The lyrics to “Sloop John B” by the Beach Boys began to play in Fern’s head, almost as if someone had paused the song in the perfect spot.
The Beach Boys were Eddie’s favorite band, and they were singing about the worst trip they’d ever been on. Fern wished her older brother was here in Washington with her. He might be able to save her from what was sure to be an awful series of nights.
In that moment, the words to “Sloop John B” rang truer to Fern than any lyrics that had ever been sung. This was the worst trip she’d ever been on—and she hadn’t even collected her luggage from the airport carousel.
Chapter 4
The Itinerary
The weather in Washington, DC, was bitter cold, and the Lincoln group was shaping up to be Fern’s worst nightmare. St. Gregory’s had chartered a bus for the entire week, and as the bus driver loaded luggage into the compartment on the bottom of the bus, students scrambled to call dibs on their seats. Fern, who was in the very back of the pack of students, dragged her suitcase behind her. She couldn’t find Lindsey or Sam in the crowd. They were probably already on board, enjoying the company of actual friends.
Friends.
Just when Fern thought that Lindsey Lin would be her first lasting friend, their bond was crumbling before her eyes. All it took was a class trip and some bad luck with rooming assignments to obliterate a new friendship. Lindsey had so many other options, after all—everyone loved her. Fern handed her luggage to the bus driver. She looked right, then left. Somehow, she ended up being the only person besides the bus driver who wasn’t already on the bus.
“Are you waiting on somebody, sweetheart?” the bus driver questioned. He had a jovial tone to his voice and friendly eyes set deep in his face.
“No . . . no, I guess I’m not,” Fern said, hanging her head. She could hear the gleeful shrieks of her classmates spilling out the open bus door. The vehicle looked enormous as it loomed in front of her.
“Someone in there you don’t wanna see?” the bus driver asked, bending down to get a better look at Fern.
“Something like that,” Fern responded. Unconsciously, she shook her head. She was an Otherworldly. An Unusual. She had single-handedly defeated an evil vampire’s plan to steal one of the most powerful objects on Earth only a few weeks ago. Now she was afraid of boarding a bus full of Normal twelve- and thirteen-year-old classmates.
“Well, look here, sweetheart. I’m gonna go start the bus and you take a few breaths. Sometimes a few breaths is all a person needs, eh? Holler if there’s anything else I can do for you during the trip. The name’s Willie.”
Willie put his hand out, and Fern shook it. His hand was cold in hers, but his smile was warm. Even though he didn’t really know her, Willie seemed to have taken a liking to Fern. Perhaps it was only kids her own age who hated her, Fern thought.
She was now the lone figure standing outside the bus. She took a deep breath and released it five seconds later. The breath formed a small cloud of steam in front of her. After taking another breath and holding it longer, Fern took the first step into the bus, and then the next. She pivoted and was now facing her classmates, who were hitting, standing, yelling, swaying, singing, and whispering to one another. The commotion reached near-deafening levels.
The five adult chaperones and Headmaster Mooney were seated in the front three rows. All were clutching clipboards, seemingly in the middle of an impromptu meeting, shouting over the pandemonium behind them.
“Feelin’ better?” Willie asked.
“Much. Thanks for your help.”
“No need,” he said, tipping his Washington Nationals baseball cap.
Fern decided she’d better find a seat before someone noticed her. Four rows in, next to Mark Gaber, there was an open seat.
“This seat’s taken,” Mark said in his loudest voice.
Fern spotted another unoccupied seat next to Samantha Crothers.
“I’m saving that for someone,” she said. There was no way that was true, of course, since Fern was the last one to board the bus, but she didn’t have the energy to argue. Fern approached two more open seats and was met with the same response.
Had the whole school schemed against her while she stood outside talking to Willie?
“Fern!”
Fern searched through the snickering crowd to pinpoint the location of Lindsey’s voice.
“Over here! In the very back!” Though Lindsey was waving her arms wildly, she blended in with the rest of the hyperactive students.
