by Betsy Uhrig
“Mom!”
But Mom wasn’t home. My parents own the bookstore in town (Flounder Bay Books—I know, original), and Mom, who usually got home before Alice did, had stayed late because someone was out sick.
Uncle Luke, who had one of those jobs you can do in your pajamas from home, was in the kitchen making lasagna. Uncle Luke made really good lasagna, even when he put spinach in it, as he was now. Tons of it.
“It cooks down!” he said when he saw my expression.
At around six, Aunt Shannon pulled up to the house in her little convertible (something that definitely went on the cool side of her cool/nerd equation).
“Here’s my ride,” said Luke. “We’ll just hang out until your parents get home.”
Aunt Shannon was wearing her usual work outfit: jeans, sneakers, and obscure-band T-shirt. Shannon worked for Woozle, the biggest company in Flounder Bay, which was way bigger than the second-biggest company, Hopkins Hairnets. Hopkins Hairnets had been the only company in town until Woozle came along ten years ago.
Woozle is the giant Internet search engine entirely for medical issues. I bet your parents have used it when you got a Lego stuck up your nose or something like that. Aunt Shannon described Woozle as “Google for hypochondriacs.” (I’m not going to make you “write it down and look it up”: a hypochondriac is a person who worries constantly about their health.)
The company has a huge building on the outskirts of town. The building is surrounded by a “campus” with walking trails and even a golf course. They have their own softball field too, but even so, the Hopkins Hornets always beat the Woozle Warthogs at corporate softball. There’s way more muscle power among the hairnet makers.
Luke wandered back into the kitchen, and Shannon asked me how H.A.I.R. Club was going. I described the security system and the user agreement and the embarrassing ID photos, being ultra-careful not to go into enough detail to activate B.U.R.P.
“So what does ‘H.A.I.R.’ stand for?” she asked.
“No idea,” I said. “It must have something to do with security.”
Shannon pulled out her phone. “What’s the name of the company that made the equipment?” she asked. “We can have a look at their website—unless you guys already did that?”
We hadn’t. In our defense, we’d run out of time. In our non-defense, I’m not sure we would have bothered anyway.
“Hmm,” said Shannon after some fast poking. “Are you sure you have the name right?”
“Prescient Technologies,” I said. Then I spelled “prescient” for her.
She rolled her eyes. More poking.
“Nothing,” she said. “That’s strange. You’d think a company making high-tech stuff like that would have a web presence. Very strange.”
I agreed that it was strange, because I guess it was. I mean, if even the company that ships your bananas has a web address printed on the little banana stickers, you’d think a security company would have one. Maybe they were so secretive and mysterious they didn’t want a website. Maybe they did most of their work for governments and reclusive billionaires and didn’t want just anyone knowing about them.
But this led to an unavoidable question: Why give such cutting-edge equipment to Flounder Bay Upper School for free?
I was about to run this past Shannon, but then Mom and Dad came home and lasagna-heating directions were discussed, and Luke and Shannon were leaving.
As they pulled away in the little convertible, Alice cornered my parents in the kitchen.
“Jason called me a dookie,” she said.
Chapter 9
TUESDAY’S H.A.I.R. CLUB MEETING WAS fairly tame. Hoppy insisted we set up a chart for taking turns with the equipment. Nikhil objected, Sonia tried to compromise, and Steve decreed we’d start using the chart on Thursday. (For the record, it was never mentioned again.) Nikhil and Steve then spent most of the hour following their cross-country assistant coach, Mr. Bradley, around because they suspected he went outside to smoke between classes. He was indeed sneaking out. To eat Twizzlers.
I noticed that Sonia was taking secretary notes, so I decided I needed to take historian notes too. When I couldn’t find a pen in the mess in my backpack, I asked Sonia if I could borrow one. Unfortunately for me, she was wearing a blouse with yellow pom-pom fringe. I felt like a fool writing my official-historian notes using a pen with a yellow pom-pom bobbing on top.
