Bug Girl Read online

“Where’s Emily now?” she asked, puzzled.

  “Oh, that delicate little flower called for Frida to come fetch her once I got there and she knew you were safe.” Poppy chuckled. “Kept flapping her gums about needing a shower and something called an ‘exfoliant,’ whatever sort of newfangled tomfoolery that is. Frida gave her an earful, too. You would have been proud. Called her ‘the little princess.’”

  Amanda attempted to sigh. Even in the direst of situations, Emily remained totally prissy.

  “Poppy, could I have some water?” she asked.

  “Sure thing, Mandy,” he said, shuffling to the door.

  With Poppy gone, Amanda thought she was alone but then heard sniffling. She turned her head with great effort and saw Vincent in a nearby beanbag chair, puffy-eyed and wilted. Tears were streaming down his face.

  “Vincent?” Amanda whispered. “What are you doing here?”

  “I heard a car pulling into your driveway.” Vincent sniffled, trying to pull himself together. “When I looked out my window, I saw your grandfather carrying you in. I ran over as fast as I could, and he said I could stay, but only for a minute.”

  Amanda was thankful to have a friend at her side. She thought maybe Poppy was wrong about a partner being more important than a sidekick. Sidekicks were loyal.

  “Vincent, listen to me,” she huffed. She had a lot to tell him and not much time. It was getting harder to breathe. “You know more about what’s going on here than anyone else, and I need you to talk to Emily and help her out if anything happens to me.”

  “What do you mean? What could happen?” Vincent slobbered, wiping away fresh tears. “You’re here and awake! You’re going to get better! And why would I ever help that stuck-up social climber?”

  Amanda struggled to sit up. “The Exterminator poisoned me when I was in his lair,” she explained. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but you need to be prepared. You can do this! Now pay attention.”

  Vincent scooted his beanbag closer to Amanda’s bed. She flopped back against the pillows. She felt like she was about to pass out at any second and was having trouble keeping her eyes open.

  “Emily’s not as mean as she seems to be.” Amanda struggled to keep speaking. “I think, especially after today, that she’s just scared. Scared to be herself, maybe.”

  Vincent was taken aback. He looked like he’d seen someone dressed in florals and plaids. Amanda was defending Emily, the girl responsible for all her misery!

  “Emily and I, we take after our moms,” Amanda continued. “We’ve both got powers. And I think I know what hers is, even if she hasn’t figured it out yet. Emily’s got … an anger-management thing happening. You’ve got to get her upset to help her unleash superstuff. And we’re going to need that stuff unleashed if we want to defeat The Exterminator and save the town on Oyster Cove Day.”

  Vincent was speechless. Amanda knew it was a lot to take in. She was telling him he would have to work with Emily, the unapproachable. Emily, the Queen of Mean. Emily, who had never learned his name and, when forced to acknowledge him, usually called him Marmoset. This was the person Amanda insisted Vincent work with in order to salvage Oyster Cove’s freedom. She was asking a lot. But no more than she knew he could handle.

  “Wh-what do I need to do?” Vincent managed to squeeze out through gulps of air and bouts of panic. He didn’t like confrontation to begin with, and Emily Battfield was not a person to be confronted.

  “You need to make fun of her,” Amanda said in a whisper. “You need to make fun of her in public, and about her appearance. Especially her clothes. If her hair looks greasy, tell her. If her shoes are scuffed, make sure to point it out. You have to be awful! Use words like cheap and knockoff and frumpy. Maybe even last season. The angrier you get her, the closer she’ll get to tapping into her powers. She’s almost there. I’ve seen her snap things in half.” Amanda paused. Partially for effect, but more to catch her breath. She was fading fast.

  “But be careful,” she warned her friend. “Emily doesn’t know how strong she is. Once you start in on her, you might have to take cover. She might not have much control. Anything could happen.”

  Vincent was smiling now, despite the situation.

  “What?” Amanda asked.

  “I’m sorry, but this assignment is going to be totally fun,” Vincent said. “Did you know that I’ve been waiting for months to tell her that black shoes should never be worn with a brown belt?”

