Friendly Face, page 9
“Rory!”
“What?” Rory’s gaze didn’t leave the tank.
“Do you see what they’re doing?” Mott asked.
“Huh?” Rory looked over at Mott.
“The Sea Bonnies. See how they’re all lined up?”
Rory looked at the Sea Bonnies. They were milling about separately. Mott felt a growl-like sound rise up in his throat. The little monsters! They were messing with him!
You’re so easy to mess with, a chorus of whispers tickled his ears.
Mott clamped his hands over his ears and started humming.
He wasn’t sure how long he stood there humming. Probably not long. Rory was capable of sitting still for only a nanosecond or so. He couldn’t have been waiting at his desk for long before he started yanking on Mott’s shirt.
Mott opened his eyes and looked at his brother. “What, Rory?”
“What’s a word that rhymes with love?”
“Above, dove.” Mott chewed the inside of his cheek. “That’s all I can think of right now.”
“Above works.”
Stupid, the whispers came again.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” Mott told Rory. “Stay in here and behave. When you’re done with your poem, come and get me in my room.”
“But—” Rory began.
Mott didn’t wait. He bolted down the hall and escaped into the bathroom.
He wasn’t sure how long he remained in the small white-tiled room. He didn’t need to use the toilet, so he sat on the edge of the tub and stared at the fish-patterned blue-and-white wallpaper. He shivered.
Was it fish in general that were weirding him out now? He gazed at the wallpaper. Would the blue fish whisper at him, too?
He waited. Nope. No whispers.
That was because the sounds weren’t in his head, or at least, they weren’t being manufactured in his head. The sounds were coming from the Sea Bonnies. He was sure of it.
“Mott?” Rory shouted through the door. He pounded on the door so hard it rattled in its frame. “I’m ready!”
Mott sighed and stood. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door.
“Come look,” Rory said. He motioned for Mott to follow him back to his bedroom.
“I said you can read it in my room,” Mott said.
Rory turned and shook his head. “No! You have to come see this. It’s super-duper coolio.”
Mott swallowed and accompanied Rory.
In Rory’s room, Rory walked over to the fish tank and began reading. “When I saw my Sea Bonnies, I felt love. It was like a gift from Freddy above. They’re super cool, and they make me glad. I like that ’cause I hate being sad.” Rory pointed to the Sea Bonnies and looked over at Mott with a face shining with happiness. “See?” he said. “They like it!”
Mott made himself look in the tank.
Oh, man.
As much as the Sea Bonnies seemed to dislike Mott, they appeared to love Rory. They were all in formation again, lined up at the glass in front of Mott’s little brother. Their little see-through tails were shimmying in unison.
Well, at least the revolting little monsters are nice to my brother, Mott thought.
“It’s a good poem,” Mott said to Rory.
Rory turned to beam at him.
Behind Rory, the Sea Bonnies darted, as one, to the end of the aquarium, and they all focused on Mott … or again, it looked like they did.
“Do you want to go play my video game with me?” Mott asked Rory.
“Really? Sure!” Rory ran toward Mott, his Sea Bonnies and his poem momentarily forgotten.
Mott hummed as he and Rory trotted toward the stairs. Behind him, whispers reached for his ears, but he hummed louder and refused to listen.
* * *
Mott managed to avoid his brother’s room for the rest of the evening. When his mother got home, he told her Rory had been restless, so Mott hadn’t had time to do his homework. She took over Rory duty, and Mott retreated to his room.
Because, distressingly, he could still hear the faintest of whispers in his own room, he put in his earbuds and listened to music while he studied. He kept in the earbuds while he got ready for bed, taking them out only for a couple of minutes to say good night to his mom. Then he went to bed wearing the earbuds. When he got up the next morning, he went from earbuds to shower to earbuds to out the door. He avoided breakfast by telling his mom he had to get to school early to meet with Nate and Lyle so they could talk about an upcoming history project. The truth was their history project was weeks away, but he figured a lie in the interest of remaining sane was a lie worth telling.
