TWELVE

Something atop the prison growled. Some little servomotor whined like a dog. The motion sensors, wherever they were, ogled the yard between the jail and the fence and thought they saw a ghost.

I was dressed in bubbles. Covered head to toe in a really unflattering outfit of bubbles. It was Halloween, and this year I was going as...bubbles. I was trick-or-treating my first house, a big pimple with a gun that would vaporize me if it didn’t like my costume.

I shuffled forward, cocooned inside a fine froth. That fine froth was inside a layer of bigger beads, then another layer like party balloons, and all of this inside one big bubble the size of a tollbooth.

Bill was in there with me. Every now and then he snapped his antennae, sending little electric orders to the bubbles to keep them all together.

I was passing a ring of lights now, lights that shone directly on the dome ahead of me. I was always taught that you should try to draw attention away from a pimple this size, but whatever, different strokes.

I was about halfway there, and I still couldn’t see a way in.

Some motion sensors won’t detect you if you’re not moving fast enough. Some motion sensors can’t see you if you block them with clear glass. All of this came to me now, half remembered from an episode of MythTesters. So I minced forward in my bubble ensemble, and tried not to breathe too flamboyantly, and dared that automatic rifle not to pop suddenly out the top of the prison and erase my head.

You know what I never liked as a kid? Jack-in-the-boxes. I don’t know why I mention this.

I left the lights in the yard behind, and winced at the way they cast my blurry shadow up the side of the dome.

I mean, I played with my jack-in-the-box because I didn’t have a lot of toys, but I basically hated every minute of it. I’d crank it really slowly because I was too young to know that playing “Pop Goes the Weasel” slowly is what directors do to make their movies scarier. Then the clown would bang out of his clown hole, and I’d scream and whack him with a TV remote until he was locked up again.

I was still forty feet away when the dome growled another growl and the rifle cocked up and swiveled around. I froze.

It was pointed dead at me. Then with a clack it twitched to my right. Then a little too far to the left. It kept jerking its head around like a bird, an anxious mother bird who couldn’t decide if I was after her egg or not.

I held my breath and did not move a muscle.

After about forty seconds of this I was turning blue, but the rifle whirred and snapped itself back into the dome again.

I exhaled, then sucked back air. When I was sure I wasn’t going to pass out, I took one slow turtle step toward the jail.

CLACK, the rifle raised its head again.

And snap, Bill broke free of our bubble coat and flew off around the dome.

Coward, I thought. And my second thought was, No, that’s mean—he’s already been super helpful for a billboard. And then I watched the rifle swing away from me and follow Bill and I thought, Oh.

Bill was fast. The rifle swung a full circle, chasing him, and around went Bill again. And again, drawing a ring of bubbles behind him, tracing and retracing an O above my head.

I surged toward the dome, leaving my disguise behind me like a cartoon cloud. I heard the rifle seize up, swing back the other way. We had it good and confused now, and it fired over my head, erasing the bubbles and creating a good-sized divot in the yard. I reached the edge of the dome and leaped, landing on my hands and knees about halfway up and scrambling the rest of the way, then ducking as the rifle came around again. I stood up behind its butt end and scrambled this way and that to stay behind the butt end as it swiveled back and forth.

I said “butt end” a couple of times. Pardon my language.

Anyway, the rifle looked like it might have Bill in its sights, so I leaped on top, trying to wrestle it in a safer direction. Instead it spun so fast it threw me clear.

“YeeeeEEEEE!” I shrieked, and skidded a few feet down the side of the dome. I raised my head and saw the rifle turning to give me a good look up its barrel again, so I pushed off with my legs as hard as I could. The rifle lit up again and fired, and I heard a loud BWOMP behind me.

Now I was just crouching under the rifle’s chin. It spun and spun but couldn’t find me anymore. I glanced back and saw that the dome had a small smoking dent where I’d been sitting a moment before. A dent, but no hole. So there—this prison was made from some reinforced material that even the eraser guns couldn’t breach.

Up high like this, I could see that the dome was connected by a covered tunnel to a smaller dome near the fence on the opposite side. But more importantly, there was a narrow hole in the tippy-top of the dome where I was crouching—a missing jigsaw piece the exact size and shape of a collapsible rifle. It was small—way too narrow to fit a Boov. But a thirteen-year-old who hadn’t had anything to eat for the past twenty-four hours?

I squinted down through the gap. It was kind of dark in there, but it looked like a hallway. Possibly an empty hallway. I kicked my legs in, dangled them down, pushed my fat belly through, then got stuck at the shoulders.

