“No way,” Spider said. “He’ll think that Romeo finally broke out and got away for good. And Juliet looks just like all the others.”
Grady agreed. “Yeah, dude. If it weren’t for her left ear being messed up, I couldn’t tell the difference either.”
Newton grabbed a mason jar from the table and poured half its contents into Juliet’s bottle and the rest into Romeo’s. He snapped the lid back into place on Romeo’s cage, put a few bricks on top to weigh it down, and then roused the mouse with a tap on the side of the cage.
The burly rodent stretched and yawned and then scurried toward the bottle and started guzzling. The commotion woke Juliet as well, who watched with curiosity from the safety of her own cage.
“What we s’posed to be lookin’ at?” Clementine asked.
“Just watch him,” Newton said.
Romeo started pacing back and forth inside the cage, staring back at them with fretful brown eyes. Something was wrong.
“What’s goin’ on?” Clementine said.
The mouse jerked and twitched, flipping backwards and pushing himself through the cedar chips lining the bottom of his cage.
“Whaddya do to him, egghead?” Clementine asked.
“Just keep watching,” Newton repeated, keeping one eye on his stopwatch.
The long seconds turned to agonizing minutes, their vigil lasting until Newton stopped the timer, signaling the metamorphosis was complete.
The shock of not recognizing the rodent staring back at them left them speechless. Gone was the lovably husky mouse they’d rescued, and in his place was a troglodytic mass of chiseled bone and sculpted muscle.
Romeo growled and then slammed against the wire mesh in an adrenaline-fueled rage, lifting the cage almost a foot off the table.
“We’re gonna need more bricks!” Drew shouted, struggling to keep the cage down.
Newton held up the empty jar. “I filled this at school today. I boiled it down until the water evaporated, and all that was left was…”
“Enzyme Seven,” Clementine said, beating him to the punch.
Newton nodded. “Yeah, Enzyme Seven.”
Grady took a whiff of the jar. “Wow! What’s the street value of this stuff?”
“Gimme that,” Newton snapped, snatching it back. “Anyway, I think boiling it down made it concentrated—maybe made the change happen quicker.”
“How’d you figure out it was in the water?” Spider asked.
Newton flipped his laptop around and hit the play button. “Remember that story Miss Susan told us about the Transylvania Brigade? They made a movie about it. In the movie, they used water to deliver Enzyme Seven—only they called it Vitamin X instead.”
“Yeah. Yeah, but everybody in the city drinks water,” Spider said. “That’s like a million people. They all gonna change to mice?”
“What? No. You missed the point. Nobody is changing into mice,” Newton said in exasperation. “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard—that’s more than stupid. That’s so stupid that it’s reached the ultimate stupidity event horizon beyond which nothing dumber can ever come. Congratulations.”
“The water tower,” Clementine said. “Betcha we’re the only school in the district with its own water tower. When we wrecked it…”
“When we wrecked it,” Newton interrupted, “we gave Frost the perfect cover to tamper with it.”
“Yeah, but dude, we all drink the water at school,” Grady said. “And Juliet drank the same water as Romeo. She didn’t change.”
“Yeah, that part stumped me too,” Newton said, “but we know not everybody is affected.”
“But how do we know that?” Spider asked.
“Because not everybody is affected,” Newton said. “Like you said, we all drank the water.”
“We gotta do something ’bout this,” Drew said. The others agreed, all except one.
“How come this is our problem?” Grady said. Then he looked at Drew and the others, who were suddenly staring at their shoes, and realized there had to be more to the story.
“Because of last Halloween,” Drew said.
* * *
They’d climbed the utility ladder to the top of the school’s water tower, their flowing white sheets trailing in the crisp breeze behind them. The last day of October meant an end to the vivid autumn colors, soon to be swept away by gray November’s drizzling rain, so they savored every last second while they still could.
The ghouls sat with their backs to each other in the center of the tower’s drum, and once they were convinced they were safe, they pulled back their masks.
“Didya see the look on that lady’s face when we rang the bell?” Harley asked. “I ain’t never seen anybody give away candy so fast.”
