“ ‘A battle avoided is often a battle won,’ ” she said.
Right out of Maxim’s logbook. Wow. But whom was she avoiding?
“Are you in trouble with a teacher?” I asked.
“Pfftt,” she said. “Adults are easy.”
“Then what’s got you so . . . ?”
I heard giggles in the hallway while the cheerleaders pranced past with their crepe paper and posterboards.
“Ahhhhh,” I said, the situation suddenly clear as a Kryptonian crystal. “Is that . . . ?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Vexons with pom-poms.”
“I understand,” I said sympathetically.
“I doubt you could.”
For a girl cowering on a closet floor in the dark, she could really stand her ground.
“Try me,” I dared.
“You’re not a girl.”
I laughed. “Hunter and his friends would disagree.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just that I’ve got my own Vexons to deal with.”
“They’re not the same,” she said.
“How? What makes you so special? I’m the one who should be saying you wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re just dealing with brute force. I have to deal with mind games.”
“A few minutes ago, three guys were about to make a game out of knocking my mind out of my skull.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Compared with what?” I almost yelled.
She dropped her voice again.
“The wolf packs,” she said.
“Wolf packs?”
“They move in threes,” she said, her voice flat and hollow. “They’re in every hall, in every class. Sometimes they ignore you, pretend you don’t exist. Other times they wait until you pass, and then you hear mumbling, and laughter that you know is at your expense.
“Then sometimes, they take small bites by mocking little things. Maybe your clothes and how they came from the wrong store. Maybe something you said in class. Or didn’t say. Maybe they send around a text about you. Or see that you’re reading a book. About space. And tell you how stupid they think that is.
“And then, once in a while, they sink their teeth in and rip off a big chunk of flesh. They talk about your . . . chest. It’s too flat. Or make jokes about the shape of your eyes. Or they talk in gibberish and ask you to translate. They call you . . . names.
“You can’t fight back against that. Not when you’re surrounded. The only logical option is to stay quiet. Avoid them. And everyone else. And at this moment, I am successfully not facing any of them.
“Hence,” she summed up confidently, “I have taken control.”
Her logic had an unassailable beauty to it.
“So . . . you hide here after school?” I asked.
“I just told you—it’s not hiding,” she said. “But I can isolate myself in lots of places. Sometimes after school, sometimes during. The bathrooms are good. If you find a clean stall and pull your legs up, nobody sees you. Certain closets work, if you know when the teachers are on break.”
“How do you know that?”
“I have my ways.”
“Do you go to class at all?”
“When I feel like it.”
“Don’t you get in trouble?”
“I have excuses.”
“From your parents?”
She laughed. “They don’t know a thing.”
“Then how—”
“I’m an office aide second hour.”
“And that means . . . ?”
“Access to the attendance computer.”
“Does that mean you can—”
“It takes about five seconds to erase an unexcused absence, if you know what you’re doing.”
“Don’t your teachers . . . ?”
“I told you, adults are easy to deal with. Unlike wolf packs, they aren’t looking for trouble. Challenge them on facts, and the worst they’ll do is make you transfer classes. If work shows up on their desk and you ace their tests, they never complain.”
I exhaled a long, slow breath. “I was wrong.”
“About what?”
“I was hoping we could be friends. But I think you’re out of my league.” I was trying to show her how impressive I thought she was.
“Then why did you treat me the way you did when I first showed up in the library?”
Whoops. That didn’t sound like an olive branch being accepted.
“I’m, uh, not so bright sometimes,” was all the apology I could manage.
“Clearly,” she said. She still sounded angry. But then she gave a worried sigh, as if she were reluctantly giving in to something. “But you’re probably going to see everything fall apart today.”
“How?”
“I ducked in here because after school is the worst. People sometimes ambush you if you’re not careful, you know.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
“It’s best to lie low and let them pass. The halls are usually safe after about ten minutes. But I forgot it’s a pep rally week. Wolf packs are everywhere. And Denton is prowling. If he sees me wandering the halls, I’ll definitely get detention. My parents will, perhaps literally, explode. So I have to stay here until he leaves. Except if I don’t leave now, my parents will kill me for being late. So either way, I’m dead.”
I wiped my hands on my pants and swabbed my chin with a corner of my torn sweatshirt.
“Maybe I can help,” I offered.
“I doubt it. Unless you can turn us invisible, or dig an escape tunnel.”
I cleared my throat, then stood up straight—at least, as straight as I could without knocking something over in the crowded, dusty darkness.
“Princess,” I declared, “I’m here to rescue you.”
“I don’t need a rescue,” she replied curtly. Possibly able to see me as the scrawny, filthy, frail person I was, she added, “And I am not sure you are in a position to do much rescuing.”
“No, really,” I said. “I can help. If you trust me.”
“Are you the person who called my house and made springs fly out of my parents’ heads?”
“Umm . . .”
“And did you not just say that you are running from someone who wanted to liberate your brain from your skull?”
Silence.