The rifle turned and turned.

Bill appeared and landed on my head. I couldn’t see him anymore, but I felt him like a big barrette in my hair.

“Bill!” I said. “Thank God, pardon my language. You’re a brave little billboard.”

I heard Bill spell something that I probably wouldn’t have been able to read anyway.

“I’m stuck, Bill,” I said, as the frame of the rifle’s housing cut into my armpits. “Ow. Maybe you could squirt some bubbles down here and butter me up a little?”

The rifle had grown still.

“Hey,” I said. “I just thought of something. If the gun doesn’t have anything to shoot at anymore, does that mean it’s going to—”

The gun collapsed on top of my head and knocked me like a square peg through the gap.

I crumpled to the hallway below. Groaning, I clutched my head and opened my eyes. Bill was making tipsy figure eights above me.

“Ugh,” I said. “You okay, Bill?”

Bill bumped into my face.

I tried to rise, missed, tried again. As I got to my feet, one of the walls of the corridor flickered with light.

And in the light was J.Lo.

“J.Lo!” I cheered. “Finally! Are you okay?”

J.Lo looked like he answered, but I couldn’t hear it. He was in a cell, the only cell in this corridor, and it was behind a wall of thick glass. The other three walls were close, and made from a very serious-looking honeycomb of black metal. He had a little sleeping chair and a chair for something I preferred not to think about, and in an upper corner of the cell was a screen, silently playing the presidential debate. The TV camera fixed on Smek, and now Sandhandler, and I thought, Wow, it really is mandatory.

J.Lo looked like he was shouting something new, but I still couldn’t hear. Then he stopped and sighed. He pressed his hands to the glass. He smiled at me.

I smiled back. “You can hear me?” I asked.

He nodded.

“And I can’t hear you because of some gadget, right? Some stupid noise-canceling thing that’s supposed to make you think about the emptiness of space and feel all bad about yourself?”

J.Lo frowned and mouthed, What?

“Forget it,” I said. “Your voice is okay?”

He nodded again, and pointed at the bluzzer doing loop-de-loops by my ear.

“Oh!” I said. “J.Lo, this is William Board. His friends call him Bill. Bill, J.Lo.”

J.Lo waved. Bill tried to spell something, but all that came out his backside was a glob of foam.

J.Lo pointed to my right, and then at his mouth, and back to the right again. Next to the glass was a big panel of knobs and buttons. So I pressed and switched and turned and mashed everything like the kind of little kid who thinks a soda machine will give him a free Coke if he just wants it badly enough. And it kind of did give me a free Coke—that is, a can of something shot from a slot inside the cell and hit J.Lo on the back of the head. And a koobish dropped in from the ceiling, and the lights above J.Lo changed colors a few times, and a dozen robot arms flexed out from the walls and punched him all over with tiny mittens.

“Sorry!” I said. “Sorry!” I tried to put all the buttons and switches back how they’d been. The lights were stuck on pink, but the arms ratcheted back into the walls. J.Lo rose from the floor, wearily.

The koobish minced around the cell, and noticed the glass partition, and walked into it.

“Okay,” I said, squaring myself against the wall. “Stand back. I’m, like, super strong on this planet, right? Maybe I can break it.” J.Lo hopped to the rear of the cell. Even the koobish stepped back—leaving a greasy, koobish-shaped print—and watched me throw a punch and crack my knuckles against the glass.

I tried not to cry in front of J.Lo. But I bent over and pressed my hand into my mouth.

“Ow.”

The koobish was smooshing its face around on the glass. J.Lo took a bite out of its rump before pushing it aside. Then he opened his huge mouth wide and huffed on the glass, tracing a fingertip across it before the fog faded. He still wasn’t great with written English—if you ever need your lemonade stand to look adorably stupid, you’ll want J.Lo to paint the signs. So when the fog read

I figured I knew roughly what he was talking about. I didn’t.

“Sell my phone?” I said. “Like for bail money? But I didn’t even bring it, remember? You said it wouldn’t work here.”

J.Lo stared for a moment with a deflating head before brightening and fogging up the glass again.

I pressed my palms against the window. “I. Didn’t. Bring. It. I thought you could hear me on that side. I don’t have a cell pho—”

J.Lo was drumming on his face in frustration. Then he put a finger up like he was playing charades and mimed that he was rattling invisible bars.

“Jail?” I asked, and when he nodded I got it. “Oh! Jail cell phone!” I looked at the panel again. “One of these things is a phone?”

