You have a little time at the end of your pig Latin class. You spend it
A. drawing a picture of you drawing a picture.
B. seeing how long you can hold your breath without passing out.
C. filling out college applications, going through investment options, and generally planning out your entire afterlife.
Marlo, who was highly susceptible to any scenario involving holding her breath, tapped “B” on the touch screen.
“Oww!” she shrieked as one thousand volts of electricity were rudely introduced to her body through her left hand, currently trapped in Dr. Skinner’s Juice Box.
“The correct answer is C.” The screen blinked in admonishment.
Marlo tried to yank her hand out of the small black box, but it was apparently trapped there until she had answered every question on her Snap, Crackle, and Pop Quiz.
“Sounds like some loser got the wrong— OWW!” Lyon said-then-yelped from behind the cubicle wall.
Marlo smirked. Another question popped onto the screen.
You’ve just been diagnosed with earworms. Do you
A. stick your head in a stream and go ear-fishing?
B. flush your ear canal with scalding-hot oil?
C. dislodge the earworms with a maddeningly catchy jingle?
Milton would totally ace this stuff in his usual geektastically brainiac way, Marlo thought as she arbitrarily jabbed the screen, selecting “C” since the answer to nearly every multiple-choice question is the last one.
A slightly lower voltage of electricity jolted Marlo’s system. “Oww!” she cried.
“Correct! The best way to dislodge a musical earworm is with an even catchier jingle!”
“How come I answered the stupid question right and still got shocked?” Marlo whined.
“If you get a question wrong, you get a big electrical shock as punishment,” explained the long-faced Latino girl from an adjoining cubicle. “If you get it right, then—oww, ¡Ay, dios mío!—you get a smaller shock as a sort of reward: negative reinforcement and slightly less negative reinforcement.…”
Marlo leaned back in her cold steel chair and tried to fold her arms in defiance, which is really hard to do with only one arm free.
“Well, I’m not going to answer any of the questions, then, um …”
“Paloma,” the girl replied.
“Paloma,” Marlo said as a new question appeared on the touch screen.
A dream is your brain
A. sleeping on the job and squandering precious time by playing dress-up and acting all, like, “Hey, look at me!”
B. grappling with repressed complexes and working out subconscious issues that are, for the most part, incredibly stupid. I mean, c’mon already … showing up at school in your pajamas? Is that really something you’re worried about?
C. All of the above.
Marlo sat there, scowling at the screen for three long seconds, until a massive jolt of electricity—the strongest yet—coursed through her indignant young body.
“OWW! Flippin’ ninja burgers!” Marlo squealed. “That hurt more than any of them!”
“The correct answer was ‘C.’ Maybe you thought this was some kind of a dream, with you merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily rowing your brain boat when you should have been PAYING ATTENTION!”
The skinny Asian girl poked her head over the cubicle wall.
“Knock much, um …?” Marlo replied irritably, her short fuse nearly blown with electricity.
“Midori,” the girl replied sheepishly as she straightened her glasses. “It’s just that, well, if you don’t answer, that’s the worst answer of all.”
“You’re telling me,” Marlo grumbled, her hair a blue, prickly, static-clinged bush.
“It’s how they teach us to make decisions,” Midori said. “Because adults have to make them all the time.”
“So it doesn’t matter if those decisions are even good or bad,” Marlo replied.
“Yeah.”
“That is so typically … adult,” Marlo said, shaking her head. “And … thanks for the info.”
Midori smiled and disappeared behind the cubicle wall. The electricity wriggled inside of Marlo like little white-hot wasps, making her extra edgy and anxious.
A pair of zombie teens shambled past Marlo on their way to the vice principals’ offices. Marlo, her lip bloody from biting down on it, stared at them as they staggered down the hallway.
“What’s up with Mr. and Mrs. Personality?” Marlo said, hurling her question over the cubicle wall. “It’s like they’re … I don’t know … buffering or something.”
“The teachers’ aides?” Midori replied. “No one knows for sure. They used to be—oww! Itai, oya~tsu!—normal.”
“Normal?” Marlo repeated.
“Yeah, but then they came down with cooties,” Midori said. “After a week in the infirmary, they returned but were never the same.”
“What? OWW!” Marlo yelped, having just ignored another question on her screen.
