by Sybil Nelson
“Let’s never fight again,” I said once I could catch my breath.
“Deal.”
“Best friends forever.”
“Forever.”
When our simultaneous crying fits ended, we sat side by side on the swings and gabbed at break-neck speed about what had happened in our lives over the past few weeks. We had so much to say to each other that I almost forgot about the painful pen. “Wait a minute,” I said, interrupting her telling me how she refused to go to the River Day Dance with Spencer. “I almost forgot. I need your help with something. Follow me.” On the way to Mr. Witherall’s classroom, I told her about the pen and how it shocked only me and how he then locked it away instead of putting it where he always kept it.
“That’s weird,” she said as we entered the seventh grade building.
“That’s what I said, but Kyle didn’t see anything wrong with it.”
“Kyle, huh?” Tai had this smirk on her face like she knew something that I didn’t.
“Yeah, Kyle, what about him?”
“You’ve been spending a lot of time with him, huh?” Tai said with a laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“I didn’t think it was true, but I guess it is.”
“What? You didn’t think what was true?”
Tai smiled and said, “Kyle has ‘I Love PMS’ written on the inside of his locker.”
“He loves PMS? Well, that’s just stupid. Boys don’t get a period.”
“No, not that kind of PMS.” Tai clutched her stomach, laughing so hard tears streamed down her face.
“Polk Middle School?”
“No, silly. Priscilla Maxine Sumner. P-M-S. He’s in love with you!”
“Me? That’s ridiculous. Kyle Montgomery doesn’t love anyone but himself.”
“Well, he must see a lot of himself in you.”
“Whoa. Wait. What?” I shuddered at the thought. Kyle was a self-centered, egotistical, rude, insensitive jerk. We had absolutely nothing in common except that we both hated math class and loved racing up and down Main Street on our bikes. And two days ago we did spend an hour making a list of the top ten best comic book villains. And although every once in a while he said something stupidly mean, he always took it back and apologized when I brought it to his attention.
As we walked down the hall, Tai kept chattering on about some awesome program she wrote on her calculator, but I couldn’t even pretend to be interested. All I could think about was Kyle. Who knew? Maybe he was turning into a decent person. When we reached the classroom I closed my eyes and tried to shake thoughts of Kyle out of my mind. I needed to concentrate on the mission at hand.
After making sure Mr. Witherall wasn’t around, we entered the room and then stared at the desk that held the evil pen. It was a standard work desk with two file drawers on the right side. The top one was unlocked and opened easily. The bottom drawer was the one that had the pen, and it wouldn’t budge.
“Okay, I know how we can get in,” Tai said. “My friend, Luke, who went to camp with me in Florida created this ‘key of all keys.’ You insert a wire shell into the key hole then use a computer program to manipulate the wire to the right fit. Then voila, the lock opens. I can have him FedEx it to us and we can have it by Monday.”
“Or,” I said, yanking the drawer above the locked drawer completely out of the desk. “My parents have a desk just like this in the living room. They lock candy in it, thinking we can’t get to it. The twins figured out that you can just pull out the top drawer to get to the bottom one.”
Tai shrugged. “That works.”
I pointed inside the desk. Tai looked and had a clear view of everything that was in the bottom drawer, including the pen. I reached for it and then hesitated, remembering the pain it had caused me.
“You get it,” I said.
Tai shrugged and reached through the desk for the pen. Turning it around and around in her hands, I could almost see the calculations working out in her head. She was fascinated by the painful pen.
“What? What is it?” I asked, growing impatient.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. You see this here?” She pointed to the side of the pen. “That’s a wireless antenna. I’m guessing it has a frequency strong enough to send information across the country.”
“Why would a pen need to do that?”
“And you see this?” she asked, ignoring my question. “This is a USB port. I should be able to connect it to a computer and download whatever information it has.”
“What kind of information do you think it has?”
Tai was silent for a moment. She scrunched up her face like she did whenever she had to do the rope climb in PE. “Let me see your hand,” she said finally. “Just like I thought,” she said after examining my hand. “The pen stuck you with a probe right there below your thumb. I think it took a sample of your skin or blood or something, and then it sent the information somewhere else, probably to a laboratory or something.”
“Or to another planet. It was an alien probe, wasn’t it? You can tell me. I knew I was an alien.”
“Why do you think you’re an alien?”
I quickly explained to her the conversation between my parents as she took out a calculator and some cords from her purse.
“Well, I guess anything’s possible,” she said when I finished. “But let’s not jump to conclusions. Let’s be rational about this.” She connected her calculator to the pen and then punched some buttons. “There, that should do it.” She yanked out the cords and shoved her calculator back into her purse. “Let’s get this place cleaned up and get out of here. We don’t want Mr. Witherall to catch us.”
