Before she could say another word, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and left, throwing my lunch tray away on my way out.
◆◆◆
I waited at Parent Pickup for my parents at the end of the day. I didn’t have Abigail in any of my classes after lunch, so we hadn’t spoken since then. I still felt guilty about how that conversation ended. I’d been thinking about it all day.
My phone rang. It was Abigail. I winced, expecting to have to make amends over the phone, but answered anyway. “Hey, Abi, what’s up?”
“We’re coming to pick you up right now,” Abigail told me, her voice shaking. “You’re staying at our place for a while.”
Confused, and scared by the way Abigail’s voice was shaking, I asked, “Abi, what’s wrong? Mom didn’t tell me about this, and she never forgets about plans.”
“I’ll tell you everything once I get there,” Abigail promised. “Just stay put and keep an eye out for suspicious people.”
“We live in New York,” I said with an eye roll, “When don’t I keep an eye out for suspicious people?”
A few minutes later, Mrs. White pulled up to the school. I got in the backseat with Abigail.
“What’s going on?” I questioned, buckling my seatbelt.
“It’s all over the news,” Mrs. White said, taking a different route than usual to our apartment building. The Whites’ apartment was on the floor below mine. “Someone broke into your apartment. Everything was all over the floor—”
“Are my parents okay?” I asked weakly, clutching my seatbelt so tightly that my knuckles turned white.
“They vanished,” Abigail answered. “Their cars were still in the parking lot, but they were gone.”
“Kidnapped,” I breathed. “My parents have been kidnapped.”
Abigail nodded. “And what’s more, there was a message written on the wall in crayon.”
“Crayon?” I raised an eyebrow. “How old were the criminals, two?”
“Valida.” Abigail’s eyes were filled with fear. “The message…it said, ‘Give us the girl or join the War. Take your pick’. I don’t know what this ‘War’ is, but they mean business.”
“Abigail,” I squeaked. “Did they find the crayon the message was written in?”
She nodded. “Yeah. It was right underneath it. Why?”
“What did it say its color was?” I hated the idea forming in my mind.
“Magenta.”
I knew that all of this had something to do with that one word. It was responsible for my world turning upside down, inside out, and twisting in ways I didn’t know were possible. My parents had gotten kidnapped and a weird message was written on our wall with a magenta crayon. First, Potato Brain, then the magenta blood, and now this. Either all of those were connected or the universe seriously hated me.
Given my track record, it was probably both.
I needed answers.
Chapter 4
“POTATO BRAIN!” I hollered, ignoring the usual whisperings of the Darkness. “CODE BAKED POTATO!”
“No need to shout,” a familiar voice said from behind me. “I’m right here. You aren’t going to punch me again, are you?”
“No, but it would be nice if you would help me out,” I responded. “I already tried to get answers from my parents and Doctor Robbins. No luck. This is driving me crazy!”
“There are some answers I can supply,” he said thoughtfully. “What do you want to know?”
“You called me Miss Magenta,” I said, turning to face his voice. “I know I’m the Magenta and stuff, but you called me that like we’ve met before. Why?”
“You don’t remember,” he asked, “do you?”
“What don’t I remember?” I asked, my brow furrowing in confusion.
“Me.” He sounded breathless. “Val, I have always called you Miss Magenta. You have always known why.”
“Then why don’t I?” I sat on the ground and buried my face in my hands. “Potato Brain, why did you sneak up on me like that the first time we spoke to each other in the Darkness?”
I heard him sit down next to me. “We met when we were younger, about seven or eight. We played Vampire—”
“Vampire?”
“It’s a game. The goal is to catch the other players, turning them into vampires. Anyway, so I was the vampire, and I kept catching you, but every time I did, you would scream in my ear. So I started covering your mouth when I caught you. Soon enough, that was our own inside joke. I would always sneak up on you like that.” He chuckled a little. “It got harder the more I did it, to be honest. You got pretty good at spotting me before I could even try.”
“So you were just referencing an inside joke?”
“Yeah.”
I laughed. “I feel bad for punching you now.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, well…” He trailed off.
“No hard feelings?” I asked.
“No hard feelings,” he agreed. I heard him stand and start to creep away, his footsteps softer.
I sprang to my feet and lunged at him, grabbing his arm. He yelped. I moved my hand down his arm until it reached his wrist. I held on to it tightly, determined to not let him get away.
“Sorry,” I apologized, still keeping a firm grip on his wrist. “That was the injured one, wasn’t it?”
“Yep.” I could practically hear his grimace in his voice. “What are you doing?”
“You have the answers I need,” I informed him with a grin. “You aren’t getting away from me that easily.”
He sighed. “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”
Grinning, I answered with a cheerful, “Nope!”
He sighed and sat back down, pulling me down with him. “Other than anything that has to do with the past week or so, what do you want to know?”
“What’s your real name?” I asked after just a moment.
“‘Potato Brain’ fits me pretty well, actually.”
I laughed. “Agreed, but I want to know your real name.”
He laughed maniacally. “Never!”
“You don’t want to be Potato Brain forever, do you?” I asked playfully.
“I don’t think you understand,” he responded, continuing the banter.