Like a feral animal caught in a trap, Marlo leaned into the Juice Box and spat on her hand. Then she squirmed her hand around in the box until it was nice and slick. With one last painful tug, Marlo yanked her hand free.
“My brother has been gone way too long,” she said, “and his big sister is going to find out what’s happening before he turns into a walking sack of zombified nothing.…”
Marlo opened the door to Solomon Grundy’s office. The pale and drawn old man was lying in a hospital bed with Dr. Curie weeping beside him. Dr. Curie held the man’s emaciated hand to her glowing green cheek. She glared at Marlo with her tear-swollen eyes.
“What do you want?” Dr. Curie said with a snort.
“What’s wrong with him?” Marlo replied from the doorway.
“He grew worse on Friday,” she replied.
“Oh … right. Look, I wanted to talk to him about my brother. He and the other cooties kids have been in the infirmary a long time.”
Dr. Curie straightened up in her chair and wiped her eyes. “They are very sick. So?”
Marlo put her hands on her hips. “I want to see my brother.”
Dr. Curie stood up and smoothed her frizzy gray-and-black hair back into a bun.
“The infirmary is under quarantine,” she said sternly. “Vice principals’ orders.”
Marlo turned huffily on her heel. “Then I’ll take it up with them,” she said as she stormed away.
The pink Girls’ Boardroom door was ajar. Marlo stepped inside Cleopatra’s grand throne room, her footfalls echoing against the gold-and-tan tiled floor.
Napoléon sat on Cleopatra’s divan, his little legs dangling over the edge. Marlo gulped, suddenly nervous. The last time she had seen Napoléon was in the Undermines, laughing as Ponce de León was swallowed up by quicksand. Cleopatra leveled her simmering, kohl-rimmed gaze at Marlo.
“Knock much?” Cleopatra said with hot disdain as she lay on her elegant throne.
Napoléon, with his dark, murderous eyes, motioned for his demon foot servants to “greet” Marlo.
“I … I want to see my brother,” Marlo said. “He’s in the infirmary.”
The hunched demon foot servants rattled toward Marlo, their canvas sack-covered bodies crumpled forward from tight chains wrapped up and over them like suspenders.
“We know very well where your brother is and zhe infirmary is restricted!” Napoléon exclaimed.
Virgil and Frances appeared behind Marlo in the doorway.
“I don’t want him turning into one of those creepy, slackadaisical teachers’ aides,” Marlo continued.
Napoléon’s demon foot servants, Armstrong and Patrick Harris, considered Marlo with eyes that glowed red beneath their canvas sack skin.
More curious children began to mill around outside of the Girls’ Boardroom.
“Sacré bleu!” Napoléon shouted. “What is zhis? Mutiny on zhe bouncy castle?”
“I demand to see my brother!” Marlo declared, emboldened by the children behind her. “Like … really soon!”
“Yeah,” Frances said, stepping into the boardroom. “And we saw what you did to Ponce de León in the Undermines!”
Napoléon’s nostrils flared with rage. “I should send you teeny boppers to zhe guillotine for such willful rabble-rousing!” he shouted, looking like a furious near-life-sized tin soldier.
Cleopatra patted him softly on the shoulder. “I have a better way,” she purred. She spilled off her elegant couch and fluttered her gleaming plaited cornrows with her hand. “I am glad you are all here, Junior Executives.” Her voice billowed like the intoxicating smoke of her fragrant incense. “For I have a special announcement: tonight there will be a Precocia-sanctioned social gathering … a dance.”
The children gasped, their attention shattered like a broken mirror, breaking off into dozens of side conversations.
Cleopatra’s lips coiled into a self-satisfied smile. “See, mon petit emperor,” she whispered, “nothing distracts the teeming teen masses like the delicious disorientation of a dance.…”
Marlo and Lyon sat cross-legged on the floor of the Boys’ Boardroom, dressed in massive pink crinoline gowns with hoop skirts, curling lengths of ribbon with safety scissors. Punch bowls filled with prune juice and Ensure were set on tables pushed to the sides of the room.
“Why are, like, me and Thrift Store here the decorating committee?” Lyon complained.
Midori helped Paloma stick gray balloons to an arch just inside the doorway.
“Vice Principal Cleopatra says that when you’re grown up, you never get to work with your friends,” Midori said. “You have to work with people you either instantly hate or learn to hate over time.”
