“What are you going to do with the newcomer?” the guy in the tie asked as he turned and started counting the gold bars.
I stiffened a bit at the mention of myself. It was one of those moments when you both want to hear what somebody is going to say about you and yet you sort of wish you weren’t there because since the person thinks they’re talking privately about you they might say something really mean or embarrassing. But I listened because I figured it was probably pretty important that I know what he was saying about me.
“I’ve got the newcomer under control,” said Mr. Arthur with a “don’t worry” tone in his voice. “He seems like a smart kid and I’ll just keep him here with me. I need someone I trust to help me with the day-to-day running of this place and I think that he’s very trainable. I mean, he really likes me and is very impressed with everything I’ve done so far.”
I had to marvel at Mr. Arthur’s ego. Even though I hadn’t said anything too negative to him, I certainly hadn’t ever acted like I was that impressed with what he was doing, nor had I done anything to make him think that I really liked him. But I guess people hear what they want to hear.
“Well, if I were you, I’d keep him locked up until we’re finished and I’ve gotten all the gold out of here. Because if he causes any trouble whatsoever, I’ll neutralize him myself.”
And upon hearing that, I quickly and quietly closed the door and ran silently back to my room. I’d seen enough TV shows and movies to know that
neutralize
was just a fancy, less-scary-sounding word for
kill.
And I wasn’t looking to get killed.
I got back in my room and sat on the edge of my bed. After all of Mr. Arthur’s talk about improving the place and making the creatures’ lives better, was his entire plan to simply steal gold from this frequency? But the man in the tie said that he was going to leave with the gold and then Mr. Arthur could do what he wanted. It was all really confusing, and I didn’t know what to do. Should I try to get in the machine and go back home? Should I escape and find Karen? Could Foo help me? Did she hate me now because she thought I was friends with Mr. Arthur? And could I even get out of here?
There were no guards in the hallway but there had to be others around and now I knew that if I got caught doing anything, the man in the tie was going to kill me. I tried to imagine what Karen would do if she was in this situation but I knew the answer and it didn’t seem like something I was capable of doing. I could hear her telling me to stop being a wuss and get up and get out of there, even if I had to fight off an army and kick Mr. Arthur in the nuts.
Man, how I wished I was Karen at that moment.
I heard a tapping on my window and nearly jumped out of my skin. I turned quickly and saw Foo hovering outside. I got up and went to the window and tried to open it, but it was locked. I didn’t want to yell to her through the window because I knew someone would hear me and I didn’t want to take a chance of getting either myself or Foo in trouble. And so I just gave her a lame little wave hello.
She pointed at me and made a face that said, “Are you all right?”
I nodded and gave her a “What are you doing?” look.
She smiled at me and mouthed, “I’m checking on you.”
“How are
you?
” I mouthed back, since I had merely been captured while she had seen her entire city destroyed that very day.
She smiled again and nodded, which I guessed meant she was all right. She then put her hand on the glass and gave me a look that said, “Everything is going to be okay.” My heart felt like somebody had just filled it full of helium and before I even knew what I was doing, I reached out my hand and put it up on the glass against hers. I smiled at her since I suddenly realized just how happy I was to see her. Even though I’d only known her for about twenty-four hours, and even though she was a person from another frequency who could fly, I really really really liked her. And I knew that she liked me back.
Foo moved in closer to the glass and raised her other hand. I thought she was going to put that on the glass, too, and so I began to raise my other hand to meet hers. However, all she did was give me a friendly shake of her head and point to something behind me. Before I could turn around to look, a hand clamped down hard on my shoulder.
“YEEEAAAGGG!!!” I screamed as my heart leaped into my throat.
I spun around and was face-to-face with Karen.
“C’mon, lover boy,” she said like she wanted to laugh at me. “Let’s get out of here.”
“How did you get in?!” I whispered loudly, my heart pounding out of my chest from the rush of adrenaline she had just given me. “Weren’t there guards all over the place?”
“Yeah,” she said with a shrug.
And then I heard the sound of tons of guards running through the hallway toward my room.
“Oh, man,” I said as my stomach fell into my shoes. “You just never make stuff easy, do you?”
