“What are you doing?” I shout, running toward them.
Daniel grabs a gun from the commando’s holster, points it at me. “Happiness. By any means necessary.”
He lifts the gun by the nose and brings the butt down hard on my head, and the room slips away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
In Which Some People’s Happiness Gets Its Butt Kicked and Gonzo and I Make Our Escape
Blacking out isn’t so bad, really. All in all, it’s a lot more pleasant than, say, celebrating a family birthday at a medieval theme restaurant or pretending you care about your GPA. Unconscious, I float out into a black universe where stars are winking electric Christmas candles, past the Buddha Cow raising one hoof in a Zen salute. It’s like I’m on some cool ride, chugging past automated exhibits: Mom and Dad are sitting in the hospital cafeteria, not talking over cups of lukewarm coffee. They look like shit, like a couple of toothpaste tubes that have been grabbed in the middle one too many times till whatever’s left is too hard to get out. Raina walks through the doors. She doesn’t look like shit. She looks fresh and alive and full of promise. Dad sees her and stands up, gives a little smile. Mom watches him like he’s a stranger she’s seeing for the first time. Raina hands Dad some papers and says “I’m sorry” and “If there’s anything I can do,” and Dad answers, “You’re doing so much already, Raina.” In the way she blushes and tucks her hair behind her ear, in the way Dad pays attention to that one small gesture, Mom’s face changes. She knows.
The ride loops around. To my right, the roadrunner keeps pace with me. It zips into a cave, and when it comes out, it’s the Wizard of Reckoning, the fire giants burning a giant black hole into the sky behind him. He reaches out, but the ride drops, making my stomach tingle. It creeps up the invisible mechanical hill toward a brightly lit room, where Glory’s taking the empty bag off the IV pole. “Just need to switch you out, honey.” She hooks the new fat pouch on the pole. The ride slows till I’m even with her. Her face is like one of those carved totems I saw once in a book about Easter Island—dark, beautiful, forever.
She strokes my cheek, and I swear I can feel the warmth of her skin. Her big brown eyes look into mine. “Cameron, child, are you awake in there?”
“I said, are you awake?”
My aching eyes open to see Daniel sitting across from me in a chair with his arms crossed. He looks like his happiness is more than hurt; it’s pissed and coming out swinging. I’m tied to my chair and Library Girl is nowhere to be seen. At least the gun’s gone. The bright lights of the Snackateria are little needles of pain slipping into my head.
“Yo! Cameron.”
“Yeah,” I croak. “Where’s Library Girl?”
“Who?” Ruth asks.
“Never mind,” I say. “Where’s Gonzo?”
Daniel sneers. “The midget freak? Maybe you can tell us. We haven’t found him yet.”
I’d like to beat the crap out of him for calling Gonzo a midget freak, but I’m tied to a chair and the lizard part of my brain has been activated and is now occupied with survival. Daniel gets right in my face. “So, tell us: how long have you and your spies been planning this little attack?”
“Me? I couldn’t even plan dinner. I didn’t have anything to do with this—”
Ruth cracks me on the knuckles with the anthology.
“Ow!” I screech.
“That’s for reading this depressing, hard stuff over the loudspeakers.”
“Wait, it wasn’t me. I—”
She cracks my knuckles a second time.
“And that’s for breaking the smoothie machine! They say it might take twenty-four hours to fix it. Twenty-four hours! That’s like a lifetime!”
Daniel paces the room. He’s a little scary. In fact, I’d give him just about anything that would increase his happiness right now before he goes commando on me. “We saw the security camera footage—she kissed you! And you handed her the backpack. We know you’re in this together. All the order stations have been hacked into so when you try to order a CESSNAB product you get rerouted to a book called My Happiness Wants Your Happiness to Go to Hell with quotes like ‘Read a damn book already. It won’t kill you.’ ‘People screw up all the time. Deal with it.’ ‘Not everybody gets to be famous.’ ‘If you’re so special, why am I so annoyed?’”
“Read that really bad one, Daniel!” Ruth says.
Daniel flips on a screen and reads the word flashing there. “No.”