CHAPTER THREE
THE BOOK HUGGERS
Conner was having a whimsical dream. He was skipping through the German countryside in bright green lederhosen, merrily swinging a basket of freshly picked flowers. He yodeled happily as he skipped toward a picturesque village ahead of him. Everything was so peaceful and happy—he never wanted to leave. But suddenly, a screeching alarm sounded through the area—it was a familiar sound, one that he had heard many times before. Conner looked to the sky and saw the evil alien race from the television show he had watched the night before descend upon the village and begin attacking it!
The dream came to an abrupt stop when Conner realized the sound was coming from his alarm clock. He smacked it a couple times more than necessary to shut it off. He was so tired he didn’t even feel alive. He felt like his head was filled with a giant cloud that made it difficult to keep his eyes open.
Even though he was glad he’d gotten to spend time with Alex the night before, he was seriously regretting his decision to stay up so late. He got dressed and dragged Betsy down the stairs one step at a time. Bob and Charlotte were waiting for him by the front door—they had always been morning people, a race Conner never understood.
“Ready, champ?” Bob asked, spinning his car keys in his hand.
Conner grunted something that sounded like yes. Charlotte had an early morning at the hospital and was already dressed for work. She put her arms around her son and hugged him tightly.
“Make good choices, Conner,” she said. “But most important, have fun!”
“Mom, I can’t go to Germany if you’re still hugging me,” Conner wheezed through her tight grip.
“I just need another minute,” Charlotte said. “You’re the only kid I’ve got left to hug.”
Once his mother finally let go, Conner threw his suitcase into the back of Bob’s car and they left the house. They stopped at a fast-food drive-in for a greasy breakfast, one they wouldn’t have gotten away with if Charlotte was with them, and headed to the airport. Bob happily reminisced about his own European adventures as he drove. Conner faded in and out of the conversation—the subtle bumps and vibrations of the car kept putting him to sleep. Eventually they arrived at the airport and Bob pulled up to the curbside.
“Before you get out, there’s something I wanted to give you,” Bob said in a very serious tone.
“It isn’t the birds-and-the-bees talk, is it?” Conner asked, fearing the worst. “Because I’ve already seen all the videos at school.”
“Um, no…,” Bob said. He paused for a moment, wondering if that was the talk he should have been giving him instead, but then proceeded as planned. “I got you something your mom doesn’t know about.”
Bob reached into his front pocket and pulled out a credit card. He handed it to his stepson and Conner was shocked to see “Conner Jonathan Bailey” written across the bottom.
“That’s my… my… my name,” Conner said. “You got me a credit card, Bob?!”
“I did,” Bob said. “The pin number is the year you were born. It’s only for emergencies and only for this trip, understand? As soon as you come home safe and sound I’m going to take it back. I know your mom is against things like this but I’d rather you were safe than sorry—so it’s our little secret, okay?”
Conner excitedly bobbed his head up and down. “Absolutely! Bob, you’re slowly becoming my favorite person ever! Thank you so much!”
Bob smiled and chuckled to himself. “Glad to hear it.” He patted Conner on the back. “You’re my family, Conner. I need to make sure you’ll be all right. Now go have an adventure—I mean, you know, one by normal standards. Try to avoid the evil enchantresses and talking animals as much as possible.”
Conner spotted Mrs. Peters standing outside the terminal entrance. She was surrounded by a group of four girls from school who had all just arrived as well. As excited as he was about the trip, Conner wasn’t looking forward to traveling with these girls.
“Don’t worry,” Conner reassured Bob. “The scariest thing on this trip is waiting for me over there.”
Conner gave Bob a hug, grabbed Betsy from out of the back, and waved good-bye as Bob drove off. He joined Mrs. Peters and the group of girls by the entrance. All the girls looked as tired as Conner. Mrs. Peters, however, looked exactly the same as she always did, which furthered Conner’s theory that she was a robot.
“Good morning, Mr. Bailey,” Mrs. Peters said, perky as ever.
“Good morning, Mrs. Peters,” Conner said. “Good morning, Mindy—Cindy—Lindy—Wendy.”
None of the girls responded, and Conner hadn’t expected them to. They hadn’t said a word to Conner since the school year began. Instead, they would just stare daggers at him from afar—as if he had publicly humiliated them in the past and never apologized for it. Conner couldn’t think of a reason they did this but he never spent too much thought on it. He knew girls tended to get very strange at their age—and these four were already some of the strangest girls he had ever met.
Mindy, Cindy, Lindy, and Wendy had been inseparable since the first grade when they were grouped together by their teacher for a rhyming project. Together they made up the Reading Club at school and spent every moment they could in the library. They would have reminded Conner of his sister had they not been so eccentric.
