Location Services

Location Services

Fiona Goodman.

To my father, Gregory Goodman, for letting me use his name backwards for the villain’s name

Copyright 2015

Maple Leaf Writing Project

Brattleboro, Vermont

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1

It was well past midnight, but Anna Dunst had only just fallen asleep. Her laptop was still open on her pillow, her head slumped on the keyboard, typing a stream of meaningless letters into the search box of the Cosmology Society's official website. A mug of water had been tipped over on the bedstand. Anna was not yet allowed to drink coffee, and water was the only beverage she could quietly get ahold of in the middle of the night. She'd assumed something cold would keep her awake, but had been wrong.

It kept her awake just long enough: she'd finished the forty-seventh draft (or the forty-eighth; there were many) of her entry speech to the Cosmology Society. It would be twelve years before Anna would even be eligible to enter, as she had barely begun middle school, but she liked to be ready.

On the paper her left hand rested on, the word treble? was scrawled, then crossed out, and beneath that was cubix, underlined and written in the font one often sees in advertisements. The paper underneath her laptop was printed. Life on other planets? Specialist presents on the subject! Anna had attacked the article with a highlighter.

Knocking a sheaf of papers off the bed, she rolled over and went fully to sleep.

***

Anna woke to someone pounding on the door to her bedroom. “Yes?” she tried to be polite and gather up the loose papers all at once.

“Are you still asleep?” her father asked from the other side of the door.

“I was up late.” Anna closed her laptop.

“Frankie’s mother called. I assumed you'd be okay with her and Jade coming over before the dance to hang out, so I invited them over.” Anna yawned tremendously. “But if you’re too tired—”

“No,” she said. “When’re they coming?”

“Noon.”

They would be late if they came together; Frankie's mom excelled at getting lost. “Do we have any breakfast?” Anna asked, plodding past her father.

“You're up,” said her mother as Anna entered the kitchen. “Studying again?”

“Yeah.” Anna pulled the cereal box out of the cabinet and rummaged around in the refrigerator for milk.

Someone began to hammer on the screen door, then Frankie marched in uninvited. “Hi!”

“We’re early,” said Jade from behind Frankie. “Were you up late writing your speech?”

“Yes.” Anna poured milk over her cereal. “Frankie’s dad drove you?”

“No.” Frankie grinned. “We biked and started too early.”

“Why?”

“Well, my clothing design’s meant for biking. It looks dumb unless you’re on a bike. So,” she grinned wickedly, “we’ll bike all day.”

Anna dropped her spoon. “But I wanted to show you guys my newest speech draft. And I’ve named the planet! We can’t bike!”

“Kidding!” Jade said. “What’s the name?”

“Cubix.”

“Why?”

“It was midnight and I couldn’t get the number three out of my head.”

“In the mood for threes. That could be a song.” Jade threw back her head. “In the moooood...for THREEEES!”

Anna groaned. “Never try to write a song. Keep singing other peoples’.”

“Will do,” Jade said. “Is your room presentable?”

“Somewhat.” Anna led her friends up the staircase and sat down on her bed.

“You should redecorate.” Frankie looked around. “I mean, a cosmologist should look like one! You could totally have little planet night-lights up there …”

“Where am I s’posed to find planet night lights for the ceiling?”

“I’m fantasizing.” Frankie pulled out her phone.

“Text-free zone,” Jade said.

“I just want to write some ideas for Anna’s room.”

Jade focused on Anna. “Let’s hear the speech.”

“Lemme record,” said Frankie. “It would be awesome if I could watch your speech. Ready...glitching...go!”

Anna closed her eyes. “Ladies, gentleman, I thank you for accepting me into your Society. Down to business. I began my study of cosmology at age seven simply to enter your society, but now I have also made a reality-shattering discovery. The fact that Earth is the only planet that is inhabited is a widely accepted one, but I have studied, looked at the night sky, found articles, jumped to premature conclusions...and discovered...that one planet far from here can, and does, sustain life!”

“Cut!” Frankie tapped the screen of her phone.

“You sound stuck-up,” said Jade. “Give it to me and I’ll sing it. It can hardly sound any worse.”

“It’s a speech,” Anna said. “And it’s hard to sound smart without sounding stuck-up.”

