his face. But it’s 7:09, and at 7:09, I know for a fact the bus is already on Canyon Rim.
“Come on!” I say, jumping up and down to help ease the panging Red Alerts. “We’re going to miss it!”
Cal opens wide to show me his mouthful of disgusting mush. “Go by yourself, dweeb.”
“Mom says we’re supposed to go together!” I say. Which is true. It’s also true that the six-lane intersection on Canyon Rim, with its honking cars and bus exhaust, freaks me out just enough that I’d rather wait for Cal.
We run-walk down our drive, then past the neighbors. That new girl is probably still in bed. Homeschooled. She can probably do whatever the heck she wants today. No Peavey Middle School of Panic. What the heck does Mom want me to say to her? Just ring the bell and—what then? Why does Mom like to torture me with requests like this? Glurgh. My stomach tightens.
Cal and I jog up the hill, each road and intersection getting busier and busier. At the traffic light, our bus is a flash of yellow, just pulling away! But Cal, who’s a fast sprinter, takes off and waves it down.
The doors hiss open, and Olga points a blue-nailed finger at us, from up on the driver’s seat. “That’s two times in one month for you boys. I’m not putting up with any more what you call lollygagging,” she says in her Russian accent.
Cal grunts and pushes past.
“He’s sorry, Olga. I’m sorry,” I whisper, gasping, my heart pounding from the run. “It won’t happen again.”
Olga’s always got a trucker cap on, a big wad of gum in her mouth, and mirrored wraparound sunglasses. I’ve never seen her eyes. She keeps the local radio station turned up so loud on her bus, my head pounds. And it seems like every other song is by this band named Electric Blue Oblivion that the girls are nuts about. They usually sit in the front seats by the speaker, singing louder and louder until Olga shouts, “Hey, pop divas, simmer down!”
The bus lurches forward, and I practically fall into my usual seat next to Joon.
“Dude.” Joon fist-bumps me as the bus heads out. “Guess what? My oldest sister, Kari, got a nose ring and shaved her head. Mom was so mad she was shouting in Korean so fast no one could tell what she was saying.” Joon touches his own thick brown hair. Lately, he’s started spiking it into pointy triangles with a ton of this stinky gel. I haven’t said anything to him yet, but I think Joon’s probably been watching too much Dragon Ball Z.
“Maybe you should shave yours off, too,” I suggest. “The Green Lama’s bald, right?”
He gives me a dirty look.
I don’t know why because Joon’s always loved the Green Lama. It’s been his favorite vintage comic superhero since fourth grade. A superpowered Buddhist monk from the 1940s who fights evil in a glowing green cloak? What’s not to like? “The Lama puts the om in O-M-G!” Joon used to say to me. “Never diss the Lama!”
We ride awhile in silence. Then I take a breath and ask him something I never used to have to ask, because it was a given: “So . . . do you want to hang out together this weekend?”
Joon doesn’t answer right away. He’s staring at Gaby Garcia, two seats up. Joon would submit to torture before actually admitting he likes Gaby, but I can tell he does.
“Well . . . I was thinking about biking to the comic shop on Saturday,” Joon says. “Like I’ve told you, I’m kind of over just hanging at our houses.”
The only time Joon ever talked me into biking to the comic shop was last year. My pant leg got caught in the chain, and I had to stop for him to fix it for me. Then the busy traffic and noise of Camino Real spooked me so much, I skidded through a bunch of gears by accident, wiped out, and almost got hit by a car. I’m not what you’d call a cycling enthusiast.
“If you hang at my house this weekend instead of biking,” I say, “I’ll give you one of my comics—you don’t need to buy one.”
He shakes his head so that the gel-spikes tremble. “Dude,” Joon says, looking kind of sad. “We should do stuff.”
I frown. “I do stuff.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I went to the town pool with you a few weeks ago.”
“And you stood around in the shallow end with a bunch of ninety-year-old men. It was embarrassing.”
“I don’t like to swim in the deep end. Plus those guys were interesting.”
“Half the girls in the seventh grade were there. That was interesting.”
I look at the hair-flippers in the front seat, shrieking along to the radio, and cover my ears. Joon sinks down in his seat, looking gloomy.
Finally, the bus pulls into the school drive. And at the same time, Olga’s radio goes:
GLONNGGGG!!
Electric Blue Oblivion cuts out, and a smooth, deep voice comes on instead. It’s kind of a cross between Severus Snape and a monster-truck announcer.
“Greetings, comics fans! Some call me the greatest comic artist of all time. But what is time? Time, dear fans, is fluid, more fluid than the ink with which I draw and create my Galaktikan-Metropole worlds.”
Joon and I snap to attention.
“Whoa,” Joon says. “Is that—it can’t be—is that—”
“It is! It’s the Master!” I say, feeling giddy. One of the biggest names in comics is speaking to us on the radio! He’s got movies, graphic novels, you name it. He’s got his own TV show. Big stuff. We stare at each other in disbelief.
“Comic Fest is coming soon, and to celebrate, I’m announcing something new this year: Trivia Quest! A giant trivia treasure hunt that will take place all around downtown San Diego! Enter Trivia Quest, solve all the clues, and you will receive a super-VIP behind-the-scenes pass for the following weekend to . . . Comic Fest!!”
Win a pass to Comic Fest? That’s the biggest comics convention in the country. Cool costumes! Famous people! Fan gear and gizmos! I follow it online and on TV every year, like gazillions of others. But the odds of scoring tickets are about the same as getting bitten by a mutant spider and turned into Spider-Man.
“Finish the Quest,” says the Master on the radio, “And get into the Fest! And what’s more—”
Olga snaps the radio off. “Outta here, lollygaggers,” she yells.
“Dude!” Joon’s eyes are barely focusing. He points a trembling finger at the radio. “That . . . Trivia Quest thing? We. Are. So. Doing. That!” Then he puts up both fists for a bump.
I nod and smile. Blood is beginning to pound in my ears. I almost can’t breathe, I’m so excited. Because no one knows comic book trivia like I do. It’s my one and only superpower. This Trivia Quest thing is made for someone like me to enter! And Joon knows it!
For once, he’ll totally need me!
But . . . but . . .
Wait.
The Quest is all the way downtown. It sounds hard. And crowded. And long. And exhausting. And noisy. And . . .
Joon is 100 percent pumped.
“YES!” I say, fist-bumping him. “We are SO doing that!”
My stomach’s a little queasy, but I can overlook it. Because as we’re leaving the bus, Joon kind of jumps on my back and punches me on my shoulder, and then he grins at me like the Joon I used to know. The Joon who used to be proud to be my friend.