Going Bovine (13 page)

This is officially my weirdest and most annoying hallucination yet. “What did Dr. X finally do?” I say slowly.

“He figured out how to break through, to travel through time and space. He’s been parallel world hopping, raking up quite a few cosmic frequent flier miles. But that’s not the problem. He’s come home again.” Her dark brows are furrowed. “And he brought something back with him.”

“Something meaning like a T-shirt or coffee mug?”

“Not quite.” She puts the spoon down. “Ever hear of dark energy?”

“No. What is it?”

“Beats me. Nobody really knows what dark energy is except that it makes up most of space. It’s an eternal mystery. When Dr. X traveled through space and time and stopped to smell the roses in the Higgs Field, he tapped into that stuff. Something was created, and it followed him back to this world. Now it’s massing into something new, expanding and accelerating events, destabilizing everything.” Her expression is grave. Chocolate’s smeared around her mouth like a clown’s lipstick. “You’ve got to find Dr. X, get him to close the wormhole before the whole planet goes up in flames. Before everything is obliterated.”

“Whoa. What do you mean I’ve got to find Dr. X? Shouldn’t that be your jurisdiction? Use your angel superpowers or whatever. Leave me out of it.”

She fixes me with a stare. “Cameron, do you wonder how you got your disease?”

I’ve spent, like, a billion hours wondering that very thing. “They say it might have been a bad burger.”

Dulcie makes a disgusted growl in her throat. “So unimaginative. No. Everything’s connected, Cameron. There are no accidents. Your disease isn’t a virus or a bacteria—it’s something completely different, something that actually alters your DNA. Those prions are like car body shop guys pimping the ride of your mind, my friend.”

“Thanks. That’s very encouraging.”

“Don’t you get it? The prions attacking your brain right now? They’re from the same unstable, dark energy. That’s why the doctors can’t figure it out. Because what’s attacking you is from another world.”

“But how—”

She holds up a finger. “I’m getting to it. Don’t rush a girl in the middle of her exposition. But it’s also what’s going to allow you to find Dr. X. Those prions can help you see what everybody else would miss. By not working ‘right,’ your brain is actually capable of seeing more than anybody else’s, including mine.” She taps the side of my head. “What’s going on in here right now will help you make sense of the signs and find Dr. X’s secret location.”

“Signs?” I repeat, because I’ve only understood about three words she’s said.

“Yes. Yes! Signs!” She leaps up in excitement and nearly sends my plastic water pitcher to the floor. “Tabloids, billboards, ‘coincidences’—things no one else pays attention to. These are the clues for your journey. It’s up to you to decipher it, to connect the dots and find the meaning.”

I squeeze my hands against my head as if I could make this stop. “This is officially the craziest shit I’ve ever heard.”

“Really? Man oh man, I could tell you a few things …” She laughs, then stops. “Right. Not important. So. Anyway. There’s a lot going on in those tabloids. You’d be surprised. It’s like alternate universe code. And that’s how Dr. X has been communicating. Through tabloid code. He needs help, Cameron—he’s not a well man.”

“But that’s so totally random!”

Dulcie tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. “In a world like this one, only the random makes sense.”

“Wait, I thought you just said everything’s connected. How can it be both—”

“Randomly connected, connected very randomly,” she says, examining Jenna’s stuffed cat, Mr. Bubbles Kitty. “Cute. So soft. Cotton? Hey there, kitty. Do you think Cameron should go on this mission and save the world from complete destruction? Just nod for yes.” She makes the cat nod.

I tear Mr. Bubbles Kitty out of her hands. “I still don’t understand how it is that you can’t find this guy. You’re an angel. Aren’t you? Don’t you have any angel superpowers—appearing to shepherds in fields where they lay, blowing trumpets? Laser eyes? At the very least, you should have some kind of angel GPS for locating missing people.”

“I’m just a messenger. That’s all.”

A prickly feeling works its way up my arms. “Wait, are you an alien? Where’d you come from?”

“Great question! Anyway, I don’t want you to fret. I’m not gonna abandon you to tabloids and billboards. I’ll be checking in, here and there.”

“Checking in?”

“Here and there.”

I fold my arms over my chest. Out in the hallway, an orderly pushes somebody on a stretcher. “Tell me one reason why I should do this?”

She sucks on the plastic spoon again. When she pulls it out, it’s coated in what’s left of her lipstick. “I was saving the best for last. There’s a bonus round. Dr. X is the one person who can cure you.”

