The Chaos Curse

by Sayantani DasGupta

  “Man down!” Kendrick yelled as he fell to the already-soggy auditorium floor.

  Mademoiselle Morrow, the French teacher and fencing coach, held off some kids trying to barrel over Kendrick’s fallen form, and helped him up. “S’il vous plaît! Keep your eyes on the prize, team!”

  But the shrieking and yelling just got louder, and the pandemonium more pandemonious. I turned around just in time to see Shady Sadie the Science Lady being rushed offstage, her intense eyes shining behind her glasses like beacons in the chaotic, sprinkler-induced storm.

  “Calmly, students! This is probably nothing, just an unfortunate accident,” Dr. Dixon called from the door, where he was trying to organize kids into a single-file line.

  “Who did this? I want names, ranks, and serial numbers!” P. Chenny was shrieking again from the front of the room. Her face was all twisted, and even though she was otherwise soaked, her hair now stood out straight from her head. Wow, that must be one really fancy perm. “Suspension and expulsion are too good for the criminals who did this! You’re going straight to juvie! You hear me? Straight to reform school! Do not pass go! Do not collect your diploma!”

  “Come on, Kiran!” Jovi was holding out her hand as my row filed out, pushing and shoving, toward the door.

  “I’ll be right there!” I called as she was swept away by the tide of panicky students.

  In the confusion, no one saw me bend down to pick up the gecko that scuttled back toward me from under the rows of chairs. “Thanks, little dude. Good job pulling that fire alarm.”

  The lizard flickered its tongue at me in what I can only assume was a you’re welcome.

  All right. Now that the auditorium was on its way to becoming empty, for the next part of my plan. I wasn’t about to follow my classmates out of the auditorium. Four months ago, I would have convinced myself this was all coincidence and that if I just kept my head down, and acted in ways that were unnoticeable, everything would spontaneously fix itself and all would be fine. Now I knew better. I wasn’t the kind of person anymore who waited for bad situations to get better, hoping someone else would take charge. I was the kind of person who stepped up, fixed things, and made them right. Which is why I’d had Tiktiki One pull the alarm. There was clearly something strange going on here, and I had to get to the bottom of it. I needed to talk to Shady Sadie one-on-one and get her to explain to me this stuff about the multiverse, chaos, and demons. I knew it had something to do with everything that was going on. I just didn’t get how yet.

  “Come on, students, everyone out of there!” I heard Mademoiselle Morrow call. I ducked down beneath the rows and started crawling so that she couldn’t see me. The sprinklers were raining on my head and the lights were kind of blinking too, but I crawled along the wet floor without stopping. I was on a mission.

  “Be smart. Take care of each other, folks!” I heard Dr. Dixon’s booming voice in the hallway outside the auditorium. “Walk, don’t run, students. Get outside to your meet-up places to join your homerooms!”

  The sprinklers were still going and alarms still blaring, but I was pretty sure from the quieting down of the auditorium that it was finally empty. Now was my chance to find Shady Sadie before she left the school grounds. But when I grabbed my backpack and straightened up, I was shocked to find myself nose-to-nose with Not-by-the-Hair-of-My-Cheni-Chen-Chen.

  The principal’s clothes were wet and her pink glasses so water-streaked I couldn’t see her eyes, but her hair was even more twisty-curly and standing out from her head than before. She swiveled her neck, like she wasn’t looking at me but somehow around me, hissing, “Illegal!”

  I took some serious offense, sputtering through the sprinkler water, “Illegal? I’m a human being! No human being is illegal!”

  “Illegal! Trespasser! Dimensional interloper!” Principal Chen shrieked to make herself heard over the alarm. Her teeth were kind of bared now in a creepy way. I mean, I knew she was strict, but this was ridiculous.

  “Dimensional interloper? What do you mean?” I blinked through the water streaming over my face, trying to stall for time. Now I hoped Dr. Dixon or one of the other teachers was still hanging around and would see us. I was starting to think there was something really not right with old P. Chenny.

  “You dropped into the wrong story, girl!” Principal Chen hissed as she clamped an alarmingly clawlike hand over my wrist. “But never mind, we’ll make do!”