* * *
On Thursday, we got our first actual security assignment.
“So Ms. Wu called me down to the office today,” Steve said when we’d assembled in our headquarters.
“What’d you do?” asked Sonia, aghast.
Ms. Wu was the vice principal—the school enforcer. None of us had had any direct experience with her, but we already knew enough to fear the call-down.
Steve chuckled. “I didn’t do anything,” he said. “There’s been a security breach. She wants us to look into it.”
“Have they called the cops?” asked Andrew.
“We don’t need any cops,” said Vincent.
“Cops?” said Nikhil. “We’re not cheesy TV criminals.”
“No need for officers of the law,” said Steve. “Ms. Meager in the cafeteria says something got into the croutons overnight and she wants to know what it was.”
“As in, what kind of animal it was?” Hoppy asked.
“Correct.”
“Those croutons are always stale,” said Vincent. “I don’t know why an animal would breach security to eat them.”
Laura was already signed on. She brought up the recording of the cafeteria from last night and put it on the big screen so we could all see it.
“What time?” she asked.
“Try after dark,” said Steve. “Whatever it was is probably nocturnal.”
“Plus, it doesn’t mind staleness,” Vincent added.
“I’ll start at nine,” said Laura.
She focused on the kitchen, where the giant vats of food were stored. We watched as nothing happened for a few minutes.
“Can we speed it up?” asked Hoppy.
Laura did, and the nothing started happening more quickly.
“Faster,” said Nikhil.
High-speed nothing.
“That’s as fast as it goes,” said Laura.
“Wait!” said Sonia. “Pause for a sec.”
Laura paused.
“Now back up.… Keep going.… There! See it?”
Laura let the recording move forward, but slowly.
“What exactly are we looking for?” said Hoppy.
“Like a blur or something. Over by the door,” said Sonia.
It was Hoppy who confirmed the sighting. “There,” she said. “Near the door to the cafeteria. Something’s moving.”
Laura backed the recording up again and then moved the view into the cafeteria itself. Then she let it play forward. And that’s when we all saw it.
“That’s one giant raccoon,” said Vincent. “And it’s walking upright.”
Chapter 10
IT WASN’T A GIANT RACCOON walking upright. It was a person. No, it was a whole crowd of people. In the cafeteria of the Flounder Bay Upper School. At five past midnight.
“Was there some kind of event here last night? A PTO meeting?” Hoppy asked.
We watched the action on the screen for a moment.
“Those aren’t grown-ups,” said Steve. “They’re kids.”
They were. Older than we were—high schoolers, definitely—but kids.
“Maybe some kind of really popular club met here last night,” said Andrew.
“Not possible,” said Vincent. “I’m a member of every club at this school. There were no club meetings last night. And no club is that popular. Look at all those kids.”
The cafeteria was full. In fact, it seemed like a typical lunchtime crowd.
“They’re eating,” said Laura. “This must be a recording from lunch. I must have pulled the recording for twelve noon, not twelve midnight. Sorry.
” She fiddled with the laptop.
“Okay, the time stamp says twelve a.m.,” Laura said as she let the recording play.
“It’s showing the same thing as before,” I said.
We watched the impossible twelve a.m. lunch period go on for a while.
“Move over to the windows,” said Hoppy.
Laura shifted the angle some, but the windows remained out of view. “This isn’t working as well as usual,” she said. “I can’t zoom around easily.”
“Try right-clicking,” said Andrew. “That always does something.”
“Right-clicking does not always—” Nikhil began.
“Oh, here it is,” said Laura.
“All hail the right-click!” said Vincent.
“I have to pick a view,” said Laura. “That’s weird.”
The angle shifted abruptly and we were looking at the windows.
“See?” said Hoppy. “It’s daylight outside.”
“At midnight?” said Nikhil. “Something is way messed up. Let me do it.” He elbowed Laura out from behind the laptop.
Nikhil poked around for a while, and the recording lurched forward and backward, making me a little motion sick.
