Monsters Take Manhattan, page 1
Dedication
Dedicated to all my teachers over the years, especially the ones who I will never forget: Rachell, Mrs. Solomon, Mrs. Lester, Mrs. Bruno, Mrs. Spielman, Mrs. Meiselman, Mrs. Vera Fried, Mr. Franklin, Mr. Manson, Mr. Schneider, Professor Macy Marcy, Professor Will Reiman, Professor John Stilgoe, Professor Alfred Guzzetti, Miklos Jancso, Stuart Rosenberg, and Stuart Cornfeld. Thank you for your patience and for sparking and feeding my curiosity.
—D. A.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
1. Coney Island is History
2. A Brooklyn Kid
3. Sketch
4. Sorting Through the Past
5. Great-Aunt Betty and Not-So-Great Terry
6. Tag, I’m It
7. Titanium Special Edition
8. We’re the Noodle Monsters
9. The Sinkhole
10. Phase One
11. The Eye in My Head
12. Pete’s Bar Mitzvah
13. Better Than a Museum
14. No Sleep Till Brooklyn
15. Photobomb
16. Oscar = Neptune
17. The Story of Betty and Oscar
18. Viral in the Bad Way
19. Everything is Terry-Ble
20. Phase Two
21. Not So Heroic After All
22. Waiting for Yoo
23. Gone
24. Monster Club Assemble
25. Packet in Your Pocket
26. Rebirth
27. The Night Everything Changed
28. Bigger Fish to Fry
29. Chaos Redux
30. They’re Back
31. Monsters Take Manhattan
32. Brickmen
33. Many Monsters
34. Up
35. Split in Two
36. Out of My Depth
37. Twelve Years Old
38. Regret in Waterworld
39. Attack!
40. Flushed
41. Family
42. Her
43. Atlantis: Final Phase
44. It Lives in Here. And Here.
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
King Neptune, god of the sea, sits on his throne, ready for his life to change.
He’s wearing his toga and crown, gold trident in one hand as the other strokes his white beard. He gazes at the large circular glass tank surrounding him, teeming with aquatic life—manta rays, clown fish, nurse sharks, crabs.
He is trembling with excitement.
Because soon he may finally be able to join them.
“I’ve made the transfer, boss,” his bearded employee says, crossing the marble floor with a tattoo pen and a hand mirror.
“Wonderful.” King Neptune takes the pen, feels the weight of the contraption in his hand.
The ink inside it is anything but ordinary.
In fact, it’s extraordinary.
And, after a decades-long search, it’s finally his.
“Position the mirror. I shall begin.”
His employee stands in front of him, angling the large hand mirror toward the right side of King Neptune’s neck.
The tattoo pen hums to life in the king’s hand, giving off a buzz that hits his ears like a siren song. He stares into the mirror and begins to work, the needle of the pen stabbing again and again into the skin of his neck. It is as painful as ever. Neptune knows this ache well—his body is already covered with art, much of it created by him. But this time is sweeter, because this agony holds so much promise.
As King Neptune shifts the tattoo pen to the left side of his neck, he remembers the first time he saw the power of this ink, back when he still believed he was human. He was a Brooklyn boy, twelve years old. He snuck backstage at King’s Sideshow Extraordinaire and watched tattoos of monsters come to life—jumping off the skin of two strongmen and then battling before his eyes.
One of those tattoo monsters was a foot-tall King Neptune, gold trident in hand. Well, he was more like a King Neptune monster—god on top, crab legs on bottom.
But whatever he was, he was glorious. And the Boy Who Became King Neptune was forever changed for having witnessed that greatness.
“Done,” King Neptune says, the thrum of the tattoo pen abruptly stopping. “Show me.” The employee angles the mirror to give the god a view of his finished work.
The king is so moved, his breath leaves his body. The tattoos are absolutely perfect, just as he’d always dreamed. Simple yet elegant. But before he can bask in the achievement any further, he is in pain again.
There is nothing sweet about this pain.
King Neptune can feel the skin shriveling up on either side of his neck, bunching and stretching just as he’d watched the skin of the Geilio Brothers do a lifetime ago.
The searing pain brings to the surface of his mind everything that happened after he first watched those tattoos come to life:
He shrieked in joy, making his presence known to the sideshow performers, including their ringleader, Isaac King.
Since the ritual they were in the midst of was meant to be a secret one, they were not happy to see him.
He ran.
The performers chased.
In the hubbub, he accidentally knocked over a torch that set fire to the sideshow’s curtains—along with his left hand—and burned the entire warehouse to the ground.
“Aaaaaaghhhh!” King Neptune hears himself scream.
The pain of the memory is indistinguishable from the blinding agony of the tattooed skin continuing to bunch itself up on his neck.
He tries to redirect his brain, to remember that he is finally completing his transformation into the god he was always meant to be, the god whose likeness he would sit in his bedroom and draw over and over again, thinking, If only I had King Neptune’s power, then Dad couldn’t push me around anymore.
His parents had been angry, so angry, after learning their son had snuck out to the Coney Island sideshow and then burned it down. No amount of apology or explanation on his part seemed to make a difference. Not to his father, anyway.
