“She was by the World War II Memorial. Not to worry, though, I don’t think she was up to any mischief,” Officer Hallet stated.
“Thank you so much, Officer,” Mrs. Phillips said, putting out her hand. The officer took Mrs. Phillips’s hand in his own and shook it once.
“Well, Fern McAllister,” Officer Hallet said, nudging Fern forward, “try not to meander off again.” He winked at Fern. Out of the corner of her eye, Fern saw Headmaster Mooney storming toward her as the policeman retreated with his silent partner. Though Fern knew she was in deep trouble, she hoped she was the only casualty—Sam and Lindsey may have been able to slip back in line unnoticed. Surely Lindsey’s tight group of girlfriends would cover for her, as would Preston for Sam. Headmaster Mooney was at the head of the St. Gregory’s section of the line. Because Fern and the Lincoln group were bringing up the rear, it took him a few moments to reach the back. He was wearing an oversize down jacket and a beanie with I y DC embroidered on it. A large camera dangled from his neck. Fern had never seen him move so quickly. He motioned for both Mrs. Phillips and Fern to step out of line.
“What was Fern doing with the police?” Headmaster Mooney began. His mustache danced up and down as he spoke.
“I went to—“
“Excuse me, Fern, but I think Headmaster Mooney was asking me, not you.” Mrs. Phillips gave Headmaster Mooney a flirtatious smile.
“That’s right, Mrs. Phillips. I’m sure you have everything under control. But I would like to know what was going on.”
“Well, Fern snuck out of line and went off by herself. Fortunately, Blythe noticed and notified the friendly police officers nearby that she was missing.” Fern looked toward the front of the line. Every single student had turned around to look at the Mooney-Phillips powwow. Blythe and Lee were beaming with pride. A group of eighth-grade boys were laughing with them. By leaving the line, Fern had managed to give Blythe and Lee more than enough ammunition to exact their promised revenge, as well as time to gather an audience. Worse still, Fern saw the Commander marching toward them. Her mother would probably only make bad matters worse, despite her good intentions.
“Fortunate, indeed!” Headmaster Mooney smiled at Mrs. Phillips. “Well, thank you for taking care of the situation. I’m glad that Fern had such a vigilant chaperone.” Mooney then stared down at Fern.
“I’d like to speak to you privately,” he said, backing away from the line.
After Headmaster Mooney had put about twenty feet between the monument line and himself, he turned to face Fern.
“Where exactly did you sneak off to?” Headmaster Mooney demanded.
“I wasn’t sneaking. I only wanted a better look at the World War II Memorial,” Fern said. “It wasn’t that far away!” She knew she was stretching the truth, but she wanted to get this whole ordeal over with as quickly as possible.
“Either way, that was in direct violation of the rules of the trip!” Mooney said. Moisture had gathered on his mustache. He flicked it off angrily with one of his hands. Fern was shivering, both because she was frightened of the punishment Headmaster Mooney might dole out and also because she was now far enough from the monument that nothing shielded her from the whipping wind.
“Do you realize that you’ve embarrassed St. Gregory’s once again? Why, you’re nothing but a bane on the school, Fern McAllister!” Headmaster Mooney’s face was now red as he gasped for more breath. “You’re a disgrace! Getting the police involved! If your mother hadn’t volunteered to be a chaperone on this trip, I swear I’d have you on a plane so quickly, it would make your head—“
“I guess then, Headmaster Mooney, Fern’s pretty lucky I am a chaperone on this trip.”
The Commander had stalked up behind the headmaster a few moments before. By the time she was close enough to interject, she’d heard quite enough of his diatribe. Dressed in slacks and a pinstriped collared shirt, her flaxen hair was gathered in an understated bun. The Commander was fuming, but collected.
“As for Fern making a foolish, but innocent, mistake, I won’t disagree with you there,” the Commander said, glowering at her daughter, “but perhaps it would be best if you didn’t discipline her in front of such a public audience.” Headmaster Mooney’s face turned bright red, much as it had when he and Clownface—a teacher nicknamed by the students for her overuse of makeup—faced off with the Commander after Fern’s initial Pirate Cove teleporting incident. Fern thought he would have learned by now that he was no match for her mother.