“What fun would that be?” she said with a smile as I saw the glint of swords and battle-axes appear outside my door.
NOW WE’RE IN TROUBLE
Karen reached over her shoulders with both hands and pulled two gorilla guard swords out of the back of a woven battle vest she had made from heavy rope. She tossed one of the swords at me handle-first. I caught it before my brain even realized that my hand had been smart enough to reach out for it.
“Try to do a better job than you did in the forest,” she said as the gorilla guards ran into the room.
Oh, great, I thought. Nothing like heading into battle wearing pajamas.
Karen gave a yell and ran at the guards, swinging her sword in a figure-eight pattern that made it impossible for them to hit her with their weapons. The guards all looked startled at the power of her attack but quickly had to react as she charged toward them. They stuck out their swords. CLANG! CLANG! She swung her weapon into theirs so hard that the guards all spun sideways as the swords flew out of their hands.
“Let’s go!” she yelled as she grabbed my shirt collar and dashed for the door, practically pulling me off my feet. I snatched my backpack and clothes off the chair next to the door, then raised my sword and pointed it rather lamely at the guards as we ran past them, hoping they would think I was as tough as Karen was. But their faces just filled with anger as they grabbed their swords and ran after us into the hallway.
As we sprinted toward the stairs with the gorilla guards running after us, I heard the green door behind us open. I looked back and saw Mr. Arthur emerge.
“It’s the Anti-Art!” Mr. Arthur yelled. “GET THEM!!!”
We tried to run down the stairs quickly without falling and killing ourselves. Running down stairs is hard enough but it’s even worse when you’re carrying a big sword and getting chased by creatures who want to chop your head off. The guards were hopping down the stairs after us but luckily their feet were so big they were having trouble keeping their footing.
We ran down the curving staircase into the lobby and saw the front door. Suddenly, the door flew open and the huge mole commander and several gorilla guards appeared, weapons drawn.
“Well, well, well,” said the mole commander with what I assumed was a smile. “If it isn’t my old friends. You two just keep making it easy for us, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” said Karen with a sarcastic laugh. “You really did a great job catching me last time.”
“Oh, we just let you go,” he said with his own version of a sarcastic laugh. “We were after your friend there. If we’d really wanted you, we would have gotten you.”
“Yeah?” Karen said as she raised her sword at him. “Do you want me now?”
The mole commander and the gorilla guards behind him all raised their weapons threateningly.
“Oh, yes,” said the mole commander. “We do.” He then stepped forward and turned his blade so that the light glinted off it onto Karen’s face. “Nice knowing you.”
And with that, he took a huge swing at both of us that showed he really did intend to detach our heads from our bodies. We both dropped to the floor, the ax literally clipping off the top inch of my hair.
“Don’t kill the boy!” I heard Mr. Arthur yell from the stairs as all the gorilla guards ran toward us.
“Looks like someone made himself a friend,” Karen said to me with a scowl. “Well, guess what? You’re my ticket out of here now.”
And before I even had a chance to process what she said, she threw her arm around my chest, stood up quickly, and pulled my back tight against her, turning me into a human shield as my sword dropped out of my startled hand and thumped onto the carpet. Then she put her sword up under my chin and turned to face the approaching guards.
“One more step and I cut off his head,” she yelled at them.
The guards all stopped and looked up at Mr. Arthur. He put out his hand, signaling them to wait. Then he looked at Karen and made a frustrated face.
“She’s bluffing,” said a voice.
We all looked up at the top of the stairs and I saw the man in the tie come around the corner. He came down a few steps and looked at Karen and me.
“You’re not really going to fall for that old gag, are you, Mr. President?” the man in the tie said with a smile.
“Who the hell are you?” said Karen, sounding very surprised to see another person from our dimension.
“The name’s Golonski,” the man said coolly. “Herbert Golonski.”
Karen burst out laughing, then said, “You’re joking, right?”
“It’s not nice to make fun of people’s names, Miss,” said the man, looking a bit perturbed.
“He’s right, you know,” I added quietly. “I hate when people laugh at my na —”
“Shut up,” she growled into my ear.
