Margot and Mateo Save the World by Darcy Miller

Author:Darcy Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-03-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

“ARE YOU SURE I CAN’T help?” Margot asked. “I know I broke a slide, but—”

“Two slides,” Chelsea said, carefully handing Calvin a glass cover slip to position on top of the slide he had just set up. “You broke two slides. Snapped them like the Hulk.”

“Can I help it if I’m strong?” Margot retorted. “I’ve got a lot of adrenaline running through me right now!”

Calvin slid the freshly prepared slide beneath the microscope he’d set up on a card table in the corner.

Margot glared at Chelsea.

Chelsea shrugged. “Sorry,” she said insincerely.

“This is fascinating,” Calvin said, not lifting his head from the microscope. “The specimen Margot removed from Mateo’s back appears to be vastly different from the one currently attached to the mayor. Almost as though there are different stages in the life cycle.”

“What, like a tadpole turning into a frog?” Chelsea asked.

Margot, who had been about to ask the same thing, glared at Chelsea a little bit harder.

“What?” Chelsea asked in annoyance. “You’re not the only one who can know things about stuff.” She turned back to Calvin. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

Calvin nodded. “Exactly right. In the ‘tadpole’ stage, the alien entities are still in a sort of stasis. They can’t grow, but they replicate themselves. Classic asexual reproduction,” he said gleefully. “Then, once they attach to a host, they’re able to draw the necessary nutrients from its body, kick-starting their growth. The ‘frog’ stage, if you will.”

“Uh-huh,” Margot said. “So have you figured out how to get the ‘frog’ off the mayor yet?”

“Oh, er, not yet,” Calvin said, dropping his eyes to the microscope again. “Although my banana bag seems to be working nicely,” he added, gesturing vaguely toward the coatrack Mateo had dragged out of the hall closet for him. A Ziploc bag full of fluids hung suspended from it, a length of plastic tubing leading into the mayor’s arm.

Mayor Balboa was still asleep, but her cheeks looked fuller, and her color had drastically improved.

“Great. But maybe focus on the part where we stop the aliens from draining everyone’s body fluids and, you know . . . killing them?” Margot suggested. “Just a thought.”

Calvin nodded, not looking up. “Right. Good tip. Chelsea, can you start preparing another slide?”

“On it,” Chelsea said, nudging her way past Margot to reach the box of glass strips. “Do you mind?”

“Sorry,” Margot said, taking a step back. She hovered uncertainly next to Calvin’s chair for a moment, feeling oddly useless.

It wasn’t a feeling she enjoyed.

“I’m just going to see if Mateo’s heard anything from his dad yet,” she said. “But let me know if I can do anything.”

Bending low over one of the slides, Chelsea gave her a careless wave. “Okay. Whatever.”

Margot scowled. Pausing in front of the door, she pulled her mask from her pocket and started to slip it over her head. Then, thinking better of it, she stuffed it back into her pocket.

Opening the door, she braced herself against the smell of dead whale then stepped out.

“Hey,” she said to Mateo, letting the door fall shut behind her.

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