“You don’t smell something…kind of…fishy?”
J.Lo swung his legs in little circles. “I am not knowing this ‘fishy.’ How smells this—B-A-AAOOW!”
He nearly scared me right off the road.
“What? What is it?”
J.Lo frowned down at Pig. “The cat did to bite me!” he said.
“She bit you? Pig never bites.”
Pig was still purring, still trying to rub against J.Lo’s feet, which were now pulled up safely against his stumpy body.
“Well, she is to biting now! Now she is excellent biter!”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have been swinging your legs around, then. What do you expect when you scare her like that.”
But I knew that wasn’t it. Suddenly everything made sense. I leaned to the right and drew a long breath through my nose. Fish.
“It’s you!” I shouted happily. “You smell like fish!”
J.Lo was stunned.
“Noooo,” he said finally. “I am not to smelling—”
“You do!” I insisted. “You smell just like fish. Stinky fish. No wonder cats like you guys so much! You’re like a big piece of sushi.”
J.Lo stared down at Pig. “Perhaps I am to needing a bath, then.”
“You’re forgiven, Pig,” I said, laughing. “You couldn’t help yourself.”
“Please not to laugh,” said J.Lo. “She bit wicked hard.”
I stopped laughing. We drove in silence for a few minutes.
“Okay,” I said. “What is it with that word? Wicked. Nobody says that anymore.”
“Nobody?” asked J.Lo.
“Hardly anybody.”
The Boov shrugged his frog arms, never taking his eyes off Pig.
“I do not to know. It was teached to me by the tutor. It is not a word?”
“It’s a word,” I said. How to explain? “It’s just that…you’re using it in a way that…isn’t really common anymore. If it’s all the same to you, I’d really like it if you didn’t say it again.”
J.Lo nodded. “It is all the same to me. I am not meaning to upset you, Turtlebear.”
I must have slammed on the brakes, because the car squealed to a halt. I could feel my heartbeat in my toes.
“Get out!” I yelled.
“Wh—get into the out? Here? Wh—oh…okay.”
Something about the look on my face sent J.Lo scrambling out the door, onto the edge of a grassy hill. Pig followed.
“Should I…Should I to—”
I slammed the door in his face.
I don’t know how long I sat there, grinding the steering wheel with my hands, my insides like hot soup. I’m guessing thirty minutes. Or four hours. Somewhere between thirty minutes and four hours. J.Lo was still there, though, motionless beside the car.
I got out, slammed my door good and hard, and came around to face him.
“Where did you learn that word?”
The Boov twittered his fingers together.
“I…I was already to telling you I did learn it from the tu—”
“Not ‘wicked,’” I shouted. “Turtlebear!”
“Is…is a perfectly good word.”
“WHERE DID YOU LEARN IT?”
“Fromto th-the tutor. Is a term of affection.”
I fell back against the car, all my breath squeezed right out of me.
“No…” I said. “It’s not, okay? It isn’t a word at all, except to me…and my mom.”
I didn’t like even mentioning Mom again. I didn’t want the Boov to know his people had hurt me. But then he said something that turned me on my head.
“Oh! That is explaining! Gratuity’s mom was probably J.Lo’s tutor!”
After that, I was just a screaming tornado of fists. I battered the Boov with everything I had.
“What? Stop! No! Whyfor?” he shrieked.
I went back to the car, grabbed the Boov’s toolbox, and began throwing its contents at him as he ran downhill.
“Oh, please,” he said. “No…do not, we willto be needing that—”
I found one of those aspirin things and whipped it at his head. Suddenly he was a big, lumbering snowman trailing fat chunks of foam.
“Aaah! Help! Help now!”
I tackled him. The foam exploded all around us. I drew back to punch the Boov in the face. He uttered something in Boovish and my knuckles cracked against his fishbowl helmet, which had just snapped into place.
“Ow! Stupid…Put that helmet back down!”
“No. Whyfor—”
“You stole my mom!” I said, rubbing my hand.
