Rita Morse and the Sinister Shadow

by Holly Hook

  * * * * *

  “No!” I yelled as I stood in front of the television in my black long-sleeved shirt the next morning. “No!”

  The weather report displayed today’s high in huge numbers. Ninety-one degrees. Sunshine all day. No wind. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the humidity was going to be high, too. Sweat already crept out under my arms and on the back of my neck. The air conditioning hadn’t had a chance to cool the house yet, since the power had come back on only fifteen minutes ago, but that didn’t matter. The school didn’t have air conditioning, and unless I wanted the A on my forearm to show for the world to see, I’d have to sweat to death all day.

  Making sure I had Sean’s disc in my backpack, I headed out the door before my mom could yell at me to put on a short-sleeved shirt. Time to get to school before the sun got too hot.

  Penny and Ryan waited out by my driveway. I brought them up to speed on last night, rolling up my sleeve to show them my arm. Ryan’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw it.

  “I don’t know what it means,” I said, rolling my sleeve back down, “but it can’t be anything good.” I wondered if Jerry had one of these, too, but I had no way to ask him. Would I ever get to talk to him again? What would he tell me to do? What did you do when this sort of thing happened?

  Penny suggested we stay in a tight group once we got through the double doors of the school. That was a good idea. “Scan the halls. If you see anyone shadowy—”

  “I don’t think the Shadow Ones are going to jump out from behind the drink machines,” I told her, searching up and down the hall. Crowds of other students gathered in groups and socialized. The cheerleaders stood over next to the jocks, giggling. One of the art girls marched down the hall wearing fake elf ears. And Josh and Kristina leaned against some lockers, fiddling with a couple of new cell phones. “Too many people here.”

  Penny looked behind her. “Well, you’d never know.”

  Ryan glared at Josh and Kristina and their phones. “I hope Mr. Gorfel confiscates those and throws them in that algae tank.”

  “Oh, crap.” My stomach lurched. On top of everything, I hadn’t done my homework for Mr. Gorfel last night. My grade in that class was already teetering on the toilet seat. One more missed assignment, and it would fall in. It was bad enough I had A. Gist to worry about. “Great. I also couldn’t do my questions last night.” Since Penny had gotten kicked out by my mom, she hadn’t reminded me.

  The row of plastic frogs all croaked as we walked into Mr. Gorfel’s class. Only a couple of people sat up front. Perfect. I sat and pulled my Biology brick—I mean book—out of my backpack. Mr. Gorfel hadn’t come in yet and the bell wouldn’t ring for ten minutes. I had hope yet, although Penny wouldn’t let me live this down for the next month.

  “Penny,” I asked, “Can I copy your questions?”

  “Copy?” Penny wrinkled her nose. “You know I don’t like that. And if I got caught—” She didn’t finish that sentence. “I can help you with the questions, though.”

  “This is an emergency!” I flipped to the assignment page. “We don’t have time for that.” And besides, I could look up the questions myself. I wasn’t an idiot. “It’s not my fault I couldn’t do my homework.”

  “C…copy mine.” Ryan fished through his papers. “I think I have most of the answers right.”

  “Thanks,” I said, glancing at the grimy clock above the chalkboard. Nine minutes before the bell. I had to hurry.

  I scribbled down Ryan’s answers onto my sheet, trying to put them in my words as much as I could. The tense minutes ticked by as more and more people filed into the room and slouched in their chairs. If Mr. Gorfel caught me doing this, I just might be dead before A. Gist found me again.

  Penny made her humph sound as she opened her own book. “I can’t believe this.”

  “We’re being threatened by the Ruler of Ageism and his whole Shadow Regime, and you’re worried about me copying some homework?” My voice rose. I couldn’t help it. “It’s not like I could fit it between me passing out and losing our power last night. What am I supposed to do? Take a zero?”

  “You’re supposed to find the time to do your homework and make sure it’s your own work,” a horrible voice rang out from the front of the room.

  Oh, no.

  Mr. Gorfel stood next to the storage room, arms folded over his chest. He must’ve lurked in there the whole time and heard everything I said. Great.

  “Rita. Ryan. Come up to my desk,” he said, sitting down.

  I sighed and walked up to the teacher’s desk while Josh and Kristina snickered. Why didn’t they get in trouble for anything?

  The millipede climbed up the wall of its tank as if trying to get a better look at me getting grilled. I joined Ryan in front of Mr. Gorfel’s desk. The back of my neck prickled. Everyone in the class must be staring at us.

  “I’m marking both of your assignments in as zeroes,” Mr. Gorfel explained loud enough for the whole class to hear. “And in addition to that, I have decided on your punishment for your other little example.”

  He leaned over towards a drawer, the drawer that had the pile of Detention Slips. Big surprise. Mr. Gorfel pulled out two of them and waved them high in the air. He made a show of filling them out, too. “And not only will this be a detention. It’s going to be a little parent-teacher conference as well. I will personally call your parents to pick you up tomorrow night, after your special little punishment.”

  We sulked back to our seats. Penny stared straight ahead as I sat. Could my week get any worse?

  I could only think about how my mom would yell at me for copying homework. Things were bad enough with my parents lately. I couldn’t even imagine what I’d get for breaking into the classroom. Mr. Gorfel wouldn’t forget to mention that. Ryan sighed and slapped his Detention Slip down on the table.

  “Hey, I’ll keep you out of trouble and tell your mom I dragged you into this,” I said. Which was, to some degree, true. “You’ll get in less trouble that way.”

  “You don’t have to be the protector all the time, Rita,” he said. “I…I can tell her myself.”

