by Holly Hook
I filed, wincing at the awful grinding sound it made in my head. I wondered if it was what Edith and the man had experienced when I hit them.
Something was up with me.
Though Alyssa had promised that the filing would get better with time, it was still as awful as it had been yesterday.
“Remember to brush your teeth,” Mom said from out in the living room. She set her purse down on the coffee table. “You need not go to school with bad breath again.”
I set the file down on the sink. It had bits of the tooth on it. Not the sight I wanted. “I know, Mom.” No one had ever complained about my breath in class. It was a reason for Mom to pick on me. Since when was anyone's breath rosy and perfect? I ran the sink to mask the filing sound as I started on the other tooth.
And I was still hungry.
Much hungrier, in fact.
The running and limited fighting I had done had dropped my hunger meter to well below half. Soon, I'd reach the critical stage.
And that might happen during class. This would not be a good day.
I chose a long-sleeved shirt and threw a hoodie on over it for extra protection. That alone made me feel better, but it made me think of Brendan. But after what I'd done, would he try to come after me again? Somehow, I doubted it. Brendan had been the nervous newbie that they sent out to do the easy job. The scout. He wasn't good enough yet to do any actual fighting.
But I had been.
I shook my head and packed my school books into my backpack. Mom had brought enough home to turn my pack into a virtual brick. I had better ride the bus, because if she saw me lugging this with ease, the suspicion would go up all over again.
When Mom got into the kitchen, I made a show of dragging the pack across the room.
“Don't you do conditioning for that?” Mom asked, opening the fridge to get out her coffee creamer.
“We don't practice lifting forty pounds of books,” I said. “That's basic training. Feel this.”
She didn't have the time. “I hope you studied last night.”
Did memorizing every groove in the frying pan count? “I worked on Physics,” I said. My stomach threatened to growl again. At the same time, a roll of thunder sounded. Rain was coming in. That was good. It would block out a lot of sun.
Mom eyed the plate and the crumbs in the sink. “Make sure you hand in your work,” she said. “I know that you slack sometimes. You're not going back to that.”
“I've handed in all my assignments.”
She said nothing to that and left a moment later. I stood there in the kitchen and bristled as I listened to her board the elevator. She got off at the bottom floor, and I lost the sense of her once she reached the parking ramp. But, I did her car start and pull out, so that was something.
Edith and Brendan and the guy must not know my address but they might know my school now. Someone must have told them that I went to this one. Bathory, most likely. She would have heard that information from the mayor.
I wished I had my car. It was still at the shop until I could afford to fix the windshield. Alyssa had promised me that Xavier would help with that as soon as things calmed down, but everyone had forgotten with all the craziness that happened.
She couldn't come back to school, could she? Sure, everyone knew her as Roslyn there, and she had changed her looks some, but someone might recognize her as Alyssa Choy.
I'd find out. Alyssa insisted on coming back.
I grabbed my backpack and pulled my hoodie over my face the best I could. By the time I reached the lobby, there were already two kids there, waiting for the school bus. It rained now. So far, the headache hadn't returned. Another rumble of thunder followed.
Nobody bothered me as I stood by the door. Cumberland still ran school buses through most parts of the city, including this one, because of a disagreement the city bus company had with letting kids use permanent passes. At last, the bus pulled up, and I had no problem walking outside and boarding. This was more typical Cumberland weather.
The ride to school was short, and I spotted nothing strange on the way. I texted Alyssa and let her know I'd be at school, and she responded with a thumbs up. I could get away with that. It was a normal thing to do. I found her waiting for me in the main doorway, with the same blue highlights she had gotten this weekend. Neither one of us had gotten the chance to undo our new looks. She drew stares, but not the bad kind.
“Hey, Al—Roslyn,” I said. I couldn't get used to her fake name again.
“So far, so good,” she said. “I haven't gotten called down to the office. I don't know how much the mayor's people questioned the staff here about me.”
“If you're lucky, they didn't know your real name,” I said, keeping my voice low. The flow of students continued through the double doors as buses dropped off their loads. After saving the world, coming back to school didn't seem real.
“But they might have seen me on the news,” Alyssa said. “How does this makeup look?” She had put on purple eye shadow today along with some blush. I could see right through it. I could also see a hint of red through her contacts.
“Ask Maisha,” I said. I hadn't spoken to my other friend since my old apartment had burned down. As far as she knew, I had fallen off the face of the world.
“Janine!”
Oh. There.
Maisha wove through the crowd, dressed in her soccer T-shirt. She wrapped me in an enormous hug and tried to lift me up to spin me around, but didn't succeed.
“Why do you have fifty pounds of homework on your back?” she asked with a grunt.
“Because I was gone for a while?”
Thunder cracked. Maisha had eaten bacon and eggs for breakfast. Complete with pepper jack cheese.
My stomach growled. I glanced at Alyssa.
I needed help.
“Let Janine breathe,” Alyssa said. “She got done recovering from having her apartment burn down.”
“Oh, I heard about that!” Maisha released me. “I tried to call you for like, two weeks, but you didn't pick up.”
“My mom and I were busy moving,” I said, telling the truth.
