She looked around for Snooker and Hotpaws, but they were already gone. Kana and Kensu wouldn’t know where the parka was either, as their food truck was on the far end of the city. With no one to help her, she began wandering around aimlessly, yelling, “StarKat! StarKat!”

  She didn’t expect an answer.

  Who was yelling now?

  Chapter

  Forty-Five

  An amusement park. That’s what this place looked like. An amusement park on steroids.

  Finding StarKat would be a challenge, but at the moment, there was nothing else Gloria could do, so she searched around from place to place, eventually doubling back toward the food truck. That’s when she noticed the handsome guy with the neon hair breakdancing in the middle of a group of people. Tied around his waist was—StarKat!

  Gloria’s heart began to race again, as she approached the crowd and worked her way to the front. Around the boy, StarKat was just a parka, nothing special.

  Chapter

  Forty-Six

  He had to have seen her with the StarKat parka before and known that it was hers and that she’d come looking for it. After all, how many people could miss an oversized yellow and blue StarKat parka in a place like this?

  She stood there among the crowd of humans, Machina, and Fabled and felt exposed. She wished she could crawl into her parka, seal out the world and be safe once again.

  The crowd chanted, “Go, Jet!” and with each beat, the guy performed another acrobatic dance move, generating even more applause.

  StarKat was simply a colorful adornment.

  Chapter

  Forty-Seven

  “Excuse me.” The voice seemed to be coming from somewhere beyond her mouth, but it was definitely hers.

  The boy turned to face her. “Yes.”

  “I believe you have my StarKat parka.”

  He smiled. “Finders keepers.” He fluffed the oversized arms tied around his waist. “Think you’re the only fan of The StarKat and Friends Show around here?”

  “Not exactly,” Gloria responded, her voice gaining confidence. “But my father gave me that parka as a birthday gift. I’d really appreciate it if you gave it back.”

  “Tell you what,” Jet said. “I’ll give you a chance to win it back.”

  Chapter

  Forty-Eight

  Gloria sighed, preparing to face yet another of her fears: dancing in public.

  She knew she couldn’t beat Jet, but she had to at least try. How else would she locate The Designer—and possibly her dad?

  Then she saw Snooker with his floating blue toupée (how could she’ve missed that before?) and Hotpaws step into the growing crowd.

  “Go, GloKat!” Hotpaws yelled beneath his roaring flames.

  “What’s your name?” the neon-haired boy finally asked.

  “Gloria Martiene Holbrook.”

  “My name’s Josh Latorre, but you can call me Jet,” he responded. “I hope you brought your best dance moves with you.”

  Chapter

  Forty-Nine

  The music seemed to come from out of nowhere, the pulsing electronic beats fusing with the boom bap of hip hop. Jet immediately dove onto the dance floor and started doing the windmill, his legs rotating at various angles like a tilting spinning top. He rose to his feet and began popping and locking to the beat. Then he pointed to Gloria.

  Her turn.

  Attempting to channel her mother’s dances, she awkwardly did a two-step shuffle, clapping her hands. She added in a spin, but she was no b-girl.

  She did the best that she could—and waited.

  Chapter

  Fifty

  Despite Hotpaws’s thunderous chants of encouragement, the crowd easily found Jet victorious.

  As an encore, he untied the parka from around his waist and danced himself into it.

  Seeing Jet completely adorned in the StarKat parka sent a shiver down Gloria’s spine, and although she tried to hold back the tears, she couldn’t.

  She turned around to hide her face and brush the corners of her eyes with the sleeves of her shirt.

  “Hey!” Jet called out.

  She turned around, deflated.

  “Here,” he said, handing her the parka. “You might need this more than I do.”

  “Thank you,” she managed.

  Chapter

  Fifty-One

  Gloria immediately put on StarKat.

  “I’m so sorry I left you,” she said.

  “It’s okay!” StarKat responded.

  Turning to Jet, Gloria said, “Thank you so much!”

  “No problem! It vibrated when I picked it up, and it vibrated again after the battle just now.”

  “StarKat, are you vibrating?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Jet smiled. “I have an idea. Just hang around over here for a few minutes, and let’s see if it vibrates again.”

  Colorful butterfly pillows leaped from the parka’s paws, reminiscent of the hearts from earlier.

  “GloKat has butterflies!” StarKat yelled.

  This time Gloria simply owned it and laughed.

  Chapter

  Fifty-Two

  “What were you doing on Earth before you came here?” Jet asked.

  “I was a college student majoring in urban planning. You?”

  “Let’s just say that I wasn’t dancing,” Jet responded. “On Earth, I couldn’t do what I’m doing right now. There’s something special about this place once you plug into it.”

  Gloria thought about the heart-shaped pillows StarKat had shot out earlier and wondered if there was more.

