Yeah. That would be really cool.
She folded her arms and waited. It was so strange to be here, to see Bug in this big and messy place, like he was some little kid playing house. Which, she thought, he was. So many things here seemed familiar. Like the monkey in the corner. The suit of armour. The tapestry on the wall, just like Bug’s father had in his lair. She hugged herself even tighter.
Bug came out of the bedroom carrying jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of trainers. “Here,” he said. “You can put these on in the bathroom.” He pointed. “Over there.”
“Thanks,” she said. She went to the bathroom and shut the door. She dropped the wet clothes to the floor and pulled on the dry ones. Thankfully, they were big enough to fit her. (It would have been horrible if the stuff had been too small.) Then she looked at herself in the mirror and sighed. The T-shirt said HOT STUFF in orange flames. She was hot stuff, all right. Her hair was in its customary thick ponytail, but random wisps stuck out all over, spraying sideways and tumbling down her shoulders and back. “Hi!” she said to the mirror. “I’m HOT STUFF!”
“What?” Bug called from outside the door. “Did you say something?”
“No!” Georgie said. And then, under her breath, “Just talking to myself like a complete lunatic.” She pulled out the ponytail and tried to comb her hair with her fingers as best she could, but it was no use. Her hair, like her body, was apparently intent on taking over the city.
Georgie threw open the bathroom door. “I have world domination hair,” she said irritably.
Bug frowned. “What?”
“Never mind,” Georgie said. She was going to sit in the chair, but Bug was sitting in it. She searched the room for another chair, but she didn’t see one. She settled for a coffee table shaped like a tree stump. Or maybe it was a tree stump, she didn’t know. Perching on the stump, she said, “Thanks for the stuff. I’ll give it back to you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Bug said.
Georgie frantically searched her feeble brain for something to say. “Do you know that pen that your… um… that Sweetcheeks wanted me to steal from my dad?”
“Yeah?”
“You won’t believe what it does.”
“Let me guess: writes?”
Georgie glanced up sharply, a little hurt that Bug sounded so sarcastic. “Yes, it writes. But it makes anything you write with it come true.”
Bug raised an eyebrow. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope. But things come true only the way the pen wants them to come true.”
“No way.”
“That’s what The Professor told my dad. And that’s what my dad told me. That people wouldn’t even be able to fly if someone hadn’t written something about flying a long time ago.”
“I think I remember The Professor hinting around about that the first time we met him. Something about how people weren’t supposed to fly.”
“Yes,” Georgie said. “But whoever started it didn’t write, ‘I wish all people could fly’ or whatever, he wrote something else, something that had nothing to do with flying at all. The pen did whatever it wanted to do. And now, well… you know the rest.”
“Wow,” said Bug.
“Wow is right,” said Georgie. She waited for Bug to say something else, but he didn’t. “So, um, if you had that pen, what would you want to write with it?”
“What?” said Bug. “I don’t know.”
“Come on. You must want something. It’s a pen that makes dreams come true.” Yikes, she thought. She sounded like one of those chain e-mails people send to all their relatives. She was now giving herself the creeps.
“My dreams did come true,” Bug said, fidgeting. “I mean, I’m a Wing now, right? And in all these adverts. Did I tell you about the Skreecher campaign?”
So much for conversation. “Yeah, you did. Just before.”
“Oh.” He pulled the sleeves of his jumper over his hands. He tipped his head, as if he was considering something. “So, how do you like school?”
“OK,” said Georgie, too embarrassed to tell him about Roma Radisson. Too embarrassed to tell him that even though she might be The Richest Girl in the Universe, no one liked her any better for it.
“I’ve got tutors,” said Bug. “Too much work to do to go to school.”
“I don’t know that falling into the East River counts as work.” She hadn’t meant to say that, but out it popped. When your arms and legs and feet and hair are threatening to take over the world and you’re wearing a T-shirt that says HOT STUFF in orange flames, things that you don’t intend pop out.
“I didn’t fall,” Bug said. “Something pulled me into the water.”
“OK,” said Georgie. “Whatever you say.”
Bug’s cheeks got noticeably redder. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Georgie said, backtracking. “I don’t know what happened. I heard about it on TV. I wasn’t there.”
“No, you weren’t there.” He muttered something under his breath, something that sounded like “You’re never there.”
“What?” Georgie said.
Bug shook his head, a lock of sandy-brown hair falling into his eyes. “Forget it.”
More silence. Pinkwater’s Momentary Lapse of Concentration seemed to feel the tension, seemed to want to fix it. He darted back and forth between Bug and Georgie, as if he were trying to stitch them together. “Hello!” he squeaked. “Hello, you person!” He alighted on Bug’s shoulder, and proceeded to bonk Bug in the cheek with the top of his little blue head. Bonk, bonk.
“I think he wants you to pet him,” said Georgie.
Bonk.
“Oh,” Bug said. He reached up and petted the bird.
“Purr,” the bird said.
“Once he stops dive-bombing, he’s OK,” Bug said.
“Purr,” said the bird.
Georgie watched Bug pet the bird. “I think he likes you.”
“I think he does too,” Bug said. “So where’s Noodle?”
“Home,” Georgie said. “Which is probably where I should be going.” She felt tired and she felt stupid and she missed Noodle and she missed Agnes and the edge of the tree stump was making her bum ache. Maybe, she thought, she was outgrowing more than clothes and shoes. Maybe she was outgrowing her friend, too. That thought made her achy right in the middle of her chest.
Bug looked down at the clothes spread across the floor like wads of seaweed left by a storm surge. “It’s OK. I’ve got lots to do anyway.”
He seemed so lonely that for a second Georgie almost changed her mind, almost said something crazy like “Hey, maybe we could go flying in the park. Maybe we could make ourselves invisible and sneak into the cinema.” But she didn’t say these things. What she said was: “I like your suit of armour.”
“Thanks,” Bug said. “I found it. Well, that’s not exactly true. There were these guys moving out a couple of floors down. I think they meant to take it with them, but they forgot it in the hallway.”
“So you stole it,” Georgie said.
“I didn’t steal it. They forgot it,” Bug said.
“You