“Mimom?”
“My mom!”
We sat inches apart. I teetered on the edge of attacking him again.
“Oh, yes! Yes! Gratuity mom must have to been one of the tutors! We invite many humans to help teach the Boov!”
I was hyperventilating. “The…the mole…” I said. “On her neck.”
“Yes! A storage device! It holds up every word she say or think for long time. Then the Boov did call her back to remove this mole. Its information was to planted in all the Boov that was to live in Gratuity’s area! Gratuitymom is very helpful!”
My eyes stung. I pawed at them with the heels of my hands.
“‘Is’?” I said. “‘Is very helpful’? Is she…She’s still alive?” It hurt to ask. I just then realized that I’d thought she was dead.
“Of course she is alive!” said J.Lo. “What a question! She is alive and certainly to be waiting in Florida for her Gratuity!”
I couldn’t decide between hugging him and kicking him in the head, so I just sat there. Purple spots swirled before my eyes, and I couldn’t catch my breath. I felt like I was going to pass out. Then a few seconds later I went ahead and did it.
After the fight, it was more difficult to carry on as we had. I was just permanently steamed, a little at J.Lo, and a little at myself for feeling too exhausted or beaten down to even hate him properly. Given what I’d learned, I thought I was entitled to ditch the Boov somewhere and keep going on my own. But there he was, curled up in the passenger seat, tense, guarding against the human and the cat who would certainly start hitting or biting him at any moment.
I eventually gave in and veered off the highway at a King Value Motor Lodge so we could break into a room and take showers. The motel grounds were empty, apart from a raccoon. Someone had taken out some sort of grudge against the ice machine. There were abandoned cars in the parking lot and a moped floating in the swimming pool. One of the vending machines was completely cleaned out. The second was tied with a chain to the back of a pickup truck, which, as far as I could tell, had dragged it for forty feet before running into a telephone pole. Then the machine had been smashed like a piñata and looted.
Way off in the distance, a cluster of bubbles loomed in the sky. The smallest of them must have been bigger than a minivan, and they formed a shape like an octopus, or a galaxy, trailing tendrils of singular bubbles in a disk around it. I felt like it was watching us as we approached the building.
J.Lo bent over in front of the doorknob to room fourteen. I was expecting some really interesting tool that melted the lock or turned it into butterflies, so I was disappointed when he just picked it with a hairpin.
The showerhead sputtered out something like gravy for ten minutes before the water ran clear. As J.Lo showered, I sat staring at the bathroom door, thinking, I could leave right now, I could leave without you. A little while later he emerged, and I took my turn.
We left the motel with armfuls of towels and little soaps, as was the custom.
WELCOME TO FLORIDA
said the huge metal sign. It was shaped like the state itself, and dotted with pictures of attractions and exports and things. It was in this way that I learned the state motto is “In God We Trust,” which is just terribly original, and that the state beverage is orange juice, and that it’s filled with old people and swamps. Way to go, Florida.
“What did that to say?” asked J.Lo as we
hovered by.
“What,” I said, “can’t you read?” It wasn’t the first time he’d asked this.
“It passed behind to us too fast.”
I sighed. “It said, ‘Welcome to Florida,’ and then it said a lot of other things about beaches and oranges.”
“Ah, yes. I am liking these oranges. Perhaps we could to be getting some—”
He was interrupted by a piercing wail behind us. I looked in the rearview mirror, which I dared not touch or the muffler would fall off, and saw a flashing light approaching.
“That’s strange,” I said. “That noise. It’s a siren. It’s like a strange siren.” It seemed we had a cop following us. But I hadn’t thought there were cops anymore.
“Why do you think—” I began to say, but J.Lo was scrambling into the backseat. He landed with a thump and pulled one of our blankets over his curled body. Pig followed him underneath.
“What’s with you?” I shouted, with one eye on the view behind us. It was night, and hard to see with that flashing light, but I could tell that there was no police cruiser or motorcycle cop approaching. It was one of those gliding antler-spool scooter things, like the one J.Lo had left behind.
