44

YOU’D THINK HE’D HAVE NOTICED.

“Hey! Don’t look so shocked!” Bitsie was saying to Mingo and Princess Peachy. I guess the blank expression on their faces could look like surprise if you really wanted it to. “You think you’re the only living puppets around?…Ha! Think again, folks!” He loved knowing stuff other people didn’t.

Bitsie did a little cha-cha-cha dance on top of the table. I should have just grabbed him and stuffed him back into my knapsack and hoped that Arnold was thinking about something else and hadn’t noticed anything unusual. But I didn’t. I was still trying to get my brain in gear.

Arnold, by this time, had, like, staggered back up onto his feet. His face was white and Caleb was still hanging upside down off one hand. Arnold gawked at Bitsie, closed his eyes, shook his head, then gawked at him again. It didn’t help. The puppet was still dancing and talking all by itself.

Arnold looked at me all crazy-eyed and went, “How do you do that?”

Bitsie, I guess, thought Arnold was talking to him. “The cha-cha?” he said. “Oh, please! It’s easy! It’s just one-two-cha-cha-cha. One-two-cha-cha-cha! C’mon! Just follow old Bitsie! That’s it! Right foot first, then left. Atta-boy! Put some hip movement into it, Arnie! Yeah!”

It was probably just because he was so shocked, but Arnold actually started following Bitsie’s cha-cha steps. He wasn’t bad either. He even seemed to catch on pretty fast to the turns and arm movements Bitsie’d thrown in. But I could tell by Arnold’s wide-open mouth and shifty eyes that he was still thinking of something else.

Bitsie, of course, didn’t notice anything. He was in puppet heaven!

“C’mon, you guys! Isn’t anyone else here going to dance?”

Bitsie gave Princess Peachy a friendly little nudge with his foot and she fell out of her chair and landed flat on her face.

That was the first time I ever saw Bitsie scared. He went, “Sorry, Arnie…I mean, Mr. van Gurp!” in this really chicken voice. He jumped down off the table, threw Princess Peachy into a fireman’s hold and got her back into her seat.

“How’s that, Highness? All better or what?” She didn’t answer. Bitsie looked back and forth between me, the Princess and Arnold. I thought he must have figured it out by now, and as crazy as this sounds, I was sort of hoping he’d know what to do. I sure didn’t.

Arnold, meanwhile, had pulled himself together. His face had gotten a little pink again and he sort of smiled. He was watching Bitsie’s every move, like he was looking for strings or something and not seeing any. He was getting ideas.

“Oh, don’t worry about her, Bitsie,” he said in this really fake voice. “The Princess was up very late last night!”

Oh, c’mon. How lame was that?

Not lame enough. Bitsie fell for it.

He went, “She was? Ha! I was up all night! I kid you not!

We ran away from the studio yesterday and had to camp out at the bus station.”

“Oh, really?” Arnold was very interested.

“Really,” Bitsie said. “I wish you’d been there. It was so cool. Disguises—the whole bit! It was like Spy International:

The Series. Only better. No one could find out who we were or where we were going. Ab-so-lute-ly top-secret.”

Arnold was practically rubbing his hands together the way the bad guys do in old cartoons.

“Really?” he said. “So no one knows you’re here…”

“Not a soul! As you can see, we made sure no one would ever be able to identify my lovely sidekick here as the plain, mousy Tel…”

“Bit-sieeee!” I screamed. I held the “-sie!” part for a while so my brain could figure out what to say next. “These cheap robots!” I kind of whispered to Arnold. “I had some trouble with his software program. Sometimes he says crazy things!”

Arnold would have gone for the computer story, I’m sure of it, if Bitsie had just kept his mouth shut.

“I say crazy things?!?” he went, all indignant. “Listen to her!”

Bitsie bent over and did that look-up-my-bum thing.

“Do you see a computer there?”

Arnold did a very thorough inspection. I guess he wanted to be extra sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.

“No, I can’t,” he said and looked at me in a creepy way.

“Nothing at all. Just the standard mecs.”

Bitsie snorted. “Ignore them! They’re just for show.”

Arnold smiled. A big, happy smile that made me feel sick to my stomach.

“So, you like to dance, do you, Bitsie?” he said.

“Ooooh, yes!” Bitsie did a little hip-hop rapper move with his hands and neck.

“Then you have to meet these other pals of mine!” Suddenly, Arnold was Mr. Hospitality again. “They’re just down the hall.”

Warning sirens went off in my head. I went to grab Bitsie and bolt with him, but Arnold was faster.

“Here, I’ll give you a ride!” he said and tossed Bitsie up onto his shoulder like he was the nicest dad at the class party or something. What could I do? I snatched my knapsack and followed. I tried to catch Bitsie’s eye, but when I did he just gave me a big thumbs-up sign.

Arnold took us down the hall. He unlocked a door at the end and showed us in. It was a tall room with one tiny window way up high, but it was full of puppets all stacked on top of each other like firewood. I figured Bitsie had to understand what was going on now. People don’t usually stack their “friends” in locked rooms. At least where I come from.

But I guess it’s like Grammie always says. We all believe what we want to believe.

Bitsie said, “Boy, these guys look like they were up late too!” and crawled down off Arnold’s shoulder. “I am going to like it here! Par-ty Central! This is definitely my kind of place!”

He noticed something and stopped yakking mid-boogie.

“Hey! Isn’t that Mavor the Mammoth?” He trotted over to a pile of fur in the far corner of the room. “From Prehistoric Preschool?…It is! Whaddya know!”

I heard a click. I turned around. Arnold had left the room. I heard another noise and knew right away what it was.

Arnold had locked the door.