She hung up, turning in my direction again. I didn’t realize I’d been staring at her until suddenly she was staring—scowling—back.
“Hey,” she said, and I felt panic rear up inside me. I was already mentally preparing my excuses for the “What are you looking at?” that was sure to follow, but she shocked me by instead saying, “Do I know you?”
“Uh, I don’t think so,” I said quickly, even though I’d been wondering the same thing. I didn’t remember much about that girl from middle school, but if this was the same girl, I definitely didn’t want her to remember me. My braces and outdated glasses had been the least embarrassing things about me back then. “But I couldn’t help but overhear—you’re missing a few of your friends? I think I might have seen them.”
That made her eyebrow go up. “You? Where did you see them?”
I ignored the loaded way she said you and replied, “I saw a blond girl wearing a uniform like yours in Everett earlier. And then on the train—” I broke off. Actually, that was yet another weird thing about the entire incident. I’d seen her on her skateboard in Everett, but then fifteen minutes later she’d been on a train heading back toward Everett. How had she gotten there so fast?
The girl didn’t notice the confusion on my face, though. She was looking off in the direction of the train platforms, her scowl deepening. “Everett?” she murmured. “What was she…?” She looked back at me. “Damn. Listen—”
She broke off suddenly, whirling around. The security guard I’d spoken to earlier was coming back out of the office, followed by another officer with stripes on his sleeves.
The cheerleader cursed. “They’ve noticed us. We need to get out of here.”
I furrowed my eyebrows. “Why? They’re just coming over to talk to me. I…I needed to tell them something.”
She glared at me. “About Leah?”
I just gaped back at her. What was with these cheerleaders?
“Shailene!” The girl with the braids was hurrying toward us. “Sentries.”
“I see them,” the one who’d been speaking to me—Shailene, I guess—said. “We need to get out of here. And that includes her.” She pointed at me.
“Who’s she?” the other girl asked.
“Laura,” I said after a minute, realizing they were waiting for a response. I don’t think that was the answer they wanted, though.
“She saw Leah,” Shailene said. “In Everett.”
The other girl cursed now. “Okay. We’ll distract the sentries, then. You get her out of here.”
“Um, I’m not going anywhere,” I interrupted, jerking my arm away when Shailene reached for it. “I have to catch my train. I don’t have time for kidnapping-by-cheerleader, thanks.”
I turned on my heel, striding confidently toward the two security guards, who were pushing forcefully through the crowd. I’d only made it about three steps, though, when a redheaded cheerleader whipped past me—way faster than I would have thought was physically possible, even for someone fit enough to hoist a fully-grown human on her shoulders. She held something black and metallic in her right hand. For one horrible instant, I thought it was a gun; I realized what it actually was just half a second before she pulled the trigger. Barbs shot from the barrel, careening toward the officer faster than my eyes could keep up, and then electricity crackled through the air.
“Are you freaking nuts?” I shrieked. “You can’t just tase the cops!”
The cheerleader ignored me. The security guard cried out in pain, staggering backward into the other officer—but he wasn’t a cop anymore, I realized with horror. As the electricity pulsed through the security guard’s body, it shimmered, and the human appearance seemed to fall away like shredded clothing. What was left was… I don’t even know what it was, honestly. The closest description I could come up with was a giant black pincher bug on two legs.
I screamed bloody freaking murder.
“Come on,” Shailene barked, and this time I ran after her without hesitation. I hadn’t thought I would see anything weirder today than these cheerleaders, but at least they were human. I think.
We raced up the stairs to the train platforms, Shailene leading the way. “What the hell was that thing?” I panted. “And why doesn’t anyone else see it?” After the Taser incident, I’d have thought for sure that the station would be pandemonium, but the only person screaming had been me—and no one seemed to have noticed that, either.
“They’re Anesidorans,” Shailene called over her shoulder. “And no one can see them because they don’t want to be seen.” She ducked under a metal guardrail with a sign attached to it that read No Admittance, and crouched behind the controller box.