Frankie put her phone down on the bed, and somebody noticed. It wasn’t Anna, Jade, or Frankie herself. It was someone directly involved with Anna’s discovery, someone who hated it.

He’d known of Anna for months. He knew she’d discovered the planet Cubix.

Now, he had the two things he needed to keep her discovery private.

Anna’s face, and, thanks to Frankie’s Location Services, exactly where he might find her.

2

Anna hated middle school dances. An auditorium of raucous, dirty teenagers with damaged eardrums and more damaged taste in music? Horrific.

But this one was the worst. Whatever shallow-minded fool arranged it had brought in disco lights.

Frankie was in heaven. “I’m dancing with Roger!” she said. “See ya!”— and ran off. In the swirling, hypnotic disco lights she was nothing but a blue-and-white blur.

“I love this song!” Jade twirled away, grabbed a boy by the elbow, and vanished into the crowd. The song in question, Anna thought, was blatantly tuneless.

They should play Bach, she decided, slumping into a chair. Or Beethoven. Or Mozart. Classical would be nice.

Something blue-and-white crashed into the chair beside Anna, sobbing hysterically. It took a moment for Anna to realize that it was Frankie, followed by an anxious-looking Jade.

“Roger,” Frankie sniffled, “swore he’d dance—”

Anna grabbed both her friends by the arm and towed them towards the girls’ bathrooms. When they were crowded into a stall Frankie went on: “He swore, so I went over to dance with him but—” she burst into another fit of sobs “—but he was dancing with Gracie, so I waited until the dance ended and he wouldn’t dance!”

How pathetic, thought Anna. But maybe if I cried because I couldn't get into the Cosmology Society, Frankie would think it was pathetic. Don't judge people so hastily—her mother said this several times a day, but it had little effect.

“Why are boys so mean?” Frankie wailed.

Jade fished a pack of tissues from her pocket, and Frankie gratefully accepted them.

“It’s not too loud in here,” said Anna. “We’ll wait until you’re done crying, then go back out.”

Frankie nodded slowly, wiping at her face with one of Jade's tissues.

“I’ll sing,” said Jade. “I don’t sound as bad as you might think.”

“Don’t,” said Anna. “The music out there is bad enough.” A gaggle of screaming girls propped open the door. The music became audible again—this song was the worst of all. Maybe a monkey had composed it.

This can’t last much longer, Anna thought. It must be almost nine thirty.

It was seven fifteen. Two hours and fifteen minutes of sheer torture. Frankie couldn’t cry forever, so they would soon be back to the disco lights, the raucous music, the teenagers making fools of themselves.

If this school ever had another dance, Anna wasn’t going.

Frankie stopped crying for a moment. "What’s that?"

“What’s what?”

“Someone yelled.”

“Everyone's yelling. Who do you mean?”

Frankie shook her head and looked up at the ceiling. “None of them. Someone, a grown man, I think, yelled up there.”

“Why would a grown man yell in the ceiling?” said Jade. “Why would a grown man be in the ceiling in the first place?”

A noise cut through the hubbub of the dance that didn’t sound like a teenager. A chill ran down Anna’s spine.

“I think I hear it, Fran,” she said.

“What’s up with the walls?” said Jade. Anna turned so quickly she nearly fell backwards. As if they only half-existed, the walls of the stall were beginning to fade away.

The man in the ceiling yelled again. The girls’ voices faded along with the music. Anna’s heart beat so fast she was sure it would burst from her chest.

A wave of fog seemed to come out of nowhere, and Anna felt herself begin to spin.

The man in the ceiling, when the ceiling had properly existed, spoke again.

“Anna Dunst?”

Frankie and Jade began to spin, too. Anna gripped their arms as tightly as she could and screwed her eyes shut.

The spinning stopped, and Anna went flying into a wall. Something grabbed her arm. She shrieked, but it was only Jade.

“What’s going on?” Jade asked.

“I have no clue.” Anna forced her voice to remain steady. “The music could’ve easily caused a mass hallucination, though.”

Frankie grabbed her other arm. “That guy’s scary,” she whispered.

