The True Meaning of Smekday (8 page)

J.Lo bent over in front of the doorknob to room fourteen. I was expecting some really interesting tool that melted the lock or turned it into butterflies, so I was disappointed when he just picked it with a hairpin.

The showerhead sputtered out something like gravy for ten minutes before the water ran clear. As J.Lo showered, I sat staring at the bathroom door, thinking, I could leave right now, I could leave without you. A little while later he emerged, and I took my turn.

We left the motel with armfuls of towels and little soaps, as was the custom.

WELCOME TO FLORIDA

said the huge metal sign. It was shaped like the state itself, and dotted with pictures of attractions and exports and things. It was in this way that I learned the state motto is “In God We Trust,” which is just terribly original, and that the state beverage is orange juice, and that it’s filled with old people and swamps. Way to go, Florida.

“What did that to say?” asked J.Lo as we hovered by.

“What,” I said, “can’t you read?” It wasn’t the first time he’d asked this.

“It passed behind to us too fast.”

I sighed. “It said, ‘Welcome to Florida,’ and then it said a lot of other things about beaches and oranges.”

“Ah, yes. I am liking these oranges. Perhaps we could to be getting some—”

He was interrupted by a piercing wail behind us. I looked in the rearview mirror, which I dared not touch or the muffler would fall off, and saw a flashing light approaching.

“That’s strange,” I said. “That noise. It’s a siren. It’s like a strange siren.” It seemed we had a cop following us. But I hadn’t thought there
were
cops anymore.

“Why do you think—” I began to say, but J.Lo was scrambling into the backseat. He landed with a thump and pulled one of our blankets over his curled body. Pig followed him underneath.

“What’s with you?” I shouted, with one eye on the view behind us. It was night, and hard to see with that flashing light, but I could tell that there was no police cruiser or motorcycle cop approaching. It was one of those gliding antler-spool scooter things, like the one J.Lo had left behind.

“Boovcop,” I whispered. Then I grew angry. What if this Boov was a threat? Wasn’t this exactly the sort of thing J.Lo was meant to be protecting me from?

“Get back up here!” I yelled at him as I slowed Slushious and cut the gas. In the mirror I could see both the scooter Boov coming around our left side and the blanketed lump of J.Lo trembling in the backseat.

“Stupid Boov!” I shouted, and then the scooter cop was right there. Right beside my window, knocking his little frog hand against the glass. I rolled down the window.

“What did you to say?” asked the Boovcop in a low, wet voice. He was dressed in gray-green rubber and a helmet with the flashing siren thing mounted on top. It was still turning and flashing, purple green, purple green, and making its weird noise, but softer now. He had these frilly epaulets, like the leader of a marching band. It was way too much shoulder decoration for someone with no real shoulders.

“What did I
say
?” I asked. “When?”

“Just now, before I did to knock on your window.”

The Boov’s eyes narrowed. Seconds passed. The siren whispered
ploobaloo?
over and over.

“It was French,” I said.

“Say it again.”

I hesitated. Did the Boov know French?

“Ah…stoopeeeda
bouf
.”

“What does it to mean?”

“It was a compliment. I was admiring your scooter.”

I think I picked the right subject. I’d seen his scooter out of the corner of my eye, and it was a little fancier than J.Lo’s had been. There was a lot of chrome and an entire aquarium full of turtles in the back. The Boovcop grinned and puffed himself up. And I mean that literally—his head actually got a little bigger.

“Yes, yes,” he said, patting one of the antlers. “Thank you.”

“Le mor
on
,” I answered.

Soon the Boovcop’s smile faded and he was all business again. “Why have you to come here so late? Alls other humans did to come three days ago.”

“Yeah…I just thought, you know, that I could drive instead. Save you guys a seat on those rocketpods.”

At my mention of driving, the Boov took a good look at Slushious. His throat crackled and whined.