“Boovcop,” I whispered. Then I grew angry. What if this Boov was a threat? Wasn’t this exactly the sort of thing J.Lo was meant to be protecting me from?
“Get back up here!” I yelled at him as I slowed Slushious and cut the gas. In the mirror I could see both the scooter Boov coming around our left side and the blanketed lump of J.Lo trembling in the backseat.
“Stupid Boov!” I shouted, and then the scooter cop was right there. Right beside my window, knocking his little frog hand against the glass. I rolled down the window.
“What did you to say?” asked the Boovcop in a low, wet voice. He was dressed in gray-green rubber and a helmet with the flashing siren thing mounted on top. It was still turning and flashing, purple green, purple green, and making its weird noise, but softer now. He had these frilly epaulets, like the leader of a marching band. It was way too much shoulder decoration for someone with no real shoulders.
“What did I say?” I asked. “When?”
“Just now, before I did to knock on your window.”
The Boov’s eyes narrowed. Seconds passed. The siren whispered ploobaloo? over and over.
“It was French,” I said.
“Say it again.”
I hesitated. Did the Boov know French?
“Ah…stoopeeedabouf.”
“What does it to mean?”
“It was a compliment. I was admiring your scooter.”
I think I picked the right subject. I’d seen his scooter out of the corner of my eye, and it was a little fancier than J.Lo’s had been. There was a lot of chrome and an entire aquarium full of turtles in the back. The Boovcop grinned and puffed himself up. And I mean that literally—his head actually got a little bigger.
“Yes, yes,” he said, patting one of the antlers. “Thank you.”
“Le moron,” I answered.
Soon the Boovcop’s smile faded and he was all business again. “Why have you to come here so late? Alls other humans did to come three days ago.”
“Yeah…I just thought, you know, that I could drive instead. Save you guys a seat on those rocketpods.”
At my mention of driving, the Boov took a good look at Slushious. His throat crackled and whined.
“Humanscar…humanscar do not float.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s not entirely—”
“Howfor does this float?” the Boov growled. His brow curled and pinched symmetrically, like an inkblot test that meant “angry.” His head grew a little bigger. “Did someone do this to for you?”
I swear he dropped one arm to his side, and I was reminded of those guns. I didn’t think before I answered.
“Yes.”
In the rearview mirror I could see the big lump of blanket behind me begin to shake again.
Okay, so I’m not stupid. I had some impression at this point that J.Lo had not been totally up front with me. Maybe he was in some kind of trouble. Maybe he was even some kind of Boov criminal. Perhaps that was why he wanted a ride to Florida, so he could hide among the humans. The problem was that I didn’t know, and I couldn’t know what I was supposed to do. Would turning him in just get me in trouble? Would it be worse if I didn’t?
“Who did do this forto you?” the Boov demanded. “Who did?”
“A Boov,” I said slowly. “Some maintenance officer.”
“Where?”
“Up north, in Pennsylvania. A couple days ago.”
The Boov’s face brightened. This seemed to interest him quite a bit.
“Was he working onto antennas? At an antenna farm?”
He was, of course, and now I really knew J.Lo was in some hot water. And it would have been the easiest thing in the world to jerk my thumb back at the jiggling woolly blob in the backseat and be done with it. But then I thought, looking squarely at the Boovcop’s slowly inflating head, You people took something of mine. Something I want. So now I have something you want. I played it cool.
“He didn’t say anything about a farm,” I said. “His English wasn’t so good. But he did say something about heading north. Into Canada.”
“Ha!” shouted the Boov, and his head deflated with a soft whistle. “He will not to get far.”
“Uh-huh. So…can I keep going? Into Florida?”
The Boov seemed more relaxed now, casually looking around the car.
“So you do not to know?” he said. “What has happened?”
“No,” I answered, not liking the sound of the question. “What’s happened?”