Drew held his mask in his hands, admiring the workmanship. “These turned out good.”
Clementine agreed with a mischievous grin. “Yeah, they did.”
She’d shown up at the Windmill earlier in the day with an armload of raggedy teddy bears and a pair of scissors.
“Won’t your sister miss these?” Newton asked her upon her arrival.
“Yeah,” Clementine said, “but that’s the point.”
After decapitating the hapless toys, they cut their faces off and tore holes in the fabric where their button eyes used to be. They stapled rubber bands to each end to hold the grotesque masks on their faces, and they were...
“Wait,” Spider said. “Is that where you got these?”
“Where else?” Clementine asked.
“Yeah—yeah, I thought maybe your dad was a serial killer or somethin’,” Spider said.
They laughed and turned their attention back to the candy.
“Good haul this year,” Drew said.
“Yeah, bigger than last year,” Harley agreed.
Halloween meant block parties in the neighborhood, and soon entire sections of the downtown would be in flames in a tradition that dated back to the city’s founding. But this was the best place to be, away from the trouble and with a ringside seat for the mayhem. From here they could see the entire city and beyond it, to the far horizon where the sky turned from twilight to the deepest indigo imaginable.
They emptied their bags and made a communal pile. Every variety of candy they could think of glittered before them in colorful foil wrappers like a pirate’s treasure. Though, like every pirate’s treasure, this bounty was booby-trapped.
“This apple’s gotta a razor blade stuck in it,” Drew complained, tossing it aside.
“Hypodermic needle here,” Spider said, carefully pulling the broken syringe out of the candy bar.
Clementine bit down on a butterscotch candy and yelped, spitting the candy into her cupped hand. “Ouch! Bullet in this one.”
Harley held a sucker up to the light, taking a squint through its cloudy center. “This sucker ain’t a sucker. It’s a glass eye with a stick jammed in it.”
“Looks like the rest are clean,” Newton said.
“At least nobody gave us pennies this year,” Spider said, “chipped my tooth last time.”
Clementine stuffed a caramel into her mouth. “You’re fault for thinkin’ it was chocolate covered in foil.”
Harley took a hearty bite of licorice. “I could live off this stuff. All I need is a fork.”
“With bites that size, you better invest in a trident,” Newton cracked.
But Harley didn’t get mad; he laughed. Cracks like that were allowed between friends—though not from anybody else.
They stuffed their faces until they were sick of the taste and then kicked back to watch the city burn. The best thing about being here was that they didn’t have to say or do anything. They could just hang out and think about whatever they wanted to—or not think about anything at all. It was absolute freedom, however fleeting the feeling.
“Hey, you kids! I see you!”
The guard climbed to the top of the drum as fast as he could, but he was an old, gray man in a baggy gray u
niform, and his creaky joints slowed him down.
“Don’t move,” he warned them. “I gotcha!”
The kids recovered from their initial shock and slid across the drum’s slick surface, disappearing over the edge one by one.
“No! Don’t jump!” the guard shouted. He moved across the drum taking short, choppy steps to keep his balance, swearing under his breath. “You selfish little…You know how much paperwork I gotta do now!”
He made it to the edge just in time to see the kids crawling out of a pile of pink fiberglass bundles stacked around the tower’s concrete base, the remnants of the latest round of repairs to the school’s infrastructure.
“Damn. They musta planned an escape route,” the guard said, his heart still pounding. He took a quick look around the tower but didn’t see anything amiss and relaxed a little. “Well, don’t look like they did no damage no how.”
“Help…”
The guard turned his head back and forth, trying to pinpoint which direction the voice was coming from. “Who said that?”
“Help…”
He poked his head over the tower’s edge and took another look. “Well, looks like not all of ya got away,” he said, drunk with satisfaction—and with the booze he’d sipped from his thermos earlier.
Harley hung from the tower about halfway down, his overalls snagged on a metal hook sticking out of one of the wooden crossbeams.
