Lucretia and the Kroons

10

Loochie couldn’t escape the smell. The female Kroon had snatched her and Sunny. She clutched them close and ran with them. Loochie was so confused, overwhelmed, that she couldn’t be sure which direction they were headed. She was trying to squirm free but the Kroon’s grip was impossibly strong.

But that smell. It was the smell of burning plastic. Strong and toxic and it irritated Loochie’s eyes. But behind that smell, along with it, was something sweet. Once Loochie and her mother had tried to make sugar candy at home and it had gone badly. The whole apartment had smelled like this for a day. Loochie tried to pull her head back from the Kroon but each time she did the thing only squeezed tighter and Loochie lost her breath and fell into the stink again.

Loochie found herself imagining what would come next. One Kroon grabbing Loochie’s feet and the other holding Loochie’s head, then each side pulling until head and feet popped right off her body. But when they finally stopped moving Loochie was dropped to the ground, landing on a new patch of concrete. She was on her back, looking up at the endless gray sky.

And she was under the Unisphere.

It was right here. Only ten feet away. Because of its precarious angle it looked as though the great stainless steel globe was about to roll off its stand and crush her.

“Sunny?” Loochie called out.

But the face that appeared above her wasn’t Sunny’s. It was the Kroon. It was breathing hard from the run. From this angle Loochie could see the roof of the Kroon’s mouth, which wasn’t pink, like a normal person’s, but yellowed and tough. The Kroon coughed and Loochie felt a scattershot of spit hit her forehead and cheeks.

She hopped right up after that. And it turned out she’d held on to the old wooden tennis racket. The one Sunny had set on fire. Once she realized she had a weapon Loochie didn’t hesitate. She cocked back and brought the tennis racket down hard, right on the crown of the Kroon’s head.

Loochie screamed as she connected with the creature. And did the same when she hit the thing a second time. She must’ve sounded as frightening as Pit and his brothers ever did. The third time she swung the racket she only grunted, like Serena Williams during a tennis match. The racket’s head — already brittle from the fire — cracked into little pieces, leaving Loochie holding only the handle and a portion of the shaft. It had snapped off into a jagged sharp point. Loochie was basically holding a dagger now.

The Kroon had taken all three hits and seemed dazed by the attack, by Loochie’s ferocity. It was on one knee, one hand flat on the concrete for balance. It still hadn’t caught its breath from running with Sunny and Loochie in its arms. Its head dipped down so the back of the neck was exposed. Loochie could see the top of the spine, that little ball under the skin. She raised the sharp stick so she could drive it through.

“Stop! Loochie, stop!”

Sunny threw herself at Loochie, sending her best friend tumbling over. Loochie and Sunny fell into a heap. The racket handle dropped from Loochie’s hands.

“What are you doing!” Loochie shouted.

Loochie tried to shake free, but Sunny gripped her close. She held Loochie’s wrists and looked down into Loochie’s eyes.

“She’s my friend,” Sunny said.

Loochie struggled some more.

“She’s my friend,” Sunny repeated.

Finally Sunny released Loochie’s wrists. She slid away from Loochie and Loochie sat up. Nothing that had happened in 6D had stunned Loochie more than those three words. Loochie watched Sunny, dumbstruck.

“I’m your friend,” Loochie finally said.

Before Sunny might react both girls heard heavy breathing behind them.

Sunny moved toward the sound, toward the female Kroon. When Sunny stood right next to it (her?) they looked like a jockey and a horse. One big enough to stamp the other into dust. The sight made Loochie want to pull Sunny away. Loochie scanned the ground for that tennis racket dagger, which she could still plunge into the monster, like stabbing a vampire with a wooden stake. But it had landed behind the Kroon.

Sunny pressed her body against the Kroon, hugging its big arm and resting her head against its shoulder. How could she stand the smell? That’s what Loochie wondered.

“Are you okay?” Sunny asked quietly.

The Kroon sniffled but nodded.

“Can you stand up?”

Sunny stepped back and the Kroon rose to her full height. To Loochie the thing seemed to be seven feet tall. She looked into that face again — that missing jaw, the dribbles of spit rolling down its neck — and wanted to turn away. But now there were also two small gashes in its forehead, and a bump already starting to rise on its scalp. Hard for Loochie to believe she could’ve done such damage to something so powerful.

Sunny pinched her lips tight. “I want you to say sorry to Alice.”

Loochie didn’t mean to, but she laughed a little. “Her name is Alice?”

The Kroon dropped her head. It almost seemed embarrassed.

Sunny crossed her arms. “Loochie’s better?”

That stung a little bit. “My name is Lucretia,” she corrected.

Sunny pointed at the female Kroon. “And hers is Alice.”

Sunny set her lips tight and squinted her eyes and leaned forward. It was her gangster pose. The one that had scared the Doberman pinscher away years before. Well now Loochie understood why that dog had panicked. Despite Sunny’s nearly bald head and her body worn down by cancer treatments, even with a monster standing right there, that girl looked like the fiercest thing in the world.

“Fine,” Loochie finally muttered. “I’m sorry.”

But that didn’t seem to be enough. Sunny said, “I couldn’t have saved you without Alice’s help, do you understand that? Who do you think pulled those bars on the fence apart? Me?”

Now Loochie looked up at Alice, but Alice looked away.

“You did that?” Loochie asked. “Why?”

