by T. R. Burns
Best-case scenario, their plan is to rekidnap us. Worst-case, it’s to kill us. Either way, it’s happening soon. Because the screaming and pounding is growing louder.
“How far to the factory?” I ask Elinor.
She glances over her shoulder. “Too far!”
“But what if we get there even a second before they do? Could we run and hide inside?”
She shakes her head. “If I know about it, Shepherd Bull definitely knows about it. He probably has every room and hallway memorized! They’d find us in no time!”
“What about—?”
Our Go Kart lunges sharply forward. I slip from my seat and thrust my hands against the tiny dashboard to keep from flying out.
“You okay?” I ask Elinor.
She slides back in the seat. Brushes her hair from her face. Nods. Floors the gas.
“Sorry!” Gabby yells. “They just hit me! And I hit you!”
I look back—then up. The front of the bus is about a foot from Gabby’s rear bumper. Through the broken windshield, I see Mr. Bull laughing.
“We have to fight back!” I yell.
“How?” Abe demands. “We don’t have any weapons!”
We’re quiet for a second. Then Gabby shouts, “Sure we do!”
After which, a strange thing happens. The way my body’s been switching to autopilot lately anytime it’s engaged in conflict? That’s exactly what Capital T does.
First Gabby motions for Abe to pull his Go Kart next to hers. When he does, she kisses her stuffed unicorn, lodges it between the steering wheel shaft and the gas pedal so that the motor revs nonstop, and hops out of her toy car and onto Abe’s. Her unmanned Go Kart flies to the right, making Shepherd Bull ease up on the gas and a half-dozen IncrimiNators leap to the ground and run after it. Next she waits for the front of the bus to come close again, then climbs on top and crawls up the hood to the broken windshield.
“What’s she doing?” Elinor yells.
Something completely crazy and definitely dangerous—that still makes me smile. Mostly because I know she’s having fun doing it. “Staring him down!”
Gabby’s blocking my view, so I can’t see Mr. Bull’s expression. But it must work because several seconds later, the bus slows. Gabby scrambles to the front of the hood, waits for Abe to draw closer, and drops onto the back of his Go Kart. Abe speeds up, leaving the bus in his dust. Once they’re far enough away, he motions for Gabby to take the steering wheel and for Lemon to drive next to him. Then, while the child giant shakes off his hypnosis, Abe pulls out his drawing pad, rips out page after page after page, and starts folding.
“What’s he doing?” Elinor yells.
“Not sure!” I yell.
Abe says something to Lemon I don’t quite catch. Lemon nods, reaches into his coat pocket, and removes his lighter. He holds it toward Abe. A flame appears. Abe holds a piece of paper over it. The paper catches.
Abe cups one hand around it and thrusts it at me.
I take it. When I do, I realize it’s a paper airplane. One of dozens he’s made in a matter of seconds.
I look at Elinor. “Can you drive parallel to the bus?”
I cup my hand around the flame to protect it from the wind. She swerves to the left and eases up on the gas until we’re even with the back of the bus. Abe and Gabby drive next to us. Lemon drives on the other side of them.
The IncrimiNators are so busy screaming and beating their transportation they don’t realize right away that we’ve moved. I take advantage of this head start and stand on my knees. Assess the situation. Eye potential targets. Just like I didn’t want to hurt the misfits with Skee-Balls, I don’t want to hurt them with fire. . . . But I do want to get them off the bus.
“The flags!” Elinor yells.
My head snaps toward her, then to the row of broken windows lining the side of the bus. Five kids fling around brown IncrimiNator flags. Unlike everything else associated with this dirty, strange place, the flags are shiny. Clean. Pristine.
“They’re the only things Mother insists we take care of!” Elinor adds. “If anything happens to them, we’re thrown in the pit for a week!”
Point taken. As the heat of the burning paper airplane nears my pointer finger and thumb, I pull back my arm. Aim. And fire.