“Humanscar…humanscar do not float.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s not entirely—”

“Howfor does this float?” the Boov growled. His brow curled and pinched symmetrically, like an inkblot test that meant “angry.” His head grew a little bigger. “Did someone
do
this to for you?”

I swear he dropped one arm to his side, and I was reminded of those guns. I didn’t think before I answered.

“Yes.”

In the rearview mirror I could see the big lump of blanket behind me begin to shake again.

Okay, so I’m not stupid. I had some impression at this point that J.Lo had not been totally up front with me. Maybe he was in some kind of trouble. Maybe he was even some kind of Boov criminal. Perhaps that was why he wanted a ride to Florida, so he could hide among the humans. The problem was that I didn’t know, and I
couldn’t
know what I was supposed to do. Would turning him in just get
me
in trouble? Would it be worse if I didn’t?

“Who did do this forto you?” the Boov demanded. “Who did?”

“A Boov,” I said slowly. “Some maintenance officer.”

“Where?”

“Up north, in Pennsylvania. A couple days ago.”

The Boov’s face brightened. This seemed to interest him quite a bit.

“Was he working onto antennas? At an antenna farm?”

He
was
, of course, and now I really knew J.Lo was in some hot water. And it would have been the easiest thing in the world to jerk my thumb back at the jiggling woolly blob in the backseat and be done with it. But then I thought, looking squarely at the Boovcop’s slowly inflating head, You people took something of mine. Something I want. So now I have something you want. I played it cool.

“He didn’t say anything about a farm,” I said. “His English wasn’t so good. But he did say something about heading north. Into Canada.”

“Ha!” shouted the Boov, and his head deflated with a soft whistle. “He will not to get far.”

“Uh-huh. So…can I keep going? Into Florida?”

The Boov seemed more relaxed now, casually looking around the car.

“So you do not to know?” he said. “What has happened?”

“No,” I answered, not liking the sound of the question. “What’s happened?”

“You may to go,” he said. “You are not the only latecoming person. Drive ontoward Orlando. Report onto the first Boov you see.”

“Will they help me find my mom?”

“Mimom?”

“
My mom.
I need to—”

“Drive onto Orlando. Report onto first Boov,” he said again; then his gaze froze on the backseat. On the blanket.

“Whyfor is that—”

“It’s just my cat,” I said quickly. “Pig! Treat!”

Pig made a little sound and crawled out from under the blanket.

The Boov frowned. “Your cat’s name is ‘Pig Treat’?”

“Um…Sure.”

“You humans is so weird,” he said, and he glided away.

“All right,” I said, “start talking!” The Boovcop was safely behind us, and J.Lo was slowly crawling out from the blanket like a slug from a rock.

“Talking?” he said, wearing the blanket like a poncho. “Is there something for talking about?”

“The
whole point
of you coming along, the
only reason
I agreed to it, was because you were meant to play my escort if we met any other Boov. You were supposed to keep me safe! And now I find out you’re in more trouble than
I
am.”

J.Lo made a noise like
Maaa-aa-aa-aa-aa!
I figured this was him laughing.

“I is in no troubles!” he said as his eyes darted from window to window.

“So why’d you—”

“That Boov, it was…Carl. I just…was not wanting to see Carl just now. I owe Carl money.”

“I heard as well as you did what he said—”

“
She
said,” J.Lo corrected. “She.”

“She?”

“She.”

I shuddered. “
Fine.
I heard what
she
said about the antenna farm. They’re looking for you. You can tell me why or you can be a jerk, but I know they’re looking for you.”

My last words faded away, and there was nothing but the hum of the car and the flapping of hoses. And under that, the bubbling sound of J.Lo’s humid breath in the backseat. I looked out my window, but it was too dark to see anything. I would have liked to have seen the landscape, maybe to think about my visits here with Mom. Going to the beach, going to Happy Mouse Kingdom. I realized I might see Happy Mouse Kingdom again, if we made it to Orlando without being stopped. Without being stopped by any Boov, that is.