With a grin, I went with it. “Well, Potato Brain, what don't I understand?”
“Well, you see, Miss Magenta…” He paused for dramatic effect. “I’M POTATO BRAIN FOR LIFE!”
Before another word could be said, I woke up, laughing uncontrollably, my worries temporarily forgotten.
◆◆◆
“What’s so funny, Val?” Abigail questioned, sitting on the couch next to me.
I wiped tears of laughter from my eyes. “Just the...the dream I had last night.”
She rested her head on her fist. “Tell me,” she ordered.
I sat up with a yawn and stretched. “Two little words,” I answered, grinning. I counted them off my fingers. “Potato. Brain.”
“Potato Brain?” She laughed. “Okay, then.”
Mrs. White entered the room with an apron around her waist. “Breakfast is in the kitchen,” she announced. “Valida, if you don’t want to go to school today, I won’t make you. Just try to rest up.”
Oh yeah. My worries flooded back to me. I tried to shove them to the back of my mind with little success. The last thing I needed was time to think about my circumstances. At least school would get my mind off of my parents’ kidnappings. And I wouldn’t have to catch up on schoolwork later.
“That’s alright, Mrs. White,” I declined politely. “I’ll see you after school.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive,” I reassured her with a smile. “What’s for breakfast?”
Chapter 5
When I walked into my P.E. class at school, I found quite the spectacle.
There was a group of girls giggling around a boy I’d never seen before. I estimated that he was about my height, maybe an inch or two taller. He was fit, but not excessively muscular. One
of his arms was in a makeshift sling. The grin on his face was one that would get him labeled as a “problem kid” by just about any teacher on campus.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“He’s new,” Abigail said with an eye roll. “His name is Felix Wilson, and I’m pretty sure that at least half of the girls at this school are crushing on him.”
“But, Abi, it’s only first hour,” I pointed out, “and on his first day.”
“So what?” she challenged. “Did you see the crowd around him before school started? That guy is a girl magnet.”
I groaned. “Today is going to be a long day.”
“And a painful one,” Abigail added. “We’re playing dodgeball. How long do you think it will take for one of us to get hit in the face?”
I sized up my classmates. Most of the guys were taller than me, more muscular, and had been on the throwing end of the majority of the balls that have hit me in the face in the past. The ones that were shorter than me or really close to my height usually hung around as far away from the war zone as possible, whether they were muscular or not.
“If the new kid is any good,” I responded, “it’ll be anywhere from two to five minutes.”
The new kid—Felix—was better than just good, even with his broken arm. He had lightning-fast reflexes and a strong throwing arm that wasn’t broken.
It took 3 minutes and 3.76 seconds for him to hit me in the face. Abigail timed it on the stopwatch setting on her watch.
“You okay?” she called as I walked over to the sidelines and sat down.
“More or less,” I answered, trying to rub the pain out of my cheek.
The game went on. I got out a total of eight times, five of which hit me in the face. Coach Henderson never cared much for the “no headshots” rule and never enforced it.
Battered, bruised, and limping from a very hard hit in the leg, I continued on with my day as normal.
Until my third hour: Algebra 1.
Felix Wilson was there, too. He sat in the middle row of desks, attempting to fold paper airplanes with an arm in a sling. I sat two desks away from him in the same row, and he kept catching my eye and winking as he ran his good hand through his brown hair between attempts.
Great, I thought as I shot him another eye roll, now he’s hitting on me, too.
Finally, about halfway through class, Ms. Montgomery called on Felix. “Mr. Wilson, explain what an exponential function is.”
Without hesitation and without looking up from his latest attempt at making a paper airplane, he said, “A function of exponentials.”
The class tittered, but fell silent as Ms. Montgomery shot them her infamous death glare.
“That is not an acceptable answer, Mr. Wilson,” she informed him coldly. “Now answer the question.”
The look he gave her confused me. Rather than looking at her like all the other kids did when they were messing with her, he looked genuinely confused, like he actually thought that he’d answered it correctly.
“I did,” he said, slowly and cautiously.
Ms. Montgomery’s grip tightened on her textbook. “Don’t talk back to me, young man. I know all the tricks in the book. Now tell me, what is an exponential function?”
“If that isn’t the answer, then I don’t know,” Felix responded calmly.
Ms. Montgomery’s look of triumph was the fire that boiled the anger within me. I’d been on the receiving end of that look once, and the memory still haunts me. I shuddered, but the fiery anger remained.
“Then maybe,” she said haughtily, “you should pay attention instead of folding those ridiculous paper airplanes.”
“Or,” Felix muttered a little too loudly, “you could teach us stuff that actually matters.”
“Oh, the new kid’s gonna get it now!” a boy, Julian, yelled.
For the first time, Ms. Montgomery ignored him. She whirled on Felix. “Do you want to repeat that, Mr. Wilson?”
“MAYBE YOU SHOULD TEACH STUFF THAT WILL ACTUALLY BE USEFUL IN REALITY!” he shouted. “CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? I HOPE SO, BECAUSE I CAN’T YELL MUCH LOUDER!”
