Suzy and the Star Bandits
They say it’s easy, what I do.
They say I’m just playing games.
People laugh at what they don’t understand. But you know what’s really funny?
I’ll bet none of them have ever hidden in the cafeteria freezer until the school was empty. Could they build an igloo out of wonderbreads? Could they huddle within their five parkas, listening for the receding steps of the final lunchperson, and emerge without a single frostbitten toe?
Guess we’ll never know. Hey – even for an intrepid girl reporter, some questions aren’t meant to be answered.
But you’re not here to get your questions not answered. You wanna know about the scoop. And boy, are you asking the right questions.
The school was dark, the doors were locked, and not a soul was left to tread on the weathered linoleum. Of course, that’s what we call a half-truth, given the presence of my loyal compatriot and I. And if our tip was on the money, it might soon turn out to be a third-truth. Maybe even a quarter.
Truth is a slippery thing in my business.
I could tell the chill had taken a toll on my assistant’s delicate constitution, so I provided a vigorous hair-ruffling to share static electricity. It took but a moment to renew his motivation.
We stashed our extra layers behind the milk machine and crept silently into the halls.
“Suzy,” my confused companion Collin whispered warily. “What happened to dressing for stealth?”
“What about it?”
He winced as my sonorous voice bounced down the halls like a poltergeist. I’ll admit it: I’ve never quite managed the knack of whispering. It’s my gift and my burden; I have a voice that must be shared.
“What I mean is, what in Saint Jesus’s name are you wearing?”
“That is a great question,” I grinned. “Ten reporter points to you. This is known as The Junior Super-Sleuth Pocket-Rich Tactical Leotard, for the Trendy Reporter on the Go. You have no idea how many box tops this cost. And as you can see, it keeps me kitted up for any occasion. This baby has a grappling hook, smoke bombs, groucho glasses, a little reed so you can hide underwater for extended periods…”
“Right. It’s actually the pink I’m worried about.”
I frowned. “I thought it was cute.”
“Also, even in this tiny bit of moonlight, the glitter is reflecting like a little sun. I can barely look at you.”
“Collin, you’re sweet, but I really don’t need you buttering me up all the time.”
I patted his head. The boy came dressed in a pitch-black hoodie and slacks, so it’s no wonder he was impressed.
As we tiptoed around the final corner, I put a finger to my lips for silence. Collin returned the mild glare that he so favors.
…Yes, you do. I’m serious. You do it all the time. I’m surprised your face isn’t stuck like that! Ahaha! Look, look in the mirror right now!
But seriously, stop distracting me.
We scuttled to the classroom door, and I had Collin hoist me to peer through its tiny column of glass. The only light within was a patiently-blinking smoke alarm LED. My eyes had little time to adjust to the gloom before my partner’s little arms began to give out.
What? It’s not an insult. It’s called truth in journalism, Collin. Heard of it?
I swear. The youth of today.
In an ideal world, I would have picked the lock. But bitter experience had shown me that bobby pins do not possess the powers I once hoped. Instead, I produced an ordinary key from my lower-left hip pocket. How I acquired it, I cannot divulge.
Trade secret.
The lock’s click was loud in the silent hallway. And the lock-tooth-thing going KATHUNK in that way that school doors do when you open them was even louder.
I knew, then, that if any lawscoffing heistigators skulked within, our presence was known. As we crept inside, I retrieved my loyal nunchaku from my upper-right shoulder pocket.
The eerie will-o-wisp of Collin’s phone light showed us a seemingly empty classroom. Nary a human face, other than the gruesome anatomical model found in any modern school. After Collin’s scream had died down –
Okay, fine, and my scream too! Jeepers Christ, sensitive!
– a strange prickle made its way down my spine. Now, I may be slightly scoliotic (in a cute way), but this was more than a twinge of misalignment. Somehow, I was almost certain:
Me, Collin, and the anatomical model were not alone.
I watched the sliding shadows warily as we moved toward Mr. Starchman’s desk.