“And does your plan for rescue involve leaping into the garbage compactor until R2-D2 can find the off switch?”
I fidgeted with the straps on my Cosmos backpack. “Kind of.”
“I’ll take my chances in the closet.”
“OK,” I said. “Go on and face Denton by yourself. And if you avoid him, you can march out right past the cheerleaders in the cafeteria, just you, squinting in the daylight, against them. All of them. If you can take that on—you’re braver than I am.
“Me? I have a plan for getting out of here without being seen by anyone.”
I let that sink in, then added: “It’s risky. But so is doing nothing. And I know what Maxim would tell you.”
“What’s that?” she asked, urgently.
“ ‘A no-win scenario just means you have nothing to lose with whatever course you choose.’ ”
At that moment, we heard chanting and shrieking in the distance. It made me think of witches. And human sacrifice.
“OK.” She finally sighed. “I don’t think you’re that bright, but you’re all I have. What’s your plan?”
I felt my way to the door and opened it a crack. A beam of light shot in. I took a chestful of fresh air, blinked and looked around.
“Follow me,” I said.
We scurried to the classroom door. I peeked through the rectangle of glass; nobody was nearby. But we could hear the laughter from the cheerleaders, who were still in the cafeteria, where all the doors were wide open. Nothing blocked the squad from seeing us if we tried to run past.
We really needed a cloaking device about now, but all I had to work with were a stack of c
hairs; a resin statue of a squirrel holding an apple sitting on the teacher’s desk; and a TV cart, left over from the last substitute teacher.
Commander Steele could have turned these things into an invisibility ray, or a photon torpedo for that matter, but unlike him, I was not lucky enough to have been first in my class at the Galactic Science Academy.
But I had been on the sixth-grade audio/visual committee, and that gave me an idea.
I wheeled the cart out of the corner. It was a bulky, old-fashioned thing, and this one had a huge projector on it, the kind intended for use with a pull-down white screen but possibly large and bright enough to direct anti-aircraft fire at incoming bombers. Wired to it was an ancient VCR the size of a suitcase. It was quaint. But it would work.
Out of habit, I peeked at the little plastic VCR window to see how much tape was left. Sure enough, nobody had bothered to properly rewind the last movie shown. Some poor sub had merely turned off the film mid-showing and fled.
“Wait here until I tell you,” I said. “When I signal, head straight for the door marked MAINTENANCE.”
Ricki nodded.
I checked the hall one more time, then pushed the cart through the door. I was risking more than I let on to Ricki; our main goal was to avoid being seen by the cheerleaders, but we couldn’t be caught pushing school property around without a teacher’s note, either. We’d get detention for loitering, and probably charged with looting. Or attempted larceny. Or something.
I crouched behind the cart as I pushed it down the hall. I could hear the cheerleaders’ chatter, but I wouldn’t be exposed until I crossed the double doors of the cafeteria. I had thought that the cart would be bulky enough to screen us from view as we dashed past.
But I had to stop a few feet from the cafeteria entrance. From this angle, it was clear there was far too much hall for even that big old VCR and TV to hide us.
I began to retreat, but I again thought of Maxim: always move forward, he would say.
I spied an electrical outlet across the hall.
Quickly unspooling the power cord, I got down on my stomach and wormed my way across, commando-style. This was mostly for dramatic effect, but it made me feel braver.
I pushed the cart to the edge of what I thought would be the cheerleaders’ field of vision and aimed the lens inside the cafeteria. I set the focus, raised my arm to signal Ricki and flipped the switch.
The VCR began to whir and hum, the tape spooled through and the powerful lamp flickered to life.
“Now!” I whispered. I turned the volume all the way up.
The cheerleaders instinctively turned toward the sound of the VCR, but the pulse of light blinded them. They then turned to the far wall, where a movie had suddenly appeared.
I marveled for a moment—it was one of my favorites, Jason and the Argonauts! It was right at the scene where the army of skeleton warriors rises from the soil, and even if the effects were primitive, it was still riveting. I had watched the film on many a Saturday afternoon, but never had I seen the grim, clanking soldiers of the earth elicit shrieks of disgust from a room full of cheerleaders. It was even better this way.
Ricki made it to my side.
“What now?” she asked.
“This way!” I said, and we ducked behind the door that led to the basement. I led her down the stairs, around the workbench, past the shelves of cleaning supplies and to the furnace. I slid the grate out of the way and set my feet on the rungs.
“Down here,” I urged. “Close the grate behind you.”
Her mouth hung open in either disbelief or disgust.
We heard some kind of activity upstairs. “Trust me!” I said.
She looked behind her, then stared right at me. Her eyebrows were pressed together; her lips were tight.
After an eternity that lasted probably a second and a half, she huffed: “This is some rescue.”
And down we went.
As we got nearer the bottom, I reached into my backpack for my flashlight. Then I realized—someone already had lights on down below.
We were not alone.
7.03.05
I thought of Maxim and kept moving forward.
From the bottom of the shaft, it was a ten-foot drop to the floor. There was no way to tell who or what I would find when I let go.