Over lunch, sitting with his friends, eating his cheese sandwich, he thought about telling them what was going on, but he knew his friends. They didn’t share more than one serious bone between them. Mostly, they were one big laugh fest. There was no way they’d do anything but make fun of Mott if he told them what he thought about the Sea Bonnies.
After algebra that afternoon, he briefly considered telling Theresa about his experience with the Sea Bonnies. He knew she was as grossed out by them as he was, so she might be inclined to believe him. But …
“Maybe next weekend?” she asked him.
Mott realized he’d missed all of whatever she’d just told him. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “My head was someplace else.”
Theresa laughed. “I do that all the time. I said we’re going camping this weekend, but I was wondering if you’d like to get together next weekend and study? I’m having trouble with two-variable linear equations. You seem to be getting it. I was hoping you could help me?”
She looked really pretty today. Her shiny hair was caught back in a yellow scarf that matched her short dress.
Mott grinned. “Sure!” He’d help her shovel manure if she asked.
He didn’t think telling a pretty girl that you think tiny mutant brine shrimp were whispering to you was a good way to impress her. He kept his fears to himself.
If only he could stay away from home …
But he couldn’t. His mom was used to him enjoying being at home. He spent most of his afternoons with Rory and most of his evenings with his mom, when she wasn’t at an event. She would find it bizarre if he suddenly wanted to stay over with Nate or Lyle, and his friends would, too. He’d just have to avoid Rory’s room.
This plan worked for much of the evening. He got Rory involved in another video game in the living room. Then he suggested they all play a board game after dinner.
When the game concluded, Mott started to tell his mom he had a headache. Unfortunately, she beat him to it.
“Can you get Rory ready for bed, Mott?” His mom held a palm to the side of her head. “I have a tension headache, and I need to lie down.”
Mott’s reluctance must have shown on his face. She frowned when she looked at him and said, “I’ll give you extra allowance this week.”
Mott shook his head. “Forget that. It’s okay. Sorry. I was just … never mind. Of course, I’ll get him into bed.”
“Let’s read Foxy and Bonnie on the High Seas,” Rory shouted.
Mott’s mom drew away from the sound and headed out of the room.
“Dial it down, buddy,” Mott said. “Mom has a headache.”
“Oh.” Rory turned to watch their mom go up the stairs. “Sorry, Mom!” he yelled.
Mott shook his head and ruffled Rory’s hair. Rory emitted his multisyllabic “Mott” and galloped up the stairs. Mott turned off all the lights, checked that the doors were locked and the security system was on, and then he followed his brother up to the second floor.
A long twenty minutes later, Mott had Rory settled and in bed. “You need to get to sleep,” Mott told his brother. He handed Rory the plush Freddy Fazbear he liked to sleep with.
“Nope,” Rory said. “Read.” He clutched Freddy and pointed to his nightstand. The book he’d referred to earlier was lying under a rolled-up comic book, a slingshot, and a half-empty package of gum.
Yeah, read, the whispers commanded.
Mott ground his teeth, but he reached for the book.
He knew better than to try to leave Rory’s room without reading to him. Rory was quite capable of pitching an ear splitting fit, and if he did that, it would delay Mott’s exit from the room even longer. So, he reached for the book and pulled it out, sending the slingshot and the gum to the floor. He didn’t bother to pick them up. He just started reading where he’d last left off.
He read fast and he read loudly, but Rory didn’t seem to care. He listened raptly for several minutes, and then his eyes began to droop. Mott kept reading loudly; he was almost shouting. Just as he had been with all his silly antics earlier, he was trying to drown out the whispers.
Thankfully, Rory could sleep through a hurricane. He burrowed down under the covers, tucked Freddy under his chin, and closed his eyes tightly. In seconds, Mott could hear Rory’s little-kid snores, even over the shouted reading.
Mott stopped reading, laid the book on the nightstand, and stood all in one motion. He was ready to get out of here.
He turned off the wagon-wheel lamp on the nightstand, but the room didn’t go dark. Rory had a night-light plugged in near his door, and the fish tank had a light, which was still on.
Mott turned and prepared to sprint out of the room.
Namby-pamby, the whispers taunted.
