The Thing About Growing Up in Jokertown Page 3
The runner—with scruffy hair and a beard, wearing a leather jacket even in summer and faded jeans—catches sight of me out of the corner of his eye as I charge up the slope toward him. He does a double take, but he doesn’t slow down and he doesn’t change course, even as I curve around and head straight for him. We’re charging each other now, and I might end up tackling him anyway in a failed game of chicken, because he doesn’t look like he’s going to move and I’m going too fast now to stop or turn without falling or crashing.
I put my head down, ready to take it, and then the running guy disappears. Flashes to nothing right in front of me. Flailing my arms and digging my feet into the grass, I lurch to a stop.
A teleporting ace. Bullshit!
And suddenly the guy’s behind me, still running, not a break in his stride and not looking back. He might be able to teleport, but he only seems able to move a few yards at a time.
I should back off, then. Aces are bad news, ’cause you never know what all they can do, and if you don’t want to get hurt it’s best to stay away. That’s what Ma and Dad always say, at least. A few aces live in Jokertown. And a few aces who look like jokers—nothing like Peregrine, you know, who has wings and can fly, but guys like Beastie who look really weird but are super strong, like ace strong. I should back off, but I’m so angry, I almost had him and then he pulled a trick like that. My lungs fill with air again, and my legs are on fire. I know I can catch this guy. I’m fast enough.
I spin on my foot and once again launch. Dig into the earth and kick my speed up a notch. He keeps running, but in just a second or two I move up behind him. I know I decided not to tackle him or get confrontational. Stay safe by keeping away from the ace, right? But how else am I going to stop him?
I lean in, reach out, grab for his sleeve— He teleports. Boom and boom, just a couple of feet away again, but enough to get out of my reach. He glances over his shoulder and he has on a wide-eyed look of panic. He’s breathing hard. Maybe he can teleport, but he still has to run.
The cops are coming up behind us, shouting. I can’t hear what they’re saying.
The guy changes directions, keeps running. I keep chasing, not tired at all. This is fun. I get close, and he teleports out of my reach—and I change direction and run after him again. It’s chaos, a mess, we’re tearing up all the grass on the hillside and running in circles, and we aren’t going anywhere. I have him corralled, but he stays out of reach.
And then, just when I go to grab him again, he teleports—and lands right in front of the pair of cops who’ve finally caught up with us. The taller of the two, a fit black guy, jams a hood over the guy’s head while the other one wrenches his arm back and puts handcuffs on him.
The runner shouts a bunch of curses, his voice muffled by the hood.
“Shut up, Blinky, you ain’t gonna die,” says the cop cuffing him.
The taller one looks over at me and studies me like he’s trying to figure out what to do. Both cops are nats, and I suddenly wonder how much trouble I’m in.
“And who might you be?” the tall cop asks.
“Um. Miranda Michaelson, sir.”
“Well, Miranda Michaelson, hold on just a minute. We’re going to need to talk to you.”
The rest of the gang finally catches up, slogging up the hill like they’re tired or something. “Rikki! What the hell?” Splat calls.
Beastie comes up and puts a big hand on my shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I caught a bad guy!”
“You could have been hurt!” he says.
“Seriously,” Kris says, her face blazing red and orange with fear and a little anger.
“These your friends?” the tall cop asks.
“Yeah—we’re not in trouble or anything, are we?”
“No—just … just come on, until we get our friend here situated.”
We follow them across the lawn to the Fifth Avenue side of the park. The cops are dragging the blindfolded ace between them, and he’s still yelling.
Splat hisses under his breath, “I think we should run. Before the cops get too interested in us.”
“I want to see what happens,” I say, and Splat huffs, scowling, but he keeps following.
“Can I ask—why the blindfold?” I ask.
The tall cop answers, “He has to be able to see to teleport. If he can’t see, he can’t vanish. Blinky’s an old friend of ours. We have a system. He just got away from us this time.”
“Like Popinjay,” Splat says. Splat knows all about old-school aces and stuff like that. He reads the comic book versions.
“Not nearly as powerful. In fact, Blinky here’s more like a deuce, aren’t you?”
“Fuck off!”
“Hey, no swearing around the kids,” says the short cop gripping his arm.
“Fuck them, too.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “People say ‘fuck’ all the time around us.”
The tall cop looks like he’s tasted something sour.
A line of three patrol cars waits at the curb, one of them belonging to the cops who’d arrested Blinky, and the other two just seem to be there to watch. We hang out nervously while they load their mugger in the backseat. If we want to run, this is our chance.
“Are you sure they don’t want to arrest us?” Kris says.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” I say.
Kris glares. “No, you just went running off to interfere with some arrest—”
“They wouldn’t have caught the guy at all if I hadn’t helped!”
