Bad Hair Day (19 page)

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“The lions. They’re stone. You don’t need to sneak up on them.”

I looked down at the stone beastie in front of me. “Yeah, I got that. I’m looking for the Yeti.”

“It ran behind the house.”

“Then why are you still standing here?”

“I got my video already.” She shrugged. “But I thought I’d wait out here in case it came back.”

“What’s the flyswatter for?” I asked. She looked down at it like she wasn’t sure how it had gotten into her hand. “Never mind. Look, that Yeti is my friend. I’m going to look for it. If you see him, will you yell for me?”

“Wow,” she said. “You’re strange.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But will you do it?”

She nodded, and I took off toward the side of the house.

I settled into an easy jog and then spent a moment marveling that I could ever use the word
easy
to describe a physical activity. But I’d started puffing by the time I rounded the side of the house. Sure, I could maintain an easy jog around a normal-sized home, but this was like trying to lap a football stadium with a wraparound porch. It wasn’t going to happen.

It was almost a relief to find Bryan in the backyard. His face was completely distorted and borderline unrecognizable, but he was wearing the hospital gown from earlier, so I was pretty sure it was him. And the fur was the right color—dark brown, just like his hair. It wafted in the breeze as he took out a topiary shaped like an elephant. He pulled off the trunk with his bare hands and started beating the plant’s hindquarters with it.

I never thought I’d see one of my friends spank an elephant with its own trunk. Heck, I never thought I’d see
anyone
do that, let alone someone I’d associate with voluntarily.

“Bryan!” I yelled. “Stop that!”

He paused, cocking his head. The gesture made me think of Armstrong. He used to give me the same questioning look when I’d tell him to do something. Apparently, Bryan’s effective IQ was about equal to that of the average Labradoodle. That was good to know. Although strange, because Trey certainly didn’t seem to have lost any brain cells. I’d have to think on that later.

“Put the branch down,” I said firmly, pointing first at the branch and then at the ground.

Bryan looked down at the huge stick in his hand. After a moment
of consideration during which I was able to fully contemplate the possibility that I could at any moment be bludgeoned, he flung it away. It whirled through the air and speared the throat of a flamingo topiary about fifty feet away. Topiaries are creepy, but I still felt kind of guilty.

“Why are you talking to me like I’m an idiot?” he asked. His voice was lower than usual, and kinda growly, but still clear enough to understand.

“Because you’re an idiot.”

It probably wasn’t very smart to taunt the elephant spanker, but it just popped out. Luckily, all he did was chuckle. He was used to my sense of humor.

I took a couple of steps forward. “Are you okay? You’re not going to throw me into a wall again, are you?”

He winced, hunching his shoulders away from me for a second like he was afraid of losing control again. So I froze. Any movement I made might send him into a hairy, nanobot-fueled haze.

We stood there for a minute.

“All right,” I finally said. “I know what’s wrong with you. I need you to chill while I figure out how to fix it. If you run off again, I can’t help you. Can you do that for me?”

“All right,” he rumbled.

I decided it was probably wise to keep Rocky’s abduction a secret for now. So I led him to the car in silence.

And then he clamped his hairy hand onto my shoulder. “Where’s Rocky?”

“W
here is Rocky?” Bryan repeated insistently, his voice deepening. I could barely understand him now. Thankfully, he released me and clamped down on one of the lawn chairs in the Black family backyard instead. The metal screeched as it bent.

I stopped and held up my hands, urging him wordlessly to settle down.

“It’s okay,” I said. “She’s okay. Now take a deep breath. The condition you have gets worse when you get upset or scared. I need you. So does Rocky. You got me?”

After a moment, he nodded.

“Let’s go to the car. You can meditate or something.”

I started walking, and he followed me without any further topiary-related incidents. The trophy wife shot some video when we walked past, but we wouldn’t pose for the camera the way she
wanted us to. She flounced up the stairs and slammed the door on us. I was hurt by that. Really.

I got behind the wheel. Bryan sat down in the passenger seat and stared at me like I was the freak instead of the other way around. I couldn’t help examining him right back. His face looked pulled out of shape, like one of those Hollywood plastic surgery addicts. His forehead bulged and his brows drew low over his eyes, giving him a serious caveman vibe. His teeth seemed too big for his mouth somehow. Of course, I couldn’t see them very well under all the superfluous hair. It covered his entire face except for two bare circles around his eyes. He looked like a reverse raccoon.

“Pretty scary, huh?” he muttered.

I patted his hand. The hospital gown puffed out from all the fur crammed inside.

“You’re still Bryan. Just hairier.”

“I need Rocky.” He squirmed uncomfortably. “Will you take me to her?”

“Of course I will!” The words came out too hastily; I had to force myself to sound casual. “But will you come with me on an errand first? I don’t want to get hurt again.”

“I said I was sorry.” His eyes flashed, and his chest started heaving. I could almost feel his control slipping away; I wanted to open the car door and run, but that would be the worst choice I could make.

“I didn’t mean you!” I said. “Really, I didn’t. Trey Black beat me up. He hurt Jonah too.”

Bryan snarled. But not like an angry guy. More like a pissed-off wildcat.

I took a deep breath and plunged in. “Do you think you could track Trey? Like, by scent or something? I don’t know where he is, and I need to stop him from attacking anybody else. He’s the one who jumped you behind the restaurant and wolfed you out.”