I sit straight up. “Wait, they said there is no cure—”

“—That they know of,” Dulcie interrupts. “But there is a cure. And Dr. X has it.”

A cure. It seems as ridiculous as those spray-painted feathers she’s sporting. But a cure …

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m hooked up to an IV. I can barely move.”

“Yeah. I can help you out a little there, cowboy. I’ve got something Dr. X left behind. One of his early experiments. Hold out your wrist?” I do and she hooks what looks like a big plastic watchband around it. “Your temporary pass. It’ll keep the symptoms at bay and stabilize you for about two weeks. After that …”

“After that, what?”

She’s not smiling anymore. “The prions will take over. They’ll tear your mind apart the same way that dark energy will tear the world apart.”

Hearing her say that makes my heart beat a little faster. The watchband has something inside—a laminated green card with writing on it. Walt Disney World. Magic Kingdom. “E.” Adult Admission. Good for Choice of One. On the left side is a list: Adventureland, Frontierland, Liberty Square, Fantasy-land, Tomorrowland. “What is this?”

“An E-ticket,” she says excitedly.

“An E-what?”

“E-ticket. They used to have them at Disney World a million years ago. They got you a straight shot to the best rides. So awesome! Of course, those tickets are discontinued now, so you should be careful with that one.”

I stare at it. It’s just a green ticket in a bracelet around my wrist. “And this would protect me … how?”

She licks the rest of the pudding spoon clean and drops it on the tray. “Sorry. That is top-secret angel info.”

All the hope I’d felt vanishes. In a minute, I’ll wake up. I’ll wake up and it will be another day in which I’m living a dream of dying slowly, a dream I hope I’ll wake up from, on and on till it’s over.

“Okay, you know what? I’m clearly having some kind of pain-meds-induced hallucination, and I’m sure you’re a very nice hallucination with a supergreat, nonreal personality, but I’m going to go back to sleep now, and when I wake up, you’ll be gone.”

She puts her hand on mine, and it’s as soft as her wings. “Cameron, we’ve exhausted every other option.”

“You still haven’t told me who ‘we’ is!”

She sucks air through her teeth, nods. “Yeah. I know. Cameron, you’re our last best hope. I’m asking you to save the world, cowboy.”

“Wait,” I say, pushing myself up again. “That’s a line from Star Fighter.”

She gives me that big goofy grin. “Yeah! I couldn’t resist. Great movies, right? Well, the early ones. The later ones … ehhh. Oh. Almost forgot. There’s just one more thing,” she says, biting her lip. “You need to take Gonzo with you.”

“What?”

“You need a pal on this trip. Everybody needs a friend.”

I drop back against the pillow, fold my arms over my chest. “Not me. I travel solo or not at all.”

Her eyes crinkle. “Now who’s quoting Star Fighter?” She deepens her voice, swaggers. “‘Not me, princess. I travel solo or not at all.’ Right. Not the point. The point is, you’re gonna need a mate, a pal, a sidekick and coconspirator. And frankly, Gonzo could use a little help, too. I mean, look at him.”

She parts the curtain a crack. Gonzo’s asleep, mouth open, snoring slightly, a Captain Carnage video game guide crumpled under his chin.

“You’d be providing a valuable public service,” Dulcie says.

“No, no, and no.” I tick off the reasons this is a bad idea. “One, he’s a compulsive talker. Two, he calls his mom, like, five times a day. Three, he snores. Four, he’s completely phobic and thinks everything’s going to kill him.”

Dulcie shrugs. “Nobody’s perfect.”

“The other day he said there are chemicals used in the processing of toilet paper that can give you rectal cancer. So now he’s bringing his secret stash of special recycled toilet tissue in with him in the mornings. He will never say yes.”

“You won’t know until you ask. Besides, his fate is tied to yours. Everything’s connected.”

“There’s no such thing as fate.”

“Except for random fate.”

“That’s … insane.”

“Yeah.” She grins. “Insanity. Brilliance. Such a tough call. Look, Cameron, I’m just a messenger. I don’t know everything. But I do know this: you’re being given a chance. Take it and you might live. Stay here and you will surely die.” Dulcie cuddles Mr. Bubbles Kitty, fluffing him with her fingers. “Whaddaya say—you, Gonzo, connecting the dots, finding Dr. X, getting a cure, saving the universe? You down, cowboy?”