“She used to be as bad as the others,” Sunny said. “But she doesn’t want to act like a monster anymore. Now she wants to be friends.”

Alice opened her hands and extended them so Loochie could see the scrapes on the palms and fingers. Proof that tearing open that hole in the fence hadn’t been easy. That Alice had done something kind for her friend Sunny. And for Loochie, too. Wasn’t that all she’d been hoping to do for Sunny in her apartment that afternoon? To be a good friend?

Alice left her hands out and Loochie walked closer.

“It’s going to be okay,” Sunny said calmly. She uncrossed her arms, relaxed her face. She was cooing at Loochie, the way you might call a skittish cat.

Loochie inched closer. Alice’s big hands remained outstretched and open.

“I promise it’ll be okay,” Sunny said, and the words were so quiet it almost seemed like Sunny was speaking right inside Loochie’s head.

Loochie raised her two hands and set them flat on Alice’s. Loochie’s hands were so small, by comparison. Then Sunny set her hands, even smaller and frailer than Loochie’s, on top of theirs.

“Friends,” Sunny said.

They stood this way, and remained quiet, for a little time.

“Let’s go home,” Loochie finally said with a smile.

But in a moment they heard the great, echoing yelps of the male Kroons again.

“They’re back,” Sunny said, looking at Alice. Strangely, Sunny didn’t sound scared. She sounded tired.

Alice stood straight. Alice pointed behind them, toward the Unisphere.

“We’ll have to hide,” Sunny said. “Let them pass by.”

Loochie looked up at the stainless steel sphere. She’d always been amazed by the size of it in Flushing Meadows Park, and it was just as impressive here. Twelve stories tall, twice as high as Loochie’s building. You could actually see through much of the sphere, which was just a series of crossing lines, like longitude and latitude lines, welded together into the shape of a globe. Only the continents were solid steel, sitting just inside the lines, matching their real positions on the earth. It was a beautiful construction, a work of art, and even here, at its cockeyed angle, the Unisphere made Loochie feel secure.

Alice picked Sunny up in one arm then she extended the other arm to Loochie. Loochie almost couldn’t do it, let herself get grabbed again, but then the squeals of the males came louder. Getting nearer. Loochie climbed into Alice’s embrace.

Then Alice ran toward the Unisphere. She hopped over a concrete barrier that surrounded the base of the sphere, landing in a pool of mucky, murky water. As Alice ran the pool got deeper, the water coming up to her ankles at first, but then her knees, even the middle of her thighs. Loochie gazed down into the water, which looked like sewer sludge. The smell was just as hideous. She pressed her face into Alice’s shoulder, preferring the scent of burning plastic to whatever might waft up from the pool. As Alice ran the sound of splashing water drowned out the other Kroons.

They reached the base of the Unisphere, a concrete pedestal. Alice stepped up onto it. She moved around the base until they were right below the continent of Australia. Sunny pulled at it. Australia swung open like a door. They scrambled inside the Unisphere.

Sunny was inside now, walking along a latitude line, one foot in front of the other, with confidence. Her arms hung out slightly for balance. She made it ten steps before she turned to find Loochie stuck right at the start.

“I was scared the first time, too,” Sunny said and she smiled as warmly as she had since they’d met in 6D. “You can do it.”

Loochie looked at the latitude line again. She had to be calm. She breathed quietly. But the barks of the males were so loud it seemed as if they were shouting right into Loochie’s ear and the tremors in her legs got stronger.

Sunny had made it all the way across, to the next continent. Africa. She called out. “I don’t want to rush you, Loochie, but Alice needs to get in, too.”

Loochie looked back. Alice stood outside the sphere, on the concrete pedestal base, her body still, but her forehead had gone reddish and sweaty. Alice seemed to be as scared of the other Kroons as she was.

Loochie decided she would walk across the line like Sunny had done. Follow Sunny’s example. Simple. No fuss. No hesitation. Sunny hadn’t even seemed to look down at her feet as she crossed. Loochie would do the same. That sewage water in the pool sloshed a foot below her. If she fell in there she’d probably drown or die of disgust, but she wouldn’t pay that any mind.

Just walk. Just walk. Just walk.

She made it three steps before she slipped.

She was falling before she could even scream. Sunny had to scream for her.

“Loochie!”

Loochie threw out her hands to try to regain balance but that only made things worse. She flailed. She could see the water underneath the Unisphere. It was so dark it looked green. She saw the gaps between the longitude and latitude lines, like the gaps in the grillwork of her security gate but magnified a million times, and she hurtled toward them. And now the smell from the water, pure muck, did reach her. A sharp ammonia scent and something worse along with it. It felt like she’d been punched. She was going to dive right into it.

But she stopped falling. Alice had grabbed her by the waist of her jeans.

Alice pulled her back in.

Alice walked across the latitude line with Loochie in one hand. Alice grunted with the exertion but she made it. All the way across. Where Sunny crouched. Alice reached Africa and set Loochie down. Sunny put her arms around Loochie and Loochie fell into the embrace. Sunny held Loochie tight.

“You’re with me,” Sunny told her. “I’m not leaving you.”

Those words made Loochie cry even harder than when she’d been alone in the Playground for Lost Children. But this time Loochie wept with relief and happiness. She was with Sunny. Sunny wasn’t leaving her. Loochie and Sunny and Alice sat inside the Unisphere. They rocked in the cradle of Africa and they were safe.