If the Stars were still here, this was a stakeout. If not, an investigation.
But if the bandits were nearby even now?
Well, these perps were either criminally wicked or criminally desperate. And even a worm will bring out its claws when cornered.
“Hey, I just had a thought,” Collin whispered. “We should be literally anywhere other than here right now.”
“Sh!” I said darkly. “Wanton miscreants could be lurking anywhere.”
“That is literally what I mean and you are literally ten times louder than me –”
I made a ‘quiet coyote’ at him, which is kind of the ultimate authority to Collin’s Boy Scout nature.
Ignoring his glare, I knelt down behind the desk and set to work on the industrial-grade combination lock. There were only a few codes worth trying. I sighed when the drawer opened to the first one. “Again? Really?” I murmured.
I waved off Collin’s raised eyebrow.
Inside the drawer, beside Starchman’s laptop and a stack of tests, heaps of Stars shone like bullion, blinding us in the faint phone light.
“Okay!” I clapped my hands together happily. “Stakeout t–”
The alarm made me jump out of my skin.
It was a ghoulish sonic chimera – equal parts egg timer, car horn, and school bell. The room exploded with accusing red light. The sprinklers brought forth a miniature monsoon. I shrieked and stumbled back against the whiteboard. “The Tactical Leotard! It’s dry-clean only!”
Before my dinner-plate eyes, a huge, round shape swung down from the ceiling, hung for an upside-down instant like a vampire, then launched itself in an Olympian front-flip, captured midair in majestic freeze-frame by the strobing red lights.
In my shock, I uttered a word I will not repeat.
Me and Collin dove under the desk. It barely shook as Starchman landed on top of it with surreal grace.
“Who’s there?” Starchman asked, his mild voice cutting through the din like a polished katana. “I’m not mad, dear student. Just a bit disappointed.”
I slapped my palms to my face. Of all the teachers, of all the adults in the world one could possibly hide from, why did it have to be this off-brand clown-show? At least threaten us properly!
“How about a shiny Starchman Star if you show yourself? I know you were trying to steal them, which is not at all dope or krunk… but that’s no cause for me to be stingy.”
What do we do!? Collin mouthed, eyes wide as flying saucers.
But what did I tell you, reader? I came prepared.
I winked, then patted my Tactical Leotard until I found what I needed. I aimed the Miniature Welt-O-Matic BB Gun (with Revolving Barrel) up high – at the tiny shutoff button next to the viciously flashing red lightbulb. I fired.
All light vanished with a gentle spray of broken glass. I hoisted my assistant like a rolled-up sleeping bag and hurtled out from the desk and out the door.
A moment later, we were a couple hallways away and huddled in a dark cave of mops and squeegees.
I wheezed adorably as I wrestled my breath back into my body. “Hey – hh – listen,” I said, “you didn’t hear what I… hhhhh… said back there, right? ‘Cause. It was. A bad swear, okay? So you just – hhhhhhh – shouldn’t know it.”
Collin, red in the cheeks and stuffed into the corner with one leg in a bucket, was frantically miming something elaborate and possibly unkind.
“What? What is it, boy? Speak!”
He pointed angrily at his mouth.
“Oh.” I released the quiet coyote.
Collin groaned, stretching his jaw and exercising his liberated larynx.
“I can’t believe this!” he hissed at me, red in the temple. “Again! Every time you have an idea, I end up in some kind of nightmare!”
“Oh yeah? Well then why are you even friends with me?” I huffed.
“Well, let’s see,” Collin said sardonically. “I mean, you never shut up. You always need to be in control. You have no moral boundaries whatsoever. You’re somehow convinced that you’re insanely charming –”
“Yoohoo, students!” came a bone-chilling voice down the corridor. “You know hiding only ends in sadness! Let’s work this out, alright, friends?”
I swallowed a long, exasperated groan. ‘Yoohoo’? Couldn’t he at least leave us our dignity?
