Dex thought, This ought to be good.
“Obedience!” Jons yelled. “You got that? Obedience to the Word of God! That plague was a test! It was a plague—get it? A plague! You sinners may have passed the test, but are you gonna pass the next one? These kids, Neal and Audrey, they took their final exams, and they FAILED!”
This was met by gasps from all over the auditorium. Everyone looked to the Taylors in their chairs behind the podium, but the couple continued to stare blankly at nothing.
“Each and every one of the faithless sinners blighted by this plague—” Jons ranted, “they all failed! What’s gonna happen to you when it’s your time? You gonna be in a better place? How you gonna get there? You gonna climb on a tower and sneak through a trapdoor? Well, I’m here to tell you, you can’t cheat your way through the Pearly Gates! You best choose your paths wisely my friends, because they don’t all lead to the same place! You best pray for your immortal souls!”
The room had gone silent. Dex scoffed at the suggestion that praying could have any effect on, well, anything. Daphna wished it were so. She’d be happy to pray if God would respond to her.
“Are you going to earn your Just Desserts?” Jons continued, still building steam. “Will you be among the believers who will rise from their graves? Will you be among the faithful who will meet the Lord Jesus in the air when he raptures his chosen people? Those who have lived by the testament written in his blood will be caught up with them as they rise into the sky to be with the Lord forever!” He paused a moment, then roared, “WILL YOU BE AMONG THEM, OR WILL YOU BE CONSIGNED TO ETERNAL PUNISHMENT IN A LAKE OF FIRE?"
“Now wait just a minute!” someone called out. It was Mr. Taylor, who’d evidently tuned into what was going on. He was on his feet now, red-faced and sputtering. Mrs. Taylor, perhaps unaware of what her husband was reacting to, was trying to pull him back into his seat.
“But let me tell you the real reason I came here today,” Jons said, ignoring the interruption, or changing the subject because of it. “I came to point a finger at the true source of our troubles!”
Dex and Daphna had both been thinking about that odd phrase, ‘testament written in his blood,’ how they’d seen the same thing on that plaque under the painting of the Last Supper at the Vatican. But now their eyes went wide. They both had the same panicked thought: this crazy pastor was talking about them.
“I’m here to tell you who brought this plague down upon the good people of our land!”
Suddenly, Haslam was hurrying in through the door he’d gone out of backstage. “That’s enough!” he shouted.
“They are here!” Jons railed, in a full lather now. “I tell you they are here among us right now as we—!”
Before Haslam could reach the podium, before Jons could name the culprits, before the twins could back out of the auditorium and run for it, someone screamed, “Shut up!” from the crowd—a girl in the front row who had gotten to her feet. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” All the twins could see was a cascade of spiraling white-blonde hair. “You don’t know!” the girl cried in a quavering voice. “You don’t know!”
The pastor looked stunned, as did Haslam, who’d frozen a few feet behind the podium.
“Hey!” someone shouted before either of them could respond, someone else now. The ringing, nasal voice was a dead giveaway. It was Wren, Teal’s best friend. She was on her feet next to a seat at the end of the center aisle, pointing at the twins. Her eyes were pink and swollen. Make-up ran down her face. She looked devastated. But she also looked great in a designer tank top and swirl skirt. Daphna realized all the girls there had dressed up, everyone but her. “Hey!” Wren shouted again. “It’s them!”
That’s when Dex and Daphna realized they had in fact been naïve to imagine a single measly news article about their having had nothing to do with the plague would undo so much news about their having had everything to do with it.
While Jons, Haslam, and both the Taylors remained on stage looking stupefied, and while the crowd processed what Wren was talking about, the white-blonde girl up front screamed, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Then she tore down the aisle. Dex and Daphna got a good look at her because she sprinted right between them. Her features were delicate and ghostly pale. Tears streamed down her face.
When the girl disappeared into the hall, the twins turned their attention back to the auditorium to find themselves facing two thousand cutting eyes. It was not something either had ever experienced. Now they were stupefied.
