Bad Girl School

by Red Q. Arthur

  “Don’t be absurd, girlette. I knew, of course, what decision I’d have made. Because I’d always have made the same one.”

  All righty, then. I may have sighed. “No doubt, Mr. Wiz. So how was Uxmal?”

  “Getting back to normal. The Guard was just leaving. Bit of bad news, though. In the interim, Palak seems to have cursed your family.”

  “Palak! That backstabber! We had a deal, dammit— I sent back the flashlight fair and square.”

  “I presume we weren’t fast enough. And apparently Mayan curses can’t be rescinded.”

  “Oh, well. It’s not like we didn’t know about it. Your eye looks better. What happened last night?”

  “I fell into the evil hands of spoiled brats. The royal monsters locked me up.”

  “Excuse me, but you’re the Alpha Beast.”

  I was messing with him, of course. I knew this was a sensitive point. But all he said was, “I loathe working with children.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “…I’m supposed to be smarter than they are. I know. Could you give it a rest, Human? How did I know they were going to throw me into a pit and pull a grate over it?”

  “Oh. I was in one too. But here’s the thing— why didn’t the servants let you out? I heard you complaining— why didn’t anyone else?”

  “Have you any idea how much noise you people were making out there? You couldn’t have heard a plane crash.”

  Speaking of which, I was starting to experience major jet lag.

  “Well, I feel like I’ve been in a war. Can we go to bed now?” But then I remembered something “Wait. What should we do with the codex? We have to return it to break the curse. The curse! Hey, we did it, A.B.!” It had suddenly dawned on me what this could mean. “All we have to do is find the owner.”

  “Done.”

  “Huh?”

  “This is the home of a Mayan shaman.”

  “So we just… leave it?”

  “Exact-a-mento.”

  “So, like, the world’s saved and everything?”

  “Mission accomplished,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

  Emboldened by my Jaguar ride, I grabbed an ear for the road, which earned me a gentle love tap— the kind that leaves bruises. So back to the tail.

  And in seconds, we were back at Ranger Central, which now smelled like stale popcorn and nervous kid-sweat. Kara and Carlos were dozing. Everyone else was focused on the candle, sending energy as promised. I was touched.

  And I suddenly got why A.B. had thought it was so important. I wondered if, without it, he’d so easily have reincarnated himself after death by skinning. If he’d taken five minutes more— even three— we’d both have been permanently dead.

  “We’re baaaaaaaack!”

  In the pandemonium, Cooper and I found each other’s eyes, and I could have sworn his were a little misty. But that’s impossible; he’s a guy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT—RANGERS’ NIGHT OUT

  I slept the clock around. We got back about noon and by noon the next day, Kara decided she should call Evelina. I woke up to find her leaning over my bed, one hand on my shoulder.

  “You okay, chica?”

  “I’m just really tired. You know our psychic club, right? We’ve been working on a project that kind of took it out of me. Did everybody lose points for missing classes?”

  She shook her head, sitting down on the bed. “I handled it. Everything’s good.” She gave me a little pat. “You did a good job, mija.”

  “Uh… and that means… um… what?” How could she know?

  She smiled. “I have my sources. And also… your back.”

  In my half-asleep state, it took me a minute to figure out what she meant. Could she really have said she had my back? Wow. Good to know. “Thanks. Can I ask you something? There haven’t been any calls from my family, have there?”

  She shook her head so sadly that I could tell she knew a lot that I hadn’t told her. “I’m sorry, Reeno. I’ll let you know the minute they call.”

  Well, hell. I was just supposed to get up and go to class, like everything was normal? Uh-uh. No. “Could I just go on sleeping for a while?”

  “Sure.”

  I slept till early the next day, roughly forty hours. A world record, I figured; and I still felt like I’d run a couple of marathons.

  I looked at the alarm clock— whoo! I seriously had to get going. First, I dug out Morgan’s phone, the one I’d stolen, and speed-dialed the number under “Mom”, hoping she hadn’t yet left for school. “Hi, did someone there lose a cell phone? I found this phone I’m calling from and…”

  Evidently her mom was the impatient type. The next thing I heard was “MORGAN! Somebody found your phone.” And then Morgan came on the line.

