“Where you goin’, kid?” the Chief asked me.
“You know where I’m going,” I muttered as I crossed rooms to elevators and walked up ramps to Level 4. Palace workers paused to look at me, but I didn’t look back. Eyes forward, walking briskly but not running, I looked like I was supposed to be there. Like I had urgent business. Don’t bother the human with stupid questions; she obviously has somewhere to be. “You disappointed in me too?” I asked the Chief. “You going to abandon me like everybody else?”
Ahead of me was a skywalk. At the end of that was Dan Landry’s door.
The Chief eyed me. “What in God’s name are you talking about, Stupidlegs?”
“J.Lo’s abandoning me. Bill...abandoned me. You died. My dad was never around, and Mom...”
I trailed off, without a clue how to finish that sentence. The Chief blew a raspberry.
“You know, I’ll wager the Spook thinks you abandoned him. Bill just got his feelings hurt, but cut him some slack—he’s new at feelings. I loved you like a granddaughter, and your pa didn’t know he had a kid and still doesn’t. And please explain about your ma—”
“All right, I know—”
“—’cause to the casual observer it looks more like you’re the one who flew eight hundred million miles away from her.”
“All right!”
I frowned. But there wasn’t any time to think about it. The Chief was gone and I was looking at the door to room 4-440. My own ravaged face was reflected back in its mirror finish.
When it opened, I couldn’t look Dan Landry in the eye. Mostly I just didn’t want him to know I’d been crying.
“Gratuity Tucci, as I live and breathe,” he said. “Made up your mind so fast?”
I sniffed, and stared at his shoes. They were nice shoes.
“I just want to go home,” I said quietly.
He stood aside and let me in.
It was a big suite, with plush furniture and a giant screen and end tables everywhere. Emerson was reading a comic book atop a big blue pouf. He looked surprised to see me.
“I told Captain Smek about our arrangement,” said Landry. He put his hand on the small of my back and steered me across the room. “He furnished me with a device that will let you interrupt all the video feeds the same way your little friend did. We think it’s important that it look the same, you understand me?”
“And then I go back home?” I asked. “Just like that?”
“Just like that. I had the Boov find your car. They’ll tow it all the way back to Earth with you in it. I told you I’m a man who can make things happen, Gratuity. Now: Do you know what you’re going to say?”
I nodded.
“Don’t just nod; tell me.”
I sighed. “It’s...I’m not going to go on and on saying how great you are or anything. It’s gonna be short.”
Landry nodded and twirled his hand. He seemed to be in a hurry.
“Well,” I said, “I’m gonna say that I’m the human, Gratuity Tucci, and that J.Lo’s my friend—”
“Call him the Squealer, actually.”
“That...the Squealer’s my friend, but that he lied about all that stuff he said. The whole story. That I went along with it because...he’s my friend. But I know and everyone on Earth knows that Dan Landry defeated the Gorg.”
“Fine. Smek also wants some language added about how Dan Landry was able to beat the Gorg only because Captain Smek had loosened them up first. Like they’re a pickle jar. I told him I’d write it down for you, but...” He was putting on his suit jacket and watch and looking constantly at the door. “You seem articulate enough. Just wing the Smek stuff. Or don’t, I really don’t care.”
“You’re leaving?” asked Emerson. “Now?”
“Pressing business,” Landry told him. “Remember what we talked about.”
Emerson looked miserable. “Yeah, I know,” he said.
“Gratuity? Clip the thing when you’re ready to talk. Unclip it when you’re done. You’re doing the right thing. We’re all doing the right thing. Onward and upward. No regrets,” he finished as the suite door opened and closed and he was gone.
When that much chatter is suddenly gone, it leaves kind of a dizzy vacuum in its place. I swooned and looked at my hands.
“For a while I thought you wouldn’t come up here,” Emerson told me after a moment, with a stony expression that said he had me all figured out now.
“Whatever,” I muttered, and turned to the TV. Another cooking show on mute. Some improbable-looking vegetable sizzled silently on a grill. A lone Boov worked over a metal grate lit by a dusky red glow. I eyed Smek’s waveform clip.
Just do it quick, I thought, like ripping off a Band-Aid—and I took up the waveform device and snapped it in place.
Now I was on the TV. My face, parade-balloon big.
I thought of all the Boov all over New Boovworld, pausing in their lives, wondering what I was going to say. There was a slight delay between me and this giant girl on the screen. I’d move slightly; she’d move slightly a fraction of a second later. Like the giant girl wasn’t me, but just a show I was watching.
And I thought, That’s how I’m going to get through this.
I thought, It’s not me.
The giant girl looked tired. She needed a change of clothes.
I took a breath, the girl took a breath, and said, “Hi.”
I could feel my heart. I imagined all of New Boovworld saying hi back.
“I’m the human, Gratuity Tucci. J.Lo...the Squealer is my friend. And I have something really important to tell you about Dan Landry.”
I found myself wishing I could comfort the giant girl on the screen—look at those puffy eyes, that hair. If she were my friend, I realized, I’d probably tell her to call her mother.
(She wasn’t, though. She was about to badmouth J.Lo.)
But then if her mother was anything like my mother, she’d be better off solving her own problems. Mom had been so not there when I was growing up that when she got sucked right out of my life by a spaceship, it was like the punch line to a joke that hadn’t been funny for years, you know?
The sick feeling in my stomach told me that I was full of it. Even the girl on the screen was shaking her head.
We both took a breath.
“Don’t be like me,” I told her. “Don’t be afraid to trust people; don’t be afraid to love.”
Of course, by telling her this, I was really telling it to a million Boov. That must have been confusing.
“Sorry. So. I have something important to tell you about Dan Landry. Did I say that already?”
Look at that, now—the girl just got this gleam in her eye. She looked good. She looked like someone the Chief would have liked. I couldn’t believe what she was going to say next.
“Dan Landry is a poomp,” she said. I said.
“A real kacknacker,” I added. “Pardon my language.”
She had a nice smile, this girl.
“I just thought you should know.”