Black Moon Rising

by D. J. MacHale

  I walked to the rear of the room and took the gunfighter’s seat, the farthest seat back, so I could see the entire class. The stool I chose was close to the lab station where Ainsley sat. She was leaning over the table and talking to a friend, until Nate Christmas walked into the room.

  Ainsley saw him and stiffened. She didn’t even want to be in the same room as the guy—that’s how much she hated him.

  I glanced to Kayla. She kept her head buried in her biology book, like it was some kind of page-turning thriller.

  Nate surveyed the room. When he focused on Ainsley, he tensed up as well. The little guy’s jaw muscles worked as if he was holding in anger as he strode directly toward her lab table like a confident rooster.

  Ainsley ignored him, keeping her eyes straight ahead.

  A guy was sitting on the stool behind her. Nate went up to him, grabbed his shirt, and forcefully pulled him off the seat. The guy resisted until he saw who it was, then abruptly backed off and took another seat.

  My pulse quickened again. I was beginning to see why everybody hated Nate Christmas.

  Nate took the vacated stool a few feet behind Ainsley and moved it a little closer to her.

  Nothing good was going to come of this.

  Miss Britton’s lecture was on algae, not exactly a fascinating subject under any circumstances. I was way more interested in Nate and Ainsley.

  “You coming after me?” Nate whispered. He was being quiet enough so that Miss Britton couldn’t hear, but Ainsley could. She sat up straight, as if his words had put her on full alert.

  “I dare you,” he growled in a low, menacing voice. “I want you to.”

  Everyone else’s attention was on Miss Britton. There was only one other student aware of the low-key drama playing out.

  Kayla. She sat at the lab table to our right. She was no longer focused on her book. Like me, she had her gaze fixed on Nate and Ainsley.

  “You’re telling everybody it’s my fault, aren’t you?” Nate said.

  Ainsley never turned around. But it was clear that she heard every word he was saying, because she sat there as rigid as a mannequin. I wanted her to spin around and smack the guy. Or at least move to another seat. I thought about saying something, but I didn’t belong there and didn’t want to draw any attention to myself. That definitely ruled out my punching Nate in the head, which was what I really wanted to do. I had to sit there and take it, just like Ainsley. If her blood was boiling as hot as mine, I don’t know how she kept from slugging him.

  “Where do you get off blaming me anyway?” Nate asked. “You think you’re something special. Trust me, you’re not.”

  I heard a faint sound. It was like a gentle rattle. I took a quick look around but didn’t see anything that could be making it. I thought maybe it was the ventilation system and tried to ignore it.

  The lab table where Ainsley sat was near a wall and next to a long counter. Over the counter were shelves filled with glassware and bottles of…whatever. Science stuff.

  “I didn’t start this,” Nate whispered. “This is all on you.”

  The rattling grew louder. It sounded like glass bottles were lightly tapping against one another. Kayla heard it too. She was no longer staring at Nate and Ainsley. Her gaze drifted to the counter and up to the shelf of bottles above it. I looked in the same direction and saw a row of brown bottles with stoppers and warning labels.

  “You best keep looking over your shoulder,” Nate said. “Or you won’t see me coming.”

  The rattling got so loud that the entire class heard it, including Miss Britton. She stopped her lecture and looked around.

  “Now, who is doing that?” she asked, annoyed.

  CRACK!

  One of the brown bottles on the shelf burst, sending clear liquid pouring onto the counter below. The sharp odor hit me instantly. It smelled like the strongest chlorine treatment you could ever put in a swimming pool. My eyes started watering and my nose burned.

  “Look out!” Miss Britton shouted. “That’s hydrochloric acid!”

  Ainsley and Nate dove away. Other bottles on the shelf started shaking as if a mini-earthquake were centered directly under it. Many more bottles of acid were lined up, side by side. They all started to shake and bounce. If they broke and their contents splashed down, kids would get burned.

