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“Fly, I mean, walk with us, Georgetta.”
The red-haired goddess herself, Roma Radisson, appeared next to Bethany Tiffany and London England. Georgie was immediately suspicious.
“Georgie,” Roma simpered. “We were just kidding before. We didn’t mean anything by it.”
Right, thought Georgie. Roma meant every spiteful word she said. But then, even with everything Georgie had been through, she was a deeply curious girl, the kind of girl who watches the world and misses nothing; she wanted to know why Roma was talking to her. And though she would never have admitted it, Georgie was also a hopeful girl. In the back of her mind, a little voice told her that maybe, maybe, if she were nice to Roma, if she could joke and laugh like the rest of the girls, Roma might be nice to her.
“Tell us,” Roma said. “Were you really kidnapped when you were a baby?”
Even though the story had been in the papers for months and months, everyone always asked the same questions over and over again, as if Georgie would suddenly answer them differently. “I was kidnapped by Sweetcheeks Grabowski. He’s in jail.”
“Amazing!” said London. “And is it true that no one could find you for years and years, and you lived in an orphanage practically your whole life?”
Georgie nodded. “I didn’t even know my real name.”
“Speaking of real,” London said, eyeing Georgie’s thick silver ponytail and fluffing her own blond curls with her fingers, “is that your real hair?”
“Whose hair would it be?” Georgie joked.
The other girls gave each other funny looks, and not the kind that indicated they thought Georgie’s joke was amusing. “Well, anyway,” said Roma, fanning the air. “I bet that orphanage was just so grimy and horrible. I did a TV special once where I had to meet some poor people. They sent me to a farm. I had to pick tomatoes. Awful! I had dirt under my fingernails and everything!”
“At least you could have eaten the tomatoes,” Georgie said. “At the orphanage, I was always hungry.” The girls gaped at her. So much for joking. Since Georgie was always trying not to reveal too much, she was prone to saying strange and unfunny things. (When you’ve spent years in an orphanage shunned by everyone but a cat, you’re prone to saying strange and unfunny things.) Georgie cleared her throat. “So, you were on TV? Was it, uh, cool?”
“She’s been on TV thousands of times,” Bethany said, eyes so green that Georgie wondered if Bethany had ordered them from a boutique. “You haven’t seen Roma’s advert for Cherry Bomb lip balm?”
“Or the video from her new CD, Don’t Get Up, Get Down?” said London.
“Or the ads for Jump Jeans?” said Roma.
“No,” said Georgie. “I don’t watch much TV.”
“What do you do?” Roma demanded.
“Well,” Georgie said. “I’ve been reading a lot.”
“Reading!” London said, her sky-blue eyes wide. “Why would you do that?”
Roma admired her French manicure, glancing askance at London. “Have you ever thought, London, that she’s been reading my memoir, Fabulousity?”
“Oh!” said London. “Right. That’s a different story.”
Georgie didn’t believe that fabulousity was an actual word, but she decided not to say so. Instead, she said another wrong thing. “I’ve been reading From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler.”
“The mixed up what?” London said.
“That’s a kid’s book!” said Bethany in horror.
Georgie was tempted to point out that, technically, they were still considered kids, at least by adults too dim to know better, so a “kid” reading a kid’s book wasn’t so surprising, but somehow knew that wasn’t the right thing to say. She was also tempted to tell the girls how thrilling it was to pore over all the books she’d missed reading as a child, but then she knew that wasn’t the right thing to say either. Georgie lumbered along, trying to figure out something fabulous and witty to talk about. Mechanical monkeys stole my memory? No, too crazy. My cat Noodle is really unusual, even for a cat. She’s what they call a Riddle, see, and she can put you in a trance if she wants to… no, too childish. Um, there are giant rats with filed teeth living underground that call themselves The Sewer Rats of Satan. They’re obsessed with kittens. No, too bizarre.
“So tell us about Bug Grabowski,” Roma said, stopping to stare at yet another mounted skeleton of something or another. “Is he really Sweetcheeks’s son?”
“Yes.”
“Oooh! A gangster’s boy! How dangerous!” said London.
“Well,” said Georgie. “It was until they threw Sweetcheeks in jail. Now he’s just a regular boy.”
“Not such a regular boy,” said Bethany. “Is he your boyfriend?”
