But she only looks back from the crowd of nefarious minionettes, shaking her head and rolling her eyes.
I throw up my left arm with the invisible Bracelet of Submission one more time just in case the minionettes have secretly sent a gibberish laser beam my way. “Pew!”
I’ve crushed them!
CHAPTER
7
Daddy’s brownstone—66 East 126th Street between Madison and Park Avenues—has four whole floors. Well, half-floors compared to my big house down in Huntsville with its wraparound porch, giant rooms, chandeliers, and backyard wider than Daddy’s shop and the nefarious minions’ lot put together.
Bianca and her grandmother live on the ground floor, where there’s a door leading to the tiny backyard that’s not even big enough for me to stretch my arms and spin around like an asteroid.
On the first floor is the kitchen at the end of a long, narrow hallway. There’s a small dining room whose walls are lined with books and records. One of those records is faced out on its shelf. On the cover, three people wearing strange clothes are crouched down, posing. I quickly grab the album and stare at the picture because of their outfits. They’re all wearing white space suits! There’s a lady in the middle with white high-heel boots aiming a phaser straight at me. The two men on each side of her are either wearing their space glasses over their eyes or on top of their heads. One of them looks like Daddy himself! I’ve never seen them before in any of the Star Trek shows or even in Star Wars, but from the looks of it, they’re definitely space heroes.
I read the words on the album’s cover out loud. “Warp Nine. Light-Years Away.”
A chill travels up my spine and my skin crawls. Warp 9, as in the absolute fastest the USS Enterprise can travel. And light-years, as in beyond the galaxy, beyond Andromeda, where Planet Boom Box exists at the edge of our entire existence. And this must be where these people are from. Surely, King Sirius Julius has had contact with the Sonic King. They’re in cahoots!
I quickly start to look for other clues that King Sirius Julius has allies out there in the universe. I pull out another album to see a bunch of guys around Daddy’s age posing in weird clothes. They call themselves the Sugarhill Gang and they’re supposed to be the 8th Wonder.
I hold both albums beneath my arms and search around the house for more signs.
In Daddy’s living room is a large green velvet couch. A big, old TV set with dusty wooden side panels is pushed up against the corner. Another smaller TV sits on top of it. It has a wire hanger that sticks out behind it like bunny rabbit ears. Back home, once the antenna on our TV didn’t work and the shows became fuzzy and staticky, Granddaddy just bought a new TV. I like Daddy’s TV set better, though. It looks like an alien robot. Almost like R2-D2, but square and less funny. That gives me an idea. I tuck the two braids sticking out on each side of my head into their bobos so they look like Princess Leia’s round buns.
“R2-D2, where are you?” I hear someone say with a robotic voice in my imagination location.
So I quickly look for an opening on R2-D2, just like when Princess Leia recorded her hologram message to Obi Wan Kenobi. What if I could record a message asking for help for my own granddaddy?
“You must see that this message is delivered safely to my grandfather, who is held prisoner on Planet Boom Box,” I say. “This is our most desperate hour.”
But there isn’t an opening for me to slide in a VHS tape.
I look around the R2-D2 TV set—on top of the smaller TV, and on the floor around the bigger TV. Nothing. If Daddy doesn’t have a VCR, then what was the point in packing all those videotapes into Momma’s old makeup case? I might as well have left the dolls she packed.
I fidget with the knobs on the small TV trying to turn it on and find my favorite show when Uncle Richard walks in.
“Ha! My main gal, EG! Come and give your uncle a high five!”
I do as he says, slapping his hand so hard that my own hand stings.
Then he turns around and sticks his hand out behind him. “All right now, from the back.”
I slap his hand again.
“To the side.” He bends his knees and sticks out his hand from his hip.
I slap it again and cover my mouth to hide my smile.
Uncle Richard looks like a skinnier version of Daddy with a scraggly beard and a gold tooth. He wears a black leather jacket even though it’s as hot as Venus outside, and he smells like a mix of sweat, wet leaves, car grease, and too-strong cologne.
“What you doing inside, baby girl? It’s a Saturday evening in June. Everybody’s out on the streets. You ain’t seen all them kids?”
I glance out of the tall and wide windows. Bianca Pluto is on the sidewalk jumping over that long, white telephone cord as it swings around her like the rings of Saturn. Two of the minionettes are at each end turning the rope and keeping their prisoner in check. When they say jump, Bianca Pluto jumps high.
I shake my head. Poor Bianca Pluto. E-Grace Starfleet will rescue her when she’s good and ready.
Uncle Richard is not one of the nefarious minions, of course. He’s almost like Granddaddy because he can go into his imagination location with no problem. He’s all right by me. The only thing is, he never sticks around to hear about the Uhura and Captain Fleet and the evil Sonic King.
“Those kids are all strange, Uncle Richard,” I say.
He laughs. “Oh, you’re just a little bit country—and a whole lot of strange, too—EG,” he says. “And call me Uncle Rich, you hear? Emphasis on the Rich. Words have power coming out of the mouths of children, ain’t that right? They have the ability to manifest.” He spreads his hands out across the front of his face as if he were making the word manifest magically appear out of nowhere.
And I see it, too. Manifest. It glitters and chimes like it’s written with gold and silver and a million tiny bells.
“Manifest,” I whisper.
“That’s right,” Uncle Rich says as he strides over to the TV set and turns it on. “What you wanna watch?”
“Star Trek!” I shout. “You got a VCR, Uncle Rich?”
“Star Trek?” He turns back to me and looks at me all funny. “Oh, I forgot. You’re extra-galactic. I think we just missed Kung Fu on Channel 5. You ever seen Five Deadly Venoms?” Uncle Rich stands back and poses like Bruce Lee and says, “Ha-Ya!”
“I don’t like Kung Fu, Uncle Rich. It’s too violent!” I say.
“And Star Trek ain’t? With all those laser guns going off?”
“Phasers!” I make my hand like a phaser and point it at the top TV, hoping to vaporize it and in its place will be a new VCR. “Pew! Pew!”