The tall cop says, “Hey. You kids aren’t in trouble. We just need a statement. You’re witnesses. So don’t freak out. I’m Officer Dewey, and this is my partner Officer Clancy—”
By this time Clancy has stuffed Blinky in to the car and he edges over to whisper, as if we aren’t right there, “You sure about them? I mean, a bunch of jokers, what are they doing all the way in Central Park—”
Dewey crosses his arms and glares. “They’re not Werewolves, Clancy! Look at them, they’re a bunch of kids.” He looks skeptically at Beastie but doesn’t correct himself.
“Hey!” Splat says. “I’m seventeen; I graduate next year!”
Dewey and Clancy look at each other, and Clancy shrugs, as if to say it’s on his partner’s head. Dewey sighs and goes to the car to get a notebook.
“All right. One at a time. Tell me what you saw.”
* * *
Being a witness is easy enough, but it isn’t as much fun as actually running down a bad guy. Officer Dewey says we probably won’t need to do anything else—Blinky had mugged some student; there’d been plenty of witnesses. Since he’s a repeat offender, he’ll likely plead guilty, so there won’t be a trial or anything. But Dewey thanks us for being good citizens and offers to give us a ride home.
“Where do you kids live?” he asks.
We all stare at him. Like, is he serious?
* * *
Officer Dewey has to call in a van for Beastie. I ask if maybe we can get a ride in a SWAT van, just to see what that’s like, but no, they have a regular white utility van. Beastie rides in the back. The trip goes a little faster than the one uptown. That doesn’t change how weird it is, riding in a cop car. We have to keep convincing ourselves we haven’t done anything wrong and we aren’t being secretly taken to a jail somewhere.
But no, Officer Dewey drops off Kris and Splat, and we all promise to get together in a couple of days. Just to hang out, we decide. No adventures next time. Beastie gives me a careful hug before he goes up to his apartment. He never has any trouble getting his arms around my barrel chest.
Finally, we stop at my apartment building.
“I’ll walk you up,” Officer Dewey says, parking the van. With the police logo on the side, he can park anywhere.
“You don’t have to do that,” I say. “I mean, I’m sure you’re real busy—”
“Indulge me.”
By now it’s after dark, after supper, which me
ans I’m going to get in trouble. I don’t know what’s going to happen when my folks see Officer Dewey and the police uniform. They’ll think the worst; I’m not looking forward to it.
“Okay, here we are,” I say, standing at the door, not opening it. “Thanks again for the ride—”
The door opens. Ma’s standing right there. It’s like she heard me talking. She’s probably been waiting by the door for an hour, and now I feel terrible.
“Hey, Ma,” I say, shrinking inside myself, blushing hard.
“Rikki, where have you been, you’re late—”
And then she sees Officer Dewey. The blood drains from her face and all her tentacles go limp, flattening on the floor like a carpet. “Aw, jeez, Rikki! What did you do, hon? How many times have I told you to stay out of trouble?”
“Ma, please, it’s not what you think—”
“Officer, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what she’s done, but I’m telling you, she’s a good kid—”
I’m hoping Officer Dewey will say something soon, but he’s staring. One of Ma’s tentacles starts climbing up the wall as she’s talking, and another reaches out to me, trembling. I recognize the signs—the tentacles all kind of quiver when she gets mad.
But I suppose this looks pretty weird to Officer Dewey.
“Ma, just listen!”
“You’re gonna kill your poor father, Rikki, when he hears—”
Officer Dewey finally recovers from his shock with a shiver and manages a polite neutral expression. “Um, Mrs. Michaelson? Rikki isn’t in any trouble at all.”
She stops mid-rant, her tentacles frozen. “What?”
“I just gave her a ride home after she helped us nab a mugger uptown. I thought you might like to hear about what a good citizen she is. You should be proud.” He smiles. I smile. He doesn’t flinch at my fangs.
Ma’s expression goes through a whole range of changes, from shock and upset to confusion, then to relief and finally—pride.
“I know she’s a good kid,” Ma says, beaming. “She’s the best. Thank you for bringing her home and letting me know.”
“My pleasure, Mrs. Michaelson.”
Ma reaches out to me—with a hand, even—and grabs hold of my own. But she puts a tentacle around my shoulder to pull me close in a big hug. And it’s totally normal.
About the Author
Carrie Vaughn is the New York Times bestselling author of the Kitty Norville books, including Kitty’s Big Trouble, Kitty Goes to War, and Kitty and the Midnight Hour. She is also the author of the standalone novels After the Golden Age and Discord’s Apple, and the young adult books Voice of Dragons and Steel. Vaughn had the nomadic childhood of the typical Air Force brat, with stops across the country from California to Florida. She earned her B.A. from Occidental College in Los Angeles, and a master’s in English from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has worked as a Renaissance Festival counter wench, a theater usher, an editor, a buyer at an independent bookstore, and an administrative assistant. She lives in Boulder, Colorado. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by Carrie Vaughn
Art copyright © 2016 by John Picacio
Carrie Vaughn, The Thing About Growing Up in Jokertown
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