York: The Shadow Cipher

CHAPTER SEVEN

CRICKET

The morning after Darnell Slant—or rather, his creepy minions—told the residents of 354 W. 73rd Street that they were officially homeless, six-year-old Zelda "Cricket" Moran woke up the same time she always did: 5:22 a.m. on the dot. And she did the same thing she did every single morning: she climbed out of bed and selected her outfit for the day. She was very particular about her outfits, which she matched very carefully to her moods. (This didn't always please the adults around her, especially on class picture days or family reunions when she insisted on wearing a skeleton costume or a gas mask.) That morning, she put on a pink tutu, striped tights, red sparkle high-tops, her favorite heart necklace—the one that the building had her—and a black T-shirt with a picture of a skull and crossbones and a snake head poking through the eye socket, because this was the most metal outfit she owned and she was feeling particularly metal.

Since no one else was up, she marched into the kitchen, poured herself a bowl of her favorite cereal— no milk, because milk made everything soggy and soggy was not metal—and ate in front of the TV. When she was done with her breakfast, she spent the next fifteen minutes practicing her crowd-surfing in the front foyer, which was a little difficult because she was by herself. After a while, Karl trundled into the room and tugged on her pigtails as if they were handlebars and he was trying to steer her. He was always trying to steer her. Stop trying to steer, Karl! Or else he was spinning the lock on the pantry door, scrambling to get at the Cheez Doodles. He loved Cheez Doodles.

Cricket got up and unlocked the pantry—silly Karl, the combination was 1, 2, 3—and grabbed a handful of Cheez Doodles. Karl ate them while Cricket put on his harness. Then she walked him around the apartment. Well, Cricket walked. Karl was on his back with his legs in the air, getting dragged along. He looked a little bit dead. That was pretty metal.

Her mom finally shuffled out into the living room.

"Cricket, please don't drag your raccoon around like that. You know how dirty he gets."

"He likes it, don't you, Karl?"

Karl scrubbed the cheese from his masked face with his tiny hands but didn't try to get up.

"Right," said Cricket's mom. Her hair was mashed down on one side of her face and her eyes were blood-shot. It wasn't a good look for her, but it was also too early in the morning for Cricket's UNBRIDLED HON-ESTY. At least, that was what her dad would have said. The first time he said it, she had to look in her special word book for the meaning of unbridled. Then she spent the next two weeks galloping around like a horse.

"Who are you today?" her mom asked. "Isn't it obvious?"

"Not to anyone over the age of seven," her mother said.

"I'm a ballerina-spy-deathmetalhead."

"Lovely," said her mother, walking into the kitchen area. She opened one cabinet after another, using bad words under her breath. Cricket had looked up some of those bad words in her special word book. She wondered if her mom knew what the words meant. She thought not.

Cricket said, "If you're looking for the coffee, I used it for my experiments.

Her mom's head swiveled toward Cricket like a bobble toy. "Experiments?"

"I was a supermodel-scientist-archvillian yesterday, remember?"

Her mother closed the cabinets, slumped at the kitchen table. "It should be a crime to mess with a woman's coffee."

"Are you going to have me arrested?" said Cricket. "Of course not."

"Call Detective Biedermann! I would like to be arrested!"