THE REST OF the school week is pretty much okay. All Joon wants to talk about on the bus is the Trivia Quest, which makes me nervous. But on the plus side, Principal Coffin doesn’t hold any more safety assemblies.
Still, I haven’t been sleeping well all this week. My mind’s too full of fire drills and airport explosions and purple sneakers flailing in the tops of trees.
So Saturday morning, when the phone rings early, I’m groggy.
“Dude! You still asleep? I can’t stop thinking about Trivia Quest!” Joon says. “Let’s make a plan. You want to bring a stack of your comics over?”
My eyes snap open. He wants to hang out? It’s been eons since I spent a Saturday at Joon’s. We used to, all the time. But he’s been so busy, with soccer and everything.
“Five minutes,” I tell him, grinning, “I’m there.”
As I head out, I glance next door. I haven’t seen the neighbor girl since Monday. I told Mom I did my duty and said hello, and left it at that.
But now, when I get to the end of the drive, there she is by the garbage pails, flattening out a bunch of cardboard moving boxes.
I freeze. She looks different, up close and out of the tree.
She must be at least six feet tall. Taller than Calvin. And skinny. Like, bony-skinny. Her hair’s bleached white, and shorter than mine. Below her forehead, she’s got kind of watery, green, bulging eyes.
Along with ripped black leggings, she’s got on a giant, dress-sized sweatshirt that says Frolicking Kittens.
“It’s a band,” she says to me.
“What?”
“Frolicking Kittens. That’s what you’re looking at, right?” She drops the piece of flattened cardboard she was holding, and pulls the sweatshirt out by the corners to better show off the picture of kittens. They have red fangs, and blood dripping from their claws. “It’s my mom’s old boyfriend’s band.”
“Okay. Cool.” My heart’s hammering, like it always does when I talk to a new person. I try to stare up at her face, not her shirt. At her watery, bulging eyes.
“When I was really little, we traveled around with them on tour,” she says. “But they broke up. Not the band—my mom and the drummer. And all I got was this lousy T-shirt.” She grins. Her teeth are small, with spaces between them.
“So,” I hear myself say. “Wh-where’d you move from?”
“Pittsburgh, the last couple of years, living with my uncle and my mom. Then my uncle moved here, and my mom and I figured we’d come, too—but she’s in LA, to try acting, and so, well, I decided to come here, to . . .” She gets a cloudy look on her face.
“To what?”
She shrugs. “Nothing. To keep Uncle Dan company, and help him with the move.” She puts her words in air quotes. I hate when people do that.
I have no idea what she’s talking about, so I just stare at her shoes.
“Liberty,” she finally says.
“And justice for all,” I reply.
“No, stupid.” She snort-laughs. “That’s my name.”
“Okay.” I swallow, hard.
“How old are you?” She nudges my shoulder with her bony elbow, and I take a step back.
“Almost thirteen,” I say. “Technically, twelve and nine months.”
Her eyebrows rise. “Wow. I’m less than a year older than you, and seriously about twice your height.” She snort-laughs again. “We’re two extremes.”
I scuff one sneaker against the other and steal a glance up the road, where Joon’s waiting. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, you’re right. I’m the smallest kid in school. But extremes are no good. I’d rather be the norm.”
She puts out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Norm.”
I shake her hand quickly. Then I sprint up the road. I’m sweating and all stressed out.
At the corner, I look back, and Liberty Silverberg is still standing there, watching me. She looks like an Axi-Tun warrior. A member of that alien race from the Fantastic Four. The Axi-Tun were giants, with the superpower of being able to manipulate energy.
Which makes sense. Because I feel like I just escaped from some kind of freakish force field.
Joon’s mom opens the door before I can knock, and stops yelling into her phone just long enough to shove a napkin with some home-baked granola bars into my hands. They’re crispy-chewy-salty and pretty much one of my favorite foods.
“Very healthy! Full of protein. Eat ’em and like ’em,” she orders. “Complaint department, fifth floor.”
That’s our standard joke because there’s no fifth floor at Joon’s.
Joon says his mom is the most uptight yoga studio owner in existence, but I like that you always know where you stand with Mrs. Lee—because she will tell you flat out. There’s something calming about that.
Joon’s upstairs, lying on his bed in a pile of comics and dirty laundry. I offer him a granola bar, but he waves it away.
“You’re in, for sure? No scaredy-cat backing out? We’re doing the Trivia Quest, definitely, right?” Joon flaps one of his silly Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew comics in my face.
“For sure!” I say. “Me? Back out?” I laugh. Ha ha! What an absolutely ridiculous question.
“Trivia Quest is a big deal, Stan. There’s tons of teams already signed up. I’ve checked everything out online. Seven clues. One day. And the clues can be about anything—any comic, from any time period. So I need you. Don’t wig out on me.”
“No problema!” I say, all fake-cheerful, even though my brain’s already flashing with possible disaster scenarios. Maybe getting down to work will help. I open my backpack. “Okay. Here. I made some comic history charts last week in study hall, just in case. Let’s start with the Golden Age of Comics, 1930s to 1950s.” I smooth out the folds in my pieces of paper, stare at my small, careful lettering. Just looking at the charts calms and comforts me. This is order. This is control. If I concentrate on the trivia, and I don’t think about the Quest itself, I just might get through it.
“How about we go through the superheroes one by one,” I say.
Joon grabs the chart from me. “Hey, there’s the Green Lama! Whoa. How many names on this list?”
“A ton of superheroes were born during the Golden Age. Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, the Atom, Hawkman, Green Arrow, and Aquaman . . . And that’s just on the DC side. Now, Marvel, or what was going to turn into Marvel, they created the Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, Captain America . . .”
“Captain Marvel,” Joon adds.
“Er, no.”
He squints. “Captain Marvel is not Marvel Comics?”
“He was under Fawcett. Then DC bought Fawcett.”
“So Captain Marvel is a DC comic? That’s weird.”
“Well, yeah. Sorta. And then the comic got renamed Shazam! And later, there was this thing called the Crisis on Infinite Earths, which led to a bunch of reboots, when a lot of stuff changed around. You’ll see—”
That’s when Joon gets a glazed look and says he has to go to the bathroom.
While he’s gone my thoughts slide back to the contest. I go to the official website on his laptop, just to see what I’m getting myself into.
At Trivia Quest, hundreds of comics fans from all over the world will compete for clues that send them to many local landmarks all around scenic downtown San Diego. For every clue solved, one gold token is awarded. Contestants who solve seven clues and collect seven gold tokens will automatically be awarded VIP passes to Comic Fest, which starts the following weekend! But never fear—there are consolation prizes as well. . . .
Hmm. Sounds intimidating.
“Joon,” I say as he comes back in. “You know, Trivia Quest sounds pretty much mainly for superfans. And grown-ups. This has to be only for grown-ups.”
“Nope. Read on, dude.”
I skim down the fine print and sure enough: Ages twelve to eighteen welcome to register with signed permission from a parent or guardian . . .
My stomach flops. How will I handle a whole day in a crowd downtown?
“It’s gonna be awesome!” Joon shouts.
I try to smile. “Yeah! Awesome!” I say, slapping him five.
I pray he doesn’t notice how weak my high five is.