Mott froze. Feeling like he couldn’t back down from a challenge made by something as small as a Sea Bonnie, he turned to glare at the hideous things.
Expecting to see them glaring back at him, he was surprised to find them all clustered together near the back of the tank. He started to walk by, but then he did a double take. They weren’t just clustered together. They were clustered together around Fritz. They were attacking him!
Mott made a beeline for the fish tank to save Fritz, but he realized there was nothing he could do without a net. He looked around wildly. Where was the net that he used to remove Fritz when he had to clean the fish tank?
Mott started opening Rory’s desk drawers, and then he snapped his fingers. Rory had taken the thing into the bathroom; he had been playing with it in the tub.
Mott tore out of Rory’s room. He raced down the hall to the bathroom. Yep. There was the net, sitting on the side of the tub. Grabbing it, Mott ran back into Rory’s room. He charged over to the fish tank.
As Mott reached for the tank’s lid, he froze. The Sea Bonnies were nowhere near Fritz. They were swimming around in the tank, acting like … well, acting like normal Sea Bonnies. And Fritz was swimming around by himself. He looked just fine.
Had Mott imagined what he’d seen?
Mott leaned closer to be sure Fritz was okay. He appeared to be—
Mott blinked and frowned.
Fritz was not okay.
Fritz was different. He didn’t appear to be orange anymore. What had the Sea Bonnies done to him?
Ignoring his distaste for the Sea Bonnies, Mott went over to the tank to get a closer look at the goldfish.
Up close, it was clear that not only was Fritz’s color off, his shape was weird, too. Now a faded blue, not unlike the color of the Sea Bonnies, Fritz was a little lumpy, as if he’d—
No, hang on. He wasn’t lumpy. Mott gasped, but he couldn’t pull himself away from the tank. He had to see.
He leaned closer, putting his face almost up to the glass.
Fritz was drifting lazily through a cluster of Sea Bonnies toward the back of the tank. Mott had to wait until Fritz turned to circle toward the front of the tank. He remained still, almost holding his breath, as the no-longer-gold fish came his way.
As soon as Fritz swam toward the front wall of the tank, Mott’s stomach turned. He covered his mouth as he stared at the fish.
Mott had been right when he’d first seen it. Fritz wasn’t just lumpy. Something was moving inside Fritz. No. Not inside. Mott squinted at the fish as it swam past his gaze.
Something was moving on the outside, too. All of Fritz was in motion, as if—
“Oh gross!” Mott backed away from the tank, but he couldn’t stop looking at Fritz.
Not that Fritz was Fritz anymore.
Fritz was no longer a goldfish. He no longer had fish scales and fins. No. Fritz was now a mass of squirming Sea Bonnies. All Fritz’s own parts had been replaced with the tiny gelatinous deformed aquatic rabbits.
Mott stared in disbelief and total disgust. As he gaped, he saw a couple of Fritz’s scales drifting toward the bottom of the tank. They slowly floated downward until they settled on the rocks. Mott stared at the tiny scales. They were all that was left of the original Fritz.
Mott felt like he was going to be sick.
Fritz swam behind a cluster of Sea Bonnies, and Mott swallowed bile. He made a face and started to turn toward the door, but movement in the tank caught his attention. He glanced back.
All the Sea Bonnies were lined up against the glass, staring at him.
Mott ran from Rory’s room.
Mott spent most of the night and the better part of the next day thinking about Fritz … or actually, Not Fritz. All this thinking time wasn’t technically needed because he’d reached a conclusion about the body-snatched fish within an hour of leaving Rory’s room. Lying on his back on his bed, he’d forced himself to think about what he’d seen. After analyzing it from every angle he could think of, he’d decided what he’d seen was not some new version of Fritz, formed out of Sea Bonnies. It was, instead, a Fritz imposter; it was a mass of Sea Bonnies formed to look like Fritz. Why? Because the Sea Bonnies had consumed Fritz, then used what they’d ingested to multiply themselves and take Fritz’s place. Mott had decided they were kind of like flesh-eating nanobots, which then took on the form of the thing they’d eaten.