J.Lo muttered silently to himself, then breathed on the glass again and drew a word in Boovish:

Which I guess meant “mute,” because I found a button labeled just like that and pushed it, and suddenly J.Lo was muttering to himself in high-def sound that rattled like a low-flying airplane straight through the wall behind me.

“...’CAUSE IF YOU HAD ONLY BEEN STUDYING THE BEGINNING BOOVISH FLASHEDCARDS LIKE YOU PROMISED THEN YOU COULD READ THE BUTTONS YOURSELFOH HELLO IS THE PHONE ON NOW?”

I found the volume and turned it down. On the TV Ponch Sandhandler was saying, “My opponent will tell you it takes a strong leader to maintain a well-ordered society.”

I glanced at it, and you could see that Smek had planned to say that, because he crossed something out on his speech. Sandhandler continued:

But I tell you that a well-ordered society that never changes doesn’t need a strong leader. What has the house of Smek done for you lately?

I tried to ignore the TV. I’m one of those people at restaurants who can’t stop watching the hockey game on the set behind you, even though I don’t care about hockey. It’s a problem.

“How are you feeling?” I asked J.Lo.

“Relieved. The TV just reported that you died again.”

“Again?”

“Second time today.”

Ladies and gentlemen and ladygentlemen and gentleladies and gentlemen­tlemen and mentlegentladies and gentlemen­men­men­men: I say that you good people take care of yourselves. You maintain your own society! But we are like clocks, forever going around and around and never moving forward!

“Are you watching the television?” asked J.Lo.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I guess I had thought that we were having a friendship moment,” J.Lo added.

“We were. I’m just expecting something to happen. At the debate. Something I overheard earlier.”

“Well, you can let me know whento it comes. I will just relax here inside my filthy prison.”

“No, seriously,” I said. “I’m sorry. Now how do I get you out?”

“There is there a combination lock on the other side: five variables, each with ten possible values.”

“Yes! Okay!” I said, and I started blindly turning the digits, trying combinations.

“Now,” said J.Lo: “with only five variabilities and ten possibles we can determines that there are merely one hundred thousand combinations, so that if you keep trying one every second it will only take...on average...thirteen hours.”

I paused. “Thirteen hours?”

“Well, fourteen. I rounded downward so you would not get discouraged.”

We stared at each other, uselessly. On the TV, Sandhandler was saying

Five hundred years ago we were excited about the change from lighter-than-air ships to heavier-than-air ships. The ships we enjoy today are still very similar to those earliest designs. Do you know what the humans were excited about five hundred years ago? Chimneys.

The crowd gasped.

“Chimneys!” Sandhandler said again. “Andyetnow look how far they have come! While we are as stagnant as the pond that bears Smek’s name in Nacho Park!”

J.Lo said, “Are you watching the—”

“No. No, I was just thinking. I’ll have to look around the rest of the prison,” I said. “Right?” There was a door at one end of this corridor. It probably led to that covered tunnel and the smaller dome that I’d seen earlier. Probably some other Boov, too. “Maybe someone will have the combination written down...somewhere.”

I think the impossibleness of what I’d been trying settled in on us both. Even Bill’s loop-de-loops had a little less verve. Only the koobish was happy, galumphing around the cell with a bite out of its butt.

On the TV, Smek said:

My jerk opponent thinks my leadership has not been forward-thrusting and dynamic! He says that you, the good Boovish people, have stagnated! How dare he do this? Also, do not stagnant ponds also change? A stagnant pond grows things. Unexpected things! Under the quiet surface a thousand million bacteria are hustling and bustling! You, my people, are like bacteria!

This wasn’t going over super well with the crowd.

“You need to find somebody who will be on your side, Tip,” said J.Lo. “Someones who will listen, and get you safely home again. Maybies this Sandhandler.”

“Actually, there might be someone else on New Boovworld who can help,” I told him.

“Yes? Whonow?”

Well, let me introduce you to a man who does not think Ponch Sandhandler should be the new HighBoov. Ladies and gentlemen and ladygentlemen and gentleladies and gentlementlemen and mentlegentladies and gentlemenmenmenmen: I give you the hero of Earth, Dan Landry!

“Him,” I said.

“Unexpected turn of events from Captain Smek,” said a newscaster, as Landry took the stage. “Are candidates allowed to have special guests during the debate, Bish?”

“No idea, Chad,” said the other newscaster. “But the crowd here has gone wild for the human whom many Boov affectionately call ‘not completely useless.’”