The man in question, Anna saw as the fog cleared, was simply a well-groomed man of about forty, with sleek red hair and startlingly pink robes, but there was something about him which simply was wrong. And, if Anna wasn’t mistaken, the television on the side table was showing America’s Got Talent. But before she could comment on this, he said, “Anna Dunst?” again. Whoever he is, Anna thought, he knows your name. Watch your step.

“Yes?” she said. She had to grit her teeth to keep her voice from shaking.

“You don’t know me,” he said. He seemed almost to have a New York accent.

“No,” said Anna, as politely as she could. “You seem to know me, though.”

The man scowled. “Address your king with more respect.”

Jade slowly let go of Anna’s arm. “King? Of what…?”

The man laughed. “King Yrogerg, of what you call Cubix.”

For a moment, Anna couldn’t breathe.

This was Cubix. She was on Cubix.

She had met its king.

3

Frankie bowed so quickly she practically collapsed. Jade did the same a moment later, and Anna was left between them, caught in a staring match with a king.

“Your friends have respect. Where’s yours?” snapped King Yrogerg.

No. Just Yrogerg. He’s not my king.

“Back on Earth,” said Anna, sweetly. “We left so quickly I dropped it. If you’d give me a moment, I could retrieve it.”

Yrogerg growled. “I won’t fall for that. As long as you’re here, I’m safe.”

“Safe?” Anna forgot to be rude. “How?”

“Safe from discovery. Your Earth is polluted badly enough. For the time being, my ‘Cubix’ is clean. If it were discovered, that would end.”

“I only wanted to get into the society, not colonize your planet!”

“The discoverer’s plans rarely have much effect. It would only be a matter of time before you swarmed up here in your spaceships and enslaved my people and took up leadership yourselves.”

“Spaceships!” Jade burst out. “How cheesy is that?”

Yrogerg focused his gaze on her. “I didn’t send for you or the weirdly dressed brunette. You can go.”

Jade looked at Anna, who shook her head vigorously.

“I don’t plan on leaving,” said Frankie.

Yrogerg put his hand down on the table, and let go of something. A marble—no, a pinkish stone. A pebble.

“You’ll have to go to the holding cells pending the decision of your future,” said Yrogerg. “I think cell 549 will do.”

This time there was no fog, or spinning. Bars seemed to grow all around the three of them, and a dank, moldy smell accompanied them.

“Yrogerg’s cheesy,” said Frankie. “What a hallucination!”

“It isn’t one,” Anna said. “Cubix is the planet that I discovered.”

“No way!”

“Yes, way. I assumed they’d be friendly, but…”

“What was that stone?” asked Jade. “A portal?”

“Portal!” Anna exclaimed. “Who’s cheesy?!”

“It's just a thought!”

Anna sat down in a corner, hugging her knees. Everything had gone wrong. She had been kidnapped by an alien...it really was cheesy. Even if the stone was a portal, she didn’t know how to use it.

If this were a fantasy novel, I'd be the brains. I’m to blame for this mess anyway.

But it wasn’t a fantasy novel—Anna knew that. Fantasy novels didn’t happen, and this was definitely happening.

Come on, Anna, think. Yrogerg doesn’t want his planet discovered—that’s fine. Make a different brilliant discovery, and talk him into letting you go.

You can only talk yourself into corners, not out of them. Even if you were good with persuasion, Yrogerg doesn’t trust you.

It would take you billions of years to get from Earth to Cubix ordinarily. So there’s got to be something about that stone...

How can we get it from Yrogerg? He wears a stupid robe, but he still knows more than we do...

A stupid robe. A stupid pink robe. Anna chewed her lip. It didn’t take Frankie to know that pink was a horribly clashing color for Yrogerg.

She did have an idea, Anna realized. If only she knew what it was...

“Any genius ideas?” Jade looked over at her.

“Yes—no. Maybe.” Anna screwed her eyes shut. “I'm trying.”

Jade began rattling on the bars.

“Excuse me?” yelled Frankie. “Would anyone help a couple innocent kidnapped girls?”

Anna forced herself to block out their yelling. If the stone was a portal...Her plan had something to do with his robes. Maybe she should ask Frankie.

Anna shook her head. Her plan was going wrong. She wanted to get back home, not steal his robe.

