“Hey, that was really good! That was your best throw yet!”
“Yes,” she said, like she’d known how to do it all along, but just preferred sending him into the bushes like a rodent.
“Dinner!” Dad called from the door.
When Ethan returned to his room after the meal, Inkling was drawing on a blank piece of newsprint. Ethan caught only a few details—a corner of a bed, but not a normal bed; this one looked like it was metal, and had wheels—before Inkling quickly erased everything.
“What were you drawing?” Ethan asked.
DON’T KNOW
Ethan nodded. “Okay.” He didn’t feel like it was polite to pry. He looked at Inkling and wondered how a splotch of ink could seem so much like a someone instead of a something. He’d been drawing, just for himself, something private. What else did he do and think about? Something suddenly occurred to Ethan.
“Will you stay?” he asked.
NOT MOVE?
“Well, you can move, but only here, in my room.” He indicated the space with his hands. “Inside the house. But don’t leave.”
Inkling was still. Ethan wondered if he was explaining this well enough.
“You’ll stay inside and help me finish the drawings?” He mimed drawing, then patted the floor again. “For a little while. You won’t go anywhere else?”
I STAY, Inkling wrote.
Chapter 5
When Ethan woke up the next morning, there were a few seconds before he remembered Inkling and the amazing things that had happened yesterday. Then he leapt up, reached under the bed, and gently dragged out the stack of newspaper. Inkling wasn’t on top. He riffled through the pages without finding him.
“Inkling?”
He checked around his desk and on top of his chest of drawers, surprised by the panicky flutter of his heart.
“Inkling, where are you?”
Then, through the wall, he heard Sarah giggling in her bedroom.
“Do it again!” she said, as if talking to a pet.
Ethan inhaled sharply and hurried to her room. She was in her pajamas, sitting on the floor, encircled by her favorite stuffed animals and dolls. A big picture book was open in front of her.
“And again!” she said, and brought her balled fist down hard on the book. “Splat!”
All the ink splashed across the page, and she giggled with delight, rocking back and forth. Inkling collected himself into a big ball in the middle of the page and jiggled as if chuckling.
Sarah raised her hand again. “And . . . splat!” she shouted. Inkling obligingly sprayed himself all over the page.
“Ethan, look!” Sarah said as he came closer.
“Wow,” Ethan said, sitting down beside her.
This time, Sarah jabbed her hand into the middle of Inkling and started finger-painting with him across the paper. Then she lifted her hands in front of her brother’s face solemnly and said, “Not dirty. Not one bit dirty!”
“That’s so cool, Sarah,” Ethan said.
“Splat!” said Sarah, smacking Inkling yet again.
Ethan had to admit, it looked very satisfying.
“Be a good puppy!” Sarah said, pointing her finger.
Obediently, Inkling shaped himself into a dog, his tongue lolling.
Sarah laughed. She’d been asking for a puppy for almost a year now. Dad had tried to suggest an easier pet—a fish, a hamster (“After what happened to Squeaker?” Ethan said), a newt—but she had never changed her mind. It had to be a dog, and Dad was absolutely not willing to get a dog. Ethan knew that Dad had bought her a robotic dog for her birthday. It was very lifelike. Its eyes opened and closed, and its head and mouth moved. Its tail wagged. Its sounds were realistic. Ethan wondered if the dog would be as big a hit as Inkling.
The puppy walked off the pages of the book and scampered around on the floor. Sarah had him roll over. When she put her hand on his back, he wagged his tail, then turned his head and licked her hand with his inky tongue.
“She gives licks!” Sarah exclaimed.
“It’s a she?” Ethan asked her. He’d automatically assumed Inkling was a he, and his sister assumed Inkling was a she. He supposed it didn’t matter one bit.
“Yes! Lucy!”
She’d already named it. Ethan looked at his little sister. Happiness beamed from her face like the ray from a lighthouse.
When Ethan heard his father’s zombie footsteps approaching in the hallway, he grabbed the picture book and dropped it in front of Inkling. “Into the book!” he whispered, tapping the page. “Stay!”
Inkling scurried onto the paper just as Dad entered the room.
