“Oh. I don’t think that’s gonna help, then.”
“Just as well,” said J.Lo. “It makes my teeths hurt.”
He pulled the sheet back on. We’d made him some arms now as well, with white sleeves and mittens.
“Booo,” said J.Lo the ghost. “Boowoooooo!”
“Okay,” I replied, smiling. “Thank you.”
WELCOME
TO THE UNITED STATES
OF ARIZONA
said a big sign, and I let out a sigh. According to the sign, Arizona is known for cotton and copper. The state bird is the cactus wren, and the state canyon is the Grand Canyon. Way to go, Arizona.
A few minutes more and I could see tents and little houses dotting the land. And people—more humans than I’d seen in one place for three weeks. Hundreds of people, and they were all staring at us.
“Why is everyone staring?” I said. Then I answered myself in my head: Why wouldn’t they be staring?
I tried to look sixteen, which is really hard to do if you’re not concentrating, and lowered Slushious closer to the ground, the back tires just skimming over the asphalt. But there were still the extra fins and the hoses and BullShake can and the ghost in the passenger seat to contend with, so people stared. J.Lo stared right back.
“Ah! Looksee? The Boov are helping.”
It was obvious where he was pointing. There was something like a transparent soccer ball filled with shampoo near the main road. People with buckets and coolers crowded around it, but they’d stopped whatever they were doing to watch us pass.
“It is a telecloner,” said J.Lo. “The peoples can use it to make water, and to make food.”
“Food? I thought the telecloners couldn’t do that. The Boov ones, I mean.”
I wished I hadn’t added that bit about the Boov. I hadn’t meant anything by it, but I thought I heard an edge in J.Lo’s voice afterward.
“Is not complicated,” he said. “The telecloners can make a healthy milk shake. Has everything you need.”
“That’s nice of them,” I said. “Nice of the Boov.” And the crazy thing was, I really meant it. The Boov had invaded our planet, erased our monuments, taken our homes, and dumped us in a state they didn’t want, and I was already so used to the whole idea that it seemed like a sweet gesture that they hadn’t left us to starve in the dark.
I coasted Slushious down a hill past what used to be a Buy-Mor but now seemed to be home to a bunch of people. They gawked and pointed at our floating car, so I started shouting “Magic trick!” out the window as we passed. It didn’t mean anything, but it got about half of them to nod and go back to what they’d been doing.
It wasn’t ten minutes before we were stopped. I saw blue and red lights flashing behind me, and heard a siren, but you couldn’t imagine a sweeter sound. It was just a siren—nothing weird about it, nothing new. It was an ordinary cop car, carrying two ordinary probably-scared-half-out-of-their-minds cops.
I pulled over. The squad car slowed and parked some distance behind me. A man cop got out and crouched behind the open door, training his gun on Slushious. A woman cop got out the driver’s side and crept slowly up on us like she expected the car to change into a robot. After a minute of this she leaned over and looked in my window.
I thought the police officer was supposed to take the lead in these kinds of situations, but this woman just stared at us. I smiled back sweetly.
“Hi.”
The policewoman frowned at my “hi.” I think her instincts kicked in.
“Do you know why I stopped you today, ma’am?” she said.
“Because I’m only eleven and my car is floating?”
The officer stared for another moment, and coughed.
“Yes,” she said.
“Sounds like you’d better take me down to the station, then,” I replied.
I figured I wasn’t going to find Mom by driving all over Arizona shouting her name out the window, so I knew I’d end up going to the authorities anyway, if there were any. At the station I explained about my mom’s abduction, and the mysterious Boov who rebuilt our car, and how my brother JayJay would throw up for ten minutes if anyone tried to touch or talk to him. I got a lot of practice telling this story, as I had to repeat it to no less than fifty people over the next few days. Soon I had a police escort down to Flagstaff, where a lot of former government types were trying to collect information and help people reunite with friends and family. It was funny that there were so many people trying to find one another when we were all crowded into one state like this. But I guess unless you were all on the same rocketpod, you had no way of knowing if your loved ones were living in Mohawk or Happy Jack or Tuba City. I swear I’m not making these names up.
The Bureau of Missing Persons of the United State of America was in a university building. I was introduced to a thin man in a little suit named Mitch. Two more men in identical suits stood behind him with their hands behind their backs.
“Name,” said Mitch. I was staring at the pine trees and snow-speckled mountains through a window and wondering why I’d thought Arizona was all cactus and sand dunes. It took me a few seconds to recognize that he was asking me a question.
“Oh, um. Gratuity Tucci.”
He glared at me over his clipboard. “I don’t have time for jokes?” he said. “I have a lot of people to see? What is your name.”
“Gratuity. G-r-a—”
“That is not a name.”
I frowned. “Isn’t that sort of between me and my mom?”
“Uh-huh? And is this your mom?” he said, motioning at the policewoman who had pulled us over and was now in the corner trying to keep J.Lo entertained without speaking or making any sudden moves.
“Wow,” I said. “You are good. Here I am, looking for my mom, and you find her before I even leave the building.”
“I have a lot of people to see?” Mitch said again. “For the time being I am going to put you down as Gratuity.”
“It’ll have to do.”
“Last name.”
“Tucci.”
“Middle initial.”
“I don’t have one.”
Mitch looked at me like I didn’t have a middle name on purpose.
“What is the name of the person or persons you wish to find.”
“Lucy Tucci,” I said. “My mom.”
“How old is she.”
“Uh, thirty.”
“And what is the nature of your relationship with Lucy Tucci.”