I get a direct hit. Abe holds another paper airplane toward Lemon, who lights it. Abe gives me the flaming flyer. Elinor hits the gas until we’re even with the next flag. I get that one too. And the next one and the next one and the next one. When we run out of targets on this side, we loop around to the other side and start again.
The reactions are even better than I could’ve hoped. As soon as the kids see flames, they shriek. They wave the flags, smack them against the side of the bus, pull them inside, and beat them against seats. The IncrimiNators who aren’t holding flags drop their garden tools and sports equipment to help others extinguish. The material must be flammable, because the flames grow taller. The smoke thicker. Soon the IncrimiNators start giving up. Desperate for fresh air, some climb out of the windows and pull themselves up onto the roof. Others dangle from the windows until their arms grow tired. Then they let go, dropping to and rolling across the ground.
To his credit, Mr. Bull holds on a while. He keeps driving even when he starts coughing. But then his coughing turns to hacking. Then choking. Eventually he throws open the door and flings himself down the steps while the vehicle’s still in motion. He lands face-first on the ground, flops over onto his back, and gasps for air. Any IncrimiNators still on board join him.
The bus rolls several more yards. Then it bumps into a cactus. And stops.
To our credit, we don’t celebrate. Not right away. We wait until we’ve put about a mile between us and the fallen IncrimiNators. And the fire inside the bus reaches the gas tank, the bus explodes, and the black sky turns gold. And a loud whooshing starts in the distance, then comes closer.
We even wait until a scraped, dented, wobbly helicopter appears. And GS George sends down a chain ladder. And we scramble up and inside.
Only then, falling onto the couches, do we finally release a collective sigh.
“That’s some flare,” our pilot calls from the cockpit as we swoop away from the burning bus.
“Go big or go home!” Abe calls back.
Completely exhausted yet somehow more awake than I’ve ever been, I smile at him. Lemon. Gabby.
Elinor.
“Let’s go home,” I say. “To Kilter.”
Chapter 26
DEMERITS: 2500
GOLD STARS: 300
You knock.”
“No, you knock.”
“I can’t knock. I don’t know what’s behind that door. The second we step inside, everything could change. We might get expelled. As in kicked out. Then I’ll have to go back to straight A-plusses and extra credit and giving out rice cakes on Halloween and—”
Lemon holds up one hand. Gabby stops rambling. Abe looks relieved. Lemon curls his fingers to his palm, presses his thumb to his pointer finger, and reaches forward. He taps the door once, then turns the knob, and pushes.
“SURPRISE!”
Abe, Gabby, Elinor, and I jump. Lemon slides his hands into his coat pockets.
“If this is what getting expelled looks like,” Abe whispers, “we should do it more often.”
I know what he means. Instead of landing on the Kommissary roof when we got back to Kilter, we landed in Annika’s backyard. GS George told us en route that while we were rescuing Elinor he e-mailed his boss and informed her of our whereabouts because there was no use trying to hide it. The helicopter still flew, but it was so banged up she’d know it had been somewhere it shouldn’t have been. And since, until last night, she was the only one who used the chopper, that would mean it had been stolen. GS George thought coming clean was the only chance he had of saving his job.
Annika’s response contained a single order: to bring us to the conference room in her house the second we got back. That was all s
he said, so I figured she was furious. I expected to find her waiting inside the conference room with our packed suitcases. And possibly our parents, come to bring us home. Home home. Not Kilter home.
As it turns out, Annika is waiting in the conference room. But she’s not with our suitcases and parents. She’s with Houdini. Wyatt. Fern. Samara. Lizzie. Devin. Mr. Tempest. Ike. With the exception of Mystery, who stands at the back of the group picking his teeth, they all clap and cheer after yelling their initial greeting. Silver streamers hang from the ceiling. Bunches of silver balloons bob throughout the room. The long table’s sprinkled with silver glitter and covered in platters of fish sticks and my alliance-mates’ favorite snacks. Champagne flutes surround big glass bowls filled with hot chocolate and sparkling apple cider.
It’s a party. Though for what, I’m not sure.