“Hmmm. Fat kids sure do love wearing those bib overalls,” the guard muttered. “Wonder why that is?”
Harley fought to free himself, but his overalls tore and he dropped almost six inches, so he stopped fighting. He was hanging fifteen to twenty feet above the pavement, and falling from that height meant a broken leg or twisted ankle at best.
“Help,” Harley whimpered again.
* * *
“We coulda gone back,” Drew said. “We shoulda gone back.”
“Some windows at Bixby got broke that night,” Clementine said. “Some computers got stolen. Wasn’t us. But Harley got caught hangin’ from the water tower, and they blamed him. Took ’em down to the dungeon.”
“The dungeon?” Grady asked.
“Juvenile hall,” Newton said. “Downtown. We didn’t see him again for three months.”
“Went by his house, but nobody ever came to the door,” Clementine said. “But that was normal for his house. When he got back, things were different…just different.”
Drew tossed a piece of grungy fabric to Grady.
Grady peered through the eyeholes. “Harley’s mask?”
“We found it nailed to the Windmill door after he got out of the dungeon,” Drew said.
Their story answered a lot of questions Grady had. He’d only moved into the neighborhood—their neighborhood—a few months ago and didn’t share their history. But at least now their eagerness to help Harley made more sense. They’d been carrying the guilt of their escape long enough, and they were ready to exorcise it.
* * *
The Eyewitness News studio was always freezing, a fact that infuriated Molly to no end. She kept turning up the thermostat in her dressing room but came to suspect that it was there just for show and didn’t really control the temperature at all. So she sat there, shivering in her chair, hair in curlers, while the mousy makeup girl dabbed foundation onto her pale skin.
“I want better stories, not the fluff pieces you keep sending me out on,” Molly hissed, her breath fogging in the air. “I mean, look at the stuff I covered the last few weeks: local optometrist thinks he’s a cat; man in a white suit orders spaghetti at local restaurant; cheapskate Spider-Man does laundry for free. What kind of stories are these?”
Molly finished the conversation and hung up the phone, biting her lip while the trembling makeup girl finished. She was so angry that she almost didn’t notice the unfamiliar reflection in the illuminated vanity. “Who are you?”
“Miss Tuggle, we’re big fans,” Drew gushed.
Molly waved the makeup girl away. “How’d you get in here?”
“We’re on a class field trip,” Drew said, handing her an eight-by-ten glossy photo of herself to sign. “You know, you’re much prettier in person than on TV.”
Molly’s sour frown gave way to a coy smile. Some kind of tour group was always wandering through the station’s hallways. She autographed the photo and passed it back to him. “Thanks, half-pint. Here you go. But whose we? I only see you and—whoa—what happened to you?”
Grady’s sudden appearance in her doorway caught her by surprise. He’d hacked off more of his hair, etching a design into his scalp that mimicked the stripes on his arms. Mascara smeared into the hollows of his eyes gave his face a sunken look that Molly would later describe to her producer as cadaverous.
“It’s called Crypto-Punk,” he said. “All the cool kids are doin’ it. I’m cool, so I’m doin’ it…’cause I’m cool.”
Molly got out of her chair to take a closer look, standing much taller in person than she appeared on TV. “How long has this been going on?”
“For a while,” Drew said.
“What do your parents think about this?” Molly asked.
“They hate it,” Grady said, “really hate it.”
Molly tried pumping them for more information, but Drew held back. Having planted the seed, he turned to leave, hustling Grady out the door with him. “Guess we’ll be seein’ you at the Bixby PTA meeting tomorrow night.”
“What? Wait. What PTA meeting?” she asked.
“Just thought that since Channel Six and Channel Four would be there, you’d be there, too,” Drew said. “Thanks again for the autograph. We gotta get back to the tour before we get in trouble.”
* * *
Molly posed outside the Bixby Elementary entrance, wetting her lips and checking her reflection in her compact. “Hey, headgear. How do I look?”
“Good,” her cameraman answered. “Very lifelike.”
She shot him an angry scowl and snapped the compact shut. She put her earpiece back into place and waited for his cue.
