This is Part 2 of a three-part serialization. Read Part 1.
The detective shuffled down the hall, trying to figure out what the hell he was even doing. Why had he got mixed up in this crazy case? Was it just for the Batman stickers? Or was it something else?
There was something about that screwy kid. The world had done her rotten, but somehow it hadn’t made her cynical. She still believed in justice. She still believed in hope. She still believed that objects disappeared when you put a surface in front of them and that they reappeared by magic when you took that surface away. She even believed in him. No one ever had before. It was enough to keep him going.
But everywhere he looked he came up empty. He searched the couch for clues, but all he found were Cheerios. He interviewed the kitty cat, but, as usual, she wasn’t talking. Desperate, he decided to go undercover.
“I’m a train,” he said, to no one in particular. “Choo-choo, I’m a train.”
The tactic failed. He was running out of cards to play. If he wanted to get to the bottom of things, he was going to have to take a risk. He was going to have to put his ass right on the line.
He was going to have to go to the TV room.
The TV room was a classic grownup hideout, the kind of after-hours joint that didn’t start hopping until after bedtime. If Gaga was hiding a unicorn, she couldn’t have picked a better spot.
The detective slipped inside and got to work—opening drawers, taking things out, and then dropping them hard on the floor. It was an age-old detective strategy, a way to make sure that you touched everything and that everything got everywhere.
He’d gone through most of the cabinets when the door burst open. He turned around and swallowed. It was Gaga.
“I’m a train,” he said. But she wasn’t buying it. She reached down and grabbed him. He managed to wriggle free. But now the chase was on.
He ran through her legs and out the door, barrelling down the hallway. He could feel Gaga hot on his tail. He spotted a closet and sprinted inside. But it turned out to be a dead end.
“How about a nap?” Gaga asked, staring down at him.
The detective shook his head defiantly. If she thought he was going down that easy, she had another thing coming. He wasn’t some rube she could play for a sap.
“How about some yummy medicine?” she asked.
The detective ate the medicine. He liked to eat things that were yummy, and Gaga had used that word when describing it. He smiled as the sweet cherry capsule hit his tongue. But it was quickly followed by another, stronger flavor. The bitter taste of betrayal.
It wasn’t the first time he’d been drugged. Still, the detective couldn’t help but marvel at the grownups’ depravity. At this point, it wasn’t their cruelty that shocked him; it was their cowardice. They never had the guts to do you dirty to your face. They preferred to stab you in the back.
They said you could skip vegetables, then sneaked them into your mashed potatoes.
They said you could sleep in their bed, then moved you to the crib the moment you were out.
They said you could have a present, then gave you a potty with a bow on it, and told you to poop in it in front of them, as if that were some kind of a gift.
Everything they did was designed to pull the wool over your eyes. And if you asked too many questions, if you got too close to the truth, they did whatever it took to silence you.
The detective stared through the bars of his crib. The grownups had taken away his freedom, his power, and his dignity. But this time the joke was on them. Because now he had nothing left to lose.
“Where have you been?” Baby Anna cried. “I looked everywhere! Inside a cup, inside a shoe!”
“I can’t fit in those places.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m too big.”
“But when you’re far away, you look small.”
“Objects look big when they’re close to you and small when they’re far from you.”
She let out a terrified sob. “Oh, God, what’s happening?!”
A vacuum cleaner sounded in the distance.
“We’re not safe here,” he said. “Come on!”
He yanked her behind an ottoman and continued in a frantic whisper. “Gaga tried to kill me,” he said. “She drugged me and left me to die inside a crib.”
“Oh, my God,” Anna said. “How did you escape?”
“I said, ‘Gaga, up,’ and then Gaga came and picked me up.”
“Why did she help you after trying to kill you?”
“Why do you think? She’s insane.”
“Do you think she did something to Moomoo?”
“I think she’s capable of anything.”
“So, what do we do?”
To be continued . . .
This excerpt is drawn from “New Teeth,” by Simon Rich, out this month from Little, Brown and Company.
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