Georgie felt herself flush. “No, he’s not my boyfriend.”
“Did you see that advert he did for Rocket Boards?” Bethany said. “Those muscles!”
Ever since Bug was declared the youngest winner of the citywide Flyfest competition, he’d been spending hours and hours every day working out with his personal trainer. Like Georgie, Bug had also grown some centimetres… wider. His biceps bulged and his stomach now looked as if someone had carved furrows in it. Georgie still hadn’t decided whether she liked it or not, but it was clear that Roma, London and Bethany did.
“He’s got the most interesting face,” Roma said, which, to Georgie, was a polite way of saying that Bug looked a lot like a bug. “If he’s not your boyfriend,” said Roma, “you won’t mind setting me up.”
“Setting you up?” said Georgie. “But…” She trailed off. She wanted to say that she never saw Bug herself, now that he was so famous. And then she wanted to say that Bug was just another reason she knew money couldn’t buy happiness. That the last time she did see him, months ago, things hadn’t gone so well. He couldn’t seem to remember her real name and kept calling her Gurl, and she didn’t know what to say about his father being… well, his father. She asked him if he wanted to go flying and he bragged about a late-night photo shoot he’d been on and how that had made him too tired to do anything. He asked her if she wanted to turn them both invisible and wander around the city, but she told him that her parents didn’t want her to do that any more. They’d sat at the Bloomingtons’ huge dining room table and pushed the chef’s food around their plates in silence.
But Georgie wouldn’t talk about any of this with Roma, London, and Bethany. And even if Georgie wanted to talk to them, they wouldn’t have given her the chance.
“What?” said Roma. “You don’t think I’m good enough for him?”
You’re not, Georgie thought. “No!” Georgie said. “It’s just…”
“It’s just what?” Roma snapped.
“Nothing,” Georgie said. “I meant—”
“Just because you’re rich doesn’t mean that you’re all that, OK?” Roma said, her voice icy. “Anyway, you don’t have that much money.”
A hot flash of annoyance made Georgie blurt, “I’m The Richest Girl in the Universe.”
“Oh!” said Roma, lavender eyes blazing. “Well. You might have more money than most people, but you’ve never actually done anything.”
Georgie, who had rescued her cat from an army of giant rat men, unwillingly stolen for a matron with a plastic surgery obsession, endured a makeover by a magical Personal Assistant named Jules, defeated a cabal of Punks, escaped a narcissistic gangster (twice) who just happened to be a former child model, evaded a zipper-faced pterodactyl, and befriended a genius Professor with grass for hair, said, “I’ve done a lot of things!”
Roma put her hands on her hips. “Have you made your own CD? Written a book? Had your own line of deodorants?”
Georgie, who didn’t think that having your own line of deodorants was anything to boast about, said, “No, but—”
“You can’t even fly!” exclaimed Roma. “You’re a leadfoot! And I know you haven’t trademarked your own slogan. Have you ever heard anyone say: ‘That’s so fab’? Well, I own that.”
“Own what?”
“The words! I made up that phrase all by myself!”
“But anyone can say that!” Georgie protested. Oops. Roma got so red in the face that she resembled a Roma tomato.
“Fine,” she said, glaring at Georgie with her lavender eyes. “I only invited you to walk with us because I was trying to be nice. I won’t bother any more!” She and the three girls sped ahead of Georgie, Roma announcing: “Georgetta Bloomington in is love. With herself. So not fab™.” The three girls flew off as if Georgie was just another dead thing the museum had mounted on a stick.
Georgie looked down at the floor and resisted the urge to call them all a bunch of Dunkleosteuses. Of course, Roma and her friends had only wanted to grill her about Bug because Roma wanted a new boyfriend. Who knew that the Prince School would turn out to be so much like Hope House for the Homeless and Hopeless?
Georgie paused in front of the skeleton of a spiny anteater. Oh, get a grip, Gurl, she told herself. So the other girls at the Prince School didn’t like her. And so what that Bug was running around the city, starring in adverts for Foot Fetish foot powder and Cheeky Monkey shaving cream, even though he didn’t shave yet? So what that he hadn’t called her in weeks and that was only for five minutes to tell her about the film roles he’d been offered? So what that the only time she got to see him was in magazine pictures? He was busy, that’s all. That didn’t mean they weren’t friends any more.
