Bug Girl Read online

  Poppy shuffled off to the kitchen before either girl could stop him.

  Neither Amanda nor Emily moved.

  The silence grew until it was unbearable.

  “Come in,” Amanda said unenthusiastically. She’d been waiting for this, wanting it, but now that it was happening …

  Emily stepped inside. She took a breath. “I guess we have to talk,” she said finally.

  She guesses … Amanda bit her tongue to keep from snapping back, “What was your first clue?” You need her, she silently reminded herself. You need her, and she doesn’t do anything unless she thinks it’s her idea. So just let it be. It was easier said than done.

  Amanda led Emily to the dining-room table. Poppy slapped two towering bowls of ice cream down in front of them, and Amanda dug in. Hindering criminals burned a ton of calories. She was starving! And she hoped that the frozen goodness would make swallowing her pride a little easier.

  Emily stirred her ice cream into soup and chatted politely with Poppy, answering his silly questions (What’s your favorite tree fruit? Are you allergic to legumes?) while Amanda shot her skeptical looks. The girl’s civility was making her nervous.

  Then Poppy asked something that snapped Emily out of her pseudo-polite nodding.

  “Say, how’s that Frida of yours doing? Quite the character, that one.” Poppy laughed. “I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of a fight with her!”

  “Wait, what?” Emily sputtered. He had totally caught her off guard.

  “Oh, I know a thing or two about the goings-on over at the Battfield house,” Poppy added mysteriously. “Frida and me, we go way back.”

  Emily shuffled in her seat nervously and then made a point of sitting still. Amanda was enjoying watching her squirm—Emily hated to let her emotions show, and this was clearly too much for her.

  With one last lick of her spoon, Amanda suggested they go to her room, where, in relative privacy, she suspected Emily would finally say what she had come to say.

  Though it was dark in Amanda’s bedroom, individual insect cages were lighted—the bulbs provided heat for the more tropical bugs—giving the place a soothing glow. Emily sat down on the rain-forest-themed bedspread while Amanda got busy feeding her pets. She gazed into the tank closest to the bed—it held a praying mantis egg case. Amanda couldn’t wait to see the stunning miniature mantises emerge and scurry about. She was planning to release them into her mother’s flower bed to eat aphids and other pests and participate in the cottage garden ecosystem. It was going to be beautiful!

  “Earth to Amanda.” Emily snapped her fingers impatiently. “Now is not the time to be daydreaming about your little companions. I came here for a reason.”

  Amanda plopped down on her bed next to Emily. “So…?” She was going to make Emily say it.

  “So. I believe you,” Emily sighed. “About our moms, I mean.”

  “Well, you should!” Amanda snapped. “I don’t lie.” She couldn’t help but be a little perturbed. Here she was trying to save their mothers, risking everything, and Emily was acting like it was a big deal that she “believed” her.

  Emily pursed her lips. Then spoke again. “And … I saw you in the mall.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In your outfit,” Emily clarified. “With that bad guy? I saw you with your powers, uh, on.”

  Amanda was shocked. She hadn’t thought anyone could recognize her. “Sooooo…?”

  “So, if you’re going to, like, rescue our moms or something, I want to help.”

  Emily sounded less self-assured than she had in a long time. But she was saying she was in, that they could be partners, and that meant Amanda was one step closer to getting her mom back. But before they could bust any moves, Amanda had to fill Emily in on a shedload of stuff. Starting with the villain they were up against.

  “All right, then. Check this out.” Amanda grabbed her mother’s folders from her bedside table and plunked them down on her bed beside Emily—she’d been reading them every night. “These are the suspects my mom identified before she and your mom were taken. I’ve read through everything and narrowed it down. I think this is the guy.”

  Emily flipped through the clippings. “A bug killer?” she scoffed. “Of course you do.”

  “A scientist,” Amanda corrected. “A really mad one, but I’m not positive it’s him. He just seems the most likely.”

  “So how do we figure out if your bug killer is the one?” Emily asked. “The green things flying all over town don’t seem very scientific … or buggy.” Emily sounded annoyed. Amanda felt annoyed, too. Clearly, she was going to have to do ALL the mental lifting.

