by Betsy Uhrig
Chapter 13
THE NEXT CLUB MEETING FOUND us divided. Steve was leading a faction that included Sonia and Nikhil and possibly Laura (hard to tell) that felt like we should get to the bottom of the Crouton Critter Mystery before we went on to solve the Twelve A.M. Lunch Mystery. The rest of us wanted to go back to the midnight recording and figure out what was going on.
Things got a little intense until Steve and Hoppy settled on a compromise: We would pull up the recording from last night at midnight, which could show the Crouton Critter but might show another impossible lunchtime scene.
As before, we sped through a lot of nothing happening in the cafeteria until around 10:30 p.m., when something flashed by.
I was at the controls, and I wasn’t used to them, so I was annoying everyone with how slowly I was responding to their commands. I couldn’t get the recording to pause until past eleven, then I had to back up while my colleagues made personal remarks and Nikhil told me to put a sock in the tuneless humming.
Finally, I stopped at ten fifteen and went forward again in slow motion. No kids in the cafeteria, but yes—from out of the kitchen came an animal. It was dark in there, so we had a hard time identifying the creature at first.
“Is that a raccoon?” said Vincent.
“Too small,” said Nikhil.
“Maybe it’s a possum,” said Laura.
“No way is it a possum,” I scoffed. “It’s a cat.”
“Cats don’t eat croutons,” said Hoppy.
“Guys,” said Steve. “Come on. You’re ignoring the obvious because you don’t want it to be true.”
He was right. By this time I’d frozen the image onscreen and was zooming in. It wasn’t a cat—it was a skunk.
“Ew!” said Sonia.
“So why doesn’t it stink in the cafeteria every morning, if a skunk’s been there?” Vincent asked.
“Because no one’s been bothering it,” said Andrew. “They don’t spray unless you bother them.”
“Let’s see where it goes and then we can move on to more important things,” said Hoppy.
I inched the recording forward to the point where the skunk left the cafeteria, then lost it.
“You have to switch views to the hallway,” said Nikhil, elbowing me aside. “I’ll do it.”
He took over and followed the skunk out of the cafeteria and into the hallway, where it roamed around as if it owned the place, which was disturbing. What if it decided to make a nest and have babies in my locker some night?
Nikhil couldn’t keep up with the skunk either, though. He lost it when it went into the girls’ locker room. The girls were horrified, so they must have been worried about the thing making a nest in their gym clothes, but there was nothing more we could do.
“Mystery solved?” said Steve hopefully.
“Not really,” I said. “We don’t know how it’s getting in.”
“Good enough for today?” Steve asked.
“Sure.”
We moved on to more important things.
Hoppy took over for Nikhil at the laptop, and she was no better than I was, but somehow there were fewer remarks.
She brought us right up to the brink of midnight and then hesitated.
“Go on!” said Vincent.
“I’m afraid of what we might see,” Hoppy admitted.
“Like, aliens with giant exposed brains or something?” Vincent asked.
“No. Like nothing. Like last time was a glitch and now it’s normal.”
“And we have a year of checking up on Stinky McSkunk the Crouton Crook,” said Andrew. “And nothing else.”
We all backed off. Some of us literally took a step away from Hoppy.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Steve said quietly.
Chapter 14
HOPPY LET THE RECORDING MOVE forward at normal speed, and this is what we saw on the ninth screen: dark, empty cafeteria. More dark, empty cafeteria. And then, as the time indicator in the corner went from 11:59:59 to midnight, the room lit up. It was like Dorothy stepping out of the gray house and into Technicolor Oz. Suddenly the cafeteria was bright and full of kids. They didn’t trickle in from the hallway—they were already there.
“Whoa,” said Steve. “Do that again.”
“Do what again?” said Hoppy. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Go from eleven fifty-nine to twelve o’clock again.”
She did, and the same thing happened: empty and dark to full and light in the span of a second.
“Cool,” said Vincent.
“That’s impossible,” said Nikhil. “They can’t just appear there like that. There’s something massively wrong with this thing.”
“Obviously,” said Hoppy. “Either there’s something wrong with it or the Flounder Bay Upper School cafeteria is magic.”
We let that idea dangle there for a moment, during which I’m sure we all came to the same conclusion: The Flounder Bay Upper School cafeteria was not magic.
“There I am again,” said Andrew, pointing to the screen.
“And there I am,” said Hoppy.
Both were still larger onscreen than off.
“Pan around,” said Steve to Hoppy. “Let’s see if we can find anyone else we know.”
She started moving closer to one face after another. I was pretty sure I saw a kid from Spanish I had labeled “Destined for Piercings” go by.
“Wait,” said Nikhil. “Is that me?”
It was the back of some kid’s head. Some kid with ears like handles. Nikhil’s ears. His hair was longer than Nikhil’s, though. Hoppy kept the focus on him, and we waited for him to turn around.
“Good lord,” muttered Vincent when he did.
It was Nikhil, all right. But he had a mustache. A thin, sad-looking mustache. We gaped in horror. Until we got a good look at the kid next to him.
“No,” moaned Steve softly. “No, no, no, please, no.”