  Amanda breathed out a pathetic puff of air that should have been a laugh. Her eyes were closed now, and breathing was increasingly difficult. Her pale skin had taken on a pallid, pasty off-white hue.

  “Amanda?” Vincent touched her arm and recoiled. A fine white film had settled over her body—a sort of fuzz. Barely visible, it coated everything. Even her eyelids.

  “Vincent”—Amanda turned—“feed my bugs. Instructions are on my desk. And, Vincent,” she whispered, “I know you can do this. Thank you for being my friend.”

  Determined to stay awake, Amanda saw Poppy returning with a pitcher of water and some cookies on a tray. Next to her, Vincent sat with his face buried in his hands.

  Poppy put the snack down and shuffled over to Amanda’s bedside. He put his hand on the whimpering boy’s shoulder.

  “Now, don’t you worry too much.” Poppy patted Vincent. “These things—they tend to have a way of working themselves out. You’ll see. Run along home now.”

  Vincent looked back once and waved as he left the room.

  Amanda struggled to say something, and then everything went black.

  22

  Emily remembered the first time she tried to make the break with Amanda like it was yesterday. It wasn’t a mean thing; at least, that’s not the way she saw it. It was just … necessary. It started when Amanda called her up to coordinate outfits for a presentation on Abel Goatslam and the Curd Boom of 1812 that the two of them were doing in front of the school for Heritage Days. Amanda thought it would be “cute” if they wore the matching Clam-I-Am T-shirts they purchased together at the pier over the summer. “It’ll be fun. Like we’re twins!” Amanda suggested gleefully. Emily knew for a flat-out fact that there was nothing fun about the idea. They were already giving a speech about curdled dairy. That, coupled with wearing matching seafood outfits in front of the whole school, would result in nicknames and worse.

  Still, Emily hadn’t wanted to be the one to break it to her clueless friend. Amanda’s wide eyes, her trust, her heart-on-her-sleeve personality … She probably should have told Amanda, “No way. That is a terrible idea.” But she couldn’t. Instead she let Amanda show up in her goofy T-shirt while she chose to wear a cute blouse. There would be no “twinsies” on her watch.

  The hurt look on Amanda’s face when she saw Emily and realized she hadn’t put on her coordinating tee was hard to take. Harder to take, Emily knew, would have been the mocking judgments of the other fifth-grade girls.

  “Sorry,” she told Amanda. Though Emily was not sorry about dodging the social bullet. She reminded herself that she had done her friend a favor. She had done them both a favor. If they’d made such a dire fashion slip in tandem, they would both have become a laughingstock and slid so far down the social ladder that they never could have climbed back up. It was then that Emily realized she would have to let Amanda go to save her. And herself. See? She had saved Amanda … that time.

  But what about now?

  Emily was racked with guilt. She felt like everyone she met was staring at her and knew what a wimp she’d been in the face of danger.

  It might be different if she had powers. The thought of that horrible injustice made Emily’s cheeks grow hot. It wasn’t fair that Amanda had cute little superantennae and who-knew-what-all else! The glimpse she got in the locker room of Amanda’s glossy body armor had set Emily off completely. Until then she’d almost convinced herself that her mom really was on a cruise and that Amanda was plain nuts. But then … proof.

  Emily was nearly
hysterical by the time Frida arrived to pick her up early from school after that incident.

  They rode home in silence, but once they were inside, Frida took Emily by the hand and led her all the way to the back of her mother’s largest walk-in closet.

  “It’s time you knew, mija,” Frida said in a grave tone. “Past time, if you ask me.” Then Frida pushed a button on the mirrored wall behind Emily’s mother’s prized collection of organic yoga pants, and the floor began to move. Together Emily and Frida descended into an underground area as big as the house above it.

  “Listen to me carefully,” Frida said. She kept looking deep into Emily’s eyes without smiling. It made Emily feel all squirmy and weird. “I owe your mother my life,” Frida enunciated. “And so do you.” She pointed right at Emily’s nose as the elevator came to a stop.

  The doors opened and Frida launched into a long, boring story about oppression and poverty and corruption, but Emily was having a hard time following it.

  She was standing in Megawoman’s—her mother’s—Super Palace. There were costume rooms and communication rooms and training rooms. Oh, and there were boots. Lots and lots of boots.