Did it?
Georgie realised that she’d got pretty far behind the group and had to run quickly to catch up. And that, you see, was her biggest mistake. When one has experienced a serious and dramatic growth spurt that has caused one’s feet and limbs to lengthen far beyond one’s brain’s ability to compensate, doing anything quickly is unwise. Georgie tripped over someone’s outstretched leg and crashed into an unfinished exhibit entitled “Mega Marsupials”. Georgie’s own mega-sized limbs took out the partially-assembled bones of a giant wombat, which then landed in a painful, thunderous heap on top of her. Georgie was dazed, but not nearly dazed enough to block out the loud, mocking laughter of the Prince Girls, Roma Radisson’s loudest of all.
Yes, her name was Georgetta Rose Aster Bloomington, and she was, literally, The Richest Girl in the Universe.
But all she wanted to do was disappear.
Chapter 2
Eight Arms to Hold You
“Good, good,” said the photographer. “Now hold that pose. Hold it, hold it, hoooooold it, just another minute.” The camera whirred and clicked.
Bug had been holding his arms over his head in a V – for victory! – for what seemed like hours now. Every muscle in his body ached, the tip of his nose itched, his feet were killing him, and he had spots burned into his retinas from the camera flashes. He never knew standing still could be such hard work.
It was a gorgeous April day – the sky a rich, robin’s-egg blue, the sea beyond the docks sparkling as if the surface were sprinkled with gems. A day perfect for flying. Bug was sure that Central Park was packed with people doing just that. The thought made him so wistful that he forgot to stand still; he looked up at the sky and sighed. Not because he wanted to fly, but because he didn’t want to. He didn’t know people could be this tired and live.
“That’s gorgeous,” said the photographer. “I love it! Now look towards the water; I need a profile shot. Come on, I need you to think regal, OK, Bug? You’re a duke! No, you’re a king! You’re the king of flyers!”
Bug rolled his over-large, buglike eyes, wondering how he could look like the king of flyers with both feet flat on the ground, but he turned his face to the sea anyway. He was being paid a lot of money to do this ad for Skreechers trainers, money that his agent, Harvey “Juju” Fink, said Bug could use. “What about all the money from all those other ads and posters and everything else?” Bug had asked. “What about the Cheeky Monkey campaign?” For that one, Bug had spent hours stuck in a hot bathroom with bitter-tasting shaving cream melting into his mouth. Ugh.
“What other adverts? Those little things? Pennies! Nickels! Dimes!” said Juju, who got his nickname because of his magical ability to promote athletes, and because all of his hair – including lashes and brows – had fallen out all at once on his twenty-fifth birthday. (There are two kinds of juju, superstitious people say. Good and bad. Juju seemed to have a little of both.)
“Skreechers trainer company is offering you your biggest contract yet,” Juju informed his youngest and most valuable client. “The biggest you could ever get, if you never win the Flyfest again.”
“What are you talking about?” Bug told him. “I’ll win Flyfest again. Wait and see. I’m going to win a whole bunch of Flyfests.”
“Of course you will, of course you will,” Juju said, his bald wrinkly head and naked eyelids making Bug think of a turtle in a suit. “But don’t you want to have another ten million in the bank for a rainy day? Just in case?”
So Bug had signed the papers. Here he was, posing on a dock at South Street Seaport in a pair of gold trainers called “Buggy Gs”, trainers the Skreechers people expected to sell all over the world. About thirty metres away, executives from the company watched the photo shoot, relaxing over lobster rolls and late afternoon cocktails, while Bug stood as still as possible and tried to look regal. Juju gave Bug the thumbs-up as he paced back and forth, barking into his mobile phone, and the photographer snapped, snapped, snapped his pictures, darting around Bug like a dragonfly.
It was all deeply boring.
