Beasties, page 10
Dylan annoyed me most of all. “If only we could, like, find a wormhole into the past in Central Park,” he said. “I read a book about that.”
“You can read?” I shot back.
“I’m reading the greasy hairs on your back, and they spell out Attack me now!” Dylan snapped, jumping at me with his claws stretched.
“Stop it, you two!” Kate squawked. “If we don’t stick together and be kind to one another—”
Dylan landed his massive raccooniness on me. But before Kate or I could react, a distant scream made us all stop to look. “AAAAAAAGH! What is wrong with you?”
Dylan slid off me. On the main road, a guy was moaning on the ground. Next to him stood a woman on a motorized scooter. “What is wrong with you?” she replied. “Letting your dog loose like that! If it was on a leash like it’s supposed to be, I wouldn’t have had to swerve into you to avoid it!”
“It? Not it—her!” the man replied. “And for your information, motorized vehicles aren’t even allowed in the park!”33
A shadow bounded out from a bush and headed straight for us. We all flinched, but it was just a really nervous black Labrador retriever. “Scared scared Jerry hit hurt ow scared SCARED hungry SCARED!”
“Whoa, whoa . . . easy, friend,” Mason said. “Don’t panic. Jerry’s gonna be OK. Look! He needs you. Now you go back and be with him.”
The Lab cocked her head. I don’t think she ever saw a talking water bug. “Here? There? Scared scared?”
“Don’t be so scared,” Mason said. “Go.”
The Lab paused for a moment, then turned. She walked tentatively back, until her owner spotted her and called her name. Then she broke into a run, licked the man, and barked ferociously at the scooter person.
“THAT WAS AWESOME, MASON,” Sara said.
I don’t know how this is possible for a water bug, but I could swear I saw him blush.
“That felt good,” Mason said. “This sounds weird, but maybe it won’t be so bad to be forever Beasties. We can try to make the best of it. We can help others who aren’t as . . . people-y as us. Like that Lab. I mean, I couldn’t do that if I were human.”
Kate shot a glance at him. “Wait, seriously? You’re giving up? You, the most popular kid in the class?”
“How about this, Mason,” I said. “We try to be human again, but you and I switch places.”
Mason let out a barely audible sigh. “Dude, you don’t want that. You have a mom and dad, Riley. Good ones, too.”
Sara sidled up to Kate. She put a wing awkwardly over Kate’s back, where Mason was still perched. “YOUR DAD WILL COME BACK, MASE.”
Whoa. I didn’t know his dad had gone anywhere. But then when I thought about it for a second, I realized I couldn’t remember ever seeing his dad.
“He said he would come back, but that was when I was seven.” Mason turned toward me. “My mom’s in bad shape. She works too hard. And then she drinks. You try carrying her to bed when she comes home late. And when she constantly yells at you for being born and ruining her life. I mean, yeah, I want to be me again. I do. But if not, hey, we adjust. We can do good things. Other animals are much easier to help if you’re an animal, too. Does that make sense?”
“THAT’S SO SAD, MASON,” Sara said. “AND ALSO SO SWEET.”
“It is?” he replied.
“MY PARENTS TRAVEL ALL THE TIME,” she went on. “THEY NEVER LOOK AT MY HOMEWORK OR ASK ABOUT MY GRADES. THEY DIDN’T COME SEE ME IN ONCE UPON A MATTRESS. I DON’T EVEN KNOW IF THEY KNOW I’M GONE RIGHT NOW. SO I KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN. BUT STILL, I DON’T WANT TO GROW OLD AS A PARROT.”
Kate and I exchanged a look. Compared to them, our lives looked pretty good.
With a sigh, Dylan flopped down at Kate’s feet. “My dad left us, too. He took the yacht and the Lamborghini. Plus my mom is going out with a creep. OK, he’s Silas Gould and he’s famous, but he hates me. And I think he just wants Mom’s money. But even still, I want to be me again. I want so badly to be human. Wouldn’t you, if you were like me?”
“That’s enough, Dylan,” Kate said.
“It’s OK,” Mason assured her. “He means well.”
Sara let out a kind of purr and rubbed her head gently against Mason’s wings.
“Make me puke,” Dylan said.
My eyes were fixed on the scene across the pathway. Near the construction tent—the one where our whole adventure started—I could see Percy the turtle, Carlos the pigeon, and Christina the possum staring at us. “Youse got any news?” Percy asked.
