Imaginalis by J. M. DeMatteis

Imaginalis by J. M. DeMatteis

Author:J. M. DeMatteis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-05-14T16:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Finding the Dreamer

“So,” Celeste asked me the following Sunday morning at Queenstown Family, “what’s with Porky Boy and Bizarro Girl?” I kept trying to duck her, but she finally cornered me in the pantry. Considering she was stuffing her face with a custard doughnut—and I’d been seeing her on the bus in the afternoons—I figured she was definitely over her health kick.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“I mean, you dump me and start hanging around some fat kid with a nose the size of a football and some goofy girl in an ugly yellow dress?” She was right, I pretty much had dumped her. “The same dress every day,” Celeste went on. “What’s up with that? And that hair? With those pigtails sticking straight out and those bangs in her eyes, she looks like a sheepdog that stuck its paw in an electrical socket.”

That was pretty harsh, but I wondered if Celeste was acting that way because…maybe…she missed me. I mean, I was her best friend. Once. In fact, I was starting to feel so guilty about it that I was kinda sorta considering telling her everything that was going on. “They’re nice kids,” I said.

“Well, they totally creep me out,” Celeste said. “They always have. Y’know, I can’t figure why you’ve gone all gaga over these idiots all of a sudden. I mean, you’ve known them since the first grade.” Of course I hadn’t, but since Uncle Nossyss and Prognostica—or Ellison and Claire—had been going to school with me every day, we needed some way to explain them, so…you guessed it…the old elephant put a whammy on the whole school to make people think that they’d always been there. “And what’s with that other kid I see you with sometimes? The one who looks like he’s foreign or something?” She was talking about Imagos. He’d taken some walks around the neighborhood with me. Called them “sociological expeditions,” a way to understand our world and its customs. “What’s a boy that hot doing hanging out with you?”

I couldn’t believe she said that to me. I almost said something super awful back—and maybe I would have, if we weren’t in a place where we were supposed to be nice to people. Instead I just walked away from her and sat down at one of the tables. I looked over at Celeste—really quick—and she had this weird look on her face, like maybe she felt bad about what she’d said.

“I heard what Fish Face said to you.” I hadn’t realized that there was a boy already sitting there. He was about fourteen. Tall and skinny, with red hair down to his shoulders and an expression on his face like he thought he was really cool or something. He was wearing a faded old jean jacket, a black T-shirt, and pants so low and baggy I thought they might slide off.

“What’d you say?” I asked.

“Fish Face,” he said, nodding his head toward where Celeste was standing in the back. He squinted at me. “You



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