Lindsey had separated from Olivia, Alexa, and Mary Eileen in order to save a seat for Fern. Overjoyed, Fern trotted to the back of the bus. Just as she gained speed, Blythe Conrad extended her leg into the aisle and snagged Fern’s own with her foot. Suddenly Fern was airborne. The left side of her face met the rubber-treaded floor of the aisle with a loud splat.
The bus quieted to a whisper as the students erupted from their seats, trying to get a better look at Fern, now splayed in the aisle. Fern rolled over so that she was faceup. She cupped her left eye with her hand. It stung and throbbed all at once. Both of her knees were skinned.
Headmaster Mooney lumbered down the aisle toward her.
Fern felt someone picking her up by the arms, forcing her to her feet.
“She’s fine,” Lindsey said as she helped Fern to the back of the bus.
“Are you sure you’re unharmed?” Headmaster Mooney asked Fern with feigned concern, mentally reviewing all the different ways St. Gregory’s could be sued because of a situation like the one unfolding in front of him. He silently thanked those individuals who’d invented the permission slip, the consent form, and the parental waiver.
“I’m okay. I’ll only have a little bruise,” Fern said, still seeing stars from her fall.
Lindsey was careful to wave off Mrs. McAllister, who stormed down the aisle behind Headmaster Mooney.
After hovering in the aisle for a minute, Mrs. McAllister repressed the urge to check on her daughter and returned to her seat next to Mrs. Lin in the front of the bus. The trip had barely begun and already her daughter was the focal point of a small spectacle—but the one request Fern had made when the Commander signed on as a chaperone was that her mother not baby her. With that promise firmly in mind, Mary Lou McAllister was doing her best not to start the trip off on the wrong foot. Fern had been more temperamental lately (not that Mary Lou blamed her given all that Fern had gone through), and she didn’t want to upset her further. She worried constantly about her daughter, but Mary Lou was trying to give her some of the space she thought every teenager needed, all while still keeping tabs on her.
Lindsey steadied Fern, holding her arm, and guided her into the seat in the back next to her own. Sam and Preston were sitting directly across the aisle.
“You okay?” Sam asked.
“I’m fine,” Fern said, still covering her left eye with one hand.
“What happened?” Lindsey asked.
“Blythe Conrad tripped me. Where did you disappear to?” Fern used her most accusatory tone, though she wasn’t quite sure what she was accusing Lindsey of.
“I was the first one on the bus, to make sure I could save you a seat next to me,” Lindsey replied defensively.
“Oh,” Fern said, relieved. Lindsey hadn’t forgotten about her. The bus lurched forward, heading toward the Marriott, signaling that St. Gregory’s Spring Break Trip was officially underway.
“I’ll bet she’ll have a nasty shiner tomorrow,” Preston said, leaning over Sam from his window seat to get a better look at Fern. Sam shot Preston a dirty look—he didn’t want Preston involved. Preston took the hint and put headphones on.
“I’m going to make Blythe Conrad wish she never came on this trip,” Sam declared, glaring down the aisle at Blythe and Lee.
“Wait. No one’s going to do anything to Blythe or Lee,” Fern said, defeated.
“What? She deliberately tripped you! For no reason,” Lindsey said, airing her own outrage.
“I want to live through this week, and I think it’s probably best if we just leave them alone so that they’ll leave me alone. I’m rooming with both of them.”
“You’re rooming with them?” Sam said, having been too distracted to hear the announcement of Fern’s room. “How did that happen?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I thought it’d be a great week for me to make some new friends, so I put them down as my top choices,” Fern said sarcastically.
“This is a disaster,” Sam said, putting his head in his hands. “I knew we shouldn’t have come.”
After all that had happened with Vlad, Fern, and the Otherworldlies, Sam was convinced that the two of them should stay at home over spring break to both hide and lick their wounds. Fern was now someone every Otherworldly on planet Earth was after. In Sam’s opinion, it was not the time to go cavorting off to Washington, DC, and expose Fern to all sorts of unknown dangers—his worst fear was that some Blout would kidnap his sister.
