Felix Yz Read online

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2017

  Copyright © 2017 by Lisa Bunker

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  Ebook ISBN: 9780425288528

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Bunker, Lisa, author.

  Title: Felix Yz / Lisa Bunker.

  Description: New York : Viking, [2017]. | Summary: Thirteen-year-old Felix Yz

  chronicles the final month before an experimental procedure meant to

  separate him from the fourth-dimensional creature, Zyx, with whom he was accidentally fused as a young child.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016029068 | ISBN 9780425288504 (hardback)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Schools—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | People with

  disabilities—Fiction. | Extraterrestrial beings—Fiction. |

  Blogs—Fiction. | Science fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Family /

  Alternative Family. | JUVENILE FICTION / Science Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B864 Fel 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016029068

  Book design by Jim Hoover

  Version_1

  For Cy and Sam, with love.

  Thank you, Bairns, for words and art!

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  29 Days to Go

  28 Days to Go

  27 Days to Go

  26 Days to Go

  25 Days to Go

  24 Days to Go

  23 Days to Go

  22 Days to Go

  21 Days to Go

  20 Days to Go

  19 Days to Go

  18 Days to Go

  17 Days to Go

  16 Days to Go

  15 Days to Go

  14 Days to Go

  13 Days to Go

  12 Days to Go

  11 Days to Go

  10 Days to Go

  Still 10 Days to Go

  9 Days to Go

  8 Days to Go

  6 Days to Go

  5 Days to Go

  4 Days to Go

  Still 4 Days to Go

  3 Days to Go

  Still 3 Days to Go

  2 Days to Go

  Still 2 Days to Go

  1 Day to Go

  ZeroDay

  ZeroMoment

  29 Days Ago

  29 Days to Go

  I almost talked to Hector today.

  How it happened was, as soon as I got off the bus Tim the Bore popped up like he was waiting for me. I can’t remember a time when Tim was not picking on me. He is such a jerk. Anyway, nothing new today, same old joke. “Hey, Felix,” he says. “Guh-guh-guh-guess what?” Making fun of how Zyx makes it hard for me to talk. So incredibly clever, he is. As usual I don’t answer, but that never stops him. “Time for the word of the day,” he says. “What do you think? Will the streak continue? Let’s find out… .” He’s run-hopping along next to me, and I just stare at the ground and keep walking. “The word of the day is, Felix Yz a … retard!” Which is supposed to be funny because my last name sounds like “is.” Get it? Then he does a leap with his arms in the air and screams, “Yes! The streak continues!”

  Like I said, usually I don’t respond, but this time maybe I’m feeling a little more stressy than usual on account of how hard it has been getting to move in the morning and ZeroDay finally being set, because all of a sudden I feel this hot squirt in my stomach and I make a fist. I only do it for a second before uncurling my hand again, but he still goes nuts. “What? What’s that?” he shouts, shoving me and punching my shoulder. I start shaking and turn to face him, but before I can do anything else he pushes me into the janitor’s closet and slams the door. I crash into the big square sink and fall over against the rolling bucket and lie there for a second, feeling swoopy.

  Once the floor stops pitching around I get up and try to open the door. It pushes out a little and then slams back, and I hear Tim’s stupid laugh and figure out from the foot shadows under the crack that he and one of his stupid friends must be holding the door shut. I try again and they push back so hard they make it bang. I still feel dizzy, so I slide down and sit leaning against the door, letting my body curl naturally into the Pose, the way it always wants to these days. The wood feels cool against the side of my head. They start whisper-calling through the door, but I can’t hear what they’re saying and I don’t care.

  I start to think maybe I’ll take a nap or something when I hear high heels and a teacher’s voice. Tim answers, and even through the door I can hear the fakey apologizing tone in his voice. The teacher speaks again and sneakers go away, squeaking hard on purpose, and then the door opens and Mrs. O is there.

  Mrs. O is OK, I guess. She talks to me like I’m eight years old, but then she talks to all the other kids the same way, so maybe it’s not because she thinks I’m stupid. Maybe it’s because she always says things right out of the Positive Things for Teachers to Say Handbook. “Felix,” she says, in her very concerned voice. “Are you all right?” But I hardly hear her, because Hector is standing right behind her.

  OK, do I really have to explain about Hector? Because it’s complicated and I don’t actually know what I’m explaining and I don’t want to.

  do what you want do not do what you do not want

  Great, Zyx, that’s such a big help.

  sarcasm question mark

  No, you think?

  sarc Yes, sarcasm. Gah. Anyway, I think I do have to explain, because that was my idea with this secret blog or e-journal or whatever, that I am telling everything from scratch to a total stranger, so that if ZeroDay goes, um … let’s just say, if I don’t happen to be around later, people will have everything they need to understand. So. Explaining Hector.

  felix explain question mark

  I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Uh.

