The Chaos Curse (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #3) - Sayantani DasGupta Page 0,30
Zuzu. “Just to rebel against her mom.”
I looked from Zuzu to Jovi and back again in astonishment. When had they gotten so chummy?
“Just give Zuzu a chance, will ya?” whispered Jovi in my ear. “I know you didn’t get along when you were younger, but we’re on the fencing team together now and she’s actually not that bad once you get to know her.”
I felt my head spinning. Zuzu had said almost the exact same thing to me about Jovi not that long ago. Or, I guess, today. Depending on how you looked at it.
“So you guys are friends now or something?” I muttered.
I wanted to say something more, but Jovi shushed me, while the other kids in our row gave us dirty looks. I slunk down in my seat when I realized the principal was looking right in my direction. No one, and I mean no one, wanted to be on Biggie Chen’s bad side.
“Well then,” sneered the principal. “Without further ado, let me introduce you to the host of public television’s longest-running science program, none other than Shady Sadie the Science Lady!”
As the trombone music for my favorite program blared over our school loudspeakers, I couldn’t help but feel grateful to the wormhole for making this possible. In my previous New Jersey story line, this would never have happened. But somehow, magically, I’d made it to a version of Parsippany where my television scientist role model was right in front of me in real life.
“Hashtag awesomesauce,” I gushed.
“Hashtag you’re adorkable,” countered someone in a mocking voice. It was Ned, who, I realized, was yet again sitting right behind me. I turned to give him a dirty look, but he gave me a face-melting smile and then handed me a teeny plastic flower bouquet that he produced from thin air. Jovi and Zuzu giggled as, totally flustered, I took the flowers before turning back around.
And then I was busy drinking in the sight of my own personal superhero. Shady Sadie had danced onstage to her show’s theme music and was now standing there beaming at us. Shady Sadie the Science Lady was wearing her signature round dark–rimmed glasses, pantsuit, and bow tie. Today’s suit was a psychedelic blue with the outlines of butterflies all over it. Her bow tie too looked like it might be an actual butterfly resting on her throat. Curiouser and curiouser. What was with all these butterflies? That couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?
Shady Sadie’s short black hair was all spiky in a zillion directions, and she bopped in place like she didn’t know how to stand still. “Heya, young scientists!” Sadie boomed as the music finally finished. Just like on TV, the audience yelled back, “Heya, Sadie!”
She pressed a button, turning the projector on behind her, so that she was standing in front of a giant dark screen with a tiny pinprick of light in the center. Space, I supposed. But then the tiny light started to expand more and more, until, taking up the whole screen, it seemed to explode in a shower of light.
“The big bang!” Sadie said, her voice echoing impressively through the auditorium. “The beginning of our entire multiverse! From a tiny spark, it has grown infinitely! And it continues to grow every day! Think about all that life—all those stories—expanding without end!”
“Booo-ring!” singsonged Ned from the seat behind me. I felt him tugging at a strand of my hair and whipped around.
“Stop that!” I hissed. “It’s not cute!”
“But I am!” he said all mock-suavely, raising an eyebrow in a way that weirdly reminded me of Neel. He held out his palms all “jazz hands” like—and did I imagine it or did little flames shoot out of both?
Before I could ask what kind of amateur magician could produce fire from his hands, Jovi pulled at my sleeve. “P-to-the-Chen’s looking this way again!”
I whipped back around. I did not want to attract Principal Chenopolis’s attention again, no matter how cute and/or annoying Ned was.
Sadie flicked an image of a boring-looking gray building on screen. Wait a minute, I’d actually seen it before. It was on Route 46, in the shopping center next to my parents’ convenience store!
“We at Smarty-Pants Science Corporation are trying to re-create the environment of the big bang so that we can study it and prevent anything that would reverse the expansion of the multiverse!”
“Why do you keep saying multiverse?” someone shouted out from the audience. “Instead of universe?”