“What the hell does that mean?” I asked, following her. “Just wanting to be invisible doesn’t make you invisible.” I of all people ought to know that, considering how many times I—with or without my family’s help—had managed to mortify myself in public. But I kept that addendum to myself.
Shailene rolled her eyes. “It is way too complicated to explain right now. All I want is for you to tell me where you saw Leah and Joanie and then to get the heck out of here before those sentries find us.”
“I told you, I saw the blond girl in Everett. And then…” I swallowed at the memory of the second incident. It seemed a lot more sinister now, after seeing that bug monster down there. “I saw her and another cheerleader on a train heading toward Everett. They were on the roof of the train. And there was a guy with them, a guy in a black trenchcoat.”
Shailene’s already-pale skin went white as a sheet. She’d pulled two tripod-looking devices from…somewhere (did cheerleader uniforms usually have pockets? Where would they fit?), and she froze in the middle of unfolding the legs of the second one. “Goddammit,” she muttered.
“What? What’s the matter?”
She glared at me. “Don’t worry about it. It just means I need to get you out of here before—”
She broke off. The officer with the stripes on his sleeves had appeared at the top of the stairs. He looked human, but after seeing what had happened with his buddy downstairs, I somehow got the feeling that he wasn’t.
“Hold still,” Shailene whispered. Hurriedly, she unfolded the legs of the second tripod and set it down on the other side of me. Then she pressed a button on the base of each and some kind of digital screen shimmered into place in front of us.
“Anesidoran sentries don’t see the way we do,” she explained in a low voice. “That should scramble his vision sensors enough that he won’t find us. Hopefully.”
“Hopefully? And what do we do if he does find us?” I couldn’t believe that he wouldn’t be able to see right through this mostly-transparent screen. And what about the other passengers at the station?
“You don’t want to find out,” Shailene said.
I ground my teeth. As if that weren’t the most contrived action-movie response of all time. I didn’t dare demand a better explanation, though. Partly because I was afraid the cop would hear, and partly because I kind of genuinely didn’t want to find out.
The cop strolled casually down the platform, looking around with practiced detachment. To all the world, he probably looked like he was doing a routine check for, I don’t know, drug dealers or something. But I knew he was looking for us. I held my breath and pressed my body against the controller box as hard as I could.
He paused when he got close to us, looking around with narrowed eyes. He sniffed the air, and for a second I thought I could see the movement of antennae superimposed behind the façade of his human face.
“Little girls,” he said in a singsong voice. Goosebumps rippled across my skin at the sound. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
I glanced over at Shailene. Her scowl was gone. Now she looked almost as nervous as I felt.
He sniffed the air again, then started to move forward, disappearing from view behind one of the massive concrete columns supporting the roof of the platform. I exhaled, but Shailene put
her arm in front of me, making me freeze in place. “Don’t move,” she breathed.
“But my train…!” I whispered in protest. It would be rolling in any second now. If I wanted to get away from this craziness, that would be my last chance for another half an hour.
Shailene looked like she was about to say something snide, but then her eyes widened, and she hissed, “Shh!”
I looked up in alarm. The officer was approaching us again, this time on our side of the guardrail. He sniffed the air once more, eyeing the controller box warily. “You can’t hide from me, girls,” he said, his voice gravelly. “I know you’re here.”
Shailene’s eyebrows were drawn. She’d shifted her weight onto the balls of her feet. In her right hand was a stun gun. She was going to rush him. My heart pounded in my ears.
The officer took a step closer, looking around, his eyes wandering just over our heads.
Shailene flicked the safety switch on the stun gun. It made a soft click.
In an instant, the officer was on her, grabbing her around the throat with hands that flickered, shimmering into claws and then back again. The stun gun fell from her hand, skittering across the ground and disappearing over the side of the platform. I gasped, frozen in place.