Bug wondered what Gurl was doing. Probably hanging out with her rich friends from the rich school she went to. What was it called? The Princess Academy? Everyone that went there was loaded. Technically, Bug was loaded too, but he didn’t enjoy it the way other people seemed to. The only reason he was doing this whole endorsement thing was so that he didn’t have to touch his father’s money. He didn’t want to use a cent of that money – gangster money, hate money, blood money. Bug was not like his father at all. And he was going to prove it to the whole world. He would even prove it to Gurl and her parents, if he ever got a chance to see them. But Gurl was probably having a ball with all the rich girls. She wasn’t even calling herself Gurl any more; she was calling herself Georgie, a name that Bug still hadn’t got used to. He hadn’t seen Gurl – um, Georgie – in months, which made him feel guilty, but not too guilty, because Georgie didn’t seem to be trying too hard to see Bug. At first, it was because she finally found out who her parents were and she wanted to take the time to get to know them. (Bug understood that. He wasn’t an insect.) But then weeks went by, and then a month, and then the whole winter was gone. What was up with that? What was a person supposed to think?
Exactly what I am thinking, Bug thought. That Georgie had better things to do than hang out with the son of Sweetcheeks Grabowski, no matter how many stupid adverts that son had been in.
Bug heaved another sigh, trying to ignore the bright blue sky stretched overhead, trying to ignore his aching arms, trying to pretend he was back home in his apartment (but then, he didn’t want to be there either, because no one was there, and who wants to hang out all by yourself with no one to talk to, even if you don’t really want to talk, you just want to sleep).
Oh great, thought Bug, now my ankle itches. But this itch wasn’t really an itch. It was more like a gentle pressure, like a finger poking him. Bug looked down. There was something grey and slimy lying limply across his foot.
“What the…” said Bug. Was it a rope? Where did the rope come from? He tried to shake it off.
“Bug! What are you doing!” shrieked the photographer. “Stand still!”
“There’s a rope—” Bug began.
“Who cares?” the photographer shrieked again. “I’m shooting your face now. So stop frowning!”
Bug frowned even more deeply when the grey, slimy rope began to writhe, began to pluck at his shoelaces. He shook his foot again, this time more frantically.
“You’re ruining my shots!” the photographer wailed, turning round to look at Juju. “Juju! Tell your boy he’s ruining the shots!”
“Bug, baby!” Juju called. “Don’t ruin the man’s shots.” He gave the Skreechers execs a bright, toothy smile, waggling the skin where his brows would normally be. “These athletes. So twitchy. Can’t get ’em to stand still.”
One of the executives eyed him with eyes the colour and warmth of polar icecaps. “You better get this one to stand still. We’re paying you enough.”
But Bug was not standing still. He was staring down at the grey, slimy thing; he was trying to pull away from it.
It looked like a tentacle. Yes, it looked exactly like a tentacle. Suckers and everything.
And it was doing more than playing with his laces, it was curling around his foot, it was grabbing him by the foot, and it was dragging him towards the edge of the dock.
The photographer threw up his hands and whirled in a dramatic circle. “How am I supposed to work like this? I’m a professional! I want to work with professionals!”
Juju covered the mouthpiece of his phone, not even looking in Bug’s direction. “Bug!” he yelled. “Quit fooling around!”
Bug looked up, a wild and not very regal expression on his face. “I’m not fooling around. Something’s got me, something—”
His last words were cut off as the rope that was truly a tentacle jerked Bug right off the dock. He barely had a second to register that he was in the water before the tentacle was pulling him under the water, into the greyish murk, deeper and deeper. Bug flailed wildly and his lungs burned. His mind screamed silent, hysterical things like WHAT IS IT? and WHAT’S GOT ME? and I’M IN THE WATER!!! I CAN’T FLY AWAY IN THE WATER!!! Whatever held his ankle had him in an iron grip as it dragged him down, down, down.
And then, suddenly, it stopped.
Bug had the sensation of dozens of questing fingers running over his face, but he didn’t dare open his eyes for fear that he’d see a monster there, a monster with arms for legs and teeth for eyes and hooks for teeth and razors where its lips should be. His mind screamed more hysterical things, but these things weren’t words, they were just sounds, just bright bursts in his head, as the arms or legs or suckers of the razor-lipped, hook-toothed thing prodded him like a doctor feeling for swollen glands.
And then, just like that, the thing let him go.
His lungs close to popping, Bug kicked away from the monster and swam up towards the surface of the water. When he got his first lungful of oxygen, he launched his body from the murk like a rocket. Bug hovered in the air a moment before collapsing face-down on to the dock.
“Ow,” he said, and coughed.
“Bug,” said a stern voice.
Bug flipped to his back, still coughing.
“Bug!”
“What?” Bug managed to say. He opened his eyes, which had been squeezed shut, to see a great many very angry people glaring down at him.
