The Somebodies (10 page)

WHEN HOWARD AND FERN HAD REACHED THE
middle of the bustling lobby, they stopped and let it all swirl around them: the massive glittering chandelier; the small orchestra in one corner playing something antique and lilting; the fountain bubbling in the middle of the floor; plush golden overstuffed chairs beneath huge paintings of men and women in white wigs, holding pug-faced doggies; a row of revolving doors in constant twirl at the front; a fleet of elevators
bing
ing wildly on one wall; a bank of fast-talking clerks—they were wearing powdered wigs too, as were the flying monkeys. (The wrestler woman had been telling the
truth about them after all.) The monkeys scooped up suitcases in their clawed feet and flapped overhead and up the large spiral staircases.

Some very elegant Anybodies sipped wine by the fountain, picking at the food display—chocolate-shellacked fruit, plus candies and grapes and cheeses. Other Anybodies, tourists, clutched cameras and gaped. A few were whispering and pointing at a man with dark hair, shuffling through the lobby with some children in tow. One of the kids was complaining about an itchy tag, and so the man stopped. He pulled the kid’s tag out of his shirt. His hands suddenly turned into a complicated instrument filled with sharp pointy knives and scissory things. He quickly snipped the child’s shirt tag. His hand went back to normal. A tourist waved to him excitedly, and a purple top hat appeared on the man’s head. He tipped it. The purple hat disappeared, and he scurried out of the lobby with his kids.

“That was Johnny Depp,” Fern whispered to Howard.

“Johnny who?”

“The famous actor!”

“Don’t know him!”

Fern didn’t take the time to explain. There was too much to see. Fern was drawn to the huge map on the wall opposite the food display. The map was multilayered:
New York City above, and the city beneath the city below. Fern spotted the castle right off. It was located beneath an open field at Central Park. She touched the spire and the spot in Central Park where, at this very moment, Fern thought, a family might have just spread out a blanket for a picnic.

“I’m hungry,” Howard said, pulling Fern toward the heaps of delicacies. “Look at it all!”

Fern hadn’t realized how hungry she was. She and Howard stood there for a moment, just taking in the beautiful colors, the scents—everything polished in either sugar or chocolate or a colored glaze. Even the ham was chocolate frosted.

Fern looked closely, taking a deep breath.

Howard grabbed a plate and started filling it. “One for you, two for me.” He was scooping as many chocolate-covered things as possible from the enormous mountain of goodies.

Just as Fern was about to take a bite, a couple leaned in close to her. “Oh, hello! So great to see you here,” the woman whispered.

“Yes, looking forward to your joining,” the man said.

They were a well-groomed couple who smelled particularly sweet and fruity. They had tidy haircuts and broad smiles.

“You know not to go to the speech, don’t you?” the
woman said. “It’s for the others. The lesser masses.”

“The lesser masses?”

The woman flitted her hand in the air. “You know, those who are clearly
not
Somebodies. Let them be hypnotized to think less of themselves! Not us. We’re ready to go up! Aren’t we?” The woman nodded her tidy haircut at Howard, who was standing nearby, trying to pretend he wasn’t paying attention. Fern now saw both the Triple S logos on their blazers.

“Up?” Fern asked.

“Yes, yes! Straight up!” She pointed to the ceiling.

“Congratulations on your selection into the society!” the man said, his smile aglow. “Ubuleen is pleased, I’m sure of it! You’ll be a Somebody soon. Like us!”

A Somebody? She thought back to Lucess Brine in Mrs. Fluggery’s class, and how she used to call her a nobody, saying,
Don’t you wish you were a somebody?
Fern
had
wanted to be a somebody—how happy she’d been about the invitation! But now, she
didn’t
want to be a somebody—not like these Somebodies. What was the Triple S exactly, and did they really know Ubuleen Heet? Did they know she was the Blue Queen? And what could they possibly mean by
We’re ready to go up
? Fern wanted to tell the couple that they might
think
they were friends with Ubuleen Heet, but she didn’t have friends. She didn’t believe in it. Or were they just as evil
as she was? Fern decided not to ask any questions, though. She didn’t want to align herself with the Triple S and Ubuleen Heet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, trying to sound polite.

