When we’re done with our lunches, Bianca and I head out to Daddy’s shop. I look up at a faded red-and-blue sign that used to say FREEMAN’S AUTO REPAIR. Now it just reads MAN’S AU PAIR. The shadows of the missing letters are like ghosts, and maybe we need to call the Ghost Busters to get those missing letters back! The red is now a dull pink and the blue is more gray, as if it’d been way more than three years since I last saw that sign.
A rolling thunderclap makes my insides drop and I quickly look toward the aboveground train tracks at the end of the block. But there’s no train.
I look all up and down the street. The brownstones are lined up next to one another like soldiers—broken, raggedy soldiers. Some are now boarded up with padlocked chains hanging in front of wooden slats instead of doors. A few brownstones have missing windowpanes and even steps. A giant cardboard box surrounded by shopping carts sits in front of one of the buildings.
Suddenly, the Soul Train comes speeding down the aboveground tracks at the end of the block—with a roll and a thunder, and a thunder and a roll. My eyes almost pop right out of my head and I take a gulp of that No Joke City air. “The SOOOOUUUUL train!” I sing.
Then I quickly cover my mouth because a smile, then a laugh, and then a boogie-down dance is starting to take over my whole body, my whole soul—almost like the ladies who catch the Holy Ghost in Momma’s church.
“That’s not the Soul Train,” Bianca says. “That’s the Harlem Line!”
“Well, my daddy says it’s the same thing,” I say, uncovering my mouth and watching the very last car of the train speed past our block.
“Nuh-uh,” Bianca says, rolling her neck.
“Uh-huh,” I say.
She shakes her head. Then I whisper, “Well, it’s the Sonic Boom! The Sonic Boom is destroying everything!”
Down the block is an empty lot where some of the kids who’d been in the fire hydrant are playing. I can’t tell from where I’m standing, but they’re jumping on something wide, square, and springy—a mattress maybe. Who would bring a mattress out into an open lot?
“Let’s go over there,” Bianca says, grabbing my hand.
I quickly let go. “The junkyard is better!”
“I’m not going to that junkyard. It’s dirty and junky. Calvin and them are in the lot.”
“You mean to tell me that that’s not dirty and junky, too?” I say, pointing to the lot with big, metal trash bins that Daddy said were oil drums, old tires, and torn mattress. And, of course, the nefarious minions. I’ve never seen this much trash in Huntsville. The garbageman comes down Olde Stone Road twice a week, and it’s Granddaddy’s job to put our metal bin out on the sidewalk. But no one ever, ever puts trash on the street. And surely, there’s nothing funny about that. No Joke City, all right!
Someone shouts Bianca’s name and we both turn to see another group of nefarious minions—all girls wearing short-shorts, too small and too colorful T-shirts, and each one holding onto a long white telephone cord. They walk across the street to where Bianca and I are standing.
I can tell right away there’s a leader—a girl with two long, swinging ponytails wearing a Rainbow Brite T-shirt. “Is this your friend from Alabama that you were talking about?” Rainbow Dull starts to say even before she reaches the sidewalk. She and her minionettes keep their eyes on me, and my pleated skirt, lace socks, Mary Jane shoes, and stupid curls. I wish I had changed into an appropriate E-Grace Starfleet uniform before braving the streets of No Joke City.
Bianca nods. “This is Ebony.”
“So you two are Ebony and Ivory singing together in perfect harmony?” Rainbow Dull asks. “What happened to PJ, Bianca?”
What a stupid thing to say, even though I know it’s from that Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney song that Momma likes. So I ask, “Who’s PJ?”
“Her boyfriend!”
“No, he’s not!” Bianca shouts.
The nefarious minionettes giggle. Another ploy, as Captain Fleet would say, to get me to smile, giggle, or laugh, too. I furrow my brows even deeper this time, and stare at each one of them, narrowing my eyes, tightening my jaw, and clenching my fists.
“You look like you wanna punch somebody!” Rainbow Dull says, and an avalanche of No Joke City gibberish pours out of everyone’s mouth like shooting lasers from a spaceship.
“You wanna fight?”
“Why is she so weird?”
“Why does she have on church clothes?”
“Lemme hear you talk country.”
“They don’t know how to fight Down South.”
I block their laser-beam gibberish by throwing up my arms like Wonder Woman with her Bracelets of Submission. “Pew! Pew!” I say with each swing of my arms.
“What is wrong with your friend?” one of the minionettes asks.
“Ebony, stop acting weird!” Bianca says.
But her words are laser shots and I block them, too. “Pew! Pew!”
“Stop it!” Bianca yells through clenched teeth.
But I have to protect myself. And her. “They’ve got you, too, Bianca Pluto! Save yourself! Block the gibberish laser beams with your Bracelets of Submission!”
She grabs both my arms to stop me, but I pull them away.
“I’m not gonna let you take me prisoner!” I yell over the laughing minionettes.
“What are you talking about?” Bianca yells back. “You know what . . . Never mind.”
She reaches into a tiny pocket in front of her striped shirt and pulls out a small folded green paper that opens up into a clean, crisp five-dollar bill, and she smacks it over the bony part of my chest. “Your daddy gave me five bucks to be your friend.”
I grab the five before it falls to ground and look at it. “Five bucks? To be my friend?” I say, almost whispering.
“I’m gonna need at least twenty bucks just to put up with all this loca!” Bianca says.
The minionettes laugh even louder and harder. One of them takes her index finger and swirls it around near her temple. A mind-controlling trick! So I shut my eyes and cover my ears. I should’ve known that Bianca Pluto had already been taken prisoner. I have to save myself first, then I can save her.
E-Grace Starfleet will not fall under the hypnotic spell of the Sonic Boom!
I let the minionettes walk away with Bianca Pluto.
“If you can hear me, Bianca Pluto, make sure to use your secret spying senses to get all the information you need from the nefarious minions to defeat the evil Sonic King, the Funkazoids, and the Sonic Boom!” I shout into the steamy No Joke City air and hope that it reaches Bianca Pluto’s bionic ears in time.