  “Hi, Morgan, it’s Reeno. You want this phone back? Good, ’cause I need a ride to the Lakers game tonight.”

  The stuff she said next seemed to be in some strange language, best translated thusly: “#$%^U(U^E$@%*^#%*!”

  “Hey,” I answered, “did the cops pick up Jace and Baldy? Because, the funniest thing, I noticed a couple things about this phone. First, you forgot to erase the texts Jace sent you about the hit. Second, this thing’s got video of my house on it. Hellooo! How amateurish can you get? The minute I leave, the standards fall all to hell.”

  “Give me a break, Reeno. Last thing I’d do is take video of a hit. How dumb do you think I am?”

  “Oh, I must have forgotten. Maybe it was me that took that video. After you left.”

  Actually, I hadn’t thought of that, but she didn’t have to know.

  “And then there’s the texts,” I said. “An elementary burgling no-no.”

  ***

  “I was gonna erase those,” she said, her voice decidedly sulky. “But somebody stole my phone.”

  “Bummer. But it could be a learning experience. Maybe next time you’ll follow procedure.” I paused for a long time, drawing out the tension, and then I said, “So. You wanna go to the Lakers game or you wanna go to jail?”

  And then I paused for more profanity.

  “Uh-huh. Good. We’re in Ojai. Yeah, I said ‘we.’ Sure I meant Snookums. I never go anywhere without my kitty-fluff. Snookums and six humans, including me. Bring your mom’s mini-tank. Huh? Well, steal one.”

  I hung up, absolutely confident we were going to see Morgan at the appointed time and place. The tiny texting faux pas aside, she was a thoroughly meticulous criminal. Much more talented than Jace.

  Next, I made sure Cooper had the tickets and got messages out to all the Rangers— we were meeting at three p.m., usual place, to finalize plans, pick up the Curly dog, reshield both ourselves and it, and get our glamours on.

  A.B. must have been with me at least some of the time I was sleeping off the time-jaunt, but we hadn’t had a chance to talk, and I had some really big questions for him. Imagine my horror when he wasn’t in the Rangers room. What was this? How were we supposed to do this Lakers thing without Snookums to keep Morgan in line?

  But he arrived! He was waiting by the car when we got there. “Somebody,” he sniffed, “had to put a glamour on this monstrosity.” Meaning the SUV, not Morgan, I assumed. And he was right to think of it. I’d barely noticed the tank myself. With the glamour on, it registered as “visiting Mom-car,” rather than “ginormous suspicious vehicle.”

  And in our glamours, I hoped, we looked like well-behaved kids going to dinner with someone’s parents in a completely authorized fashion.

  As opposed to “Red Alert! Remedial Unit Runaways!”

  Morgan was cool as Orange Ice behind the wheel, only she was more like Platinum Ice. She wore black as always and, as usual, looked like some dangerous blonde from a spy movie. And trust me, dangerous was exactly what she was. We’d met when I skinked her house. She was older than me, already sixteen, and she was so nice to little, trapped me, just talking instead of calling the cops. But she had a little agenda of her own— she wanted me to steal stuff for her.


  Well, no problem. I wanted her to drive for a kickass crime crew. So we struck a deal. Or, as some might say, I made a pact with the devil. She was a great criminal, but you couldn’t trust her. As experience had shown, she didn’t have your back.

  “Hey, Morg,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  She held out her hand. “Give me my phone.”

  I picked up A.B., knowing he wasn’t going to resist. This was an acting op and I’d long since realized he lived for them. “Snookums,” I said, “’splain things to my good friend Morgan.”

  “Wowwwwwwrrrrr,” the Beast explained, in a voice that should have had a glamour on it.

  Even some of the Rangers had to hold their ears.

  “Shall I translate? He said you do the job, you get your phone.”

  She turned from the window and stared straight ahead. “Pile in, everybody,” I said, but when Carlos climbed in with the dog, she drew the line. “Ewwwwww. What is that thing? No way that thing’s going in this car.”

  “Huh? It’s just a stuffed dog.”