  “We’ll have to go out there and look.” Amanda nodded toward her window.

  “Now?” Emily asked, arching her perfect brows.

  Amanda nodded. “We don’t have any time to lose!” She ticked off the steps on her fingers: “We need to track the green monsters back to their point of origin, find the villain responsible for unleashing them, figure out why he needed to keep everyone locked up in fear, foil the plan, and save our moms!”

  “Simple,” Emily said sarcastically. “You think we can just ‘track’ those things? If it was that easy, don’t you think the police would have done it already?”

  Amanda stood up and paced her room. She didn’t care for Emily’s tone.

  “Maybe, but maybe not,” Amanda said. “The cop at the mall said there had been a big increase in petty crime. Not to mention a ton of accidents and reports. I think our local law enforcement is pretty tapped out.”

  “Well, anyway,” Emily continued, “I got some stuff from my mom’s secret lair. Frida took me down there. She knows all about bunkers. And a lot of other stuff, too. It turns out she’s been, like, in on our mothers’ hero bit for a long time. She’s really some famous freedom fighter. And she thinks she owes my mother her life. Apparently after Megawoman and Dragonfly helped liberate her country on spring break, like, twenty years ago, Frida decided to come back with my mother and go into hiding. She thinks it’s safer that way. She says if people find out she’s really Marvella Corazon, it could jeopardize the safety of her family or something. So she just pretends to clean—and does whatever she can to keep Mom’s identity a secret.”

  Amanda’s jaw dropped. Marvella Corazon? She was a great liberator! She inspired her country to fight an oppressive regime and then disappeared mysteriously … into the Battfields’ in-law unit? It was hard to believe.

  “Marvella Corazon?” Amanda asked, dumbfounded. “The Marvella Corazon?!”

  “Or something like that,” Emily said dismissively. “Anyway, she told me all that and then she showed me Mother’s lair. Just wait until you see! It’s practically overflowing with the coolest accessories ever. Including this amazing unitard!” Emily pulled a deep-silver one-piece number out of her bag, her voice rising with excitement. “I mean, can’t you just picture me in this?”

  Sure she could, but … “Emily, this is weird,” Amanda interrupted, holding up a hand. Everything was happening so quickly.

  “What’s weird?” Emily asked.

  “You. You … walking in here and acting like everything’s okay. With us. You could apologize, you know. You could do something. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have your best friend from birth just turn on you and suddenly act like you’re the biggest, grossest joke ever played on the planet? It’s not something you forget.” Amanda had never spoken to Emily about what had happened between them before. It was hard to say the words, but … Amanda blinked back tears. She was strong. She could do this. She was assertive now. Right?

  Emily was silent for a moment. She gulped, and Amanda thought her eyes were glistening, too. Just a tiny bit. “Amanda, forget that stuff. This is not about you. Or me. It’s not about us. It’s about our moms now. We’ve got to save them.” Emily’s demeanor changed again, back to sassy. “Whining and moaning are not going to help,” she said, and turned away.

  Just like that, th
e tone Amanda had become accustomed to hearing from Emily was back, and there had been no apology. But at least now Amanda’s eyes were dry. Quite frankly, Emily’s brattiness helped. It was easier to feel angry with Emily than it was to feel sad about their lost friendship. Emily was probably right. It would be best to keep emotions at bay. The two of them didn’t have to be friends. They had to be partners.

  And they had to get moving.

  Without wasting another moment, Amanda snuck downstairs to retrieve her outfit from the mending basket while Emily changed. Luckily, Poppy was dozing again. Though she had pretty much completed everything on his superhero list, she worried he might insist that Emily do more training, too, or enlist the two of them to help alphabetize the spice drawer, or … It would be easiest to just sneak out.

  Amanda’s garment was lying beside Poppy, perfectly stitched. She paused and kissed her grandpa’s hairless forehead. Even though he could be hard to understand, she was glad he was there.

