There was a flash of light in my skull.
There was a loud snap.
My ears popped.
It was utterly dark. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t even feel my own body. And I thought, Great—I died right when I was in the middle of something.
I couldn’t feel my body because the teleportation makes you numb for a bit but I wouldn’t know this until I started tingling all over a few seconds later, like I was carbonated. First I stretched my jaw to clear my ears, because I heard voices.
One of them was familiar. It had that TV announcer sound, but it was more of an off-camera, demanding-more-doughnuts-in-his-dressing-room sort of voice.
I remembered I had a flashlight, so I drew it out of my pocket and nervously switched it on against my hand. Through the red glow of my fingers I could see a curtain drawn in front of me. I edged around it. I was in a very small room. Past the curtain there was a mop and bucket. There was a dustpan. And there was a familiar dark wood door with a brass knob, confirming what I’d only just guessed.
I was in Daniel Landry’s broom closet.
Five minutes later I jumped back through the telecloner and saw the flash and heard the snap and landed, ears popping, back in the ghost town. I expected J.Lo to be right in front of me, and panicked when he wasn’t there.
“Oh, boy. Oh, boy—J.Lo! J.LO!” I turned. “How does this thing shut off…how does it—”
J.Lo’s head poked out the car window.
“We have to shut this down!” I shouted. “How does it turn off?”
“You are alive!” J.Lo sang.
“Focus, J.Lo! How do I shut it down?”
“What? Oh. Green thing!”
There was, thankfully, only one green thing, shaped like a racquetball on a golf tee. I grabbed at it, wondering if I was meant to squeeze or pull or push or what, but it instantly gave a gassy noise and deflated as the booth stopped humming. I sat back and breathed, my head no longer filled with visions of Gorg armies pouring into the moonlit street after me. Pig brushed against my legs. Then I noticed J.Lo at my shoulder.
“Where was the pebble?!” he shouted. “What about the pebble?”
I hadn’t thrown it back to tell him the booth worked. I’d been too busy eavesdropping, and I said so.
“I thought Tip was dead! Or in troubles! And I could do nothing! Nothing!”
“Why were you in the car?” I asked.
“I was about to leave. I was to try driving to find you.”
“Thanks.”
“But the booth, it worked? Why did you turn it off?”
“There were Gorg on the way. I thought they might teleport here.”
“Then they saw you?”
“No,” I said. “Listen. I got there, and it was all dark, and I could hear voices, right? And that’s when I knew I was in Dan Landry’s broom closet.”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“Get out of town.”
“It’s true!” I said. “And Landry was shouting at someone, shouting, ‘We had a deal!’ and ‘They were only questions, I wasn’t accusing you of anything!’”
“What questions?” asked J.Lo.
“Well, wait a second. It gets worse. Then a Gorg voice answers—”
J.Lo gasped.
“—then a Gorg voice answers, ‘THE FESTIVAL WILL PROCEED AT SUNRISE. THE HUMANS WILL BE COUNTED AND SORTED.’
“And Landry says, ‘She was just a kid. Kids get upset. Now you’ve kidnapped her?’ So the Gorg admits they screwed up and got Mom instead, but they still want me ’cause I fit the description of a girl who stole something from them.”
J.Lo muttered something in Boovish.
“But here’s the kicker,” I said. “The Gorg says, ‘WE WILL HONOR OUR PROMISE. YOU WILL HAVE YOUR POWER. WE WILL SEE YOU BECOME LEADER OF YOUR PLANET.’ And then some other Gorg chuckle, and he says, ‘WE WILL RELEASE THE MOTHER OF GRATUITUCCI AFTER THE FESTIVAL.’ And now the other Gorg are laughing, you know, because there isn’t going to be any ‘after the festival.’ That’s when I came back through the booth.”
J.Lo shook his head. “He was just wanting to be leader. He wanted to be the king of Earth and call it Danland.”
“Yeah. Maybe. Except, what about all that stuff he said to me about the Gorg leaving soon? What if he really believed that? Maybe he really thought by cooperating he could keep more people alive until the Gorg left on their own.”
“Or maybe he is just a poomp, pardon my language.”
“Maybe. Anyway, that wasn’t a Gorg base. But right before I teleported back, it sounded like the Gorg were going to use the broom closet to leave, and I was afraid they’d get here right behind me.”
“We will try another one, then,” said J.Lo.
“The next closest booth?”
“Hm. I am thinking, why not the strongest, instead of the closest. The strongest signal. This would more likelies be an important base.”
J.Lo tuned the booth, and we gathered our stuff. We each had enough aspirin to cover Mount Everest. J.Lo put up his helmet, and I still had mine. I had a backpack full of cat treats and my camera, and J.Lo had his toolbox, as usual.
“And looksee,” said J.Lo. “The talkie-walkies. I have fixed them up with power cells. Now we can talk and walk. J.Lo to Tip, J.Lo to—”
He was holding them no more than ten inches apart, so his gravely, squawking message got echoed back and forth and made the Worst Noise In The World. And I’ve heard Gorg sneeze.
I tried to put the walkie-talkie in my cargo pants. It made me feel like I had a peg leg, so I put it in my bag instead. The four-foot-long antenna stuck up through a gap in the zipper and bobbed as I moved.
“I can’t believe people used to run around with these while getting shot at,” I said, because I didn’t know what I’d be doing a half hour later.
J.Lo stared at the antenna. “You look cool.”
“I look like an RC car.”
“Yes. I do not know what that is.”
We gathered up Pig and stood before the teleclone booth. J.Lo fired it up again.
“Can we all go at once?” I asked. “Will we get mixed up?”
“I am sure we can alls go at once. Pretty sure.”
Nobody moved.
“Might be a lot of Gorg on the other side,” I said.
“Yes,” J.Lo said, and gave Pig a pat.
“I have enjoyed being your brother,” he added.