Juju’s wrinkled turtle head was even more wrinkled. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“What?” Bug gasped. “What do you mean?”
“What do you mean what do I mean?” Juju said. “If you wanted to go swimming, we could have gone after the photo shoot.”
“Something pulled me into the water!”
The Skreecher execs shook their heads. “Mr Fink,” said the one with the polar-ice eyes, “we don’t appreciate these sorts of displays.”
“Well, neither do I,” bellowed Juju. “And I assure you it will never happen again. Will it, Bug?”
Bug was astonished. “Didn’t you see?” he said, coughing up more brackish water. “Didn’t you see the tentacle grab me?”
“What are you talking about?” said Juju. “What tentacle? You tripped over a rope.”
Bug squinted, focused in on the photographer. “Didn’t you catch it with the camera?”
“Catch what?” shrieked the photographer. “Who could catch anything with you shaking and dancing around like that?”
Another of the Skreecher execs shook his head. “Maybe we made a mistake hiring someone so young. They can never control themselves.”
“We could still cancel the contract, remember? We’ve got that ‘bad behaviour’ clause,” said Polar Ice Eyes. “I’ll talk to the boss.” He whipped around. “Darn it! Paparazzi!”
Everyone turned to see a small army of new photographers buzzing around like mosquitoes. “Hey, Bug! Look over here!”
“Don’t look!” screeched the Skreecher execs. But it was too late. Bug looked, the photographers snapped, and the execs freaked.
But Juju managed to work his juju. He convinced the Skreecher execs that Bug’s bad boy persona would only bring more street cred to the Skreecher brand.
“What do you mean, bad boy persona?” said Bug. “I don’t have a bad boy persona. I don’t even know what a persona is!”
“Sure you do,” said Juju, giving Bug a wink.
Mr Ice Eyes nodded. “I see what you mean. Skreechers are hip. They’re tough. They’re gritty. They’re mad hot.”
Mad hot? Bug wondered if the guy had eaten some bad clams.
Juju and the Skreecher execs were so excited about their trainers’ new street cred that they forgot all about Bug. He was left to dry alone on the dock like a fish at a seafood market. Even the paparazzi had got bored and moved off in search of other famous people doing humiliating things.
No one else had seen a tentacle; no one believed that there was a tentacle. After all that shrieking and lecturing, Bug was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t got his foot tangled in some rope and fallen into the water. It was possible. The photo shoot had gone on for hours; he was exhausted and distracted; he’d been holding his arms over his head for so long that perhaps not enough blood was going to his brain. Maybe he had got confused.
He should have taken the Bloomingtons’ offer, he realised. Right after Flyfest, they’d asked him to move in with them for a while, just till he got on his feet. But he’d said no. He’d said he wanted to do things on his own. He’d just got Juju appointed his agent and legal guardian, and he said he’d be fine.
Sure. Right. Fine. He was so fine he was conjuring up imaginary tentacles and flinging himself off docks. He could hear his father laughing now. You’re less than nothing, Sylvester. You’re just less, how about that?
Bug sat up. The water lapped gently, laughing at him. Nope. No razor-lipped monsters lurking there.
Geez, what a spaz he was. He made a fist and punched the dock.
Wham!
A strange sucking noise and a briny sort of smell made him glance towards the water.
A tentacle was patting the dock. Patting the dock as if it were looking for something.
Looking for him?
Bug scrambled backwards on all fours as another tentacle flopped on to the dock, then another, and another. As Bug watched in horror, two huge, dark eyes peeked over the surface of the dock. Then the tentacles curled themselves around the wooden columns all around the dock, and the biggest octopus Bug had ever seen – the biggest octopus Bug had ever imagined – hauled itself out of the water. Its skin was a mottled bluish-grey, with a craggy, rocklike texture that was all bumps and gnarls and knobs. So terrified that he forgot he could walk, run or fly, Bug scrabbled off the dock as fast as he could, not able to tear his eyes from the approaching monster. The octopus’s arms were at least six metres long and lined with rows of suckers the colour of teeth, while its weird, balloon-like mantle hung limply behind its eyes like an empty hood. The octopus used its insanely long tentacles to shimmy and curl and twirl itself across the surface of the dock to the street beyond. It paused as it passed Bug, blinking its large, unfathomable eyes.