  Over the shelf was a large silver showerhead, there for just such an emergency. We were told in science class that if you spilled something caustic, use the shower. I figured this qualified as an emergency, so I dove for the metal chain next to the showerhead and yanked it. Water instantly sprang from the round showerhead, cascading down like a mini-rainstorm. It made a total mess, but when the water hit the counter, it diluted the acid enough that the smell went away almost entirely. The bottles stopped shaking too.

  “Everybody back off!” Miss Britton yelled, losing her cool. “Don’t touch anything.”

  I backed away quickly. I didn’t want to be splashed by acid, diluted or not.

  The rest of the class was huddled together against the opposite wall, watching in stunned wonder.

  “How did this happen?” Miss Britton shouted. “Who did this?”

  There were no answers because nobody knew. I had been sitting right there and I didn’t know. Nobody had touched anything. It was as if the bottle just decided to break on its own.

  The kids looked shell-shocked. There was no screaming or sobbing. I guess they were getting used to having strange things like this happen.

  Ainsley stood in front of the others as if to shield them. She stood defiantly straight and tall, as if to say she would not be defeated by a little bit of acid.

  Nate, on the other hand, looked pretty shaken. He had run all the way to the front of the room to escape the acid and was checking his clothes for burns.

  The only kid who wasn’t staring at the mess was Kayla. She sat in the back of the room, leaning against the wall, twirling her long hair around a finger.

  One good thing came from the scary event. It helped me narrow down my search for the cause of the disruption. I felt pretty certain that whoever or whatever was causing it was in that room. All I had to do was figure out what it was.

  Yeah. That.

  * * *

  NOBODY WAS BURNED. NO real damage was done other than the kids being kept on edge, wondering when the next dangerous accident would happen, and whether they might be the one caught in it. They had been lucky up till then, but how long would that luck last?

  * * *

  Everett was sitting in his usual spot at the circulation desk, glasses down on his nose, reading from the red book that held the story about Coppell Middle School.

  “It’s a disruption, all right,” I declared. “There’s nothing right about anything that’s going on at that crazy school.”

  I had left Coppell the same way I arrived…through the janitor’s closet in the boys’ room. It was weird to think that getting around that way was feeling less, well, weird.

  “Any theories on who might be causing it?” Everett asked as he skimmed the new entries.

  “Lots of the kids are blaming a weasel named Nate Christmas. But it doesn’t make sense that Nate could be doing all this stuff. It’s not like he’s got some strange powers. At least not that I know of.”

  “He’s the only suspect?” Everett asked.

  “Maybe. There’s a girl named Kayla who’s been square in the middle of a bunch of the events. But I can’t talk to her because she doesn’t speak. At all. To anybody. I guess she hasn’t said a word in years.”

  Everett raised an eyebrow.

  “She could be worth pursuing,” he said as he scanned the book’s pages. “There has to be a story there.”

  The spirits who wrote the stories had already documented in the red book everything that happened. All Everett had to do was read to get caught up. Hard to believe, but that was starting to feel normal to me too.

  “What d’ya plan on doing next?” Everett asked.

&nb
sp; I headed for the door that led back to reality. My reality.

  “I want to find out more about those kids,” I said. “But I’ll need help.”

  “Lu and Theo?” Everett asked.

  “Yeah. I made friends with the girl who’s president of the eighth grade. She can open doors for us.”

  I walked quickly toward the exit.

  “Marcus?” Everett called.

  I turned back to him but kept walking.

  “Yeah?”

  “Exceptional work, lad. Your father couldn’t have done any better himself.”

  His words meant more to me than he knew. My whole life I’d wondered if I was anything like my biological parents. Turns out that I was. At least in the sleuthing department.

  Or maybe Everett only said that because he knew exactly how much it would mean to me and wanted to make sure I’d come back.

  “Yeah, well, I haven’t done anything yet,” I said, and went for the door.