“It’s time, um . . . to get . . . ,” Dad was saying.
“She has a puppy!” Sarah said, pointing at the blob in the book.
“That doesn’t . . . ,” said Dad, rubbing his eyes, “look like . . .”
In a split second, Inkling re-formed himself into a puppy.
“Sarah and I were reading,” Ethan told his dad.
“Uh-huh,” said Dad, looking at the book, confused. “Now . . . yeah . . . clothes.”
“Lucy!” Sarah shouted, picking up the book. “Give lick!”
But Inkling was on his best behavior and stayed perfectly still.
“She really wants a dog,” Ethan told his dad.
“Well, maybe for her birthday,” Dad replied, finishing his first sentence of the day.
When Ethan took out the illustration board to show his group during work period, they all just stared for a few seconds.
“Did I tell you?” said Soren, eyes wide. “Did I tell you this man could draw!”
“This is fantastic!” said Brady.
“Wow!” Pino said. “Ethan, I was starting to get a little worried, but this stuff’s incredible. Now we can get to work coloring and lettering.”
“Yeah,” said Soren, “and me and Ethan can rough in the next pages.”
Ms. D wandered over and nodded approvingly.
“Very nice. Now, I’ve got to do some photocopying,” she told the class, and left the room.
Other kids came over to have a look, including Heather Lee.
“Wow, Ethan, you’ve got your dad’s talent.”
Ethan felt himself blush. “Thanks.”
Vika stood silently for a few seconds, hands on her hips, chewing her lower lip.
“No way,” she said. “Your dad did this for you.”
Ethan shook his head. “I got no help from my dad,” he said, which was the truth, but he still felt a prick of guilt.
“This looks like his stuff.”
“Ask him yourself,” Ethan challenged her.
That silenced her for a moment, and Ethan hoped she’d go away. Then she said, “Okay. Draw something right now. Draw your gorilla.”
Ethan was too startled to reply, but Soren saved him.
“You think you can just order people around?” Soren said. He massaged Ethan’s shoulders like Ethan was a boxer about to go into the ring. “My man here works better in private.”
“Yeah, right,” said Vika, and returned to her own table.
Meanwhile, back home, Inkling was bored with eating newspaper. All those dull words and numbers. All those grainy pictures of men in suits. Restlessly, he slid out from underneath Ethan’s bed.
From the moment he’d sprung free of the sketchbook, Inkling felt like there was someplace he was supposed to go, something he was supposed to find. Something to do with paper and ink, maybe. It was important. He hoped he’d know when he found it.
From Ethan’s bookcase, the smell of ink and paper beckoned to him, but as he slid closer, he caught a second, more pungent whiff from the desk. There were two drawers, and the smell came from the bottom one. Inkling slipped inside.
He’d never seen such a glorious jumble of color and movement. At first he could only stare, quivering at Ethan’s giant heap of comics. Superheroes and monster classics, and some of the latest stuff from Soren—or really, Soren’s brother, who had e
verything, even stuff that Dad didn’t like Ethan reading because he said it was too violent.
Inkling couldn’t resist a moment longer. He poured himself onto the pile, inhaling magentas and yellows, feasting on letters of all shapes and sizes. Oh, the glory of it all! Even though he was close to bursting, it took all his willpower to stop. He swirled up out of the drawer like a tornado and vaulted down to the floor.
He couldn’t stay still. He had to move. Like a storm vortex, he spun himself outside into the hallway and up the wall. He’d seen so many incredible things in those comics, and he suddenly longed for a shape of his own! He wanted to be huge and powerful like the creatures he’d just read about.
And then he spotted, hanging on the wall, Mr. Rylance’s vintage King Kong movie poster.
After school, Ethan walked home with Soren, who was busy telling him about the quadcopter his brother, Barnaby, had just bought.
“He wants to add mechanical claws to it,” Soren said breathlessly. “So you can pick stuff up. You could fly it downstairs, take a cookie, and fly it back upstairs. And it’s super quiet. It’s called a Phantom Hawk! Pretty amazing, huh? Ethan?”
Ethan was having trouble concentrating. “Yeah, that’s super cool. So has he let you fly it?”