Just then, four lizards in gold lamé suits slithered into the boardroom. They dragged broken toy pianos, horns, and guitars behind them. The tallest lizard—nearly two feet high—leered over the top of his Ray-Bans.
“Where should we, you know, set up?”
Lyon grimaced and pointed to the corner.
“Over there … as far as you can be away from me while still being in this room.”
The lizard winked his double-lidded eye and crawled away. As the band set up their pseudo-instruments, the boys started filing in wearing ill-fitting pale blue tuxedos.
“HELLO? Is this thing on?” the lead lizard said into his microphone. “It’s great to be here in”—he looked down at a slip of paper—“Precocia. It’s great to be anywhere, actually, with the frightening popularity of lizard-skin boots. I kid. Hey, what do you call a lizard that lays down some funky rhymes? A rap-tile! Well, I hope you’re all ready to rock out. We’ve been practicing our scales all week … a one, two, three, FOUR!”
The band launched into a loud, guitar-heavy dance number, with the lead lizard swinging his microphone like a windmill.
So get out of your seat
These mad, bad beats are dropping
So move the toe tags on your feet.”
Virgil and Angelo scoped out the room, with the boys and girls on either side as if the room were a giant, socially awkward teeter-totter. Angelo spotted Marlo. She was trying to look cool and not sway to the music, but she couldn’t help herself. She caught him staring at her. Angelo smiled. Marlo quickly looked away.
“So, you said her brother is in the infirmary?” Angelo said nonchalantly.
“Yeah,” Virgil replied, hooking his finger around the collar of his too-tight tuxedo. He stared at Marlo who, even in her nauseatingly pink and poofy dress, still—to Virgil—looked like a princess, albeit a dead, surly, blue-haired one with a serious shoplifting problem.
“Why don’t you ask her to dance?” Angelo said with a smirk, noting Virgil’s interest.
“I … I don’t really know how,” Virgil replied. “Unless you count line dancing—”
“Which no one does,” Angelo interjected. “Here, watch me … I’ll show you how it’s done.”
Angelo swaggered toward Marlo. The girls bunched together suddenly like pigeons.
“Hey, um …,” Angelo said with a noncommittal nod of his head.
“It’s Marlo,” Marlo replied, trying to look as cool as she could despite her big, pink Hostess Sno Ball dress.
“Right. Marlo.”
Marlo wrung her sweaty hands. “So … um … this dance is pretty lame, right?”
“Yeah,” Angelo said, staring off into space. “Lame.”
Marlo, flustered, began to laugh nervously. “It would be, you know, funny, if we danced or something.”
“I don’t really do the ‘dancing’ thing,” Angelo said coolly before walking away.
Marlo stared at her feet, fuming with embarrassment. “Dances blow,” she grumbled as Virgil awkwardly approached.
“Um … hey,” he said, willing himself to stop sweating and doing a terrible job of it. “I was, you know, wondering if—”
Angelo brushed past, wedging himself in between Virgil and Marlo. He handed Marlo a cup of prune juice. “Did you miss me?” he said, flexing his jaw muscles to produce two perfect dimples.
Marlo smiled, going from mad to sad to glad in about fifteen seconds flat. “Not really,” she murmured, sipping her drink.
Myung-Dae shuffled to the dance floor in awkward mechanical jerks. “You know, if we were all really robots and were doing the ‘robot,’ we’d really just be doing the ‘us,’ ” he explained to Midori.
Midori laughed and began to lurch alongside of him in cyber-rhythmic fits and starts.
The lizards bowed as they finished their first song. They lapped up the tepid applause as if it were sugar water bobbing with dead flies, which lizards really, really like.
“Thank you very much,” the lead lizard said, wiping his sweaty forehead with a kerchief. “We’d like to bring things down a bit now.…”
The band slumped sullenly over their instruments.
“My heart beat ‘Welcome,’
Then you wiped your feet on it.
Cupid’s arrow’s dipped in venom,
Now I’m bleeding a sonnet …”
Virgil sighed as Frances stepped up next to him to stare at Marlo and Angelo, who were chatting quietly.
“What does he have that I don’t?” Virgil asked grimly.
Frances sipped a cup of prune juice and grimaced. “Do you want a list itemized alphabetically or by priority?” she said.
“Staring contest!” Angelo suddenly blurted. “You and me … GO!”