“This has to be it,” he said finally, and he let the recording move forward again at 12:15 a.m.
“Still lunchtime,” I said. “The time stamp must be wrong. It should be p.m.”
“Who eats at twelve p.m.?” asked Hoppy.
“Seniors,” said Vincent.
“I don’t recognize anyone there,” said Sonia.
“Maybe that’s because you don’t know any seniors,” said Nikhil.
“I know lots of seniors,” said Sonia. “My brother is a senior. And I don’t see him or any of his friends.”
“I’m thinking ghosts,” said Vincent. “Ghosts of kids past who meet at midnight to enact—”
Nikhil didn’t let him finish. “Ghosts?” he said. “This isn’t Scooby-Doo.”
“They do seem a little out of focus,” Sonia said carefully. Then she waited for the avalanche of ridicule.
“She’s right,” said Steve. “Try zooming in,” he said to Nikhil.
Nikhil zoomed jerkily in on a kid no one recognized. The image got bigger but remained fuzzy. Nothing like the sharp image of the Twizzler flecks in Mr. Bradley’s teeth from last time.
“I can’t get any closer,” said Nikhil. “And don’t say it—I already tried right-clicking.”
“Okay, zoom out, way out,” said Steve.
“Yes, sir,” Nikhil snarked, but he did it.
The image was still out of focus.
“Plus, there’s no sound on this recording,” said Nikhil. “The volume is all the way up.”
We listened to the silence and watched the fuzzy strangers eat their fuzzy lunches.
Andrew sat down heavily on a desk.
“Are you okay?” Sonia asked him.
Andrew didn’t answer at first; he kept studying the ninth monitor with its view of the lunch scene.
“Here’s the thing,” he said after a moment. “I keep telling myself it’s not what I’m seeing, but I think it is. Do you guys see it?”
“What?” asked Hoppy. “See what?”
“Me,” said Andrew. “Over there by the drink machine. I see me.”
Chapter 11
IT’S WORTH EMPHASIZING HERE THAT Andrew Vernicky wasn’t just tall for his (our) age. Which he was. He was tall for any age. He was a head taller than any other seventh grader and right up there with the tallest high schoolers. People were always asking him if he played basketball, which he did not.
His hands were distinctive as well—graceful, with the kind of long fingers piano teachers swoon over. He didn’t play piano either. Andrew was a constant source of frustration to piano teachers and basketball coaches throughout Flounder Bay.
“Are you sure that’s you?” asked Vincent.
“Who else could it be?” said Andrew. “Those are definitely my hands.” They were. “And my hair.” It was. “And that’s my UC Santa Barbara sweatshirt.”
A UC Anything sweatshirt was rare in the hinterlands of Flounder Bay, so we all stared as Nikhil focused on the sweatshirt.
“It must have shrunk in the wash,” said Andrew. “Darn. I love that sweatshirt.”
The sleeves were definitely too short, making Andrew’s hands even more noticeable. And the person at the drink machine was definitely Andrew. Except—
“You look different,” said Steve.
“Even taller,” said Hoppy.
“Have you been working out?” Sonia asked.
We studied onscreen Andrew. He did look different. He looked bigger all over, especially in the shoulder region. We turned to live Andrew and his shoulders in particular. No change. He shrugged the shoulders in question.
“No,” he said. “Not lately.”
“So what were you doing in the cafeteria at midnight?” asked Vincent.
“I think we’ve determined that this recording doesn’t show the cafeteria at midnight,” Hoppy said. “It’s clearly daylight.”
“I eat at ten thirty, with you guys,” Andrew said. “And who are these other kids?”
Nikhil started moving the focus around to the various kids, closing in on their faces.
“Well, there’s Hoppy,” he said finally, pausing on a figure standing beside a table toward the center of the room. The table, I should add, that Hoppy always sat at.
“Oh my god,” said Hoppy. “That is me.” She paused for a few seconds. “Sort of.”