  I pushed the exit door open and stepped into…

  …my bathroom at home. No sooner did I close the door behind me than somebody knocked on it. I pulled it open expecting to see Everett with some last-second thought. Instead, I was jarred to see my dad standing in our upstairs hallway.

  It took a couple of seconds for me to reset my brain and register how that was possible. There were some things about the Library I was still having trouble getting used to.

  “You feeling okay?” he asked with a worried frown.

  His question threw me.

  “Uh, yeah. Why?”

  “Because you ran up here like you were going to explode. I wanted to make sure you weren’t puking your guts out. Or something.”

  Oh. Right. I had left my parents at breakfast and ran upstairs when I felt the Paradox key grow warm. Even though I had been at Coppell Middle School for a couple of hours, I returned home at the exact second I’d left. This time-displacement thing was yet another weirdness that needed some getting used to.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “False alarm. Gas…I guess.”

  I flushed the toilet for effect.

  “Oh. Good. Well, I’m glad you’re going to give some thought to what we suggested.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  He gave an exasperated sigh. “About looking into joining some extracurricular activities.”

  Oh. Right. The domestic conflict of the day.

  I laughed.

  “Why’s that funny?” Dad asked, perturbed.

  “Sorry, it’s not. Don’t worry. I’ll come up with something. See you tonight.”

  I pushed past my dad and headed out of the bathroom, still laughing to myself. My parents wanted me to find some kind of extracurricular interest. They had no idea I was going on adventures that made joining some lame school club seem like a joke. The trick was to get them off my back so I wouldn’t have to actually join some after-school thing, because I was way too busy traveling through different dimensions.

  —

  The next morning, following a full day of school and a solid night’s sleep, I went right back to Coppell through the Library to continue the investigation. I waited until then because I didn’t want to crash and burn by living through too many thirty-six-hour days. Though my normal life went on hold and didn’t unfreeze until I got back home, my body kept going the whole time. I was still living and breathing when I was in a story, so I had to be careful not to spend too many hours in the Library or I really would end up like Rip Van Winkle.

  At least on this trip I wasn’t alone.

  “Marvelous!” Theo exclaimed while gazing at the ancient brick school building. “I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the original structure dated back to the 1800s.”

  “Old” was Lu’s simple appraisal.

  “Everett hasn’t forgotten about your stories,” I said. “He’s been looking, but there are a lot of books back there.”

  “Maybe there’s nothing to find,” Theo said hopefully. “We may not be going through disruptions after all.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But if you are, he’ll find the stories. Or I will, if I have to look through every book myself.”

  Lu gave me a big smile and said, “Like you’d do that.”

  “Okay, maybe not, but I trust Everett. He’s got a lot more time to look than I do.”

  “I get it. Let’s worry about one story at a time,” Lu said. “What do we do first?”

  “There are three kids I want to know more about,” I said. “I’ll go for that d-bag Nate Christmas. He’s public enemy number one.”

  “How could one kid do all of those things?” Lu asked, skeptically. “He may be a foul ball, but he’s not magical. Or is he?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Everett said people sometimes get trapped in situations they don’t understand because there’s nothing logical about them.”

  “Well, that’s pretty scary,” Theo said.

  “Yeah, Theo’s worst nightmare,” Lu said. “Stuck in a world with no logic. It would make his Spock brain explode.”

  “I’m sure it wouldn’t bother you,” Theo shot back. “Seeing as you don’t understand much about science anyway.”

  “I got a couple of lousy C’s!” Lu exclaimed. “That doesn’t make me an idiot.”

  “No, just average.”

  “Stop!” I shouted. “Can we focus, please? Theo, try to meet that girl Kayla. She was right in the middle of most of the incidents. It could be a coincidence, but you never know. She won’t talk to you, but maybe you can get a feel for what she’s all about.”

  “I’ll try,” Theo said. “I’m quite perceptive.”