Mindy was the shortest, the loudest, and the self-appointed leader of their group. She wore her hair in pigtails every day as if she was contractually obligated to. Cindy was the youngest and to this day proudly told everyone that she had skipped kindergarten. She also had a mouthful of braces with enough metal to build a satellite. Lindy was African American and the tallest girl at school. She even towered over all her teachers. She stood a bit hunched over from all the time she spent looking down at people. Wendy was painfully shy and usually let the other girls do all the talking. She was Japanese and had very dark hair and the largest eyes Conner had ever seen on a human.
He had known for a while that the four girls were going on the trip and it had almost convinced him to stay home. But luckily, Bree was going, which somehow made the whole trip worthwhile.
“We’re just waiting for Ms. Campbell to arrive and then we’ll get checked in,” Mrs. Peters said, looking up and down the curb. “You’re the only boy on the trip, Mr. Bailey. Are you sure you can handle it?”
“Oh yeah,” Conner said. “I’m used to it. My mom and sister used to talk about all kinds of girl things in front of me… usually over dinner, too, which I never appreciated.”
The girls exchanged dramatic eye rolls with one another as soon as Conner mentioned his sister. He couldn’t figure out what their problem was.
“Oh, here comes Ms. Campbell,” Mrs. Peters said.
Conner jerked his head in the direction she was looking and saw Bree Campbell walking toward them. The exhausting clouds filling his head instantly deflated. Just seeing her made Conner feel like he had drunk five energy drinks.
Bree Campbell was unlike any girl Conner had ever met. She was always very calm and cool, never raised her voice for anything, and never seemed to let anything or anyone affect her in any way. She had blonde hair with a streak of pink and blue in her bangs. She usually wore bracelets and wristbands by the dozen, always wore a purple beanie, and had an earbud plugged into one ear whenever she could.
“Good morning, Ms. Campbell,” Mrs. Peters said.
“Good morning, everyone,” Bree said with a yawn. She even yawned cooler than everyone else, Conner thought.
“Let’s go inside and get checked in,” Mrs. Peters instructed, and they followed her with their luggage. One by one they showed their passports to the lady behind the counter and checked in to their flight.
Conner was standing in line right behind Bree. He couldn’t explain the anxiety she caused him. He was so excited to be near her, yet terrified at the same time.
She’s just a girl, not a python, he said to himself over and over in his head. Be cool. Don’t try to be funny. Just act normal. And when you get back home you need to see a doctor about this.
“Mindy, Cindy, Lindy, and Wendy are in row thirty-one, seats A, B, C, and D,” Mrs. Peters said as she passed out their plane tickets. “And Conner and Bree are in row thirty-two, seats A and B.”
Conner’s heart was doing cartwheels. I’m sitting next to Bree! I’m sitting next to Bree! Woo-hoo! he thought. But why does that seem like the best news of my life?
He got a glimpse of Bree’s passport photo—which was, to no surprise, far better than his—and Bree caught him staring at it. Conner had to think fast so he didn’t seem like the creeper that he was.
“Your passport picture is much better than mine,” he said. “I got mine over the summer and made the mistake of asking if I was supposed to smile right as they took it.”
He flipped his passport open so she could get a glimpse of it.
“It kind of looks like you sneezed and it scared you,” Bree said blankly. There was no trace of judgment or mockery in her voice. It was a perfectly honest description.
“Would you like to check your bag, sir?” the lady at the counter asked. It took Conner a second to realize she was talking to him; no one had ever called him sir before.
“Oh, please! Take her!” Conner said and handed Betsy over to be tagged. The lady gave him a strange look, hearing that his suitcase had a gender. “I mean take it. Take the suitcase.”
Betsy was loaded onto the conveyor belt and slowly traveled farther and farther away from him. The next time he’d see her would be in Germany. Conner and the girls went through the security line and their group was boarding the plane within the hour.
The plane was massive. Conner couldn’t wrap his head around how something so big could get into the air. Even after witnessing all the magical things he had seen in the Land of Stories, it was still fascinating to him. They walked down the aisle and found their seats. Conner gulped when he realized how long he would have to spend in such a small area.
“Where is your seat, Mrs. Peters?” Mindy asked. All the seats around them were filling up fast.
“I’ll be in first class,” Mrs. Peters said. “But don’t worry; if any of you need me, just have a flight attendant notify me. I’ll be in row one, seat A. It’s going to be a long flight, so get comfortable.”
And with that said, Mrs. Peters promptly turned on her heel and pushed her way past the oncoming travelers to the front of the plane. Conner sat down in his seat by the window and Bree sat next to him. He stared at the back of the seat in front of him for a moment; he had no idea how to start a conversation with her.
