Patrick Griffin's Last Breakfast on Earth (17 page)

“No time,” she said, putting her hand to her lips. “Somebody will explain more to you later.”

She cleared her throat and continued her prepared statement. “‘You, Patrick of Earth,'” she continued, “‘are here to help restore balance. It is too late to have prevented Ith's great decimation, but there's still a chance for Earth. It's not too late for sanity.'”

“I don't understand—you want me to do something?” said Patrick.

“Don't listen to her!” shrieked Kempton, finding his voice. “She's full of lies! She wants anarchy! Chaos! Evil!” He kicked his bound legs at the broken glass. “Do you need more proof—look what she's just done to official property!”

“Will you
please
shut
up
?
Please?
” said Skwurl.

“Never! You disgust me and I want you arrested immediately! HE-EEELP!!! HE—”

The girl tore off a rectangle of tape and placed it over Kempton's mouth. He writhed and rolled his eyes like a terrified animal.

“For now, it is merely hoped that you will keep your mind open, Patrick Griffin, and not fall in with the hypocritical manners of this world.”

“You mean, like, wearing makeup?” asked Patrick.

“Sure.” The girl smiled. “Or also, for instance, why everybody seems to be dismissive about the fact that you have no memory of your world's Hearer.”

“That's what I told them—I don't know anything about a Hearer,” said Patrick.

“And they don't quite listen, do they? Perhaps they implied that you have memory issues resulting from your transubstantiation?”

“Yeah, that's what they said,” said Patrick.

“Interesting, don't you think? I mean you're the one who's from Earth—our first visitor since Rex himself—and yet they're so quick to discount what you have to say.”

Patrick had indeed thought some along the same lines already.

The girl lifted her camouflage sleeve and glanced at an old-fashioned wristwatch. “Now, sorry, just one more thing—”

She broke off, sucking breath through her teeth.

Kempton had somehow spun himself around on the floor and kicked her in the shin.

“Actually, maybe I can make time for
two
things.” She removed a black marker from her pocket, bent over Kempton, locked his head between her knees, and wrote
I brōktenet 10
across his forehead.

“
That's
what you get for kicking somebody smaller than you,” she said as she got up. “Now—before I go—” She gave another deft flick to her metal whip, dislodging the camera's glass lens with a
pok!

“Check it out,” she said.

“Is that what I think it is?” Patrick asked, cautiously stepping forward. But she didn't reply—she was gone.

“Mmmmf,” said Kempton.

Patrick pulled the tape off the boy's mouth and helped undo the bonds on his hands and feet. Without a word, he helped Kempton to his feet and the two of them approached the busted-open camera. A large, vein-streaked, slime-covered orb dangled from a foot-long glistening pink cord. To Patrick's mind, the thing was either a prop worthy of a grade-A horror movie, or an actual
eyeball
.

 

CHAPTER 26

Roadside Assistance

Carly Griffin, Patrick's ten-year-old sister, looked out the BMW SUV's tinted window at the flashing lights and spotted her unharmed father and brother even as Mrs. Fettridge asked, “Is that your
father
's truck, Carly?!”

Carly—busy wishing she was someplace very far away—didn't answer at first. In addition to being the most popular, Polly Fettridge was the prettiest and possibly the wealthiest girl in the fifth grade, and had a mean streak that made even Carly's older sister Eva seem like an amateur.

Mrs. Fettridge drove Polly and Carly home from their travel soccer clinic every Saturday. Carly had long since learned that the safest course was to only speak when spoken to and, even then, to do so only with the very shortest statements possible.

“What?” said Carly, intentionally looking out the wrong window. “Where?”

Polly peered at Carly, her nearly lipless mouth perched at the brink of a laugh.

“Oh,
dear
,” said Mrs. Fettridge. “Let's stop and see if we can help.”

“Uh, I—” began Carly, but cut herself off. There was nothing she could say that would make this any better. And a lot of things she could say that would make it worse.

“Your
dad
had an accident?!” said Polly. “And, look, your
brother
's there, too.”

“I hope everybody's okay,” said Mrs. Fettridge. “My goodness, will you
look
at that car they're towing!”

The Prius that had rear-ended her father's pickup truck was entirely missing its windshield, and both its hood and grille were pushed back- and downward as if a giant had rolled his foot upon it.

“Your dad's, umm, truck doesn't look too bad, though,” said Mrs. Fettridge, touching her hair with one hand and glancing in her visor mirror as she pulled to the curb and put the BMW in park. Mrs. Fettridge, like her daughter, was quite pretty, and amply pleased with the condition. “Well, and aren't we
all
lucky it's stopped raining?” she said, scooping up her iPhone and checking her side mirror as she exited the SUV.

Carly trailed out of the vehicle after Polly.

Neil was over by the curb berating himself for having done the honest thing and—on finding it under the passenger seat—given his dad's phone back to him. If he'd only thought things through and pretended to keep looking for it, he could right now be looking up information about the squid and also whatever that weird new insult was that his father had used.
Entack?

“Rick! Is everybody all right?”

“Oh, hi, Andrea,” said Mr. Griffin, spotting Mrs. Fettridge as he finished up a conversation with the police officer. “Yes, Neil and I are both fine. And the other driver, too. They took him to the emergency room to be safe—just cuts and bruises, though.”

