Felix the Shark

  Contents

  Title Page

  Felix the Shark

  The Scoop

  You’re the Band

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  Dirk knocked over Jenny’s knight with his queen. “Check.” He shifted positions; he was getting stiff from sitting so long.

  Jenny sat on the other side of the low oak coffee table, her elbows propped on its surface, her square chin resting on her hands. She lifted a thick eyebrow and shrugged, then moved her own queen. “Check.”

  “How long are you two going to do that?” Jenny’s twin, Gordon, asked. He was lounging against a pile of red pillows on the big black sectional sofa behind Dirk. “You two are stuck in a loop. Isn’t there such a thing as a perpetual check?”

  Dirk flicked a look at his friend. “We’re not in perpetual check,” he snapped.

  “Actually, I think we are,” Jenny said.

  “We’re not,” Dirk said. “A perpetual check only happens when no one can deliver a checkmate. It’s not something that’s called after just a few checks.”

  “Yeah, well you’re close enough,” Gordon said. “Face it, the game’s a draw.”

  Dirk shook his head several times.

  For as long as he’d known Gordon, which was close to a decade now, Dirk had always found the guy’s endless confrontations annoying. Maybe if Dirk had a wider circle of friends, he would have left Gordon behind long ago. But he didn’t have that kind of choice.

  Dirk was part of a group of five friends who spent most of their off hours in the twins’ basement apartment. The twins and Dirk’s other two friends, Leo and Wyatt, were basically Dirk’s entire social life … and had been since junior high. They’d stuck together through high school and college, and now that they were supposedly adults, they were still together. Sometimes, Dirk had to admit that his small circle of friends and their evening rut was a little lame, but he couldn’t seem to change coming over here. He liked it; it was homey … and homey was something he’d never found elsewhere.

  Dirk glared at Gordon now. “The rules of chess don’t require a draw just because of a perpetual check. That only happens when there’s a threefold repetition or if the fifty-move rule is met.”

  “Okay, but you could agree to draw,” Gordon said.

  Dirk frowned. “We could, but giving up is a sign of weakness.”

  Gordon snorted. “Some would argue caring this much about a game is a sign of weakness.”

  “Chess is the sport of kings!” Dirk shouted. He sat up straight and crossed his arms. “It’s a game of mastery and intellect and creative thinking. In fact, I think children should be taught chess in school.”

  “Some are,” Jenny said. “I just read about a special ed program where they’re using chess to teach abstract reasoning and creative thinking. In fact, I’m putting together a proposal to take to the superintendent to see if he’ll let me start a similar program. The kids I teach could use the focus.”

  “Good for you,” Dirk said. As he often did, he lamented the fact that Jenny was just a friend. Back in high school, he’d tried to turn their friendship in to something more, but Jenny had gently told him she loved him like a brother and only like a brother. For the last seven years, he’d been telling himself she’d change her mind eventually. That was why he’d stayed here to go to the same college she went to, why he was writing for the local paper instead of becoming the travel writer he wanted to be.

  Jenny caught Dirk staring at her, and she gave him a raised-eyebrow look. He flushed and shifted his gaze to Gordon, returning to his argument.

  “Well, all kids should learn chess,” Dirk said. “There’s no debating it. The game is good for everyone.”

  “Everyone?” Gordon rolled his eyes. “Just because it’s your opinion that chess is great doesn’t mean everyone should have to do it.”

  “But I’m right,” Dirk said. “And I’m going to keep playing.” He looked at Jenny. “Okay, Jenny?”

  Jenny yawned. “Whatever. Do what you have to do.”

  Dirk chewed on his lower lip and started to reach out toward the chessboard. Before he could put his hand on the king, a red pillow landed on the board, scattering the few pieces that remained on it.

  Jenny didn’t move when the pillow hit. She just calmly watched the chess pieces fly.

  Dirk, however, clenched his fists, and whirled on Gordon, who was still on the sectional—one less pillow behind his head. “Dude! What’d you do that for?”

