“Just Kiran?” asked Jovi, a little less goofily, grinning in my direction.
“It’s a long story,” I mumbled. “But I think I have an idea of who can help get us back to the Kingdom Beyond.”
“Who?” the girls and Lal asked, almost all in unison.
“The smartest scientist in this dimension, of course,” I said. “We’ve got to get to Shady Sadie’s atom-smashing lab. From all the stuff she was saying at the assembly today, about black holes, chaos, the light and dark—I think she was trying to send me a message.”
“Oh, come on,” started Zuzu. She was still petting Lal’s coat sleeve and I wondered if she just didn’t want me to take him away.
“No, really,” I said. “Unless you have any better ideas, I think it’s our best chance.”
“Then let us go! We must not waste any time!” Lal was starting to sound a bit more like himself. Jovi had also heated up a plate of nachos and he was digging in, so that might have had something to do with it. He crunched loudly, mumbling through a cheesy mouth, “I must get back to the Kingdom Beyond! My people need me! Also, what kind of salsa is this? It is very delicious!”
“Jovi, you said her atom-smashing lab was somewhere here in town. That picture Shady Sadie showed us in school looked like a building right near my parents’ store.” I stole a nacho from Lal, earning a dirty look from both my friends.
Jovi furrowed her blond eyebrows. “You mean your parents’ old store, before they sold it.”
“Right.” Yet another thing that was wacko about this dimension. I scratched Loki’s ears while the big dog licked my elbow. “So how are we going to get all the way out to Route 46 from here?” I asked, turning my mind to practical problems. “It’s too far to walk. At least in this cold. Especially with Lal’s twisted ankle.”
“Either of you know how to drive?” Zuzu had the door open to Jovi’s garage and was staring at her parents’ extra car.
I thought about my experience driving the auto rikshaw. And then the fact that I’d crashed and totaled it. “Nidhoggr almost just killed us all. I’d rather not finish the job for him.”
“Never fret, I have the solution.” Jovi was pointing at something in the garage. “How about some nonautomated wheels?”
I looked to see that Jovi was pointing to two incredibly small dirt bikes, obviously the property of her little stepbrothers.
“There aren’t enough for all of us!” I eyed the tiny dirt bikes with the huge thick rims. “And those seats are so small, there’s no way we can ride double!”
“Well, don’t you have a bike too at your house next door?” Jovi asked. “I trashed mine last year and never got a new one, but you’ve got to still have yours in your shed, right? The one with the big banana seat? That should be big enough to take Lal on too, right?”
“Prince Lal can’t ride alone with his twisted ankle!” Zuzu said, adding hopefully, “Maybe I could take him on your bike!”
“No, I’d be happy to!” volunteered Jovi.
In the end, I rode my own bike, the embarrassingly pink and sparkly Princess Pretty Pants™ one with the crown streamers on the handlebars and the unicorn flippety-floppety inserts on the wheels. It was a little awkward, since the bike was so small, and Lal’s weight on the back of the banana seat didn’t make it very easy to pedal. Still, within a few minutes, we were biking away through our neighborhood, everybody’s knees practically up around our armpits. It had taken a minute to convince Loki to stay at home instead of coming with us, but we’d finally managed.
We were off! I’d grabbed an old jacket from my house, since I’d left my own winter coat at school. It was a little bit small on my arms, but it was better than wearing Ned-slash-Nidhoggr’s ski jacket. (I didn’t want his dragon cooties!) I was actually feeling kind of like a kid again, the wind whipping by my face, the handlebar streamers flying. I even cring-cringed my rusty Princess Pretty Pants™ bell for good measure.
Jovi and even Zuzu were doing little tricks on and off the curb on their bikes, but it was a lot of effort for me to just keep my little pink bicycle steady and straight down the road. Lal was holding on to my waist and giving me incredibly unhelpful suggestions.
“Watch that ice patch, Just Kiran!” he yelped. “Slow down! Not so sideways, my lady! Not so straight! Ring your bell! Perchance might you have any snacks in that basket?”
“Stop holding on so tight, Lal!” I griped. “I can barely breathe!”
“I have snacks!” Zuzu enthused, tossing Lal a granola bar from her pocket. She was standing up to pedal and looked like she was having a ball.
“Good thing we decided to come with you two!” said Jovi, maneuvering her bike on the other side of me and tossing Lal some gummy bears.
Embarrassingly, Lal lapped up all the attention even as he ate up all the snacks.
We were at the top of a big hill, and before I had time to think about it, my friends were convincing me to stop pedaling and see who could coast down the hill fastest. “Princess Just Kiran, be careful!” Lal yelled as we careened down the icy road. He scattered a bunch of gummy bears into the air in his agitation.
I was reminded of zipping along on a skateboard behind an auto rikshaw with the Pink-Sari Skateboarders what felt like ages ago. Even though I was nervous at first, soon I was whooping and hollering along with Zuzu and Jovi. Even Lal seemed to get over his fear.
“All for one and one for all!” the girls cheered as they started pedaling again at the bottom of the hill. For good measure, they even waved their fencing foils around in the air.
I thought about how much that musketeer rallying cry was like Nidhoggr and Sesha’s favorite: The all is one. Both sayings were talking about how people were connected, but our phrase, as opposed to Sesha’s, didn’t necessarily mean that we had to all be exactly the same to be on the same side.
Lal cheered. “I like your friends, Just Kiran!”
I laughed. “I’m fairly sure they like you too!”
Unfortunately, we were all so giddy from the rush of our adventure that no one really considered the route we were taking from our neighborhood to Smarty-Pants Science Corporation. The way we were going would not only take us in front of my parents’ old convenience store, but around the back of Zuzu’s family’s Greek diner. We were already biking through the adjoining parking lot, the one that goes between the pet grooming place and the Bennigan’s Coat Factory, when the fiercest employee of Mount Olympus Diner spotted us: Zuzu’s grandmother.
Zuzu’s yiayia was well into her eighties, but she still worked every day at the family’s restaurant, making the world’s best spanakopita and baklava, chatting up customers, and basically keeping Zuzu’s entire family on their toes. And our bad luck, she swung open the back door to the diner just as we were skating by.
“Oh no!” breathed Zuzu, but it was too late to turn around.
Yiayia stood there in her head scarf, apron, and orthopedic shoes, a bag of garbage in her hand. She squinted at us for a second, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, and then, in a move worthy of any intergalactic superhero, she threw the garbage bag. The smelly plastic sack hit Zuzu in the legs and knocked her off her bike.