  “You’re the best dancer I’ve ever seen,” Gloria said.

  “Thanks. This place’ll do that to you. It’ll allow you to turn your weaknesses into strengths.”

  She let that idea sink in.

  Chapter

  Fifty-Three

  Several minutes later, just as Gloria was finally starting to settle into the conversation, StarKat vibrated.

  “I just felt it!” she said.

  Jet nodded his head, as if listening to music through the headphones around his neck. It took Gloria a moment to realize he was counting.

  “That’s about right,” he finally said.

  “What is?”

  “If it’s happening in intervals, my guess is that it’s some kind of beacon.”

  “You mean it’s leading me somewhere?” she asked.

  “It certainly seems that way.” Jet smiled, adding, “A classical rapper once talked about vibrating higher, elevating your frequency.”

  Gloria tried to understand.

  Chapter

  Fifty-Four

  “How do you perform for so many people without getting nervous?” Gloria asked.

  “Oh, I get nervous. I just fight through it.”

  “I wish I could do that.”

  “Whenever you feel like the moment might be too much for you, just dance. Bounce around on the balls of your feet. Feel the ground beneath you and then do what you came to do.”

  “Thanks, Josh.”

  “No problem.”

  “Well, StarKat and I should get going then.”

  “Gloria, one more thing: stay away from the Tombs of Perpetua.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Sparkadians claim it’s haunted.”

  Gloria had StarKat note that.

  Chapter

  Fifty-Five

  Two ancient books crossed Gloria’s mind when she reached the outer edges of the city: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum. Until that moment, she’d never considered their enormous similarities (or that each title contained the word “wonder” within it). She figured herself, at this point, to be somewhere between the two heroines.

  StarKat was now vibrating in slightly more predictable intervals, though not nearly close enough for Gloria’s satisfaction.

  She gazed up at the land masses hovering overhead and wondered how such a place could actually exist.

  Chapter

  Fifty-Six

  Back when Gloria was ten, her father took her to New Detroit. Her stepmother hadn’t come, having preferred to avoid going to such a place. Still, her father had wanted her to see where her birth mother had grown up.

  The trip was supposed to fill in blanks for Gloria, who could barely remember the time before her mother died. Instead, she found herself shocked at how differently people in New Detroit lived, as opposed to Denver. She remembered her father carrying cases of bottled water for her to drink and bathe in.

  But they’d never shared any of it.

  Chapter

  Fifty-Seven

  Gloria couldn’t tell how long they’d been walking, but it was clear they had moved far beyond the city, though what constituted “rural” here looked nothing like it would have on Earth. Waterfalls flowed upward, and the beauty of the land seemed to stretch clear into the horizon. The beacon was now vibrating more regularly, though it was far from the rapid succession that would signal that they’d arrived.

  If they didn’t find The Designer soon, she wondered if she’d lose her confidence to continue the journey.

  With no one seemingly for miles, Gloria did her best not to panic.

  Chapter

  Fifty-Eight

  She’d taken everything in stride since she and StarKat had arrived, but now she had to be honest with herself: all of this was completely unfamiliar to her.

  She sat down on the ground, exhausted.

  “We are getting closer!” StarKat offered.

  Gloria sighed. “But closer to what? The Designer? Danger?”

  She lowered her head, fighting fatigue. “I just want to go home,” she finally said.

  “You are not alone!” StarKat said.

  “Well, it sure feels that way.”

  They sat in silence with only the sound of rising waterfalls splashing somewhere in the distance above them.

  At least they had water.

  Chapter

  Fifty-Nine

  The thunderous sound of hooves slapping against the ground startled Gloria. She lifted her hood to see a human woman in the distance, holding what seemed like aerosol spray paint cans. The paint shot forth from the cans into an arc of color and formed what appeared to be a—unicorn! The multicolored unicorn seemed to be pulling her, as if she were standing on some kind of invisible chariot.

  “StarKat! We’re saved!” Gloria shouted. Scrambling to her feet, she waved StarKat’s huge anime paws back and forth.

  The woman approached, stepped down onto the ground, and holstered her cans.

  Chapter

  Sixty

  The woman introduced herself as Inksy. Gloria introduced herself and StarKat as GloKat.

  “Out a bit of a way from civilisation, eh?” Inksy said, smiling.

  Gloria stood in awe of her. Inksy would have been quite formidable on Earth, but here in Avonova, she presented as a pure, unadulterated boss!

  “We’re trying to find The Designer.”

  “And you think whoever that is is out here?”

  “Our beacon is sending us somewhere.”

  “Not to put a crinkle in your skivvies, but there’s not much out here on a day like today. Mostly everything’s in the city.”

  “Could you please help us?”

  Chapter

  Sixty-One

  “Why are you way out here?” Gloria asked.