Still, although Fern was embarrassed by the fact that Headmaster Mooney was chastising her in front of everyone, she was mortified by the fact that her mother had come to her defense. It had only made her more of a spectacle.
“Fine,” Headmaster Mooney conceded grudgingly. “She will not go unpunished for this, though.”
“I’m not suggesting that. What I am suggesting is that you keep the scene to a minimum.”
“Thank you for your input, Mary Lou. You can go ahead and go back to the Madison group. I’ll take it from here.” Headmaster Mooney gave Mrs. McAllister a wide, saccharine smile. “Fern, come with me.”
“Where exactly are you planning on taking Fern?”
“Fern has lost the privilege of traveling with the rest of the school to the top of the monument. I plan on sitting with her while her classmates enjoy the spectacular view they’ve been waiting patiently in rule-abiding fashion to see.”
Mrs. McAllister imagined her daughter being cruelly berated by Headmaster Mooney for the next forty-five minutes. She’d probably already overstepped chaperone boundaries by leaving the Madison group to intervene on her daughter’s behalf, and she could sense that Fern didn’t welcome her involvement, but it wasn’t in her nature to stand by while Fern was ridiculed by a buffoon like Ralph Mooney. Why had she left the line? Mary Lou McAllister recognized that Fern had an uphill climb when it came to being accepted by her classmates. Sometimes, though, she honestly thought her daughter only made it harder on herself.
“I’ll stay with her and get May Lin to watch the Madison group—there’s no reason you should be deprived of the opportunity to go to the top.” The Commander smiled sweetly at Headmaster Mooney.
Headmaster Mooney looked at the McAllister girl and then her mother. He wanted as little to do with them as possible. Finally the barrel-chested headmaster shrugged his shoulders at them both and told them to follow him. He led the McAllisters to the front of the Washington Monument where the white building that housed the monument bookstore stood, enclosing the entrance to the elevator that took tourists to the top. Concrete surrounded the base of the building, but beyond that, there was a wide expanse of grass. Headmaster Mooney stalked up to the spot where the concrete slab met the grass.
“ You will sit here,” he said, pointing at a small, dewy plot of grass. “While your classmates ride up to see the panoramic views of our nation’s capital, you will not move from this spot. You will stay here until every single student has gone up in the elevator and come down. Please make sure that your daughter does not walk off in the future. Okay?”
Headmaster Mooney had turned red again.
“Fern will sit here silently, I assure you,” the Commander said sternly. Headmaster Mooney nodded once firmly and stalked off to rejoin the line. Once he was a safe distance away, the Commander kneeled next to her daughter.
“Why did you wander off?” she asked Fern.
“I wanted to see the World War II Memorial,” Fern said, folding her arms. Mary Lou McAllister looked at the bruise under Fern’s eye. She leaned in to get a closer look, but Fern turned away.
“Was it Lee and Blythe? Were they teasing you?”
“No. Seriously, Mom, there wasn’t anything else going on,” Fern said, almost angry. She realized that everyone was staring at her.
“You can tell me what’s wrong, Fern. I want to help.”
“If you wanted to help, you should have left me alone,” Fern said, directing an angry glare at the Commander
. “I have a hard enough time making friends as is without my mom following me around like I’m a baby while everyone watches.”
Mary Lou closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying not to show any injured feelings in her expression. She thought about her best friend, Fern’s birth mother, Phoebe Merriam. Phoebe was the most stubborn person Mary Lou had ever met, but Mary Lou loved her all the more for it. Fern was growing more and more like Phoebe every day. Mary Lou wished there was something she could say to her daughter—something that might stem the tide of stubbornness and resentment that she felt was beginning to engulf Fern. And yet, Mary Lou had no idea how to even conceptualize what her daughter was going through. In the last few months, Fern had found out that Mary Lou had been lying to her, that her twin brother wasn’t her actual twin, and that she was at the center of a centuries-old battle between good and evil vampires. The Commander wouldn’t have believed any of it if she hadn’t lived it with Fern.
