by Bret Schulte
Jigawatt121 : oh. I could not find your monuments to endless winter. lots of statues of winter scenes or winter spirits. but no endless winter.
Saraberlinfan#1: that’s okay. I figured that part out myself.
She decided to take a chance. Esteban seemed to know everything about everything anyway; she might as well put that to good use.
Saraberlinfan#1: You don’t happen to know of a place where The Eiffel Tower, Great Pyramid, The Statue of Liberty, and The Sphinx all meet do you?
Jigawatt121 : ur kidding right?
Saraberlinfan#1: its weird I know. It is a riddle in a game we’re playing.
Jigawatt121 : here you go.
A video window popped up on her screen labeled LIVE FROM ATOP THE STRATOSHERE.
And there they all were; all four monuments, live and in color.
In beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada.
She figured the Stratosphere had to be a very tall building, because she was looking down at about twenty different casinos along The Strip, but at the far end she could clearly see Lady Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, and a sphinx sitting ready to pounce next to a large shiny black pyramid with a bright beam of light shooting out the top. Nestled between those casinos was a large medieval castle.
A quick Google search revealed that it was the Camelot Hotel and Casino, which seemed to Sam like a very logical place to find King Arthur’s sword. Finally something was going her way. It was amazing. All she needed now was to figure out who her oldest friend was and find a way to Vegas.
Simple.
And the faster she did it, the sooner she could get her life back.
Saraberlinfan#1: thanks a bunch.
Jigawatt121 : no, thank you. Zoey said yes. ttyl.
He signed off.
Three seconds later, Sam was completely lost to the rest of the world. She was diving deeply into the rich history and mythology of the Witch Hunter’s Gauntlet. The file was filled with articles and reports from scholars and professors from all over the world who were tracking the gauntlet’s story from stone tablets to modern day.
Sam barely even looked up when Zoey and Tasha returned. She nodded along as they told her about Amy chewing Zack out for bursting into a girl’s room uninvited. She threatened to report him to Principal Shepherd unless he agreed to never step inside Cooper Hall again.
When they were finished, she returned to her computer. After a few minutes of silence, they asked her if something was wrong. She muttered something with the words “homework” and “late” in it and they nodded sympathetically and left her alone.
Sam found the earliest stories the most fascinating because they came with pictures of priceless ancient art.
Most of the stories dealt with people defeating giant monsters, slaying gods, or smashing vast armies with their great power before being killed by their own greed or stupidity. Only a handful of truly great ones had been able to give up the power when their quests were over. Either way, the gauntlet would usually disappear for hundreds of years waiting to be found by the next hero.
That’s when it hit her.
If the file was a rough timeline of all the people who supposedly had worn the gauntlet from King Gilgamesh until now, then the last person in the file would have to be her mother.
Sam scrolled all the way down to the bottom and there she was: Joanne Hathaway. The BEA had collected a novel’s worth of information on her mother: everything from her birth certificate to her mysterious death. There was an equally long report on her father and even an embarrassing six-page report on Sam herself, including her travels with her parents and her school records from Presley.
It turned out her sixth-grade Social Studies teacher thought she suffered from a terminal case of shyness and her seventh-grade gym teacher thought she had an attitude problem. Apparently it never occurred to them that their classes were just boring.
Sam kept reading until her brain maxed out on information. So she went to class. On her way there, she discovered that something truly terrible had happened while she was busy.
Lucas was now the most popular person in school.
Well, technically the second most popular, after Tiffany.
Chapter 18
A Long Fifteen Minutes
It was practically impossible to find anyone who wasn’t talking about Lucas and Tiffany going to the dance. Upperclassmen were high-fiving him in the hallways. There were even rumors that he was getting phone calls from Teen Vogue and Inside Edition asking for interviews, and a very excited Celestial told Sam that MTV was coming to film the dance. Celestial was searching for the perfect outfit that would ensure that she got on TV without looking like she purposely picked it out just to get on TV.