And he didn’t know that he was King Neptune back then—that wouldn’t be revealed to him until some years later—so when his father shouted at him, or cursed him out, or smacked him, there was little else the boy could do but run.
He left home at age fifteen.
And he’s been searching for a new one ever since.
Now, some seventy years later, King Neptune grips his gold trident and lets out a primal scream that crescendos into two giant POP! sounds, which reverberate off the marble floors. There is the feeling of release, and the fiery stabbing in the king’s neck dissipates into nothing.
For a moment, he is panicked that the tattoos have leapt off his body to become independent creatures.
There is no need to worry, though. For, as he takes a deep breath, he can feel that his calculations were correct:
Not only can the magical ink bring illustrated monsters to life—
It can turn a being into a monster.
Or, in this case, allow a god of the sea to more fully become . . . himself.
“Mirror,” the king commands the shocked employee, who again holds it up, this time with trembling hands.
And there they are:
Gills.
Open, fleshy, gloriously real gills.
King Neptune practically bounces off his throne, yelping with glee as he jogs toward the only spherical tank in the room, this one free of sea life. It’s his breathing tank, used for years to strengthen his lung capacity and extend his time underwater. He recently hit three minutes and twelve seconds, but that record is about to seem laughable.
The king climbs the ten-foot ladder—quite quickly, considering his physical body is that of an eighty-seven-year-old man—and steps into the tank, toga and all. He lowers himself down into the water.
At first, instinct takes over, and he can’t help but hold his breath.
You no longer need to do that, he reminds himself.
He opens his mouth, lets the water flow in.
It immediately feels like a mistake.
His lungs fill, his head spins, that terrible, crushing feeling.
But then:
His gills open.
Relief.
And joy.
He can breathe down here!
It’s real.
He has truly become the god he’s always been meant to be.
Which means his new plan can officially happen.
With the ink his at last, and his aquatic form a reality, the god of the sea is going to create the home he’s been searching for his entire life. Right here in New York City. Soon, very soon, all of lower Manhattan will be transformed into his kingdom.
His Atlantis.
And there’s no one who could possibly stop him.
1
Coney Island is History
Eric
It’s been a good summer.
No, scratch that.
It’s been an amazing summer.
And I really don’t want it to end.
“Am I the only one who’s kinda hyped for school to start tomorrow?” Yvette “Beanie” Ofege asks, standing and holding a remote as she focuses on the rolling robot she’s constructed out of wheels and plastic sand toys (pail body, shovel arms).
“Yeah, Bean, I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that,” Ahmed “Hollywood” Wilson says, face in his phone.
Yoo leaps into the air on his board, with an ease he definitely didn’t have when the summer started, successfully landing an ollie.
“Perfect form!” Linda “Smash” Cartageña shouts as she skates directly into him, a collision that turns into a hug. “I’m so proud of you, Yooby.”
“Thanks, Smashy,” Yoo says, and then, as has been their way all summer, they start messily kissing in front of all of us, their helmets awkwardly clacking together. In a weird way, I’ve gotten used to their PDA. Once fall starts, I might even miss it a little. Okay, maybe not that much. But still.
It’s Labor Day, and I’m hanging out with my closest friends at my dad’s Coney Island amusement park, which is packed with families trying to wring the last drops of fun out of the summer. Until a few months ago, it was known as King’s Wonderland, founded as it was by my great-great-grandfather Isaac King, but then, after everything that went down in the beginning of the summer—you know, finding Isaac’s magic ink, bringing our monster drawings to life, accidentally letting things get out of hand, leaving us no choice but to save Coney Island from hundreds of scary Noodle Monsters and their giant Crumple Noodle leader—Dad renamed it after us: Monster Club Wonderland.
All of us—me, Yoo, Smash, Hollywood, and Beanie—had met over the years playing a monster-fighting game that Yoo and I invented in fourth grade. Everyone drew their own monster, with its own specific set of powers and attacks, and we’d have battles, using tetrahedral dice and a spinner and the letter die from Scattergories. It was the best. We were Monster Club, and that game was our whole world.
But now, we’ve all sort of grown past it. Once your drawings actually come to life, it’s hard to go back to the two-dimensional versions. I used to be so scared for us to stop playing, like that would mean we wouldn’t be friends anymore, but that’s part of why this summer has been so incredible—we’ve been as close as ever, without a single monster battle.
It helps that we usually meet here to hang, near the side of Dad’s toolshed where I spray-painted a detailed mural immortalizing all our monsters—Brickman (mine), BellyBeast (Yoo’s), Skelegurl (Smash’s), RoboKillz (Hollywood’s), and DecaSpyder (Beanie’s)—as they fought off Crumple Noodle.
It also helps that together we went through that real-life monster battle of epic proportions. We all became a little famous afterward—me most of all—which has been part awesome, part totally weird. A video some guy took of me on the Parachute Jump facing off against Crumple Noodle went viral, and I got interviewed by the news, and people I didn’t know started saying hi to me on the street, shouting stuff like “Yo, Monster Kid!” or “Whaddup, Parachute Jump!”
