A voice yelled in her ear. "Is me! Shiraz. Come I see perfect!"
As Tookie and Shiraz leave, the SMIZE flutters away. They meet up with the other two and head for the emergency ZipZap, heading towards the stadium. Tookie silently says goodbye to the people she cares about at Modelland (Kamalini, Guru Lauro, Dr. Erica and Bravo).
They arrive at the emergency ZipZap which is red, with jagged teeth. It's hot to the touch and there's red liquid inside and screams echoing from it.
Suddenly, the path leveled off. Tookie saw a fork straight ahead.
Normally it's best to tell your readers if a previously pitch-black area becomes lighted. Otherwise you just confuse them.
Tookie yells that she thinks they should go left. Shiraz and Dylan say right, and Piper says left. They go right, and they see light at the end of the tunnel.
They plop down in some red mud, and realize they're in the Diabolical Divide. Tookie yanks them free of the mud. Just as they're about to jump back into the ZipZap four fireballs head towards them.
Hm. Four fireballs that appear just as Tookie and the Unicas go back into a ZipZap? Any relation to the four fireballs that went after Myrracle, Creamy and Hunchy?
The girls jump back into the ZipZap . . . which makes the worries about going in the wrong fork entirely pointless, if you can just jump back inside and take the correct fork. Unless everyone else who'd gone through previously had been incinerated before they could get back in.
They land in a fountain in LaDorno. Dylan says that Tookie was right, and that they should have taken the left fork. Uh, Dylan? Piper said that, too. And it was pure chance that Tookie was right.
After the girls hug, they realize that they now have to go their separate ways and return to their homes.
Dylan looks up and spots Ci~L's pouch in the sky. The girls run, pursued by Ci~L. They find an open manhole cover and go down the ladder, running through the tunnels.
Piper is somehow able to tell that they're heading north by northeast, and tells them to take the next ladder they find. I'm more than a little skeptical that Piper would be able to navigate the city perfectly, considering that - as far as we know - she's never been there before. It would be like dropping me down in the middle of the Paris sewer system and me somehow navigating it perfectly.
They emerge in the middle of the town square where T-DOD was held. (Apparently, this is the manhole that several girls fell down during T-DOD.) The square is completely deserted.
They hear a scratching sound from a nearby trashcan.
It's Lizzie. They hug and then do their weird little greeting from earlier in the book. The Unicas watch them, not sure what's going on.
Lizzie tells Tookie that she's been waiting in the square every day since Tookie left. Not only did she forgive Tookie almost instantly, she obsessively waited where Tookie had left from. Even though becoming an Intoxibella requires at least two years.
Either Lizzie is a saint, or she's so desperately lonely that she's clinging to the faint hope that her only friend will return to her after abandoning her. It's depressing either way.
"I'm sorry," Tookie said. Her worst fear had come true—Lizzie had seen her take the Scout's hand. She remembered how Lizzie had stood in her driveway the morning of T-DOD. How she'd let out that scream, thinking Tookie had abandoned her. "I wanted to escape with you, Lizzie. But they threw me into the car—I was stuck!"
ಠ_ಠ
So her apology is essentially "I'm sorry, it wasn't my fault!" Please tell me Lizzie calls her out on this.
I take it back. This reaction is even better. It's an epic guilt trip. Tookie doesn't admit to the fact that Lizzie isn't the reason she came back, and tells Lizzie that she's ready for Exodus that moment. Tookie introduces Lizzie to the Unicas.
Lizzie lets loose a shriek, saying that "they" are coming for her. Ci~L then appears in her flying pouch.
Maybe standing out in the open in the middle of the abandoned square during your reunion wasn't such a bright idea.
Lizzie bolts, and Tookie tries to follow her. The Unicas take off after the two. Tookie nearly loses track of Lizzie and then realizes that the Unicas are no longer behind her.
Out of nowhere, a bus from Peppertown appears. The Unicas are inside. Apparently, the bus driver is from the same place as Shiraz (and speaks in broken English as well).
In the less than a page since Tookie ran after Lizzie, the Unicas managed to find the bus driver, Shiraz told him all about their problem and convinced him to help Tookie.
Can we please have the protagonists actually work for their successes? Just once?
Wait . . . so Shiraz brainwashed him into helping them? And no one is going to call her out on this? Just because she's one of the protagonist doesn't mean that what she does is always right.
They see Ci~L soaring through the sky. Then they see a second Ci~L and a third. Ci~L is using her power of Multiplicity to chase them.
The Ci~Ls chases the bus for a bit while the girls panic. Tookie spots Lizzie out the windshield, and yells at her to stay where she is.
Okay, they're on a speeding bus right now. Taking time out for this breaks the flow of the action and seems utterly unrealistic given how quickly they should have passed by Lizzie. This cutting scene is just so out of place that it's almost comical, which I'm sure is not what Tyra was going for.
The bus goes through an alley, and the driver is forced to slam on his brakes to avoid hitting a shopkeeper that had just exited his store.
And then everything went black.
Tookie is constantly lying and hiding the truth, even when there's no good reason for her to do so. I would love to see her actually be forced to face the consequences for her deceptions. It would be an excellent vehicle for character growth. But with only 10 chapters left, I doubt this is going to happen.
Then again, this is planned on being a trilogy, so maybe the character development is being saved for the next two books. Maybe.
Comments