Since Mary Lou’s revelation about Phoebe, when Fern thought no one was looking, she would grow quiet as a sad and distressed look clouded her face—like she’d lost something very important and had no hope of getting it back. The few times Mary Lou had seen this look on Fern’s face, she could feel her heart breaking for her adoptive daughter. What if, Mary Lou asked herself, I lose Fern like I lost Phoebe ? She quickly banished such thoughts from her mind.
Mary Lou realized Fern’s teeth were chattering.
“Are you cold?” the Commander said, feeling despondent as she thought of Fern’s face during those quiet moments.
“No,” Fern said coldly.
“Well, I’m going to run into the gift shop and get you another layer just in case,” the Commander said sympathetically.
“I really don’t need anything. . . .” Fern’s voice trailed off. The Commander pretended she hadn’t heard Fern as she trotted off in the direction of the Washington Monument’s entrance.
The fact that the Commander was being so nice to her only made Fern want to distance herself further from her mother. The Commander was trying, maybe, but she didn’t have any clue what was going on with Fern anymore. Then again, how could she?
After a few minutes of being alone, Fern spotted Sam entering the white stone building. He saw her in her damp exile and mouthed Sorry before disappearing through the security checkpoint. Lindsey separated from her roommates for a moment and gave Fern a small wave.
Before long, everyone from St. Gregory’s had entered the building to ride up to the top of the monument, and the Commander hadn’t returned. Fern was still alone on the wet patch of grass. But not for long.
“It’s pretty cloudy out anyway. You’re not missing much.”
Fern looked up. Sam’s best friend, Preston Buss, was standing in front of her. Preston played volleyball and basketball with Sam and hung out behind the outdoor stage with the other popular kids in school. Preston was a few inches taller than Sam, with a lanky frame, and the two boys had a friendly rivalry in most things. Today he was wearing skinny jeans, a Burton snowboarding jacket, and a skullcap. The hair poking out from under his hat was black, and his olive skin seemed out of place in the cold Washington weather.
“What?” Fern asked, confused.
“The view. On a clear day, you can see all of DC. And I’m not going to lie. It’s pretty cool, but it’s cloudy today,” Preston said, sitting down next to her and blowing a bubble with his chewing gum. “So you’re not missing much.”
“You’ve been here before?” Fern asked.
“My dad’s a pilot. We go lots of places,” Preston said. His eyes were the color of copper and were perfectly suited to his face.
“You may want to get up,” Fern said. “The grass is soaking wet.”
“Too late,” Preston said, smiling at Fern. She was getting the distinct feeling that he was trying to be nice to her, but she couldn’t decide why.
“Aren’t you supposed to be with your group?”
“Nah. They’ll lose track of everyone up there. I’ll sneak back to my group when they come down.”
Preston peered into Fern’s eyes in a way that made her heart jump. The two sat on the grass, craning their necks up toward the capstone of the monument. Fern scanned the horizon nervously, expecting the Commander to reappear at any second.
“So what’d you do?” Preston asked, this time not looking at Fern.
“Didn’t you see everything? I thought everyone did. . . .”
“I mean, I saw Mooney chew you out and I saw you get dropped off by the police, but no one really knows what you did. Blythe Conrad is telling everyone you were trying to score cigarettes from tourists all over the Mall.”
“Oh, great,” Fern said, her blood boiling. “I wandered off for a second and Blythe Conrad told the police I was 'missing.’”
“That girl sucks,” Preston said with a smile.
“I thought you were friends with her.”
“Um, no.” Preston turned his body toward Fern. “No one wants to be on her bad side because there’s no telling what she might do, but I’m not sure anyone actually likes her.”
Fern could sense that Preston Buss was trying to be sympathetic, but that almost angered her more. She didn’t need charity. She liked it better when she was ignored.
Preston nervously pulled blades of grass out of the ground, depositing them in a pile as they sat cross-legged, facing each other. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a shiny metallic object the size of a large pack of gum. He cupped it and brought it to his mouth. His cheeks expanded like he was a puffer fish as musical notes began.