I could barely detect Mr. Starchman’s light step drifting down the hallway.
But then he stopped. And his voice dropped a somber octave.
“It is you, isn’t it… Suzy?”
I swallowed my teeth.
“It’s over! It’s over! We’re dead!” Collin whispered, staring upward as if reconsidering Pascal’s wager.
I grabbed him by the shoulder to get his attention. Using all my willpower not to make sounds with my voice, I mouthed, It’s not over for you!
Collin’s eyes widened. “S…Suzy…” he whispered anime-ish-ly.
“So, then… I was naive,” Starchman rumbled to the empty hall, “to believe your unique status a panacea for temptation.”
I froze. Surely he wasn’t going to say it out loud.
“I… I have failed on two counts. As your teacher, and as –”
Dearest reader, here’s something you should understand about my job. Even a muckraker has secrets she must keep – never mind whose, or what kind. Some questions aren’t meant to be answered. Some things are just too heinously mortifying to be known. And when one of those secrets tries to slip out, a girl must do things she’d rather not do.
I kicked the door open. “OKAY YOU GOT US”
~ ★ ~
I like to say that the news gets made in funny ways.
Usually that means funny ha-ha. But once in a while, it can mean funny strange. And when things get a little too twisted for the average mind? Sometimes funny isn’t very fun-y at all.
That quote is a Suzy special, and it is trademarked.
That means you write the little ‘TM' next to it, okay, Collin? Are you still getting all this?
But you aren’t writing this, right, like this right now? You understand that when I speak directly to you, that, in itself, is not meant to go in the article? If you need help telling the difference, notice that I’m also not doing the voice right now. Okay. I’ll do the voice again when I continue the story. You got that? Okay, good job.
I think we’d better skip back a little bit.
Reader, I warned you that things would get twisted. And sometimes the first thing to twist is on top of our very heads. When you’ve been on the beat as long as I have, you know that wearing one’s shiny black hair in an off-center ziggurat of little donuts is a sure sign of a mind straying off-tempo. Of a person as off-kilter on the inside as they seem on the out.
If you’ve never had cause to venture down the slimy, lightless back-hallways of our fair school… and I guess, like, never been to class either… then you might have the privilege of never having had the misfortune of ever having had to meet her. The queenpin of our little underworld. But that privilege, like so many reasonable things, is denied me, reader. Doubly so on the morning in question.
I’d like to tell you she rudely invited herself in, but it was worse than that. The fact is, she politely invited me in. After getting to my clubroom FIRST.
There she was – sitting behind my desk, with her prim little hands clasped, as still as a wax statue.
Lisa.
Lisa [INSERT LAST NAME BEFORE THIS GOES TO PRINT].
It was a sight that – trust me – would elicit a batlike shriek from absolutely anyone.
“Suzy,” she said in a gentle, velvetesque voice. “Please, come in. I’ve been expecting you.”
I maintained my battle-ready stance. “What are you doing here! That’s my seat! That’s where I sit!!” I kindly reminded her.
“I’m aware,” Lisa replied. “Sharesies?” She scooted sideways and patted the edge of my beloved spinny chair.
I deflected this psychological attack and turned instead to the interloper’s accomplice-by-inaction.
“Dee! What the Moby Dickens is she doing here!?”
Dimitri, alounge upon his own roller chair and drifting idly along the floor, pulled down his headphones and shrugged. “Ask her,” he said.
“I’m saying why did you allow her to take the seat of power? To symbolically usurp your beloved president!?”
He shrugged, this time with a tiny smile. “Not a lot of chairs in here.”
“Dimitri!”
I really only had one recourse.
After clambering onto my desk and sitting down criss-cross applesauce, I was able to address the vixen in our midst with renewed dignity.
“Fine, then, Lisa,” I said, eyebrow arched. “As long as you’re getting all up in my business, it’s time you stated yours.”
It is difficult to convey the subtle tactical gymnastics that occur in the briefest instant between she and I. In seconds of eye contact, volumes are spoken.