“Hey,” I said as it hit me, “where are all the people?”

“Hm?”

“There’s supposed to be, like, three hundred million people here. I thought there would be tents and shelters and people walking around everywhere.”

J.Lo pressed his face against the glass. “Yes. Many humans. No Boov. Humans everywhere.”

I had a terrible thought. I thought about the people in concentration camps in World War II, told by Nazi soldiers to take showers, and the showerheads that didn’t work, and the poison gas that tumbled slowly through vents until every last one was dead. And then I thought about everyone two days ago, rushing to line up for those rocketpods.

“What…what did you do with them?” I said. My voice fluttered. I was almost too afraid to speak. “What did you do with them really?”

J.Lo crawled out from under his blanket. “I? I did not do nothing with the people. I am Chief Maintenance Officer Boov, not Humans Transport—”

“J.LO!” I shouted, my voice louder but raw. The car slowed and drifted onto the shoulder. I wasn’t paying attention anymore. “Tell me the truth, J.Lo! Tell me the truth. Tell me.”

J.Lo looked down at his hands and nodded, biting his lip. My stomach fell and my face went hot, but I was
not
going to cry, no matter what.

“I…” said J.Lo. “I…am not really chief maintenance officer. I am—”

“No! Nono…” I said. “I don’t care about that now. What really happened to all the humans?”

J.Lo looked stunned. “Oh…
oh
. I do not know.”

I searched his face. He really didn’t know. He was a terrible liar.

“You thought they’d be here?” I asked.

“I thought this thing, yes.”

We sat for a while in the still car, wondering where everyone was. I thought about what the Boovcop had said:
So you do not to know? What has happened?

J.Lo edged up into the front seat again. Pig purred and actually curled up in
my
lap, if you can believe it.

“They are all right,” J.Lo said. “They were probably taken unto some other place instead. You should not to expect such bad things of the Boov.”

They’ve done such bad things already, I thought. But I didn’t say it, because he wouldn’t understand. History is written by the winners, so they say.

I noticed we were hovering in a ditch on the side of the highway. I gripped the wheel again.

“We’re staying off the main roads until I know what’s going on,” I said. “I could be walking into some kind of trap. And
you
don’t want to run into Carl again, I’m guessing.”

J.Lo winced. “Her name is not Carl. I did not to know her at all.”

I almost said
I know
, and then I almost nodded, but in the end I just sat there. I guided Slushious up an embankment, dropped her onto an access road, then began snaking my way through the city streets of what used to be Jacksonville.

Then I said, “So you’re not the chief maintenance officer, huh?”

J.Lo waggled his head. “No. I was more what you would to call…ah…fixing person….”

“Handyman?”

“A HandyBoov, yes,” he said sadly. “I was at to the antenna farm to change the antennas for using by the Boov.”

“You said that before,” I reminded him.

“Yes…but I was not telling then that I made very big mistake with the antennas. I did not to do my job correctly. Now I must stay away fromto the Boov. Hide with the humans.”

I might have told J.Lo that the humans probably wouldn’t be any happier to have him than the Boov were, what with him stealing their planet and all, but the subject was driven from my mind by a building ahead of us.

Had it been a moonless night, I might not have seen it at all. It lay just beyond the pool of my headlights. I swiveled the car clockwise and aimed for the blue scrawled letters on the side of a Potato Potentate restaurant:

UMANS-HAY—

O-GAY OO-TAY THE INGDOM-KAY—

EET-MAY UNDER-WAY THE ASTLE-CAY

—BOOB

Boob?

“What does that to say?” asked J.Lo, leaning against the dash.

I stared at him for a moment, frowning.

J.Lo glanced at me, then cast his head quickly back to the wall.

“Is it…is it the English? So many little lines.”

It was a secret message of some kind, of course, but from whom? It was hard to believe anyone would be so naive to think Pig Latin might fool a Boov. And it was even harder to believe that it did. Then I finally put it together.