  Frida just kept talking, following Emily from room to room. “Are you getting all of this?” she demanded. “Because I don’t want to have to tell you again.”

  “Yes, yes.” Emily waved her hand. “Someplace near Belize, spring break, Marvelous Cadillac whatever, blah, blah, blah.” Frida scowled at her in the mirrored walls. But Emily could not bring herself to focus. She was too busy running her fingers over a pair of sequined thigh-highs. “My mother is Megawoman,” she whispered to the shiny footwear. It suddenly made sense to her, then, all of it: Her mother’s ability to silence people with a look was the superdiluted version of the lethal withering look Megawoman was famous for. Her mother’s fearlessness. Her independence. It was all part of being so much more than normal.…

  “Your mother is very powerful,” Frida confirmed, still frowning. “And so are you.”

  “I am?” Emily turned toward Frida then, batting her eyelashes and laying on some sugar. “Tell me more about me,” she demanded. Without waiting to hear, she rushed to the training room they’d passed on the way. She’d tried to re-create her mother’s powers. All of them. Any of them. But she wasn’t able to so much as wilt a petunia with her glare. She had nothing.

  Frida watched in silence, her dark brows knit together. “In time. In time,” she finally murmured to Emily. But her worried expression remained. Then, perhaps because the longtime live-in knew Emily so well, Frida suggested the girl do a little “shopping” in her mother’s closet. “It will cheer you up,” she said. Emily couldn’t deny it. Finding the silver number really had helped. If she couldn’t stun somebody with a dirty look, she could at least look completely stunning.

  “Your partner can help you develop your talents,” Frida told her when they got back to the main level.

  “My partner?” It took Emily a minute.

  “Amanda is a good girl, stronger than you think,” Frida insisted. “Stronger than you. Go talk to her. We need her help to save your mother … and hers.”

  Emily nodded and stepped up to the silly cottage door without flinching. She even rang the bell. But after that … The initial adventure had not gone very well, had it? Amanda had gone and knocked herself out in some dump and rendered Emily’s current school experience a total nightmare. Not only was the entire student body all freaked out, but Vladimir or Virgil (or whatever unfortunate name that kid who hovered around Amanda had been given by his parents) was all up in her business. And worse, he had enlisted recruits.

  The little wimp marched right up to Emily in the hall before lunch without a hint of shame. He stood at his full height of four feet eleven inches, barely reaching Emily’s chin, and peered up at her face. “Is that an Olga of Antwerp Home Perm?” he shouted so everyone in the hall could hear. “I can smell it from here, and it looks”—he grimaced—“greasy.” He waved his hand in front of his screwed-up face. “Clearly not a professional job.”

  Emily was taken aback by the shrimpboat’s verbal assault on her naturally wavy hair. To make the situation more distasteful, he was flanked by no fewer than a half dozen other nerds wearing sensible footwear and headphones and toting laptops.

  “Your glasses must have fogged,” Emily answered, trying to remain calm. The hallway was not the place for a tantrum. “As if it’s any of your business. And what would you know about hairstyles, anyway?”

  “Please,” Vincent snapped. “I know everything about hairstyles.”

  Emily served up her fiercest side-eye. The boy was unfazed. “Who said you could even talk to me?” she blurted. “And who are those people?” She waved a hand at his friends and wrinkled her nose.

  “Look here, Mismatched Prints, I am trying to help you—Amanda told me everything. And those people”—the boy gestured to the pasty, breathless crew backing him—“are the fighting wing of Hack and Role, or as we prefer to be known, the Otaku Army.”

  Emily looked confused and the nerd leader leaned closer. “They’re just some guys from the Robotics RPG Society. You know, in case you need backup,” he added conspiratorially.

  Emily felt her cheeks get warm. Of course Amanda had told the fragile boy everything. That was so like her. But Emily did not need backup. Certainly not from the Motley Order of Nerds Society. “Everything’s fine. The last thing I want is a pack of brains on my tail.” She gave the kid her most withering look, expecting him to retreat, but he stepped forward and lowered his voice instead.