“You may to go,” he said. “You are not the only latecoming person. Drive ontoward Orlando. Report onto the first Boov you see.”
“Will they help me find my mom?”
“Mimom?”
“My mom. I need to—”
“Drive onto Orlando. Report onto first Boov,” he said again; then his gaze froze on the backseat. On the blanket.
“Whyfor is that—”
“It’s just my cat,” I said quickly. “Pig! Treat!”
Pig made a little sound and crawled out from under the blanket.
The Boov frowned. “Your cat’s name is ‘Pig Treat’?”
“Um…Sure.”
“You humans is so weird,” he said, and he glided away.
“All right,” I said, “start talking!” The Boovcop was safely behind us, and J.Lo was slowly crawling out from the blanket like a slug from a rock.
“Talking?” he said, wearing the blanket like a poncho. “Is there something for talking about?”
“The whole point of you coming along, the only reason I agreed to it, was because you were meant to play my escort if we met any other Boov. You were supposed to keep me safe! And now I find out you’re in more trouble than I am.”
J.Lo made a noise like Maaa-aa-aa-aa-aa! I figured this was him laughing.
“I is in no troubles!” he said as his eyes darted from window to window.
“So why’d you—”
“That Boov, it was…Carl. I just…was not wanting to see Carl just now. I owe Carl money.”
“I heard as well as you did what he said—”
“She said,” J.Lo corrected. “She.”
“She?”
“She.”
I shuddered. “Fine. I heard what she said about the antenna farm. They’re looking for you. You can tell me why or you can be a jerk, but I know they’re looking for you.”
My last words faded away, and there was nothing but the hum of the car and the flapping of hoses. And under that, the bubbling sound of J.Lo’s humid breath in the backseat. I looked out my window, but it was too dark to see anything. I would have liked to have seen the landscape, maybe to think about my visits here with Mom. Going to the beach, going to Happy Mouse Kingdom. I realized I might see Happy Mouse Kingdom again, if we made it to Orlando without being stopped. With
out being stopped by any Boov, that is.
“Hey,” I said as it hit me, “where are all the people?”
“Hm?”
“There’s supposed to be, like, three hundred million people here. I thought there would be tents and shelters and people walking around everywhere.”
J.Lo pressed his face against the glass. “Yes. Many humans. No Boov. Humans everywhere.”
I had a terrible thought. I thought about the people in concentration camps in World War II, told by Nazi soldiers to take showers, and the showerheads that didn’t work, and the poison gas that tumbled slowly through vents until every last one was dead. And then I thought about everyone two days ago, rushing to line up for those rocketpods.
“What…what did you do with them?” I said. My voice fluttered. I was almost too afraid to speak. “What did you do with them really?”
J.Lo crawled out from under his blanket. “I? I did not do nothing with the people. I am Chief Maintenance Officer Boov, not Humans Transport—”
“J.LO!” I shouted, my voice louder but raw. The car slowed and drifted onto the shoulder. I wasn’t paying attention anymore. “Tell me the truth, J.Lo! Tell me the truth. Tell me.”
J.Lo looked down at his hands and nodded, biting his lip. My stomach fell and my face went hot, but I was not going to cry, no matter what.
“I…” said J.Lo. “I…am not really chief maintenance officer. I am—”
“No! Nono…” I said. “I don’t care about that now. What really happened to all the humans?”
J.Lo looked stunned. “Oh…oh. I do not know.”
I searched his face. He really didn’t know. He was a terrible liar.
“You thought they’d be here?” I asked.
“I thought this thing, yes.”
We sat for a while in the still car, wondering where everyone was. I thought about what the Boovcop had said: So you do not to know? What has happened?
J.Lo edged up into the front seat again. Pig purred and actually curled up in my lap, if you can believe it.
“They are all right,” J.Lo said. “They were probably taken unto some other place instead. You should not to expect such bad things of the Boov.”
They’ve done such bad things already, I thought. But I didn’t say it, because he wouldn’t understand. History is written by the winners, so they say.