I watched her shrewdly as she took out a juice box, peeled the top flaps open, and swirled it slowly in her palm. She took a long, savoring sip.
“The fact is, Suzy, I was thinking I could do you a favor.”
I scoffed. “I’ve got a nose for stink, wise guy,” I reminded her.
She chuckled. “Fine. If we’re through playing games with each other: I was thinking you could do me a favor.”
“That smells more like it.”
“Think of this as an insider tip. A nice, big scoop for your empty waffle cone. I happen to be aware of a job taking place tonight. A job I’d rather not see successful.”
“A job?” I leaned toward her and lowered my voice. “For what booty?”
“The only kind that matters around here.”
Lisa raised a hand and rubbed a thin item between her fingers. Its gold plastic glimmered in the rising sun.
~ ★ ~
A mummy is not a corpse, eternally limp within the Earth. And a mummy is not a zombie, in constant inexorable motion. A mummy lies still while blythe colonizers plunder its tomb… A mummy lies still, until it doesn’t.
It was the sunny start of a new school week, and Devilora Demonelle DuNacht, Vice Principal of Mayview Middle School, sat behind her desk, ashen and still as a mummy.
I sat before her in a demeaningly small chair, my arms crossed in patient protest. Collin sat beside me in a somehow smaller chair, having some sort of episode.
What? What do you want me to call it? That’s what you were having! You had your head in your hands and you were muttering things like ‘what’s the statute of limitations for juvenile crimes’ and ‘why do I listen to that absolute frothing freakout weasel’ – fantastic moniker for Lisa, by the way.
Finally, with an audible and concerning series of snaps and cracks, a very wide smile broke across the grey face of the Vice Principal. “I see –”
“Is this going on my record!?” Collin screeched.
“Seal your heinous trap, swamp-goon!” Ms. DuNacht barked, lurching to her feet and leaning across the desk like a collapsing skyscraper. Her chair made a dent in the wall five feet behind her.
Collin slapped his hands over his mouth. I leaned away from Ms. DuNacht’s weird long nose.
“I fear you don’t understand,” she said in tones of melting slag, “the nature of our relationship. Your peaceful tenure in my schoolhouse is that of flitting insects unworthy of notice. Only when you get involved in something sticky and cause an unharmonious vibration am I obliged to take an interest.”
Her boiling grimace stretched itself into a lopsided sneer as her head swayed between the two of us.
“I want you to know I advocated for your suspension –”
Collin gasped behind his hands.
“– but your lovely Principal reminded me that the school board took away the hooks. Instead, you’ve been assigned two weeks’ detention. Penance for the attempted theft of Mr. Starchman’s –” Her lip quirked in derision, adding to the uncanny web of unpleasant attitudes already crammed into one face. “– precious classroom materials.”
This was my cue, and I leapt to my feet, coming level with Ms. DuNacht’s glaring nostrils. “I’m innocent!” I declared.
“‘We’!” hissed Collin angrily.
“Not the time for grammar!” I hissed back. “Vice Principal, I was –”
“Blonde vermin, every word from your oily lips shall be an additional week spent in purgatory.”
“But I – That’s – No –” I sputtered to a red-faced halt as she began counting upwards on her spindly fingers.
Collin kicked me in the shin.
“I get it!” I hissed at him.
He slapped his face into his palms as the Vice Principal happily raised three more digits.
~ ★ ~
I don’t think we need to belabor the rest of that interaction. Suffice to say that when I was finally able to kick the door open and stomp out, my ponytail was almost done coming apart from sheer rage.
Dimitri was just skidding to a stop outside the office, for once slightly out of breath. Honestly, I didn’t realize someone so chill had to breathe.
“What’s the damage?” he asked.
I kept my jaw clamped indignantly shut and rushed both my subordinates back to our clubroom, where I finally took a grateful gasp of air before I could pass out.
“Detention!” Collin burst out before I could. “So! Much! Detention!”