“Oh that's so
wonderful
,” said Mrs. Fettridge. “Ambulance is
never
good, though. People are
so
litigious these days.”

“Well,
he
rear-ended
me
,” said Mr. Griffin. He'd thoroughly reassured himself on this score. “So, there won't be any judgments going his way. Anyhow, he seemed like a nice man. Just a bit of a tailgater, obviously.”

“Well, what happened?” said Mrs. Fettridge.

“Somebody's dog got out of their yard and ran out in the road,” said Mr. Griffin. “I hit the brakes, and then…”

“That's terrible,” said Mrs. Fettridge, her hand fluttering to her chest. “And you didn't hit the dog?”

“No, it ran off.”

“What kind was it?” asked Mrs. Fettridge.

“The dog?” asked Mr. Griffin.

“A big one,” said Neil.

“Yeah, it must have been a Saint Bernard or something,” said Mr. Griffin.

“Though it was gray,” said Neil. “Which means it wasn't a Saint Bernard. That's for sure.” He stifled an impulse to also note that Saint Bernards don't have antlers and carry crosses.

“Maybe it was a great Dane,” suggested Mrs. Fettridge.

“Heya, Superstar!” said Mr. Griffin to the slowly approaching Carly. “How was soccer?”

“Fine,” said Carly, trying to guess just how many minutes into school tomorrow Polly would be calling her “Superstar!” in front of all her friends.

“Well,” continued her father, “the Fettridges have gotten you this far. You want to ride home with me the rest of the way?”

Carly gave her dad a shrug and gazed off at the horizon, still wishing she was someplace far beyond it.

“She was embarrassed about your truck even when it
had
a back bumper, Dad,” said Neil.

“What?” he said, in mock shock, placing his hand over his heart.

“
I
like your truck, Rick,” said Mrs. Fettridge. “It's very
you
.”

“Uh, thanks, Andrea,” said Mr. Griffin, looking over at her gleaming oversized luxury SUV and deciding it was best not to return a similarly veiled statement.

“Well,” said Mrs. Fettridge. “Are you sure it's okay to drive—I mean, I guess it looks all right, all things considered—”

“Yeah, it's just going to need a new bumper and to have its airbags reset.”

“What a
day
you Griffins are having,” said Mrs. Fettridge.

“What?” said Mr. Griffin.

“I read on Facebook that Patrick's gone missing. Have you found him yet?”

“What?” said Carly. “Patrick?” She felt a sinking feeling suddenly. She'd been thinking about Patrick in the car just a little while ago, remembering his birthday was on Thursday. She and Mom were going to make him a pineapple upside-down cake, his favorite.

“You read that on
Facebook
?” asked Mr. Griffin.

“Yes, Laura Tondorf-Schnittman is watching the twins, and Jenna Michaels said that Lucie's home and that your mother was picking up Eva from swim practice so—”

“Wow,” said Mr. Griffin. “The Internet now knows more about my family than I do.”

Mrs. Fettridge decided she'd detected a note of judgment and grimaced. “Well,” she said, “let us know if there's anything we can do to help. I know it must be a scary time.”

“I'm not too worried,” said Mr. Griffin. “Patrick's a twelve-year-old boy and twelve-year-old boys sometimes go off and do things on their own. Or, at least, they used to.”

Mrs. Fettridge raised a neatly plucked eyebrow and didn't say anything back.

“You know, it's this old-fashioned thing called independence that used to happen before everybody got personal tracking devices and began posting their status updates to major media companies every ten minutes.”

“Ah, of course,” said Mrs. Fettridge, grabbing her daughter's hand and turning to Carly. “You looked great at soccer today, Carly. You should come over and play with Polly sometime. We have a great big yard and she
never
goes out and practices on her own.”

Polly gave Carly a withering look as her mother steered her back to their car.

Carly looked to her father. “Is Patrick all right, Dad?”

“I'm sure he's fine,” he replied as he watched the high-heeled Mrs. Fettridge slide back into her luxury automobile. “He just went off someplace without telling anybody is all.”

“Oh,” said Carly, not entirely reassured.

Mr. Griffin ignored his cell phone as it buzzed. Whatever it was, it could surely wait till he got home in two minutes.

How could he have guessed it was his wife calling to say their children Paul and Cassie—the Twins—had also gone missing?

 

CHAPTER 27

What Meets the Eye

After allowing Kempton and Patrick to scrub the ink off the former's forehead, Gymnasiarch Frayne and two black-mustached men in dark blue uniforms led them from the locker room, down two hallways, and up an escalator to the plush reception area outside Provost Bostrel's private office.

Patrick had never seen such a fancy setup in his whole life, much less in a school. From the silk-cushioned bench with its lion's claw feet and fluted armrests to the large and expensive-looking landscape paintings and portraits on the walls to the crystal chandelier, it was the sort of waiting room he would have expected to see maybe for the president of a very old bank.

To Patrick's eye, the only less-than-classy aspect of the room was the scrolling text upon the digitally enabled wallpaper. Textured messages circled, wobbled, and swayed around the room:
if
ü
SE
sum
ð
ing, in
form
!
an
ark
E
=
E
v
Ə
L
!
vij
Ə
L
Ə
ns
Ə
buv
o
L
!