“You’ve got boobs,” said Sonia, her voice tinged with awe.
Hoppy, who was short and had that wild head of hair, looked almost exactly the same onscreen. The main difference was the one Sonia had just mentioned.
Hoppy looked down at her chest. That seemed to give everyone else permission to do the same. It did not match the one onscreen.
“Okay,” she said. “I didn’t look like that earlier today. And I wasn’t in the cafeteria at midnight or noon.”
“It’s obvious what’s going on here,” said Steve.
“Is it?” I asked.
“Sure. There’s something wrong with this so-called state-of-the-art security system. The thing is broken.”
“That does explain it,” Sonia threw in.
“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “It doesn’t explain it at all. If there were something wrong with the system, it might leave out chunks of time or record the same thing over and over. But it wouldn’t put some of us in the cafeteria when we weren’t there and make us look… um… bigger,” I said, going for a word that covered both Andrew’s and Hoppy’s situations.
“Maybe,” said Andrew, “the program is somehow mashing different times together. Maybe it’s been recording over itself, so different lunchtimes are layered on top of each other. Maybe that’s my head on someone else’s body. And also my hands.”
“That’s got to be what happened to me,” said Hoppy.
“But is that your sweatshirt on someone else’s body?” I asked Andrew.
“Maybe?”
Andrew’s explanation made better sense than any others we could think of, but it didn’t seem like enough of an explanation.
“It’s a working theory, anyway,” Steve said presidentially. “It’s past four,” he added. “We’ve got to finish up.”
We shut down the laptops and the monitors, and Steve locked the door behind us. “Let’s try to have a few more theories on Tuesday,” he said. “We’ll figure it out.”
“We didn’t even figure out what was eating the croutons,” said Vincent.
Chapter 12
THAT NIGHT I DIDN’T HAVE time for working theories. I had a lot of homework, and Alice decided to perform one of her “shows.” This had been happening more and more since Alice had spent the summer at kids’ theater camp being told she had a “talent for drama.” Which she definitely did. Just not the way the camp counselors probably meant it.
“Tonight,” she announced
right after dinner, “for a limited time only, I, Alice Sloan, present a special presentation of my sold-out show—”
“Alice,” said my father in his get-on-with-it tone of voice.
“Oh boy, a show!” said Mom, having a seat on the sofa. “Come on, Jason.” She patted the cushion next to her.
“I’ve got a ton of homework,” I said, truthfully but not regretfully.
“It’ll just take a minute,” said Mom.
“No, it won’t,” said Alice. “This is a feature-length show.”
“You’ve got five minutes,” said Dad.
I plopped down next to Mom as Alice took her position in the middle of the living room rug. Dad remained standing, eyeing his watch.
“Tonight’s show is The Ugly Dorkling,” she announced.
“Oh, for pete’s sa—” I began.
“Quiet in the audience,” said Alice. “The show is about two normal parents who have a son who is an ugly dorkling. And he doesn’t grow up to be a swan. He grows up to be a big, big dork. And he joins the Dork Club at his stupid new school and…”
She went on for exactly five minutes, snapping at us to “keep watching me” when we dared look away. Then my dad shut her down.
The “show” itself never started—she just described the “plot,” which didn’t amount to much except the terrible things that happened to her thinly disguised main character. By the time “the beautiful and smart princess swan, Alicia” was born to the overjoyed parents, even my mom had stopped chuckling appreciatively.
I escaped to my homework while my parents lectured Alice on how words could sometimes be hurtful.
You may be asking what all this has to do with the history of H.A.I.R. Club, and the answer is not much. Except don’t dramatic scenes and conversations make history “come alive,” as Ms. Grossman would say? Even if it’s just me, my parents, and my deranged little sister involved?
Although I should say here that if you’re looking for things like character development and poetic descriptions, you are barking up the wrong book. If you want that type of stuff, go to Flounder Bay Books (shameless plug), and find yourself something good to read.