“We found out there was an antidote called Proteus Two and it was in a museum storage room,” Kate said as we all headed to the tent. “We managed to find the room, but Proteus Two was sold.”
“Whoa, whoa, back up,” Christina said. “You said ‘sold’?”
“Proteus One and Two were both in the museum for years,” Kate continued. “Thieves broke in to get them both, but they botched the break-in. They only got Proteus One. When they reached the park, one of them made the mistake of opening the box. He’s now a sea lion named Otis. His partner is a coyote called Uncle Chester. They somehow managed to close the box and bury it.”
“And we found it, lucky us,” Percy said. “So yer tellin’ us that some schnook bought Proteus Two?”
“WE HAVE A CLUE,” Sara squawked. “IT WAS SOLD TO SOMEONE NAMED SGE. DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR TO YOU?”
Now Carlos was circling in the opposite direction from Christina and Kate. “We could google it,” he suggested. “I mean, if we had fingers.”
“Will youse stop that soiclin’, yer makin’ me dizzy!” Percy scolded. “This ain’t addin’ up to me. Question number one—why would the museum decide to sell Proteus Two?”
“These two boxes were sitting there for years,” I said. “Maybe the museum thought they were worthless.”
“OK, so Proteus Two goes on sale with a lot of other junk,” Carlos asked. “But the real question is why would anyone want to buy it?”
“Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!” Dylan said, raising his paws. “They’d want to buy it because Proteus Two has the power to cure people who’ve been turned into animals! Duh.”
“But how would anyone know that?” Kate said. “If a normal person is exposed to Proteus Two, nothing happens, right? It only turns morphed animals back into humans. So if you’re already human, Proteus Two is just a dumb old relic that looks like poop.”
Now we were all circling. Even Percy. “It doesn’t add up . . .” he kept repeating.
I agreed. The Proteus Project happened decades ago. To see Proteus 1 and Proteus 2 do their work, someone would need to have them both. You’d need to see someone morph into an animal and back. And if that had happened, it would be all over the news.
Or would it?
I stopped so short, Dylan crashed into me and fell into the hole.
“What if there are people who know about it?” I said. “Other people, like scientists and archaeologists from back then? Maybe some are still around.”
“EVEN IF THEY WERE STILL AROUND,” Sara said, “WOULDN’T THEY BE SWORN TO SECRECY?”
But my mind was rolling. “OK, we know Otis and Uncle Chester were on the team that stole Proteus One. If they stole it, they must have known about the powers. Remember, Uncle Chester said he could get eighty million dollars for it. Which means there must be people who know about the secret and are willing to pay for it. They can’t all be scientists.”
“Scientists don’t have that kind of money,” Dylan said.
“So how do we find out who they are?” Mason asked.
Slowly Kate’s head started to twitch. I guess that meant she was thinking. “There’s only one way to find out. The source.”
“Uncle Chester?” Mason asked.
“Uncle Chester,” Kate said.
“Uh, what kind of animal did you say this Chester is?” Carlos asked.
“A coyote,” Dylan replied.
Carlos and Christina both yelped. Percy’s head retracted into his shell so fast, it seemed to vanish in thin air. “Um, maybe I’ll sit this one out,” he whined.
“You know,” Christina added, “that coyotes do their hunting at night, right?”
I gulped. “I did not know that.”
“They love rats and raccoons,” Carlos added.
“That I knew,” Dylan said.
“And possums and pigeons and toitles,” Percy added.
“It’s a death trap,” Dylan agreed.
I glanced at Kate. She was gazing off to the west, where the Ramble was now a hill shrouded in black.
“Possums and pigeons and turtles can do whatever they want,” she said, “but the Beasties are going in.”
“Yes!” Dylan proclaimed. “Tomorrow morning while Chester is still sleeping!”
“No,” Kate said, baring her talons at Dylan. “Now.”
33I left out some choice words. It is New York, after all.
21
WE CROSSED THE LONG, flat Bank Rock Bridge over the Central Park Lake. The distant lights from skinny skyscrapers disappeared from sight as we entered the wooded Ramble. We passed under a super-narrow stone arch, lit dimly by the moon. When I was a human kid, I could stretch my arms and touch each side. As a rat, I felt like I was passing through the Lincoln Tunnel.