Sam couldn’t wait until Biology to give Lucas a piece of her mind.
But Tasha beat her to it.
“Hello, Benedict Arnold,” Tasha said the instant Lucas stepped into the classroom.
It looked for a second like he was seriously considering just turning around and running the other way. Instead he sheepishly walked over to their table and sat down avoiding Tasha’s steely gaze the entire time.
“Uh, hi,” he said with a small wave.
“Hi,” Jerry said happily, unaware of the thick tension in the air.
After a few silent minutes passed, Lucas took a deep breath and said, “So I guess you’re pretty mad at me, huh?”
“Mad?” Tasha asked extra-loudly. “Not at all. Surprised. Disappointed. Questioning your morals, intelligence, and cowardice, sure. But not mad.”
He nodded. “I see. It is nice to have such good and supportive friends.”
Tasha’s eyes narrowed. “We are supportive. But what kind of friends would we be if we let you ruin your life like this?”
“Ruin my life? By going to one dance with a girl you don’t like? A girl you have never even spoken to?”
“By being sucked into her superficial world. You know those people will only like you for the ten minutes it takes for her to get tired of you. And it is a Masquerade Ball, not a dance.”
“Whoa, time out,” Sam said, stretching out her arms across the table between them. She could not believe she was actually about to defend Lucas. “It is no big deal. Lucas can do whatever he wants. If he wants to date a rock star, who are we to judge?”
Tasha was still mad, but Lucas was clearly relieved. The truth was that Sam didn’t want to feed his ego any more. It was better to let him think she didn’t care what he was doing. She also didn’t want Tasha to completely chase him away.
“Thank you,” he said, leafing through his textbook. “It isn’t like I’m a whole new person. Or a complete moron. But come on, I went from being a turned-down dateless wonder spending a depressing night egging houses with Natch to being asked out by a beautiful celebrity. That’s the kind of story they make movies about!”
Off the top of her head Sam could think of at least six movies like that, although all of them were about a dorky girl who gets to go to the big dance with the most awesome guy in class. This seemed backwards and unfair.
“Right on!” Jerry raised his hand waiting for a high five.
Lucas shrugged, pretending to be embarrassed, before he slapped Jerry’s hand.
Sam couldn’t believe it. Not only was Lucas turning into a horrible phony, he was actually bragging about his date while simultaneously trying to make Sam feel guilty.
The whole pretending-to-not-care plan was going to be harder than she thought, but she managed a weak imitation of a polite smile. This was apparently the exact wrong thing to do because it made Lucas relax even more.
“So, Tasha,” he started. “I guess I’ll see you at the dance. Is Zoey going to be there? Or is she too cool for dances like Samantha here?”
“I never said I was-“
“What is Tiffany going to wear?”
One of the girls at the next table cut Sam off.
It was Rachel, someone Sam had sort of liked in that never-really-spoke-to-her-but-she-looked-ni
ce kind of way. Now Sam wasn’t so sure. Rachel looked at Lucas with wide, expectant eyes, as if he was about to reveal the secrets of the universe. The three other girls at her table were all smiles as well, just waiting for him to speak.
“Go on,” Sam said. “Don’t leave ‘em waiting.”
Lucas shrugged and turned to face Rachel’s table.
“She’s going to be Cleopatra.”
The girls gasped in approval. One of them even wrote it down.
“She’ll be gorgeous.”
“Yeah,” Lucas said, clearly enjoying being the center of attention. “I haven’t actually seen the costume yet. She’s in Italy right now being measured and all that by some fancy designer. I don’t remember which one. It ends in an ‘I’.”
More gasps. More note taking.
“Thanks a bunch, Lucas,” Rachel said before turning back to her table. “Okay, so we need to find Egyptian costumes to match. This is going to be so cool.”
The girls immediately started tossing around ideas for gowns and headdresses and other Egyptian costume accessories. Lucas, realizing he wasn’t the center of attention anymore, turned back to his own table. Sam just smiled at him.