“Too slow, Striker,” the officer—creature—hissed in her face. “Now you need to come with me. Your friends are waiting for you.”
“Where are they?” Shailene choked.
The officer tightened his grip. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
He didn’t even look at me. Now was my chance to get the hell out of there. But I couldn’t just leave Shailene with that thing. I didn’t know her from a load of hay, but I wasn’t an asshole. I had to do something. If only she hadn’t lost that stun gun! Electricity seemed to incapacitate them…
The ground rumbled beneath us—my train was pulling into the station. I just had a few seconds. Before I could think twice, I lunged to my feet, tackling the officer as hard as I could.
He teetered for a moment on the edge of the platform before tumbling down onto the tracks. He screamed as his body connected with the electrified third rail, the last of his human façade fading away. The creature looked at me for an instant through prismatic, insect-like eyes, his pointed mandibles quivering.
“You,” he said. Though his words didn’t quite seem to be English, I still understood them. “Why—?”
Before he could finish his sentence, the train came thundering into the station, crushing the creature like a bug on a car windshield. Wind and monster-guts pelted me as I stood there staring, numb and shaking.
“Laura,” I heard Shailene say from behind me. I turned to face her, a grin starting to form on my lips, but was met with a glower in response. “Why did you do that?” she demanded.
My jaw dropped. “Um, because he was strangling you?”
“I had it under control,” she snapped, though her red face showed that she knew it was a lie. “Now how am I supposed to find out what they did with Leah and Joanie?”
I just stared at her, my mouth moving wordlessly. She picked up my overnight bag and tossed it at me—hard. I caught it with a grunt of surprise.
“Just get out of here,” she said.
“Are you kidding me?” I sputtered. “I just saved your life from some kind of bug monster, and I don’t even get a thank you?”
“Thanks so much,” she said, her voice dripping sarcasm. “Now I think you have a train to catch. Wouldn’t want you to miss it.”
I gaped at her a moment longer, anger boiling in the pit of my stomach. Then I turned and stormed onto the train, slamming my bag onto the floor just as the pneumatic doors swished closed.
I looked out the window as the train started to move. Shailene was already gone. But just as the platform disappeared from view, I saw him standing there. It was just for an instant, but I could have sworn he was staring back at me. A shiver ran down my spine.
The man in the black trenchcoat.
My head was in a complete fog by the time I made it back to the Gam-Lam house. I felt like I was sleepwalking.
It didn’t help matters that the house was almost completely deserted, since most of the girls were either home for spring break or partying it up in Florida somewhere. The brightly-lit halls of the big brick house (poor planning, really, in an earthquake-prone city like ours) were eerily quiet, adding to the dreamlike effect. I tossed my overnight bag onto my bed in the large room I shared with the other freshman girls, and then followed the sound of TV speakers into the second-floor lounge down the hall.
My big, Ana, was sprawled across the black leather sectional watching the five o’clock news. She looked up from the bowl of sugary cereal she’d been shoveling into her mouth and grinned. “Laura,” she said around a mouthful of marshmallows. “There you are! I was starting to get worried. Weren’t you supposed to be back here hours ago?”
I shrugged. “Got held up in Everett.” Which, of course, was a total lie. What I’d actually been doing—since leaving the San Luis station, anyway—was staring off into space questioning my sanity. When my train had gotten to the St. Francis stop, I’d just sat there. I’d continued to sit there for the next dozen stops, until the train was gliding past the blue waters of the Bay, and I could see the spires of Bayview University. I’d never seen their campus before. It honestly didn’t look all that different from St. Francis, though of course I could never say that in front of any of my Mariner friends without getting burned at the stake for heresy.
Finally, after racking up enough stops that this month’s PeRT bill was sure to make my mother erupt like Krakatau, I’d gotten back over to City East and headed home. But in that time, I had come to a decision: I wasn’t going to tell anyone what had happened that day. I didn’t like being that person who kept secrets, but no matter how I looked at it, there was just no way that I could explain it that wouldn’t make me sound—at best—drunk out of my mind.