My head hurts; it’s almost time for my pain meds. Where’s Glory? I want to check out for a while. Not think or feel. I roll onto my side, away from her. “I’ll think about it.”

“Okay.” Dulcie reaches over me and tucks the cat into the crook of my arm. “But Cameron? Don’t think about it too long.”

NIGHT

Mom and Dad and Jenna are here, camped around me. They’re all watching some stupid episode of an even stupider show on YA! TV called What’s Your Category? where kids have to answer questions to prove they know more than anybody else does about a particular stupid topic, and if they get too many wrong, they’re dunked in a stinking pool of mystery yuck.

“Dude,” Gonzo whispers without taking his eyes off the TV. “You ever watch I Double Dog Dare You?”

I shake my head. It throbs, and I can’t help thinking about what Dulcie said, about those prions attacking my brain being some mysterious agent from another world. It would be so nice to blot this all out with a big fat dose of pain meds, but I can’t have any for another hour, according to Glory, who was here … when? I don’t know.

“It’s awesome. Once they made this guy shave his butt on national television—and the guy did it! Totally rocked the house.”

How long till the pain medication? I could count the minutes. Go to sleep and not wake up. I could stay here and wait for the inevitable.

Saving the world. That’s impossible. Insane.

Still.

A cure. I could be cured. That’s what she said. And some little atoms come awake inside me, swirling into a question I can’t shake: “Why the hell not?”

I could have a chance.

And a chance is better than nothing.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Wherein I Try to Convince the Dwarf to Leave Behind the Comforts of Recycled Toilet Paper in Order to Accompany Me on a Mission to Possibly, Maybe Save the World

Once my family thinks I’m asleep and they step out for dinner, I wake Gonzo.

“Hey, dude. What’s up?” He sits up and wipes the drool from the corner of his mouth. The newsprint from his video game manual has smeared over half his face from where he fell asleep on it. This is the guy Dulcie thinks I should take with me on the road? Holy crap.

“Um, look, I know this is going to sound completely crazy, but I had this, I don’t know exactly what you’d call it. A vision, maybe.”

“What kind of vision?” he asks, yawning.

“This angel spoke to me and—”

Gonzo stops mid-eye rub. “Hold up. How did you know she was an angel, amigo? What did she look like?”

“Uh … wings. Breastplate. Pink hair. Fishnets and combat boots.”

“Awesome! Punk-rock angel! You think God’s a metal-head?” Gonzo gives me a thrashing air-guitar solo while banging his head and flicking his tongue in and out of his mouth. It’s like watching a snake die slowly and painfully. “What’s angel girl’s name?”

“Dulcie. So—”

Gonzo frowns. “Doesn’t seem like an angel name to me. My mom’s really big on the saints, and I’ve never heard of a St. Dulcie. You sure you weren’t just dreaming, man?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” I say, though I’ve never been less sure of anything. “She gave me this mission, Gonzo. The most important mission of our time.”

“Awesome. Lay it on me.”

“Well …” I tell him everything Dulcie said about Dr. X and his time traveling and the cure and the end of the world approaching if we don’t locate him and get him to close the wormhole.

Gonzo stares at me. “Dude, you sound like those geezers who hang around the bus station wearing tinfoil hats and pissing into empty soda cups.”

“I know it sounds crazy, but I’m telling you the truth. I swear. She was here. She ate my pudding snack.” The spoon. Her lipstick. I run for the trash. “I can prove she was here. Hold on.”

The linoleum’s bitter cold against my feet. The postal workers in my brain finally come off break and send the message to my legs that it’s okay to walk, and I stumble over to the trash can. Nothing’s in there but my mom’s half-finished crossword puzzle.

“They must’ve taken it with the tray,” I say.

“Sure they did.” Gonzo holds up some fingers. “Let’s do a quick sanity check. How many fingers?”

I flip him the bird. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Harsh.”

“I’m not crazy, okay?” I say, even though what I’m saying has every hallmark of a stadium-sized crazy concert.

“Okay. So how do we find this miracle guy, this Dr. X?”

“She said we have to look for signs—billboards, tabloids, personals.”

Gonzo stares at me. “Seriously, what are they putting in your IV? Wack on tap? Even if we entertain the idea that a winged being in combat boots gave you a secret mission to find a doctor with a magical cure, how are you gonna go anywhere, dude? In case you haven’t noticed, you’re in a hospital bed at St. Jude’s and sometimes you have trouble just getting to the bathroom. Did 1-800-Punk-Angel give you some pointers there?”