“And Roslyn!” Maisha turned her attention on Alyssa. “What's your excuse?”
So at least my other friend didn't realize the truth. I caught no suspicion in her tone.
“I had the flu,” Alyssa said. “You didn't want to see me towards the end of last week.”
I snorted. There was so much to that story we couldn't tell.
“I thought you wound up as sacrifices at the water park thing,” Maisha said. Her curls bounced. “Both of you. I tried to find footage, but there wasn't any of the actual event, but I saw what happened afterwards.”
I remembered what Brendan had told me—that he'd seen me on the news.
He wasn't even a good liar, then.
“I heard it was bad,” Alyssa said.
Maisha poked her in the side. “You're not, like, secretly Alyssa Choy or something?”
Crap.
I smiled. I knew how to smooth this over. “Oh, she was out hijacking ATC vans and fighting demons and everything else while she had the flu. That's what we all do when we're sick. It helps us recover.”
Maisha laughed. “I'm glad to have both of you back. Now, we plan what we will wear to the Dream Dance down to every possible detail. We've got three more weeks, and I was fearing I'd have to pick out your outfits for you.”
I exchanged a glance with Alyssa. She shrugged.
It seemed not too many photos of her brandishing her sword had circulated around the school. But we'd still have to be careful.
Alyssa mouthed thanks as we walked to our lockers.
My stomach roared. Maisha had a class on the other side of the building, and relief coursed through me as she separated from us, sure to get out her notebook and plan every detail of the dance down to the minute, including which guys she'd flirt with and when. I shook my head. How could I dive back into this world? It was familiar, but it was also terrif
ying.
“I forgot about the Dream Dance,” I said when I reached my locker.
Alyssa watched me open it. “People are wondering about me.”
“She was joking,” I said. “I heard zero suspicion in her voice.”
“How do you know?” She leaned against the locker, wide-eyed.
“I could hear her tone well.” I still hadn't told Alyssa that the effects of Xavier's god blood hadn't worn off. “My senses are still through the roof. And I'm strong.”
“You are,” she said.
“No. I fought off two of our favorite people last night.”
“You fought them?”
The first warning bell rang, and I knew Alyssa and I would have to use the oldest method of communicating in class to have this conversation.
Passing notes.
Chapter Ten
Not only was passing notes tense with Mrs. Mackitt almost always facing the class, but I could tell that Alyssa was waiting for the ATC to burst in through the door at any moment. She had done the things I'd mentioned to Maisha. She kept eyeing the window that peeked out at the driving rain and at the flooded garden. I listened to the outside for her, but only an occasional late student ran down the hallway. A teacher in the lounge nearby talked about another student who had smuggled chewing tobacco into class and used it. How he got away with that, I didn't know.
The mayor had people ask staff about the girl named Rosyln when the crap started. Coach Lancey was one of them, and she'd asked me where Roslyn had gone after she had stopped showing up to school. That was the day before Thoreau had broken into my apartment and held me as Alyssa bait. I hadn't thought about it much but Coach Lancey had mentioned that some people wanted to talk to Roslyn.
So far, the teachers were treating us as Normals, though word had spread about the apartment fire. I was getting a lot of stares and comments from people in class, until Mrs. Mackitt, the stereotypical mean English teacher, shushed everyone. So after I got done scrawling out a dangerous note about what had happened, I tried to focus on poetry terms.
My stomach continued its grumbling. In only a few hours, I'd have to solve that problem. Last night hadn't gone well, but I'd told Alyssa that I could make it until at least this afternoon. Maybe.
Alyssa and I had to separate for our second class, and we didn't get to sit together until lunch. We ate nothing, but no one cast us a second glance. Alyssa pretended to drink out of a juice box.
“You smashed that guy's skull?” she asked. That was the start of our conversation.
“I smashed that guy's skull,” I said. The food smells were rose as people ate. The last classes of the day would be torture.
“And that woman's nose.”
“And the woman's nose. It made a horrible sound.”
“No offense, but you shouldn't have been able to overcome the two of them,” Alyssa said. “It's Xavier's blood for certain. It strengthened you, at least for now.”
“I didn't mean to do it,” I said. “Biting him. And smashing skulls. Any of it.”
Alyssa leaned across the table and gave me the most serious look possible. “You need to keep this a secret as much as you can. Nothing good can come out of this. I'm speaking from experience.”
“It's too late for that,” I said, clutching my cramping guts. The end of the day couldn't come fast enough. “At least two people know about me now. And now I'm hungry again.” My teeth had also been a bit achy all day. They were busy growing back in, and they didn't waste any time. By the end of the day, they'd start to look suspicious. By tonight, they'd need another date with the file, or I'd never pass.
Alyssa sighed. “If they're connected with you know who, you definitely need to get your car back so you can go to and from school more safely. We'll tell Xavier as soon as he meets us here. And he's going to Transpose us to your apartment after classes. We''ll meet by the conference room, since he can visualize that hallway and get there. It's the only place he can visualize in the whole school.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “I thought you didn't want him to Transpose me? Too risky?”
“We will take the risk,” Alyssa said. “With luck, he's found something out about the missing vampires today. He would ask around the Underground while we're stuck in class.”