And, besides, Shailene had made it abundantly clear that she didn’t want any more of my help. So the best thing was to just forget it entirely and get back to my normal life. It didn’t involve me, anyway.
Ana swallowed and set the empty cereal bowl on the coffee table with a clatter. “So, how was the wedding?”
I rolled my eyes. “Every bit as fun as you’d expect.” I started to tell her all about what had happened with Lola while the newscaster droned about the latest poll numbers for the upcoming election. But I broke off mid-sentence when I heard him say, “And now for local news. Two Bayview University cheerleaders were reported missing earlier today…”
I jerked my head over to the screen just as the picture switched to a live reporter standing in some kind of large gymnasium. In the background, I could see girls milling around wearing cheer uniforms I didn’t recognize. The text at the bottom of the screen said that it was the Regional College Cheerleader and Dance Team Championships.
“That’s right, Jerry,” the reporter said, “Leah Martin and Joanie Fitzgerald were reported missing earlier today when they failed to appear at the regional cheer meet here at the Jones Athletics Center. Neither girl has been heard from by friends or family since two days ago, but it’s believed they may be traveling eastbound toward the town of Everett.”
Gee, I wonder where they got that idea. I narrowed my eyes. Somehow I got the feeling that they’d been heard from more recently than two days ago—by the other cheerleaders at least. Did they lie to get the police involved sooner?
Then the camera zoomed out, and my breath caught in my throat as a petite girl with braids I definitely recognized came into view. “I’m here with Erikka Johnson, one of the missing girls’ squadmates,” said the reporter.
Erikka nodded, her eyes watery. “We’re just so worried about them. Leah’s our captain—we weren’t even able to perform at the meet without them. I don’t know what could have happened to them. They’re such nice, normal girls.”
The snort came out before I could stop it. Ana looked at m
e in surprise. “What’s that about?” she asked, her eyebrow up. “Do you know them or something?”
“No, not really,” I said quickly. “It’s just, I mean. Cheerleaders. From Bayview. I’m sure they decided to blow off that stupid meet and hit the beach in Cabo or something.” I could feel Ana’s dark eyes staring at me, but I kept my burning face riveted on the TV screen, hoping she wouldn’t press. A second later, I wished I hadn’t—because the camera moved slightly, and I saw that standing next to Erikka was Shailene, looking flawless and elegant, her mouth pulled into a dainty pout of concern. No sign of the bug guts that I’d been picking out of my own hair all afternoon, or the scowl I’d last seen on her face. My cheeks grew even hotter against my will. It didn’t matter that she was pretty, I scolded myself. She was still a bitch.
I jumped to my feet. “Well, can’t sit around watching TV all day. That English paper isn’t going to write itself.”
Ana looked at me oddly. “Laura, you sure you’re okay?”
I laughed. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine. I’m just tired. You know how big family events can be.” I knew she did. Ana had an enormous Mexican family; she and I had bonded over it when I rushed, and that was part of the reason she’d been eager to take me as her little. We got each other on a spiritual level.
She pursed her lips. “Okay, well… Don’t forget, we don’t have kitchen service this week. Do you want to go get some dinner later?”
“No, I think I’ll just have some toast or something. Rest my stomach after all that lumpia.” I smiled tightly, and she gave me a thin laugh in return. She still looked worried. It made me feel even worse about lying, but I couldn’t tell her how I really knew those cheerleaders. Even thinking it sounded ridiculous.
It doesn’t matter, I told myself, heading back down the hall to my room. I just needed to put it behind me. In a few days, I’d have forgotten about it, and everything would go back to normal.
* * *
I told myself that, but then what did I do as soon as I got to my room? Got right on the internet and started Googling everything I could find.
Cheerleaders From Planet X Page 2