  Cooper pulled at my sleeve. “Reeno. You’re just used to it. But that thing’s toxic, trust me. We started fighting while you were gone, and finally figured out it was the dog. We had to renew our shields every couple of hours. Finally, we just put it out in the hall.”

  “Oh. Well, what if it makes her run off the road or something? How are we going to do this?”

  “I know!” Sonya said. “Let’s put a shield on her too.”

  Julia nodded.

  “Okay, Morgan, a little ceremony first.” By now, we could go into our focus just by closing our eyes and collecting our thoughts. She must have thought we were praying, poor innocent babe. But it worked. Once we’d shielded her, you could see her muscles relaxing, her jaw untensing. “Better?”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “Is this school some sort of religious crackpot thing?”

  “I told you. It’s government. And don’t ask who these agents are. If I told you I’d have to kill you.”

  She didn’t crack a smile, just kept staring. “Where are we going?”

  “Didn’t you believe me? To the Lakers Game. Cooper even got you a ticket.” Obligingly, Cooper slipped her a cardboard rectangle.

  “Where the hell is the Lakers Game?”

  “Staples Center, of course. You must not be a basketball fan.”

  “I’m not. How am I supposed to get there?”

  I turned to the back seat. “Oh, Agent C.A., when you got the tickets, did you have a chance to MapQuest the destination?”

  “Roger that,” he said, producing the printout. “Located in downtown Los Angeles, on Figueroa St., Staples Center is easily accessible from several major freeways.” I stifled a giggle. He had to be quoting from the Staples Center website. Cooper had plotted out this hit every bit as carefully as Morgan used to plot the hometown ones.

  “And I’m supposed to park there?” Morgan said.

  “Agent C.A.?” I asked.

  “There are 3,300 parking spaces at Staples Center with more than 16,000 others available within a seven-to-ten-minute walk. Anything else, Commander R?”

  Hey, that was a better rank than A.B. gave me. This was starting to be fun!

  “Yeah,” I said. “Tell her to shut up and drive.”

  “Ma’am,” he said, “I’m going to need you to shut up and drive.”

  Excellent. We heard not another word out of Morgan until we had parked in one of the more than 3,300 available parking spaces and entered on 11th Street, the entrance nearest the press box which we knew to be above the Upper Concourse on the west side. The problem was, we figured, the general public probably couldn’t get into the press box. So what we had to do was get Manny Diaz out of there.

  We’d thought of yelling “Fire,” but decided against it.

  Yelling “Jaguar,” however, had merit.

  On the drive down, I explained the plan to darling Snookums.

  “Not in a thousand millennia,” he answered sweetly. “Not if a hundred of my lives depended on it.”

  “Well, actually only one does,” I said. “They can only shoot you once. This isn’t like that other time— you’re not going to be tied up. You can just time-travel out of it when you’re ready. And you have to admit you do kind of owe me— for saving the world and all. Plus, doesn’t the Alpha Beast have a mandate to stop any evil he hears about? Can you really be responsible if we don’t get that curse out of circulation? Besides, you’ll get your picture in the paper.”

  I truly think it was the last argument that won the day. The Beast had more ham in him than Wilbur the pig.

  But he did have a question: “How exactly do you propose to enter the arena with your delightful tiny pet?”

  “Three options, Mr. Whiskers. You can put on a glamour and sidle in like you’re the official stadium mouser, you can time-travel in, or…”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s always Carlos’ backpack.”

  “Wowwwwrr.” He actually spoke aloud.

  In the end, he chose time travel. It had far more dramatic appeal, and you know how His Ninjaness loved the limelight.

  ***

  Here’s what we knew from the website: The press box was accessible only by a stairway on the Upper Concourse and by a particular elevator near the press room on the Event Level. And from that press room, you could take the stairway to the private media entrance, which we figured on this occasion would be serving as the private media exit. And once on the Upper Concourse, anyone leaving the building would still have to use that elevator, so why not just board it in the first place?

  Thus, we planted ourselves in front of it, all but A.B.

  When things started happening we had to keep close to the door of the press room. But we just had to see the show. So at first we watched the game.