“Are you okay by the window?” Conner asked her.
Bree looked confused. “But you’re by the window,” she said.
Conner wanted to smack his head against the stupid window—they weren’t off to a good start. “Oh, right, what I meant to ask was if you wanted to sit by the window,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind switching seats.”
“I’ll be fine,” Bree said. “I’m just going to read for most of the flight.” She gestured to her bag and Conner saw it was full of thick murder-mystery novels. Bree kept getting cooler by the second.
“Great. Let me know if you change your mind,” Conner said, and returned to staring at the seat in front of him until he thought of something else to say. “So, Mrs. Peters was telling me you like to write, too.”
“Uh-huh.” Bree nodded. “Short stories mostly. I read some of yours when I TA’d for Ms. York last year—they’re cute. They remind me of classic fairy tales.”
Conner couldn’t believe his ears. “You’ve read my stories?”
“Yup,” Bree said. “I liked them a lot—especially the one about the Curvy Tree and the Walking Fish. Those were very clever.”
“Thanks,” Conner said, and blushed a deep shade of red. Not only had she read them but she also remembered them. “Those were originally called the Curvy Giraffe and the Flying Frog, but I changed the titles to sound more… um… realistic. What kind of stories do you write?”
“I just finished one called ‘Cemetery of the Undead,’ ” Bree said. “It’s pretty self-explanatory.”
Conner nodded a little too much to seem normal. “Sounds lovely.”
He felt like an idiot talking about his fairy tales knowing that she wrote about things like cemeteries and zombies. How was he going to convince her he was cool when she was obviously the coolest person that ever lived?
“I’ve thought about changing up my genre,” Conner said. “I think it’d be fun to write darker stories about things like that. Stories with vampires and werewolves, but no love triangles or anything—”
“Oh, Conner—I forgot I had something I was going to ask you,” Bree said.
“Ask me anything,” he said.
“Do you have a crush on me or something?” Bree asked him point-blank.
Conner was positive everything in his body came to a complete stop, starting with his brain. He could feel his cheeks filling with so much blood he was worried his head would explode.
“What?” he asked, as if she had asked him if he was a leprechaun. “No! Of course not! Why would you think that?”
“Because you turn bright red and ramble whenever I’m around you,” Bree said. She was neither accusatory nor suspicious; she was just stating the facts calmly as ever.
Conner forced a laugh that was too loud to be genuine. “Oh, that? That’s nothing. That’s just my sodium allergy.” He was as surprised to say it as she was to hear it.
“Sodium allergy?” Bree asked. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“It’s very rare,” Conner said. “Makes me ramble and turn bright red for no apparent reason.… So that explains all that.…”
He wasn’t sure how far he was planning to go with this. He could tell she wasn’t convinced.
“Sorry, I just thought since we’re going to be sitting next to each other for half a day on this plane I would ask,” Bree said.
“I appreciate you asking,” Conner said. “That would have been totally awkward.… Just sitting here… for hours and hours… one of us crushing on the other… glad that’s not the case…”
Conner wanted to die. He fantasized about crawling out the window and curling up in the plane’s propeller. He couldn’t decide what was more mortifying: giving the impression that he had a crush on her or that there may have been some truth to her suspicion. Conner had never had a crush before; he wouldn’t have known if he had. But after being accused of having one, it slowly dawned on him that that must have been his problem—he had a crush on Bree!
He looked out the window, too horrified to look at anything else. What was he supposed to do now that he had been diagnosed with a crush? Was there an anti-crush pill he could take? Was there a gland on his heart that could be removed? Was it terminal?
Soon the plane pulled away from the gate and proceeded to the runway. It took off with a jolt and Conner watched in amazement as the airport below them became smaller and smaller.
“Amazing,” Conner said under his breath.
“Have you ever flown before?” Bree asked him.
“Not on a plane,” Conner said without thinking.
Bree squinted. “Then what did you fly on? A magic carpet?” she asked.
It took Conner a moment to realize she was being sarcastic. “I’ve been—um—ballooning before. It was really neat but nothing like this. Technology is almost like magic these days.”
“You know, Arthur C. Clarke said that magic is just science we don’t understand yet,” Bree quoted.
Conner smiled. “Not always,” he said to himself.
“Pardon?” Bree asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Conner said. “That’s a great quote.”
Bree narrowed her eyes and stared at him suspiciously. “Where did you go ballooning?” she asked.
“It’s a long story.” Conner shrugged it off. “It was with my sister in my grandmother’s—um—state. But this is my first time being on a plane.”
“Looks like you’re having all kinds of first experiences,” Bree said with a smile of her own. Luckily for Conner, she then popped an earbud into her other ear and began reading one of her books before he could panic or respond with something else embarrassing.