by Jen Malone
“I thought you said it would be open for the game this afternoon?” I’m trying not to sound too accusatory, but I might not be succeeding.
Paige blows her bangs out of her eyes. “I assumed it would be. But the game’s not until four, so I guess . . .”
Veronica disappears around the corner of the building. She pops her head back, points with two fingers to her own eyes, then at us, and motions with her hand for us to follow. Like we’re spies or soldiers or something. Rambo Veronica: on the move. But we don’t exactly have another plan B. I take off after her, and Paige saunters along behind me. We creep along the perimeter of the building, yanking on each side door we pass.
Locked.
Locked.
Locked.
We go three-quarters of the way around the building to the last sidewall, where gray cement blocks outline the double doors to the gymnasium’s emergency exit. I’ve only ever been through these doors when we do fire drills. And of course . . . they’re locked. From inside the backpack, the baby ducklings make tiny squeaking noises that sound about as hopeless as I feel right now.
“It’s no use,” I say. “The whole school’s locked. What do we do now?” This time, instead of sounding annoyed, I have to fight to keep the whine out of my voice. But really, it is a whine-worthy situation. How are we ever going to find Anna Marie if we can’t even follow up on the measly clues we have?
Veronica busies herself readjusting the backpack straps on her shoulders as Paige marches up to the very last door on the wall. She gives us a Here goes nothing look and then tugs on it with all her strength. It opens so easily, she stumbles back and lands on her butt in the dirt as we all gape at the door. Veronica shoves it closed.
“What are you doing?” Paige screeches, popping up and dusting off her black skinny jeans.
“Peek in first. Make sure the coast is clear,” Veronica says with a shrug. “Junior Detective basics.” She eases the metal door open again, then sticks her head inside and swivels it left, then right. “Looks clear to me. I think it’s the locker room.”
Paige and I follow her inside cautiously. As soon as I feel the warm heat on my cheeks, I sniff and then wrinkle my nose.
“Definitely the boys’ one!” I say.
The smell is pretty much the opposite of Jake’s sweatshirt’s soap-and-mint boy smell. This is stinky socks and BO all the way. Ick. I pinch my nose and try to breathe through my mouth. I also try really hard not to think about the fact that OMG, we’re in the boys’ locker room. Where boys are usually . . . you know.
In front of us is a long bank of green metal lockers, leading to the corner of yet another row. In the distance I hear the sounds of a shower. My eyes bug out of my head.
“Um, guys. I know we shouldn’t be in the school at all, but I definitely don’t think we should be in here!”
“So true.” Paige shudders. “Let’s go!”
We wind our way through a maze of lockers, but the shower noises just seem to get closer. Oh no. No, no, no, no. My heart is thudding so loudly, it sounds like a marching band.
But what’s even worse is when those shower noises stop altogether.
“Run!” Paige whisper-yells, and the three of us book it around the corner.
I spot an exit sign over a door and aim for it. We burst through into an empty hallway, panting heavily. Close one! That could have been mega-awkward. Veronica checks on the ducklings while we catch our breaths. “Everyone is good. Waddleworth looks a little motion sick though.”
Waddleworth? I mouth to Paige.
“We should stay on the move,” Paige says, pushing off the wall and leading the way to the eighth-grade wing. We pass the inside entrance to the gym, where the walls are covered in painted posters cheering on the basketball team. We creep past the vending machine with its sugar-free juices and healthy snacks, and then the empty cafeteria, minus the regular school-day smells of goopy lasagna and soggy broccoli.
We’re just about to turn the corner, when we hear whistling. Paige holds out her hand to stop us.
Of course, Veronica walks right into her.
Paige sucks in a breath and then puts a finger to her lips. She peers around the corner and then back at us. “Janitor,” she whispers. “He just went into Mr. Fontana’s room, pushing a mop.”
“Oh great. That’s right next to Miss Shanley’s,” I answer. “Do you think he already did hers, or is hers next? Which way was he coming from?”
Paige shrugs. “I couldn’t tell.”