  Things went along in an entirely sportsmanlike way until… well, until, for one split second, a harmless orange cat appeared in the middle of the court and then, before you could blink, it morphed into a jaguar the size of a couple of large mastiffs. Seriously— I’ve looked it up. A male jaguar can weigh three hundred and fifty pounds, and when A.B. was a jaguar, he was flamboyantly male. I mean, cojones the Lakers could play a game with. So three-fifty at least. In the middle of the court.

  “There’s an animal on the court!” screamed the announcer. “What is that thing? It’s some kind of a leopard— it’s a leopard! There’s a leopard on the court!”

  Meanwhile, Lakers and opposing team members alike were busy scrambling for safety, not to mention anyone else who happened to be on the court. Except for the photographers, of course. Nothing ever scares photogs, and in this case at least, they were perfectly safe. A.B. was not about to let his Oscar op go undocumented.

  “I think it might be a— it is! Actually, it’s a jaguar, not a leopard,” screamed another announcer. “It’s… it appears to be washing its face.”

  He was right. A.B. had plopped himself down in the middle of the court in Cat Position Two (Egyptian Temple Cat) and was now proceeding to lick his dainty paws and rub them adorably all over his big spotted face. I looked up at the monitors, to make sure he was getting his close-up.

  Yes! Beautiful!

  Meanwhile, people were starting to stand up, wondering whether to be scared or enjoy the show. But the first announcer quickly made that decision for them: “Ladies and gentlemen, don’t panic! DO NOT PANIC!”

  Which of course was the signal to panic. People started streaming for the exits.

  A.B., in an effort to keep the lid on, went into Cat Position Five, The Sphinx, and then rolled over into Beach Kitty, doing his best to look non-threatening.

  Meanwhile, uniformed men began to converge on the court. A.B. licked his paws some more and probably would have purred if anyone could have heard him.

  “We have a message from Security advising everyone to stay in place, the situation is under control. A team of experts from the SPCA is on the way. Meanwhile, sh
arpshooters are in place, but the Chief of Security asks everyone’s cooperation in an all-out effort NOT TO FRIGHTEN THE ANIMAL!”

  Nonetheless a near-stampede was occurring. People were practically stepping on each other’s heads to get to the exits. Screams, yells, cat-calls (excuse the pun), whistles, and profanity billowed in delicious cacophony throughout the arena. Not the least of the screamers were hollering at other people to get out of the way so they could take cell-phone videos.

  “Target arriving!” Carlos yelled. He was out of the energy loop, his job being to act as our personal commentator, also to distract or encourage Manny as necessary. I turned around in time to see the elevator doors opening, various broadcasters debouching, nearly all clutching cordless microphones.

  “And theeeeeere’s Manny!” Carlos hollered. Kara was clutching the Curly dog, her face a rigid mask of focus. “And a one,” yelled Carlos, “and a two, aaaaaand THREEEEEE!”

  On “three” Kara let go, the signal for all five of us to focus on flying it straight up. Carlos moved closer to Manny (who I now saw had a blue-gray aura) and we moved closer as well, guiding the dog with our energy. But suddenly some civilian saw Cursed Curly flying low over everyone’s heads. “What the hell is that?”

  The various broadcasters all tried to answer at once, to solve this new riddle, and I could hear Manny saying, “It looks like some kind of… stuffed toy. Folks, a stuffed dog seems to be… well, floating above us, but we’re not sure…”

  Carlos yelled, “Watch out, Manny! Catch!”

  Well, of course that fired everyone up. All the broadcasters wanted to be the one to catch it, but Manny, after all, was the ex-baseball player in the bunch. And one more thing— Cursed Curly was going right for him if the Ozone Rangers had anything to do with it.

  “Contact!” Carlos yelled. Manny had dropped his cordless mike and opened his arms. The stuffed dog was no longer floating, but downright hurtling into them.

  “Bulls-eye!” He’d caught the dog.

  Like lightning, we pulled off its shield.

  “Hey,” we heard Manny yell, “what the f—k was that? This is nothing but a f—king stuffed toy. What the f—k was that all about? Get out of my way, turdface. Give me that!” The last sentence was meant for Carlos, who had politely picked up the mike and held it out to the poor distressed broadcaster, who wrenched it rudely out of his hand.