His friend’s shoulders slumped. “Not yet. Soon, though.”
Ethan let out a big breath. “Look, I know you can keep a secret, right?”
“Absolutely. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of things I shouldn’t have.” He paused. “I’ve seen things that really no one should see.”
“Okay, well, I need to tell you something.”
“You found a dead body.”
“What? No! I—”
“You’re an alien in human flesh.”
“Will you just listen to me? The drawings for our project. I didn’t do them.”
Soren looked at him in genuine surprise. “Your dad didn’t do them, did he?”
“No. But I had some help. Well, more than help, really.”
“So who did it?”
“It’s easiest if I show you.”
“Does it involve a portal to another dimen—”
“You’ll see when we get to my place!”
Two steps inside the house and Ethan stopped cold. It looked like a chimpanzee with a paintbrush in each hand had cartwheeled through the hallway. There were colorful zigzags and red lightning bolts. But no chimpanzee could have also written giant words like BLAM! and KAPOW! and THUKKKK!
Soren started giggling, but it was a nervous giggle. “There was a movie like this, when a guy goes berserk and, um . . .”
For a second Ethan wondered if his father had gone crazy, but then he thought, Inkling.
“Are you guys maybe redecorating?” Soren asked.
Ethan followed the colorful mess into the living room, then the kitchen and dining room, searching for any signs of movement.
“Inkling!” he whispered.
“Who’s Inkling?” Soren asked, wide-eyed.
Ethan hurried back to the hallway, but froze when the bathroom door opened and Dad walked out.
His father looked straight at him. Ethan looked straight back. His father’s eyes flicked to Soren. Soren stared back, a smile glued to his face. Ethan’s heartbeats went thumpa thump, clompa clomp, counting down the seconds before his dad noticed the chaotic graffiti everywhere. But his oblivious father just grunted, walked back to his studio, and shut the door behind him.
Ethan breathed again and rushed into his bedroom—
And recoiled, because charging across the back wall was an enormous ape, beating its chest, throwing its head back and howling. It was, in fact, silent, but in Ethan’s head he heard everything: the thump of a meaty fist, the bloodcurdling wail.
“What the—!” exclaimed Soren.
“Shush!” Ethan hissed, dragging him into the room and slamming the door.
“What. Is. That?” Soren squeaked, because the giant gorilla, its head scraping the ceiling, was marching across the wall by the bed, straight toward them.
“Inkling!” Ethan said. “Stop it!”
The gorilla paused, then roared silently once more. A speech bubble expanded from his mouth, and inky words wrote themselves in spiky letters:
WHY SHOULD I, YOU PUNY LITTLE HUMAN?
Soren just stared.
I AM KONG, DREADED KING OF THE JUNGLE!
As if to demonstrate, a little biplane appeared from the shadow of Inkling’s back and circled around his head. He pulverized it with a mighty fist.
“Inkling, you’ve got to clean up!” Ethan told him.
GIVE ME ONE GOOD REASON WHY I SHOULDN’T OBLITER-
“If my dad finds out about you, he’ll put you back in his sketchbook!”
Ethan didn’t know where this threat came from, but it did the trick.
NOT THE SKETCHBOOK, NO!!!
The giant ape collapsed like a burst balloon and fizzled back to a small splotch of ink on the wall.
“This is Inkling?” said Soren, staring.
“Yep.”
“What is it?”
Ethan didn’t know how to describe him properly: ink and energy and artistry and his father’s imagination all mixed up in some kind of cauldron. Right now all he could worry about was getting the walls and ceiling cleaned up.
“The hallway,” he said to Inkling. “Fast!”
While Soren listened outside Dad’s studio, Ethan set Inkling on cleanup duty and watched as he surged over the walls, erasing and gathering the ink back into himself.
Ethan pointed at his father’s vintage King Kong poster, now just a blank rectangle on the wall. “You can redraw it, can’t you?”
He remembered the way Inkling had been able to redraw his mother’s photograph perfectly.
From the wooden frame, Inkling cleverly slid underneath the glass so he was right on the poster itself. Inkling made himself into a long line and slowly rolled across the paper, leaving an exact replica of the movie poster in his wake.