  “Yeah, and it’s not like you know how to talk to girls anyway,” Lu said dismissively.

  Theo scowled at her.

  Lu smiled.

  “What about me?” she asked.

  “Find Ainsley Murcer. She runs this place and knows everything about everything. She might have seen things she didn’t even realize she was seeing. You’ll get along with her. You two are alike.”

  “But I’m an original,” Lu said, aghast.

  “I don’t mean exactly alike. Jeez, just talk to her. If anybody asks why you’re here, tell them you’re new. That’s worked for me.”

  “Maybe we should say we’re all from the same family,” Lu suggested. “A white guy, an Asian girl, and a black guy—that’s not suspicious at all.”

  “Yeah, don’t do that,” I said firmly. “It won’t be a problem. The adults here are so spun around by what’s happening they’re not going to care about a few extra kids wandering around. Learn what you can and meet back here when the bell rings before first period.”

  “Marcus?” Theo said. “I’m feeling rather anxious about this.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “They’re normal kids. I think. But stay alert: you never know when something might fall on your head.”

  “That doesn’t make me any less anxious,” Theo said as he glanced to the sky, expecting something to be headed his way.

  “No sweat,” Lu said with confidence. “We beat the boogeyman. This’ll be cake.”

  The three of us walked through the wrought iron gates and entered the early-morning bustle of the courtyard. I scanned the crowd, looking for our targets. It was as hectic as the day before, with kids being dropped off and hanging out until first period.

  “There,” I said. “That’s Ainsley.”

  She was sitting at a table, working intently on something, papers spread out in front of her.

  “She doesn’t look anything like me,” Lu said, annoyed.

  “I didn’t say she…oh, never mind, just go!”

  Lu locked her eyes on Ainsley and went straight for her.

  “What does Kayla look like?” Theo asked. “And in spite of what I just said about my superior perceptive abilities, how am I supposed to get information from a girl who doesn’t speak?”

  “Because of what you tell me at least three times a day.”

  “What’s that?” />
  “You’re smart. There she is.”

  I pointed at Kayla, who was sitting by herself on a bench just inside the fence. After nearly getting sliced by a falling sheet of glass, she probably didn’t want to be anywhere near the school building.

  Theo took a deep, nervous breath and said, “Wish me luck.”

  He took off, headed for Kayla.

  On my own again, I went looking for the infamous Nate Christmas.

  I found him and a couple of his pals in a far corner of the courtyard, keeping to themselves. Or maybe everybody else was steering clear. The three of them were in a circle, kicking around a soccer ball.

  “Hey, you okay?” I asked him as I strolled up.

  He gave me a quick, dismissive look and said, “What’re you talking about?”

  “The acid. In science. You get burned?”

  I knew he wasn’t hurt, but I needed some way to open up a conversation.

  “Oh yeah,” he said, looking at his friends. “Clark Kent here saved the day.”

  “It was weird how that happened,” I said. “Nobody was close enough to the bottles to knock ’em over.”

  “Yeah, almost as weird as you spying on us in the bathroom, perv.”

  “I wasn’t spying,” I said, taking a deep breath to keep from letting him get to me. “But a lot of strange things have been happening here. Any idea why?”

  Nate kicked the soccer ball hard, sending it sailing halfway across the courtyard.

  “Hey!” one of his friends yelled angrily and went after it.

  Nate walked up to me, getting uncomfortably close, and looked me square in the eye.

  “You think everything’s my fault too?” he snarled.

  I felt his hot breath on my chin, but there was no way I’d back down from this munchkin bully, so I stood my ground and locked eyes with him.

  “Nah, I’m just worried about you, chief,” I said.

  “Worried? Why?”

  “Seems like you’re always there when something goes wrong. Maybe somebody’s got it out for you. Do you have any enemies…Nate?”

  There was a subtle shift in his gaze, as if I’d told him something he hadn’t thought of before. It lasted only a second before he locked back on me.