  Yeah, you know what? I’m done for today.

  zyx love felix

  You love everybody and everything. Or so you keep saying. But, yeah, thanks.

  welcome

  Twenty-nine days until ZeroDay. I’m counting down. Twenty-nine days to go.

  28 Days to Go

  I just read through what I wrote last night, and I realized that if someone reads this who doesn’t know me, which is the whole idea, then there are a bunch of things that would be hard to understand, like how a lot of the time I have trouble talking, and the part about it getting hard to move in the morning, and ZeroDay, and the Pose, and the words in italics. Well, all of these things have one reason behind them, which is that when I was little there was an accident with a secret machine my dad was working on, and I got fused at the atomic level with a hyperintelligent being from the fourth dimension. Zyx, say hello.

  why say hello question mark

  If you understood humans better it would be easy to explain, but you don’t, so it’s not. Could you just do it, please?

  hello

  Thank you. As you can see, Zyx communicates by using my fingers to type, but has never figured out about shift keys or punctuation. Or italics for that matter. Those I go back and put in after so you can tell who is who.

  So that’s Zyx (rhymes with “six,” i
n case you were wondering), and the Pose is the exact position I was in when the accident happened. That was when I was three, so I hardly remember anything about it, but from what they tell me, Dad had me at the lab, babysitting while he worked. There were these two big spheres, and the idea of the experiment was to make a tiny crystal marble disappear from one of the spheres, pass through the fourth dimension (the actual space kind of fourth dimension, not time), and appear instantly in the other sphere, and what happened was, the machine went off before it was supposed to. Maybe Dad got a little excited or something. Mom says he could be like that—overeager is the word she used. In any case, the spheres were not sealed up the way they were supposed to be, and at that moment they figure I was losing my balance and falling on my butt, because in the Pose I’m half curled between standing and sitting, with my right arm sticking out to the side and my neck bent. Which is why I walk hunched over, and why I sleep on a recliner instead of a bed. And being fused with Zyx also makes it hard for me to talk most of the time, which is why Tim came up with the R-word for his little game. Most people think I’m mentally disabled, but I’m not. Just stuck together with an alien.

  What else? ZeroDay, right. That’s when the Procedure is going to happen, which means they are going to try to separate me and Zyx again. Dr. Yoon is worried that if we stay fused together for too long it might be bad for me, for both of us. None of this has ever happened before, so nobody really knows for sure, but it seems like, um … like … I don’t want to say it, but I guess I have to. It seems like if we stay fused together for too long, there’s a chance we might both die.

  yes no

  I just had to go into the bathroom for a minute and close the door. That was no fun to type.

  no yes

  Yeah, I see you there being all mystical, but, later. There’s a chance the Procedure might kill us too, but they think the chance of that happening is much lower, so it seems best to do it. And that’s without them knowing about how sometimes these days I feel frozen up in the morning, because I haven’t told anyone, so when Mom said they wanted to set a date, I said OK.

  How can I be thinking about stuff like this? I’m not even old enough to get my own phone yet, according to the ridiculous Mom rules in this house. And I only just got started on Jarq. I’m not nearly ready to start drawing it, not for real. How can I plan my comic about the world I’m building when my life might be about to end? Excuse me. Bathroom again.

  OK, I’m back. And I think I’ve explained everything. So, Hector.

  Um.

  Gah, OK, fine. Hector is this boy at school. He’s the same age as me—we’re both in eighth grade—and he’s one of the only students in the whole school who ever talks to me like I’m not stupid. And he laughed once when I made a joke. Laughed at the joke, I mean, not at me. And he’s wicked cute and I, you know, kinda like him, so when I see him I feel like my head is suddenly full of so much blood I can’t hear and I think of all these bits of things but nothing whole to say and feel like the most idiotic person on the whole planet Earth.

  felix heart glow when hector look

  It does not. Mind your own fourth-dimensional business.

  …

  Thank you. (The three dots, btw, that’s Zyx’s way of saying “no comment.”) So, ANYWAY, back to what happened yesterday with Tim the Bore, et cetera, Hector is there behind Mrs. O. I guess he was just walking by, and there are a couple of other kids too, staring at me, but Hector isn’t staring, he’s looking concerned, and as I get to my feet he does big eyes at me and touches the side of his face with his hand. It’s a mirror image of where my head hurts from hitting the sink, so I touch and feel the stickiness of blood. I do NOT want to go to the nurse and have there be this big fuss, so I keep my face turned away from Mrs. O and say, “I’m fine,” trying to make it sound true. “Are you sure?” she says, and she reaches to turn me toward her, but I pull away, and then before she can try again, Ms. C comes up.