He gritted his teeth, sinking back into the seat. On the surface, he looked relaxed. It made me feel better until I saw his hands tightly balled into fists. This was not good.

“I’ll track him down,” he said darkly. “Take me to the last place you saw him.”

It was probably the best I’d get. Time was moving too fast, and if I didn’t find a cure soon, I’d be the one throwing people into walls. Had the bots made Trey a killer, or had he always had that capacity inside him? I didn’t want to find out firsthand.

I drove back to my house. Despain would probably lecture me, but once she saw Bryan I was sure she’d help us. Someone needed to figure out how to deactivate the stupid bots without killing us all, so I tried to speed-read the stupid binder when we stopped at red lights and stop signs. I figured with my luck, I’d get into an accident. With no license. Which would really suck. The whole thing gave me a headache, and I was suddenly starving on top of everything else.

I realized this wasn’t the time to be complaining about the little things, especially since I had a wolfman sitting next to me wearing one of Aaron’s old hoodies with the hood pulled up so he didn’t scare anyone we passed. But between the building
queasiness in my belly and the stabbing hunger pains, it was hard to concentrate.

My driveway was empty. A slip of paper fluttered on the front door, a couple of inches above the bloody handprint that still decorated it. I turned to reassure Bryan, because I figured he’d flip when he saw the blood, but he was asleep. The increases in strength and speed had to be consuming incredible amounts of energy, which could lead to the burnout that Sebastian mentioned. At this metabolic pace, the more energy he could conserve, the better. And letting him sleep for a few minutes gave me some time to speed-read the manual.

When I turned the car off, Bryan didn’t even move. I couldn’t help worrying that it was CPR time again, but then he started snoring, which was a relief until it got really annoying. I debated jabbing him with my elbow, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’d have to live with it.

Back to the binder. So far, I’d skimmed through a bunch of nanotech theory. While it was really interesting, it wasn’t remotely helpful—although I could use it to write one killer term paper for AP Bio; I made a mental note to copy everything before I returned it. All’s fair in love and Advanced Placement classes.

I flipped forward to the section on nanobot construction. Sebastian said he’d looked for some way to deactivate the bots and failed, so I wasn’t exactly expecting to find an Off switch, but maybe there was some kind of weakness I could exploit. The bots were a mixture of biological and synthetic materials designed to augment physical strength and speed reflexes, which was just a
fancy way of saying they were itty-bitty robots that make people as strong and fast as bears and wolves. Technically I should have called them werebearwolfbots, but that would have made me sound like a complete idiot.

Bryan started to snore at full volume, or at least I hoped it was full, because if it got much louder, my eardrums might pop.

One bit caught my eye as I read on: every test animal had died when the docs had tried to give them an MRI. The bots must have been sensitive to magnetic fields. I felt all special when the binder confirmed this. Autopsies showed that the mice had died of massive internal hemorrhaging; the bots pretty much ripped them apart.

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, trying to find some way to make this info useful. We could put Bryan into an MRI machine to destroy the bots, but he’d die of internal bleeding. As far as side effects went, that one was about as bad as it got. I had to find some other way to interfere with the mechanical parts.

Unfortunately, I drew a blank. Hunger made it hard for me to focus. I felt so starving that I was actually dizzy. When the door opened and Aaron held his hand out to help me out of the car, I honestly thought I was hallucinating.

“You are not here,” I said.

“I missed you.”

When he pulled me out of the car and pressed his lips to mine, I knew what it meant. He’d chucked Elle for good this time. I smiled triumphantly against his lips, barely restraining myself from throwing my arms over my head in a display of triumph.
It probably wasn’t very nice of me, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t obligated to be nice to wannabe boyfriend stealers. But then the smiling made it tough to kiss, so I stopped.

When we pulled apart, Aaron searched my face. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I just didn’t want to leave Bryan out here by himself. How did you know we were here?”

“I didn’t. I tried to call you, but your cell is off. So I came by to see if you were home.”

“Stupid phone.”

“So …,” he said, taking my hand and holding it between both of his.

I waited. It took all my willpower not to throw myself into his arms and wail about how much I had missed him. But all I needed to do was picture Elle sitting in his lap and it became much easier. I wasn’t letting him off with anything short of a full apology, because he got the better deal with me. My brains would get better with age; her body wouldn’t, except for maybe the synthetic boobies. I didn’t think those had an expiration date, but I really wasn’t sure. Synthetic boobies weren’t my area of expertise.

“I’m sorry,” he said. And I still waited. Because it wasn’t good enough.

“I didn’t mean to let it go as far as it did. I mean, yeah, I didn’t want to piss her off, but it also felt good to have somebody want me that bad.” He shook his head. “Stupid, I know, but you’re so awesome. I mean, you’re famous. The other day, I read that they might be making a TV movie about you. I’m just the quarterback of a sucky football team. How can I compete with that?”

I had nothing to say. In fact, all I could manage was a very unattractive gape. He couldn’t be feeling inferior to me. Everyone loved Aaron, and I was the class brain. That ranked me slightly above the gamer geeks in terms of coolness level, but not by much.

“Are you nuts?” I asked.

That was all I got out before a Volkswagen hopped the curb, tore up our driveway, and nearly ran me over.