Ms. Montgomery gritted her teeth. “You don’t think this stuff is useful, Mr. Wilson?”
Somehow, Felix straightened up and stared her right in the eye. “No, Ms. Montgomery,” he said coolly, “I definitely do not.”
The class went dead silent as they watched in awe, myself included.
“Allow me to enlighten you,” Ms. Montgomery said, slamming her textbook on his desk. “If you want a decent job as something useful in society, you need to learn and understand math. Even a simple job, such as working at a fast-food place, requires math. That is why we learn it in school, young man.”
Rather than withering under the math teacher’s death glare, Felix did the most incredible thing I have ever seen.
He looked right into Ms. Montgomery’s death glare—and laughed.
He laughed. My jaw dropped.
“What’s so funny? Do you find this amusing?” Ms. Montgomery demanded, her face flushing as she tensed with anger.
In between laughs, Felix said, “You...you think...oh sea pearls…”
The remainder of his words dissolved into laughter. Once he’d gotten control of himself, he finally got his message across.
“You think that getting a job is going to be a task on my list?” He crossed his arms the best he could with a sling, an amused smile on his face. “I have bigger things to worry about.”
“Oh yeah?” Ms. Montgomery challenged. “Like what?”
“Like avoiding the Attackers, dodging the Lulins, living through another day, saving all of your guts...you’re welcome, by the way,” he said, counting them off his fingers. “I’ve got more.”
In the row in front of me, I saw Doctor Robbins’ daughter, Selene, making a slashing motion across her throat, as if saying, Felix, shut up! Her wavy, light blonde hair reached just past her shoulders. While she normally seemed to have every hair in its rightful place, today her hair was frizzy and tangled. Although it was a small anomaly, I still noticed it.
The weirdest thing about her that I had found was the fact that she acted like she had known Felix for a while, and she clearly didn’t want him saying what he was saying.
“You know what else math isn’t useful for?” Ms. Montgomery’s hands shook with fury as she dialed something on the phone on her desk. “Getting away with disrespecting a teacher. I’m calling the principal.”
It didn’t take long for the principal to arrive; the office was just down the hall.
“Ms. Montgomery, is there a problem in here?”
Principal Tavello stood in the doorway, his unusual black eyes as creepy as usual. I still had no idea how he got hired; he freaked all of us out. Ms. Montgomery appeared relieved.
“Yes,” she answered. “Felix Wilson is disrupting the class.”
Selene stood and faced Tavello. “What are you doing here?”
“Same thing you are,” Tavello replied. His black eyes flashed red for a moment. A couple of my classmates, Mary and Opal, screamed.
See? Scary. This should be considered proof that the American public education system is messed up.
Selene pulled a pen out of her pocket. She clicked the top and said, “William Johnson, get over here before Tavello kills us all!” into it.
The pen crackled, and a boy’s voice came over it. “What’s the magic word?”
“Forget that! Get over here now!”
“Fine! Copy that.”
“What is the meaning of this?” Ms. Montgomery demanded.
Before the words even left her lips, Selene yanked me out of my chair. Pain shot up my arm as it hit the desk when I stumbled on the way up, and I cried out. She pulled me out of the classroom.
“Bring Miss Smith back, Miss Robbins,” Tavello ordered with a snarl.
“Never,” she snarled back. She ran, pulling me after her.
After a few twists and turns, and even cutting through the bustling c
afeteria, Selene threw open the door to the janitor’s broom closet and shoved me in.
“If you want to live,” she panted, “stay.”
Surprised and out of breath, I didn’t argue. Selene closed the door and left me in there with just my phone for light.
I stayed in there, just like she told me, without making a sound. It was boring, even though I played games on my phone, but I stayed.
After all that had happened, I knew better than to return to math class.
Chapter 6
The door to the broom closet swung wide open, revealing a grinning Felix Wilson in the doorway. “Who are you hiding from?” he teased.
“Depends,” I answered. “Why did you pay a visit to the janitor’s broom closet?”
“Selene sent me,” he answered, stepping into the small space. “Speaking of Selene, we’d better head to the cafeteria before she murders me for losing the M—” He caught himself. “—I mean, you.”
“What were you going to say?” I asked, feeling like he was holding back something important.
“Nothing,” he answered a little too quickly. “Come on.”
He motioned for me to follow him. I did, but I didn’t drop the subject.
“It didn’t sound like ‘nothing’,” I pried. “What were you going to say?”
“Never mind,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “It’s irrelevant at the moment.”
We reached the cafeteria double doors in silence. Felix stepped forward and opened one of them for me with his good arm.
“After you,” he said with a grin.
As I walked through the open door, I ran into Abigail.
“Where have you been?” she demanded. “Lunch is half over! Did you have to retake a test or something?”
“Nope,” I answered. “I did end up in a broom closet, though. Long story.”
Abigail eyed Felix suspiciously. She tightened her grip on her novel. “What does he have to do with it?”
“I found her,” Felix responded nonchalantly.
Abigail raised an eyebrow. “What were you doing snooping around in a school broom closet?”
“That’s for me to know and for you to not care about.”
The Magenta (The Legendary Keepers Book 1) Page 2