“That's good.”
“And Janine?”
“Yeah?”
“Let no one know you're super strong. Quit soccer, just to stay safe. There's too much risk.”
“I can't quit soccer!” It was one of my escapes from home.
“You might need to. If you kick a ball into a Normal's head--"
“Thanks for that image,” I said, deflating. “Can't you mess someone up at practice, too?”
Alyssa kept her serious tone. “I've trained in martial arts forever. They teach you control. I needed that. Janine, you don't have that yet, as you saw. I don't want you to, well, end up in a bad situation. I'll talk to Thorne and see if he can teach you some stuff. How about that? I'll even quit soccer with you. Besides, it's dangerous enough for me to be here.”
“But soccer,” I said. As much as I hated to admit it, Alyssa had a point.
I couldn't be kicking off someone's head with a ball. Before the Xavier incident, I might not have that capability, but now I did.
“Control,” she countered.
“All right,” I said. Misery swept over me like the driving rain outside. I'd done soccer since I was eight years old. I felt as if a piece of me had gotten ripped away. This was worse than ending up on the bench. I knew I could do much better at sports now. I had been having thoughts of sports scholarships. Free rides to college.
I had all this strength, and nothing to show for it. Track and soccer had stopped within the space of twenty-four hours.
I heard Principal Herring approaching the cafeteria before Alyssa did. He waddled, so people called him Principal Penguin instead. I'd never heard his gait before, but the scrape scrape of his worn dress shoes put the picture of him in my mind. I stiffened. “Incoming Antarctic bird alert,” I said.
Alyssa sighed. “Him.”
The scraping approached and I debated on whether we should move away from the cafeteria door. Alyssa had been eyeing entrances and exits all day long, and this was no exception. So far, everyone had called her Roslyn, which was a good sign, and she didn't have pink pigtails anymore like the news reported about Alyssa Choy. She had also evaded most cameras during her adventures. That helped, too. But right then, I couldn't help but feel dread as Principal Penguin approached the cafeteria doors and pushed them open.
He stood there, dressed in a black suit with a white undershirt. He also wore an orange tie. I held down a laugh. He had the exact color profile of his nickname.
His gaze swept across the cafeteria.
He smelled like copious amounts of fast food, which explained the waddling.
I gripped the table. I was going crazy with hunger.
“Roslyn Arnold,” he said, gaze falling on my friend. “Can you follow me to the conference room, please? We need to discuss your long absence and how you're going to catch up with the curriculum.” His chin wobbled as he spoke.
Alyssa tensed. She gave off no metallic scent, but the way she gripped the table confirmed that she feared the worst.
“No problem,” she said. “I had the flu, and I have a note from the doctor.”
“Great,” Principal Penguin said. He didn't believe her. My much improved hearing uncovered that fact. There were hundreds of ways people could inflect their voices. Every word could carry a thousand meanings.
Alyssa rose and followed the principal out of the cafeteria. She shot me a glance.
I was to follow.
Well, I would not abandon my friend.
It wasn't right he didn't ask to see me, too.
I waited for a moment, listening to their footsteps get fainter down the hall as chatter continued through the cafeteria. Maisha would join us as soon as she got out of the lunch line, but she had t
o walk through most of the school to get here, so she wasn't out yet. I glimpsed her halfway down the line, and she waved at me with a notebook in hand.
I waved back, got up, and followed Alyssa into the hallway.
Alyssa and Principal Penguin walked away from the office and towards the conference room, the one where she and Xavier had first spoken. They used the conference room, not the cramped little office, to grill people in trouble. It could be just a meeting about her bad attendance, but I also knew Principal Penguin tried to keep walking to a minimum. Seeing both of us at the same time would make sense.
He had his back to me, but his breaths had a tense end to them.
He feared Alyssa.
“So,” she said, not daring to look back. “Is my dad here? I know I need to pick up my homework. I should have done it before, but I was too sick to get out of bed.”
She shouldn't have returned.
I wondered if Alyssa had come back to keep me from Transposing back home with Xavier alone.
“Yes,” the principal said. “That is an issue, and we will discuss that.”
They turned the corner to the conference room hallway, which stood empty since just about everyone was at lunch. I listened for signs of anything bad. The principal eyed the conference room door.
I heard a weapon cock.
A whisper.
A boot scraping the floor.
Tense breathing.
It was all coming from the darkened conference room.
And Alyssa continued to walk beside Principal Penguin, oblivious. She couldn't hear the things I could.
I tensed, walking faster, but I could keep my gait quiet. Principal Penguin moved on to talking about the end of the semester and how it might affect Alyssa's grades. The tense ends to his sentences turned into exclamation points.
My stomach cramped again, the fast food smell got overpowering, and I leapt at the back of Principal Penguin.
He didn't see it coming. I had to bite through his white undershirt, and it was harder than it should have been thanks to the file this morning, but my teeth had already recovered enough to get the job done. I was so hungry that I didn't care that Principal Penguin had a neck like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. He thrashed and made a choking sound as glorious McDonald's gushed into my mouth in liquid form. He couldn't turn to face me. I was in a near craze.