“Look at them!” Annika sings, hurrying toward us with arms outstretched. “Back from the battlefield and cuter than ever!”
She gives each of us a quick, tight hug. Even Elinor, who catches my eye when it’s her turn. Then Annika takes a champagne flute from the table, fills it with sparkling cider, and turns toward us.
“No one in Kilter Academy’s illustrious history has ever done what you four did last night. There are too many achievements to recount them all now, but among the most notable are stealing a school helicopter in the middle of the night. Convincing a Good Samaritan to act as pilot. Traveling across the country. Rescuing a classmate from a difficult, somewhat dangerous situation. Returning here safely—and before breakfast.” She pauses. Smiles. “After you successfully completed the Ultimate Troublemaking Task last semester, I knew you were talented. But I didn’t realize until this morning that you were extraordinary.”
Abe and Gabby grin. Lemon lets one corner of his mouth lift. Elinor frowns. Still unsure of the situation, I shoot for a neutral expression.
Annika raises her glass. Our teachers quickly take theirs from the table, fill them, and join the toast.
“To the most promising Troublemakers we’ve ever had the privilege of training!” Annika declares. “Thank you for making our jobs so enjoyable.”
The faculty bursts into a chorus of “Hear, hear!”
“You must be starving,” Annika says once they’ve sipped and quieted down. “Please help yourselves.”
Abe and Gabby rush to the table. Lemon saunters after them, Elinor trails him, and I follow her. I’m so busy processing everything I can’t tell if I’m hungry, but I take a plate and fill it with fish sticks anyway.
“Nice work, Hinkle.” Houdini claps me on the back.
“Thanks.” I force a smile.
Other teachers offer congratulations. Some let Capital T and Elinor get food, then form a loose circle around them and start firing questions. Abe and Gabby seem more than happy to do most of the answering. Fern, the gym teacher, gently pulls Elinor to the side and asks how she is, if there’s anything she needs. Before I can hear Elinor’s response, there’s a tap on my shoulder.
I turn around. “Ike. Hi.” When I smile this time, I mean it.
“Hey. Can I talk to you for a second?”
We go to a corner of the room.
“First,” he says quietly, “wow. I don’t even know what else to say about what you just did. I’m beyond impressed—and I want to hear all about it at our next session.”
“You got it. And thanks for agreeing to help. I wouldn’t have felt okay going if you didn’t have our backs.”
“No problem.” He takes out his K-Pak. “And speaking of help . . . Know how you said to watch the faculty? And let you know if anything seemed strange?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mystery use one hand to swipe glitter across the table and into the palm of his other hand. He dumps the sparkles into his coat pocket, then swipes some more.
“Yes,” I say.
“Well, you left at night and weren’t gone that long, so most of our teachers slept the whole time. Nothing strange there. But I got hungry while keeping tabs, so I stopped by the Kanteen for a late-night snack. And who was there loading up on candy at the ice cream bar?”
“Mr. Tempest?”
“The one and only. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it except he wasn’t making a sundae. He wasn’t even filling his pockets with sweet treats for later, the way some kids do. He was filling bags—big ones. Like a backpack. A duffel bag. A suitcase on wheels.”
“That’s a lot of candy.”
“That’s what I thought. Which is why I followed him. Here.”
He holds out his K-Pak so I can see the screen. There’s a photo. Of a pink house. With purple shutters. White window boxes filled with yellow flowers. A white bench swing filled with dolls and stuffed animals. And lining the roof, eaves, door, and chimney—candy. Gumdrops. Licorice. Peppermints. Lollipops. In every color of the rainbow.
“Did Hansel and Gretel answer when you rang the bell?” I ask.
“I didn’t want to get that close. Because the house—which is more like a cottage—is in the middle of nowhere. In the woods.”
And then I see it. Thanks to the colorful additions and some new construction, they look nothing alike. . . . But the house in the picture is the same one I followed Mystery to. The one where I was almost axed to death.
“Weird, right?” Ike asks.
“Very.”
Before I can add anything else, I catch something Abe says to some of our teachers.