“Whoa!” said Soren.
Ethan frowned and looked at the poster. Something was missing. He cocked his head at Inkling. “The biplanes, too, Inkling. Come on, spit them out.”
Reluctantly, Inkling coughed back up the biplanes that were zooming toward King Kong as he leaned out from the Empire State Building.
“Thank you,” said Ethan. “Now the rest of the house.”
Inkling was amazingly fast. He just soared over all his graffiti, on walls and ceilings, erasing it effortlessly. When he was finished, Ethan grabbed an old magazine from the coffee table and held it against the wall so Inkling could flow onto it. Ethan didn’t even notice the extra weight. Inkling ricocheted around the edges of the cover, erasing it stroke by stroke.
“Why’re you so excited, Inkling?” Ethan asked when he and Soren were back inside his bedroom.
I’VE BEEN READING!!! SO MUCH ACTION!!! AND COLOR!!!
“What’ve you been reading?” Ethan asked. He had a suspicion.
COMICS!!!
Ethan opened his bottom desk drawer and peered inside at the massacred covers. He picked a few comics up and riffled through them, seeing the half-eaten pages.
“Oh, geez, that’s one of my brother’s,” Soren said.
“It was a candy factory to Inkling,” Ethan said. “At least it taught him to speak in full sentences.”
On the magazine cover, Inkling was still bouncing around like a pinball.
“Okay, I don’t think comics are good for you, Inkling.”
NO, NO, NO! VERY GOOD! THEY’RE VERY GOOD!!!
“You need to calm down!”
Ethan went to the shelf and grabbed an old-looking book called Anne of Green Gables. His mother had given it to him, but he’d never read it because it was set in the past and was about a girl, so he assumed it must be boring. “Here, try this,” he said.
Inkling eagerly glided onto the first page and started erasing the type line by line.
“Ethan,” Soren said. “Where did yo
u find . . . him?”
“He came from my father’s sketchbook.”
He told Soren everything.
“So let me get this straight,” Soren said, watching as Inkling moved across the book’s pages. “He eats whatever he touches.”
“Yeah. Words, pictures. That’s how he learned to read and draw. He can copy anything.”
“How about TV or . . .” Soren pulled out his phone and opened up a picture of a beach with palm trees. He put it down on the book in front of Inkling. “Can you eat this, Inkling?”
Inkling bumped up against the phone and pulled back as if surprised. On the bottom margin of the page he wrote:
PLEASE DON’T INTERRUPT ME! I’M UTTERLY ENRAPTURED BY THIS GLORIOUS STORY!
“Why’s he talking like that?” Soren asked.
IT IS TRULY SUBLIME!
“I think he talks like whatever he’s reading,” Ethan said. “Inkling, we were just wondering if you could take a look at this picture.”
Reluctantly, Inkling became a splotch again and flowed onto the screen of Soren’s phone. Too late, he discovered it was the same slippery stuff that covered the posters in the hallway. Inkling skated helplessly across the glass, but the image of the beach didn’t disappear or fade at all, even as he ricocheted back and forth a few times before hauling himself off the phone.
“He can’t do screens!” Soren said.
“Ink,” said Ethan. “Maybe it has to be ink!”
“Did you see anything, Inkling?” Soren asked.
Eagerly, Inkling flowed back onto the pages of the book, then wrote:
I SAW NOTHING BUT A GREAT, ACHING DARKNESS. IT WAS HORRID. PLEASE, I BEG YOU, NEVER PUT ME ON SUCH A TERRIBLE THING AGAIN!
Ethan smiled as Inkling happily continued reading, erasing word after word.
“So, he’s the one who did our drawings?” Soren asked.
Ethan nodded.
“Why didn’t you just tell us you couldn’t draw?”
“Because you all thought I was some kind of genius! I cannot draw!”
It felt good to finally admit it.
“I can’t hit a baseball,” said Soren with a shrug. “Big deal. So. You just tell Inkling what to draw and he draws it?”
“I didn’t need to, really. He read your story, and used my stick figures as a guide, and did the rest. It’s cheating, right?”