  “Gee, I see you appreciate it.”

  Ryan flattened his hands on the table. “I do. It’s just that…I can stand up for myself sometimes.”

  Mr. Gorfel started a boring lecture and I stewed over just about everything until the bell rang. What was so bad about wanting to stand up for my friends? Or myself, for that matter? I couldn’t help it or anything. I’d been doing it ever since I took that spider off Ryan’s lunch box on the playground. What did people want me to do? Sit around and giggle all the time? Well, my mom did.

  I forced those pleasant thoughts from my mind when the bell rang. We still had the disc to look at and our next class was Basic Computers. “We’ll tell you what we saw at lunch,” I said to Ryan as he split from us to go to his Drawing class.

  I followed Penny into Mr. Harvey’s room and took the back table. I fished out Sean’s disc and thrust it into the computer before the teacher even took attendance.

  “Here goes,” I said.

  The disc had only two folders on it, one labeled Open First and the other Open Second. Yeah, nothing original. All the first folder had in it was a link to those Youtube videos Sean told me about.

  “There it is,” Penny said.

  I clicked. And I’ll admit it. My heart started to pound. I almost didn’t want to know what Sean had found. But I had to do this now. A. Gist knew where I lived, which meant I might not get another chance.

  The school still had dial-up, by the way. Which meant the page loaded slow. The bell rang and Mr. Harvey started taking attendance by time it did.

  A row of videos finally popped up, all labeled The Saga of Gabe Cruz. I saw five parts waiting there in the sidebar. It did look like an amateur movie series someone had put up. If Sean ha
dn’t told me otherwise, I would’ve passed right over it if I was browsing Youtube,

  “We’d better start watching them.” Penny leaned forward, grimacing. “Video takes forever to open.”

  I turned the volume way down and clicked on the first movie as Mr. Harvey called out everyone’s names. A black screen popped up and a red loading bar crept along below it. I hit pause. There was no point in watching the movie if it had to stop to buffer every few seconds.

  By time it finished loading, Mr. Harvey told us to start on some PowerPoint presentations and gave us a story about a camping trip he’d done over the summer. At long last, I hit the play button.

  A tall guy with spiky black hair, maybe seventeen, appeared on the screen. Movie posters and figures of comic book characters decorated the walls and shelves behind him. He seemed like someone Ryan would get along with. “Hi,” he said, smiling. The screen tilted as he adjusted his webcam. “My name is Gabe Cruz. I’m here to document my battle with a local business.” A pause as he slicked down his hair. “I used to be a loyal customer at a place called the CD Den here in town. Now I can’t go in with my friends anymore because of this.”

  He vanished and a photo took his place on-screen. A square blue sign glared out from behind the glass of a door covered in music ads. Absolutely no one under eighteen allowed without a parent. I swallowed. We were in the right place, all right.

  The movie went back to Gabe Cruz. “See?” He folded his arms over his chest. “You probably have a store like this in your town that you complain about, too.”

  I snorted with laughter. It’s not like I could help it or anything.

  “But I’m going to do something about this.” He leaned towards the camera and came so close that his face blocked out his movie posters. “The first thing I’m going to try is a letter right to the manager. I’ll report back in two weeks to let you know how it went. If it doesn’t work, I’ll do something else. Gabe Cruz, checking out.”

  I closed out the movie. Exciting? No. But we still had four more videos to go.

  Penny eyed the clock and bit her lip. “I have to start on my assignment. Keep playing those while I’m working.”

  Everyone—including poor Penny—started working on their presentations. Mr. Harvey buried himself in his own computer. From here I could tell he was surfing the net, because he was on a sports site. He’d never notice what we were up to.

  The Saga of Gabe Cruz, Part Two. White letters stood out on a black background as the next video buffered. Penny typed into her Powerpoint slides and leaned closer to my screen at the same time. We didn’t speak or even look at each other. Finally Gabe Cruz sat on the screen again, nervously smoothing down his hair.

  “Well, I have the letter w…written and r…ready to go. I’ll send that out tomorrow.” He gulped. “I know this is really early for me to be back, but something kind of weird happened this morning. It was right after I loaded my first entry up on here. I have to tell someone, even if it’s just this camera.”

  “Turn it up!” Penny twisted the volume control before I could react, then added a new slide to her assignment. “We might be getting somewhere.”

  “I went out right after I sent my letter to get some chips.” Gabe stole a glance behind him. “I rode my bike down to the gas station and I passed the CD Den. And standing there…well, you’re not going to believe this.”

  “Really?” I blurted, gripping my chair like I was on a roller coaster. “Try us.”

  Gabe pressed his face closer to the camera. “It was this shadowy figure. It was totally black even though it was bright and sunny, and standing right there on the sidewalk. I think it was wearing a cape, I’m not sure. I turned and rode away from there as fast as I could.”

  Penny clicked something with her mouse and tapped me in the shoulder. “Bingo.”

  “Well, that’s out of my system,” he said. “I don’t know what it was and why it was there. I just hope I never see it again. The letter’s sent, and I’ll see you in a week.”

  The screen went dark again, and we shot knowing glances at each other. Gabe had ticked off A. Gist, which didn’t take much. But all the dumb comments below his video told me no one believed this was anything but a corny movie. Ohhh, scary! I just wet myself. And hope your next episode actually shows something happening. And wholesale shoes and purses at www.cheapstuff4sale.com. Okay, so the last one was spam, but you get the point.

  I glanced at the clock. Thanks to the dial-up, our time was short. “There’s no way we’re going to see all of these today. We’ve still got three entries to go.”

  “Load the next one.” Penny turned back to her screen and kept working.