“But this place? IncrimiNation? Oh, man. Talk about insane. For example—”
He’s cut off by a sharp clanking.
“One more thing!” Annika declares, tapping her glass with a fork to get everyone’s attention. “After everything they just accomplished, we can’t let our Troublemakers return to their house empty-handed. They’ll each receive more demerits than any student ever has for a single task . . . and one of these!”
The wall screen that displayed a map of the United States the last time I was here illuminates behind her. A picture of a super-sleek silver golf cart appears.
“That’s the Kilter Kart 5000,” Abe says, eyes wide.
“Indeed it is,” Annika says. “Would you like a closer look?”
He nods. So do Gabby and Lemon.
“Great. They’re in the driveway. GS George will take you.”
“Now?” Gabby asks.
“Now,” Annika says.
They drop their plates and bolt toward the door. Our teachers, including Mystery, follow. Ike does too. I start after them but am stopped by another tap on the shoulder.
“I’d love a moment,” Annika says. “If you don’t mind.”
Besides us, Elinor’s the only other person in the room. She’s standing by the door. Our eyes meet. As if wanting to prevent some secret silent communication, Annika steps between us.
“Elinor, please ask Fern to take you to the administration building for paperwork. I’ll meet you there in a bit.”
Elinor looks at me. I nod. She leaves.
Annika closes the door and faces me. The smile she’s worn since our arrival disappears.
“Seamus, Seamus, Seamus.”
Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts.
“You’ve put me in an interesting position.”
Normally, I’d automatically apologize. But for perhaps the first time ever, I’m not sorry for doing something that displeased an adult.
“Do you know why?” Annika asks.
“Because I stole a helicopter? And convinced GS George to fly across the country? And everything else you just mentioned?”
“Not quite. I called those achievements, and most of them were.”
“Which ones weren’t?”
“Not ones. One.” She pulls out a clear high-backed chair at one end of the table. Sits. “You kidnapped Elinor.”
“Not kidnapped. Rescued.”
“Why split hairs? The important thing is that she was sent away. By me. And you brought her back. Without asking permission or even w
hy she was shipped off in the first place. You’re an extraordinary Troublemaker, Seamus. . . . But you don’t know everything. Not by a long shot. And you’d be wise not to act like you do.”
“Maybe I’d know more if I hacked into other people’s K-Mail accounts.”
Then, realizing my autopilot just kicked in yet again, I clamp one hand over my mouth. Annika stares at me.
“How do you know about that?” she asks quietly.
Keeping my hand over my mouth, I shake my head.
She narrows her eyes. Studies me for several seconds. Points to the high-backed chair at the opposite end of the table. I cross the room and sit down.
“You don’t trust me.”
I release my mouth. “It’s not that I—”
“It wasn’t a question. I see it in your eyes.” She sits back, clasps her hands in her lap. “What do you say we clear the air?”
I pause. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re uncertain—probably of Kilter, definitely of me. So ask me anything you want. Right now. No extra assignments required.”
This sounds like a trick. But at this point, what do I have to lose?
I sit back, clasp my hands in my lap. “Why did you hack my K-Mail? And Elinor’s?”
“By leaps and bounds you’re the most promising student I’ve ever seen. As director, it’s my responsibility to make sure you stay focused and on the right path. So you can reach your maximum potential. In order to do that, I need to know about potential distractions. Since Elinor’s chief among those, I need to stay on top of her, too.”
“Is that why you sent her away? Because you thought she was distracting me?”
“Partially.”
“Why else?”
“She failed assignments, refused to try, and rarely engaged in any part of the Kilter curriculum. I would’ve expunged any other student who behaved the same way much sooner. Also, her mother runs IncrimiNation, which, as you learned, is the devil’s satellite den. I thought spending time there would help her better appreciate her time here.”
“Why’d she come to Kilter in the first place?”
“Because her mother didn’t want her.” She lets this sink in. Which it does. Like a boulder to my stomach. “Despite what you may think, my heart’s not completely made of stone. I took pity on her and brought her here.”