In addition, since Fern’s sudden disappearance from English class one day and almost immediate reappearance at the beach (her first experience teleporting), the teasing at school had become worse than ever. She’d only further guaranteed her position as the school punching bag, despite Lindsey championing her cause.
For her part, Fern insisted that Sam should go on the trip, at the very least. He’d been looking forward to it all year. Fern hated to think that his concerns about her would keep her twin brother home. She’d already disrupted everyone’s life enough.
In the end, the McAllisters worked out a compromise. The Commander would go as a chaperone, along with Lindsey and her parents for added security. The Lins were senior officials in the Rollen intelligence community, and they assured the McAllisters that there had been no reports of plots to harm Fern. As the first verified Unusual and a partial fulfillment of the centuries-old prophecy, people were very curious about her. But there were no known threats. In addition, Mrs. Lin thought it might be a good thing for Fern to change locations for a little while. Only those in the St. Gregory’s community would know exactly where Fern was.
“It’s not a disaster. I’m supposedly one of the most powerful Otherworldlies around, remember?” Fern asserted with Eddie-like confidence. “You really think I can’t handle a week with Blythe Conrad and her lame evil sidekick, Lee Phillips?”
“Be a little quieter, Fern,” Sam said, glancing nervously around the bus. He was more worried about keeping Fern’s secret than she seemed to be.
“Students!” Headmaster Mooney bellowed from the front of the bus. “Itineraries for the week are being passed back to you. Please do not lose them. They have all meeting times and locations listed. You’ll also find important phone numbers attached, should you need them. I’m not anticipating any problems, of course.” Fern was certain Headmaster Mooney was staring directly at her as he emphasized the last sentence of his announcement.
Slowly, stapled copies of the itinerary reached Sam, Lindsey, and Fern in the back of the bus. Fern looked absentmindedly out the window. They were zooming away from Dulles Airport and toward the District of Columbia. The bus was on a four-lane highway—but it was much different from the freeways and highways she was used to in California. There were large trees on both sides of the road and a large green swath of grass in the middle. In Southern California, a sprinkler system would have to be installed if a green parkway was to remain green for very long.
“Here,” Lindsey said, shoving Fern’s copy of the itinerary in her face. Fern glanced at the schedule.
“They’re giving us two whole hours to walk around the National Museum of the American Indian?” Sam complained. “Why do we have to go there?”
“Quit being so culturally insensitive,” Lindsey said, reaching across the aisle and punching Sam in the arm. “You stole all their land . . . the least you could do was give them a museum and go visit it every so often.”
“’You’? Why are you saying it was just me? You’re an American too! You’re not innocent!”
“My Chinese relatives did not arrive in this country until well after your relatives had mistreated the Indians and taken their land,” Lindsey said.
Sam was about to continue the argument when Fern gasped so loudly that the kid sitting in front of her, Garth James, swiveled his head to look at her.
“You okay?” Garth asked.
“She’s fine,” Lindsey answered, signaling for Garth to turn back around.
“What is it?” Lindsey whispered to Fern, hoping not to draw any more attention from Garth.
“It’s nothing,” Fern said. “I thought I saw a spider.” Fern was disappointed that she couldn’t think of a better excuse.
“A spider? On the bus. Really?” Sam added skeptically.
Fern knew she wouldn’t be able to come close to convincingly explaining why she had gasped. Her reaction was to the itinerary for Friday, March 29. After gathering in the lobby of the Marriott, all of the St. Gregory’s students were to board the bus so they could spend two hours at the morning’s designated location: the National Zoological Park. That had been the name on the crate in her dream about Miles Zapo! Sure, there might be many other places with a similar name, but Fern suspected there was only one National Zoological Park. It made sense that it was in Washington, DC.
Was Miles Zapo there now, in some dark corner? Was Fern supposed to find him? Was that why she’d had the dream?
Fern’s elevated heart rate caused her normally pale face to turn red. Sam and Lindsey both realized something was wrong with her but knew the back of the bus was not the time to have any kind of substantive conversation about it.