“How about your costume?” she asked. “Don’t tell me she’s making you go as Caesar or, what’s his name, Mark Antony.”
“Nope. I had mine picked out a while ago when I thought… When I first decided I might need one.”
“And? What is it?”
“Not telling.” He crossed his arms and stuck his chin in the air. “If you’re not going to go you don’t get to see it.”
“Dork,” Tasha said. “Be that way. We won’t tell you what our costumes are then either.”
Lucas’ eyes widened. “Wait, does that mean you are going to the dance now? That’s great!”
Sam started to shake her head when someone kicked her leg. Hard. From Tasha’s side of the table.
“You should see her costume,” Tasha said, waggling her eyebrows.
Sam made a mental note to kill Tasha later. This was all going very badly very quickly. Tasha knew Sam didn’t have a costume. She was playing some sort of game with Lucas, and Sam didn’t want to be a part of it.
Suddenly the smile withered from Lucas’ face.
“Who are you going with?”
Tasha tapped Sam’s leg under the table again. Sam knew it was a secret signal, she just didn’t know what it was supposed to mean. She and Tasha were going to have to have a conversation about their non-verbal communication.
“Um…”
“Are you saying that a girl isn’t allowed to go to a ball without being forced to bring some stupid boy along?” Tasha said indignantly.
“So, no one,” Lucas said smugly.
“I’m not going with anyone either,” Jerry interjected quickly. “You could go with me if you want.”
He looked so pathetically hopeful at that moment that Sam was truly temped to say yes, but that really wouldn’t help her with the whole ‘keeping her friends from being turned into vampires’ thing.
“Thank you, Jerry,” Sam said, thinking fast. “But I really don’t think I’m going to go.”
Tasha kicked her again.
“For the whole thing,” she added quickly. “I might just show up for a little while. Make an appearance. Hang with my friends. See if MTV is really there. But I will probably see you there.”
Sam hoped that response would keep her from getting kicked again.
Lucas furrowed his brow. “You’re only coming for a little bit. What else do you have to do?”
Why was everyone suddenly so interested in Sam? Why couldn’t they just let her do her thing? Now she was sinking deeper and deeper in a swamp of lies.
What else could she be doing on Halloween?
“I’m going trick-or-treating.”
This seemed to surprise everyone at the table.
“Seriously?” Lucas asked. “Aren’t you a little too old for trick-or-treating?”
“Can you ever be too old for free candy?”
Lucas thought about it for a moment. “I guess not. It is way better than Natch egging houses. But I’ll save you a dance maybe? If you get back in time?”
“Um, sure. Maybe. If I get back in time.”
“Well, I’m glad you worked that out,” Professor Walsh said from directly behind Sam.
A quick glance around the room revealed that, just as she feared, everyone was staring at her. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember if she had heard anyone else in the class speaking for the last few minutes. Judging from the big goofy grins on everyone’s faces, no one had been.
“Now that we’ve had our Teen Nick moment, can we return to class?” Professor Walsh asked.
Sam nodded.
“Good,” Professor Walsh returned to the front of the class. “Everyone turn to page 254. Mitochondrial DNA.”
Sam sank into her chair and didn’t speak to or look at anyone for the rest of class. She was the first one out the door, with Tasha trailing right behind her. Once they were outside, Sam stomped over to a large elm tree just beginning to shed its red and golden leaves. It was not only gorgeous, it was far enough away from the sidewalk to make for a perfectly semisecluded place to chew someone out.
“What the heck was that?” Sam asked Tasha with her hands on her hips just to make sure Tasha knew she was serious.
“What?” Tasha asked innocently. “I am trying to save our friend Lucas, but you don’t seem to want to help.”
“Save him how? By making me look stupid?”
“You wouldn’t have looked stupid if you had just gone along with my story.”
“So you agree that I looked stupid?”
Tasha nodded her head. “Sorry.”
Sam gave her the nastiest look she could.
Tasha giggled.
“Fine,” Sam said, moving on. “How is lying about me having a costume going to save Lucas?”