“Karen,” said Mr. Arthur, “just let Iggy go. I’m not looking to hurt you.”
“Huh. Really? And exactly how does the phrase ‘Don’t kill the boy’ fit into that?” she said about as sarcastically as anything I’d ever heard anyone say.
“Why wouldn’t he want to kill you?” asked the man we now knew as Herbert Golonski. “You’ve been trying to subvert his presidency and destroy this city. Where we come from, that’s called treason. ”
“Gee, I thought where we came from it was called liberating an oppressed people from a dictatorship.”
“Hey, I’m not a dictator,” said Mr. Arthur, sounding highly insulted. “I’ve done nothing but nice things for the people of this city.”
“Yeah, and if they didn’t agree with you or want what you were giving them they were just free to do whatever they wanted, right?” she said to Mr. Arthur as she slowly backed the two of us away from the guards.
“Mr. President, you don’t have to listen to any of this,” said Herbert with a shake of his head. “She’s not going to kill the boy.” He then looked at the mole commander and got a very angry look. “Grab her!”
The mole commander nodded and then gestured angrily to the gorilla guards. “You heard the man. Grab her!”
The gorilla guards all started to stalk forward as Karen continued to back up. Since we weren’t moving toward the door and seemed to be backing into a corner, I had no idea what Karen was going to do. I felt her sword press harder into my neck.
“Uh . . . Karen,” I said as delicately as I could, “are you really going to kill me?”
“Yes,” she said in a scary tone. “As soon as we get away from these wackos.”
And with that, she suddenly flung the two of us backward, holding on to me tightly.
CRASH!
We smashed through the window. The next thing I knew we were flipping through the air as shattering glass fell all around us.
“Brace yourself !” she yelled as we twisted in the air. Since we were on the first floor, I knew that we were going to hit the ground quickly and so put my hands up to make sure that I didn’t land directly on my head and break my neck. She let go of me and did the same.
WHAM! The two of us hit the ground hard, landing painfully on our shoulders. I felt a shower of glass fall onto me and put my hands up to block it from cutting my face. Fortunately, the glass in this frequency was a lot more like brittle rock candy than the dangerous glass we have back home and so it bounced off our faces and hands like pieces of plastic.
Before we could even recover from hitting the ground, we heard the sound of the guards running out the door.
“Run!” Karen yelled as she jumped up. I shoved my clothes into my backpack and sprinted after her in my Sleepin’ on Arthur Time! pajamas across the White House lawn.
I looked ahead and saw that a bunch of army guys and White House guards, as well as the giant baby in the tie, were blocking the front gate, their weapons drawn.
“Where do we run
to?
” I yelled at her in a panic.
“Just follow me,” she yelled back over her shoulder as she veered and sped toward the high fence surrounding the yard. “And don’t twist your ankle or run out of steam because if you do, this time I’m not coming back for you.”
She leaped and landed halfway up the fence, grabbing the bars while still holding her sword, and quickly used her hands and feet to scramble up it like a monkey. I jumped onto the fence and tried the same thing but my now famous lack of upper body strength suddenly found me just hanging on as my feet tried to get a grip on the bars. Karen was already on the top of the fence and squeezing between the spikes when she looked down and saw me.
“Climb, you lame-o!” she yelled as I looked back and saw that the gorilla guards were almost at the fence. “Use your feet!”
My shoes finally got a grip on the bars and I scrambled higher up the fence, which was good because suddenly there was a huge CLANG! I looked down to see that one of the guards had thrown an ax at my legs and had just missed me.
“Hey, I thought they weren’t supposed to kill me!” I shouted as I tried not to freak out.
“Yeah, but he didn’t say anything about not cutting off your legs,” said Karen as she jumped down to the ground outside the White House yard. “That’s just the kind of guy Arthur is.”
Not wanting to lose any of my limbs, I pulled myself up as hard as I could and flung myself into the air. “Oh, man!” was all I heard Karen say as I flew over the fence completely out of control, my arms and legs flailing all over the place like a flying squirrel that suddenly realized it couldn’t fly.