“Oh. Is that all?” Dimitri said.
We treated him to matching scowls.
“Sorry,” he said, a little sheepish. “I was just worried she’d use the hooks.”
Dimitri had taken up a cool-guy lean on the wall, while Collin hopped on the spare chair for a moody spin. But I? I was not ready to retake my desk. Just call me a dog getting ready for bed, because I badly needed to pace in circles.
“Guys!” I said. “Who cares about detention! None of that is literally even the point right now!”
“Oh?” said Dee.
“The point is, who was really trying to heist the Stars!?”
“Lisa,” said the two boys in harmony.
My jaw dropped as an asteroid landed inside my mind.
My voice pitched up with fury. “That… That…” I tugged furiously at my frazzled-up but still lovely hair. “Wicked… haggish… enchantress!!”
I could see it all. Lisa – or rather, one of her multifarious masked agents – would have snuck in after Starchman took us away. She just needed me to get through the locks, because…
Well, because I am fantastic at locks.
“Well, that does it! We’ve got her!” I said with a charming and maniacal grin. “That daringly rotten minx! Her whole operation’s going down! Straight downtown!”
I quit pacing before I could burn all the rubber off my skechers. Instead I pounced to my desk, leaning over it from the front. I lunged to access the drawer on the other side and procured my finest Scooby-Doo stationary, where there’s a paw shape around the spot for your name and date. I brandished my pen that has a quill taped to it and dipped it in the glitter jar. I licked my lips, relishing the oncoming scandal. This is what makes it all worth it, my friend!
“ ‘s weird,” said Dimitri idly.
My head snapped around, owlesque, to fix him with a gaze of controlled magma. Collin, on his chair, reflexively rolled away from me.
“What do I pray tell might so be ‘sweird’ on this day, my beloved chum??” I queried tensely.
There was a pregnant pause. One that craved elaboration with pickles.
“Oh – Just, like, you can’t really steal Stars.” He shrugged, amused. “Like – Starchman can remember who he gives them to, more or less. You’re not gonna swan up to him the day after the heist and turn in fifty hundo for the Aquazooka 90k, or, like, the ancient Sumerian OOP-Art.”
“Hey, you’re right,” said Collin. His spin slowed to a thoughtful drift. He folded his arms on the back of the chair in consternation. “If any Stars got stolen at all, he’d probably shut the whole thing down until the villain was caught. So what’s this all about?”
“What’s this all about? What’s this about? Excuse me very much, but it’s about me and how she’s out to ruin my life!!” I calmly reminded him.
“Right, I know everything’s about you,” Collin said with commendable sincerity. “I mean – and I can’t believe I’m encouraging one of your hit jobs, but – if we want to make this stick, we need to know what kind of scam –”
“Need to know?” I protested. “Journalism is not done on a need to know basis! This is very simple! There are two steps! You have the facts up here,” I drew a glittering X on my forehead, “and you write them down here!” I drew a triumphant elephant on my paper. “And then you give them to everybody!”
“Then what are you going to write!?” Collin barked.
I stared at him. A hair had actually come astray from his lawyerly coif. He held my gaze, eyes wide and slightly feral.
I was going to give him a really good answer, but then I accidentally didn’t.
“Ghuuuuuh! H-E-triple-hockey-sticks! Fine!” I swiveled on my still-smoking heels, ground my lovely teeth, and marched back out the door. “Let’s move, boys, and you better bring your shovels. We’ve got muck to rake and dirt to dig!”
~ ★ ~
On the way to Lisa’s den, the boys and I had time to temper and conceal the embers of our rage.
I struck a sassy and powerful pose before the bouncer, as I’m sure my assistants were doing behind me. “Listen here and listen well, Ollie Oop. You are going to let me pass right here and now, or –”
“Yeah, no prob.” The big guy shrugged and lifted the velvet rope away by its legs. “Boss said you’re welcome anytime.”
My face squinted into suspicion.
“Well… good,” I said, pointing a menacing finger at his face, 45 degrees up.