It took Fern a few seconds to realize that Preston was playing a harmonica. She recognized the first few bars of the most basic blues riff. He repeated it. Da-na-na-na-na. Preston tapped his foot on the wet ground in front of him. Fern couldn’t tell if she was more nervous because of Preston’s presence or because the Commander would be back at any moment with a cheesy sweatshirt.
“Fern was sittin’ in the soakin’ grass,” he sang, trying to make his voice sound husky. Da-na-na-na-na. “Feelin’ kinda down 'n low.” Da-na-na-na-na. “Preston Buss weren’t very much help.” Da-na-na-na-na. “Till he gave his harmonica a blow.” Preston’s voice dipped as low as it could go for the final lyric of his impromptu song. He ended by blowing a fast pattern of notes out of his harmonica. His hand opened and closed and his lips moved up and down the harmonica’s comb. The music flowed from Preston. He was obviously fairly skilled.
Fern grinned at Preston, amazed he didn’t seem to care at all about who was watching him—he had a goofiness that she’d never noticed when she hung around Sam and him together. A few people in line had leaned over the chain to get a better look at the source of the music.
“Where’d you learn to do that?”
“My older brother is in a band. I only fool around, mostly.”
“You’re not bad,” Fern said earnestly.
“Yeah, well, at least you don’t look so depressed anymore. Better get in position to jump back in with my group. Don’t want to pull a Fern McAllister and wind up in custody,” he teased, smiling at Fern as he bounded up and ran toward the monument’s entrance.
Finally alone in the bathroom of her room after the monument benching and the rest of the day’s scheduled events, Fern put both hands flat on the sink basin and leaned forward. Inches from the mirror, she raised a finger and touched the patch of black and blue, puffy skin. Fern winced but didn’t mind the pain. It momentarily took her mind off what she was about to do. Blythe and Lee would surely be elated once they saw Fern’s black eye. Perhaps they might even leave her alone, satisfied with their revenge—now that they had publicly humiliated her with the Capitol police stunt, the underwear caper, and the bus face-plant incident.
For this trip, Fern hadn’t given Sam or Lindsey any time parameters. She’d simply told them that she was going to teleport to the house in the picture once Lee, Blythe, and Candace had fallen asleep. She was exhausted from a day of sightseeing
—everyone in the St. Gregory’s contingent had walked all around the Tidal Basin, the Jefferson Memorial, and the Mall. After a late-afternoon box lunch that included a dried-out sandwich and a seriously questionable orange, the students were given two hours to wander through the National Museum of Natural History. Fern estimated the students had covered at least five miles in touring.
Though most of her classmates stared at Fern from a distance as rumors continued to swirl that she had snuck out of line to purchase contraband or participate in other nefarious illegal activities, Candace dogged Fern. She hung at Fern’s side the entire day, rattling off a potpourri of arcane facts and figures about the memorials and other landmarks. Lindsey and Sam had offered to hang out with Fern for the rest of the day, but she’d dismissed them both, figuring they couldn’t actually talk about anything of significance with Candace around. She spotted her brother and best friend throughout the day, surrounded by groups of four or more, laughing and goofing around as they dashed from one attraction to the next. Fern couldn’t remember the last time she’d spent time with more than two people at once by choice (unless you included Eddie, but he was her brother, so he didn’t count). She was beginning to recognize that, as an outsider, she had more in common with Candace than with Sam or Lindsey.
Also, Fern couldn’t help but be impressed by Candace’s command of facts as they wandered through the exhibits in the Museum of Natural History.
“Hey!” Lindsey Lin called out to Fern. “Come here for a sec.” Lindsey was motioning for Fern to join her in the corner of one of the exhibit halls.
“I’ll be right back, Candace,” Fern said, before trotting over to Lindsey. “Stay put.”
“See that man over there?” Lindsey said, pointing to the far end of the hall. Fern spotted a white-haired man in glasses wearing a nicely tailored suit. He had a dozen people around him, all listening intently to him as he gestured toward a skeleton encased in glass behind him.
“Yeah,” Fern said, wondering why Lindsey had called her over to point out a tour guide.
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