The three of us stick in place, waiting, like our feet are in cement. Paige acts as lookout on the eighth-grade corridor while I dart glances over my shoulder at all that empty hallway behind us. I pray hard that no one will come around the corner and spot us. It’s so quiet that even our deep breaths seem to echo. I can’t remember ever being in our school when there wasn’t all kinds of talking and slamming lockers and shoes scuffing on the floor. This kind of silence is super-eerie. Even the ducklings must sense something, because they’re still too. To calm my nerves, I start counting in my head. I do this a lot when teachers are passing back tests, and it works. Sometimes. I’m all the way up to 146 before Paige whispers.
“He just came out! Now he’s going across the hall into Miss Ross’s room,” she reports.
“What do we do? We can’t keep standing here in the middle of the school! What if someone sees us? We’ll get expelled!” I say.
Paige bursts out laughing (quietly of course), and I put both hands on my hips. “I’m really sorry,” she says. “It’s just when you’re upset, your eyebrow goes up, and, well, it’s kind of funny to see just one wiggling. Oh man, that was really rude. Forgive?”
My hands fly to my face, and my fingers explore the smooth skin above my eye. I’d almost managed to forget about it again. Drat, Paige! Although it’s going to be this times eighty-seven classmates come school on Monday. I wish I’d worn the knit cap Veronica had offered me before we left Anna Marie’s, but I was worried it would make me look way too much like a burglar, and the last thing I wanted to do before breaking into school was dress the part. Um, plus it had a picture of the Wiggles on it. So there’s that.
Maybe getting expelled wouldn’t be such a bad thing, after all. Maybe my mom would let me wait until my eyebrow grew back before finding me a new school to attend.
And, hey, if we get caught and I get sent to juvie, maybe I can convince the scary teens who are there for serious stuff that my eyebrow is some kind of sign of how tough I am, the way prisoners tattoo teardrops on their faces to show they’ve murdered someone. Then at least they’d leave me alone.
I’m pretty deep into my jailhouse fantasy when a duckling lets loose a tiny quack from the backpack and snaps me out of it. Paige is still peeking over at me with sorry eyes, waiting to see if I forgive her. Of course I do. Paige can be a little bit insensitive sometimes, but she doesn’t mean anything by it. And besides, having Paige stick up for me at school on Monday is possibly the only thing that could maybe keep the mocking at a minimum. Paige is Popular with a capital P, and if Paige says my solo eyebrow is cool, chances are, by the end of the day, half the girls at school will be volunteering to shave their own off.
I smile and shrug, and Paige pulls me in for a hug before saying, “We have to get down that wing. Let’s make a run for Miss Shanley’s room on the count of three. Veronica, it’s the fourth door on the left.”
Veronica hums distractedly, her hands in the backpack of ducklings.
“One, two, three,” Paige whispers, and I take off running on my tiptoes. I follow Paige into the science classroom, skidding around the corner and narrowly avoiding a desk with a chair stacked on it.
Neither of us have Miss Shanley, but her science classroom looks pretty much like ours. A giant periodic table poster covers one wall, and a framed print above Miss Shanley’s desk says in block letters, NEVER TRUST AN ATOM. THEY MAKE UP EVERYTHING. Hardy har. In the corner, a skeleton wearing a top hat dangles from a closet door.
/> The other corner has a deep plastic tub lined with towels and lit by a heating lamp.
A very empty plastic tub.
I glance at it and then back at Paige and Veronica.
Wait.
Where’s Veronica?
I make my way over to the doorway. “I don’t see her!”
“Well, we can’t return ducklings without, ya know, any ducklings.” Paige puts a hand on her hip the way she always does when she’s annoyed. “If she gets us busted, I swear . . .”
“We have to split up and look for her in the other classrooms,” I whisper. “Wait! Get down!”
The janitor comes out of the English classroom and leans his mop against a locker. Phew—that was close! Hold on, is that a Taylor Swift song he’s whistling? Weird (but kinda funny). He pauses in the hallway, looking down the corridor before hitching his pants up and setting off to his left. I tuck myself flat against the doorway and watch as he pushes into the teachers’ bathroom, leaving his bucket in the middle of the hall.
