Kingdom Keepers V(15)

Maybeck came around the side of the building at that exact moment. He spotted her falling and sprinted to catch her, but wasn’t going to make it. He arrived a step short, his outstretched arms missing her.

Charlene stuck the landing, automatically lifting her hands overhead as she did in competitions.

A stunned Maybeck lay there, his eyes brimming with tears.

“You’re crying!” she said. “I’m touched.”

“Am not,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I ran so hard my eyes blurred, is all. I…was almost…how in the world did you do that?”

“Practice, practice, practice,” she said.

Maybeck looked up. “When I saw you headed for the asphalt, I thought…”

“I’m touched. Seriously. I really am.”

“I…ah…” Maybeck knew there was no use trying to deny it. “Whatever,” he said. Looking down at the buckets, he added, “Nice move.”

“Thank you.” She moved closer to the nearest bucket. “We need a glass jar to collect some of this stuff. The Imagineers should analyze it. It’s like liquid fire or something. It eats through wood. Maybe flesh, for all I know.”

“Sweet!” Maybeck said, always excited to see the next great horror in person.

“I think it uses itself up as it does whatever it does,” she said. “There was definitely less of it after it chewed up each of the brooms.”

Maybeck produced an empty soda can from a trash bin.

“No,” she said. “There can’t be any chance of spilling it.”

“What if we just gave them the buckets?” he asked.

“Duh! Of course!”

On inspection, the buckets proved to be plastic looking like wood, possibly explaining why the goo hadn’t destroyed them as well.

Maybeck carefully picked up two; Charlene, the two others. They carried them around to the front door of the Base, and Maybeck rang the exterior intercom. He explained to the person who answered what they were leaving on the doorstep and advised an extra dose of caution in handling it.

The intercom’s welcome screen displayed the time as 3:13.

“There won’t be any more action tonight,” he said. Historically, very little happened after 3:00 a.m.

“Agreed,” she said.

“What do you suppose they were trying to do?” he asked.

“Get inside,” she said.

“Like the Rangers,” Maybeck said.

“Excuse me?”

“The Rangers are an elite team of commandos that leads the way into battle. Black Ops. You know.”

“They were supposed to burn a hole in the wall for others to follow through.”

“Maybe you prevented that.”

“We,” she said.

“You,” he said.

That was the thing about Maybeck: just when she thought he was the biggest egomaniac of all time he’d come out with something caring and thoughtful. Completely unpredictable. Somewhere behind all his bold and brash statements was someone with a real heart, and it endeared him to her. Maybe it was the artist in him. Maybe all the blowhard stuff was just a shell he hid behind.

“We’ll stay until four,” she said.

“Of course!”

Philby would manually return them at the appointed time. To leave any earlier would require a phone call, as the Return device wasn’t currently in Hollywood Studios.

“Let’s patrol,” she said, “in case you’re right and there’s some kind of backup team in place.”

“Together,” he said. “We’ll patrol together.”

She thought her near-suicidal fall had affected him. In any case, he was that different Maybeck she liked better. They roamed the area, alert for anything out of place, the slightest movement of a shadow, the tiniest of sounds. Somewhere near the art shop Maybeck took her hand and Charlene let him. It wasn’t possessive or romantic. It was brotherly.

But it felt good.

To both of them.





Second period, Willa and Philby found themselves together in History. Both wanted to discuss Finn’s bedroom attack, having been texted about it, but Mr. E. didn’t appreciate “background noise.”

Mr. Eisenower consistently won Edgewater High’s annual “Best Teacher Award,” which at least made the class tolerable. Today’s class had been on the origins of mythological creatures, inspired in part by Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, which had swept through middle school like wildfire a few years before.

Mr. E. narrated a Keynote slide show of all sorts of weird and twisted creatures created in mythologies ranging from Indonesia to the Greeks and Africans. It was one of those blocks where no one fell asleep. Nearing the end of the period he showed a picture of Camazotz, the Mayan bat god. Both Willa and Philby gasped from opposite sides of the room.