But if he was changing his robe, he couldn't possibly hold the stone. Especially...if he was distracted…

YES!

Frankie and Jade turned, and Anna realized she’d said it out loud. “I don’t have a genius idea, but I have an idea,” she said. “I think. I need both of your help. Fran, can you convince Yrogerg that he’s wearing the wrong color and has to change his robe?”

Frankie grinned and fished a hand-mirror out of her pocket. “Well, that's easy. He must’ve never seen himself in a real clothes designer’s mirror.”

“Jade, do you know any distracting songs? He can’t see that his stone’s getting taken from him.”

“Attention-grabbing song, coming up,” said Jade, a bit nervously.

“We’ll have to get his attention first, though,” said Anna, joining her friends by the bars of their cell.

“We'd like to speak to Yrogerg, please,” yelled Frankie.

“King Yrogerg,” said Jade.

“We want to—” Anna began, but the floor dissolved under her feet before she could finish and the three of them found themselves back in the stone room, with Yrogerg facing them.

“Yes?” he said impatiently.

“Well,” said Anna, but she felt as if her teeth had been glued shut. This wasn’t a book, it was bigger. It was her, it was reality, and if things went wrong, that would be that. If she failed, she would—

Frankie took charge. “You know,” she said, brandishing her hand-mirror, “that shade of pink clashes.”

“So?” huffed Yrogerg.

“Look!” said Frankie, striding across the room and thrusting her mirror into Yrogerg's face. “No one will take a king wearing pink seriously! Forest green, dark blue, some color like that would make you look ten years younger and much more kingly.”

Yrogerg scowled, but he rose from his chair and disappeared through a small opening. Just as Anna prepared to run and grab his pebble, he returned with a robe slung over each arm.

“Navy blue is best,” said Frankie, and Yrogerg tossed the other one aside. He slipped off his pink robe, revealing a pair of jeans and shirt, also startlingly pink, and began working his arms into the blue one, never looking away from Anna.

“What d’you think you’re doing—changing without music?” Jade shrieked.

“Music?” Yrogerg took his eyes off Anna.

“The kind sung by Jade Cassidy Elton,” said Jade, and burst into raucous song.

The stone was on a table, half underneath Yrogerg’s green robe. For the moment, it was forgotten.

Not only were Anna's teeth glued together, but so were her feet, and her hands. Her heart had forgotten how to beat, and moved in jerks as if it, too, had been glued to something. It was too far. She could never make it—

Jade shoved her hard from behind. Anna took off towards the table.

Jade's song was winding down. Yrogerg’s robe was nearly buttoned.

Anna pretended that he didn't exist and she was sprinting down a hill in the woods to be the first in a cross-country race. She collapsed into the table, grabbed the stone, and whirled around.

Jade ran out of breath to hold her final note with. Yrogerg finally noticed Anna. He moved to grab her, but tripped over the hem of his robe. Anna grabbed Frankie by the arm, and Frankie grabbed Jade.

“The middle school dance at Acorn Glade!” Jade gasped.

The three of them plunged downwards, through the floor, farther from Yrogerg's shout—“We don’t have the resources to make another stone! Waaaaaiiit!” —and down into the bathroom stall.

“I can’t believe it,” said Frankie, collapsing against the wall. “Safe!”

“What do we do with this?” Jade asked, holding up the stone. Anna didn’t hear her.

Seven fifteen, her watch said. That couldn’t be. They’d spent several hours on Cubix!

Cubix. I have been to Cubix. I was right.

“We can’t just leave it,” Jade said more loudly.

“I’m done using my brain for today,” said Anna, letting her head thud against the wall. Frankie and Jade were perfectly capable of figuring something out.

“Fine; I’ll use mine,” said Jade, and before Anna could do anything she had dropped the little pink stone into the toilet, and flushed it. “Yrogerg’ll have fun trying to get it back now!”

Jade gave Anna and Frankie a push out of the stall.

“Well,” said Anna, “you’ve got two hours and fifteen minutes to get Roger to dance with you.” Somehow, the reality of the dance no longer seemed so hellish.

“No,” said Frankie. “I’m still holding a grudge.”

Anna grinned. “Dance with me.”