We put the pen back where we found it and closed up the desk. Just then, the bell rang, ending lunch.
“I downloaded all the information from the pen onto my calculator. I have Computer Science later today, so I should be able to decipher all the information and maybe even print out some stuff. Let’s meet after school at Willie’s and I’ll tell you what I’ve found.”
The next three hours were torture. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I kinda wished Kyle was still around so he could distract me with an in-depth conversation about the Batmobile or something, but he’d already left to catch a flight to New York. My stomach turned at the thought that I actually missed him. I almost puked.
The more I stared at the clock in Mrs. Talendy’s class, the slower the hands moved. At one point I think they even went backward. But finally, it was all over. I jumped on my bike and pedaled over to Willie’s Sweet Shop to wait for Tai. To pass the time, I bought a couple of raspberry cream lollipops for us. They were my absolute favorite candy in the world. They tasted like heaven on a stick.
Tai took so long, I ended up eating mine and hers. I paced up and down the aisles for a while, studying the pastries, the candies, and the ice creams as if I had not been to the shop practically every day of my life. Twenty minutes later, I really started to worry. I had already used Willie’s phone twice to call my dad and let him know where I was.
What was taking her so long? Then I had a scary thought. What if Mr. Witherall had found out about our snooping? What if he had captured her and kidnapped her and taken her to some evil place? My friend was in danger! I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Life was not a comic book. I was totally overreacting. But I still made a mental note of what I would do to Mr. Witherall if he ever hurt my friend. And it wasn’t pretty. His glass eye would be his most attractive feature when I was done with him.
Finally, I saw Tai running up to the store, clutching a large envelope to her chest. She burst through the door, sat down across from me at our favorite round wicker table, and said, “Sorry I’m late. It took me forever to break through the encryptions and find these.” She dumped out the contents of the envelope onto the table. “There were several documents that I didn’t understand, so I focused on the pictures.”
“What the heck is going on?” I said as I stared at several pic
tures of me in hospital beds. “I’ve never been in the hospital.”
“No, Priss, look at the time stamp. These pictures are from twenty-five years ago. These are pictures of your mother.”
I gasped. My eyes expanded. I knew we looked alike, but this resemblance was uncanny. I mean, I really thought I was looking at myself. It was like I was her clone. I flipped through the pictures over and over again. In each one, my mother was getting a shot or drinking some liquid or getting examined by someone who looked a lot like a young Mr. Witherall, except with two real eyes.
“I think it’s time you had a long talk with your mother. You have to find out why she knows Mr. Witherall. Maybe it has something to do with your powers.”
I gathered all the papers from off the table and stuffed them back into the envelope.
“Where are you going? What are you going to do?” Tai asked as I headed toward the door.
“I’m going to show this to my parents. They have to tell me the truth.” I put the envelope in my bicycle basket and started my ride home. I was so focused on trying to figure out what to say to my parents that I didn’t notice a black van following me.
When it pulled up next to me, I got really nervous and pedaled faster. Then it got so close to me I almost swerved off the road in order avoid crashing into it. Suddenly, the side door of the van slid open and a hand reached out. As I was pulled inside, my bike went clattering to the side of the road. I tried to scream, but a rag was jammed into my mouth and a needle went into my arm. Seconds later, everything went black.
Chapter 14: Captured: Part II
So that’s how I ended up tied to a chair. At first I thought maybe it was retaliation from Chester for that time I tied him to the chair and put him on the street corner. But then I remembered that Chester couldn’t tie his own shoelaces, let alone the sophisticated knot that held my hands behind my back.
I wiggled and struggled against the ropes, but nothing happened. Ugh, I needed my super strength. Maybe if I wished hard enough, they’d come back. I closed my eyes and tried that. Nope, nothing.
“Good morning, Priscilla. Welcome back,” an eerie voice said from … from everywhere. The deep sinister voice surrounded me as if it poured out of the walls. And it was Mr. Witherall’s voice. He had kidnapped me!
I had to figure out a way to get out of here. If my life was going to play out like a comic book, now was the time for the great escape or the big rescue. Any second some spandex clad hero was going to drop in from the ceiling, take out the Goliath with a gun who was guarding me, and get me out of here. I stared up at the ceiling. Nothing. I guess it was up to me to come up with the brilliant plan. Fortunately, I had one.
“Hey, hey you,” I said to the human truck. He cast his cold blue eyes on me, and I nearly fell off of the chair at how harsh and scary he looked.
“I gotta go to the bathroom,” I said.
He looked away without responding. I knew a simple pretty please wasn’t going to work.
“Seriously, it’s an emergency. I really, really, really have to pee!”
Still no response.