The couple nodded. “That’s right,” the woman said. “Of course not!”

“Hush, hush,” said the man, laughing as if Fern had told a joke, and they waltzed off into a group of Somebodies in Triple S blazers.

“Do you know them?” Howard asked.

“The Secret Society,” Fern muttered, as one of the women at the front desk nodded at her knowingly, the
“S’s” on her blazer shrunken to a small emblem that was hardly visible. “They’re after me.”

Just then the chandelier overhead flickered. All the chattering Anybodies hushed, overly ripe with joy. Two more women with Triple S blazers raised their fingers to their lips and shushed right at Fern, wearing their smiles. Even the orchestra fell silent—was the clarinetist wearing a Triple S blazer? Fern felt panicked. Was she just imagining that Somebodies were everywhere now?

The silver fork in Howard’s hand disappeared, and the mountain of goodies shrank into a row of blue plates. On each plate was a small dollop of some orange meat with a zigzag of white sauce on top.

“Oooh! Ahhh!” the Anybodies sighed joyfully.

“What happened?” Fern asked.

“The food shrank!” Howard said, staring at his plate.

“Oh, how very modern!” a woman next to them shrieked.

Fern and Howard looked around the lobby. Fern didn’t have time to look for Triple S blazers for the moment, because everything was changing, twisting, churning, paling and brightening, too. The change was sweeping in waves from one side of the room to the other. The food and lighting went in the first wave. The chandelier became a sculpture of fluorescent tubing.

“This is what I’ve read about!” Fern said. “This is Fattler’s genius—an ever-changing hotel! Isn’t it…amazing!”

Across the room a man shouted. A woman screamed and pointed. Fern looked at the spot of the commotion. She saw the miniature pony in full-speed gallop, hurtling in their direction.

“Look!” Fern said. “He’s back!”

Because of the pony, Fern and Howard weren’t prepared for the wave that followed—the flooring, from marble to metallic tiles. The Anybodies all seemed to know to step over the new flooring as it washed past. Even the pony leaped at the right moment. Fern was trying to reach for the pony, though, and Howard was trying to balance his food. They were pitched up into the air by the new flooring. They fell hard. Fern and Howard exchanged a look of pure astonishment. They both glanced over their shoulders, but the pony was gone. Fern patted her pockets. The apples and the jars of egg-souls were safe. The next wave was coming. They could feel it in the air. They scrambled quickly to their feet.

This wave turned the paintings of people in wigs holding pugs into rows of white canvases, each entitled
Pink Canvas
. The orchestra was replaced by a performance artist—a woman cutting the hair off a Barbie
doll. The flying monkeys no longer had white wigs. They had spiked Mohawks. A final wave whittled the overstuffed chairs into sleek cushioned planks, and the fountain disappeared completely. In its place was a spotlight on nothing.

Fern was stunned. “It’s all changed!” she said. “Transformed!”

“Into what?” Howard said, looking down at the squares of orange meat. “Can they change it back?”

Howard popped a bunch of the orange meat squares into his mouth, even though it was clearly the kind of thing you weren’t supposed to eat in bulk. “Not bad,” he said. “I mean, it’s not chocolate-covered ham, but it’s not bad.”

“Pretty good, I’d say.” It was a man wearing a pair of bifocals, and a Triple S blazer. “Hello there, Fern,” he whispered, and then sauntered off.

“Do you know him?” Howard asked.

Fern shook her head.

As the commotion from the lobby’s transformation settled, there was a new commotion on the second floor, where the two winding staircases met in the middle. Everyone was suddenly twisting to get a look.

“Good day!” The voice boomed like it was being blasted out of department store speakers throughout the lobby. But actually, it came from one spot, a large
mouth—big as the kind you’d find on a grouper, which is a kind of fish. The mouth was located just below a waxy blond moustache and a bobble of a nose—a nose that on this large flushed face seemed more decorative than something you’d actually use for breathing. The man was rosy and jolly and jowly and robust. He was all these things at once; he was a perfect example of a rosejolly-jowlybust. Or almost. There was something skittish in his eyes, a watery, nearly teary nervousness. But he still spoke with great force. “So wonderful to see you all here today at Willy Fattler’s Underground Hotel!”