It felt really good but also confusing. And I’m pretty sure the rest of Monster Club feels that way too.
Well, everyone except Hollywood, who’s been loving it. He’s used the attention to grow a massive following on his TikTok account (@RoboKillz, naturally), and it’s pretty much all he talks about.
“Awwww yeah,” Hollywood says now, right on cue, holding out his phone as he dances around and sings a made-up song we’re all sick of: “My latest vid is . . . blowing up! That’s right, it’s blowing up! And I am glowing up!”
“Congrats, Hollywood,” I say, without looking up from my sketch pad, where I’m penciling in Beanie’s rolled eyes. I’m trying to draw lifelike depictions of all my friends so I can capture these final moments of summer. I’m still not the best at drawing real people, but I’m less scared to attempt it, which is something.
“You don’t sound very sincere, Doodles,” Hollywood says, stopping his song but not his dance, sliding one hand along the buzzed swoop on the side of his head as he shimmies toward me.
“Oh, I am the most sincere,” I say, looking at him. “I spend every moment of every day hoping and praying that your videos blow up, Hollywood. That’s all I want in life.”
“Much better,” Hollywood says with a grin. “You know, I’ve been trying to think bigger than just my account. I want to monetize this thing into an empire, baby! Get my film career going! What do y’all think of this name?” He puts a hand up as if each word is a block he’s placing onto an invisible shelf. “Hollywood. Studios.”
We all look at him, then each other, then back at him.
“Is that a joke?” Yoo asks.
“A joke? No!” Hollywood says. “It’s just a sick name. You don’t like it?”
“That’s already a thing,” Beanie says, steering her beach robot past the line of parents and kids waiting to get on the Twisty Turtles. “Hollywood studios is not an idea you had, it’s an already existing thing. There are movie studios in Hollywood.”
“Yeah,” Hollywood says. “But I’m turning it into a name!”
“Isn’t it already a name? Hollywood Studios is one of the theme parks in Disney World, right?” Yoo asks.
“It definitely is,” I say. “We went there when I was in first grade.”
And as Hollywood continues to mount his ridiculous defense, I’m stuck thinking about that vacation. When Mom and Dad were still together. When we were still a family.
I know their separation is for the best—since they made it official, they’ve both seemed happier than they have in a while. But that doesn’t mean I’m used to it. Or all the havoc it’s about to wreak on my life.
“Hey.” There’s a tap on my shoulder, and I look up to see Jenni Balloqui. Until a few months ago, I knew her only as a girl in my grade who was driven and passionate and, well, very pretty. And now she’s my girlfriend. It’s rad, but it’s another thing I’m not totally used to.
“Oh, hey,” I say, standing up from where I was leaning against the shed. Even though Jenni’s been hanging out with us all summer, I still haven’t mastered how to be with her and my friends at the same time. I wish I could be as comfortable as Yoo and Smash, just making out in front of everybody, but I get self-conscious and awkward and end up forgetting how to be a person. Like right now, for example. Should I kiss Jenni hello? Just a hug? High five? Fist bump? Wave?
Thankfully Jenni now knows this about me, so she makes the decision for us, leaning in for a kiss. I happily reciprocate, immediately feeling more chill. “What’s up, everybody,” Jenni says once our lips pull apart.
“Yo, J,” Hollywood says, “weigh in on this. For the name of my new empire: Hollywood Studios.”
Jenni narrows her eyes, genuinely contemplating before she comes to a decision. “Way too boring for a company run by you.”
Hollywood opens his mouth to fight back but then nods a couple of times. “Okay, okay. Now that’s an argument I can respect.”
Jenni shrugs. “There’s something I need everyone to weigh in on too,” she says, using both hands to tighten her already-tight ponytail. “Informal vote: Who thinks Eric should return to Mark Twain tomorrow with us for the first day of school instead of going to this horrible new place?”
And there it is. She’s said what I’ve been trying desperately not to think about all day, the devastating reality I’m hours away from inhabiting.
Yoo looks down at his skateboard. Hollywood looks down at his phone. Smash bites her lower lip. Beanie lets out a huge sigh.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Jenni says sarcastically as she looks around at us. “Was I not supposed to bring that up? Are we just supposed to pretend everything is normal when it isn’t? My bad.”
“We’re not pretending,” Smash says. “It’s just a bummer to talk about.”
“I was definitely pretending,” I say.
“Same,” Yoo says.
Jenni shakes her head and lets out a grunt. “It’s not too late for you to change your mind, Eric! Then you won’t have to pretend anything because you’ll still be where you belong. With all of us!”
I close my eyes and try to breathe, letting my brain fill with nothing but the dings, shrieks, and repetitive melodies coming from the rides. I hate all this so much.
“Jenni,” I say quietly. “You know I . . . I don’t have a choice.”
“But tell your parents that—”
“Nothing I say will make a difference!” I shout. “It’s happening, Jenni!”
Jenni looks like I’ve slapped her, eyes blinking in shock.