  When Amanda returned, clad in her own costume, Emily was admiring herself in the reflection of the mantis tank. “I look amazing, don’t I!” Emily exclaimed. It wasn’t a question, but Amanda had to admit Emily did look great. Like a superchic speed skater—but she wasn’t about to tell her that. Instead, Amanda pulled on her mask and let nervous anticipation of what was coming next extend her antennae. With her sensilla in action, she could feel that Poppy was in REM sleep … and starting to stir.

  “Let’s go.” Emily turned and stared. She hadn’t seen Amanda’s antennae close up before. She started to reach for them, and Amanda pulled back. “Don’t touch,” she said. “They’re sensitive.” Then she pushed up her sleeve to show off her crystalline carapace once more. She rapped it with her knuckle. Emily was speechless. Amanda smiled. Even clad in her enviable, shiny, high-dollar Lycra number, Emily had nothing on her.

  The girls tiptoed past Poppy, pulled the front door shut, and strode out into the crisp night air.

  The green monsters were swirling around Stubby Oaks, flying up to people’s windows and screeching into their homes menacingly. After Emily flinched a few times, Amanda convinced her that the beasts were nothing to be afraid of. She even got Emily to run through a few of the floaters as they zoomed toward her.

  “This is easy,” Emily boasted after charging through a chameleon-headed wildebeest with her eyes screwed shut. “We’ll take care of this mess in no time!”

  Amanda hoped she was right.

  The pair walked right through the middle of town, past OCMS, past the heaps of damaged cars and fallen lampposts—trying to trace the holograms back to a central location. They seemed to be coming from the East Side.

  After walking for what felt like hours, Amanda spotted something promising far in the distance. It looked like little green sparks lifting off a malevolent campfire.

  “Look! There! They’re coming from over there!” she yelled, grabbing Emily’s wrist and dragging her toward the launching point.

  When the two girls reached their destination on the edge of town, they stopped and stared. Just yards away, the apparitions were rising up, one by one, expelled from the earth by the same evil that was holding their mothers prisoner. They’d found the source!

  Emily let out a horrifying wail. “Not that,” she moaned. “Oh, anything but that.”

  They were standing at the entrance to the city dump.

  18

  “Oh no, no, no, no, no, gross. Gross. No. Ew,” Emily shouted, pacing back and forth. “NO. I can’t do it. I won’t!”

  The two girls had paused at the entrance to the municipal landfill. The rank and fetid spot before them was piled high with disgusting debris from all over the area. It was foul, indeed. Driving past the waste dump on the freeway was an event that called for rolled-up windows, plugged noses, and shrieks of horror. The odor was so strong that the landfill had received the nickname Armpit Acres.

  As Amanda and Emily peered at the revolting heap—filled not only with the slimy refuse of today but also with rusting cars, tires, motor homes, and other former treasures now deemed too toxic for landfills—they reconfirmed what they had seen. This was the place the menacing monsters were coming from. They stared in awe and horror as a fluorescent-green pig-goat with bat wings slithered out from behind a half-buried car’s shattered windshield and fluttered off menacingly.

  Amanda grabbed Emily’s arm, relieved to have a partner to brave the ick with—even if it was one with a bad attitude—and started down the hill to investigate.

  “Wait. Stop. I’m not ready for this,” Emily whined, digging her heels into the dirt. “I can’t.”

  Amanda stopped. “What?” She couldn’t believe that Emily could have come so far only to be immobilized by the idea of getting dirty.

  “Are you serious right now? It’s just trash. Our moms might be down there!” Amanda hissed, pointing to the refuse in front of them. “None of this will hurt you!”

  She stood, waiting for Emily to relent, but it was obvious that Emily was not going to budge. In fact, she looked as if she might explode from terror as she stared at that dump.

  “Fine. You stay here. Me? I’m going in there to figure out who’s behind this and get our moms.” With a huff of disgust, Amanda took off. She marched past the barbed-wire arch and stacked tires that created a makeshift entrance to the refuse refuge and headed toward the green glow.