Marlo and Angelo locked eyes for a minute-long ocular wrestling match until finally, Angelo (despite his intense blue gaze) broke free.
“I win!” Marlo said with a crooked smile.
Angelo grinned. His smile was so bright that Marlo literally had to squint.
“Nope, I won ’cause I got to stare at you for a full minute without it being creepy,” he replied.
Marlo had so many feelings tumbling within her that she had to laugh to relieve some of the pressure.
“What was that?” Angelo said, the faintest flicker of outrage in his eyes.
“Laughter,” she replied nervously as she stepped back against the wall. “You know: the second-best medicine.”
“Second best? What’s the best medicine, then?”
Marlo shrugged. “Medicine.”
Angelo leaned against the wall next to Marlo, acting like a fence between her and the other kids.
“You put me on the rack,
Then you tortured me with bliss,
My heart’s under attack,
So do me in with your kiss …”
With that, Angelo brushed his full lips against Marlo’s. Marlo closed her eyes. Her heart fluttered weakly to the slow crawl of the chemical candy music. Her veins felt like they were pumping ginger ale, her mind foaming over with tiny bubbles of fizzy paradise.
“I feel … good,” Marlo murmured. “And really bad …”
Marlo crumpled. Angelo scooped her up effortlessly in his strong arms.
“What happened?” Virgil exclaimed. “Is she okay?”
Angelo smirked. “She fainted. Can’t say this hasn’t happened to me before.” He brushed past Virgil across the dance floor. Angelo stopped suddenly in front of the band, holding the unconscious Marlo in his arms while leaning into the microphone.
“I need to get this girl to the infirmary!” he said dramatically. “Stat!”
Angelo elbowed his way past Dr. Curie. His keen eyes traced the infirmary like blue laser scopes searching for their target.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Dr. Curie scolded, her radioactive radiance lighting the way. “This is a cooties hot zone.”
“Where should I put her?” Angelo asked as he examined the mostly empty beds.
“Set her there,” she replied tersely, pointing to a corner bed with “Fauster” scrawled on the headboard.
Angelo dropped Marlo onto the bed like a sack of Mrs. Potato Heads.
“Where am I?” Marlo muttered, her eyes fluttering briefly. “The infirmary …?” she added before passing out again.
“Where is her brother?” Angelo asked, glaring at the woman with intimidating intensity.
Dr. Curie swallowed. “They are having their treatments, of course,” she said nervously, her eyes betraying her thoughts by quickly flicking toward the hall.
Angelo smirked as he reached behind his back. “Well, I’ll just pop in and say hello,” he said as he strode past her, stealthily plucking a long, silver blade from his back.
“What is zhis boy doing here?” Napoléon shouted as he marched into the infirmary with Cleopatra slinking just behind. “Zhis area is under zhe quarantine!”
Dr. Einstein shuffled in from the hallway, followed by two zombie teenagers dragging Bordeaux behind them. A few old mayfly demons swarmed behind the vice principals.
Angelo sighed and tucked his blade up into his sleeve.
“I was just leaving,” he said. “I wanted to make sure Margot was safe.”
He walked past the vice principals, giving Cleopatra a wink as he entered the elevator.
“There’s something about that boy,” Dr. Curie said, her hand around her throat.
“Yes,” Cleopatra said with a vague grin. “He’s got ‘muddle management’ written all over him.…”
The zombie teenagers plopped Bordeaux onto a bed marked “Radisson” as two more shambled inside.
“Well, everything seems under control now zhat we’ve had to personally come down to maintain order,” Napoléon said with his long nose up in the air. “We will leave you all to coordinate zhe changing of zhe guard … or Kronosgraph needles, specifically.”
Napoléon and Cleopatra left the infirmary while Dr. Curie and Dr. Einstein, both highly distracted, walked out into the hallway. One of the zombie teenagers stared at Marlo’s bed with glassy-eyed confusion.
“Fauster? Again? Okay …” He grunted to himself before hoisting Marlo, bundled in her blanket, up into his arms. A mayfly demon buzzed alongside him and slipped a black leather helmet hood with a long pointy tip on top of Marlo’s head.
“What the …?” Marlo muttered vaguely.
The teenage boy passed a zombified girl in the hallway as she dragged Milton along the floor to the bed that, only moments ago, had been occupied by his sister.