“Yes!” said J.Lo. “You will find Dan Landry and go back to Earth with him. Then Landry will call the president of the United States, and he—”

J.Lo was interrupted by a low rumble that came from beyond the door at the end of the hall. A distant rumble, but a big one that you could feel in your feet, up your legs, in the pit of your stomach.

“What was—”

Another noise, closer. A loud bang of some kind. Then the sound of a whole room collapsing. And I had nowhere to go. I’d lost the hoverbutt, so I couldn’t get out the way I’d come in, and all the while the noises got louder and nearer to the hallway’s only door.

“Thank you!” said Dan Landry. “Thank you all! It is an honor to visit your fine new home.”

We were quiet, watching the door. Even the koobish watched. Then footsteps, Boovish footsteps, and suddenly a hole appeared in the hallway door.

The remains of the door fell clattering to the floor, and we all jumped. And through the hole stepped a masked Boov with a really big gun. Which he then pointed at me.

He wore a rubber uniform, the kind of suit J.Lo used to wear. But every one of those suits I’d ever seen came in the same five colors, and this one was uniquely black. Black all over, the matte black of stealth bombers and secret conspiracies. His mask was black too, with dark goggles and a skeletal grille over the mouth.

I figured I was dead, but the masked Boov hesitated. He lowered his gun.

“You,” he said with a buzzing, electronic voice.

Captain Smek is telling the truth, you know, when he says that I don’t think Ponch Sandhandler should be president. I don’t. Let me tell you a little about the guy who should.

I squinted at the mystery Boov. When someone knows me and I don’t remember them, I usually try to fake it. “Uh, hey!” I said. “Good to see you again—”

His gun was all black too, unlike any Boov gun I’d ever seen, with a scribble of tubes and triggers and a wide horn on the business end. If Batman had decided to avenge his dead parents mostly through trombone lessons, he might have owned an instrument like this. The masked Boov raised it again, but not at me—at J.Lo.

“DEATH TO THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS!” said the Boov, and I leaped to tackle him as he fired. As usual, I didn’t compensate for the weird gravity, but I still managed to kick him in the face as I passed overhead. I landed on my side in the outer room, which was full of holes and hissing pipes and flickering lights. I recovered and dashed back into the hall just in time to grab at the masked Boov’s gun and spoil another shot. Bill was bluzzing around, trying to make bubbles, but there was something wrong with him.

The next leader of New Boovworld will be a strong man. A courageous man. A man who did what no other leader could do.

There were two big holes in the glass partition of J.Lo’s cell now, and a koobish that was missing its back legs. J.Lo tried to hide behind the toilet.

“Maa,” said the koobish.

“Gratuity!” buzzed the masked Boov as we grappled over his gun. “Do not fight me! It must be done!”

I have to admit he startled me a little, using my name like that. It gave him an opening, and he wrenched the trombone rifle away from me and turned to fire again. I rammed him in the back and he shot a hole in the ceiling before tumbling down the hallway.

I could see right out to the open sky. This gun didn’t have any problem shooting through the prison walls.

I darted through one of the holes in the glass. Bill followed, and when the masked Boov got to his feet, he found me shielding J.Lo with my body.

A new kind of leader for a new time. Ladies and gentlemen and...you know, the rest of you...

“Don’t!” said J.Lo, trying to push me aside. “You mustnot! He will kill us both!”

“No, I...” I stammered. “I think I know who he is. He likes me. I don’t think he’ll—”

“I am sorry, Gratuity,” said the masked Boov in his creepy voice, and he steadied his rifle.

...tonight I officially announce my candidacy for president of New Boovworld!

I grabbed J.Lo and launched us both off the toilet seat as the masked Boov fired. Like with any other Boov gun, there was no noise, no light. So I’d find out later that I’d lost a shoelace but we’d otherwise dodged the worst of it. And now there was a gaping hole in the back wall of the prison. Fresh air breezed in from outside, or whatever passed for fresh air on New Boovworld.

Every blast of that trombone rifle knocked the masked Boov back a bit, but in a moment he had it aimed again. J.Lo grabbed the can I’d hit him with earlier and chucked it. We made a break for it, reaching the fresh exit just as the can lodged in the horn of the rifle and the masked Boov pushed the trigger and, with a honking sound, the whole barrel of it curled up and disintegrated.

“Holy cow, J.Lo!” I said as he and Bill and I ran away from the prison. “Good arm!”

“YOU WILL NOT TO ESCAPE ME!” the other Boov bellowed behind us. “YOU WILL BE STOPPED!”

J.Lo smiled a wincey smile. “I was aiming for his head,” he admitted.