  “Let me go!” I shouted, trying to pull away from my surprisingly strong principal. Even as I did, her words started to take hold in my mind. Wait a minute, what did she mean I was a dimensional interloper? That I’d dropped into the wrong story? Oh, jeez, maybe my suspicions were right! This wasn’t some temporary story-smushing thing—like what had happened to Neel or my moon mother or Bunty. This was something to do with string, or membrane, theory! I bet I’d dropped into a parallel dimension that was near my own, but not quite. Maybe that dysfunctional wormhole had dropped me and Tiktiki One into a close but ultimately wrong version of New Jersey!

  Principal Chen was pulling me along now, despite my best efforts to get away from her. “Let me go! Let me go!” I demanded as she dragged me down the empty hallway outside the auditorium. I was so off-balance, trying to break free from her, that I almost slipped on some soggy Valentine’s Day decorations that had fallen to the wet hallway floor because of the overhead-sprinkler rain. I slipped and skidded on construction hearts and overly fat baby cupids with bows and arrows, which seemed to be mocking me. Man, now was a really bad time for me to have left my weapons in a frozen tree. I needed some help. Like, pronto.

  As if in answer to my call, Tiktiki One slipped out of my backpack and onto my shoulder. The lizard flicked its tongue, hitting me in the ear.

  “Tell Neel and Mati I’m in trouble!” I yelled. The time for secret messages had obviously passed. “Tell my friends I need help!”

  Even as Principal Chen whipped her head around, I yanked off the gecko’s rubbery tail with my free hand and watched my lizard friend go scampering down my side and off along the tiled hallway.

  “No one can help you, girl!” sneered my obviously unhinged principal as she yanked me along at a frightening pace out the front doors of the school.

  As soon as we were outside, with the freezing February air hitting our cheeks, the principal ran, flat out, away from the flagpole, which was the emergency meet-up place for most of the sixth grade. As she booked along, her big belly not slowing her down one whit, she dragged me with her.

  “That’s not the right way!” I tried to break my hand free of her grip, but it was steel. Even my thick-soled combat boots were slipping in the muddy, frosty grass, and my backpack swung crazily back and forth on my shoulders. “I’ve got to go find my homeroom teacher!”

  “No worries, you’re with the principal!” cackled Principal Chen in a disturbing way. “You know how to remember the spelling of principal, don’t you? The principal is your pal!” She cackled again, and I felt goose bumps come up across my arms. And it wasn’t just because I was freezing in my sopping clothes.

  I half tripped, half stumbled as Principal Chen pulled me along the cafeteria-side wall of the middle school, out behind the building to where the giant metal dumpsters stood. Within seconds, I couldn’t feel my lips or fingertips. My nose was running something fierce. Principal Chen was wearing her normal office suit with no winter jacket but didn’t seem to be feeling the cold at all as she yanked me along with alarming strength. I mean, I’d heard of pregnant women’s hormones making them powerful, but this was beyond beyond!

  On the way along the edge of our middle school, we passed a few students running in the other direction, but no one thought to stop us. The screaming fire alarm was still bleating from inside the building, and now, from a distance, I could hear the whine and screeching tires of fire trucks speeding toward the school.

  The principal didn’t stop power-walking and yanking until we were out behind the cafeteria dumpsters, where the re
ek of lunchtime garbage was vomit-inducing. Finally, in the smelly shelter of the giant garbage area, I shook myself free of her grip.

  “Who are you?” I built up my courage to ask. I stomped my feet and rubbed my arms. I could barely feel my face from the cold.

  To my alarm, Principal Chen turned on me with a decidedly non-Principal-Chen-like look. To tell the truth, she looked a bit like a very familiar villain from a very familiar myth. Her curly hair was weaving around her head like it had a mind of its own. It looked alarmingly like, well, a headful of snakes.

  “Haven’t you guessed who I am?” she hissed. Her eyes glinted dangerously behind her pink cat-eye glasses. And her hair was looking more and more snaky by the second. “I thought you knew your Greek myths!”

  “Medusa?” I squeaked, thinking of the story I’d read about so many times with Zuzu. But if this was Medusa, why wasn’t I already turned to stone?

