No time to catch my breath before they call my brother. “Thorn, um, Fireseed, your turn to present,” calls the female judge. Once again, my nerves jump all over the place.
Thorn looks at me with a mischievous gleam as he skips toward the parlor. I see now: his shirt is bulging in a place where he has no fat. In fact, the bulge is shifting as he walks.
Oh, how I wish I were a spider on the wall in there.
Bea elbows me. “What’s Thorn up to, Ruby?” I dare not say, so I simply play dumb.
Next Armonk pulls up a chair. “How’re you holding up?”
It’s hard to concentrate while I’m watching the shadows move behind the office door, but I’m glad that Armonk wants to talk. Does that mean he hasn’t heard about Blane and me? Or that it doesn’t bother him? “My presentation went well, except they got impatient with my rambling explanations. You?”
He sighs. “I couldn’t get the darn Fireseed to burn, and I know it does, I’ve seen it happen. No way they’ll pick me. So much for seeing the great Vegas-by-the-Sea.”
“You might have misjudged …”
Armonk starts to fiddle with his long braid. I jiggle my foot. Blane is sitting on my other side, picking at the armrest, but I don’t have the wherewithal to worry about what he thinks of me spending time with Armonk when I’m also worried about Thorn. Besides, it’s not as if Blane has claimed me.
Just then, we hear screeches—of delight or fear? Nevada’s office door flies open to more screeching as a Red soars out and careens toward the ceiling to perch on a light fixture. The Red flaps its leafy wings and peers down at us as it squeaks like a rusty hinge.
Stazzi rushes out, craning her neck to get a good look at the Red. The other judges clamber out and stare too.
“Watch out!” I cry as the Red lifts its plumed tail and lays a pink turd that plops down on Jan’s shirt. Cursing, Jan bats the turd off, smearing it on the floor. The Red, frightened, lifts off of that light fixture and flaps around until it finds a higher perch, on a ceiling rafter.
The string of judges look absurd in their fancy outfits, as they leap upwards in clumsy attempts to grab it.
“My. Red!” Thorn warbles.
We all gape at him. “He spoke!” Bea exclaims, “he—”
“That thing crapped on me,” Jan yells. “It’s going to meet a bad ending.”
“Enough, Jan,” Nevada warns. She reaches up slowly for the Red with a long-handled scoop she uses for cleaning sand from the tarp.
From above, the Red cocks his head at the scooper, and then down at Thorn. It blinks its brown eyes and flutters down to sit on Thorn’s shoulder.
“My word!” exclaims George Axiom. “My word!” he repeats dumbly. He sticks his finger out for the Red to sniff … or bite or whatever a Red might do.
The Red must not like what it smells. It squeezes its eyes shut and tucks its head into Thorn’s messy hair. Stazzi, the female judge guffaws at the sight. Does she know that George Axiom has cheap taste in cologne or what?
“Thorn, can you show us where this creature lives?” Axiom suggests. As the students and even the teachers try to follow them out to the Fireseed field, Axiom holds up his hand. “Judges only, please.” We sigh loudly and trudge back to our chairs.
On their way to the burnsuit porch I hear Axiom asking Thorn how he created the Reds. Thorn doesn’t answer. Has he stopped talking?
Now I’m not only wiggling my foot, I’m rocking like a lunatic. The suspense is way too much. After ten minutes of this, I busy myself with cleaning up the pink turd.
“So, are there more of those things out there?” Blane asks me.
“I guess so,” I say.
“I’m going to slaughter every last one of them,” Jan threatens.
“The hell you will,” says Armonk. “Whatever they are, they’re miraculous. I mean, this desert’s been barren for so many years.”
“Miraculous as a pink turd,” Jan sniggers.
“Oh, will you all shut up?” Bea presses her temples with her palms. “You’re giving me a frying headache.”
“One big happy family,” I say.
To which the other guys laugh.
Thorn comes back beaming and runs into my arms. I slide over and share the chair with him. He’s gotten bigger in the last month, still there’s room enough for both of us.
I whisper into his tousled hair. “Did you show them the new buds and tell them how you made the Reds?”
He cups his hand around my ear and whispers back. “No. Keep. Secret.”
“It’ll give them something to look forward to then. You’ll still be in the finals for sure!”
He nods, confident. I’m amazed at how much the Red’s eyes resemble Thorn’s. It’s incredible, these tiny half-human beings.
And me, half human as well. How many varieties of half-human are possible? Am I the same person I was a year ago? How could I be?
Chapter 22