People stare in shock; it’s like a ghost has gotten into the room.
Inkling is scared, I know he must be. Something terrified him and now he’s running, staying on the tables because he’s frightened of being crushed underfoot.
I make a quick calculation. Can I get across the room and save Nadia’s pumpkins before he ruins them?
I know her heart will break if her pumpkins are smashed before the judging.
Yes, I can make it.
Maybe.
I sprint through the crowd, banging into devils and angels, vampires and superheroes. I reach the right table just in time. The pumpkins on one end of it are crashing to the floor.
I throw myself on top of the table, protecting Nadia’s dragon with one arm and her witch with the other.
Oof! Inkling leaps onto my back, his front feet grabbing around my neck and his back claws digging into my waist.
“Wolowitz,” he begs, “you have to save me.”
They Have an Echolocation Device
“It’s a ghost,” I hear someone cry.
“Or a poltergeist.”
“A poltergeist is a ghost, dummy.”
“It was just a gust of wind.”
Someone flips on the overhead lights. I squint.
“Save me,” Inkling repeats. Urgent, in my ear.
“Get off my pumpkins, Hank!” Nadia grabs my arm and tries to yank me from the table.
“I’m rescuing them!”
“I don’t care what you’re doing. Stop touching them. Stop it!”
I think about trying to stay on the table, but then I realize: Inkling’s clinging to my back. All the pumpkins are perfectly safe now.
I let Nadia pull me down. I pat her dragon in a friendly way, so she’ll know I didn’t mean it any harm. “I didn’t want them to roll off the table like the others,” I say lamely.
“Just keep away from them,” Nadia grouses. “That’s all I want tonight.”
Nadia’s boyfriend, Max, puts his arm around her. “It’s okay. Hank didn’t hurt them. And look—so many have been ruined, you have a better chance of winning the contest now.”
“Wolowitz!” Inkling’s whisper is urgent. “How can you stand here like this? It’s life or death! Run!”
I don’t know what he’s talking about, but he’s very bossy. I run out of the gym and down the hall. Around a corner. We’re alone.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Keep going!”
“Where?”
“Anywhere he won’t think to look for me.”
There’s a classroom door. I try it, and it opens. I step inside and close it behind me.
“I’m not safe, even here,” says Inkling. “He knows I’m in the building. He might have special equipment.”
“What?”
“For sensing bandapats. That’s how they find us, you know.”
“Who?”
“The scientists! They have an echolocation device.” He leaps off my back onto the teacher’s desk in front of me. Papers skid and pencils rattle.
“Echolocation like bats?” I ask.
“Yeah. They find us with sound waves. Then they grab us and take us away from our loved ones and lock us up in labs ringed round with mirrors!” He’s getting frantic. He’s grabbed a pencil and is waving it around in the air to make his points. “They feed us rabbit food pellets and try to make us explain how we’re invisible! They shave our fur and put sensors on us! They put tubes up our noses like in the hospital! Once a bandapat goes to the science lab, he or she never comes back, Wolowitz. This is serious business.”
“Wait, wait,” I say. “Calm down.”
“This is life or death!” Inkling’s pencil breaks in half, and he throws the pieces across the floor.
“This is just high school.”
“They shave our fur, Wolowitz.”
I sigh. “Let’s talk rationally. I need to understand what’s going on, and I need to understand now, because my parents are going to be looking for me in a minute. How do you know all this about the scientists?”
“I just know, okay?”
“I mean, if no one ever comes back from the labs, how do you know what’s going on there? About the tubes and the sensors and stuff—how do you know?”
“People talk, that’s how!”
“People who’ve been there?”
He coughs. “No.”
“Okay. People who’ve talked to people who’ve been there?”
“Maybe not exactly. But Wolowitz, you gotta believe me. The scientists are bad. I can’t let them get me.”
“Can we talk about what’s actually true here? Because you knocked over like half the dangerous pumpkins.”
“You want to know what’s true? There’s a scientist right out there in that gymnasium, searching for bandapats.”
“What?”
“You saw him with your very own eyes. You did nothing to protect me!”
“Huh?”
“The scientist! With the white hair. He came right up to Nadia.”
“Inkling!”
“I’m going to have to leave you, Wolowitz. I hate to do it. You’re the best friend a bandapat could ever have, but I can’t stay here when he’s hot on my tail like this—”
“Inkling!” I shout. “That was Max!”
“What?”
“In costume.”
There is a long pause. “Nadia’s boyfriend Max?”
“Yes.”
“Dressed as a bandapat-hunting scientist?”
“No, a scientist from the movies. Doctor Frankenstein.”
“Oh.” Inkling shakes himself like a dog. I can hear it. “Nothing about bandapats?”
“No. Didn’t you see Gustav? Their costumes went together.”
“Oh.”
“Yes.”
“You mean, I’m safe?”
“Yes.”
“Max in a costume,” he mutters to himself. “Coulda fooled me. Wow.”
“I really think everything’s okay,” I say, petting him.
Inkling sits in silence for another minute. “Max’s hair looks amazing,” he finally says. “He got a really big fluff-up. Did you see?”
“It’s a wig.”
“Oh.” He climbs onto my back, ready to return to the gymnasium. “I knew that.”
By the time we get back inside, the adults have all decided that the pumpkins must have moved because of a gust of wind. They have gone around and closed all the windows and doors. They have straightened up the mess.
The judges announce the winner of the dangerous pumpkin contest: a pumpkin that looks like van Gogh’s Starry Night painting.
Not Nadia’s witch. Not Nadia’s dragon.
“I’m really sorry,” I say to her, though she won’t look at me. “Yours were the best.”
“What a teacher suck-up,” Nadia says to her friends. “Starry Night is so undangerous I could puke.”
“I know,” says Max. “That’s like an educational pumpkin.”
“Exactly.” Nadia hangs her head.
“We know you worked hard and tried your best,” says Mom. “That’s what’s most important.”
“We’ll put them on the stoop with pride,” Dad says. “Your snake pumpkin especially is a real work of art.”
“It’s a dragon, Dad!” I whisper.
He wrinkles his forehead at me. “I don’t think so. Did you ask Nadia?”
Nadia wipes her nose with a tissue. “It’s not like I think I deserved to win,” she says. “I just hate being beaten by a lame art history pumpkin. And not even scary art history.”
“I think you deserved to win,” I tell her.
But Nadia ignores me. She leans into Max, and he puts his arm around her.
I wish she’d just tell me thanks or something. She knows I’m trying to be nice.
We collect the pumpkins and ride the F train home in silence.
Scary Isn’t In This Year
The faint-banded sea snake has yellow and green bands. Lucky for me, I have a yellow-and-green striped shirt, a green superhero-type hood, and some green sweatpants.