  “You were in perpetual check. I ended it.” Gordon ran a blocky hand through his curly auburn hair. He wore a tight gray T-shirt, which looked too small on his bulging, grease smeared biceps. Gordon was a mechanic, and he seemed to think being smeared with grease was cool. Dirk found the look desperate—it shouted, I’m cool! Notice me!

  “We were not in perpetual check,” Dirk ground out. He could feel the pulse throbbing at his temple. He hated things left unfinished. He liked things done, preferably triumphantly, but at least resolved. He couldn’t stand unanswered questions. Now, this game would never be done … unless he could re-create the board. He began gathering up the pieces.

  “Don’t even think about putting those back,” Gordon said quietly. “I’m tired of listening to you two check each other. Game’s over.”

  “Who made you king of the hill?” Dirk demanded.

  Gordon shrugged. “My house. My rules.”

  “Our house,” Jenny said.

  “You have a different opinion?” Gordon asked.

  “I thought we were going to play Caverns and Crocodiles,” Leo said before Jenny could answer her brother. He was sitting at the game table by the big stone fireplace at the end of the huge walk-out basement that Gordon and Jenny’s parents had turned in to an apartment for the twins. Neither Gordon nor Jenny earned enough to have their own place. Dirk barely did … though the converted garage apartment he rented was hardly better than living on the street. That was why he was over here all the time, even though Gordon got on his nerves.

  A fire crackled in the fireplace, and the room smelled faintly of wood smoke. Leo was bent over a notebook, a thick pencil gripped tightly in his left hand. Even from across the room, Dirk could hear the scratching sound of Leo’s pencil moving across the paper. “I created a new character, and—”

  The exterior door to the basement flew back and hit the wall with a bang. Wind whistled through the opening and tossed a dozen or so dry leaves on to the red-and-black linoleum that checkered the basement floor.

  “The food hero cometh,” Wyatt sang out, the usual big smile on his face. His brown eyes were bright with energy.

  Dirk thought Wyatt might be the happiest guy he’d ever met, although he had little reason for it. Wyatt was a computer nerd who worked at an electronics store, explaining technology to idiots. Dirk would never have the patience for that kind of job.

  “Actually, I think he arriveth,” Leo said without looking up from his notebook. He rubbed his right hand over the black bristles of his buzz cut, then cupped his equally bristly face. He did that a lot when he was thinking. “If he was cometh-ing, he wouldn’t already be hereth.”

  Wyatt carried a stack of three pizzas in one hand. Two plastic grocery bags hung heavy from the other. Plastic soda bottles peeked out through one of the bag openings, chip bags through the other.

  Dirk finished picking up the chess pieces the pillow had tossed around, but he didn’t put them back on the board. With Wyatt here now, they would probably play Caverns and Crocodiles after they ate. No more chess for tonight.

  That was okay. Honestly, Dirk had to admit he and Jenny were probably pretty close to a perpetual check. Gordon wasn’t wrong when he’d said they were stuck in a loop. It would have been co
ol, though, to see if one of them had found a way out of it—lured the other in to a false sense of inevitability only to claim victory at the last moment. It could have been a good story for Dirk’s next “Let’s Play Chess” column for the paper. But maybe, if Leo really had created a new character for their game, Dirk could talk about that in his next “Fantasy Games Enthusiasts” column. The last time he’d written that column, it had been about Caverns and Crocodiles, the tabletop role-playing game he and his friends had created based on an obscure novel called The Dogged Dogmatist, which Dirk had read and loved. The column had been surprisingly popular. Dirk had received dozens of emails and letters, asking all kinds of questions about the novel and how Dirk had come up with the twists and turns in his game. “I just have a knack for intuiting clues,” Dirk had told his fans.

  Dirk didn’t get a response like that to his writing very often. It had been pretty cool to find out people actually read what he wrote.

  The thing was that most of the time people tended to ignore Dirk, especially when he talked. He wasn’t sure why. Yeah, he knew he was kind of a dork—he was a little guy with big ears and hair that never would lay down right. He had a pronounced overbite that made him look a little like a chipmunk—a reality sadly worsened by the fact that his hair was chipmunk-colored. Not classic good looks, for sure. But even that couldn’t fully explain why people didn’t want to listen when he talked. He thought he had a perfectly fine voice, not squeaky or anything.