“Oh, come on.” Tasha rolled her eyes. “Did you see how excited Lucas was when I said you might be going to the ball? He clearly likes you. He probably would have asked you to go if Tiffany hadn’t asked him first.”
Sam looked away briefly.
Unfortunately it wasn’t brief enough.
“Wait a minute. Did he already ask you? He did, didn’t he?” Tasha’s eyes were really big now.
“Sort of. Yes. A while ago,” Sam admitted. It felt good to finally let the secret out.
“What?” Tasha whisper-yelled. “Why did you say ‘no’? Lucas is fun. Plus you could have hung out with me and Zoey.”
Sam didn’t want to tell her the truth, and she didn’t have a clever lie ready, so she just said nothing and looked shocked and sad.
“Poor Lucas,” Tasha said, leaning against the tree. “All this time I thought you had waited for him to ask and he turned out to be too big a chicken to do it. I kind of feel bad now. Although he did agree to go with Tiffany, which is still really, really bad.”
Sam nodded in agreement.
“So why don’t we go find you a costume,” Tasha said, springing away from the tree.
“When did I say I was going?” Sam asked.
Tasha’s shoulders drooped. “You have to go.”
Sam wanted to tell Tasha why she couldn’t go. She really did. But how could she? How could she tell Tasha, the person whose job it was to protect her from monsters, that she was afraid to be friends with her friends because they might be killed by monsters?
It would be like telling Tasha that she had no faith in her. It would almost be like telling her that it was her fault Sam couldn’t have fun.
“It is a dumb school dance. I think I’ll live.”
“Why do people keeping saying that? It is a Masquerade Ball.” Tasha stomped her foot. “And if you don’t go, I can’t go.”
“Why not?”
Tasha bit her lip. “Because I have to guard you. If Bad Guy finds out you are sitting up in your room all alone while everyone is busy at the
big noisy ball what do you think he’s going to do? And trick-or-treating is out, I’m sorry. You probably shouldn’t leave campus while Bad Guy and Cervantes are still loose.”
Sam hadn’t thought about that.
“I really don’t want to guilt trip you, I just really want to go,” Tasha said sincerely.
“No, I understand. Don’t worry about it. I’ll go. It’ll be fun.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Sam said. “I really did want to go. I just didn’t want to go alone to my first real dance. Or ball.”
“Rock on. Now we just need to find you a costume.”
“Yeah, that might be a little difficult two days before the ball. I’ll get stuck with a giant bunny costume or something.”
Tasha laughed. “I think you are forgetting that you sleep a mere five feet away from the greatest fashion collection in the entire school.”
Twelve minutes later they were in Sam’s room with Zoey’s closet doors thrown wide open. They had explained the situation to her, and Zoey had already pulled out three blouses for Sam to try on.
“Oooh, how about this one.” Zoey held up a black cutoff with a pink skull on the chest. “You could be a punk rocker.”
“Hmm, we’ll put that in the maybe pile.” Sam tossed the shirt on Zoey’s bed.
“How about a ballerina?” Zoey asked, holding up a pair of slippers.
“It’s too cold out for that.”
Zoey looked a little crushed. “Okay, you throw out an idea then.”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on,” Tasha prodded. “What do you want to be?”
Zoey held up a short red dress. “This’ll get you some attention.”
“I don’t think I-“
“Hold that thought,” Zoey said, carefully laying the dress down on her bed before rummaging through her closet some more. She pulled out a pair of red high heels and a silver purse too small to hold anything larger than a cell phone.
“We could bleach your hair, get some gaudy fake jewelry, and you could go as Tiffany. It would be hilarious.”
“That’s perfect,” Tasha said.
“No,” Sam said as forcefully as she could. “Absolutely not.”
If Sam was going to dress up like someone famous she was going to dress up as someone respectable, like Sara Berlin. Besides, she sort of wanted something that people, namely Tiffany and her gang, couldn’t make fun of. She needed a costume that wouldn’t stand out too much.