  Oh, great, I think, why not just get the whole school out here, but I’m also glad to see her, because if Hector is one of the students who treats me the closest to normal, Ms. C is one of the teachers who does. When she looks at me I see—OK, this is going to sound kinda gross, but I don’t mean it that way—I see her brain behind her eyes, looking in through my eyes to my brain, so there’s this brain-to-brain connection. “Felix,” she says, “are you all right?” “Yes,” I say, tired of repeating myself, and wishing they would all go away except Hector, because the bell is going to ring any second and right at this moment I feel like I could actually almost talk to him. And just as I think that, the bell rings.

  Mrs. O seems to make up her mind. “Well, all right, if you’re sure,” she says, already looking back over her shoulder as she click-clacks away on her high heels. I shift my feet with the idea of maybe possibly taking a step toward Hector, but then Ms. C takes my arm. She turns me and looks at the side of my head and makes a “tch” noise. “Felix, you should go to the nurse,” she says. “Or at least wash that off before you go to class.”

  “OK, Ms. C,” I say. Hector is edging away. Now I just want to leave.

  “And, Felix, one more thing,” she says. “I have something I want to speak with you about. Would you come to my room after school, please?”

  “OK, Ms. C,” I say again, feeling like a marionette, head on a string, up down up down. She lets me go and I stumble into the bathroom, wash the cut, and then go to math. I’m still feeling queasy from hitting the sink, plus now I’m wondering what kind of trouble I am in. All I can think of is that she’s been chosen to tell me that all my teachers are annoyed about how I’m always drawing in class. But I have to, because I feel like I’m never going to get the character design right for Jarq unless I work on it all the time.

  Speaking of trouble, I guess Tim gets into it, because after third period he walks past me in the hall with his face all glowery and his shoulders hunched, and when he sees me he gives me a look like his eyes are the twin holes in the end of a shotgun. The look says as plainly as saying the words, “I am going to KILL you.” Great. I wish he would die and leave me alone.

  27 Days to Go

  I didn’t end up going to Ms. C’s room yesterday because Mom was picking me up right after school, but I met her in the hall again today and she asked me again to come see her. Since she had now asked me twice I figured I had to go, so after last bell I went to her room.

  I had Ms. C for English last year. I go to regular classes and I do all right, but most of the teachers skip over me after the first few days because of how Zyx makes me talk and move. Not Ms. C. She never stopped calling on me the whole year long. She also gave me mostly good grades, and when she didn’t, I understood why. She was nice to me. Still, she’s a teacher, and if you are due for trouble, she has no trouble dishing it out.

  Zyx, will you help me remember? There was a lot of talk. Can you do the thing where I kinda half give you control of my fingers, and you do that word-for-word recall that you do?

  yes

  Cool, thanks.

  welcome

  So I knock on the open door and she looks up from her desk and says, “Oh, good, please come in, Felix,” which sounds promising. I shuffle up to her desk and stand there with my eyes down. We are the only two people in the room. “How’s your head?” she asks.

  I turn my face to show her. It really was just a scratch, already healing over. “Fine,” I say.

  “Good.” There’s a little pause. “Felix, I asked you to come see me because last Friday, Mr. M showed me a book report you turned in to him last week. Do you know the one I mean?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I say. I had been wondering about that, because he handed them back but didn’t give me mine, and I wanted to see what grade I got. It was about that story with Meg and Charles Wallace and the Echthroi. It’s the first book we’ve read all year that I liked, so it’s the first book report I tried to do a good job on.

  “He asked me if …” She pauses, and I glance up.
She looks … embarrassed? That seems to be how she’s looking, but I can’t think why. “He asked me if I thought, based on having had you in my class last year, that you actually wrote it. He thought maybe you had … gotten it from somewhere.” I keep my face down. Mr. M is definitely one of the teachers who treat me like I’m stupid.

  “Do you know what I told him?”

  “No.”

  “I told him that I was certain you had written it, and that I thought it was well written. I told him I was sure because I recognized your voice.”

  Now I really look up, because, A, it sounds like I might not be in trouble after all, and, B, I don’t know what she means about my voice.

  “I don’t know if you realize it, Felix,” she says, “but you have a strong writing voice. You write clearly, and you have good ideas and you express them in a way that makes me feel like a particular person is speaking to me, and you use solid, concrete details that make what you’re saying come alive. That’s what I mean by a strong writing voice.”

  I stand there breathing for a moment and then say, “OK?”

  She holds out a piece of paper. “This is an entry form for the annual Littlefield School District essay contest,” she says. “There are prizes for the best essays in each age group. How old are you?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “Then you are in the third bracket from the top, and the prize in that bracket is”—she looks at the paper—“two hundred dollars. The deadline is only two weeks from now, but that’s enough time to do a good job if you get started right away. I think you should enter. I think you are a good writer, and I think you could win.”

  My hand reaches out by itself and takes the paper. “OK, thank you,” I say, like a computerized voice, not knowing what to think. Then I turn around and walk out, still not knowing what to think, and now I’m home, and I STILL don’t know what to think.