“Where is the National Zoological Park?” Fern asked Lindsey and Sam, trying to sound casual.
“It’s in the north part of the city—it’s got its own stop on the subway or whatever,” Sam responded. “Our hotel is close to it, I think.” Though he would never admit to it, he’d brushed up on his capital knowledge over the past few weeks.
“What kind of park is it?” Fern asked.
“It’s a zoo. I don’t know why it has that name.”
“Oh.”
After a dinner of pizza, which had been served to the students in one of the Marriott’s conference areas, Fern returned to her room and curled up on one of the double beds. She put on her headphones, mostly to block out the incessant chatter of Blythe, Lee, and the ten-year-old genius, Candace Tutter. Her roommates were unpacking their things into the dressers of the Marriott hotel room the four girls were to share for the next week. The Commander had given her an ice pack to soothe her bruised eye, but it languished melting and leaking on the floor next to the bed. Fern didn’t want to give Blythe the satisfaction of knowing she had caused her any pain. Besides, Fern thought a black eye might make her look tough. She had abandoned all hope of fitting in and was now focused on cultivating a strong outsider persona—at least that way she would be left alone.
Fern determined pretty quickly that both Blythe and Lee had requested her as a roommate as part of a diabolical scheme. Fern wondered if they’d managed to alienate every other friend they had. When she confronted them in the hotel room, Blythe was forthcoming.
“You know what they say,” she’d said, popping a piece of Trident between her front teeth. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
“We are going to have such fun together, aren’t we, Lee?” Blythe purred. She plopped on the flowered bedspread next to her cohort.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we aren’t all best friends by the end of the week,” Lee responded. The two girls giggled.
“Well, thirty-six percent of people in the United States own a pet and of those, fifty-five percent say their pet is their best friend,” Candace Tutter began, talking quickly. “Do any of you own a pet? Because if so, I’d say the probability of us becoming best friends is not in our favor.” Candace had already unpacked all of her clothing and had neatly hung her coat in the closet. She was sitting at the table by the windo
w, reading Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (for the second time, she informed Fern later).
“Shut up, Candace,” Blythe said, springing up from the bed and taking two steps toward her. “You will SPEAK only when we tell you to . . . get it?”
For a girl so tiny and underage, Candace Tutter didn’t scare very easily. She ignored Blythe and continued reading War and Peace. The phone rang, and Blythe jumped over Fern to grab the receiver, a wicked smile on her face.
“It’s for you,” Blythe said, waving the phone in front of Fern. “Probably one of your freak friends.” Fern removed her Bose headphones. They were huge and cumbersome, but Fern liked the way the music sounded with them on.
“Those headphones are ridiculous, by the way,” Blythe said, rolling her eyes. “Do you think you’re a DJ?”
“I’ve got the perfect DJ name for you,” Lee said, glowering at Fern. “DJ Ugly Freak.”
She and Blythe snickered as Fern picked up the receiver of the telephone.
“Hello?” Fern said, trying her best to ignore the two girls.
“Yeah, um, this is hotel security,” a voice said. Fern recognized immediately that the person on the other end of the line was lowering his voice to try to sound older and more authoritative. “If you don’t come remove your underwear from the front lawn, like, immediately, we’re going to, uh, have to arrest you.” Fern heard bursts of laughter in the background—clearly the caller had an audience. Then came a click and a dial tone.
Fern frowned. Lee and Blythe eyed each other mischievously.
“Who was that?” Lee asked, feigning innocence. Fern didn’t bother responding. Instead she walked over to the window. The girls had a seventh-floor room on the front side of the hotel, facing Woodley Road and overlooking much of the Woodley Park neighborhood of northwest DC. The hotel had a well-manicured lawn and several vine-wrapped gazebos.
Fern pulled the drapes open and looked down. Spotlights were set on the lawn, shining on the hotel to illuminate the towering redbrick building at night. Almost immediately, Fern noticed a hot pink splash of color resting on one of the spotlights. She noticed a few white blots on the lawn and a spot that seemed to be orange.
The Siren's Cry Page 3