Fern knew, straightaway, that he was Willy Fattler. She’d seen pictures of him in
The Art of Being Anybody
, Chapter 16. There were photos of him and his father, also named Willy Fattler, and his grandfather, also named Willy Fattler, and his great-grandfather, also named, you guessed it, Willy Fattler. He was just as Fern had pictured him: big and bellowing, in the center of it all.

“Welcome to the grand extravaganza! Where you will find that you
can
please everyone,
if
you offer enough choices!” He turned then with a majestic flourish. “May I introduce Ubuleen Heet. The hottest new motivational speaker! She will, no doubt, change our lives!”

Ubuleen strode forward and waved. Fern could see Lucess standing behind her. Ubuleen was stroking the
fur of her coat, which was not live raccoons now at all, just a fur coat.

“Please come and hear her speak later today in the amphitheater, the largest Anybodies amphitheater known to Anybodies worldwide, where guests buy tickets to the grand imagination! Enjoy your stay at Willy Fattler’s Underground Hotel,” he bellowed. And then he added in an urgent whisper, as if he couldn’t stop himself even though he wanted to, “Now offering day spa specials at a special rate, perfect for a weekend getaway.”

What did that have to do with anything? Fern had to talk to him, but he was surrounded by Anybodies in Triple S blazers. Even as she tried to push her way through the crowd, Fattler backed away from the railing, took Ubuleen by the arm, and they disappeared through a pair of tall mirrored doors. Just then the fluorescent tubing overhead flickered into a sagging, rusty lamp. The food swelled into pots of all things meaty and beany.

“We’ve got to follow Fattler,” Fern said.

Fern turned to Howard. “Watch out for the—” Fern grabbed Howard’s arm, and they jumped together as the metallic tiles flapped and changed into worn wood.

The woman giving Barbie doll haircuts morphed into a player piano with a loud, warped, tinkling sound. The
paintings repainted themselves into portraits of horses and stern-faced outlaws. The folks at the check-in counter became surly. The women clerks wore old-fashioned dresses and the men ten-gallon hats. They slapped down old keys, telling guests that they weren’t allowed to shoot on the premises. Two of the flying monkeys, dressed in dusty vests and worn denim, started a brawl, and the concierge had to break it up. The concierge threw out a rabble-rousing monkey through the saloon doors that had replaced the revolving doors.

Fattler was escorting Ubuleen and Lucess from the lobby. A man in saggy pants, wearing a holster with pistols in it, was breaking up the crowd for them. “Walk this way, Ubuleen, Lucess!”

The people around Fern were whispering about Ubuleen. “It’s her!”

Howard looked down at what he was holding: a tin cup of something beany. “I don’t really like beans,” he said.

Howard pulled out one of his bottles of Correct-O-Cure and sprayed the cupful of beans. The spray stunk like burnt plastic.

“What are you doing?” Fern asked. “We need to get to Fattler!”

“Trying to get these beans to turn back into chocolate. That’s what, of course!”

“It’s a scam,” Fern said. “Let’s go!”

“Don’t be like that, Fern.” He shook the bottle again and sprayed, coughing because of the burnt plastic stink. The beans stayed beans.

Fern shrugged. “Give up,” she said.

Howard sighed heavily, shoving the half-empty bottle back into his pocket with the other minibottle. “You know, everyone has to have faith in something!”

“Let’s go,” she said, rushing past a few beaming Somebodies. “We’ve got to keep Fattler in sight! We have to warn him!” Howard wasn’t budging. Fern grabbed his arm. “Come on,” she said, but he was frozen to the spot.

Howard had made his own discovery. His face had gone slack. He could barely speak. He tugged on Fern’s sleeve. “Dorathea,” he said, “and the Bone!” Howard pointed to the other side of the lobby. The Bone had flyers in his hands. Fern could see that the flyers had Howard’s and Fern’s pictures on them—their awful school pictures.
Does everyone have to use those?
Fern thought.