  “Wrong!” Principal Chen—or who I still thought of as Principal Chen—sneered and spit on the ground. She went on in a whiny voice, “Everybody’s so terrified of my sister. It’s always about Medusa … I mean, MEDU-SA, MEDU-SA, MEDU-SA! What about me, huh? What about Stheno and our other sister Euryale? Just because we can’t turn people to stone, no one remembers to fear us—oh, nooooo. We’re just the cut-rate Gorgons, aren’t we? I’m just the middle sister, aren’t I? I mean, like, it’s so unfair!”

  What? Maybe she wasn’t Medusa, but standing before me was one of her Gorgon sisters! I was starting to really freak, my body shaking not just from the freezing February temperatures, but from fear. I didn’t have my weapons, I didn’t have my friends, I didn’t even have my lizard anymore. What was I going to do?

  Principal Chen, aka the Gorgon Stheno, approached me with her claws out and teeth bared. I nervously retreated, my back almost against the brick wall of the school.

  “You’re not even really pregnant!” I said, pointing at her suddenly flat belly.

  Stheno couldn’t reply, because just then, a voice came out of the skies. “Unhand that princess!” someone yelled, and then there was a torrent of arrows raining down toward the Gorgon-slash-principal. Under the assault, the Chenmeister turned more and more into her Gorgon form, her body becoming more lionlike, and great big wings sprouting from her back. With her skirt suit and jacket still on, she looked seriously strange. Plus there were what looked like horns peeking out from under her snaky locks!

  I turned around, hoping that my rescuer was somehow, miraculously, Neel; that he’d gotten the lizard-gram and made it across the dimensions in the last few minutes. But of course, it wasn’t. Instead, for whatever shocking reason, the person wielding a very familiar-looking bow and shooting arrows at our Gorgon-slash-principal was none other than the too-perfect-looking boy Ned, riding on, of all things, a giant eagle!

  Yo, this was some wacky sort of magic trick.

  Unhand that princess!” Ned shouted again. At some point, I’d have to figure out how he knew about my identity. But first, survival and getting away from this principal-slash-mythical-beast-monster.

  “You!” shrieked the Gorgon formerly known as Principal Chen. “A year’s worth of hard labor detention! Suspension by your teeth in midair! Off-planetary expulsion!”

  “Oh yeah? Well, how about a haircut, you googly goon?” Ned let a few more arrows fly with his words.

  “What are you doing with my weapons?” I recognized the arrows as well as the distinctive ash-colored bow in his hands. “You stole those from me!”

  “Um, how about I brought them back after you lost them in a tree? Don’t worry, darlin’, I’ll return them just as soon as I finish saving your life,” said Ned as his eagle flapped its giant wings, creating even more freezing wind to add to what was already swirling around us.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I noticed some blue butterflies flying by over Ned’s shoulder. But that couldn’t be right. What would butterflies be doing in New Jersey in February?

  Principal Chen roared, far more of a monster than a school administrator now. “Go away, you pale yellow tree monster! Your country’s food is terrible, and your stories are gross! That one about the eyeball! UGH!”

  “Worry about your own gross stories, you cut-rate excuse for a Gorgon!” Ned’s eagle swooped down and then up in the nick of time as Principal Stheno’s grasping claws almost caught the bird’s legs. As the bird banked hard right, huge against the gray-white sky, I saw that it had snatched the principal’s bright pink handbag with its claws. With a loud caw, the eagle dropped the overstuffed purse, making used tissues, chewing gum wrappers, and a giant sheaf of detention slips roll out onto the icy ground.

  The rolling detention slip bundle crashed into some other trash near the dumpsters. Stheno shrieked and recoiled. Surprised at her reaction, I looked more carefully. What her detention slips had bumped into wasn’t anything too scary—just a lighter with a drawing of an atom on it. In fact, I recognized that lighter. It was the same one Dr. Dixon sometimes used to do chemistry demonstrations for our science class. But seeing Stheno’s reaction, I got an idea. I took two quick steps backward, then grabbed it. I waved the tiny object at the principal-slash-snake-haired-monster.

  “You don’t like fire, huh?” I yelled, shoving the lighter at her face. I could hear it still had a little fluid left in it. “You’re not scared of it or anything, are you?”

  “Stop that! You bully!” shrieked Medusa’s less capable sibling, trying to knock the lighter from my hand. “You’re as bad as my sister! It’s not my fault I’m scared of fire since that aromatherapy candle incident!”