After getting cursorily swatted in the face by a female bully, I filed on past, with my assistants in tow –
“Just her,” Ollie said to the boys, barricading the hall with one hand.
I looked back, hesitant.
“You got this!” Dimitri called across the divide. “Keep the pressure on! Make her sweat!”
“Don’t do anything dumb!” Collin added.
Dimitri punched his palm. “Hit the facts hard! Get the bite, get the scoop!”
“Please try to make good decisions. Like, a little,” Collin said queasily.
I gave them each a thumbs-up. “See you on the other side,” I grinned.
I went in.
I felt a familiar unease wading between the tables of that huge room… though if anyone hid here, it was in the anonymity of the crowd. It was pre-school-day rush hour. Kids hurriedly forked over gold Stars, lunchbox fruit roll-ups, cartoon monkey erasers, and other valuables to Lisa’s sharply-dressed lieutenants, in exchange for last-minute cheat sheets and performance-enhancing beverages. A dizzying quantity of Starchman currency changed hands over games of rummy and B.S., of Sorry and Yu-Gi-Oh.
Behind the counter, Lisa serenely whipped together sugary mocktails for an eager throng. I’ll give her this: The girl has the kind of speed that makes it look like she has three pairs of arms. But I knew better. She only has one pair, and they were about to get cuffed behind her back.
As I approached, she slid her patrons’ drinks to either side, Moses-ically parting the group for my convenience. I refrained from taking a seat – I wasn’t going to increase her height advantage.
“Suzy,” Lisa said serenely. A nasty touch of pity lurked in the corner of her mouth. “I’m really glad you decided to stop by. I heard how things worked out with the… you-know-what.”
Her hushed tone invited every kid within earshot to crane their attention toward us, which I could only take as an insult.
“Sure,” I said airily. “It’s just a shame I couldn’t put your bandits in hot water. Maybe if you leak a little more info, we can burst that dam wide open.”
“Hmm. I wish I could do that for you, Suzy. But I have a feeling those crass freebooters have already set sail for distant shores. What are you drinking today, if I might change the subject? I see you as a pink lemonade kind of girl.”
“Ooh, really!?” I asked, momentarily blinded by my love of identity-defining magazine quizzes. Then I came back to myself. “Wait, I mean – No, thanks.” I glowered. “I’m not buying anything from you, Lisa. Not today.” I leaned forward, propping my elbows on the counter. “And I mean that in more ways than one.”
“Intriguing.” Her smile widened slowly. “You know I love reading your little zine, Suzy. And I’ll be thrilled to see if you manage to dig up anything at all on those condemnable crooks. Anything that holds water, I mean.”
I clamped my mouth into a line as anger poured down to my antsily-tapping fingertips. The villain stood before me, so close I could slug her; if this was ancient Rome, we’d be settling this in the Coliseum. But this was modern Earth – and our battlefield, the public forum.
Then, as the chatter of the student body flowed around me, a jolt of hot lightning linked up my neurons in a perfect constellation.
I snapped upright so fast my spine was normal for a second.
“I get it,” I said, eyes wide.
“Yes, I was doing a kind of ‘water’ motif, playing off of what you –”
My grin was just about wider than my face.
“No, Lisa. I get it.”
Lisa’s face did not move, and yet suddenly, her sleepy smile was that of a launched missile pausing an inch from its target. I felt a jolt in my lungs. Sweat broke out on my arms.
“Suzy,” she said sweetly, “Before you say anything more, I would like you to think carefully about where you are and to whom you are speaking.”
My triumphant cackle pierced through the cacophony of voices, and even surpassed the nightcore vocaloid mix playing on hidden speakers. “I’ll bet you would!” I crowed. “Too bad that’s the one thing I would never do!”
“Suzy,” Lisa repeated.