  “What do you mean, ‘Everything’s fine’? Have you even checked to see if Amanda’s okay? Do you even care that The Exterminator, who is exacting some crazy revenge on your mothers, has poisoned her? No, you were too busy whining about getting a walnut shell enzyme scrub to worry about anyone but yourself.”

  How did he know about that? Emily’s heart was pounding. The look of intensity on the little toady’s face was unsettling, and she didn’t want to admit her failure. She hadn’t known for certain if The Exterminator was behind this business. She hadn’t been brave enough to follow Amanda and find out.

  “Last time I saw Amanda, she was at Armpit Acres,” Emily blurted at the kid calling her out. “And for your information,” she added smugly, “I’m the one who made sure she got out of there in one piece. One phone call from me, and she was on her way to safety. So stifle it, Sniffles, and get out of my way.” She pushed past the pocket-size honor student, not-so-accidentally knocking him into the mob of goobers. The weaklings fell like bowling pins, cushioning their technology with their slacker bodies.

  “Your skirt looks like it was sewn out of tablecloths!” the pint-size techie shouted after her as she stormed down the hall. “I saw those pleather shoes in the clearance bin at Pumps by the Pound,” he added with glee. “Don’t worry, no one can tell the difference.”

  Without even thinking, Emily punched her right hand directly into a locker. The metal door buckled and folded in on itself as if it were made of paper. She looked around—no one had seen her. No one but Amanda’s friend, who stared at her with a small smile on his face.

  By lunch Emily could stand it no longer. She walked off campus and all the way to Amanda’s house. The route was ingrained in her memory from the days when the two girls used to walk there after free-form dance class at Ms. Bovinia’s Jazz Danceteria and Crafts Cottage. That was back when they liked each other and had things in common. Both of them used to enjoy doing interpretive dance moves and making legume-and-noodle mosaics—though their motifs differed. Emily preferred to create portraits and flowers with lentils and split peas, while Amanda invariably crafted something creepy and crawly out of pinto and black beans. Often she made bees.

  “Ugh!” Emily squeezed her eyes shut.

  Ever since they were toddlers, all Amanda ever talked about, or played, or was interested in were bees or grasshoppers or other things with too many legs.

  The memory no
w showing in Emily’s head was a recollection from second grade. She had been practicing making French braids on her Enfant Terrible doll and wanted to discuss hair ties, but Amanda kept prattling on about bees.…

  “Bees are amazing. They give it all. They devote their lives to the greater good. They’re willing to sacrifice everything for the colony and their queen.” Emily could swear that Amanda had wiped away tears as she herself had swallowed back bile. Bees gave her the heebies. Gross.

  “Did you know bees only sting if they think their hive is threatened?” Amanda had gone on. And on. “They attack with their stingers, which are covered with spikes. When they try to remove them, the barbs stick fast, like fishhooks, so then, when they try to fly away, they end up pulling out their own entrails—that’s their guts—and they die! For the greater good!”

  Just the memory of that sad speech made Emily queasy. But this time it wasn’t because of the bee innards. It was because she knew Amanda was right. Amanda was the good one. The one willing to sacrifice. For others. For the greater good. Just like a bee.

  As she stretched out her hand to ring the Prices’ doorbell, Emily began to chicken out. She could not look into Amanda’s grandfather’s pale old eyes. He knew she had been out there with Amanda last night. He knew she had been more concerned about odors and clogged pores than Amanda’s safety. And he probably knew that, unlike Amanda, Emily didn’t have any real powers!

  Emily stood for a moment longer on the front stoop, and then slipped around to the side yard. She couldn’t face Poppy, but she had to know if Amanda was okay. She climbed the oak tree that grew past her old friend’s window. She snagged her leggings and scraped her arms on her way up. She didn’t care. When she got high enough to see inside, she almost wished she hadn’t come at all.

  Amanda was lying on her bed. She was covered in some sort of strange gossamer goo. The poor girl looked awful, more pale than ever. She wasn’t moving … like, at all. And what is that gunk? Emily wondered, pursing her lips in distaste. It reminded her of some sort of creepy Silly String shroud, only shrouds were for dead people, and Amanda couldn’t be—