“They did it!” another girl stood up and shouted. It was Branwen, the third and most polished jewel in the middle school crown. Beautiful Branwen. She was sporting her usual flowing raven locks and wearing her famous “Little Black Dress.” She wore it every year on Dress Your Best Day, when it never failed to have the effect it had on everyone now. Of course, Branwen dressed her best every day. The entire crowd stared at her, evidently forgetting everything else. “It was them!” Branwen repeated when she’d absorbed enough staring. “They killed Teal!” Her make-up was perfectly in place.
An oppressive silence suffocated the auditorium for a moment. Daphna knew something really bad was brewing. People did whatever Branwen wanted. It was an ironclad law of life: if you looked into Branwen’s big, beguiling eyes, you did what she wanted. Lots of kids believed she was actually the Queen of the Pops, that the others did her bidding without her ever having even to bother moving her pouty lips to give orders. The only reason the crowd wasn’t doing anything yet was because they weren’t sure exactly what she wanted it to do.
Finally, Branwen started to boo. Then someone else started to boo. Haslam, turning back from watching Jons storm off stage past the Taylors, called for attention, but he was ignored. The booing was coming from everywhere now.
Branwen bent down, picked up a purple piece of paper, some sort of flyer or program, balled it up, then threw it toward the twins. It missed by a mile, but two seconds later hundreds more went flying. The room suddenly smelled of lavender.
Daphna, who’d somehow left her body for a moment, came back when she realized the flyers were scented with Teal’s favorite fragrance, but she was paralyzed by all those eyes. “Dex,” she whispered through lips that would barely move, “get me out of here.”
If this is a test, she thought, I fail. A wad of paper bounced off her face. Then another.
“Attention!” Haslam demanded. “Atten—!”
Teachers all around were up now and calling for order, but they were all ignored.
“Dex, please!” Daphna was seeing the room spin.
“No,” Dex said without looking at his sister. He was staring down the two thousand eyes, scanning two by two to meet every last one. They weren’t going to make him move an inch. Getting blamed for the plague? Sure, why not? Why should he have expected anything else?
The booing got louder.
“Attention! Stop this at once!”
The bell for Zero Period rang just then, but no one got up. Dex wouldn’t let them. He stood his ground up to his ankles in smelly crumpled paper, trading hate for hate with all those ignorant eyes as the booing flowed over him, justifying his every thought since leaving Dr. Fludd’s that morning. If this is a test, he thought, I. Don’t. Care.
But enough was enough.
“You’re welcome!” Dex shouted. “It’s been an honor and a pleasure to serve you!” He turned to take in Daphna’s approval for this marginal witticism, but she was no longer there.
Sighing, he stepped out of the auditorium, letting the door close on the sound of Haslam still hollering ineffectually over the boos.
Daphna was just down the hall bent over a water fountain.
“We should have expected something like that,” Dex said when he reached her, still feeling rather pleased with himself. “Can you believe that loony preacher guy? What a crackpot!”
Daphna straightened up, touching the corner of her eye with a wet finger. She wasn’t crying, which was a good sign, Dex thought,
but her face seemed disturbingly unstable, like a continent about to collapse in on itself. She was taking deep breaths.
“Come on,” Dex sighed. “Get over it, Daphna. Who cares what those—”
Daphna slapped him. Hard.
“I do!” she snapped. “I. Do! Get it? Or is that too hard to get through your thick skull! Do you know anything about me? I needed you back there—and you just—!”
At that moment kids erupted from the auditorium and streamed into the halls. Daphna went silent and put her head down, while Dex just stood there with his hand on his cheek, thinking about slapping his sister back. She had lost her mind.
There was no booing. No one threw anything, but everyone kept as far away from the twins as possible as they passed by. One boy simulated a heart attack stumbling past. He and some others were clearly trying to be cruel, but most seemed genuinely afraid.
Daphna pulled the schedule she’d downloaded last night out of her back pocket, read it over, and walked off without even acknowledging her brother.