  Inksy chuckled. “Can’t you tell, mate? I’m not one for authority—even in a paradise like this.”

  “Ha! Ha! Ha!” StarKat yelled. “I like you already!”

  Inksy raised her eyebrows in surprise. “No volume control on your jacket, eh? I get it. She’s straight punk—like me.”

  Gloria beamed with joy at the comparison.

  “Tell you what: I’ll go a bit of the way with you, but then I have to get back to a mural I’m working on.”

  “Wow! Thanks!” Gloria responded. “Can we see the mural?”

  “Only when it’s finished.”

  Chapter

  Sixty-Two

  Gloria enumerated the different people she and StarKat had met since they arrived in Avonova.

  “Useless, the lot of them,” Inksy responded, “except for Kana and Kensu. They make one great—I have no idea what to call it—but it’s pretty good, if Sparkadian food’s your thing.”

  Gloria didn’t know what to make of Inksy’s comment, but she wasn’t surprised. It probably took a lot to impress a person like her.

  “Who’re you looking for again?” Inksy asked.

  “The Designer. I think he might know how I can find my father.”

  “Well, good luck to you on that, mate.”

  Chapter

  Sixty-Three

  As Gloria explained their story in detail to Inksy, Inksy only nodded. She seemed largely unfazed by everything, but she was attentive nonetheless.

  Gloria found her presence comforting, and for a brief period of time, she lost track of the distance they’d traveled together, only vaguely aware of the slowly increasing vibrations of the beacon.

  “What do you think you’ll say to him, if you find him?” Inksy finally asked.

  “I just want to know what happened to my dad.”

  “And you think The Designer has all the answers?”

  Gloria shrugged. “I certainly hope so. I have no other options.”

  Chapter

  Sixty-Four

  They walked across the vast plain, then up several hills resting in the shadows of floating islands. When they became hot and tired, they stood by the waterfalls that drifted up into the sky, allowing the mist of the water to tickle their faces as they wrestled to cup it in their hands and drink it.

  Gloria took a seat on a small boulder and stretched her tired legs out before her. That was when she noticed a cluster of flowers reflecting a diverse array of hues. In fact, the colors seemed to change with each angle.

  “What are those?”

  Chapter

  Sixty-Five

  “Those are Avonovan Irises,” Inksy replied.

  “They’re beautiful,” Gloria responded.

  “So beautiful!” StarKat echoed.

  “But they’re powerful, too,” Inksy added. “They have the power to heal, the power to transform.”

  Gloria reached over to pluck one. It glowed in her hand.

  “Maybe if Earth had had these, things would have turned out different, better, I mean.”

  “Seriously?” Gloria said. “You think these things can save Earth?”

  Inksy snorted. “My Earth is already dead.”

  Gloria shook her head as if to digest this. “But we just came from Earth.”

  “My Earth is dead. Yours might still be alive. I don’t know.”

  Chapter

  Sixty-Six

  The concept of multiverses was one that Gloria had read about in different classic science fiction novels in grade school, but she’d never thought there was a way to prove such a theoretical concept.

  Even more, Inksy told her that somehow Avonova rested at the intersection of this vast system of multiverses. That would mean there were versions of her that, in theory, could cross through Avonova at some point. It also meant there might be other versions of her father as well. She wondered if he was aware of any of this before he gave her the StarKat parka.

  Chapter

  Sixty-Seven

  “Have you met any other versions of yourself?” Gloria asked Inksy.

  “Nope. And I don’t want to. I’m not trying to become an Avos.” Inksy stood up from the grass and stretched her arms.

  “An Avos? What’s that?”

  StarKat yelled, “An advanced being! One that has transcended!”

  Gloria waited for a greater explanation, but StarKat was finished.

  Inksy didn’t bother to add anything either.

  “How curious!” Gloria said, beginning to feel overwhelmed by the idea of it all. “What can you tell me about these Avos? Are they gods or something?”

  Inksy scoffed. “They’re a mystery. I don’t do mysteries.”

  Chapter

  Sixty-Eight

  “GloKat,” Inksy said, unholstering her spray paint cans. “You’ll have to take it from here. I’m headed back. I hope you find whatever it is that you’re looking for.”

  GloKat was sad to see her go. Inksy had been the best companion they’d met since they’d arrived in Avonova.

  “Buck up,” Inksy said, lifting her bandana over her nose. “If you come back through, I might be able to show you my finished mural.”

  “Thanks,” Gloria responded.

  The vibrations were now closer and closer together. It wouldn’t be long.

  Then Gloria said, “Inksy, what’d you mean when you said ‘if’?”

  Chapter

  Sixty-Nine

  The journey was a bit more arduous without Inksy’s rebellious energy and acerbic wit to entertain them.

  And StarKat continued to vibrate.

 

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