But yes. It was Glamorous Steve. Or formerly glamorous Steve.
“What is wrong with my hair?” Steve practically wailed.
Steve looked taller onscreen, but it was the hair that really stood out. Or no longer stood out. Steve’s floppy, perfect hair was shorter and… it’s hard to describe. It looked both lumpy and flatter, as if someone had made a cheap Steve doll with molded-plastic hair.
“Look away!” said Steve. “Look away!”
But Hoppy was closing in relentlessly.
“That’s as good as it gets,” she said. The close-up was fuzzy, just as the midnight images had been last time. “I can’t get any more detail.”
“Is it a wig?” Sonia asked tentatively.
“It better be,” said Steve.
“Maybe it’s part of a costume,” said Sonia. “Like for a play or something.”
Steve just shook his head. Theater wasn’t his thing.
“Could be product of some kind,” said Vincent. “Some type of off-brand gel…”
Steve was nodding now. “That has to be it,” he said.
Hoppy finally had mercy on Steve and moved away from him and his hair. We located Sonia after a good amount of scanning around the room. She was in a corner, vigorously making out with some kid none of us recognized. It took a while for us to convince the real Sonia, when her onscreen version came up for air, that she was looking at herself.
“My parents say I can’t date until after I’m married,” she half joked when she’d finally admitted what we were seeing. “And did I trip and take a header into the discount-makeup bin?” The onscreen Sonia had definitely gone a little overboard with the makeup. Her eyes were already big, but onscreen they looked manga size. “Are those false eyelashes?” she wondered aloud.
“Actually,” said Hoppy, “I think the kid you’re going at it with is wearing even more makeup than you are.” He was. Then Hoppy spoke for all of us when she said, “Is it me or does it look better on him?”
Sonia groaned. “That pirate blouse we’re both wearing looks better on him too. Where would a p
erson even shop for a thing like that?”
Vincent was hard to spot for a different reason: We found him slumped over a table, his head resting on a pile of books.
“I think I’m asleep,” he said when he’d examined himself. “It’s possible I’m drooling.”
“Keep moving,” I said to Hoppy as she pulled away from Vincent, leaving him to his nap. “I want to find myself. If everyone else is there, I must be too.”
Hoppy panned the cafeteria for a while, but I was not to be found.
“We’re almost out of time,” Steve said.
“Fast-forward,” I told Hoppy.
“You’re not going to see yourself in a blur,” Hoppy objected, but she did it anyway. We watched kids quickly eating, chatting, throwing out trash, leaving for class. Hoppy was right. No one’s face was recognizable at this speed. The room emptied out. Then, when the time stamp went to 1:00:00 a.m., the bright and empty cafeteria turned dark and empty. We were in the present again.
“Huh,” said Hoppy. “So the weird midnight lunch scene lasts exactly an hour.”
“Back up a bit,” I said. “So we can watch everyone leave at normal speed.”
Now she was just indulging me, and everyone knew it, but we watched a few minutes of kids exiting the cafeteria. We saw Vincent, among the last of them, stagger out with his pile of books. No Jason.
Which was strange. Shouldn’t I have been with Vincent at lunch? We always sat together. And, come to think of it, shouldn’t Steve have been sitting with us too?
When Steve moved to Flounder Bay the summer before last, the first kid he met here was his neighbor Vincent. Which meant that the second person he met was me. So Steve started hanging out with us before he realized how glamorous he was for Flounder Bay and that he could easily do better than Vincent and me. By the time school started, it was too late—we were friends. The three of us had sat together at lunch ever since.
“Oh well,” I said. “We can look for me again next time.”
We shut everything down and locked up.
And if you’ve noticed that we never found or even bothered to look for Laura, congratulations. I certainly didn’t.
Chapter 15
THAT NIGHT WE HAD ENDURED two “acts” of Alice’s new show, Make Way for Dorklings, when the house phone rang. I sprang up to answer it—something I never did ordinarily. Anything to get away from the inept Mr. (Jason, obviously) Dork leading his little dorklings directly into traffic while heroic Officer Alice tried to save them.
It was Vincent. He was calling on the landline because the school had a rule against students having cell phones until ninth grade, and our parents—unlike anyone else’s we knew of—actually obeyed that rule.
“The plan’s a go for tomorrow night,” Vincent said in an unnecessarily secretive tone.
“Um, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to—”
“You already said you would.”
“But my parents—”
“No problem. It’s all arranged. You’re invited to my house for dinner and to ‘work on a H.A.I.R. Club project,’ quote unquote,” Vincent said. “You ‘might have to stay overnight if we don’t finish,’ quote unquote.”
“Stop saying ‘quote unquote,’ quote unquote,” I said.
“Good one,” said Vincent.
“Okay, I guess,” I said.
“Excellent,” said Vincent.
So the plan was a go. Which was not what I was expecting when I’d agreed to it, to be honest.
* * *
Vincent and I had been walking home after H.A.I.R. Club when Steve jogged up behind us.
He wasn’t at all out of breath when he caught up to us. “I have an idea,” he said.
We kept walking as he talked.