* * *
The day after Mott saw Not Fritz for the first time, the day was bright and relentlessly sunny. The weather was all wrong for his mood. He thought a stormy day would have better suited his dark thoughts.
But no matter. His thoughts weren’t distracted by the sunshine. By the time Mott got home from school, he’d reached a conclusion: The Sea Bonnies had to go.
Unfortunately, he came to this conclusion too late in the day. If he’d worked this out earlier, he could have cut school to come home and flush the nasty things. But now Rory was home, and Mott was going to have to figure out a way to get Rory out of his room—no, out of the house—so Mott could dispose of the Sea Bonnies.
Rory now sat at the kitchen counter eating his afterschool snack of crackers, cheese, and orange juice. Mott leaned against the counter by the sink and watched his brother shower crumbs all over his blue shirt and the floor.
“How about we go outside and toss the ball around?” Mott said. “It’s a nice day; everyone should be outside.”
“Okay!” Rory shouted. “I’ll go get my mitt.” Shoving his last two crackers into his mouth and trailing crumbs behind him, he scurried out of the kitchen.
Once they were outside, Mott started working on a plan to keep Rory out of the house while Mott went back inside and disposed of the Sea Bonnies. Mott had plenty of time to work on his plan because neither he nor Rory were particularly good at throwing or catching. A lot of time was spent running around their big backyard, chasing the ball.
Mott’s house sat on a large lot, which backed up on a greenbelt. A thick forest of old oak and maple trees hugged the fence line, and gnarled branches reached into the yard to drop leaves. Uneven grass covered most of the yard. It used to be thick green grass, but when Mott’s dad started taking longer flights, which kept him away longer, he stopped doing things like fertilizing and trimming. Moles started burrowing under the lawn, and the yard turned lumpy … sort of like Not Fritz.
Mott squinted up at the sun, which was starting to slide toward the horizon. He needed an excuse soon to keep Rory outside.
“Hey, Rory!” a child’s voice called from the other side of the wooden fence at the north end of the yard.
“Hey, Danny!” Rory called back. He’d been running after the ball, but he abandoned that task and veered toward the wood slats that separated Rory’s domain from Danny’s.
“Wanna come play ball?” Rory shouted. He put his face up to one of the weathered fence boards and peered through a knothole.
“Nope!” Danny called. “Mom and I are taking Dapup for his first walk on a leash. Wanna come?”
“Yeah!” Rory shouted.
He turned to look at Mott. “Can we?” he yelled. He did a typical Rory spastic dance of excitement.
Mott grinned. This was perfect! He nodded. “You go ahead. I’ll stay here and get started on my homework so I’ll have more time to play with you later.”
“Cool!” Rory shouted. He dropped his mitt and ran toward the gate.
“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Danny’s mother called through the fence.
“Thanks, Mrs. Fairchild!”
Mott charged back into the house as soon as Rory slammed the gate shut and started shouting, “What’s up, Dapup?”
Mott had a feeling a walk that included a puppy and two antsy boys wasn’t going to be a long one. He needed to hurry.
He took the stairs two at a time and ran down the hall to Rory’s room. Rory’s door was open; it always was during the day. Inside the room, Mott went directly to Rory’s desk, shoved aside a pile of books, and reached for the fish tank.
The sound of splashing water stopped him. He looked in the tank. Its lid was up, probably because Rory had forgotten to close it after he fed his little maniacal creatures. Mott could see both through the glass and from above the water that the Sea Bonnies were spun up, violently darting this way and that, creating swirls under the water and rough waves on the top. It was if they knew what he planned to do.
Yeah, well, so what? He wasn’t going to have to be worried about what they knew and didn’t know soon enough.
Mott strode to the desk, reached out, and slapped the fish tank lid closed. The water inside the tank churned more wildly. The lid vibrated, like it was going to pop open. Mott smacked his hand down on top of it, then used his other hand to put a book on the lid. He looked around and grabbed one of Rory’s T-shirts off the floor. Covering the tank with the shirt—because he sure didn’t want to look at the Sea Bonnies as he carried them to their deaths—he pulled the tank toward him and lifted it off the desk.