  Wyatt stepped over to the game table and set the pizzas in the middle of it. He looked down at Leo’s notebook. “Writing a new masterpiece?”

  Leo glanced at Wyatt. “New character for Caverns and Crocodiles.”

  Dirk got up and offered a hand to Jenny. She didn’t need it; she was a gymnast—she coached at the high school where she taught—and she could probably have done a backflip to her feet. Dirk, however, would take any excuse to hold her hand, even for a second. Jenny accepted his help. Her palms felt rough with calluses when he pulled her up. She dropped his hand, and Dirk headed toward the bar counter.

  The pizza smelled amazing: onion, green pepper, pepperoni … but he could also smell the ham and pineapple on the pizza Gordon and Jenny always got.

  Dirk reached behind the bar counter to grab a stack of napkins and a couple of baskets. He handed the baskets to Wyatt, who dumped in the chips. Dirk got the sodas out of the other grocery bag and grabbed a stack of plastic cups.

  This well-choreographed food routine was done with no talking. They’d been through it often enough that they needed no discussion of who was doing what.

  At the game table, Jenny was setting out paper and pencils for their game. Gordon was at the stereo setting up the night’s music.

  Leo was the only person without a task to fulfill. This was because no matter how many times you asked him to do something, he never got it in his head that he could do the same thing the next time.

  Leo was an amazing storyteller—he wrote and illustrated comic books. He’d already had one published, and it was doing so well that his future seemed pretty well set. Honestly, Dirk was more than a little envious of Leo’s success. It wasn’t like Leo’s life was great or anything—he was an awkward guy like Dirk, and he lived at home. Still, Dirk longed for the day he could write his own book instead of writing about other people’s books.

  There was something about all Dirk’s friends that kept them out of mainstream society, kept them from going out on their own and actually having a life worth talking about. Jenny threw all her energy in to the kids she taught and coached, so she didn’t have much time for anything else, even romance … although the romance thing was compounded by the fact that Jenny resembled her brother. On Gordon, squareness and toughness worked. He was short, but broad and muscular. He looked like a little commando. Jenny had pretty green eyes, but her muscular body mass and rough features made her unattractive to many guys. In high school, the kids had nicknamed her “Troll.” Dirk thought that was mean, and he hated it on her behalf, but she didn’t seem to care. Jenny kind of lived in her own world.

  In high school, Gordon had been the star of the wrestling team, but even so, he hadn’t been popular. Gordon had an obsession with conspiracy theories, so he was never destined to fit in. The first time the other jocks invited him to their table at lunch, he had droned on about how extraterrestrials had infiltrated the government, that a race of people lived in the center of the Earth, and that a good portion of society had been replaced by androids. He’d never gotten another invitation to sit with them. These days Gordon spent his time working on cars or hanging out in his apartment … though he was still seeking a willing audience for his theories.

  Wyatt was the most recent addition to Dirk’s group of friends, “recent” being a relative term. Dirk met Wyatt their senior year in high school. By then, Dirk was living in a foster home. His parents had passed away in a car accident when he was eight, and then his aunt—who’d taken him in—died of cancer when he was in high school. Wyatt’s family had moved in to the house next to Dirk’s foster home. Wyatt was really smart and had skipped two grades already. The school wanted to advance him even further, but his parents didn’t think he was ready socially … and they were right. When Wyatt tried college the following year, he hated it. He ended up dropping out and getting the job he had now. His parents were “very disappointed in him,” a fact that in no way quelled Wyatt’s daily delight.

  Others might see these quirks as too unique to meld well together, but in truth, they were the only reason why Dirk even had a group of friends. Dirk wouldn’t fit in with a group unless all its members had some quality that disqualified them from being “normal.” Not only did Dirk’s looks prevent him from wearing that label, his interests did as well. In addition to chess and fantasy games, Dirk was in to science—biology, chemistry, and physics; semiotics and puzzles; butterflies; sharks; and mysteries of all kinds. He was in clubs for those things, and in high school, he’d been on the debate team, too. His debate skills had no outlet now, except with his friends, and maybe in his newspaper columns.