I let my backpack fall first, and it made a slapping sound as it hit the concrete floor. I landed next to it, in a clumsy Spider-Man-like stance. I looked up, and as my eyes adjusted to the light they fell on . . .
“Les!” I had totally forgotten that this was his day to use the Sanctuary. He wouldn’t like that I had messed with the schedule.
Then I realized how much less he was going to like the surprise coming right behind me.
“What are you doing here?” he said, standing up from his chair and dropping his comic book.
“Um,” I said. “We need to talk.”
At that moment, a shoe fell on my head. A girl’s shoe. Slip-on. Had Ricki been running in these things? She was more adept than I—
“Eeep!” she called. I jumped aside just as the other shoe, with Ricki’s foot still inside, plunged down next to me.
I realized, too late, that I should have made some kind of effort to catch her. But there was no need; she landed gracefully, with one leg extended behind her, and made sort of a flourish with her arms.
“Tae kwon do?” I asked, impressed.
“Arabesque,” she said. “Seven years of ballet, from six instructors. I always thought it was hundreds of hours down the drain. But I never knew I would be using it . . . down a drain.”
In the yellow light of the crayon candles, I could see Les turning an alarming color. His lower lip was trembling. His eyes began to shine.
“I said you couldn’t tell ANYONE!”
“Les, I—”
“I KNEW I shouldn’t have trusted anyone!”
“Les! It was an emergency! Hunter and his goons nearly killed me!”
“So you decided to VIOLATE your word by bringing a frakking DATE down here?”
“Les, she’s not a date!”
“She’s a girl!”
“She’s one of US,” I said.
“I think I resent that,” she said.
Her voice jarred Les out of his rage. It was as if he were surprised that she could speak.
“Les,” I said. “This is Ricki Roy. Ricki, this is Les Martin. Keeper of the Fortress of Solitude.”
They stared at each other. Les wiped his nose on his sleeve in a long, slow motion.
“I’ve seen you leaving his library class,” he said.
“I’ve never seen you,” she replied. “Just your name. On the attendance forms in the office.”
He looked startled. “I keep a low profile,” he said.
“I would too, if my brother was Ty Hunter,” she said.
The chamber turned as quiet as deep space, as still as absolute zero.
“Your brother?” I whispered.
Les’s face had gone from purple to red to white. His eyes were wide and fearful.
“Your brother?” I asked again, although it was clear that what Ricki asserted was true.
It wasn’t exactly as shocking as learning the identity of Luke Skywalker’s father, but to find out that my one friend had been hiding his family ties to my worst tormentor was akin to . . . to . . . something so infuriating that my mind would work only in staccato sputterings. Which is how Les spoke.
“Who said . . . Who told . . . How did you know?” he finally asked Ricki.
“I access the attendance database to excuse my absences,” she said matter-of-factly. “I notice things. Like the fact that you have the same home address as Ty. And the same parents. I was just assuming you were related. I guess I was right.”
It was my turn to rage. “Anything else you need to tell me, Les? Maybe you’ve heard a few good ones about me at the dinner table?”
“No, I—”
“Or maybe you didn’t need to listen, be
cause maybe you were hiding somewhere, after setting me up! Maybe you’re one of THEM!” My head was spinning, and my insides had sort of a weightless feel.
“Clark! No!” he almost whimpered. “I was just trying to protect you! And me. And us.”
I held my tongue. Not because I believed him, but because I didn’t want to have a tear-streaked meltdown right in front of both of them. So I stood there, breathing hard. This gave Les a chance to speak some more.
“Ty is my stepbrother. I hardly even talk to him. In fact, he hates being seen with me. Which is why I stay out of his way. When he gets angry, he’s a lot like his dad.”
He let that sink in. I could see his logic, but still. “You couldn’t have told me?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t . . . I don’t know how . . .” He gulped a breath and looked up. “He’s been hell on my friends in the past. And people don’t stay friends with me for long because of it. I was afraid you wouldn’t, you know, talk to me if you found out.”
I could have pressed the “abort” button on our friendship right there.
But I did understand that loneliness makes a guy do desperate things.
Candles flickered as I thought about what to say next.
“You’re a freak, Les,” I finally told him. “I mean, everything I know about you is weird. Alien mutant-level weird.” I let out a deep breath. “But everything I know about me is alien-level weird too.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, also exhaling. “Yeah.”
“Is there anything else I need to know about you?”
He shook his head.
“Good. Because, um . . . ,” I looked over at Ricki, and down at my torn shirt, and back at Les. “Because I could really use your help right now.”
His eyes stayed wide for just a moment. And then his expression faded into his usual look of controlled intensity.
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re a mess. How are you going to explain this to your parents?”
“Oh God, my parents,” said Ricki. “If I’m not walking through my front door in a few minutes, everything comes unraveled. Everything.”
Les scanned her. He was calculating something. “Can you make up some excuse for why you’re late?”
Revenge of the Star Survivors Page 11