After watching his sister head through a crowd that parted for her like the Red Sea, Dex took a few deep breaths of his own. Daphna had read his schedule to him last night, so he knew what Homeroom he was in, but why bother?
If life is a test, he thought, who needs school?
CHAPTER 7
the next thing she knew
If hell was a high school, Daphna was now enrolled in it. She didn’t hear the jeers, the fake puking noises, the foul insults—there were only these hideous faces drifting past her in slow motion. I’ll make things right myself, she thought, fuming. If he doesn’t care about seeing our mothers again, he can go jump in a lake—a lake of fire! Daphna almost turned around and screamed, ‘Too bad you can’t swim much better than you can read!’ but managed to resist the urge. Barely. That would have been the meanest thing she she’d ever said in her life.
Was it really all a test? Deep in her heart, Daphna thought it might just be. God left humans to their own devices, surely to prove themselves worthy of his gift of free will. That was a test. Despite everything she and her brother had seen and done, Daphna suspected she was failing it. She had always believed that the ends don’t automatically justify the means. Just because they thought they had to take Dead Face into Heaven didn’t mean they actually had to, did it? How could anything good have come of such a thing?
Maybe she should have stopped him before he opened that book, thrown herself at him or something before he turned the key in the cover—even if she was bleeding to death at the time. Things couldn’t possibly be like that pastor described them. Could they? God didn’t get involved. But what if that was only until you died? What if he was up there in some secret part of Heaven somewhere, waiting to pass judgment on you when you got there—when you were supposed to get there? Surely they were wrong to step foot there with or without Dead Face. Dex was right—they weren’t dead! What was happening up there?
Wait! Daphna thought. Taking Dead Face into Heaven was Dexter’s idea! Maybe I won’t have to answer for that!
Now Daphna was utterly disgusted with herself, sickened by having even entertained that thought—she’d reached a new low, a low even lower than what she’d almost yelled at Dex. And it wasn’t even entirely true. She deserved whatever she got for that selfish thought alone. But alone is how she felt. It was Dexter’s fault she was even having these thoughts!
Flustered by the effort to keep it together, Daphna went the wrong way, so she had to trek all the way back through more abuse, which she could hear now. Finally, mercifully, there it was, her homeroom, about as far away from the auditorium as she could get. She paused before going in, taking a moment to hope she got a good teacher. Because parents had a history of flooding the school with requests for Homeroom changes based on teachers’ reputations, Wilson didn’t include their names on the schedules.
Daphna walked in—and froze.
Wren was there. Just her luck. Branwen, too. She’d forgotten that they tried to place kids from the same middle schools together in Homerooms if possible, based on recommendations. Her old teachers probably thought they were all friends, just like Daphna used to. There were a few others there, too.
Naturally, the Pop girls were chatting up the Pop and potential Pop boys. Branwen had one trapped by the rear wall, little-black-dressing him to death. He was tall and lanky, with longish black hair that fell into a wide part and flipped a bit over a pair of large, dark movie-star sunglasses. Actually, now that she looked closer, Daphna thought the boy seemed rather uncomfortable. Extremely uncomfortable, in fact. He was fidgety and looking around the room too much, nervously stretching a bright yellow elastic cover on a large book he was holding.
Was she supposed to have her textbooks already? No one else seemed to. It was going to be the last straw if she got an assignment she couldn’t do.
The boy seemed to be searching for a way to escape the situation. Maybe he wasn’t a Pop? Resistance was futile, if he wasn’t. That’s how Pop girls operated—right in for the kill. It was a well-known fact that no boy Branwen had ever targeted as boyfriend material ever got away. Daphna had seen it a thousand times, but she couldn’t help watching how Branwen operated with Wren as her wing man and the other girls as her audience/shield/distraction. Did they get together to plan actual strategies, or was it some kind of pack instinct?
For a second, the boy seemed to look at Daphna as she watched the scene. He smiled. A big smile. A gorgeous smile. Daphna didn’t smile back. Instead, she choked a bit on her suddenly dry throat.