  Tonight, Dirk was going to need those skills. He was hoping to talk his friends in to helping him with a project, one he’d been thinking about for a while now. He’d been dreaming about it, too. For some reason, he felt compelled to—

  “Earth to Dirk,” Wyatt said.

  “Huh?” Dirk looked around and noticed he was the only one not seated at the game table.

  “Are you and your napkins being antisocial tonight or are you going to join us?” Gordon asked.

  Dirk glanced down at the stack of napkins he still held. He laughed. “Sorry. I was thinking about a new club I want to start.”

  Gordon groaned. “Another one? Isn’t there a limit on how many clubs a person can be in? You know, like you can only own so many animals? Like that?”

  Dirk pulled out the last red-tweed-covered plush chair at the games table. He parceled out the napkins and accepted the slice of pizza Jenny offered him. “Thanks.”

  “I don’t think the government regulates how many interests a person can have,” Wyatt said. He smiled at Dirk. “I think it’s cool you’re in to so many things. You’re like a Renaissance Millennial.”

  “Doesn’t a Renaissance man, millennial or not, have to have talent or knowledge, not just interest?” Gordon asked.

  A chorus of “Oooh” rose up from the table.

  Jenny smacked her brother’s arm. “Don’t be mean.”

  Dirk’s face got hot, and he looked down at his pizza so no one would notice. Unfortunately, when his face got hot, his ears did, too. He was pretty sure they were bright red.

  Wyatt leaned over and nudged Dirk. “Don’t let him bother you. I don’t think someone who believes his boss is an android has a strong grasp on reality.”

  “I heard that,” Gordon said.

  Wyatt aimed his 300-watt smile at Gordon. “I figured you would. I was doing that thing … what’s it called?” He snapped his fingers.
“Talking smack. I was talking smack to you.”

  Gordon shook his head and took a bite of pizza. “Old Man Vance is definitely an android. You’ll see. Someday, one of his customers is going to short out his circuits. He’ll be all”—he froze his face in a contorted position—“and sparks will come out of his ears.”

  “You’re so beyond weird there’s no word for you,” Jenny said to her brother.

  “Thank you.”

  “Speaking of robots,” Dirk said, thrilled to have an unexpected opening for what he wanted to talk about tonight. “Do any of you remember going to a Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria when you were little?”

  “Freddy’s!” Wyatt shouted. “Yeah, we went to one when we lived in Iowa. I loved Chica so much my mom made my fifth birthday cake in the shape of one of Chica’s cupcakes.” He beamed at the memory.

  Leo, who had been scribbling in his notebook with one hand and eating chips with the other, looked up. “I’d forgotten all about Freddy’s. But yeah, now I remember. I loved the Freddy’s coloring books. That’s what started my drawing. Eventually, I got tired of coloring and just drew the figures. My favorite was Foxy. He was kind of the inspiration for Scythe-man.”

  Dirk thought about the purple-clad superhero in Leo’s comic. The character had a scythe attached to one arm. “Yeah, I can see that,” Dirk said.

  “I don’t remember coloring books,” Jenny said. “The Freddy’s that Gordon and I went to didn’t have any. But we loved the games, didn’t we, Gordon? Remember the climbing bars?”

  “How could I not?” Gordon said. “You’d swing straight up to the top like a monkey, and then Mom would yell at me for letting you go up there. Like I could have stopped you.”

  Jenny laughed. She took a swig of orange soda. “I loved the music, too, and the dancing. Gordon didn’t care about that, but he was fascinated by the animatronics.”

  “Obviously,” Wyatt said.

  Everyone nodded.

  Dirk watched Gordon’s gaze drift toward the fireplace. His brows came together, and Gordon looked back at his friends. “I wonder if the android takeover started at Freddy’s.”