“Thanks, Chet. Bixby Elementary is in the grip of a troubling new fad that’s taken the school by storm. Crypto-Punk, as it’s known on the street, is…Wait—what is that?”
The sound of grinding gears drowned out her intro, making it impossible to hear anything else. The school’s hedges parted, and the Channel 8 news tank rolled across the grass, gnawing the lawn to pieces and leaving a trail of diesel fuel in its wake.
The tank rolled to a stop next to the flagpole, and the hatch slowly turned. Out popped the Channel 8 reporter, sticking her head out of the turret to check their position. Shedding her helmet and goggles, she shook her head, her auburn hair cascading out in waves like she was filming a shampoo commercial. She turned and gave Molly a sarcastic wave from the safety of the turret, flashing her most insincere smile.
“When did Channel Eight get a news tank?” Molly fumed.
The producer screaming in her earpiece reminded her that she was live. “Oh—sorry. Disciplinary problems associated with the fad have skyrocketed in the last few weeks, prompting the meeting. Tonight, anxious parents have gathered to voice their concerns and frustrations and cut through the rumor and innuendo. This is Molly Tuggle, reporting live for Eyewitness News. Back to you, Chet.”
* * *
Angry parents filled every seat in the auditorium, their tempers pushed to the boiling point. More and more of their kids were giving in to the Crypto-Punk fad, and they wanted to know what the school was going to do about it.
Superintendent Boggs stood at the podium, trying to appease them, but the mood was getting ugly. One pointed question after another had him reeling.
“Parent…parents…I feel your pain,” Boggs pleaded, sweating beneath the hot lights. “We are as concerned as you are about this new fad, but threats…threats aren’t gonna help us come up with a workable solution.”
Thin and wiry with the demeanor of a funeral director, Boggs looked much
older than he was, his hair having turned gray prematurely. Around the district he was known as the angel of death because he only appeared during a crisis.
The crowd settled down, placated for the moment by the superintendent’s pleas. “What’s the school gonna do about this Crypto-Punk business?” demanded one parent.
“I’ve asked the school psychiatrist to speak on that very point tonight,” Boggs said.
Dr. Camaro appeared at the far end of the stage, fighting his way through the red velvet drapes. He planted himself behind the podium and adjusted the microphone to suit his stature.
“The threat of the Crypto-Punk fad has been wildly overstated,” Camaro said. “These changes will pass as your children enter the larval stage. Studies show that most children change colors, sprout horns, or develop webbing between their fingers and toes at some point during their lives. Fortunately, most of them grow out of these changes by the time they emerge from their protective cocoons.”
“New age mumbo-jumbo and gobbledygook!” shouted one parent, and the others grumbled their agreement.
Camaro ducked an over-ripe tomato, followed in rapid succession by a grapefruit and a boomeranging banana that splattered harmlessly against the podium.
“We gotta stop catering these meetings!” Boggs complained, barely dodging a knuckleballing pineapple that would have sent him to the hospital.
The Doctor’s explanation wasn’t going over well with the blue-collar crowd. They were ready to storm the stage, pitchforks in hand.
Boggs threw himself in front of the mob in a last-ditch effort to prevent a riot. “Let’s not do anything we’re going to regret later,” he begged. “Let’s all calm down.”
“No! You calm down!” shouted one parent.
The angry back-and-forth continued until the lights dimmed and the parents fell silent.
“Pay no attention to that man in front of the curtain!” the booming voice commanded over the PA.
The curtains parted, and Frost’s face appeared projected onto the auditorium screen like the great and powerful Oz. “Just kidding. I’ve always wanted to say that. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m Vice-Principal Frost, and I’m here to put your minds at ease.”
His image faded, and a pattern of abstract shapes and colors flashed across the screen.
Suddenly, the parents started getting drowsy…
* * *
The parents left the auditorium marching in lockstep to the tune they whistled together in perfect harmony. Their mood coming out was markedly different than that going in—a miraculous change of heart under the circumstances.