“We have a minute or two. He’s in the bathroom. You go that way, and I’ll look over there.” I point across the hall.
When Paige nods, I race to our drama room and slip inside the hanging rack of costumes all set up for next month’s production of Annie. An orange wig of curls hangs over a hanger and tickles my nose. I swat it away. It would be a disaster to sneeze at a moment like this!
I scan the room but don’t see any signs of an awkward girl, and I definitely don’t see any clusters of ducklings. Herd of ducklings? Flock of ducklings? What did Veronica say it was? I shake my head. Not important, Meghan. Find Veronica, return the ducks, and look for clues that might help you find Anna Marie. In that order.
I abandon my hiding spot in the classroom and move to the doorway, where I slowly stick my head out into the still-empty hallway. I suck in a deep breath, getting ready to dash back into Miss Shanley’s classroom. Maybe Paige found Veronica, and they’re returning the ducklings right this very second. A flash of movement across the hall catches my eye, and in the split second before I register what I’m seeing, my heart stops as completely as it did the time I couldn’t bring myself to jump off the ski lift when I reached the station at the top. Unlike then, when I had to be pulled off by my legs as I swung around the turnstile, this time my heart recovers immediately. It’s Paige, easing out of a classroom, holding Veronica by the arm.
I sigh with relief. Paige spots me and grins, and we take a step out of our doorways when a noise at the other end of the hallway snaps our necks around. The door to the teachers’ bathroom is opening! I duck back inside the drama room and pray so, so hard that Paige and Veronica did the same in the science room. I can hardly bear to look.
I hear whistling getting closer and then the sounds of a mop being pushed in and then lifted out of a bucket. I try counting again to calm down, but it doesn’t help the way it did before. My heart keeps racing like it’s playing catch-up in Mario Kart. But if the janitor saw anything, he wouldn’t be whistling. He’d be shouting. So he didn’t notice us! Now I just have to cross my fingers he isn’t headed for the drama classroom next. The whistling stops.
I count to twenty again and then screw up all my courage to peek into the hallway again. All is quiet. Should I stay? Should I go? What are Paige and Veronica doing right now? I hesitate in the doorway for a few seconds, and then I just . . . go. I dash across the hall to Miss Shanley’s class, exhaling when I see Paige and Veronica already inside. They’re busy placing the tiny ducklings back into the plastic tub.
“Couldn’t I just keep Waddleworth?” Veronica is saying. “Who would notice?”
Paige slips the backpack off Veronica’s shoulders. “We need to find Anna Marie, not babysit a duckling all day. Why don’t Megs and I do this part, and you stand lookout in the doorway?”
Veronica lowers her shoulders and crosses the room.
“You should be nicer to her,” I say to Paige as we gently return the rest of the ducklings and refill their water supply from a bottle sitting next to the tub.
“I know, I know. I’m not trying to be mean. She just doesn’t really pick up on any signals, so I kind of have to be blunt, ya know? Besides, we can’t let her keep one of the ducklings!”
I nod but keep quiet, and eventually Paige says, “Fine. I’ll try harder.”
That’s all I was saying to begin with.
When we’re satisfied the little guys are comfortable and safe, we turn back to the doorway.
But Veronica isn’t there.
CHAPTER TEN
Do Janitors in Japan Play Unicycle Floor Hockey?
“Did you know, in Japan, schools don’t have janitors? The kids do all the cleaning every day because Buddhist traditions associate cleanliness with morality. Isn’t that cool? Well, not for you, obviously. You’d be out of work if you moved there, huh?”
I watch in horror as Veronica walks in the opposite direction from us, yammering away to the janitor. Um, say what? What is she doing?
I can’t see his face, but he sounds pretty annoyed when he says, “That’s great, kid. But you still haven’t answered me. What are you doing here?”
Veronica hops over wet mop marks on the floor. “Oh. That’s easy. I’m returning this backpack I found outside.”
The janitor mops back and forth, from locker bank to locker bank, crisscrossing the hallway. “Doesn’t explain what you’re doing, wandering the classrooms and . . .”
