It was all deeply boring.
Bug wondered what Gurl was doing. Probably hanging out with her rich friends from the rich school she went to. What was it called? The Princess Academy? Everyone that went there was loaded. Technically, Bug was loaded too, but he didn’t enjoy it the way other people seemed to. The only reason he was doing this whole endorsement thing was so that he didn’t have to touch his father’s money. He didn’t want to use a cent of that money – gangster money, hate money, blood money. Bug was not like his father at all. And he was going to prove it to the whole world. He would even prove it to Gurl and her parents, if he ever got a chance to see them. But Gurl was probably having a ball with all the rich girls. She wasn’t even calling herself Gurl any more; she was calling herself Georgie, a name that Bug still hadn’t got used to. He hadn’t seen Gurl – um, Georgie – in months, which made him feel guilty, but not too guilty, because Georgie didn’t seem to be trying too hard to see Bug. At first, it was because she finally found out who her parents were and she wanted to take the time to get to know them. (Bug understood that. He wasn’t an insect.) But then weeks went by, and then a month, and then the whole winter was gone. What was up with that? What was a person supposed to think?
Exactly what I am thinking, Bug thought. That Georgie had better things to do than hang out with the son of Sweetcheeks Grabowski, no matter how many stupid adverts that son had been in.
Bug heaved another sigh, trying to ignore the bright blue sky stretched overhead, trying to ignore his aching arms, trying to pretend he was back home in his apartment (but then, he didn’t want to be there either, because no one was there, and who wants to hang out all by yourself with no one to talk to, even if you don’t really want to talk, you just want to sleep).
Oh great, thought Bug, now my ankle itches. But this itch wasn’t really an itch. It was more like a gentle pressure, like a finger poking him. Bug looked down. There was something grey and slimy lying limply across his foot.
“What the…” said Bug. Was it a rope? Where did the rope come from? He tried to shake it off.
“Bug! What are you doing!” shrieked the photographer. “Stand still!”
“There’s a rope—” Bug began.
“Who cares?” the photographer shrieked again. “I’m shooting your face now. So stop frowning!”
Bug frowned even more deeply when the grey, slimy rope began to writhe, began to pluck at his shoelaces. He shook his foot again, this time more frantically.
“You’re ruining my shots!” the photographer wailed, turning round to look at Juju. “Juju! Tell your boy he’s ruining the shots!”
“Bug, baby!” Juju called. “Don’t ruin the man’s shots.” He gave the Skreechers execs a bright, toothy smile, waggling the skin where his brows would normally be. “These athletes. So twitchy. Can’t get ’em to stand still.”
One of the executives eyed him with eyes the colour and warmth of polar icecaps. “You better get this one to stand still. We’re paying you enough.”
But Bug was not standing still. He was staring down at the grey, slimy thing; he was trying to pull away from it.
It looked like a tentacle. Yes, it looked exactly like a tentacle. Suckers and everything.
And it was doing more than playing with his laces, it was curling around his foot, it was grabbing him by the foot, and it was dragging him towards the edge of the dock.
The photographer threw up his hands and whirled in a dramatic circle. “How am I supposed to work like this? I’m a professional! I want to work with professionals!”
Juju covered the mouthpiece of his phone, not even looking in Bug’s direction. “Bug!” he yelled. “Quit fooling around!”
Bug looked up, a wild and not very regal expression on his face. “I’m not fooling around. Something’s got me, something—”
His last words were cut off as the rope that was truly a tentacle jerked Bug right off the dock. He barely had a second to register that he was in the water before the tentacle was pulling him under the water, into the greyish murk, deeper and deeper. Bug flailed wildly and his lungs burned. His mind screamed silent, hysterical things like WHAT IS IT? and WHAT’S GOT ME? and I’M IN THE WATER!!! I CAN’T FLY AWAY IN THE WATER!!! Whatever held his ankle had him in an iron grip as it dragged him down, down, down.
And then, suddenly, it stopped.
Bug had the sensation of dozens of questing fingers running over his face, but he didn’t dare open his eyes for fear that he’d see a monster there, a monster with arms for legs and teeth for eyes and hooks for teeth and razors where its lips should be. His mind screamed more hysterical things, but these things weren’t words, they were just sounds, just bright bursts in his head, as the arms or legs or suckers of the razor-lipped, hook-toothed thing prodded him like a doctor feeling for swollen glands.
And then, just like that, the thing let him go.
His lungs close to popping, Bug kicked away from the monster and swam up towards the surface of the water. When he got his first lungful of oxygen, he launched his body from the murk like a rocket. Bug hovered in the air a moment before collapsing face-down on to the dock.
“Ow,” he said, and coughed.
“Bug,” said a stern voice.
Bug flipped to his back, still coughing.
“Bug!”
“What?” Bug managed to say. He opened his eyes, which had been squeezed shut, to see a great many very angry people glaring down at him.
Juju’s wrinkled turtle head was even more wrinkled. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“What?” Bug gasped. “What do you mean?”
“What do you mean what do I mean?” Juju said. “If you wanted to go swimming, we could have gone after the photo shoot.”
“Something pulled me into the water!”
The Skreecher execs shook their heads. “Mr Fink,” said the one with the polar-ice eyes, “we don’t appreciate these sorts of displays.”
“Well, neither do I,” bellowed Juju. “And I assure you it will never happen again. Will it, Bug?”
Bug was astonished. “Didn’t you see?” he said, coughing up more brackish water. “Didn’t you see the tentacle grab me?”
“What are you talking about?” said Juju. “What tentacle? You tripped over a rope.”
Bug squinted, focused in on the photographer. “Didn’t you catch it with the camera?”
“Catch what?” shrieked the photographer. “Who could catch anything with you shaking and dancing around like that?”
Another of the Skreecher execs shook his head. “Maybe we made a mistake hiring someone so young. They can never control themselves.”
“We could still cancel the contract, remember? We’ve got that ‘bad behaviour’ clause,” said Polar Ice Eyes. “I’ll talk to the boss.” He whipped around. “Darn it! Paparazzi!”
Everyone turned to