“Look, either let me go to the bathroom or put me in a diaper ‘cause something’s coming out of me in about thirty seconds. Your choice.”
He looked around as if waiting for a command.
“Let her use the facilities,” Mr. Witherall’s voice said.
After peeing for what felt like twenty minutes straight, I looked around the completely bare stainless steel bathroom. These people could really use the help of an interior designer. There wasn’t even a mirror or a medicine cabinet where I could search for something flammable. Not that it would matter since I didn’t have fire power. I paced the tiny room and tried to think about how my powers came the last time. I remembered Tai saying something about how they were probably tied to my hormones, especially since it happened near my time of the month. I also remembered that, at first, the hot flashes came every time I thought about Spencer. I tried thinking about Spencer. Nothing. Great. Now what would I do?
I sat on the toilet and put my head in my hands. The only other thing I remember from that day was Kyle knocking on the door to taunt me about some stupid game. Why was I thinking about Kyle again of all things? I still couldn’t believe he liked me enough to put my name in his locker. That’s just crazy. But, then again, he was pretty cute. And I loved all the competitions we had against each other. He was really able to keep me from getting bored when Tai was away. And he had really pretty lips. I bet they were really soft, too, and … wait a minute…that brought the heat. I definitely felt a hot flash coming.
I put the trash can on top of the sink right under the smoke alarm and filled it with toilet paper. After setting it on fire, I waited for the smoke to rise to the smoke detector while heating up the door knob. As soon as the alarm went off, the sprinkler system came on and a commotion erupted all over the building. I heard my personal guard approach the door. But when he turned the knob, he cried out in pain. I burst through the door, knocking him to the floor as he clutched his burnt hand.
Red and white lights flashed in the hallway as people in white lab coats were ushered out of the building by the armed men in bullet-proof vests. After rounding a corner, I tried to walk calmly yet quickly and not draw attention to myself, but a twelve-year-old redheaded girl in jean shorts didn’t really blend in. Seconds later, someone yelled, “There she is. Get her!” I took off running even though I had no idea where I was going. I rounded another corner and ran headfirst into the rock-solid chest of an armed guard.
“I’ve got her,” he said into an ear piece, grabbing my arm. I noticed eight or ten more guards running up behind him. “She’s not going anywhere,” he added, squeezing my arm tighter.
“That’s what you think!” I touched his black pants and set them on fire. Then I kicked his legs out from under him and pushed his burning body into the guards behind him like I was playing a game of ten-pin bowling. I think I got a strike.
I ran past the flaming pile of pinheads and continued my escape.
Suddenly, a strong pair of arms wrapped around my waist. When I tried to scream, a hand went over my mouth. The strong arms pulled me into a dark room. I wiggled free and kicked my assailant in the shin.
“Ahh!” he cried in pain. I didn’t care. I kicked him again then headed toward the door. “Priss, wait. It’s me, Dad.”
Chapter 15: Game Over?
“Daddy?” I turned on the light and took a good look at the man who had grabbed me. Even though he looked almost exactly like the other armed guards—bald, muscular, dressed in black, and carrying not one but three guns—I knew he was my daddy. I tackled him with a hug.
I didn’t realize I was crying until my dad said, “Don’t cry, Priss. We’re gonna get you out of here.”
I looked around the room. “Where are we? What is this place? What do they want with me?” I said, wiping my tears. From the desk, the ceiling-to-floor book shelf, and the leather sofa, it kind of looked like we were in a doctor’s office. And I did remember seeing people in white lab coats running through the halls. But if this was some sort of hospital or medical building, why were there huge men with guns running around? And why did the huge men look so much like my father?
My dad leaned against a file cabinet and massaged his leg. “My God, Priss. I think you might have fractured my tibia.”
“Your what?’
“Shinbone.”
“I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m kinda strong. There’s a lot about me you don’t know.”
“I figured as much.” My dad limped to the corner of the room, aimed one of his guns at a shiny silver object hanging from the ceiling, and fired. It made a whining sound as pieces of it fell to the floor.
“What was that?”
“Surveillance camera. I don’t want them to see what I plan to do next. We only have a few seconds before they start busting through that door. Barricade us in,” he said, pointing to the door.
As I pushed the large fi
ling cabinet in front of the door, I said, “You didn’t answer the question, Dad. What is this place?”
“This is the Selliwood Institute in Colorado. I used to work here. When you didn’t come home from school, I searched for you all over town. I finally found Tai and she told me about Witherall. I had no idea he was posing as your teacher. How could I have been so careless?” He closed his eyes and shook his head.
Careless? He thought he was careless? My dad was the most careful person I knew. I always thought he was just paranoid, but he was only trying to protect me. He obviously had good reason to be so worried about my safety.