The voices trail off as the pair round the corner. I steal one last look at the ducklings, happily tumbling around in the plastic tub, then at Paige. “We have to follow them,” I whisper. “If he calls the police or something . . .”
“I know.”
We creep from the classroom and down the hallway. We stay a good distance behind Veronica and the mopping janitor, ducking into each classroom doorway as we make our way along the hallway. Veronica continues to chatter away, seeming completely “whatever” about getting busted.
Oh. My. God. I think he’s walking her to the main office. I’m sure my eyes are completely frantic as I try to will Paige to look at me. When she does, I make hand motions to indicate Veronica is about to walk into the Hornet’s Nest (which is Anna Marie’s nickname for Principal Wexman’s office).
Surely, she won’t be here on a Saturday, though. Even principals get a day off, right?
Paige doesn’t seem to get what I’m trying to say with my hands, and she makes a face, then darts into the next doorway. I see the exact moment she realizes which hall we’re about to turn down. Her whole body freezes.
Up ahead I can just hear the indistinct sounds of Veronica chattering away at the janitor. What is she doing? Why couldn’t she have just stayed in the classroom like we’d told her?
I’m afraid to peek around the corner. But I have to. My heart zooms right into my throat when I do because Veronica is going into the office.
And holding the door open for her is our principal!
We’re dead. Or expelled. Or expelled and then dead.
At this point I’m tempted to throw my hands up and turn myself in. Maybe I’d get brownie points for offering myself up. But Paige tugs my shirt and whispers, “Let’s sneak closer.”
My brain is whirring with so many different disaster scenarios that involve my parents—who think I’m blissfully sleeping away the morning at Anna Marie’s—getting called by the principal to come pick me up at school. Or worse, what if Principal Wexman involves the police? We are on school property when we’re not supposed to be and, even though we didn’t technically break in because the door was unlocked, Principal Wexman isn’t one for technicalities. Last year she suspended Sarah Mills for packing a butter knife in her lunch bag so she could spread peanut butter on her apple slices, because our school has a zero tolerance policy on “weapons.”
But in the midst of all these horrific thoughts, I don’t have the mental capacity to make any decisions, so I just follow along as Paige creeps closer. Within seconds we’re r
ight outside the door to the office, which is open just wide enough that we can hear what’s happening inside.
“So nice of you to return the backpack, but I’m curious how you got in? The school is closed until the game.” Yikes. Principal Wexman’s voice is all gravelly and serious.
“Tried the door and it was open, so how could I know it was off-limits?”
“Which door was open?”
“Um, you know, I can’t be positive. I’m so turned around with all these hallways. This sure is a big school. I’m e-schooled, so the only hallways I have to walk are between my bedroom and the living room, except if you count the one to the bathroom, which I guess you’d have to since I use that approximately seven times a day. Mom says I have the tiniest bladder known to man, even though I’m not a man. Anyway, it’s really a nice school you have here. I bet I’d like it. Do you have a unicycle floor hockey team? Cuz that’d be a deal breaker for me coming here if you don’t. . . .”
If I weren’t about to soil my pants, I’d be rolling on the floor laughing right now. I wonder what Principal Wexman is making of Veronica. Next to me, Paige’s shoulders start shaking, and she stuffs her fist into her mouth.
“Uh, no, we don’t have a team for unicycle . . . Did you say floor hockey? Ahem. No. But our basketball team is only a few games away from going to the state championship.”
Oh, this is actually good. If Veronica can get Principal Wexman going on about our basketball team, we might be okay. The woman is obsessed.
But I should know better. This is Veronica we’re talking about. Sure enough, the next thing she says is, “You should really consider unicycle floor hockey. It’s a great workout. Extra-good for balance. If you want, I can write to the International Unicycling Federation and get you the info you’d need to get accredited.”
At this Paige can’t hold back anymore. She lets out this noise that sounds like a cross between a dog bark and a cough. All is quiet in the office and then . . .
“One moment please,” says a gravelly voice.
I grab Paige’s shirt. My eyes are popping out of my head like a cartoon character’s. Heels click-click across the floor, and I can’t bear to look. I bury my face in Paige’s shirt.