Laura Ruby - The Boy Who Could Fly

Georgie looked down at the floor and resisted the urge to call them all a bunch of Dunkleosteuses . Of course, Roma and her friends had only wanted to grill her about Bug because Roma wanted a new boyfriend. Who knew that the Prince School would turn out to be so much like Hope House for the Homeless and Hopeless?

Georgie paused in front of the skeleton of a spiny anteater. Oh, get a grip, Gurl , she told herself. So the other girls at the Prince School didn’t like her. And so what that Bug was running around the city, starring in adverts for Foot Fetish foot powder and Cheeky Monkey shaving cream, even though he didn’t shave yet? So what that he hadn’t called her in weeks and that was only for five minutes to tell her about the film roles he’d been offered? So what that the only time she got to see him was in magazine pictures? He was busy, that’s all. That didn’t mean they weren’t friends any more.

Did it?

Georgie realised that she’d got pretty far behind the group and had to run quickly to catch up. And that, you see, was her biggest mistake. When one has experienced a serious and dramatic growth spurt that has caused one’s feet and limbs to lengthen far beyond one’s brain’s ability to compensate, doing anything quickly is unwise. Georgie tripped over someone’s outstretched leg and crashed into an unfinished exhibit entitled “Mega Marsupials”. Georgie’s own mega-sized limbs took out the partially-assembled bones of a giant wombat, which then landed in a painful, thunderous heap on top of her. Georgie was dazed, but not nearly dazed enough to block out the loud, mocking laughter of the Prince Girls, Roma Radisson’s loudest of all.

Yes, her name was Georgetta Rose Aster Bloomington, and she was, literally, The Richest Girl in the Universe.

But all she wanted to do was disappear.

Chapter 2

“Good, good,” said the photographer. “Now hold that pose. Hold it, hold it, hoooooold it, just another minute.” The camera whirred and clicked.

Bug had been holding his arms over his head in a V – for victory! – for what seemed like hours now. Every muscle in his body ached, the tip of his nose itched, his feet were killing him, and he had spots burned into his retinas from the camera flashes. He never knew standing still could be such hard work.

It was a gorgeous April day – the sky a rich, robin’s-egg blue, the sea beyond the docks sparkling as if the surface were sprinkled with gems. A day perfect for flying. Bug was sure that Central Park was packed with people doing just that. The thought made him so wistful that he forgot to stand still; he looked up at the sky and sighed. Not because he wanted to fly, but because he didn’t want to. He didn’t know people could be this tired and live .

“That’s gorgeous,” said the photographer. “I love it! Now look towards the water; I need a profile shot. Come on, I need you to think regal, OK, Bug? You’re a duke! No, you’re a king! You’re the king of flyers!”

Bug rolled his over-large, buglike eyes, wondering how he could look like the king of flyers with both feet flat on the ground, but he turned his face to the sea anyway. He was being paid a lot of money to do this ad for Skreechers trainers, money that his agent, Harvey “Juju” Fink, said Bug could use. “What about all the money from all those other ads and posters and everything else?” Bug had asked. “What about the Cheeky Monkey campaign?” For that one, Bug had spent hours stuck in a hot bathroom with bitter-tasting shaving cream melting into his mouth. Ugh.

“What other adverts? Those little things? Pennies! Nickels! Dimes!” said Juju, who got his nickname because of his magical ability to promote athletes, and because all of his hair – including lashes and brows – had fallen out all at once on his twenty-fifth birthday. (There are two kinds of juju, superstitious people say. Good and bad. Juju seemed to have a little of both.)

“Skreechers trainer company is offering you your biggest contract yet,” Juju informed his youngest and most valuable client. “The biggest you could ever get, if you never win the Flyfest again.”

“What are you talking about?” Bug told him. “I’ll win Flyfest again. Wait and see. I’m going to win a whole bunch of Flyfests.”

“Of course you will, of course you will,” Juju said, his bald wrinkly head and naked eyelids making Bug think of a turtle in a suit. “But don’t you want to have another ten million in the bank for a rainy day? Just in case?”

So Bug had signed the papers. Here he was, posing on a dock at South Street Seaport in a pair of gold trainers called “Buggy Gs”, trainers the Skreechers people expected to sell all over the world. About thirty metres away, executives from the company watched the photo shoot, relaxing over lobster rolls and late afternoon cocktails, while Bug stood as still as possible and tried to look regal. Juju gave Bug the thumbs-up as he paced back and forth, barking into his mobile phone, and the photographer snapped, snapped, snapped his pictures, darting around Bug like a dragonfly.

It was all deeply boring.

Bug wondered what Gurl was doing. Probably hanging out with her rich friends from the rich school she went to. What was it called? The Princess Academy? Everyone that went there was loaded. Technically, Bug was loaded too, but he didn’t enjoy it the way other people seemed to. The only reason he was doing this whole endorsement thing was so that he didn’t have to touch his father’s money. He didn’t want to use a cent of that money – gangster money, hate money, blood money. Bug was not like his father at all. And he was going to prove it to the whole world. He would even prove it to Gurl and her parents, if he ever got a chance to see them. But Gurl was probably having a ball with all the rich girls. She wasn’t even calling herself Gurl any more; she was calling herself Georgie, a name that Bug still hadn’t got used to. He hadn’t seen Gurl – um, Georgie – in months, which made him feel guilty, but not too guilty, because Georgie didn’t seem to be trying too hard to see Bug. At first, it was because she finally found out who her parents were and she wanted to take the time to get to know them. (Bug understood that . He wasn’t an insect .) But then weeks went by, and then a month, and then the whole winter was gone. What was up with that? What was a person supposed to think?

Exactly what I am thinking , Bug thought. That Georgie had better things to do than hang out with the son of Sweetcheeks Grabowski, no matter how many stupid adverts that son had been in.

Bug heaved another sigh, trying to ignore the bright blue sky stretched overhead, trying to ignore his aching arms, trying to pretend he was back home in his apartment (but then, he didn’t want to be there either, because no one was there, and who wants to hang out all by yourself with no one to talk to, even if you don’t really want to talk, you just want to sleep).

Oh great , thought Bug, now my ankle itches . But this itch wasn’t really an itch. It was more like a gentle pressure, like a finger poking him. Bug looked down. There was something grey and slimy lying limply across his foot.

“What the…” said Bug. Was it a rope? Where did the rope come from? He tried to shake it off.

“Bug! What are you doing!” shrieked the photographer. “Stand still!”

“There’s a rope—” Bug began.

“Who cares?” the photographer shrieked again. “I’m shooting your face now. So stop frowning!”

Bug frowned even more deeply when the grey, slimy rope began to writhe, began to pluck at his shoelaces. He shook his foot again, this time more frantically.