All I could hear in the Ramble was the quiet lapping of the brook, the rustle of rodents in the brush, and a soft electric hum of a streetlamp. Only a few of the Ramble paths are lit up at night. After dark, it gets pretty spooky and deserted. It’s hard to believe you’re in one of the most crowded cities in the country. One rule my parents always gave me was never ever be in Central Park after sunset without an adult. But as a rat, at least, I wasn’t afraid of being mugged.
Coyotes were another story.
Dylan was also scared. “This is a very nice spot,” he said, as we passed over a waterfall. “Maybe I can . . . um, wait here and be your guard.”
“Against what?” I asked.
“Don’t even think of running away,” Kate said, flexing her talons. “We’re Beasties, remember? All for one, and one for all?”
We wandered through hills and tiny bridges that led over a winding stream. It’s easy to get lost in the Ramble, even if you’re a NYC native like me.
It was Dylan who spotted Buttz under a sleeping bag on a bench near the Oven, right where we’d left him.
“You all hang out by the old man,” Kate said softly. “I’ll do some recon to find Uncle Chester. Along the way I’ll make sure Mason gets some water. And Sara . . . shhhh, no squawking?”
Sara nodded with understanding. She placed her own left wing over her beak.
Buttz was snoring. His bags of nuts and seeds, his jars of peanut butter, were all out of sight. But I could smell them in his cart. And I was way hungrier than I expected.
I watched Kate’s silhouette, black against the black-gray sky. As she vanished down into the tree canopies, I heard a sudden whack to my left.
“Huuuuhhhh?” Buttz bolted upright on the bench. “You touch my stuff, pal, and I’ll wrap you around that tree!”
His cart was wide open. It vibrated from side to side. A moment later, two sets of black claws appeared, and Dylan poked his striped face over the rim. “Sorry. I come in peace.”
“We-e-e-llll . . .” Buttz said with a smile. “So sorry about my rudeness. I thought you were a human, not a raccoon! The Happy Tummy Restaurant is always open, twenty-four seven. What is your pleasure?”
“Do you have a Kobe beef filet with béarnaise sauce?” Dylan asked.
Buttz walked to his cart. “Kiti-kiti-kiti-kiti to you, too! If only I could speak in your native tongue.”
As Buttz reached inside, Kate swooped out of the darkness. She perched on a branch just across the path. “Uncle Chester is gone,” she called out.
“Oh dear!” exclaimed Buttz in surprise. He wagged his finger at Kate, thinking she wanted to attack me or something. “You leave this poor creature alone, Red Tail! He’s hungry.”
“He’s always hungry,” Kate replied.
“So is Uncle Chester, I bet,” I said, checking over my shoulder.
“We need to find him,” Kate demanded. “Talk to Buttz, Sara.”
“MR. BUTTZ,” Sara said, “DO YOU KNOW WHERE UNCLE—ER, THE COYOTE IS?”
“Ohhh!” Buttz spilled a bag of peanuts. For the first time, he looked frightened. “How on the earth do you know my name? Parrots merely repeat. I never told you who I was. . . .”
“SORRY TO SCARE YOU!” Sara said. “I DO REPEAT THINGS, BUT I’M ABLE TO TALK FOR MYSELF, TOO. SO ANYWAY, ALL OF US HERE? WE’RE KIDS. OR WE WERE, UNTIL THIS MORNING. WE TURNED INTO ANIMALS. THE COYOTE WAS HUMAN, TOO, BUT A LONG TIME AGO—A GROWN-UP NAMED UNCLE CHESTER. HE WAS THE ONE WHO TOLD US YOUR NAME. SO, YOU HEARD ABOUT THOSE MISSING KIDS FROM LOESER ACADEMY?”
I thought old Buttz was going to pass out. “I—I—I’m dreaming.”
“THAT’S WHAT EVERYONE SAYS,” Sara squawked. “AND THEN THEY PINCH THEMSELVES. SO GO AHEAD. BUT WE ARE THOSE MISSING KIDS. AND WE NEED THAT COYOTE. WE CALL OURSELVES THE BEASTIES. I’M SARA SIMPSON, AND THESE ARE RILEY AND KATE TRENT, AND MASON ROSAS.”
“And Dylan Vlissing!” Dylan said.
Buttz began creeping backward, away from the bench. He looked at us, one by one. “Your eyes,” he said. “Your unity. Your soul.”
“Your peanuts,” Dylan said. “Be right back.”
As Dylan dove back into the cart, Buttz sat. “I—don’t know where the coyote is. Looking for a meal, I suppose. But I have noticed, he—he looks tired lately. And when that happens, sometimes he uses the cover of nighttime to visit the others.”