  Fear seemed to make Stheno faster. Before I knew what was happening, she was on me, scratching and punching. Okay, just waving the lighter around wasn’t going to be enough. I tried to avoid her blows as I looked desperately around for a better weapon. My eyes fell on just the thing: an old half-broken field hockey stick poking out of the dumpster closest to me. With a yell and a superhuman leap, I grabbed it, swishing it through the air like a staff. This bought me a few minutes, but I needed something more. I glanced at the lighter still in my other hand. Of course. Swishing and spinning the staff like a fighter in a movie I once saw, I got Stheno off-balance. Then I followed through on my new plan. It took me a few tries—I’d never used a lighter before—but I got the bendy side of the wooden hockey stick to finally light. Trying not to freak out at the flames, I spun the fiery staff at the Gorgon, swishing it first above my head and then down. I spun around to give myself more momentum, leaping through the air to lunge at the monster with the flaming end of the field hockey stick.

  Stheno hissed and spit at me but started to back off. “Put that out! Put that evil thing out!”

  “No chance!” I yelled, bringing my flaming hockey stick down from the right, then from the left. In the midst of all this, a blue butterfly flew down between us, landing on one of Stheno’s snaky hairs.

  “I’ll get you, my pretty!” snarled the Gorgon, and for a flash, she looked just like a green-skinned witch from a different story. Pointy black hat and everything. Then the butterfly flew off her, and she was herself again.

  The distraction gave me an idea, though. The witch in that other story had melted when water was thrown on her. Judging from how wet we’d both gotten from the auditorium sprinklers, Stheno seemed fine with water. But clearly, she had a thing about fire.

  “Ned! Flame up those arrows!” I yelled. “Let’s see if she likes that!”

  “Oh, you meddling dimension trespasser!” Stheno shrieked. She was so mad, there were drops of spittle flying from her lips, so she looked like she was almost frothing at the mouth. “I’ll make sure this goes on your permanent transcript! You’ll never get into college!”

  The Gorgon formerly known as my principal was moving fast now, eyes huge beneath the pink cat-eye glasses, nostrils flared, raining angry spittle. She was doing roundhouse kicks toward my stomach, leaping side kicks toward my head. I backed up fast, brandishing my flaming hockey stick. The
body of the stick was burning now, and I was afraid my weapon wouldn’t last too much longer.

  “Ned! Come on!” I yelled again. What was taking him so long?

  “Your boyfriend’s too scared!” Stheno shrieked, jabbing at me with a one-two punch.

  “He’s not my boyfriend!” I don’t know why I felt the need to correct P. Sthenny on my romantic status even as she was mauling me. Then I watched with horror as her jaw unhinged from her face. As it opened up, razor-sharp teeth reached out in my direction!

  “Oh, shove it in your hockey puck!” she snarled, knocking the wind out of me with a super-agile jumping front kick to the gut. Her teeth, more like long-stemmed tentacles—or maybe snakes—practically swarmed out from her giant, unhinged maw of a mouth even as her hair snakes hissed and bit at me.

  Beside the large green dumpsters were a few regular-sized metal garbage cans. I picked up one of the round lids just as the Gorgon leaped toward me, both hands outstretched. I held the garbage lid up like a shield to keep her claws and hair and teeth from me. At the same time, I kept waving the flaming hockey stick at her around the side of my makeshift shield.

  “Ow! You made me break a nail!” yelled the ex–Principal Chen, her wiggling teeth and giant mouth making it hard to understand her. “And I just got a manicure!”

  “Ned!” I yelled again as I pushed the metal lid out against the Gorgon’s body. Her flailing snake-hairs and tentacle-teeth snuck around the top and sides of it, snapping at me, taunting me. “Some help, like, now would be perfect!” I looked up long enough to see that the blond boy had finally nocked an arrow in my bow and was aiming at Principal-My-Teeth-Are-Alive.

  I held up the still flaming hockey stick. “Here!” I shouted.

  “Flaming arrows coming right up!” yelled Ned. “Princess, you might want to take some cover!”

  “UGH! Flaming arrows!” shrieked Stheno. “I hate those!”

  Ned’s eagle flew down close enough so that he could light each arrow from the flaming hockey stick before he shot it at the Gorgon. Where the flaming arrows hit her, they burned her skin, hair, and teeth, making parts of her begin to shrivel like pieces of burning paper.