“I was dropping off the H.A.I.R. key in the office,” Steve said. “And nobody was there.”
“So?” said Vincent.
“So when I put the key on the hook, I noticed a bunch of other keys hanging there.”
“And?” I said.
“And I took one.”
“Which one?” Vincent asked. Which wasn’t my first question.
“Gym, outer door,” said Steve.
“Isn’t someone going to notice it missing?” I said.
“Unlikely,” said Steve. “There are at least five copies of every key. Seriously, someone in the office must have been locked out a lot as a kid and never gotten over it.”
Because one of us had to, I asked, “Why did you want the key to a gym door, anyway?”
“Because I think we need to find out what really goes on in the cafeteria at midnight,” said Steve.
I was more confused now. “You think something really happens in there at midnight?” I said. “That it’s not a glitch or recording error or whatever?” I paused for breath and to gather my thoughts into semicoherent form, then continued. “You think that there’s some type of… I don’t know… alternate world where weird versions of us eat lunch in there at midnight? Is that it?”
I thought all this had been withering, but Steve just shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “It’s worth checking out, right?”
“Of course it is,” said Vincent.
“We can’t sneak into the school at midnight,” I said at the same time.
“Why not?” said Steve. “I have a key.”
“Because we’ll get caught,” I said, with a huge “duh” in my voice.
“By one of our many trained security guards?” said Steve.
“No. By the security cameras. The state-of-the-art security cameras positioned around the school.” But even as I spoke, I was realizing how dumb this objection was.
“And who is in charge of monitoring those security cameras?” Steve asked triumphantly.
“Ha!” said Vincent.
“My parents will never let me out of the house at midnight,” I said. “And neither will yours.” This last remark was aimed mainly at Steve. Vincent and I both had siblings to soak up excess parental attention. But Steve was an only child, and the scrutiny was intense. The three of us referred to Steve’s parents as the Eye of Sauron.
“We can figure something out,” said Steve.
We’d halted at the corner of my street. Steve and Vincent lived a couple of blocks away.
“Fine,” I said, not meaning it.
“I’ll call tonight with the deets,” said Vincent.
They had walked away before I could warn him never to use the word “deets” in my presence again.
* * *
If you think my mom and dad would object to my staying overnight at Vincent’s on a school night, you haven’t met Vincent’s parents. My parents knew full well that I’d probably be in bed before my usual bedtime and that I’d have brushed and flossed thoroughly too.
What my parents didn’t know was that Vincent’s parents cared a lot about the quality of their sleep. They had a white-noise machine in their bedroom and used those puffy sleep masks to keep out any stray photon of light. Which meant that when they were asleep, they stayed that way.
Vincent’s sister, Karen, was never seen without her earbuds in and spent virtually all her time at home in her room. She wouldn’t be an obstacle either.
Of course, without obstacles, my mind was free to explore the possibilities of breaking into the school at midnight and finding… what, exactly?… in the cafeteria.
First I had to worry about the breaking-in part. If we were caught, it would go on our permanent records, which would easily cancel out any points we’d score by being club officers in seventh grade. They’d probably disband the H.A.I.R. Club altogether because students couldn’t be trusted with monitoring school security.
And then where would I be, a voice in my head squeaked anxiously. H.A.I.R. Club was already turning out to be way more interesting than that empty table in the main hall had first hinted. And without it I’d instantly go from Historian for Mysterious New Club That Definitely Isn’t Dweeb Club right down to Random Seventh Grader with No Obvious At
tributes. And very few friends.
Finally, as I lay in bed later that night, the worry that came creeping to the front of my mind while these other, more rational ones lurked at the back was the one about meeting up with some alternate version of myself and the others in the cafeteria at midnight. That never goes well in science fiction, does it?
Chapter 16
SO, DINNER AT VINCENT’S… FIRST, Vincent’s parents are both really good cooks. But since they are even better hosts, they didn’t bother to cook for me. They ordered pizza.
Karen was forced to remove her earbuds at the table, so she took the opportunity to torment her younger brother. (And if you’re wondering, yes, it was part of our bond that Vincent and I were both tormented by our sisters. In fact, we were both tormented by each other’s sister too.)
“So you guys are in H.A.I.R. Club together?” Karen asked me by way of opening a stealth attack on Vincent.
“Um, yeah.”
“Are you in any other clubs, Jason?”
“Um, no, just H.A.I.R.”
“Huh. Vincent is in a lot of clubs, aren’t you, Vinnie?”
Vincent hated being called Vinnie, as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you.
“Yep,” said Vincent. “A lot of clubs.”
“That’s got to be hard to manage along with your schoolwork, and don’t forget Chinese school on the weekends,” said Karen. She shook her head sadly at her brother’s poor life choices.
Vincent’s parents’ antennae rose at this. Vincent hadn’t told them that he’d joined every club in school on a dare from Karen.
“I’m doing fine.”
“Sure you are,” said Karen. “And how’s Crochet Club?”
The muscles around Vincent’s jaw started to flex even though he was not currently chewing on anything. “Great, actually. I’m the vice president.”
He hadn’t told me that. Was it impressive? Unclear. It was Crochet Club, after all.