Just then the hubbub in the room suddenly died. The other kids had noticed her, too. Everyone looked repulsed. Everyone but Wren, who looked as if she could barely contain the urge to come over and rip Daphna limb from diseased limb.
Daphna swallowed hard. She saw an empty seat and took it. The kids in the nearby desks stood up in theirs and began to drag them away.
“Don’t. You. Dare.”
Daphna turned—and beamed. It was Mr. Guillermo! Mr. G! She didn’t even know he’d transferred to Wilson. His class had been her favorite in middle school, and not just for the obvious reason that he’d unwittingly set her and Dex on the path to finding the truth about Eden. He was the most open-minded teacher she’d ever had, and the most excited about what he taught. Daphna wondered if he’d be teaching World Religions there as well. Maybe he could help her get some answers about Heaven! She should have thought of that before!
“Sit down,” Mr. G snarled at the class, taking his glasses off the way he always did. She’d never heard this tone from him before. Of course he had to deal with high schoolers now.
Everyone sat down as he stormed over to his desk. Wren sat directly next to Daphna, unleashing her infamous glare, a look known to reduce its targets to quivering gelatinous heaps. Daphna used to be mortally afraid of provoking the Look. Now she rolled her eyes at it.
“I have been teaching for nearly thirty years,” said Mr. G, putting his glasses back on. “I’ve taught in elementary school, middle school, and high school. And I have to tell you something: that debacle in the auditorium was the most shameful display I have ever seen.
“Now, I’m not going to stand here and say I subscribe to that supposedly holy man’s belief system, but I’ll tell you this: If that was a test, you did not pass. Not an auspicious debut, my friends. Not auspicious at all. Something has brought out the worst in you today. I’m just going to hope it’s this crazy weather. Daphna, I sincerely apologize on behalf of everyone at Wilson. This is not what I was led to understand the school stood for. I am beside myself.” He took his glasses off again.
No one had spoken through the speech, and no one spoke now. Most kids had their heads down, but they didn’t look especially ashamed. Some were manifestly sneering. Wren didn’t even lower her eyes, let alone her head. She continued to glare openly at Daphna.
“It’s fine,” Daphna said, recalling that Dex had at some point mentioned to her that Mr. Guillermo used to be a
t their elementary school as a counselor. Dex would know of course, because he always had to see counselors. Daphna just wanted to move on. She just wanted to start high school, to start life. Why couldn’t she just move on!
Mr. G scanned the room, looking for challenges. When he was satisfied none was forthcoming, he picked up a clipboard.
“Fine,” he said, still irate. “Find a locker partner, line up, and I’ll hand out combinations.”
Great, Daphna thought. She didn’t bother to get up. Everyone else practically jumped out of their desks. The moment the commotion began, Wren leaned over and whispered, “It’s your fault she died. I know you did something to us in the park and at the party. You’re a freak. You should be the one who’s dead!”
Daphna wasn’t sure how to reply to this outrage, but it didn’t matter because Wren and Branwen rushed off to be first in line at the desk, no doubt so they could charm their way into the best locker location. Daphna just sat there while the rest of the room negotiated around her. It’ll blow over, she told herself, taking deep breaths, trying not to hyperventilate. Soon. I’ll start living, soon. I’m better off without some slob stealing my stuff all the time, anyway.
Tears were coming again, but so was something else: toxic detestation. If she had a Word of Power, she’d vaporize these girls here and now and damn the consequences. Bring on the Lake of Fire, she thought bitterly. I can swim just fine. She should have choked them all to death in the park when she had the power to do so. She should have drowned them in cleanser at that stupid “party.”
No, that was totally—
“I’m really very neat.”
“What?”
Someone was talking—to her?
“I said, Mind partnering with a boy? I’m very neat.”
Daphna didn’t think the question was directed at her, but it was. The boy from the back of the room. He’d folded up into the desk Wren just left and was sitting there looking at her expectantly through his shades with his yellow-covered book on his lap.
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