  She zeroed in on the toxic spot, waiting for fear to enter her bloodstream, but the fear never came. She was filled with nothing but fierce determination. Within moments, Amanda was close enough to conclude that the broken windshield she had seen from afar was, in fact, part of a mostly intact car—but more important, it was also the entryway of a much more sinister-looking tunnel.

  As stealthily as possible, Amanda climbed onto the hood of the rusted automobile and peered past the glass into the portal of doom the glow bubbles had come from. The tunnel was very deep. And the faster she got in there, the sooner she would get away from the overpowering stench of rancid food, ripe diapers, and general decay that was burning into her nostrils.

  “Why did it have to be Armpit Acres?” she mumbled, glad she hadn’t exhibited outward feelings of disgust while she had been with Emily. One whiner was enough in this hero duo. Too many, really. She took a deep mouth breath and braced for her descent.

  As she scurried into the dark passageway, a blast of dry, cold air greeted her. Amanda’s skin glowed very faintly and helped guide her way, as did the sensations her antennae were picking up and relaying to her brain. Without her fab feelers, she would have been bouncing off walls.

  A dim light ahead grew stronger, and Amanda moved toward it until finally the tunnel opened onto a dank corridor with high, ominously angled ceilings. A bubble beast came hurtling toward her, grimacing, but she paid the translucent jerk no mind.

  “Emily’s missing out on all the action,” Amanda said to herself as she emerged from the nasty tube. Letting her instincts guide her, she walked toward a sound coming from the next cavern—a mechanical hum. Her antennae twitched. She could feel electrical impulses before she saw the massive computer bank. The haphazard network looked like it hailed from the dawn of time; each machine’s case was that ugly off-white that yellows with age into the color of rancid butter. Black screens blipped with bright green letters and symbols. These computers were way past their prime, connected to one another by a sketchy patchwork of cables and wires that looked like the ultimate fire hazard.

  The room opened farther, revealing a massive, dimly lit space. Towering overhead was an enormous megacomputer that Amanda had to assume was some sort of command center. Giant lights flashed and blinked, and ancient-looking knobs stood ready to activate the contraption and enable it to perform tasks that a pocket calculator could probably accomplish in half the time. The monstrosity was hooked up to yet another machine in the next room that also looked as if it belonged in a museum, not in a currently operating Den of Evil.

  Amanda followed the connections
until a soft, squelching noise and a strong wind made her pause and cover her eyes. When she uncovered them, she saw a different appliance blowing great, green, slimy bubbles that transformed with a POP! into the vaporous ghouls that were terrorizing Oyster Cove.

  POP! A scorpion-tailed bison emerged and soared out of the tunnel toward town.

  POP! A snake with a hyena mane and sharp teeth slithered through the air and away.

  Every cell inside Amanda was on high alert. Her antennae were sending danger signals so strong that Amanda felt rather zingy. She knew the green things were harmless, but she was sure their creator was lurking nearby. She found herself wishing Emily hadn’t backed out. Indeed, a partner would be a good thing to have right about now.

  She jumped when she heard the raspy voice.

  “What’s this?” the voice demanded.

  Behind the emerging monsters, a puny man sat huddled over the keyboard of his computer. He moved stiffly, taking his eyes from the screen and blinking like a person just waking up.

  “What’s this?” he rasped again, attempting to swivel in his ancient chair. His feet dragged limply against the stone floor, hardly making a shuffle. This guy, much like his contraptions, was old and barely functional.

  Amanda had no answer to his question. The leering green monsters beginning to encircle her were not doing much for her clarity of thought, either—solid or not.

  “Who are you?” the man demanded, more irritably.

  “Who are you?” she shot back, though she was pretty sure she knew. “And what do you think you are doing with these … bubble beasts?” Insulted, the beasts pressed closer.

  The man stood up. He was shorter than Amanda, or maybe he just couldn’t straighten his spine. He was wearing a long dingy lab coat, and Amanda half expected to see dust rise off him when he moved. The hint of a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth, making it open slightly into a leering snarl. Yes, she had definitely seen this guy before.