Dylan, who was gorging on peanuts, looked up. “There are more coyotes here?”
“WHERE ARE THE OTHERS?” Sara asked.
“Pelham Bay Park,” Buttz said. “That is where the Central Park coyotes come from. They cross over a bridge in northern Manhattan and sneak through the streets at night. They’re territorial, you know. Like gangs. They claim a patch of land. If one family finds another there, they can be vicious—”
“Pelham Bay Park is the Bronx!” I said. “That’s miles and miles away. It’ll take forever to get there.”
“Can we figure out a way to leave him a message?” Mason suggested.
“Gadzooks!” Buttz slid away from us. “You’re actually communicating with each other! Like the animals in Wind in the Willows.”
We didn’t know much about Buttz. But I couldn’t help noticing a couple of things. His back, for instance. It was straight as a board. No slouching. And there was something about his voice. Loud. Kind of an old-timey accent. And his expressions were so . . . big. Exaggerated.
I also noticed a little book open on his sleeping bag. Death of a Salesman. It was a play Mom and Dad saw. I thought it was a murder mystery, but it’s not.34
A weird idea was starting to form in my head.
“Sara,” I said, “ask Buttz what he does—or did—for a living.”
“ASK WHAT HE DOES FOR A LIVING?” Sara said. “WHY?”
“Well, I’ll be—I see, I see . . . you are using the parrot as a conduit for speaking!” Buttz said. “A veritable Christian to your collective Cyranos!”
“Ooh! Wait . . . wait, those names,” Kate said. “From Cyrano de Something, right? The play?”
“IS THAT FROM A PLAY, SIR?” Sara asked.
“Cyrano de Bergerac!” Buttz said. “Remarkable! Brava!”
“Where the old guy with the big nose falls in love with this young girl,” Kate barged on. “But she thinks he’s gross, so he writes some flirty stuff and lets this handsome young dude recite his words, and she thinks he’s him? So romantic!”35
“WAIT, WHAT? AM I THE HANDSOME DUDE?” Sara squawked. “I’M SO CONFUSED.”
“I shall address your question, dear parrot.” Buttz clutched his fist to his chest, raised his chin, and began reciting in a corny and very loud voice. “I arrived on these shores from my native Estonia. I perfected my English by memorizing Shakespeare. I became a member of the finest profession—an actor! ‘A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage . . . and then is heard no more!’ Did you like that? It is from Macbeth.”
“COOL!” Sara said. “I WOULD APPLAUD IF I COULD!”
“He sounds familiar,” Kate said.
“He sounds like Silas Gould,” Dylan grumbled. “Another member of the Boring Gasbag Club.”
Buttz grinned. “O parrot, tell me—they’re mesmerized by my tale, aren’t they?”
“THEY SAY YOU SOUND LIKE SILAS GOULD!” Sara replied. “HE’S—”
“Be still my beating heart!” Buttz exclaimed. “The owner of the famous Silas Gould Enterprises, of course! The impresario who attracts the A-list of culture, refinement, and wealth to the art and rare-object collection at his penthouse gallery. A place I’ve dreamed of visiting. Ohhh, I blush to be mentioned in the same sentence! Thank you!”
OK, I wasn’t planning to bang my head on the bottom of the bench. But I guess that’s what happens when you’re a rat who realizes something TOTALLY OBVIOUS. “Silas Gould Enterprises!” I shouted.
“Wow, Riley can repeat things, I’m so impressed,” Dylan said.
“No! We have our solution!” I said. “Art. Rare stuff. Rich people buying things. Dylan, what are the initials of Silas Gould Enterprises?”
“SGE!” screamed Kate, Sara, and Mason together.
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Kate said.
“Wait. You think Silas Gould has Proteus Two?” Mason said. “That sucks.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because think about it,” Mason explained. “How do we get into to some rich guy’s place? Just invade it?”
“He’s got guards who look like the Incredible Hulk,” Dylan said. “Except not green. And also dressed in Giorgio Armani.”
“WE’LL BE KILLED,” Sara blurted. “WE CAN’T GO THERE BY OURSELVES!”
“What, what, what, what?” Buttz said, looking totally confused. “Go where? I need my beauty sleep.”
I squinted at him, trying to imagine what he’d look like with a good shave, nice clothes, and a big, fancy sack.