“Uh-uh! Nuh-nuh! Hahaha!” I climbed up on a barstool and put one foot on the counter, becoming one of the tallest people in the room. “Extra! Extra! Listen up, boys and girls!” I yelled. “Lisa is –”
But that’s as far as I got before the backpack came down around my head and the scents of a hundred fruit-adjacent markers blasted me out of the waking world.
~ ★ ~
I woke to a rhythmic industrial whine and a clean, chilly floor.
I saw Lisa sideways, facing away from me within a forest of metal shelving. I dizzily, silently got to my feet. I picked up the closest thing to hand – a neon fidget spinner – and clamped it between my fingers like a set of keys. I snuck closer.
“Mad Muckraker Spinning Wallop!” I yelled, and lunged. But Lisa was not there anymore. I stumbled into the shelves, which rattled with the impact of my forehead. “Gah! Jiminy Crockett!”
I spun around. Lisa was calmly looking over the wares against another wall.
I was in a storeroom. Lisa’s storeroom. The sheer concentration of wealth gave me vertigo.
I spied drums of tang powder and elephantine bags of cheese-crackers. Lacrosse rackets stood beside prop swords beside thousand-marker art sets and tinker-toy robotics kits. There were bulging files catalogued by teacher and year, and intricate dossiers with chunks of text redacted in black sharpie. There were snack packets with German labels and video games with Japanese titles. I caught sight of the unreleased Pokemon Grey.
And just beside me, some kind of printer was steadily secreting sheets of gold foil, each full of stars, embossed with Starchman’s face and ready to be punched out. A nearby monitor displayed the pattern… stolen straight from Starchman’s laptop.
“You don’t need to scam Starchman,” I blurted. “You’re just gonna scam your customers!”
Lisa laughed softly, straightening a stack of dehydrated astronaut ice cream. “Well done! Ten reporter points to you. And here I thought it was just kinda… empty!” She looked back at me with a smile and bonked her temple with her knuckles. “Your head.”
I’ll tell you, reader, my heart grew three sizes that day, in order to hold all my extra self-esteem.
I was still trying to find my words when Lisa continued. She was now at the opposite wall, looking over a shipping manifest for illegal Cuban squishmallows.
“Suzy, do you know what’s the one big problem with my little empire?”
“Uhh, the emperor being a big dork?” I offered. “Bazinga!”
“Starchman Stars. They’re a beautifully useful exchange medium, except for one thing. For all the influence I wield, it’s ultimately a meritocracy. There’s no route for outside capital to enter the system. And that’s true… as long as he controls the means of production.”
“He’ll know. As soon as kids start spending more stars than he ever gave.” My skin prickled with tension. I paced around the room, keeping her in my sights.
“He most certainly will. Do you know why they call it a bubble, Suzy? Because it eventually must burst. But that’s long after the original supplier finished chewing her gum… so to speak.”
“This is the exit speech of a beaten villain,” I retorted. “Your story’s out, Lisa. Kill me here, and my compatriots will still print the scandal.”
“The truth has a way of getting out, doesn’t it?” Lisa said, toying ominously with a Shrek-themed yo-yo. “As long as we’re sharing theories, I’d like to hear your thoughts on one of mine. Won’t you indulge me?”
I frowned.
Lisa looked at me over her shoulder, gently arranging a rack of plush snakes. “I get the impression that you know Mr. Starchman outside of school.”
Goosebumps rippled up my entire body.
“Nuh-uh,” I said quickly.
“Nuh-uh?” Lisa repeated.
“I d-d-don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The ‘d-d-don’t’ was intentional. It’s short for ‘diggedy-diggedy-don’t.’
“How long ago did you meet?” Lisa asked. Her head tilted charmingly, and then kept tilting a little too far. “Would twelve years be a decent guess?”
“Not even a little bit,” I said hoarsely.
And then Lisa, without any hurry, was right in front of me. I reflexively leaned back against the shelving. She leaned in, squeezed my shoulder, and smiled warmly.
“Well, Suzy S, it sounds like we’ve swapped secrets. That makes us close friends, don’t you think?”
~ ★ ~
