“Relax, Butchy,” Twana said, taking a bite of cereal. “Haven’t you watched the news?”
“What do you mean?”
“Bieber’s dead, been blown to kingdom come. I was there.”
“What?”
“Crowd nearly trampled me. It wasn’t their fault, they just wanted to get out of there.”
Butch stood from the breakfast table and moved across the kitchen to a little television set mounted into the wall. He snicked it on and flipped through the channels until he came to a morning news program. Sure enough, a newsreel ran from the concert venue where Bieber had played just the night before. A burned-out limo sat behind the venue, surrounded by a police line. A team of forensic investigators crawled over the scene, exploring the area for clues.
The newscaster droned on. “Bieber is dead. That’s what the headlines say this morning as the remains of his limousine smoulder in the morning light. In the middle of a large gathering of Bieber fans last night, his car exploded, sending shrapnel through the crowd. Although there were no fatalities, many have been treated for injuries in the blast and in the subsequent panic that resulted.
“Early this morning, this tape was released to the Internet from Brennon Nix, former member of The Five Fingers, Bieber’s previous boy band.”
A clip of The Five Fingers performing came on screen. The five boys, all better looking than one another, graced an audience of mostly early teen girls with their mega-hit Caught in the Act. Twana liked The Five Fingers okay. But she’d always felt that Bieber hadn’t bloomed until he had struck out on his own.
After a few seconds of The Five Fingers, Brennan Nix’s face came on screen. His video, shot with a web cam, caught him in poor light. His bedraggled face appeared drawn, traced with lines. Nix seemed to have aged fifteen years since the boy band had broken up. The former pop star had shaved his head and now had tattoos, a tear under one eye, a flourish of thorns around his neck and ducking into the collar of his shirt. Nix had always been the bad boy of The Five Fingers. Twana realized as she looked at his tired face that the bad boy rebel thing probably hadn’t been just an act.
“I know that for what I’ve done a lot of people are going to hate me. I’m cool with that,” Nix said, a snide smile hunching just below the surface. “But I want you so-called Bieber fans to know that you have been wronged. While Bieber always put on that surgically corrected smile and chirped on with his prepubescent voice, telling you to STAND, what you don’t know is, he never stood for anything. He’s a selfish, arrogant, spoiled child who always got whatever he wanted. Wherever he went, he left ruin. So, you might hate me now, but, whether you know it or not, I’ve done the world a favor by getting rid of Bieber.” With that, Nix shoved off from his desk and slid out into the middle of the room. He wore a tee shirt, the likes of which Twana had seen at school on kids who didn’t understand what Bieber was about. Nix’s shirt read, “I love to hate Bieber.”
Twana lost her appetite. She put her spoon down and clenched her teeth. She touched the little lipstick case hanging beneath her tee shirt and thought about all of the Bieber songs she would never hear because selfish old Brennan Nix had killed him.
“Relax, sis,” Butch said. “He’s just a pip-squeak.”
“How could you say that?” Twana said.
The television report flipped to a shot of police escorting Nix from his apartment, cuffed and grinning, to a police cruiser. An officer held his hands up in front of the camera, trying to block Nix from making a statement to the press.
“Look,” Butch said, recoiling. “I know you really liked his music. I’m sorry you had to be there when his car blew.”
Twana and Butch finished breakfast in silence. The television news program droned on. In national news, illegal cloning was on the rise. A photograph of Orlando DePechio came on screen. The portly man stood outside a high-rise from which he conducted business. The reporter questioned him about allegations of DePechio’s involvement in illegal cloning.
“Hey, isn’t that your boss?” Twana said in an accusing tone, nodding toward the news report.
Butch snapped off the television and smiled at his little sister. “That ain’t nothing you have to know about.”
“Whatever,” Twana said, picking up her bowl to drink off the sugary milk.
After breakfast, Twana walked down the hall of their little apartment and stood at the door of her ma’s room. She looked into the dim at the slight lump of her ma’s body beneath a pair of ropey blankets. Like every morning, Twana’s ma stayed in bed, recovering from whatever she had taken the night before. Butch worked for the man who supplied most of the drugs to the neighborhood. Twana resented that, even though Butch claimed he never dealt.
Twana tip-toed into the room and kissed her ma’s tallow head, causing her to stir in her sleep. “I’m gonna make it right, Ma,” Twana said, stroking her hair--she had lost so much of it.
She left her ma’s room and passed Butch in the hall. She didn’t make eye contact with him.
She went to her room, took out her makeup case and went to work on her black and blue face.
“Hey, sis,” Butch said from the entryway.
She glanced at him in the mirror then went back to applying base over the stinging bruises.
“You’re a good kid, Sis. You do all the right things.”
Twana cocked her head to the side and fixed Butch with a suspicious glance.
“Just sayin’,” Butch said, “don’t be like me.”
“I don’t plan to,” Twana said.
Butch nodded.
“Look, Butch, we gotta talk.”
Butch looked up. “’Bout what?”
“’Bout Ma. She’s dying. We gotta get her off the stuff. We gotta do right by her.”
“I never sold no smack,” Butch said.
“That’s what you keep saying. But if we don’t try something different, something big, we’re gonna lose her.”
“You got something in mind?”
“I do. But we’ll talk later. I gotta get to school.”
Butch mustered up an awkward smile. “You do that.”
“Don’t do nothin’ stupid, Butchy. I’m going to get us out of this. But I’m going to need you to help me.”
Butch nodded and scratched the back of his head.
Twana finished her makeup. He watched for a while then left.
After doing what she could to hide the bruises, Twana snatched up her backpack and went out into the overcast day. She took in a deep breath of polluted air and started walking her daily mile and a half trek to school.
Chapter 5
Meanwhile, somewhere on Planet Hull...
Hundreds of refugee Ice Beetles stood overground in the jungle as the Voles’ sonic thumper finished its work. They watched fissures form. Explosions from beneath shook the ground as their machines, boilers, furnaces, generators, their very infrastructure, collapsed.
Nichang and his Shreevers had led the Ice Beetle infantry valiantly into combat and killed hundreds of the enemy. But the surviving rodents had routed into the jungle. They would be back, of that Nichang felt certain. And when they came back, they would come en masse to finish what they had started.
In the meantime,